Latest / Generals of WWII: The Art of Command / D-Day, the largest amphibious invasion in history (with Stuart Vanderkooi) | Ep 21

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D-Day, the largest amphibious invasion in history (with Stuart Vanderkooi) | Ep 21 · Generals of WWII: The Art of Command

• 0:09
  Welcome to generals of War 2, the art of command.
• 0:12
  I'm your host, John Viscardo, and I'm joined today by the
• 0:15
  great Stewart Van der Coy all the way from West Point, NY.
• 0:19
  For those of you not familiar with Stewart, he was on our
• 0:21
  podcast before. He's an instructor and a student
• 0:24
  of history at West Point, and he was recently back from Normandy,
• 0:28
  which is the subject of our podcast.
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  Today. We're going to talk about the
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  D-Day invasion. Before we get to that, Stewart
• 0:34
  has a disclaimer for us. So The opinions expressed herein
• 0:38
  in this podcast are my own, and they do not necessarily
• 0:41
  represent the views or policy of the United States government,
• 0:45
  the United States Army, the Department of War, or the United
• 0:49
  States Military Academy. Thank you for that.
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  And as I mentioned, Stewart just got back from Normandy.
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  It's a second trip there. And for those of us who've never
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  been like myself, how, how moving is it, how dramatic is
• 1:01
  it? How well maintained is it?
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  Like can you give us kind of an insight of what Normandy is like
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  today? Absolutely.
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  It's probably one of the most memorialized, if not the most
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  memorialized battlefields in the world.
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  I mean, everywhere you turn, there's a museum, there's a
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  monument, there's Canadian flags, British flags, US flags
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  everywhere. It's it's pretty incredible to
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  be there. And it's, you know, the most
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  moving part, I think for for most people is going to the
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  American, for most Americans is going to the American cemetery
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  and seeing that, you know, all those perfectly aligned
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  headstones and the the flags and it, yeah, it's incredible.
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  Now I'd like to get there someday.
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  And for those of us wondering why I'm releasing this episode
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  on June 5th instead of June 6th, Stewart has pointed out the The
• 1:52
  Minesweeper started on June 5th, correct?
• 1:55
  That's right. Yeah.
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  That's key operation there that that kind of gets overshadowed
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  by the rest of it. But very important to get those
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  mines out of the way so you can get everybody across the
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  channel. Absolutely.
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  So it was launched on June 6th, 1944, known as D-Day, the
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  largest amphibious invasion in history.
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  Why does this battle get all or most of the publicity in the
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  European front? Yeah, it's a good question and
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  it's, it's an interesting one to think about.
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  I, I think it's that you, if you ask the average American with
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  not much knowledge of military history, I think at least
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  they'll have heard about D-Day. And for many people, I think
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  D-Day represents the Second World War in, in the popular
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  memory, right. It's the launching of of the
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  finally getting across the channel and, and taking the
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  fight to the Germans in Western Europe.
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  Of course, there's North Africa and the Mediterranean before
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  that, but this is the big one, the big deal.
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  And for the older generation, there's, you know, the longest
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  Day movie, right, with all the who's who of Hollywood back in
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  the day, based on a book written by Cornelius Ryan, who was, I
• 3:08
  believe in AB25 on D-Day. And he went back in and wrote
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  down what he saw and that became a movie.
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  And then, you know, for my generation, we've seen Saving
• 3:19
  Private Ryan. And when you think of Omaha
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  Beach or you think of D-Day, that's, that's kind of what
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  comes to mind. I, I think the other piece of it
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  is it's just the dramatic character of the D-Day landings.
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  You know, there's years of preparation.
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  It's an Eisenhower's word. It's, it's the great crusade
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  towards which we've striven these many months.
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  This is the Allies coming together, air, land and sea and
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  then they're going to get off of of boats, cross open ground and
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  storm the beaches at Normandy and this will open up the gates
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  into German held Europe. Yeah, and you mentioned movies
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  there and there's there's one coming up soon, pressure with
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  Brendan Fraser, which talks about our our next topic, the
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  D-Day invasions aimed to establish a Western Front
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  against Nazi Germany and begin the liberation of Western
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  Europe, as you pointed out, commanded overall by Dwight D
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  Eisenhower. So let's discuss the weather
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  piece of this. The battle is famously delayed I
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  believe by one day because of inclement rain forecast.
