Today in History: Anniversary of D-Day

Okay, on today's show, we're going to focus a little bit on history, specifically an incredibly important moment in World War II. So let's start the show. You are listening to the twenty third episode of English with Dane. Hid it. So by the time you listen to this episode, I will be in Scotland for a wedding. However, the moment in history I will be talking about today happened on the sixth of June, so today for me.

So a day before, but I think it's worth it, Balapena, because it's a really good one. So let's check in with history dot com. The headline reads D Day Allies Storm Normandy's coast. On this day in nineteen forty four, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the order to execute the largest amphibious military operation in history, Operation Overlord, which received the codename D Day, the Allied invasion of northern France.

But we have to stop here for a second, because there is more to tell and we need some more context. Let's start empecemos in nineteen forty three. With things looking difficult for the Allies, a very important meeting happened in Tehran, the capital of Iran. The leaders of the most powerful Allied forces, so the United States, Russia, and Great Britain met for the first time in the same room.

Stalin, the Russian leader at the time, strongly insisted that they open another front against the Germans, a Western front, by invading occupied France. This made sense. After all, Russia had been paying Abiestalopagando the human cost of the war with millions of men dying, fighting the Nazis. The British had resisted the idea, saying that instead, in Bis, they should fight in North Africa and then go up to Italy.

But with the advances of the Russians on the east, it became difficult to ignore Stalin's demands. This wasn't the only reason, though. The Americans and the British were thinking about the postwar picture, right? What would happen if the Russians beat the Nazis without the help of the Americans and British? How would they stop the USSR from controlling and influencing Europe? If they didn't help, they would not be able to control what happened after the war.

So they made an agreement, unacuerdo. They would open a new front, a Western front, to make the enemy have to fight on two fronts an extremely difficult thing to do. They would invade France in May of nineteen forty four, and it would be an amphibious operation. An operation that would be launched from the sea and would deploy troops on land. So they started to plan. However, it would be an extremely complicated thing to do because an operation like this had never been done before.

Literally never. This operation would require men and material from all around the world, and it required new technologies to be invented. Things that had only been discussed in the past but never done would now have to be done. But there was one decision that was maybe the most important one. They knew they were going to cross the English Channel, but where would they land? They had two choices, two options.

The first one was Calais, which is the closest point in Europe to England, and the second one was Normandy, one of the farthest points. Calais was the obvious option, but there were a few problems. The first problem was the terrain. It would be too difficult to maneuver in that terrain, and it would give them a serious disadvantage. And the other problem was that it was the obvious choice. Instead, they chose Normandy.

They wanted to have the element of surprise, and they also wanted to have the opportunity to retreat retirarse if they needed to. So the decision was made they would attack Normandy in May. But some problems arose. They needed more time to design and build everything they needed. They needed to build harbors, puertos, and other vehicles to make the mission possible. So they delayed the attack until June, the fourth of June, to be exact.

When the day finally came, they were ready to go, but then the weather changed. It started to rain a lot. And enormous waves moved the sea. Eisenhower made the decision to delay the attack. In theory, they could carry out Yebaracabo, part of this operation at night, but to bring all of those soldiers in amphibious vehicles, they needed full moon visibility. They'd needed to be able to see.

And to make it worse, the tidal conditions, la marea the tide, would not be favorable until two weeks later. It was a terrible situation. They had all of the men ready, waiting in the boats, but they couldn't start the attack. There's another aspect here that we also need to consider. This was an enormous operation, the biggest of its kind. To carry out an operation like this, anytime anything changes, there are many people who need to be informed.

You have to tell everybody, which makes it more probable that the enemy finds out. Every hour that passed, it was more probable that a spy received the information or that the Nazis noticed what was about to happen. Then a man called James Martin Stag came to the rescue. He was a captain and a meteorologist for the RAF, the Royal Air Force. He tells Eisenhower that he believes that on june sixth the weather will clear up and that conditions would be favorable. So they were ready to attack.

Around six thousand ships began to cross the English Channel, and because the British had destroyed most of the German Air Force, there were no planes that could see them coming. Then everything started, and things did not go according to plan at first. The first part of the mission required soldiers to land at the Rizar and light up in Sender the landing zone for the paratroopers, right, the soldiers with parachutes, but only two planes made it, yegaron.

And to make things worse, a lot of the things they needed to light up the landing zones were on the planes that didn't arrive. That means that only a few soldiers were on the ground and they had to use flashlights, linternas, to signal the planes carrying the paratroopers. Then there were problems with the paratroopers. Because the planes had little visibility, many of the paratroopers were dropped, soldados, too low or too high.

The paratroopers that were dropped too low broke many bones when they landed because they didn't have time for their parachutes to open. And the ones that were dropped too high floated down very slowly, giving the enemy soldiers time to shoot them very easily. The mission of the remaining paratroopers was to capture strategic places and give more time to the thousands and thousands of soldiers that were about to land on the beach. The next stage was bombing, but it was still dark.

Allied planes bombed the area, but many of the bombs missed the location by a lot, fallaron por mucho, and caused many civilian casualties in Normandy. Then the sun came out, literally, and they could now see much more clearly. So they bombed enemy positions along the beach a lo largo de la playa, and this time it was much more effective. Then at six thirty in the morning it all happens.

The soldiers were deployed, desplegados, from the boats in their amphibious vehicles, and they go towards the beach hacia la playa. Now several movies have been made about this part. The first one that comes to mind is Saving Private Ryan, which had an incredible scene showing this moment. However, I'm sure even the horrible and shocking images that we saw in that movie don't compare to what actually happened. I can't imagine what those soldiers were feeling. A lot of them were very young too.

This landing on Normandy was a bit of a disaster. In the end it worked out, right, Resulto, and this invasion helped win the war. But the attack was a little bit of a disaster. Apart from what we already discussed, some of the troops landed in the wrong place. There were several landing spots, okay, Utah, Omaha, Gold Beach, etc for the Americans, and not everyone landed where they were supposed to.

The soldiers that landed in Utah weren't supposed to land there, but when they did, they saw that it was actually a better place than the original location. So they took the beach, they won their battle on the beach, and this helped tremendously. The mission by this point had become very disorganized, and they considered retreating, but they didn't. The second wave of soldiers arrived, and in general the same thing happened.

However, some were able to fight through the positions and make progress. Finally, several of the Navy ships got very close to the beach and provided support for the troops on the ground. This coincided with the Germans running out of ammunition, so they had no ammunition left. I feel like this is the story of the whole invasion. Things going wrong, but then things going right in unexpected ways.

After all of this, after a full day of fighting, and as the sun went down, it was clear that the Allied forces had triumphed, and it was the beginning of the end for the Nazis, and the rest is history. I remember visiting Normandy and seeing the remains of the bunkers and trying to imagine how it must have been. But I don't think you can. I think you can try, but if you haven't been in a situation like that, you'll never know.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about this on today's show because it is one of the most important military moments in the history of the world. And since today is the anniversary, it feels appropriate. I know I missed things, but that is to be expected. There are entire books and series of books written about this day. So if there's anything vital that I missed, write to me at Englishwithdain and let me know. Okay, that's the show for today. I hope you enjoyed it.

Don't forget to support the show by subscribing, sharing, and leaving a review. Okay, talk soon. Bye-bye.