What if D-Day had failed?
Dr. David Stafford, of the Centre for World War Two Studies at Edinburgh University considers an alternative history:
D-Day success was no sure thing and failure would have meant military and political catastrophe.
No-one knew this better than the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D Eisenhower.
On the night of 5 June, after he’d given the final order for the Allied invasion to proceed, he took a scrap of paper from his pocket and wrote out the text of the press release he hoped he’d never have to give.
It read as follows: “Our landings have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops.
“My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available.
“The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do.
“If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
Then he put it in his pocket and forgot about it. What if he’d had to use it?
He then proceeds to consider the consequences in more harrowing detail:
And then? With Allied forces in disarray, and the Wehrmacht on full alert, no repeat invasion could have been tried again that summer and the Allies would have had to wait another 12 months.
Meanwhile, Hitler would have focused all his attention on the Russians in the East, although to no avail.
The Red Army by now was unstoppable and eventually Stalin’s forces would have not just taken Berlin, as they did, but advanced further west to the Rhine, and perhaps even to the North Sea and English Channel.
The whole of Germany and western Europe would then have been behind the Iron Curtain, and communism would have been enforced on the end of bayonets.
In a repeat of 1940, Britain would have again stood alone, except for the United States and its overseas allies.
In these circumstances, the US might well have retreated across the Atlantic into isolation, and Britain forced into some disastrous compromise deal with Stalin. The whole post-war history of Britain, of Europe, and of the world, would have been radically different.
If you know a WWII vet, do something especially nice for them this weekend. If you don’t, at least take a few moments to contemplate what they did for us all.
Speculative history is always a fragile business. It’s easy enough to see how the profound events in history are aggregated from little accidents, coincidences, and arbitrary decisions, making them totally unpredictable.
That aside, D-Day stands as a thundering example of humans suffering through and conquering horrors, not out of self-interest, but because it was the right thing to do.
Congrats on Large Mammal status, by the by.
How does that work, by the way, the ecosystem?
I’ve been all over that site, but it’s still not clear to me.
Total # of incoming links. Not sure what qualifies and what doesn’t.
If you know a WWII vet, do something especially nice for them this weekend.
The only WWII vet I knew personally died a few years ago. He had a lot of faults, but a hell of a lot of personal integrity and stubbornness and a sense of humor that had to be heard to be believed: I liked him almost despite myself (I wasn’t kidding about the faults). My dad was just 18 in 1945: he escaped being a WWII vet by literally months. *His* father fought in WWI.
Here’s a WWII vet I’d like to do something nice for – doesn’t look likely though.
If it’s an open D-Day thread, here’s the citation for Jose Lopez on his Congressional Medal of Honor certificate (excuse the length):
This is excerpted from a June 7 2002 broadcast of Now with Bill Moyers, when he interviewed Lopez. Again, sorry about the length.