Today is the 72nd Anniversary of D-Day. On 6 June 1944 over 160,000 Allied troops landed on the Normandy coastline to kick off the Land component of Operation Overlord. Alwyn Collison has been tweeting the events of WW II as they occurred – sort of a today in WW II retroactive live tweeting – and you can see the D-Day as it happened tweets here. The US Army’s D-Day site, includes multi-media (where I got the video below), a list of Medal of Honor awardees, the US and Allied Divisions involved, and a discussion of the Normandy coast, the beaches chosen for the landing, and how the Airborne assault and beach landings occurred.
raven
My dad was funny. He didn’t like the D-Day designation because “I had 32 goddamn D-Days in the Pacific”. That said it was an incredible operation and the beginning of the end. Rick Atkinson, in his WW2 in Europe Trilogy , note that after Pearl all the generals wanted to invade France. Roosevelt, on his own, said no and insisted we learn how to do it in North Africa and then Italy. Damn liberal was right.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: FDR was a very good strategist. And as you know well, the default for general officers/flag officers, as well as most officers, is to want to do something. We use to talk about this all the time in seminar with the students at USAWC: the military never says no when asked. Part of it is an overall serious commitment to civilian control of the military, so if the civilian leadership asks if you can do something you say yes. But part of it is also wanting to be active. And that’s often a two edged sword and requires good civilian leadership to know when to reign the enthusiasm in.
Miss Bianca
Dang. Well, there goes the rest of my day…down the History Rabbit Hole.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: I could post more bizarre, Asian horror movie trailers? I’ve got a South Korean one lined up. Also, the trailer for Clown, which is finally getting a US release. Your call.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR, NO MORE OF THAT F***ING CLOWN TRAILER.
D-Day footage will be quite enough horror for me today, thank you.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Clown trailer it is then:
youtube.com/watch?v=GkwHXxcBr1A
(trigger warning for Omnes!)
Betty Cracker
My grandfather was there. He waded ashore at Utah Beach, later fought in the Battle of the Bulge and slogged on to Berlin. He came through it all without a scratch. He was 25 years old on D-Day. I know all of this because my grandmother told me. My grandfather never had much to say about it.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: The hate. THE HATE.
@Betty Cracker: that’s amazing. That he made it thru’ without a scratch, not that he never talked about it. My dad never talked about it either (he was in the Pacific theater, not the Atlantic). It’s actually a little funny to me how most of my friends’ fathers served in the Pacific, not the European ground war.
Mike in NC
The 50th anniversary of D-Day was recreated at Fort Story, VA. Hundreds of reenactors participated, along with scores of volunteers from active duty and reserve/guard units. My Baltimore reserve unit operated LCM-8 type landing craft, and there must have been a couple dozen of them at Fort Story that day. Like being in a Hollywood movie.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: All of my grandfather’s friends – all from Denver – were sent to the Pacific. So I’m wondering if there was a geographic coding to the deployments.
My grandfather was mobilized as a civilian working under one of FDR’s cousins doing logistics. There’s a technical name for that mobilized status, which I never remembered. Basically, because he’d been involved with both the rail road and cattle/beef industries they put him to work securing and then moving supplies around the US to be shipped to the troops in the European, African, and Pacific theaters.
Chris
In line with something I said here last weekend about Memorial Day:
I got to be in Normandy for the 55th anniversary reenactment of D-Day as a kid. As part of the reenactment, the Americans had a parachute jump scheduled from a C-130. And three of the soldiers who jumped ended up breaking a leg or other bone, and needing to be driven to the hospital.
This was in moderately unpleasant weather (gray and windy), but nowhere near as bad as it was in 1944. It was over fifty years later (meaning, I’m sure the military’s learned some things about parachute jumping between now and then that would make the whole thing safer). And, of course, there was nobody on the ground shooting at them. But they still ended up with three “casualties.”
That was an early education to me in just how many fucking things can and will go wrong in even the most stupidly straightforward military operations.
Paul in KY
My dad landed on DD Day +14. A training accident had pushed him back. He then fought across France & Germany with his new unit. He’s still going at 92. Had a mild heart attack on Sat. & is in hospital right now recuperating.
RIP all the brave men & women of the Allies that defeated Facism! Our great Eastern Front comrades too!
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: The only thing my dad has said is that you can not imagine the stench of many 2 week old dead people.
A Ghost To Most
I’d like to remember Richard Lenker, who died on the beach at Normandy 72 years ago, and his brother Ray, a B-24 pilot who was wounded over Ploesti at almost the same time.
I’m sorry to think of what they gave up fighting the fascists, only to have the fascists take over half of their country (looking at you, Ralphing Up).
Trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Utah Beach and Battle of the Bulge? Holy crap, did he ever draw some shitty assignments. A teeny part of me would have wanted to be witness to the sheer spectacle of history’s largest amphibious invasion, but can’t think of a single positive thing about spending Christmas 1944 in the Ardennes.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: I wondered about that, myself – whether there was a geographical element. But my dad would have been in Hawaii at the time, I think – his dad being stationed at Pearl Harbor. So, I wonder if West = Pacific and East = Atlantic? However, most of my friends’ fathers would have been Detroit/Midwestern area, so I’m not sure. Maybe it was just that growing up around big bodies of water made volunteering for the Navy a thing.
