THE V.E. DAY LIE. LEST WE FORGET

What is it that we MUST remember?

Everyone knew, understood, and still celebrated VE Day when the author was a young person in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was all explained at a VERY young age, perhaps when one was as young as 6 or 8 years old. It is the day that the Nazis were defeated. Today it is probably fair to say that few under the age of 40 have anything but the most shallow awareness. And the celebrations have faded into gray.

Back then, who won the war was never in doubt. It was “our guys,” the soldiers of the United States who landed at Anzio in Italy and the Dunkirk beaches who whipped the Nazis and won the war. Every movie showed it. Every celebration extolled it. Saving Private Ryan immortalized it.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised … by now, we hope … to find that the story is more complex.

The landing at Anzio was badly botched at the cost of 24,000 American and 10,000 British dead, wounded, caotured or missing in action. D-Day was also bungled and thousands of lives unnecessarily lost.

1). Paratroopers were famously dropped in the wrong places, slaughtered by enemy fire and dying from environmental causes.
2). Unplanned-for strong currents resulted in seaborne landings in the wrong locales.
3). Pre-invasion bombings were almost 100% ineffective in reducing German fortifications.
4). Amphibious tanks that were supposed to support ground troops were made ineffective by high seas.
5). Omaha Beach was so bloody that General Omar Bradley considered abandoning the assault altogether.
6). Utah Beach also a bloodbath, although eventually successful.
7). In one single day, 10,500 casualties; 4,400 allied dead.

But for all that, Germany had already been defeated. The Eastern Front had collapsed. The Russians destroyed the German army. D-Day was at the END of the war - June 6, 1944 - after the fact. The Battle of Stalingrad ended the year before. Operation Bagration in Belarus destroyed the German Central Command virtually at the same time the allies were trying to grab victory from the jaws of defeat at Dunkirk. The Allies were in a panic to race the Russians to Berlin. And for all the sacrifice, they were too late. Imagine how far the Russians had to advance and the Germans retreat from Stalingrad and Moscow, all the way across Russia and Central Europe, Poland and take Berlin … which they did. The Russians (Soviet Union at the time) entered Berlin April 21, 1945, and the Berlin garrison surrendered on May 2, 1945. The first Americans stragglers didn’t arrive until two months later.

For all the talk of the U.S. whipping Germany, it was the Russians who destroyed the Wehrmacht (German army). 83% of combat casualties in WWII were Russian. Think about that a bit.

”…there is no question whatsoever that the Red Army played the key role in defeating the Wehrmacht and that President Trump’s claim that ‘we won’ WWII and that ‘nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance’ is nonsense and shows great disrespect for the 27 million Soviets who died in that horrific conflict.” Historian John Mearsheimer.

Mearsheimer is being polite. Trump outright lied, as usual. And you’ve been lied to about this again and again.

One of the best short discussions of this issue is the following with Princeton Ph.D and former Harvard professor Dr. Vladimir Brovkin. Listen and learn. This is history:

By the way, in different parts of the world, May 8 or 9 mark the official end of WWII in Europe, or VE day; Victory in Europe Day. The reason the date varies is due to the international date line at the moment of the official surrender of German miliary operations.

Finally, in setting the record straight, no disrespect is intended to the thousands of decent and honorable Americans, British, French, and others who sacrificed themselves for home, family, and the world. Their lives mattered, too. But it dishonors them and ourselves to lie and to pervert the truth.