The attack against the Germans in France is still controversial. Whether we should have attacked or not can easily be debated looking at the losses we faced, and the goal the United States had in mind. I personally went to see the beaches in Normandy, France and saw te disastrous terrain that halted the soldiers. Not only were they being shot at in cross sections, but the span of terrain was difficult, long, and rocky.
The D'Day invasion began with the planning. The generals believed that an invasion on the Normandy beaches would be their best shot at regaining French territory from the Germans. To do this, they tricked the Germans into believing they would attack from 2 different places (which I wrote a blog post about btw). The day was planned for June 5th. This day was chosen because of the full moon that would allow for visibility, and the calm waters for safe landing.
As the day approached, it became obvious the weather would be terrible. On the day of the invasion, thousands of men landed feet away from the beach in cold stormy water. The wade there was slow and cold, plus the rapid crossing fire ricketing in all directions. The cross on open land was either smooth and sandy or rocky and sharp, such as on Omaha beach. This stretch of land was, besides gunfire, covered in mines that exploded upon contact. This impossible attack was won by the Americans, but only after loosing 209,000 Allied men.
While many Allied troops died and we took heavy losses on D-Day, it was ultimately not only a good decision, but the only decision. While the Germans were weakened after all of the fighting on the Eastern front, it was necessary for the Allies to attack the on the Western Front and begin to take back the portion of Europe that Hitler had ripped away from them.
ReplyDeleteA primary source to give further insight into the horrors of D-Day is a quote from an American soldier, Lt. Robert Edlin, recounting his arrival at Omaha Beach: "It seemed like the whole world exploded. There was gunfire from battleships, destroyers, and cruisers. The bombers were still hitting the beaches. As we went in, we could see small craft from the 116th Infantry that had gone in ahead, sunk. There were bodies bobbing in the water, even out three or four miles."
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting idea to think about in retrospect how worth it it was to attack on D-Day because today the mission is famous and glamorized. I think that the number of losses, although many, would have been even more devastating had those other measures you've talked about hadn't been taken. In this way, the D-Day attack might have been worth it because it was successful and allowed the Allies to get a holding on Western Europe.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you all about D-Day being a good decision at the time because it not only helped in the process of turning the tide in the struggle against Western Europe, but also a critical point in taking down Germany. But, like Claire's question at the top of her blog, was D-Day really necessary? These are just hypothetical but what if US hadn't decided to attack on D-Day and just stood by and watched Europe take over the rest of the world? What if some other complications had risen during the day, an example being another country sending troop over to help, how would the ending have changed?
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