Fighting Nazism On Normandy Beaches 82 Years Ago was the Biggest Undertaking in the History of the World

 Note—Ever relevant as we face domestic Nazis, Fascists, and White Supremacists at home and the Russian invasion of Ukraine reminds us that naked aggression and war crimes are no longer unthinkable in Europe today.  We revisit this annual reminder.

When it comes to World War II, certain dates are etched indelibly into the American consciousness, even occasionally piercing the historical unawareness of young people now generations removed from the events.  December 7, Pearl Harbor Day is one.  August 6 when the U.S. dropped the first Atomic Bomb making the end of the war with Japan inevitable is another.

So is June 6, known without further explanation as D-Day.

On June 6, 1944 the Allies invaded Nazi occupied France under the overall command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is the iconic event of World War II in the American memory. 

 

 American troops pinned down on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944.

It was the largest coordinated movement of men, arms, and materiel in history and had to be conducted in enough secrecy to surprise the Germans who had at least 55 divisions in France while the Allied effort could only put 8 ashore to secure the beachhead on the first day.

Nearly 2 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen were involved in the total Operation Overlord, including those landed after the first day.  195,000 Naval personnel manned 6,039 vessels including 1,200 warships and 15 hospital ships.  The United States alone shipped 7 million tons of supplies, 14 billion pounds of material including 448,000 tons of ammunition.

Air operations in support of D-Day, which began in April, included 14,000 missions with a loss of 2000 aircraft and 12,000 airmen before the landing.  127 planes were lost on D-Day alone.

 

 British airborne troops loading a glider for their mission to be dropped behind the German beach defenses and secure roads and bridges inland.

On June 6th U.S. casualties were reported as 6,603 including 1,465 dead.  While these are awful numbers, there were several Civil War battles with greater dead.  The Soviets suffered more single day casualties four or five times.  And losses per men engaged in some Pacific landings were more than 5 times as high.  Total allied casualties that day among U.S., British, Canadian, Free French, and Polish troops are estimated to be in excess of 10,000.  German losses are less well documented but are estimated between four and nine thousand. 

After the beachhead was secured hundreds of thousands of men and tons of supplies landed across those sands because the Allies did not control any deep-water French port for weeks.  By July 14 over a million men had come ashore. 

 

 A fraction of the cost--American dead at the water line on Omaha Beach.

But heavy German resistance confined the invaders to a small zone around the landing beaches until a breakout began on July 25. 

Once free, the Allied advanced across France was remarkably swift.  Despite setbacks like the Battle of the Bulge in December and delays in getting a bridgehead across the Rhine into the German heartland, by the following April British and American units from the west met up with Soviet troops from the east.  Within a few days of that Hitler committed suicide, Berlin fell, and the German High Command surrendered unconditionally. 

 

 U.S. Army Air Force B-26 Marauder medium bombers fly over the invasion fleet to pound German positions.

It has been my honor to know several men who either fought on D-Day or who landed on the Normandy beaches over the next few days.  One of them was my late father-in-law, Art Brady. 

 

Centenarian vets returning for D-Day ceremonies were greeted by French school children at the Deauville, Normandy airport.

All of them are gone now.  Within a few years the last of the veterans of D-Day will go the way of the ghosts of Gettysburg and Belleau Wood.  The latter battle, coincidently, reached its peak on another June 6 in 1918 when U.S. Marines suffered their worst single day losses in history.

So much war.  So much grief.

Fighting Nazism On Normandy Beaches 81 Years Ago was the Biggest Undertaking in the History of the World

Note—Ever relevant as we face domestic Nazis, Fascists, and White Supremacists at home and the Russian invasion of Ukraine reminds us that naked aggression and war crimes are no longer unthinkable in Europe today.  We revisit this annual reminder.

When it comes to World War II, certain dates are etched indelibly into the American consciousness, even occasionally piercing the historical unawareness of young people now generations removed from the events.  December 7, Pearl Harbor Day is one.  August 6 when the U.S. dropped the first Atomic Bomb making the end of the war with Japan inevitable is another.