Miss Bianca
@Paul in KY: Ulp. Wish I hadn’t just finished lunch when I read that.
Chris
@raven:
The Pacific Theater’s always gotten unfairly unremembered compared to Normandy. Our collective memory focuses on a war theater consisting of France, the Benelux, Germany and Britain – and Italy and North Africa to a much lesser extent. Even in the European theater, the Russian Front, the Greece/Balkans front, and Scandinavia tend to get awfully short-changed.
Trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
Sending your gramps my best wishes. We’re losing our last WWII vets and their stories are important to hear, moreso than ever I think.
AliceBlue
@Adam L Silverman:
A geographic aspect to the deployments makes sense, but then my dad was from Georgia and ended up in India flying the Hump.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah. Having come to awareness in the Bush years, I originally came away with a general sentiment of “the people in charge need to fucking listen to the generals more.” But a glance at the history books suggest that as often as not, it’s the generals who are off and the politicians who have it right. FDR in World War Two, Truman in Korea, JFK in Cuba…
Adam L Silverman
@AliceBlue: I think it was more likely coincidence.
Villago Delenda Est
I had an uncle in the Army in Europe (he was at Remagen, the first crossing of the Rhein), another uncle in the Airborne in Europe, my dad was in the Pacific in the Coast Guard (he was the skipper of a landing craft…would have been involved in Operation Olympic had it happened), and another uncle who was in the Army but I don’t know exactly where.
My mother lost her fiance during the D-Day landings. She met my dad after the war in California.
Omnes Omnibus
My grandfather landed on Omaha near the end of June. He finished the war with four services stars – Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, and Ardennes-Alsace.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: Its not that they’re off, so to speak, but more that they’ve been socialized to the belief that you volunteer if not asked and say yes if asked. I’ve found that the best ones have learned to temper that impulse based on experience.
Germy Shoemangler
@Chris: I wonder sometimes what would have happened if Nixon had beaten JFK and was president for the whole Bay Of Pigs thing… (I’m sure more than a few alt-history novels were written with that scenario)
Adam L Silverman
@Paul in KY: We’ll keep good thoughts for your dad.
Paul in KY
@Trollhattan: Thank you! Will take any prayers/best wishes our family can get. When you are his age, there’s really no ‘mild’ heart attack. He is a tough SOB though, and his body is doing what it can to hang in there.
He was pretty chipper yesterday, but has slept all day today & we could barely get him awake enough to take needed meds.
Trollhattan
Speaking of fighting fascists, the hell’s up with this?
Hope BiP doesn’t emerge from the pleasure dome to share his thoughts.
CONGRATULATIONS!
My grandfather, who died last year at a ripe old age of 91, was Omaha, second wave. What little I could garner from him was that the experience sucked, and that in his opinion most of the landing craft pilots should have been shot for cowardice.
He was on the local news many years ago when “Saving Private Ryan” came out, they sent him to see the film. I saw it, that ten minutes at the beginning is the only time I’ve ever watched a movie and been paralyzed with fear. And they asked him about it. He said it was a really good movie and Spielberg had done a really good job. And just as a little aside right at the end, he says “of course, actually being there was far worse than the movie could show”.
Can’t even imagine.
Paul in KY
@Adam L Silverman: Appreciate it, Adam! Always learn something from your posts.
Adam L Silverman
@Trollhattan: I saw that early this morning and intend to write about it later in the week.
Omnes Omnibus
@Trollhattan: BiP was given a time out yesterday
Paul in KY
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I can go through the rest of my life without ever seeing those 1st 10 minutes of that film again. Also know it was a very toned down version of how it really was.
Trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
Coax him as best you can. Lost my MiL on Memorial Day and I’m pissed at the grim reaper.
Linnaeus
My grandfather was in the 112th Engineer Combat Battalion and he landed 15 minutes after the Rangers did. He was supposed to look for mines on the beach, but he said he spent a lot more time ducking.
Trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Great, looking forward to it!
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oooh, pity. He has so much to give. Bile, mostly.
Gym Rat
Every Memorial Day evening the local PBS station broadcasts the documentary “These Hallowed Grounds” .about Americas overseas military cemeteries. You can view the film on You Tube by typing These Hallowed Grounds on the subject line. Be warned you will cry your eyes out.
Chris
As far as family history goes:
Grandpa served in 1940, “the six weeks war.” Aerial reconnaissance over the front: apparently, his job consisted of lying flat on his stomach at the bottom of the airplane and taking pictures of whatever was on the ground. Presumably so the guys back at headquarters could see that, yes indeed, the Germans are making very good progress towards the capital. Then demobilization, and Vichy. (ETA: actually no, I believe he was in Paris, which would’ve been German-run).
