On the morning of June 6, 1944 the largest armada in history, 5000 ships, arrived of the coast of Normandy and began disembarking 130,000 Allied Soldiers. Earlier, 20,000 airborne troops had dropped behind the beaches and were fighting to establish bridgeheads and waiting to be relieved. Allied soldiers arriving at Utah Beach came ashore to light resistance and quickly began to move inland. On Omaha Beach however, hundreds of men were being killed and wounded. The Allied Commanders worried that the elite German Panzer Regiments, being held in the Pas de Calais, would counter attack and throw the invasion back into the sea. As the weather began to turn for the worse, the single most important battle Of World War Two hung in the balance. Many many things have happened since the Normandy Invasion including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and now post 9/11 The War On Terror. Many Wolrd War Two Veterans who survived are dying ever day from old age and other causes, but The Nazi Regime had to be defeated at all costs and these brave men were hero's to their generation. June 6, 1944 is indeed a most rememberable day in United States History.
The invasion of Europe was more about not letting the Russians overrun the entire continent than defeating the Germans. When Hitler gambled and lost an entire million man army group at Stalingrad it was basically over. If you couple that with the fact that the Americans and British had almost complete autonomy to bomb German manufacturing into oblivion after Hitler opened the second front the writing was on the wall. At the time of the invasion, Germany had in effect been almost completely crippled and lacked any real chance of throwing back the Soviets - the addition of a third front simply speed up the inevitable. Most of the German elite units were still on the Eastern Front at the time of the invasion and were not used until the counter-offensive that was launched through the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge). D-Day is the most romanticized battle of the war, at least from our perspective, but the battles of Guadalcanal/Midway were much more important to the American war effort and they get very little attention. Up until that point, the Japanese had never suffered a major defeat in battle and had almost complete control in Pacific - a major blunder by Admiral Yamamoto resulted in the sinking of almost his entire carrier force and forced the Japanese into a defensive posture for the remainder of the war. If we had lost the battle of Midway, our air and sea forces would most likely have been diverted from the European theater to combat the threat of the Japanese invading Australia or the home islands (Hawaii). Who knows what would of happened then.
That is good to go ASJ. I just checked out a book this afternoon at the local library today entitled "The Generals American Military Commanders From WW II To Today". I skipped over to the Vietnam War Era but intend to read the entire book. If it is as good in it's entirety as the Vietnam section is panning out to be I will recommend it for you.