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  Why is good weather, or I guess fair weather, so crucial?
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  Well. Most of the tactical operations
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  need a, a degree of, of good weather doesn't have to be
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  perfect, but it, it needs to be good enough for the air forces,
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  the bombers, you know, there's a huge bombing effort.
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  Strategic bombers are pulled off of the bombing German industry
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  and cities and they're going to go in and and try and smash the
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  fences on the beach and they need good enough weather to do
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  that. They're going to bomb railways
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  inland. The paratroopers need the the
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  C-40 sevens need to be able to see the drop zones to release
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  their gliders. So you need some clear weather
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  for that. If the sea state is too high and
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  the seas are too rough, your landing craft can get swamped.
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  Everybody can get blown off course and it can turn very
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  quickly into a disaster. In talking about the planning
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  for all of that, the Allies have been learning lessons in their
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  previous amphibious landings. You know, they've done Operation
• 5:33
  Torch into North Africa, they've done Husky into Sicily,
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  Avalanche into Salerno. And in Sicily and Salerno
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  especially, bad weather impacts the, the paratroop, the the
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  airborne operations, scatters them all over the place.
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  And that leads to, you know, isolated pockets that the
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  Germans can can pick off. Luckily, they're able to recover
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  from that in both of those instances.
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  But they've, they've learned a lot of lessons.
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  You need good enough weather to be able to put this amount of
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  equipment and men ashore and get everything to work together.
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  Agreed. OK.
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  The D-Day invasion involved forces from the United States,
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  United Kingdom, Canada and other Allied nations.
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  How many troops overall did the Allies have and how many did the
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  Germans have? So for the Allies, they're going
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  to land about 160,000 troops into Normandy on June 6th alone.
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  But there's going to be several echelons that follow that.
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  And eventually Normandy is going to become, you know, the key
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  location where they're getting troops and equipment ashore.
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  So a lot more to come, but I, I like to look at, you know, with
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  the troop structure in the, the division breakdown when, when I
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  think about this in the limiting factor for the Allies is really
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  the amount of landing craft, right?
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  So they get enough landing craft and preparation done to bring 6
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  divisions onto 5 beaches. You've got three US divisions, 2
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  British and 1 Canadian, plus the two US airborne divisions and
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  one British airborne division that are going to land in that
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  initial assault. But also on the Allied side,
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  it's, it's important, you know, note the French Resistance are
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  heavily involved, cutting communications lines, sabotaging
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  bridges, railroad lines, ambushing German columns.
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  And there's, you know, over 1000 warships alone that take part in
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  this assault. Now on the German side, across
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  the entire Atlantic Wall, from the southern Atlantic Coast of
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  France all the way up to northern Norway, there's 58
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  divisions. 33 of these are so-called static divisions,
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  which means they don't have a lot of motorized transport.
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  Are these second line troops? You could think of them that
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  there's some reserve divisions. There's Austrupin, you know,
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  Eastern troops, which are Russians, Poles, prisoners that
• 8:02
  the Germans have forced into service and German uniforms.
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  But you will probably in, in a lot of cases, surrender to the
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  first Allied troops that put up stiff resistance.
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  Now the main German Army troops are mostly behind the lines, and
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  these are your Panzer Grenadier divisions, your s s, There's
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  some s s Panzer divisions, normal Vermont Panzer divisions.
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  And on June 6th there's a probably the best German troops
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  there of Falsermiagar unit that fights against the US airborne
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  troops up in the Cotatan Peninsula.
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  And then there's the 21st Panzer Division which makes a counter
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  attack on June 6th and they actually just get to the beaches
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  but they're thrown back by a impressive and stiff anti tank
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  defense by the British. The invasion targeted 5 Normandy
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  beaches, Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.
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  Which forces were going to which beach?
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  So starting from West to east on the West beach is Utah, that's
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  the US 4th Infantry Division. two US divisions land at Omaha.
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  That's the 29th in the first Infantry division, the big red
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  one. And then on Gold Beach is the
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  British 50th Infantry Division. I know it says the 7th Armored
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  Division there as well. They do land on June 6th but
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  they're they're more of a follow on unit that's going to land
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  after the initial assault. Canadian Third Infantry division
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  lands on Juno Beach, not to be confused with the British Third
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  Infantry Division which lands on Sword and Sword Beach.