Other Grandpa (the American one) never made it to that war – he graduated USMA 1946. Also never made it to Korea. Made up for that when Southeast Asia came along: he served three tours there. And then came back and said publicly at some point that it was a “dumb war,” which most of the family agrees is probably why he never made general. Apparently there was some back and forth between him and other officers: “but you can’t say that.” “But it’s true.” “Yes, but you can’t say it!” “Okay, but it’s true!”
Never met either one of them: all of that is stuff I’ve heard secondhand.
Linnaeus
OT, but have folks seen this from the NYT yet? Apologies if it’s already been linked:
Miss Bianca
@Paul in KY: Somehow I missed that your father was recovering from a heart attack. I hope his recovery continues apace.
Schlemazel Khan
A few years ago bartcop posted some after action reports and they were stunning to read. The first few landing craft in one section opened their doors into machine gun fire and not a single guy made it to shore. The next batch guys went over the sides to escape and the few that made it had one rifle between them all. I can’t even imagine.
My uncles all visited various Pacific islands. It was very late in life that they spoke in any meaningful way about their experiences. One brother died on Okinawa. The thing they taught me was that the more a guy talked the less combat he had seen. That still holds true.
Stan
@raven: “Rick Atkinson, in his WW2 in Europe Trilogy , note that after Pearl all the generals wanted to invade France. Roosevelt, on his own, said no and insisted we learn how to do it in North Africa and then Italy. Damn liberal was right.”
Rick Atkinson’s books are full of errors.
We will never know for sure, of course, but the “US Generals” (George Marshall and Eisenhower most of all, but most of the senior generals agreed) were certainly correct when they argued against US troops going to North Africa or Italy. The plan they advocated was to go into western France (say, Brittany) in 1943 called Operation Roundup. As a backup, if it appeared that either the USSR or Germany was near collapse, they would go in in 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer).
The British argued against both these plans saying they were too difficult. They also argued against Operation Overlord – the actual invasion of Normandy in 1944. They wanted to fight instead in the strategic dead-ends of Africa, Italy and the Balkans.
Roosevelt’s solution was to have US forces in action *somewhere* in 1942, and North Africa was available. It was primarily a political decision, not a military one. Although it was not a strategic disaster, the Italian campaign was pretty sueless for the allies and delayed Overlord.
I admire FDR for many things but – a strategist he was not.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: Appreciate the kind thoughts!
Stan
“I’m sure the military’s learned some things about parachute jumping between now and then that would make the whole thing safer”
Not really. The parachutes used in Normandy were basically the same T-10Bs we used in the 1980s and I believe are still in use today. The newer MC-1-1Bs were considered *less* safe.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
My father never talked about his service. Not even when I enlisted. I couldn’t understand that. Now I know why. Raven knows why. Those who have been in the shit or even close to it remember it all to well. They’d like to forget but they can’t. And they don’t see how anyone else could possibly understand.
Schlemazel Khan
@Paul in KY:
Wishing good things for your dad, he obviously had already gone through enough
Omnes Omnibus
@Stan: Jumping out of planes is inherently dangerous.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Where would you rank tendencies like “wanting to do something, but only a certain way?”
I read a book a while ago about Obama’s relations with the military in the first couple years of the administration (blanking on the author and title right now) that depicted a somewhat tense relationship over the nature of the “surge” in Afghanistan – the military essentially saying “it’ll take 40,000 troops, not less,” and even trying to pull a fast one by offering an alternative more in line with Obama (who wanted no more than 30,000 troops) which was basically “30,000, with an option for 10,000 more if really necessary” (i.e. exactly what we originally wanted). Which didn’t seem so much “we’re positive thinkers and we’ll tell the President we can do what he wants whether we actually can or not,” more “we want to do it this way and we’ll try everything we can to do it this way whether or not it’s what the C-in-C wants.” Somewhat like WW2 era generals wanting to invade France directly instead of using North Africa and Italy to warm up.
(Mind you, I’m not sure at all whether I was on Obama’s side or not on that one).
Betty Cracker
@Trollhattan: He was in the Army before the war started but missed the action prior to the Normandy invasion because he was training soldiers stateside. He damn sure made up for that when he got to Europe! He was one of the kindest human beings I’ve ever known, so it’s very hard to imagine him in all that carnage.
PS: Sorry about your MIL. The Grim Reaper sucks.
Iowa Old Lady
Today would have been my father’s 106th birthday. He was Canadian, so he was in their navy from 1939 onward. He was on anti-U-boat patrol in the North Atlantic.
cmorenc
@Villago Delenda Est:
My Uncle Fred was there at Remagen, in the Army Corps of Engineers rather than in a combat unit, because his eyesight without glasses was too poor to be assigned to a combat unit – but there wound up anyway, dodging bullets and trying to keep the bridge functioning against determined German attempts to destroy it to minimize the number of US troops who managed to get across (25K before the Germans finally successfully destroyed in on Mar 17 1945). Fred is the last remaining survivor of his two brothers who also served in WW2 – the eldest, Rudy, served in the South Pacific while my father Jack was a pilot in the Army Air Corps who trained other pilots, but mysteriously was never sent overseas into any actual combat. While he was alive, his explanation was that since he had first cousins serving in the German Luftwaffe – higher-ups didn’t want to risk that he might have fatal hesitation to shoot to kill in combat, and for some reason I never tried to second-guess that explanation while he was alive. Last year, I finally asked my elderly Uncle Fred whether this was true. Fred said the true explanation was that just as in his case, how many people wound up being assigned was as much a matter of sheer arbitrary luck than any consistently logical explanation – but I am of course selfishly glad for it, because without that bit of luck I might not be here.