So is June 6, known without further explanation as D-Day.

On June 6, 1944 the Allies invaded Nazi occupied France under the overall command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is the iconic event of World War II in the American memory. 

 

 American troops pinned down on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944.

It was the largest coordinated movement of men, arms, and materiel in history and had to be conducted in enough secrecy to surprise the Germans who had at least 55 divisions in France while the Allied effort could only put 8 ashore to secure the beachhead on the first day.

Nearly 2 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen were involved in the total Operation Overlord, including those landed after the first day.  195,000 Naval personnel manned 6,039 vessels including 1,200 warships and 15 hospital ships.  The United States alone shipped 7 million tons of supplies, 14 billion pounds of material including 448,000 tons of ammunition.

Air operations in support of D-Day, which began in April, included 14,000 missions with a loss of 2000 air craft and 12,000 airmen before the landing.  127 planes were lost on D-Day alone.

 

 British airborn troops loading a glider for their mission to be dropped behind the German beach defenses and secure roads and bridges inland.

On June 6th U.S. casualties were reported as 6,603 including 1,465 dead.  While these are awful numbers, there were several Civil War battles with greater dead.  The Soviets suffered more single day casualties four or five times.  And losses per men engaged in some Pacific landings were more than 5 times as high.  Total allied casualties that day among U.S., British, Canadian, Free French, and Polish troops are estimated to be in excess of 10,000.  German losses are less well documented but are estimated between four and nine thousand. 

After the beachhead was secured hundreds of thousands of men and tons of supplies landed across those sands because the Allies did not control any deep water French port for weeks.  By July 14 over a million men had come ashore. 

 

 A fraction of the cost--American dead at the water line on Omaha Beach.

But heavy German resistance confined the invaders to a small zone around the landing beaches until a breakout began on July 25. 

Once free, the Allied advanced across France was remarkably swift.  Despite setbacks like the Battle of the Bulge in December and delays in getting a bridgehead across the Rhine into the German heartland, by the following April British and American units from the west met up with Soviet troops from the east.  Within a few days of that Hitler committed suicide, Berlin fell, and the German High Command surrendered unconditionally. 

 

 U.S. Army Air Force B-26 Marauder medium bombers fly over the invasion fleet to pound German positions.

It has been my honor to know several men who either fought on D-Day or who landed on the Normandy beaches over the next few days.  One of them was my late father-in-law, Art Brady. 

 

World War II veteran Jake Larson meets youths during ceremonies at the US cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandyto commemorating the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings today.  

All of them are gone now.  Within a few years the last of the veterans of D-Day will go the way of the ghosts of Gettysburg and Belleau Wood.  The latter battle, coincidently, reached its peak on another June 6 in 1918 when U.S. Marines suffered their worst single day losses in history.

So much war.  So much grief.

 

The Formal Surrender of Japan Put a Period on World War II

General Douglas MacArthur orchestrated the most humiliating surrender possible for the Japanese Empire and it's officer class.

One day after six years of war in Europe began the even longer war in Asia and the Pacific officially ended on September 2, 1945.  On that day General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) ordered members of the Japanese Government and High Command to assemble to sign the formal documents of unconditional surrender.

The Japanese had been at war even longer than their Axis allies, since the 1937 invasion of China or, if you count low grade guerilla resistance, since the 1931 annexation of Manchuria.  For them, particularly the Imperial officer class who had pushed aggressive expansion, the ceremony was an almost unbearable and ignominious occasion. 

The war had begun with such high hopes.  To them it was to be the extension of Japan’s unique high culture to the backwards nations of Asia and a final end to European encroachment and colonization.  And one after the other they had defeated and expelled the British, French, Dutch, and Americans from their possessions.  The vaunted Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would bring Asia to the forefront of the world and, of course, enrich Japan.  The struggle, undertaken for the Emperor, was a divine mission.