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  Is the eastern most beach north of Khan.
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  And you also have it on the map here.
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  The paratroopers invasions preceded by massive airborne
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  operations. Over 20,000 paratroopers dropped
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  behind enemy lines. As the Banda Brothers TV show
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  demonstrated so well, these paratroopers were meant to wreak
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  havoc behind enemy lines, secure bridges and roads.
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  Why is this so critical? Yeah.
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  So the the US 82nd Airborne Division and 101st Airborne
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  Division land behind Utah Beach and their job is to help create
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  this lodgement, right. And a lodgement is you've got
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  various bridge heads or beach heads, five of them, but you
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  need to link these together. And that's key for the Allies
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  because that, that's kind of pushing the ball the the
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  decisive point getting that over the hill.
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  Once you've linked your beaches together, then you, you have
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  mutually supporting lines of communication.
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  You can create a defensive perimeter, repel the German
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  counter attack and then continue to expand.
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  So the airborne troops, the US airborne troops are securing,
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  most importantly, I think the causeways that cross the areas
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  that the Germans have flooded to create a natural obstacle
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  against the paratroopers and the landings.
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  So those causeways will help get the forces off Utah Beach, link
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  them in with Omaha. They're also capturing places,
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  you know, famously St. Mary and Glace Karen Ton, where
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  these are Rd. hubs and you hold that piece of key terrain.
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  And then for the British Airborne, their job is to secure
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  bridges and roads. But really it's those bridges
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  over the Orne River and to the the east of Wisterham and Khan.
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  That's a primary attack route for the German counter attacks.
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  So they're holding that left flank for the Allied forces and
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  and have a critical role there. OK.
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  I do want to ask you what you think the percent chances of
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  failure were here. There was AI don't know, we're
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  not going to get into on this podcast, but there was an
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  earlier raid, it's called the D Up raid in 1942 that went
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  horribly wrong. It was a Canadian invasion in
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  northern France. So my first question is like, do
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  you think it's like 10%, twenty percent, 50% chance of failure?
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  And did Eisenhower really draft a letter in case of failure?
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  Yeah, putting a number on it is hard.
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  Maybe I'll say just just throwing it out there, maybe 10
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  percent, 20% I and I say that just because this is so well
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  thought out and planned. It's, it's just an incredible
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  coalition effort between the British and the Canadian and the
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  US and the other allied forces that as, as long as they can get
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  through the minefield, that they have a weather window and then
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  they can make that initial assault onto the beaches and
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  then link them up. Those those are the points of
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  greatest risk for this assault. Once it's all linked together
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  and they defeat the German counter attack, then I, I think
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  they've, you know, the, the Germans have very little chance
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  of fully repelling this and collapsing this beaches because
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  at this point, the, once the British and Americans and the
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  allies can land all their men and material, it's, it's at this
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  point in the war going to overwhelm the Germans In the,
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  the second question there, Eisenhower did have a, a letter
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  you, you can see it online. It's handwritten and it speaks
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  to his leadership, right? He he says in the event of
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  failure, you know, we made the best effort.
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  All the troops and soldiers and pilots, everybody did the best
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  they could in, in the responsibility is is mine and
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  mine alone. And I accept that
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  responsibility. And he kept that in his pocket
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  and didn't really share it with anybody.
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  But it seems like he had that thought out and drafted already
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  in the event that this goes sideways.
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  And I gave him massive credit there because even writing the
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  letter is somewhat defeated. But I think it just shows that
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  he doesn't leave anything to chance yet.
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  Everything buttoned up even though the 1015% chance of
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  losing. He had it planned.
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  Right. And maybe he thought it was
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  higher. I mean, Eisenhower's, I know
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  that was a stressful time for his smoking something like 4
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  packs a day and drinking a lot of coffee.
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  But I, I can't imagine the burden of command that was on
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  his shoulders trying to make that decision, you know, and I,
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  I think the, the movie we talked about, the pressure will show
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  the tense and the, the, the drama of that moment.
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  Do we go, do we not go to do we delay?
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  Can we? It's, it's not like you can just
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  turn this whole operation on a time, you know, once it gets
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  going it you can't stop it. Let's go to the other side of
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  the lines. The Allies were facing strong
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  German defenses organized under Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox,
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  including the Atlantic Wall fortifications.
