71st Anniversary of D Day (June 6, 2015)

Oh, I totally agree! I am kind of a fan of his, but he stood for the biggest douches of all time (so glad he flew home when he did).

 

I was just at Yorktown today! A French replication of a tall ship was open to the public today. Nobody around me was speaking English! Checked out the embattlements though....

 

Sometimes I think what would have happened had Hitler been more of a politician of sound mind rather than a genocidal micro-manager that fancied himself a conqueror like Alexander the Great.

At one point in the war, even though Germany and the Soviet Union had had their differences, the USSR was actually providing aid to Germany.

After kicking the Allies out of Europe, had Hitler recognized that the Soviets feared the capitalist allies as much as they feared Germany.. he could have made the calculation to tone down his anti-soviet posture and keep his eye on the UK.

Its doubtful that Stalin would have ever moved on Germany without provocation.. and although the British were down after France fell in '40, they weren't out. The Brits still had a world class air force and Hitler had too much faith in the Luftwaffe under Hermann Göring which up until that point had been engaged in little more than ground support.

Once possible scenario is that Hitler doesnt write off the invasion of the British mainland as mop up duty that can be conducted while he starts another war with Russia. Instead, he leaves the bulk of his forces in the west and commits nearly all of his resources to the air war over Britain. Although the Luftwaffe pilots werent dogfighters, nor were their aircraft, it would have at least increased their numbers.

Another possible scenario is that Hitler commits more of his resources to the construction of German U-Boats. Nothing would have shut Britain, and even the Americans, down more than cutting naval supply lines to the island. He could have run a token air campaign over Britain in more of a harassment campaign while the island nation was being bled dry of resources. At some point they would have run out of fuel and food and would have been unable to launch any sort of invasion force without American support.

Although the Americans were likely to eventually get involved in Europe at some point anyway.. it would have made things a lot tougher if the German U-Boats controlled the waters around the British mainland.

Even though Germany had taken several anti-soviet steps up until that point, not the least of which was signing a pact with Japan, I doubt Stalin would have been as easily persuaded to open an eastern front against Germany as the western allies were to open a western front. Hitler could have leaned on the Soviet shield to the east while he pounded away at the west.

It also didnt help that his anti-Semitic policies drove many of the best German scientists into allied arms. Perhaps Germany could have been the first one to the bomb.. they were already the first one to the long range guided ballistic missile.

 

Roosevelt would have declared war on Germany no matter what


IMO

 

The answer of course is No they couldn't. Society has changed....

 

well Americans go eyeball to eyeball with evil doers everyday.

USA would be capable of going to War again if we had to.

what is it now less than 10% of Americans are veterans and of those Im betting a good chunk have grey hair if they have any hair left at all.

USA goes further and further down the path of martial specialization. But I think there will always be that small percentage that would be willing to sacrifice to defend The Constitution.

Us vets need to impose some Starship Troopers on these useless civilian wuzzies

 

To be fair, your average allied soldier in the first wave thought it was going to be a cake walk. After watching the aerial and naval bombardments, they were slappin' each other on the back saying "See ya in Paris!". It wasnt until the 88s opened up on the landing boats that they realized the German defenses were still very much intact.

There were also incidents in subsequent waves that men were plenty reluctant to move inland until the tide forced them up. Some of the Coxswains on the LCVPs also refused to take their boats far enough inland.. in some cases attempting to order the men off 800 yards out. In these cases it sometimes took a gun to their head to get them to drive it in closer to the beach.

Over the years the film industry has made these guys into a bunch of heroic cowboys that stormed up the beach in a blaze of glory. The truth is that these were mostly a bunch of kids that were scared to death (rightfully so) and just doing whatever they could to survive the initial chaos until some sort of effective leadership came ashore and organized a cohesive effort forward.

There was no amount of training in England that prepared any of the ground forces for what they encountered. They accomplished what they did out of necessity. The only other choice was death.

I imagine if our troops today were taken back in a time machine and sent up those beaches that day.. they would probably handle it much the same way.

Every man that set foot on those beaches were great men.. they were heroes. However heroism and greatness were forced upon them. I guarantee nobody that went up in the initial waves that day knew what they were getting into that morning at breakfast.

 

There were other alternatives for invasion than France. We could have invaded the Dalmation coast of Croatia and established a beachhead there given our troops in Italy. That could have coincided with landings in Crete and Greece and a general move up the Balkins into Austria and Germany.

The Germans were so worried about an attack to liberate Norway they had 100,000 troops there.

 

Much of WW2 for us was landing on a beach against a well defended coast and establishing a beach head. That is the hardest thing to do in warfare but we did it numerous times in that war. Normandy, Sicily, Guadacanal, Sianpan, Guam, Philippines, Iwo Jima, Okinawa are examples.

Look what happened to the Brits at Galliopoli in WW1. Not an easy thing to do.

 

True that.

Heck, you can go back through the centuries and find tons of times armed forces have had to establish a beachhead to get at an enemy.. Take your pick from the Greek wars.

Even storming across the English channel has been done to death by various conquerors or seekers of kingship. Same goes for the Norse.. they stormed across the North sea to the English mainland a time or too.

Not all of these forces landed under heavy fire but plenty of them did. I cant imagine trying to heave all that armor and heavy weaponry off an old wooden ship and onto the beach while under the thumb of a good corps of archers. THEN there's guys running down with swords that want to hack you to pieces?!

Hard to imagine.