Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 - Foreign Affairs - Nairaland
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| Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by panafrican(op): 9:21pm On Jun 01, 2019 |
June 6 is D-Day They went, they fought and they won. Salute to the heroes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wg5x5WaZPo&t=314s 1 Like |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by donestk(m): 6:38pm On Jun 02, 2019 |
Largest aerial and amphibious assault in warfare history 1 Like 1 Share |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by panafrican(op): 1:16am On Jun 03, 2019 |
donestk:True. Eisenhower should have bombed the beaches for four weeks 24/ 7 (24 hours a day , 7 days a week ) before the first Marine put his foot on the shore. |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by panafrican(op): 2:47pm On Jun 06, 2019 |
D-Day: Afternoon on Omaha Beach What Hitler Did Wrong Correspondent Ernest Hemingway | What Hitler Did Wrong | What Eisenhower Did Right There was no German counterattack. Rommel's plans for fighting the D-Day battle were never put into motion. There were many reasons. First, German surprise was complete. The Fortitude operation had fixed German attention on the Pas-de-Calais. They were certain it would be the site of the battle, and they had placed the bulk of their panzer divisions north and east of the Seine River, where they were unavailable for counterattack in Normandy. Second, German confusion was extensive. Without air reconnaissance, with Allied airborne troops dropping here, there, everywhere, with their telephone lines cut by the Resistance, with their army, corps, division, and some regimental commanders at the war game in Rennes, the Germans were all but blind and leaderless. The commander who was most missed was Rommel, who spent the day on the road driving to La Roche-Guyonan -- another price the Germans paid for having lost control of the air; Rommel dared not fly. Third, the German command structure was a disaster. Hitler's mistrust of his generals and the generals' mistrust of Hitler were worth a king's ransom to the Allies. So were Hitler's sleeping habits, as well as his Wolkenkuckucksheim ideas. The only high-command officer who responded correctly to the crisis at hand was Field Marshal Rundstedt, the old man who was there for window dressing and who was so scorned by Hitler and OKW. Two hours before the seaborne landings began, he ordered the two reserve panzer divisions available for counterattack in Normandy, the 12th SS Panzer and Panzer Lehr, to move immediately toward Caen. He did so on the basis of an intuitive judgment that the airborne landings were on such a large scale that they could not be a mere deception maneuver (as some of his staff argued) and would have to be reinforced from the sea. The only place such landings could come in lower Normandy were on the Calvados and Cotentin coasts. He wanted armor there to meet the attack. Rundstedt's reasoning was sound, his action decisive, his orders clear. But the panzer divisions were not under his command. They were in OKW reserve. To save precious time, Rundstedt had first ordered them to move out, then requested OKW approval. OKW did not approve. At 0730 Jodi informed Rundstedt that the two divisions could not be committed until Hitler gave the order, and Hitler was still sleeping. Rundstedt had to countermand the move-out order. Hitler slept until noon. The two panzer divisions spent the morning waiting. There was a heavy overcast; they could have moved out free from serious interference from Allied aircraft. It was 1600 when Hitler at last gave his approval. By then the clouds had broken up and Allied fighters and bombers ranged the skies over Normandy, smashing anything that moved. The panzers had to crawl into roadside woods and wait under cover for darkness before continuing their march to the sound of the guns. "The news couldn't be better," Hitler said when he was first informed that D-Day was here. "As long as they were in Britain we couldn't get at them. Now we have them where we can destroy them." He had an appointment for a reception near Salzburg for the new Hungarian prime minister; other guests included diplomats from Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. They were there to be browbeaten by Hitler into doing even more for the German war economy. When he entered the reception room, his face was radiant. He exclaimed, "It's begun at last." After the meeting he spread a map of France and told Goering, "They are landing here -- and here: just where we expected them!" Goering did not correct this palpable lie. Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels had been told of the Allied airborne landings at 0400. "Thank God, at last," he said. "This is the final round." Goebbels's and Hitler's thinking was explained by one of Goebbels's aides, who had pointed out in an April 10, 1944, diary entry: "The question whether the Allied invasion in the West is coming or not dominates all political and military discussion here. "Goebbels is afraid that the Allies dare not make the attempt yet. If so, that would mean for us many months of endless, weary waiting which would test our strength beyond endurance. Our war potential cannot now be increased, it can only decline. Every new air raid makes the petrol position worse." It had been galling to the Nazis that the Allies had been able to build their strength in England, untouchable by the Luftwaffe or the Wehrmacht. Now they had come within