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  So what was the German strategy for defence, and how did
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  Rommel's plan differ from those of his superiors?
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  So when you look at the German side, it's it, it's interesting
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  because just comparing it to the level of Allied planning
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  compared to the Germans is, is vastly different.
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  I mean, the, the Allies have thought through this operation
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  for years and planned everything down to the T and, and built in
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  redundancies and every possible scenario as as far as they could
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  know, they've thought through the Germans know that an attack,
• 15:29
  yes, the allies are going to come across in into Western
• 15:32
  Europe at some point. I I think they know that.
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  But how exactly they're going to defeat this attack is the plan
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  is, you know, let's do what the Germans do best.
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  If if we're the Germans, well, we've got powerful Panzer
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  formations, we'll concentrate them together or we'll counter
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  attack and throw the Allies back into the sea.
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  But there's a command structure problem because Rommel's
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  subordinate to Field Marshall, Runestead and Runestead and
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  Rommel disagree about how are we going to employ our Panzer
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  divisions. Runestead wants to keep them
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  further back away from the beaches, concentrated.
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  And then they'll they'll launch a concentrated Panzer counter
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  attack. And Rommel has experience of
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  fighting the Allies in North Africa.
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  And the thing that he's worried about is their air superiority
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  because he thinks ruin Stead's plan isn't going to work well
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  because you got to drive all the way up to or take rail lines.
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  You're going to be Hanford by the Germans column Yabos, the
• 16:38
  fighter bombers, but the Allied air forces are just going to
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  wreak havoc on your columns trying to reinforce.
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  You'll only be able to move at night.
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  If we got a chance of stopping this invasion, it's got to
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  happen on the first day or two. We need our Panzer divisions
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  close to the beaches so they can counter attack immediately
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  because once the allies get a lodgement then there's really
• 17:00
  not a good. Chance.
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  So Hitler involvement was to kind of negotiate between these
• 17:06
  two plans and it sounds like he kind of just waffled between the
• 17:09
  two of them. Right.
• 17:10
  Yeah. And it's it, you know, it's the
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  classic German meddling that that characterizes a lot of the
• 17:17
  late war strategy. And Hitler's made himself the
• 17:21
  authority for releasing some of the Panzer divisions.
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  He's asleep initially. They're afraid to wake him up.
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  And then it's further delayed when Hitler in in other elements
• 17:36
  of the German high command aren't convinced that this is
• 17:39
  the actual invasion, right. They think well in in credit to
• 17:44
  the Allied deception effort. They think that Normandy is a
• 17:50
  diversion and the main attack is coming somewhere else, probably
• 17:54
  at Calais, right? So it it takes a while for them
• 17:58
  to realize, no, this is the real deal, this is the actual
• 18:00
  invasion, and we've got to muster as many forces as we can
• 18:04
  to counter attack. Yeah, looking at the map here,
• 18:07
  Omaha Beach saw the heaviest fighting in casualties due to
• 18:10
  terrain and fortified German positions.
• 18:13
  So why the slow going in in this area and why were there so many
• 18:17
  casualties do you think? Well, I think you you hit it
• 18:20
  there with the terrain. I mean, this is the allies know
• 18:23
  this is probably going to be the toughest place to land, but it's
• 18:26
  really the only option they have between Utah and Gold Beach.
• 18:30
  They've got to land somewhere in that area and the terrain
• 18:33
  dictates it right in a feature of Omaha Beach that is different
• 18:38
  than the others is it's got these Bluffs.
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  And you see this when you go to Omaha Beach and it's displayed
• 18:44
  in Saving Private Ryan. There's bunkers up on the hill,
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  but the bunkers don't look exactly like they do in Saving
• 18:51
  Private Ryan where they're firing straight down onto the
• 18:54
  shore. How the Germans have constructed
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  their they're called beater Stan nests, which are their strong
• 19:00
  points, their fortifications. And you go there and you see
• 19:03
  this. And this is one of the
• 19:04
  advantages of seeing it with your own eyes.
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  You realize they've built these bunkers into the hills so
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  they're and unless they get a direct hit, they're not going to
• 19:14
  be knocked out by naval bombardment.
• 19:17
  And the guns don't face out towards the sea in most cases.