The bodies of women, many of them rape victims, and children during the infamous Rape of Nanking, one of the of  the Japanese atrocities that fueled the deep hatred of American and allied troops for their enemies in Asia.

The Japanese had conducted their seemingly irresistible advances with a relentless cruelty that shocked the “civilized” world but was totally in keeping with their own traditions and particularly with the Samurai culture as redefined for modern industrial warfare.  The Rape of Nanking was not a trumped up propaganda ploy as charges of German atrocities in Belgium during World War I had been.  It set the stage for behavior to civilian populations that fell under their control, at least during the period of initial attack and occupation.  The brutal treatment of American and allied prisoners, exemplified by the Bataan Death March was directly due to the contempt the martial culture had for any troops who did not fight “honorably” to the death.

As a result of these depredations, and deeply ingrained Western racism, the war in the East was matched by equal savagery by the Allies.  The Japanese were painted as sub-human in a way that even the Nazis never were.  After some of the most brutal combat in history on all sides the Allies had crept to the doorstep of the Home Islands when the U.S. unleashed—twice—a new horror of its own, atomic weapons. 

Faced with what he feared might be the annihilation of his people, the Emperor, against the wishes of many of the same officers assembled on the deck of the USS Missouri, had finally ordered the capitulation of the Empire on August 15.

Sailors crowded the decks of the USS Missouri to witness the surrender.

It took until September 2 for MacArthur to orchestrate the final drama.  Holding the ceremony on board the USS Missouri, a battleship that survived the attack on Pearl Harbor emphasized the humiliation.  As did other flourishes like displaying the flag of Commodore Mathew Perry’s flag ship from his 1853 mission which forced the reclusive Japanese to open trade with the West.  Also pointedly on hand as official witnesses were General Jonathan Wainwright, who had surrendered the Philippines and been on the Bataan Death March, and British General Arthur Percival, who had surrendered Singapore.  MacArthur and other American officers present did not attend in dress uniforms but appeared without jackets or ties in standard duty kakis.  Most Allied officers wore more formal uniforms and full decorations.

The signing ceremony itself was starkly simple and lasted just 23 minutes from start to finish.  The instrument was first signed by the Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and then General Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff. MacArthur then signed as the newly designated Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers who would be charged with occupation and governance of the defeated nation.  A parade of officers representing all Allied combatants in the East followed to add their signatures:  Admiral Chester Nimitz, the U.S; General Hsu Yung-Ch’ang, the Republic of China; Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, United Kingdom; General Kuzma Derevyanko, Soviet Union (which had belatedly declared war on Japan only days earlier); General Sir Thomas Blamey, Australia; Colonel Lawrence Cosgrave, Canada; General Philippe Leclerc, France; Admiral C.E.L. Hefrich, the Netherlands; and Air Vice-Marshal Leonard Isitt, New Zealand.

Each signed two copies of the instrument.  The Allied copy was bound in fine leather, lined in gold, and embossed with the seals of the U.S. and Japan.  The Japanese copy was crudely bound in canvas with no seals or ornamentation.

Throughout the ceremony MacArthur never spoke to or even looked directly at his Japanese counterparts.  Afterwards he turned and walked away without shaking hands.  It was over—both the ceremony and, finally, World War II.

Two different days are recognized as V-J Day.  For Britain and most of the rest of the world it is August 15 when the Emperor announced capitulation.  President Harry Truman officially proclaimed September 2 V-J Day for the United States.

Woodstock, Illinois still celebrated VJ Day with a large annual parade and Drum and Bugle Corps festival in 1960.

For several years following the war it was a widely celebrated event.  In Woodstock, Illinois it was the occasion of an annual festival featuring a parade and a famous Drum and Bugle Corps competition until the 1970’s.  But time has erased the great feeling of relief and joy that the nation and world felt when THE War was finally over.  Most years the anniversary goes unnoticed except by the dwindling veterans and their immediate families.