When it comes to history's greatest battles, there are few that can rival the importance of World War II's Allied invasion of the beaches of Normandy: D-Day. Anyone who knows anything about the war probably knows a bit about this pivotal invasion... but The Atlantic says that something strange has happened with the telling and retelling of the D-Day invasion. They say: "[...] the passing of the years [...] has softened the horror of Omaha Beach [...]"
We're shown routes and arrows, precise landing spots, the places where German bunkers sat... but that only tells part of the story. What's lost in that kind of telling is the human side: what was it like for the men and boys who headed toward the beach that morning, knowing there was a good chance they were looking at their last sunrise?
D-Day is remembered as a triumph, as the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. And it's true that less than a year later the Nazi forces had been broken and the Allies were rolling through Berlin, all remnants of the once-terrifying German military machine destroyed. But D-Day was so complex and so logistically complicated it's simplistic to view it as a massive invasion that kicked Nazi butt. The truth is more complicated, in part because any operation the size and complexity of D-Day is going to get messy, and in part because it's become American Mythology that the U.S. led the biggest invasion ever and ended the worst war of all time. But dig a little deeper, and the mythology doesn't always hold up. Here's the messed-up truth about D-Day.
At Normandy, the Allies used an incredible 11,509 aircraft and 6,939 naval vessels to assault the Germans, and it was one of the most successful invasions in history. In addition to the 132,715 troops that attacked the beaches, there were also 23,400 airborne troops who landed behind enemy lines to provide support from the rear. Within a week, the Allies had secured the five different beachheads at Normandy, and just a few months later the French capital of Paris was liberated.
After D-Day, a practical but immensely difficult question remained: what to do with all of the bodies? Allied forces left behind thousands of their comrades' remains scattered across the beaches where they fell. The bodies were evidence of the devastating toll of the invasion. What's more, they had to be collected and buried in as respectful a manner as possible in a war zone. So, who took on this heavy task, and how exactly did they do it? Here's what happened to the bodies from D-Day.
Goebbels set out to inoculate the German people with every possible inverted truth necessary to convince them of the necessity of their country's war. And so, when faced with defeat on D-Day on June 6, 1944, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP) added some more lies to its endless glut of vile, anti-Semitic rhetoric (discussed on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) and other propaganda. German newsreels depicted triumphant troops set to brassy music, the roll of mighty German tanks, wrecked Allied vehicles, Allied prisoners in tow, and more.
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