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  They face down parallel to the beaches so they can shoot down
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  the this entire stretch of beach with 88 millimeter, 57
• 19:30
  millimeter. Their machine guns sweep that
• 19:33
  whole beach with unflating fire and cause a lot of casualties.
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  The whole beach is pre sighted with artillery fire.
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  The bombardment doesn't disrupt the communications between the
• 19:45
  forward observers in the inland batteries, so they're able to
• 19:49
  quickly call artillery and that causes a lot of casualties.
• 19:53
  And then lastly, to get off of Omaha Beach, up these Bluffs,
• 19:57
  you've got 2 draw, 2 prominent draws that the Allies need to
• 20:01
  seize, one at Veer Ville, one at Coalville.
• 20:04
  And this, the Germans know this too, right?
• 20:08
  So they've constructed this whole thing.
• 20:09
  It's, it's going to funnel these guys into those draws through
• 20:13
  the obstacles and, and make it a very deadly area.
• 20:17
  But Omaha Beach, you know, some guys get ashore and have no
• 20:21
  problem. But other entire companies are
• 20:25
  almost entirely wiped out. So it's it's it also comes down
• 20:28
  to luck. Where do you where do you land?
• 20:31
  Are you scattered? Are you together?
• 20:33
  Are you the unlucky guy that jumps off the boat?
• 20:35
  And you're right in a pre sighted German defensive area.
• 20:40
  OK, let's talk about the Allied deception role Operation
• 20:42
  Fortitude, which misled Germany into expecting an invasion at
• 20:46
  Pas de Clay. Notably, America's best general,
• 20:49
  George Patton has a decoy role. Why is this?
• 20:52
  Is this related to him slapping soldiers early in the war?
• 20:55
  Is this to throw the Germans off?
• 20:58
  And. What is this dummy army?
• 21:00
  Is it just inflatable tanks or is there actual troops assigned
• 21:04
  to him? Yes.
• 21:05
  So Patton and and Eisenhower, their relationship I think plays
• 21:10
  into this. To what extent I'm I'm not too
• 21:13
  sure, but I do know that the Germans probably fear Patton the
• 21:18
  most out of all the Allied commanders.
• 21:20
  So it's a good plan to put patent in charge of the
• 21:24
  so-called US First Army Group, which is part of the deception
• 21:29
  plan. Because if you're a German, it's
• 21:31
  like, OK, where's where this patent gonna go?
• 21:34
  His army group is made. They're making it look like he's
• 21:38
  going to go across Calais, right?
• 21:40
  So that that's one of the components of the deception
• 21:43
  plan. But there's also, you know,
• 21:45
  they're using double agents to feed false intelligence.
• 21:49
  They even hire an actor to that looks like Bernard Montgomery to
• 21:53
  go survey different places that so the Germans report back.
• 21:58
  Yeah, Montgomery's there. This is this might be where it's
• 22:00
  coming. But there's, you know, there's
• 22:02
  an army group that supposedly is going to go into Norway, making
• 22:05
  the Germans think that's where the invasion is going to come
• 22:08
  from. But Patton Patton's going to
• 22:11
  come over later with the 3rd Army and play an important role
• 22:15
  in the later on Normandy campaign, liberation of Paris
• 22:19
  and and drive to the to the Rhine.
• 22:22
  OK, we mentioned earlier that weather delays nearly postponed
• 22:26
  the invasion, but a brief window allowed the the attack to
• 22:29
  proceed. So what time did everything kick
• 22:31
  off on June 6th? And what was the Allied Navy's
• 22:36
  role? So June 6, the first troops to
• 22:40
  land are British glider troops that land around Pegasus Bridge
• 22:43
  just just shortly after midnight.
• 22:46
  And there it's, it's impressive to go there and see where they
• 22:50
  land these gliders. I mean, I, I can't imagine the
• 22:54
  skill needed to recognize that terrain and get there in the
• 22:57
  middle of the night, put these gliders down right next to the
• 23:00
  bridge and just completely surprise the German defenders.
• 23:04
  So the British airborne lands there.
• 23:07
  They knocked the Merville Battery and then the American
• 23:11
  paratroopers land about an hour later.
• 23:14
  Those are glider troops and and paratroopers that jump in behind
• 23:19
  Utah Beach. Now the beach assault kicks off
• 23:22
  on the US side. First troops land around 0630
• 23:26
  and then for the British it's about 7:30, and then the
• 23:30
  Canadians land a little bit later.
