The morning news is full of reports of the commemoration of the 75th anniversay of D-Day and it has caused me to reflect. What do my nephews and nieces and their contemporaries know about D-Day? World War II?
My guess is not much and much of what they think they know is wrong. D-Day at least from a psychological standpoint in this ephemeral modern world of ours is more distant to them than the battle of Gettysburg was to me when I was their age. I also suspect that what they think they know is colored by their parents’ or their parents’ contemporaries’ views on the Vietnam War.
I wonder if they know that at the beginning of the war the Soviets were not our allied but became our allies in 1941 after the Soviet Union was invaded by the Germans? The American Left and American Right were united in opposing our entrance into World War II. The American Left stopped resisting that effort after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. The American Right stopped resisting that effort after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
That pragmatically speaking the war in Europe was fought between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union on one side against just about everybody else on the other? The French Resistance consisted of a few hundred French Communists, the Free French were not really much of a factor other than politically in the war and many of the French actually supported the Nazis. Many of the countries occupied by the Germans actually had lots of Nazi sympathizers.
I wonder if they know that the Russians think that they actually won “the Great Patriotic War” and they’re not entirely wrong? I wonder if they realize how completely the Germans have dismissed World War II from their collective memory?
There’s an enormous confusion of propaganda with reality. Not just our propaganda but British proganda, Soviet propaganda, French propaganda, German propaganda, etc.
Russia played a big part in the war in Europe. I think you acknowledge that later so I assume you miswrote that.
We still work with the speech and debate kids at our high school. Maybe that is a more select group, but they seem, as a group, to have a pretty good handle on WWII. With less emphasis on memorizing dates and more on understanding root causes in history they seem to understand it as well or better as did kids coming out of my high school, who all believed that the US singlehandedly won WW2.
Steve
Howe well I remember the fury of my history teacher who entered the classroom on Pearl Harbor Day 1958 to find someone had written “Happy Pearl Harbor Day” on the blackboard.
Finland gave a pretty good accounting of themselves.
I never thought too much about D Day before, as June 6th also happens to be our wedding anniversary, which has top billing. This year, however, today’s focus is being shared with the 75th anniversary of such an iconic WWII battle. So many poignant, unusual details have emerged, accompanied by the enlarged media coverage, revealing much more than simply the statistical enormity of who participated and the losses of life suffered during the incursion.
Consequently, tears flowed today in reflecting and remembering…….
My father was in a field artillery company (26th Yankee Div). They were loaded onto LSTs directly from the troop transport ships, and were put ashore 6/7. Never spent an hour in UK. He ended up in the Battle of the Bulge, but front line artillery was bypassed after some exchanges.
He walked (or rode) much the same territory as my grandfather in 1918. Same enemy, same battle ground.
People whine about Germany note meeting its NATO promises. Personally, a dis-armed, pacifist, self-absorbed Germany is just fine.
PS. Germany was defeated by the Soviet Union. Almost the entire German military was always on the Eastern Front. The Western Front was a side show. If the Germans put as many troops in the west, my father and all the males in my family of that generation would have died. Or, more likely, no D-Day would have happened.
If who won and who lost in Europe had been dictated by which side had the superior military doctrine, the Allies would have lost. We won because there were more of us and because we could produce more than Germany could.
The Soviets defeated the Germans because they were willing to absorb so many casualties. The Soviets took more military casualties than all of the other combatants, Allies or Axis, put together. The had more military and civilian casualties as well, possibly as many as 30 million, an unimaginable number. Think the entire populations of metro New York and metro Chicago put together.
First Wave at Omaha Beach
“If who won and who lost in Europe had been dictated by which side had the superior military doctrine, the Allies would have lost.”
Take Hitler out of the equation and you can make a good case. His involvement hampered the German military leaders. Invading Russia has always been questionable. Doing it in winter? Worse.
Steve
It was a joint effort. The Soviets would have collapsed or made a separate peace had the US not kept them resupplied through Persia and Murmansk. The threat of a Western Front kept at least a half if not a whole Armegruppe doing occupation duty in France instead of being used to take Leningrad or Astrakhan or even Moscow. Conversely, the meat grinder of the Eastern Front made the Normandy invasion possible. Also the French Resistance was more than a few hundred Communists. To use just one example, it took thousands and thousands of men and women to execute Plan Vert, Bleu, Violet, etc. that paralyzed the initial German response to Overlord (it also helped that Hitler gave orders never to be woken before time and that Panzer units could only be moved on his authorization).
This commemoration brings to mind the 75th reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1938.
Gettysburg itself was 82 years from the Battle of Yorktown.