BTW: they were from Massachusetts, as was my other uncle Don from my mother’s side of the family – and Don also served in the South Pacific. That kind of undermines the geographic assignment theory west coast => Pacific, east coast => Europe theory. Also, my mother served as a NAVY WAVE in a Washington, DC clerical support role during WW2 – another mystery I never questioned, since her typing skills were zero, but it is an absolute fact that she did serve in that branch.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I think it’s just timing, where they need someone when you become available.
Villago Delenda Est
@Stan: Winston Churchill, super genius and GOP go to guy for manly men, was one of the big fans of the “soft underbelly” theory of war on the continent. He was after all the guy who gave WWI Gallipoli.
The World at War episode on the Italian campaign was titled “Tough Old Gut”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Which is why I never opted to train to jump out of a perfectly good functioning airframe.
Stan
@Chris: “The Pacific Theater’s always gotten unfairly unremembered compared to Normandy. Our collective memory focuses on a war theater consisting of France, the Benelux, Germany and Britain – and Italy and North Africa to a much lesser extent”
Yes….but to some extent that is based on the number of Americans deployed to each of those places. The Pacific had a much smaller number of Americans deployed than Europe, for example. And who would guess from popular history that the US Army made more amphibious landings in the Pacific than the Marines did?
In North Africa only 4 or 5 US divisions served compared to more than 60 in France.
Shell
My father went in with the second wave, the ones that came down thru Northern Europe.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: There’s a fair amount of that too. General officers/flag officers are political creatures as much as they’re military officers – they have to be. And since this was definitely true of his Geographic Combatant Commander GEN Petraeus. His theater commander, GEN McChrystal wasn’t quite as good, nor was his staff, which partially, eventually contributed to his replacement and retirement. They also have a unique view and understanding of how to approach specific problem sets. In this case I’m pretty well convinced there were looking at this primarily, if not exclusively, in terms of applying military power in Afghanistan based on the conditions being observed and encountered in theater. It is also important to remember that our ambassador in Afghanistan at the time was, himself, a retired 3 star general. Based on all of that, and learning the lessons from both the initial invasion of Iraq, and from the Iraqi Surge, significantly more boots on the ground made sense from their perspective. Here’s a pretty good report from the NY Times that delves into the whole thing, including the President’s reservations:
nytimes.com/2009/12/06/world/asia/06reconstruct.html?_r=0
Stan
@cmorenc: “…Germans finally successfully destroyed….” The Germans never destroyed the bridge at Remagen. It had been heavily damaged during the fighting, including by a partially-functioning German demo charge. But it stayed up for ten days or so and carried a lot of US traffic. Engineers were working on it the whole time, knowing it could fall down. Which is exactly what finally happened. I believe about 20 US engineers were killed when the span collapsed.
Schlemazel Khan
@Villago Delenda Est:
If I recall correctly Curchill also wanted to drive up through Italy and across the Adriatic through Hungry and Yugoslavia. That would have been fun and games.
Stan
@Schlemazel Khan: That’s correct. He was more interested in British imperial aims, and nonstarters such as getting Turkey into the war, than in actually grappling with the German Army.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: most likely.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s fun though. I even enjoyed airborne school. Of course, it was more fun as a 2LT than it would have been as a PFC.
Tom Levenson
My Dad was all Pacific. He’d taken one summer’s worth of Chinese just after graduating from college — in 1941 — and when he volunteered for the Navy after Pearl Harbor it was “you know Chinese?” (he didn’t) “OK, then — you’re off to language school to pick up Japanese.” About ten months or so later it was out to the fleet with an intelligence rating. He did a little cloak and dagger stuff (scouting islands in the company of some very hard men indeed) and signals and intelligence work on ship-board. He made it all the way to Tokyo Bay — but had no European service at all.
My father in law, also born in 1920, also graduating from college in ’41, was an avid small-boat sailor and navigator, so the Navy grabbed him too (technically, his commission was in the Coast Guard, but that was Navy for the duration). He started in the Atlantic, first on coastal patrol in a small boat, then as an officer, ultimately an XO on a destroyer on the North Atlantic and Murmansk runs. He did talk about that, particularly to his grand kids, and it was no fun at all. He got promoted out of tin cans to be the skipper of an LST that he commissioned, took through the Panama Canal, and fought through the Pacific campaign.