• 23:32
  But that has to do. That's part of the plan is the
• 23:35
  tie. It all has to do with the tides.
• 23:37
  When are the tides going to be the best?
• 23:39
  When can we see the beach obstacles and get ashore safely?
• 23:42
  And the Navy's role, obviously they don't want to soften up the
• 23:48
  shore defenses and batteries, but they can't get too close to
• 23:52
  the coast, right? Right.
• 23:55
  So the first component of the, of the Navy in a key operation
• 24:01
  is the minesweepers. And it's, you know, little
• 24:04
  smaller chips, but they've got to go through and clear
• 24:07
  channels, lanes through the, the big minefield that's in the
• 24:10
  English Channel so the invasion force can get through.
• 24:13
  And they actually start a day earlier and clear those, those
• 24:18
  lanes. And then there's, you know,
• 24:21
  everything from small frigates and corvettes all the way up to
• 24:26
  some of the big older battleships, USS Nevada and HMS
• 24:32
  Warspite. They, they're further offshore
• 24:37
  and I, I think the big guns on the battleships are mostly
• 24:40
  bombarding further inland and they're trying to knock out the
• 24:46
  artillery that the Germans have behind the lines.
• 24:49
  There are some ships that can get in close to the, the beaches
• 24:53
  and those are, you know, destroyers do great work at
• 24:58
  Omaha Beach. There's some cruisers that
• 25:01
  assist at Point du Hawk, British cruisers on Juneau Beach.
• 25:05
  So there's there's some pretty heroic efforts by the crews of
• 25:10
  those smaller ships that that can get in close and lay
• 25:14
  devastating fire on German defenses.
• 25:18
  Let's talk a little bit about some of the innovative
• 25:20
  technology that was deployed, specifically the Mulberry
• 25:24
  harbors, which are portable artificial ports to sustain the
• 25:28
  Allied invasion force. This probably is why the Germans
• 25:31
  thought the Allies were going to go to Pas de Calais, right, for
• 25:35
  the port. So to have these mulberries is
• 25:37
  probably very helpful. Yes.
• 25:39
  And as far as I know, I don't even, I don't think the Germans
• 25:42
  have seriously considered that the Allies can even do this.
• 25:45
  And it's, it's an incredible engineering effort and
• 25:50
  logistical innovation. And the Allies know that you,
• 25:54
  the problem with seizing a port is ports are a lot easier to
• 25:58
  defend. DF showed that Calais would be
• 26:02
  very difficult. Cherbourg, they want to capture
• 26:06
  these ports eventually. But you know, in the case of
• 26:08
  Cherbourg, the Germans destroy most of the port facilities.
• 26:12
  They sink ships in the harbor. And it takes weeks and weeks to,
• 26:16
  in some cases months to clear this out and repair it.
• 26:19
  So in that the Allies know they don't have that kind of time.
• 26:22
  Like this whole thing hinges on being able to get follow on
• 26:25
  forces ashore and expand and the, the beach heads.
• 26:30
  So yes, the, the mulberries facilitate that.
• 26:33
  And you know, they're towing these huge concrete caissons,
• 26:37
  floating them across the channel, sinking them offshore
• 26:41
  because they got to create a breakwater.
• 26:43
  They're sinking old ships. They've got some mobile
• 26:45
  breakwaters. And you want to be able to bring
• 26:48
  your big cargo ships in, offload and then drive all your
• 26:51
  equipment onto the beaches. One interesting thing to shows
• 26:56
  how hard this operation is, is if if you look at the Gaza pier
• 27:02
  that we I think 2024, we tried to do something similar and we
• 27:07
  did this in World War 2. But that the pier in the
• 27:13
  Mediterranean, which has a lot calmer water, is my
• 27:16
  understanding is that ran into some some challenges and in that
• 27:24
  the peer didn't work out right. I'm just saying that it's, it's
• 27:27
  like even in 2024, this is a very difficult thing to do, but
• 27:31
  the allies were able to pull this off.
• 27:33
  Well, by the end of D-Day itself, about 156,000 Allied
• 27:38
  troops have landed at Normandy. So what were the overall
• 27:42
  casualties on each side? So the, the casualties are when
• 27:48
  you, when you start to look into this, it's, it's hard to get an
• 27:50
  exact number. And there's a lot of reasons for
• 27:52
  that. We can get estimates, right?
