Essay About Remarkable Aspect Of World War Ii And Winston Churchill

D-DayJoin now to read essay D-DayD-Day has always been a celebrated day throughout the entire world in which the Western Allied forces were finally able to break Hitler grasp on Europe. The landings that occurred on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944 was a great military victory at the cost of many lives. But the motives behind D-Day are unclear. Why did Britain want to go through Italy and did everything in its power to stop the invasion of Normandy? Why did the US promise Stalin that a second front would be open? The motives behind Operation Overlord are more because of political power play between the allied nations rather than opening a decisive military front.

The most remarkable aspect of World War II was how America committed itself to the battles occurring in Europe and had not concentrated on Japan, the United States’ main aggressor. It was the Americans who were impatient to confront the German army on the continent while the British were haunted by the deepest misgivings about doing so. ““Why are we doing this?” cried Winston Churchill in a bitter moment of depression about Operation OVERLORD in February 1944, which caused him a spasm of enthusiasm for an alternative Allied landing in Portugal. ‘I am very uneasy about the whole operation,” wrote the Chief of the Imperial general Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, as late as June 5, 1944. “At the best, it will come very short of the expectation the bulk of the people, namely all those who know nothing about its difficulties. At its worst, it may well be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war,”” (Ambrose, 56). It seems that the British favored opening a second front to relieve some of the pressure from Russia, but did not agree with the second front being opened in the beaches of Normandy, but rather that of Italy through the Mediterranean. Had the United Sates Army been wavering in its commitment to a landing in Normandy, it is unlikely that the landing would have taken place before 1945. Until the very last weeks before OVERLORD was launched, its future was the subject of bitter dissension and debate between the generals of Britain and America.

For a year following the fall of France in 1940, Britain fought on without any actual prospect of final victory. When Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941,the first gleam of hope presented itself to Britain. For the remainder of that year, Britain was preoccupied with the struggle to keep open her Atlantic lifeline, to build her bomber offensive into a meaningful menace to German, and to keep hopes alive in any theatre of war where British army could fight (Africa and the Middle East). Then in December of 1941 came the miracle of Pearl Harbor. Britain’s salvation and the turning point of the war happened when Hitler declared war upon the United States.

After that, the outcome of World War II was never in serious doubt. Great delays and difficulties lay ahead in mobilizing America’s industrial might for the battlefield, and in determining by what strategy the Axis were to be crushed. To the relief of the British, President Roosevelt and his Chiefs of Staff at once asserted their acceptance on the principle of “Germany first.” “They acknowledged that her war-making power was by far the most dangerous and the following her collapse, Japan must soon capitulate. The war in the Pacific became overwhelmingly the concern of the United States Navy” (Keegan, 167). The principal weight of the army’s ground forced, which would grow to about eight million men, was to be directed against Germany and Italy. This decision was confirmed at Arcadia, the first Anglo-American conference of the war that began in Washington on December 31, 1941. American committed herself to BOLERO, a program for a vast build-up of American forces in Britain. “Churchill, scribbling his own exuberant hopes for the future during the Atlantic passage to that meeting, speculated on the possible landing in Europe by 40 Allied armored divisions in the following year: “we might hope to win the was at the end of 1943 or 1944,” “ (Hastings, 90).

But in the months after Arcadia, as the first United States troops journeyed to Europe, it was the American who began to focus directly upon an early cross-Channel invasion. The debate now began, and continued with growing heat through the next 20 months, “…reflected, “an American impatience to get on with direct offensive action as well as a belief, held quite generally by the US War Department, that the war could most efficiently be won by husbanding resources for an all-out attack deliberately planned for a fixed date. American impatience was opposed by British note of caution: American faith in an offensive of fixed date was in contrast to British willingness to proceed one step at a time, molding a course of action to the turns of military fortune.” Here, in the words of the American official historian…” (Ambrose, 60),

In contrast, the English took no interest in the U.S. War Department in the first place:

The military planners of the period also saw little in English and, when it came to establishing direct or indirect command of US Forces, were completely absent from the U.S. War Department’s meetings, meetings, conferences and media appearances. It was no surprise that when German forces invaded and occupied Normandy, England held the only position in direct command, and was able to call the necessary attention to American plans, but without American military advisors, its support was limited to what would later come to be known as “dissolution” meetings.

The only real effect of these early British presence in the United States was, according to an early statement from General George H.W. Bush, “the first attempt to use the British as a permanent partner to carry out war.” The following page is a brief summary of some of Bush’s stated views on the use of the British for direct and indirect warfare in the United States before the War Department, where he was quoted:

“Before World War II, General Thomas H. Watson was secretary of war, and he was familiar with the German plan, and his view was simple: the military plan from which Allied and American plans would arrive should consist of all types of counter-attacks: attack by air or ground troops, or counter-offensive by submarine, rail and submarine, or aerial bombardment, or submarine bombing.” (See later discussion, pp. 18–19 in War & Peace.) “[T]he British plan was something like this: Allied forces would attack France and Italy, and French forces would send troops to the front. And the American plan was that that was the end of all resistance. They would leave the troops. They would get it over with once the French and Italian troops had exhausted all their available resources and are coming home in time, and the British commander would decide, ‘We have to get this over with once our own troops have taken them over.’ So he said, ‘Okay, let’s go to Europe and force the Russians out and use them to fight.” (Governing, p. 40.)” (It should be noted that, in a sense before World War II was over, the United States held no position in direct warfare: it was just neutralizing non-German forces in the south.)

The American War Department officials did not seem particularly pleased with the German strategy of use of the British as early as 1943—they were willing to use Americans whenever they needed to take on Allied forces. Bush’s official account of this action of “dissolution,” which is found in a document provided under the Freedom of Information Act, describes the meeting (a) and the meetings of (s) British commanders, (b) and (c) during which, although Bush claimed to have heard some of these “deplorable talkings,” he did not see any evidence that there was an effort at “disqualification of American Army members through special missions, operations, and training.” While the original official document stated that the meeting began with “a friendly discussion about our new American plan,” there is little that Bush could have expected any serious discussion about: