Outstanding and well researched post. Nicely done.

"From the moment the last British troops boarded the various civilian craft sent to evacuate them from the beaches of Dunkirk, it was clear that the Allies would have to reinvade Europe at some future date in order to ultimately defeat Germany. Such an operation would require new tactics and doctrine to ensure the success of the effort. Failure to secure a beachhead somewhere on the northwest coast of Europe might doom the Allied hopes of defeating Germany."

I have some argument here that is, I'm afraid, entirely tangential to the main points of your post.

"...it was clear that the Allies would have to reinvade Europe."

That's not what you mean, at all. You mean "somewhere on the northwest coast of Europe," but, in fact, you seem to specifically imply, by omission, at least, that the only possible strategy was to invade France.

But, of course, we'd already long "invaded Europe." I know you are quite familiar with the terrible long slog up through Italy, after invading Sicily. There were those, of course, including a good deal of the time Churchill, who argued for continuing that push, and refusing the great danger of a cross-channel invasion. They felt no such invasion was either wise, prudent, or necessary.

There had also been fighting in Norway, though obviously one doesn't go very directly to Germany from there.

More to the point, to invade, "somewhere on the northwest coast of Europe," one might just as conceivably go directly into Holland, not France, or perhaps Belgium, to get to Germany. (There were good arguments against that, of course, which is why we didn't do it.)

Most importantly, and I say this with the greatest of respect for all those Allies who fought in the West from D-Day through V-E Day, as well as all those who went before them, D-Day was a side-show. It was not necessary "in order to ultimately defeat Germany."

It was terribly dramatic, to be sure, and one can't over-state that; greatest armada in history, etc.

But not really amongst the top three battles in defeating Germany. Not even likely necessary, save in a political sense.

The Soviet Union had already broken the back of the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad and Kursk. The war for Germany was lost before D-Day. And the entire Western Front was a side-show compared to the East, as we see when we look at the number of divisions involved, and the history of the battles. The Germans were defeated by the Soviet Union, as aided by the West, in essence. Important aid, in innumerable ways, to be sure. Possibly indispensible aid. But nonetheless, it is so.

Lastly, Americans were a minority even in D-Day. The majority of those fighting for the Allies were British and Canadian, over 60%. Yet, somehow, most American coverage tends to leave this unmentioned, or under-mentioned. American coverage tends to present it as a great American triumph, as aided by our compatriots. Which has it reversed in terms of who was actually on the ground, at least, as well as in a considerable number of the technological means invented for the invasion (Mulberry artificial harbors, floating tanks, tanks with flails to beat a path through minefields; all British inventions, not American, though Americans did invent the landing craft).

None of which is to quibble with anything you said, or, of course, implies that in any way we should not honor our D-D veterans, and their sacrifices and victories in the slightest. It just does seem to me to be a bit of necessary context.

I should make clear that what I'm saying here is only about 1% triggered by what you said, which gave credit to the British, and 99% by all the general news coverage of this 60th anniversary, and of general attention paid in popular US accounts; I'm not criticizing you. I'm just venting.

I'm afraid I must disagree with you on multiple points, Gary. First of all, when I said that it was clear the Allies would have to reinvade Europe, that is precisely what I meant. It was not necessarily the case that they would have to invade France; as you note, they first invaded Sicily, and then Italy, and there were arguments in favor of landing in the Balkans, Norway, and even Germany itself. D-Day did not have to be in France, but after analyzing the coast of Europe and noting the Allies' transport limitations, it became clear that France was the logical place to invade. As my post is about the training that the Allies conducted to make the invasion a success, I didn't bother to discuss why the Allies chose to invade Normandy, but since the decision to hit Normandy wasn't made until January 1944, but training for amphibious invasion began in 1941, it seemed logical for me to note only that the Allies quickly recognized that they would have to invade somewhere.

As for D-Day's necessity in defeating Germany, I'm afraid you are incorrect. While D-Day would not have been sufficient without the tremendous damage inflicted on the Wehrmacht by the Soviet juggernaut, had the Allies not landed in France and provided a true Second Front to pull German troops to the West, it is by no means certain that the Soviets could have taken Germany down on their own. By the time of the Battle of Berlin, the Soviets were down to the dregs of their manpower. Had the Germans been able to focus the additional assets they used in the West to confront the Allies, it is quite possible they could have stalemated the Red Army somewhere in Poland. D-Day was a necessary, but not sufficient, element of ultimate German defeat.

Finally, I'm not sure where you get the idea Americans were a minority on D-Day. The invasion involved eight divisions: four American, three British, and one Canadian. When one considers support troops, it is certainly possible that the Americans did not make up 50% of the troops involved, but a rough estimate would make them at least a plurality.

Further, our British friends do much the same in reverse. I've been to the British museum at Arromanche, where you can learn about the brave troopers of the 6th Airborne Division assaulting Pegasus Bridge, the seizure of Bayeux by the 50th Infantry Division, and so on, but very little about what was happening on the east end of the Allied line. C'est la guerre.

"Finally, I'm not sure where you get the idea Americans were a minority on D-Day."

I might have been wrong; I'm somewhat regretting having brought up a petty point. And, of course, it depends upon how and who you count.

Googling around, here we get an authoritative sounding:

Personnel employed in British American Other Allies
Warships 78,244 20,380 4,988
Landing ships, craft and barges 32,880 30,009 —
Naval shore and misc. parties 1,700 2,500 —
Total, Allied navies 170,701

And:

Of the Allied armies, over a hundred and thirty thousand men were landed from the sea on D-day as nearly as can be calculated. Their distribution along the Normandy shore was approximately as follows:

British Sector
American Sector
Gold 24,970 Utah 23,250
Juno 21,400 Omaha 34,250
Sword 28,845 —
Total 75,214 Total 57,500

In addition, over twenty-three thousand airborne troops were landed by the Allied air forces. The records are not complete but, including glider pilots, their approximate numbers appear to have been 7,900 British and 15,500 American.

Those figures may not be reliable, of course, and, as I said, it depends upon who you want to count.

Digression, but this is an interesting little write-up of Operation Tiger that I ran across. Also interesting is the lessons-learned report on the invasion from von Rundstedt at OKW German HQ It's a tad optimistic.

By my math, that still leaves Americans as a plurality: 21,400 Canadians, 61,715 British, 73,000 Americans. A good, multinational effort. John Kerry would have been proud. ;)

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