• 27:55
  But when people have tried to look at this, you know, there's
• 27:59
  some names are spelled differently or the rest of the
• 28:02
  war is going on, right? There's a lot of guys who died
• 28:05
  on June 6, not on Normandy, but in the Pacific, in Italy and
• 28:11
  everywhere else that the Allies are also fighting
• 28:13
  simultaneously. So that makes it difficult.
• 28:17
  I think there's approximately 10,300 allied casualties on
• 28:22
  D-Day 4427 are Kia and I think the best numbers that you can
• 28:28
  get are from the National D-Day. Memorial has done a lot of work
• 28:33
  to try and categorize and research the the dead on on
• 28:39
  D-Day. On the German side, it's even
• 28:41
  more uncertain in it, you know, there's Germans getting killed
• 28:45
  by aircraft as they're coming up to the beaches.
• 28:48
  There's those that are killed or captured on the beaches, but
• 28:53
  it's I think it's several thousand on the German side, a
• 28:57
  lot deadlier fighting is going to follow in June and July,
• 29:01
  right? That the deadliest fighting is
• 29:03
  yet to come in the Normandy campaign in the Bocage.
• 29:07
  Yeah, it leads me to my next question.
• 29:08
  The invasion established A crucial foothold leading to the
• 29:11
  breakout from Normandy the following month, July 1944.
• 29:16
  So why did the breakout take so long?
• 29:20
  Was it, you know, was it supply related?
• 29:23
  Was it the Germans were fighting a stiff resistance?
• 29:27
  And did the Germans really have any realistic chance to push
• 29:29
  them back in the ocean? I think a lot of it has to do
• 29:33
  with terrain and the famously the especially on the American
• 29:39
  side, the Bokaj country, right? These are the hedgerows built up
• 29:44
  over hundreds of years. You know, farmers are clearing
• 29:47
  fields, stacking rocks and they're building wind breaks and
• 29:51
  then you get vines and trees that grow into these things and
• 29:54
  make very formidable obstacles. It's not good tank country.
• 29:58
  So if you got to fight through these, it's it's infantry that
• 30:01
  have to go hedgerow to hedgerow in the Germans, figure out some
• 30:05
  good tactics to defend them and makes that fighting very
• 30:08
  difficult. So it just takes a while for
• 30:10
  them to get through this terrain on the US side and then on the
• 30:15
  the Canadian and British side, Operation Goodwood is the
• 30:20
  attempt to seize Khan. It doesn't go as well as they
• 30:25
  planned. There's heavy losses for the the
• 30:28
  Commonwealth troops. But what it does do is it pulls
• 30:32
  a lot of German forces away to that area and opens up the
• 30:36
  successful breakout which is Operation Cobra on July 25th
• 30:41
  where the out the US is able to break out of the Normandy
• 30:46
  lodgement and do their their follow on operations after that.
• 30:52
  So after that breakout, there's pretty much no chance for the
• 30:54
  Germans to push them back in the ocean.
• 30:56
  Yeah, I, I, I think that's a fair assessment.
• 31:00
  I Rommel probably was right. I of all, of all the German
• 31:04
  commanders that if the Germans were going to stop this, they
• 31:07
  needed to stop it in the first couple days, maybe take out one
• 31:12
  of the beaches, cause enough problems, somehow prevent the
• 31:15
  Allies from getting ashore. But Allied naval supremacy and
• 31:19
  air supremacy are huge, right? If the Luftwaffe and the the
• 31:23
  Krieg's Marine can't disrupt the landings and the Allies secure
• 31:30
  their lines of communications back to England, then they're
• 31:33
  bringing the industrial might of the United States and the
• 31:37
  British and all of their troops and weapons and supplies.
• 31:42
  And, and at that point, I don't think the Germans have a, a real
• 31:45
  shot at stopping the landing. Is it?
• 31:48
  If it's going to happen, it's going to happen elsewhere.
• 31:51
  I think that's a great point just for as I didn't really
• 31:52
  think about it. Basically it's three arms of the
• 31:56
  military against one. You know, the Germans have their
• 31:59
  infantry and tanks, but like I said, the Greeks Marine can't
• 32:03
  really get in there. I mean, maybe other than a
• 32:05
  submarine. And then the German Air Force is
• 32:07
  very limited, where the Allies have all three arms fighting in
• 32:10
  this battle. Right.
