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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Friday, June 6, 2014

D-Day's 70th Anniversary - The Unnecessary Battle


D-Day France Approaching Omaha Beach

Remembering Normandy
  • You should always support the soldier in the field, but you should also always question the sanity of the politicians and generals who sent them there.
  • FDR and Churchill deliberately sent Allied troops to their deaths in pointless battles in Normandy and Italy in order to allow Stalin and the Communists a free hand over the helpless conquered peoples of eastern Europe. 




By Gary;

It is the 70th anniversary of the Allied landings at Normandy.  It is proper that we honor the vets who put their lives on the line when their countries needed them.  Not many will be here for the 80th anniversary.

But as a military historian I cannot let this anniversary pass by without ripping on the civilian and military leadership that needlessly sent hundreds of thousands of troops to a slaughter.

The Allies suffered 209,672 casualties from 6 June to the end of August, including 36,976 killed, 153,475 wounded, and 19,221 missing.

The British, Canadians, and Poles suffered 16,138 killed, 58,594 wounded, and 9,093 missing, for a total of 83,825 casualties. The Americans suffered 20,838 killed, 94,881 wounded, and 10,128 missing, for a total of 125,847 casualties.

All these casualties were unnecessary.  The battle for Normandy should never even have taken place.


FDR and Churchill deliberately
sent men to die in Normandy and
Italy so Stalin could have a free
hand in Eastern Europe.
The Allies were fighting two wars.


The Asian Campaign

After the initial disaster of Pearl Harbor and General MacArthur's bumbling in the Philippines the war went well for our side.  All the Allies worked well as one unit to successfully push back Japan from Burma to China, in the island invasions and at sea.
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The European Campaign

But to me the Allied campaign in Europe was a disaster from day one pointlessly inflicting huge numbers of casualties.

By May, 1943 the Allies had cleared north Africa of German and Italian troops.  Italy was effectively knocked out of the war.

The Allies had two choices.  They could invade Greece from British Egypt and march through the wide open Balkans to Vienna and Berlin along side of the Russians.  Or they could invade Italy and fight on a very narrow front where the Germans could inflict maximum casualties on the attackers.

Politics and not military strategy decided the war in Europe.  FDR and Churchill sold out Poland, Czechoslovakia and the other eastern European nations to Stalin and the Communists.  No more.  No less.

An important note, in July 1943 a coup deposed Benito Mussolini as head of the Italian government, which then began approaching the Allies to make peace.  The fact that FDR and Churchill rejected making peace is interesting. 

The Allies could have taken Italy up on their offer, got them totally out of the war and then pivoted to an invasion of Greece.  Instead they deliberately rejected peace, invaded Italy in September and ignored Greece in order to allow the Communists control of eastern Europe.

The results of FDR and Churchill's failed war policies.
The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.

Normandy

The fact of the matter is that by April, 1944 the war in Europe was rapidly coming to an end before a single Allied soldier set foot in France.

In a series of major battles from 1942 on the Russians had totally gutted the German Wehrmacht.  The Germans were defeated and retreating home as rapidly as they could run.  The Russians were starting to pour into eastern Europe.

Though not talked about by historians, at this point the Allies must have been shitting bricks at the total failure of their war policies.

While the Allied armies were stuck uselessly slugging it out with the Germans in the middle of Italy, the Russians were rapidly marching on Berlin and from there maybe to France.  The horror of not invading through Greece, not making peace with Italy and of a coming Communist dominated western Europe must have shaken the leadership to the core.

So we have the meat grinder of Normandy.  Allied soldiers had to die for the stupidity of their political leadership.

God bless the men who paid that ultimate price.


See Operation Overlord and the Allied invasion of Italy.

Canadian soldiers at Normandy with a captured Nazi flag.

April 1944
The total collapse of Nazi Germany.
Before a single Allied soldier set foot in Normandy, World War II was effectively over.  

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The Soviet Union had won the war at the Battles of Stalingrad (1942), Kursk, Dnieper and Smolensk (all 1943).  From October,1943 on it was simply a foot race to see how fast the Germans could run away from the Russians.  The only real challenge for the Russians was being able to move troops West as fast as the Germans could retreat.
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Before the Normandy landings the Russians were already pushing into Romania and Poland.  The march to Berlin was well under way and from a military point of view the invasion of Normandy was not needed.

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