D-Day: A Defining Moment in a Century of Conflict by Peter Stanford So the long, and to some Americans, diversionary process of Mostly, battles are named for the places they occur: Marathon, Agincourt, Waterloo , are names that echo in hi story because wearing down German resistance began. Sicily was invaded of the decisive battles fought at these otherwise unimportant from the sea in July 1943, followed by landings on the Italian towns. D-Day however is named for the time it took place. peninsula, which initiated a grinding campaign northwards culminating in the fall of Rome just two days before D-Day in And timing, in this case, was all-important. When the United States was plunged into World War II by northern France in 1944. The campaign was made much longer Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7December1941, and harder than it need have been, as Eisenhower noted at the followed within days by Germany's declaration of war, US and time , by the failure to provide the numbers of landing craft British planners set immediately to work on plans to invade mandated at the Casablanca Confere nce in January 1943 . While the Italian campaign could hardly produce decisive France and drive into Germany to overthrow the triumphant German war machine that held sway over Europe. The Pacific results in itself, it did relieve the seige of Malta and open the was designated a secondary theater, since even US planners whole length of the Mediterranean Sea to Allied shipping saving the additional shipping required for the lengthy alternate recognized that Germany, not Japan , was the main enemy. The US approach was direct: the aim was to get the biggest passage around the Cape of Good Hope. And it did help Russia, directly and indirectly. A hefty part possible army ashore in the sho1test possible time, above all to relieve the Russian front, where the Soviet Army had suffered of the German armored force in the Battle ofKursk in July 1943 over three million casualties in six months. There was talk of was withdrawn from the battle-the greatest tank battle of the mounting a "Second Front" in 1942-certainly, US planners war-to counter the Allied landings in Sicily that month . Air forces were also withdrawn, leading to Soviet air superiority for reckoned , in 1943. The British, whose forces had been thrown out of France in the balance of the war. And - the threat of the Second Front still June 1940, and out of Greece a year later, had found their hands hung , a sword of Damocles over the north coast of France. The full fighting a small detachment of the all-conquering German Germans dared not divert forces from the D-Day front , even before it came into being. From WehrmachtinN01thAfrica.The ~ Hitler on down , it was appreciAfrica Korps , made up of just "'~ ated that the one chance of getthree German divisions under ~ ting a stalemate out of the develField Marshal Erwin Rommel, ~ oping disaster of the war would with Italian auxiliaries, had re路 ~ be to crush the Allied invasion . versed early British gains against ;: ~ On the Allied side , Eisenthe Italians and actually, by the ~ hower, named to head up the Dsummer of 1942, threatened the ~ Day invasion forces in England vital Suez Canal. For these rea-~~ ...,. ',;..~~; ~ ~~-,~.. __..,._....,_ ............... ~ in December l 943 , immediately sons the British took a wary ap~!lflOi!lii 8 doubled the size of the assault, proach to tackling the Germans, adding high-ri sk airborne landwho fielded what was easily the ~ ings in the German rear to help most powerful army on either confuse and delay effective Gerside in World War II. 路' man response, and broaden hi s Appointed to US command in the European Theater of Op~-M~~b~~~~~b...--~路_d... actual landings from a constricted .;. front of 20 mi les to 50 miles. erations (ETO) in June 1942, "It is a wonderful sight to see this city ofships," wrote Churchill, Shipping shortages plag ued General Dwight D. Eisenhower, visiting the armies on shore. Here landing craft stream ashore the planners throughout. D-Day , who had been working on war fi'om the ships, under the muule of a silenced German 88. at first fixed fo r May , was postplans under General George C. Marshall , soon reached his own conclusion: A successful inva- poned to 5 June to provide another month 's production of sion of no1thern France - the shmtest, best route to conquer landing craft. Then , because of a heart-stopping deterioration Germany - could not be unde1taken before late 1943, or more in the weather , it was postponed to 6 June. And on that day, likely the spring of 1944. "Production limitations alone ruled out it happened. People like my father, Commander Alfred Stanford , USNR, any possibility of a full-scale invasion in 1942 or early 1943 ," Eisenhower later wrote. "Indeed, it soon became clear that involved in the planning and the difficult piecemeal assembly unless practically all American and British production could be of materials and men to build the artifi cial harbors required , concentrated on the single purpose of supporting the invasion of were struck dumb by the actuality, the masses of sh ips, the men and crawling machines and the wreckage on the beaches Europe that invasion cou ld not take place unti l early 1944."* But the British and Americans realized that they could not sit studied so long in photographs. Second mate Di ck Scheuing, still - they had to attack and wear down the formidable German from his vantage point aloft on a Liberty ship 's boo m, stopped war machine. So on 8 November 1942, American and British a moment to look round him on the morning of Tuesday, 6 forces invaded Africa from the west, driving east to join the June 1944, and realized for the first time that he was seeing a British 8th Army fighting Rommel. The Germans in Africa were force in motion that would win the war and change the course finally crushed by overwhelming masses of Allied tanks and of world history in his time. This it did . May that fact never be forgotten in generation s planes (force ratios reaching l 0-to- l toward the end) and their army, which had been built up to some 250,000 men , was cut to come. apart and forced to sun-ender in spring of 1943 , a surrender that *Dwight D. Eisenho wer, Crusade in Europe (New York , 1948) actually matched in magnitude the German surrender to encirpp 53-54. cling Russian aimies at Stalingrad a few months earlier. :.::
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SEA HISTORY 69, SPRING 1994