• 32:11
  Oh, and by the way, there's, you know, a little Soviet offensive
• 32:15
  going on at around the same time Operation Bagratian, right,
• 32:19
  which is this mat like 13 fronts essentially annihilates Army
• 32:25
  group center. So the Germans are dealing with
• 32:28
  the even bigger fight that's going on in the Eastern Front.
• 32:32
  Well, D-Day ultimately paved the way for liberation of Paris and
• 32:37
  the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
• 32:41
  What is the legacy of D-Day? So the way I think about this
• 32:47
  is, is D-Day represents the start of the Allied campaign
• 32:54
  into Western Europe that's going to eventually lead them to
• 32:58
  invade Germany and bring about surrender of of the Nazis in in
• 33:03
  the German war machine. But there's a lot of hard
• 33:06
  fighting that has to happen in that year between 1944 and 1945.
• 33:12
  But D-Day opens the the way into Germany, right?
• 33:16
  This is for years, they've known, the Allies have known
• 33:20
  that they've got to go across the Channel, get into Western
• 33:22
  Europe, liberate France and are the Germans going to win the war
• 33:28
  at this point? I would say almost certainly
• 33:30
  not. But how long it lasts, how many
• 33:33
  casualties it's going to cost to bring about unconditional
• 33:37
  surrender, that still depends on on how well the Allies do.
• 33:42
  But the first step of this is getting ashore.
• 33:45
  And that goes back to, you know, why is this?
• 33:47
  Why is D-Day such a big part of our historical memory?
• 33:51
  And again, it's, it's the start, it's the great Crusade, as
• 33:54
  Eisenhower says, getting men and equipment ashore to to bring
• 34:00
  about the the end of the war. Yeah, it's an interesting
• 34:04
  legacy. I think it does get a little too
• 34:06
  much publicity because people say, well, once D-Day happened,
• 34:10
  the war was over, the Germans had no chance.
• 34:12
  I'm like, well, you know, they still had a fight across France,
• 34:15
  Germany, still the valley bulge. The Soviet still had a plow
• 34:18
  through Eastern Europe. So I don't think D-Day was the
• 34:21
  end of the war. You still had to beat the
• 34:23
  Germans. Exactly but.
• 34:26
  In terms of planning an amphibious operation that large
• 34:29
  and that well, I think Eisenhower should get a ton of
• 34:32
  credit and his staff and his generals for how how well it
• 34:36
  went. Yeah, all the way from the
• 34:38
  planners, you know, to the Navy. It the, the more you explore
• 34:42
  this battle in in see the actions of individual soldiers
• 34:47
  and lieutenants and sergeants, you know, taking charge.
• 34:51
  And those those guys are doing an incredible heroic effort to
• 34:57
  shape their little part of the battle, right.
• 34:59
  And if you get enough of those things to go well, well, that's
• 35:02
  going to drive the operations, which drives the strategy,
• 35:05
  right. So credit all across the board.
• 35:07
  But I absolutely agree. I don't know if we'll ever see
• 35:11
  anything like this again. That scale of amphibious air,
• 35:16
  naval, I mean, it would be an incredible sight to see, you
• 35:22
  know, that the ships moving across the channel, the, the
• 35:25
  planes going in the naval bombardment, We, we don't have
• 35:29
  anything like that to, to compare it to that, that scale
• 35:33
  of conventional operations. Yeah, indeed.
• 35:36
  Well, thank you for that, Stuart.
• 35:37
  Fabulous work as always, the D-Day Invasion and I appreciate
• 35:42
  your insight. I know you just visited there.
• 35:43
  That was really good to hear and I'd like to get over there
• 35:46
  sometime to just see. Absolutely.
• 35:48
  Yeah, there's so much here to learn and, and I, you know, hope
• 35:51
  to to continue to learn more about this this battle and, and
• 35:54
  visit there with with other people and share with my cadets
• 35:59
  these stories. And I I really have to
• 36:02
  appreciate the opportunity to talk about this.
• 36:05
  Yeah, it's great having you on Stewart Vander Koi from the
• 36:08
  United States Military Academy at West Point.
• 36:11
  We appreciate your time. Thank you, Sir.
• 36:13
  Absolutely. Thank you, John.