One last recollection: one of dad’s fellow students at the Japanese language school was Ben Schwartz, who became one of his best friends. Schwartz became a historian of China, (as did my dad), and I studied with him in the late 70s, becoming friends with him in my turn. Late in his life he told me this story: Unlike my dad, his Japanese skills didn’t take him out to the fleet. Instead, he ended up on signals and intelligence at the War Department — where he found himself doing the overnight duty watch in mid-August 1945. A Japanese radio broadcast intercept came in, and it was Ben’s job to translate it — the Showa Emperor’s speech to the nation in which he announced Japan’s defeat, and its surrender. Which meant that for a few minutes, Ben was the only human being in North America who knew that the war was over.
eclare
Just want to give a shout out to the excellent WWII museum in New Orleans. Incredible museum, so well designed, put together. Only had one day to visit, easily could take two.
Stan
For a terrific discussion of the competing strategies that finally resulted in the invasion of France, the official US history is hard to beat.
history.army.mil/html/books/007/7-4-1/CMH_Pub_7-4-1.pdf
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Somewhere I have the Blue Star flag that my grandparents (maternal) had. One uncle was in the Pacific, I think the Philippines; the other was in Europe and IIRC fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Neither of them ever spoke of their experiences. Adam, thank you for the links.
Mike in DC
The allies landed about 300,000 troops in the first 3 days, and over a million in the first month. Any number of things could have gone horribly wrong–different positioning of German divisions, bad sea conditions, even the remote prospect of a nerve gas attack by the Germans (no defense existed at the time; fortunately Hitler had an aversion to gas since he was injured by mustard gas in ww1).
Omnes Omnibus
@Tom Levenson: That is a cool story.
Betty Cracker
@Tom Levenson:
Wow, that’s such a cool story! Well, all of them are. But that must’ve been quite a feeling for Mr. Schwartz!
germy
My father enlisted immediately after Pearl Harbor. Fought in the b of the b. Was captured by Germans. Spent the rest of the war as a P.O.W.
After he got out he had the G.I. Bill but was too shell-shocked to function in school. Looked for work and was told by a few places that they didn’t hire Italians.
Ended up as a letter carrier. Many years later when I read Studs Terkel’s “The Good War” I learned that the post office was a career choice for quite a few Italian-American vets.
Gemina13
@CONGRATULATIONS!: My mother’s only brother hit the beach on D-day, and the only reason she got to know was because a cousin was there too–my uncle loathed my grandfather and refused to return home or have any contact with the family. The cousin who served, though, told Mom a little of what it was like.
Fast forward to “Saving Private Ryan.” I’m a history geek, and I was shaking after that movie’s first half-hour. I turned to my mother and said, “And we actually won this war?” She nodded sadly and said, “And it was twice as bad, from what I heard.”
Archon
Besides those killed and wounded one of things that made me realize that massive scope of the second world war was the vast scale of equipment lost and destroyed. The U.S by itself lost 41,000 planes including 23,000 lost in combat. The Soviet Union lost 83,000 tanks. Japan lost 19 aircraft carriers.
There will never be another war like WW2. Thank God.
Miss Bianca
@Tom Levenson: wow. seconded on the “cool story”.
Adam L Silverman
@Stan: Good find. Thanks! I haven’t seen that in a while.
Ruckus
@germy:
This was and is all too common in our war/military history. People who fought for the country, their country, and were pushed aside because of their color or heritage or religion.
Adam L Silverman
@Tom Levenson: Tom, can I get with you offline, at your convenience? I have a question I’d like to pick your brain on.
Thanks.
V/r,
Adam
Villago Delenda Est
@Tom Levenson: Third on the cool story. Thanks!
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: Sure. Send me an email via the contact link and I’ll shoot back a phone number
schrodinger's cat
I have a question for you guys. Did France surrender so quickly in WWII because of its experiences in WWI?
Why weren’t the Germans war weary after the epic disaster of WW I? I am mean the ordinary citizens not Hitler and his minions.
Adam L Silverman
@Tom Levenson: Thanks, I appreciate it.
Mike in NC
@schrodinger’s cat: To risk oversimplification, the French were outmaneuvered by the German blitz, while the German people were fed years of Nazi propaganda about easy victories and revenge.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: No, I don’t think France surrendered quickly due to the WWI experience. They just got their butts totally kicked by the Germans. The German invasion that failed in WWI succeeded in WWII, and the military situation for France was totally different. The German civilians were very wary of war, though…it took the lightening victories over Poland, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, and France to dispel some of that wariness. They still were not thinking “Total War” until Goebbels made a speech about that in 1943…after Stalingrad and the relatively easy victories were well behind them.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: In some ways didn’t Germany repeat the mistake of WWI by opening two fronts in Europe?
Chris
@Mike in NC:
Yeah, that’s always what I’d heard too. The French failed to make proper use of the technologies developed during World War Two (tanks and airplanes specifically); the Germans didn’t. The French basically expected trench warfare all over again.
Ironically, Charles De Gaulle wrote a book advocating a military heavy on mobile armored divisions in the period between World War One and World War Two. The book didn’t sell well in France, but sold very well in Germany. I wouldn’t want to claim he’s the one who gave them the idea, but they were definitely reading the right kind of stuff.
