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... hich the invasion could take place appeared as a problem. A full moon had to appear so the troops could see in the middle of the night. Also, the tides had to be just right and the weather had to cooperate with the invasion. In June, only the 5 th, 6 th, and 7 th days had both the right phase of the moon and the right tides at the right hours. But on Saturday, the 3 rd, the weather was bad and the forecast was discouraging.
By Sunday it was clear that Monday, the 5 th, would be hopeless. The prediction was for weather so bad that the air forces wouldn't be able to deliver their all-important bombardment. General Eisenhower postponed the attack for twenty-four hours. The question was whether it (the attack) could be made on the 6 th. 10 General Eisenhower took a poll of his advisors as to when the invasion should take place, and they agreed that the 6 th of June seemed like the correct day. The decision was made and Eisenhower said, "I don't see how we can do anything else. Go!" 11 On the day of the invasion, the paratroopers went first, just as planned.
Two separate drops occurred fifty miles apart at 1: 30 in the morning. This was the hardest job of the entire invasion because they had to find their way through darkness and enemy territory to seize roads and bridges behind the beaches to hold off the Germans from retreating too far. Casualties were heavy for these paratroopers. Flooded areas at both ends of (the) battlefield claimed the greatest number of British and American paratroopers. 12 These parachutes and hang gliders, however, had thrown the Germans off balance. The air force bombing raids now needed to proceed as planned. The paratroopers had no trouble with the overcast conditions, but the bombardment plans had to be changed due to the lack of visibility.
The pilots of the planes couldn't see their targets and had to bomb by instrument, which was far less accurate. 13 After the air force had done all that it could, the time had come for the most important job of the entire invasion: the first waves. "The enormous weight of the whole gigantic effort rested entirely, for the time being, on the men in the first waves. " 14 The men who had traveled for hours in the LCVP's across the English Channel had to exit their ships, run onto the beach, and into their nightmares. The goal of these men was to make their way up the beach to at least a few hundred yards from the shore and begin to attack the German held posts at the tops of the hills on the beach. 15 The first wave of the troops from the ships came at 6: 30, what is now called H-Hour. When the ship began releasing the men inside, they left the ships and waded onto the beach, through the Atlantic Wall that had been set up to stop them. The first holes in the Atlantic Wall began to open, and men began to storm through these holes. The Atlantic wall, however, had not been entirely destroyed and the Germans began to fire back at the allied troops. Many thousands of men died on the first wave alone, and the beach became covered in bodies and body parts.
A veteran of D-Day who fought on Omaha Beach, Corporal Samuel Fuller, remembers what the beach was like: We were in a very bad position, pinned down on the beach with a German division in front of us and only water behind us. We had 7 yards of beachhead with no cover; the highest thing around was a shale rock They sent me to find our commander, Colonel George Taylor, and tell him we'd opened a breach. I stood up and tried to run. When you run over unconscious men, or men lying on their bellies, it's tough to keep your balance. You go into the water, but the water is washing bodies in and out. Bodies, heads, flesh, intestines; that's what Omaha Beach was. 16 The rest of the day went as planned and appeared very successful.
The Germans slowly began to be pushed back and by the end of the day the Allies had control of most of the beaches that they had planned on attacking. The events of D-Day became known to many as the beginning of the end of World War II. It appeared that the Germans would be pushed all the way to Germany and eventually surrender the entire war. On August 15 the Allies made another attack on France, but this time it was on Southern France, not northwestern France like D Day. By August 25, the Allies captured Paris from the Germans, and by October of 1944, they had completely pushed the Germans out of France. D-Day became known as the turning point of the war, and is what caused the United States and the Allies to win the war. 17 After D-day, Germany attempted only one more offensive against the Allies.
In December 1944, the Allied invasion stalled around the border of France and Germany. This is when Germany decided to make one final offensive. This attack, which came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge, surprised the Allied forces. The United States and the rest of the Allies, however, defeated the Germans in this battle and began marching toward Germany.
In March 1945, the United States made its way into Germany. At this same time, another Allied power, the Soviet Union also moved into Germany. One month later, the two sides of the Allied force met in Germany. After this occurred, it became very apparent that the war in Europe was basically over.
On May 8, 1945, Germany finally surrendered. Citizens of the Allied powers everywhere celebrated the news of this day, which came to be known as Victory over Europe day. 18 The news of the German surrender left Japan as the United States' only remaining enemy. The United States could now focus on the war that had been going on in the Pacific ever since the beginning of the war. After Roosevelt's death on April 12 1945, Vice-president Harry Truman took the office as president. Truman proceeded to end the entire war by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After World War II, the United States became the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world.
Also after the war, the Allied powers met and agreed that the best way to keep something like this from happening again is to outlaw Germany and Japan from having a fully functional military force even to this day. If D-Day had not occurred, and World War II had not ended when it did, America could be under Fascist rule and the American public could be servants to Japanese, German, and Italian leaders. World War II's events led to the Cold War, the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Korean War. Because D-Day was the beginning of the end of World War II, these extremely important pieces of history can be attributed to the events that surrounded D-Day and the day itself. As a result of D-Day, however, the world finally reached peace after World War II, and people all around the world began living their lives without the fear of a new rule taking over. The events of World War II leading up to D-Day, the day of June 6, 1944 itself, and the effect that this day had on the rest of history all play major roles in what D-Day means to all of mankind.
What exactly would the world be like at this point without the invasion that ended World War II? Thankfully, no one will ever know. Bibliography: Bibliography Bliven, Bruce, Jr. The Story of D-Day. New York: Random House, 1956.
Fuller, Samuel. "D-Day. " Time 6 June 1994: 42 - 46. Howarth, David. D Day. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1959. Nash, Gary B.
American Odyssey. Columbus: Glencoe, 1992. Ryan, Cornelius. The Longest Day. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
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Research essay sample on World War Ii End Of World War