range of German guns. But Hitler was more eager to hit London than to fight a defensive war. He had a weapon to do it with, the V-1. It had first been flown successfully on Christmas Eve, 1943; by June 1944, it was almost ready to go to work. The V-1 was a jet-powered plane carrying a one-ton warhead. It was wildly inaccurate (of the 8,000 launched against London, only 20 percent even hit that huge target), but it had a range of 250 kilometers and flew at 700 kilometers per hour, too fast for Allied aircraft or antiaircraft to shoot down. On the afternoon of June 6, Hitler ordered the V-1 attacks on London to begin. As was so often the case, he was giving an order that could not be carried out. It took six days to bring the heavy steel catapult rigs from their camouflaged dumps to the Channel coast. The attack did not begin until June 12, and when it did it was a fiasco: of ten V-1s launched, four crashed at once, two vanished without a trace, one demolished a railway bridge in London, and three hit open fields. Still, the potential was there. Fortunately for the Allies, Hitler had picked the wrong target. Haphazard bombing of London could cause sleepless nights and induce terror, but it could not have a direct military effect. Had Hitler sent the V-1s against the beaches and artifical harbors of Normandy, by June 12 jammed with men, machines, and ships, the vengeance weapons (Goebbels picked the name, which was on the mark -- they could sate Hitler's lust for revenge but they could not effect the war so long as they were directed against London) might have made a difference. back: Ernest Hemingway reports from Omaha Beach on D-DayAfternoon on Omaha Beach, D-Daynext: What Eisenhower Did Right on D-Day http://www.worldwar2history.info/D-Day/Hitler.html 2 Likes 1 Share |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by mysticwarrior(m): 4:05pm On Jun 06, 2019*. Modified: 7:38pm On Jun 10, 2019 |
The D day was the greatest fall of the German army in western Europe, German soldiers held their defensive formation and fought like crazy bears as the Allies suffered huge casualties under heavy German machine gun fire. An unprecedented large amphibious assault was recorded on a visible page of history on that day. A combination of British, American, Canadian and Australian battalions advanced ferociously into positions as the Germans continued raining bullets which falls on their enemies like showers of rain, the allies forced their way into German positions and crippled the German artilleries, the Germans were further weakened when most of the machine gunners were routedout in a fierce and dangerous manuvre, the German flanks no longer had the strength to withstand the brutality of the allied assault, and collapsed living every German soldier to defend himself with his rifle, at this stage victory was certain for the Allied. 4 Likes 2 Shares |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by CTPlayer: 6:53pm On Jun 06, 2019 |
panafrican:Germany had built a 2,400 mile network of mines, pill boxes, bunkers, landing obstacles along the coast. Their big guns were protecting Calais. The allies tried to more successfully bomb the bunkers prior to the landings, but poor weather made it very difficult. Since the idea was for it to be a surprise attack landing, that area was not attacked prior. |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by panafrican(op): 7:14pm On Jun 06, 2019*. Modified: 3:06am On Jun 07, 2019 |
CTPlayer:D-Day took place in June 1944. The allies invaded Italy in 1943. Wondering why they didn't go through Italy to get to France and attack Germany. https://www.infoplease.com/sites/infoplease.com/files/inline-images/Europemap-2010.gif |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by CTPlayer: 1:15am On Jun 07, 2019 |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by grandstar(m): 7:13am On Jun 11, 2019 |
mysticwarrior:If it was today, the Alliea would simply have used a deluge of of guided missiles to devastate and break the German fortress |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by mysticwarrior(m): 11:10am On Jun 11, 2019*. Modified: 2:09pm On Jun 11, 2019 |
grandstar:and the Germans would have also used anti missile defense system to intercepts the guilded missiles, another reason why the Germans lost was that the German military was actively involved in fighting in multiple front and they almost had no reserve for reinforcement. Secondly the were unaware of the large size of their enemies and never expected the allied to storm the beach like bees. Thirdly their coastal defense was poor as Germany did not have a powerful navy strong enough to repel a large enemy during marine warefare. |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by panafrican(op): 6:00pm On Jun 11, 2019 |
grandstar:Provided Nazis have no nuclear bomb. |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by mysticwarrior(m): 6:23pm On Jun 11, 2019 |
panafrican:lol, there will never be Nazi in recent future, the word "Nazi " would raise an eyebrow to the rest of the world on German self claim of racial superiority, no country wants to hear that especially the Israelis. I was just wondering if the Germans had nukes as at 1941 which nation would have been the first to suffer under such fatalities. |
| Re: Remembering: D-Day June 6, 1944 by panafrican(op): 6:48pm On Jun 11, 2019 |
mysticwarrior:They would probably target the Soviet Union, then threaten UK to surrender of face the same fate as the soviets. |
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