ETA: actually, I’m pretty sure everybody got caught off guard and stomped on by the blitzkrieg. Britain was just lucky enough to have a channel they could regroup behind, and Russia was “lucky” enough to have an enormous continent-sized country that they could just keep retreating into – in both cases allowing them time to regroup and learn from their mistakes. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, France, Holland, Greece, Yugoslavia… not so much.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: They really had no choice about two fronts in WWI…remember that WWI was stumbled into by all the major powers, as Bismarck predicted, over some damn fool thing in the Balkans.
WWII was more or less an optional war for the Germans. Poland didn’t roll over like Czechoslovakia did (pushed by Britain and France in the process) so Hitler staged a casus belli (the Gleiwitz incident) and invaded. The generals were very concerned that their rear would be attacked by the French, but Hitler correctly gauged that France and Britain would do next to nothing while Germany was having its way with Poland. This insight on Hitler’s part quieted the fears of the generals about his competence.
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
You mean Western and Eastern Front? Probably, but it’s been pointed out to me that the war on the Eastern Front was probably always going to happen – it was just a matter of who betrayed who first.
J R in WV
Last Saturday we attended a memorial service for the wife of an old friend, himself 80 now.
A fellow sitting to our left had a B-24 Liberator ball cap on, I’m sure he was of an age to have flown on those aircraft. IIRC those were mostly European, and so caught huge amounts of AA fire, as well as German fighters.
My Uncle B, mom’s big brother, was a gunner on heavy bombers in the South Pacific. After Dad died (2004 – he was 4-F because of a heart murmur) as we went through Mom’s stuff, untouched since her death in 1997, we found Uncle B’s wings, with a machine-gun bullet between the wings. I gave them to my cousin, who never knew they existed.
My Dad’s older brothers – one was a Chief on a heavy cruiser in the South Pacific, the other was a conscientious objector, and joined the Friends Overseas Ambulance corps in North Africa, Sicily, etc. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre, which was interesting as a CO.
MoxieM
Hey @AliceBlue — my dad too. He trained at Pratt AFB in Kansas, then was stationed (mostly) at Chakulia AB in India, in the 40th BG, the 45th Bomber Sq (USAAC). He flew with his crew and the plane crashed in China (I have an astonishing photo). They all made it out alive, and that is the main story he told. But he was all over the Pacific. On Tinian when they loaded the A Bomb, among other things (although I don’t believe he knew it at the time). He came back and studied International Relations and Russian History, becoming a prof, and then dean; he was far more interested in understanding the world than fighting any more.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: I have been reading Guns of August, at least according to Tuchman, Germany seemed like they were spoiling for a war at the onset of the 20th century. Invading Belgium was no “accident”.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: True but the Germans seemed to think that diplomacy was overrated like our neocons and that war builds character, in case of both the world wars.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: The British didn’t get caught off guard. Rather, they had a strategy. And the obective of the first part of the strategy was time. The Ministry of Defense, the General Staff, the Admiralty, even Parliament had all concluded that they would have to face Germany on the continent, but they needed time to rebuild and refit their Land forces, as well as increase their Airpower capabilities and to try to get the US into the fight. To do so they leveraged the Navy and the Channel. Munich wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t foolhardiness, and it wasn’t a mistake. It was part of the plan. Munich bought the British time and they used that time to good effect. Here’s a good article on this:
slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/09/neville_chamberlain_was_right_to_cede_czecho…
And a good biography of Chamberlain that also delves into this:
amazon.com/dp/0340706279/?tag=slatmaga-20
The appeasement BS is a leftover from Churchill’s political campaigns against Chamberlain, as well as the burnishing of his reputation as the only clear eyed thinker in Britain during the rise of Hitler.
Now all of the above said, the Germans did get a vote. And they did move faster after Munich than the British had anticipated, but that’s why we read Long Dead Carl and Sifu Sun.
clausewitz.com/
amazon.com/Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/1590302257
Gene108
@Chris:
There’s some evidence, though not as 100% conclusive, that Stalin was gearing up to invade from the East. But the Soviet’s were not nearly as efficient at training as the Germans, so whatever troops Stalin moved to his Western border were totally overrun by the Germans.
@Chris:
France used the technology available. They just were not as creative about it as the Germans. For example, the Germans put radios in every tank for easy communications and the ability to change maneuvers quickly in the field. The Franch only had radios in the higher ranking commanders tanks.
Another problem France had was demographics. Their population still had not recovered from WW1 and they had fewer fighting age men, so France was more reserve in seeking a fight.
As far as why they lost so quickly, I think a lot of it has to do with the top brass in Paris. They would not listen to reports from the front about German troop movements and did not adjust their defensive lines accordingly. The Germans therefore had out maneuvered them from the jump.
Another problem was France was relying on the Belgians to give up their country as the battleground. Once the Belgians realized Hitler would flatten their cities they bowed out, which left the French and British positions more exposed to the German advance.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
I’ve always thought the appeasement thing was way overblown (largely because of the flanderized version of history where it’s been watered down to mean “those sissies were too chicken to fight!” so it could be trotted out to support every war the right ever wanted to fight), and wasn’t really blaming anyone for that. I’m not talking getting “caught off guard” by the very notion of Germany wanting to start a war, more “caught off guard” by the tactics they used in that war, and needing time to adapt to the new way of fighting. (Which the British and Russians, due to geography, had more time to do than most of the continent).
Will check links.
Chris
@Gene108:
Didn’t France have the biggest army in Europe at the time (numerically speaking)? I know everyone had demographic problems after the war, but I didn’t think that had put it in such a bad position vis-a-vis the Germans.
Expecting they could count on Belgium and being caught off guard at the last minute, that I’d heard.
Trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
I need to revisit “Guns of August,” a great read. Am I the only one who reads history books with a certain anxiety, hoping “this time” they’ll not repeat the fatal error? OTOH I always advise, “Go on Pickett, charge the hell out of that line!” when reading about Gettysburg.
SRW1
@schrodinger’s cat:
There was a certain degree of war weariness in Germany before WW II, as exemplified by the reaction 1938 during the Sudetenland crisis. Apparently, the German public thought this crisis meant war and the Nazi bigwigs were appalled by the lack of enthusiasm the public showed towards that prospect. What turned that around were two things: the Nazi propaganda machine, as well as the seemingly easy successes in Poland, France, and, during the first year, in Russia.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: Churchill’s policies including starving millions of Indians out of sheer spite, at the height of the WWII. Fat bastard may have been a lesser evil than Hitler but not by much.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: By the 1950s the Brits were correcting it in their own histories and political biographies. We grabbed onto it here and popularly/politically ignored the corrections because it fit our narrative of how WW II went down and what we did and our role in the post WW II order.
debbie
There was not one single mention of D-Day on NPR today (I keep it on as background distraction during work only because none of the music stations in my area can penetrate the fortress of doom I work in). Unbelievable.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: Germany had been in a naval arms race with Britain for years prior to WWI. The exact circumstances of how it happened, though, was a bit of a surprise to everyone. Also, one of the things that drove the entire train on this was, literally, trains…the mobilization schemes of both sides, once put into motion, couldn’t be stopped…so everyone had all these armies set up ready to go.
The German plan for dealing with a general war was pretty much locked in concrete…take out the French with the Schlieffen plan (invading through neutral Belgium), take Paris, force a French surrender. Then deal with the Russians and the Brits.
NotMax
@raven
Historical consensus is that priority for Operation Torch was pushed – nay, demanded – by the Free French and the Brits.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: Well, it’s not one of those media friendly anniversaries…72 just doesn’t get them going like 75 will, for example.
boatboy_srq
@Betty Cracker: @Miss Bianca: Dad was Pacific, too (USN). He talked about it a little, but not enough – and nowhere near enough for a boy fascinated with everything naval. He had a bunch of the USNI Press histories: I remember reading through some and finding his notes on various actions he was in, updating the passages – and refuting the writing in a few places. He left us more in notes on the events than he did in discussion while he was with us.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Better than Trump. He tweeted a picture of something other than D-Day in his tweet commemorating D-Day.
rawstory.com/2016/06/derp-trump-tweets-photo-from-not-d-day-to-celebrate-dday/
Origuy
My dad and his brother were too young for WWII; they both served in Korea. I didn’t think anyone in my family was in WWII, until I checked ancestry.com today and found my father’s uncle was in it. He joined in July 1941 and would have been 33. The record shows that he was in the Air Corps but gives no details. I’ll have to ask my dad about it.
humboldtblue
@Linnaeus: That’s the Cleveland Grays
I’m just finishing a book that may interest you and the others, The Dead and those about to die, recounts the 1st Division experience on D-Day.
humboldtblue
@Villago Delenda Est: Churchill gets an extraordinary amount of flack for Gallipoli but I bet if you go a bit deeper you’ll find that the original planning for that expedition came within a Turkish mine of being a huge success. There is more there than popular fable allows.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Trump needs to stop using himself as his staff. Garbage in, garbage out.
lucslawyer
Eisenhower had written a note that was to be made public if the invasion failed. It simply stated that the troops had done all that was humanly possible and that he and he alone was responsible for the failure.
gene108
@Chris:
From Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France
France did invest heavily on its military. I think it had more tanks and other military equipment than Germany, in 1940.
I think everything that could have gone wrong in France did go wrong.
Cheryl from Maryland
@cmorenc: My husband and I were visiting friends December 2014 in Germany. As my spouse is a military WWII scholar, we drove through part of the Battle of the Bulge territory in Belgium and visited Remagen. It was snowing as we drove through Belgium — just like during the battle. We’d take these turns onto country roads and drive into snow and mud to see the grave sites of American soldiers. It was eirie — dark, snowy, lonely during the middle of the day. We then went to Remagen where there is a museum dedicated to peace established by the mayor of the city right after WWII. The museum in the remaining tower of the Ludendorff Bridge on the west side of the Rhine. The museum was closed, but the caretaker saw us and gave us a personal guided tour. An amazing trip which gave me a very small insight into situation of the Allied soldiers fighting during the winter season and the sacrifices made during WWII. Thanks for your service, including my uncle who faced Germans while in a wooden boat in the Med and my father-in-law out in the Pacific.
Villago Delenda Est
@humboldtblue: But it wasn’t. And so the entire concept is questioned. For want of a nail, etc.
humboldtblue
@lucslawyer:
Yes he did.
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108: The French had more tanks in the field than Germany did. The Germans just utilized their tanks much better than the French did. But then again, de Gaulle had foreseen how tanks could be utilized overcome the firepower situation that had led to trench warfare. As had Patton and Guderian.
Mustang Bobby
My great uncle came ashore on D-Day. He was with the 467th Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion and was in the original landing at Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. His rank was Captain and he saw service in Northern France, the Ardennes, and the Rhineland before returning to the states in 1945. He was awarded the Bronze Star. He left the military for a brief period of time, but rejoined and was promoted to Major and taught ROTC at the University of Pittsburgh for about two years. He was transferred from the Army to the Air Force in 1949 and was sent to Okinawa in 1950 where he worked as an engineer at Kadena AFB. He died of cancer at Barksdale AFB, Shreveport, Louisiana, on March 12, 1952 at the age of 45.
BruceFromOhio
Awed by the stories. Thank you everyone for sharing.
columbusqueen
@humboldtblue: Agreed. The plan for Gallipoli was in fact doable & would have potentially broken the stalemate on the Western Front. What doomed it was the chickenshit on the ground from commanders like Ian Hamilton.
Miss Bianca
@boatboy_srq: My father left an unpublished memoir, written in his inimitable voice, that I found after his death, detailing his early days as a Lieutenant (JG) on the USS Andrew Jackson. Someday, I’m going to find a way to publish it, if only for his family.
Stan
@schrodinger’s cat:
In part, yes. France was severely weakened by WW1, demographically and in terms of stomach for another fight.
France was also the last major country to leave the gold standard (IIRC in 1936) and so was hit harder by the great depression than almost anywhere else.
Finally, France had severe political divisions that made it difficult to carry on a war. Alistair Horne’s excellent book “To Lose a Battle: France 1940” is quite good.
Stan
@Gene108: “There’s some evidence, though not as 100% conclusive, that Stalin was gearing up to invade from the East.”
Nonsense, it’s more like 0% conclusive. This whole line of ‘research’ has been discredited.
For one excelent critique of it see Colonel David Glantz’s “Stumbling Colossus”
Stan
@NotMax: “Historical consensus is that priority for Operation Torch was pushed – nay, demanded – by the Free French and the Brits.”
The British – yes, it was totally a British push and FDR went along so that he could show, politically, that American Boys Were Fighting.
The Free French had almost zero impact on allied strategy in WW2. Most of the US and British leaders thought they were a total pain in the ass. And in 1942 when the Torch decisions were being made, the Free French amounted to maybe less than one division of ground troops and a couple of small ships. De Gaulle was very much *not* the figure he became later in the war.
Emily68
I am working my way through the ~500 letters my dad wrote to his girlfriend, later his wife & my mother, during WW2. He was in a supply unit in Liverpool for D-Day, never saw any combat, and never felt like he’d missed anything. Anyway, his letter of June 5, 1944, which was supposed to be D-Day until Ike postponed it due to bad weather, starts off “What a day I had.” Then he goes on to tell all the problems of getting the dry cleaning handed out to all those fellow soldiers, many of whom didn’t write their names in the clothes before they turned it in for cleaning.
His next letter is written on the 7th and he says he feels the same kind of let down that you feel on Christmas morning after all the presents are open. But by the 8th, he & his pals have a map with troop locations marked and they’re following things pretty closely, despite the lack of actual news.
My brothers & I didn’t know these letters existed until after both parents had died and we found them when cleaning out the house. They are quite a find.
phein55
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually, jumping out of C-130s is easy: Once you clear the slipstream it’s quiet and peaceful.
It’s the landing part that’s critical, but that’s true if you’re still in the bird or not.
BTW, at around the :50 mark, the camera zooms in on a soldier’s face. That photo also appears in “The Bedford Boys.” Anyone know who that is?
Miss Bianca
@Emily68: Wow. What a find, indeed.
Paul in KY
@Schlemazel Khan: Thank you very much for your kind thoughts. Left work, so I couldn’t respond. He’s a lot better today, quite chipper compared to yesterday.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Being in the USAF, I never understood why someone would want to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft.
Edit: See VDE beat me a long time ago with that old joke.
Paul in KY
@Stan: After grappling with them all thru WW I (with terrible casualties), the British were never enthusiastic about major land battles against the Germans.
Paul in KY
@Gene108: I don’t think Stalin was getting ready to invade. His military was decimated from the great purges of late 30s. He did the treaty to buy time to try & get military up to speed. He was quite surprised when Germany invaded (even though the NKVD had been telling him for months that it was coming).
Paul in KY
@Gene108: France was also relying on the Maginot Line & Germans went right around it.
Paul in KY
@Trollhattan: That was Lee’s decision, although Pickett could have made a big stink about it, resigned or whatever to try & bring Lee to his senses.
Paul in KY
@gene108: Napoleon killed a lot of French people (his troops).