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Significance of D-day:Olivier Wieviorka - 'Eager to magnify the importance of a somewhat monumental event, soldiers and historians alike have often preferred its heroic charms to the harsh realities of the event, in relegating to the margins of silence everything that contradicts the legend.'50 years earlier Basil Hart also complained that there was - 'Too much glorification of the campaign and too little objective investigation.' The Normandy Campaign's success did ensure the outcome of the European conflict in combination with the Russian campaign and earlier Allied success:Earlier allied success against the Germans included the Battle of Britain fought from July to September 1940 and ensured a long war that Germany wasn't equipped to win.'The Arsenal of Democracy, was capable in answering every need,' according to Robin Neillands, and in doing so 'guaranteed the defeat of the enemy.' Historian Randy Holderfield places great emphasis on the victories in the Battle of the Atlantic, which in guarantying British survival, ensured in a prolonged war which the allies were always bound to win, overshadowing any large scale importance of D day. 'It is often concluded in retrospect that the continuation of war, considering that allies' relative advantages in men and material made victory inevitable. It was assumed that, combined, all their industrial wealth assured the allies not only had overwhelming firepower but an uninterrupted stream of reinforcements as well.'Furthermore, the manoeuvre based warfare of WW2, was a method which eschewed long, attritional fighting, something the Germans couldn't afford. This, according to Max Hasting, 'helped develop an orthodoxy that leant only grudging acknowledgment to the success of the allies in Normandy.' However, a degree of revisionism had begun to develop in recent years to challenge this relatively well established view. Terry Copp contends that though the Germans had lost, this had been a result of strategic mismanagement. The German army proved palpably unable to meet the challenge of the campaign in Normandy, principally because the allies did not allow them to on strategic, operational and tactical levels, crediting the invasion with 'driving the Wehrmacht to the point of defeat in all respects.' Regardless, put into context with significant axis defeats in North Africa and Russia, in which German armed forces suffered 85% of its military deaths and as Antony Beevor observes, 'by measure of manpower, duration, territorial reach, and casualties, the Eastern front was much as four times bigger the scale of the conflict on the Western front which opened with the Normandy invasion,' this was no great feat. Ultimately, D day was 'simply a formality that assured an already probable allied victory.' German Field Marshall Von Rundstedt, prior to D day - 'Make Peace, you idiots!' - to the German government, a reflection of the course of the war after Barbarossa overwhelming in the allies favour, and the a reinforcement of the idea that the war was 'already won', noted by Beevor that D day's primary significance was to 'speed up the inevitable.' On moral:Arguably, operation Overlord and D-day as a whole was a vast boost to allied morale as it was the first time land occupied by Nazis was recaptured.Randy Holdefield notes, 'The successful execution of operation Overload was the first great moral victory on the Western front against the military forces of the Third Reich. Michael Varhola further supports, 'OVERLORD proved a psychological and physical blow to German military fortunes from which they would never recover,' as it called into question the 'German army's ability to control western Europe, dramatically increased partisan activity against enemy occupation, and heartened the spirits of all those fighting against Nazi tyranny.'Immediately after the liberation of France, Charles de Gaulle, a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II, observed ' We are not celebrating a military victory, we are above all celebrating a moral victory.' Thomas Cantwell - Hitler's 'fortress Europe' mentality no longer credible.The significance of the operation itself is complex. During the planning for operation D-Day, Winston Churchill noted: 'in war time, the truth is so precious and so hard to find that is should be protected by a bodyguard of lies.' Allied intelligence authorities embraced Churchill's statement by creating false fronts and distributing misleading information in bid to convince the Abwehr that an allied attack would occur either in Norway or Calais. To have an operation as large as Overlord remain a complete secret from the Germans is a great success for allied counterintelligence. Some of the leaders of the German military were so completely surprised that they refused to believe that the landing at Normandy was even the main invasion, gifting the allies the element of surprise and 'reinforcing the moral of those going into battle on every front.' (Cantwell) Olivier Wieviorka, who acknowledges that while, indisputably, D-day did provide some boost in moral, rightly argues that the degree of its significance is often exaggerated. 'Portrayed often as the decisive episode in an epochal struggle between good and evil, the moral significance of D-day is primarily a myth'. He then points to the skyrocketing allied casualties, which numbered at 24,698 at the end of June, and the poor reconnaissance, bad communication and general harsh conditions which they faced to argue that, ' The violence has frequently been downplayed by historians who seek to glorify both the exploits of the allied soldiers and subsequent morale improvement.'D-day was also instrumental in the downfall of Germany and eventual allied success as in a similar scenario to WW1, it opened a two fronted war, diverting large portions of German resources and hence leading to defeat.On 25 August 1944 Paris was liberated and the allied powers had achieved their major goal. During the 50-day campaign, German human and material loss were extensive and decisive. German losses exceeded 400,000 troops killed, injured or captured. The Wehrmacht also lost more than 20,000 vehicles and 1300 tanks. Thousands of hectares of land was gained by the allies.The Allied power's successes in France according to David French 'represented a major defeat for Nazi Germany.' After the disaster in Russia, the invincibility of Hitler's Wehrmacht was seriously questioned. D-day had reconfirmed his and ongoing German losses in men and war materials was now a vital issue. Most grievous of all, they lost their inspirational commander: Rommel was gravely wounded on July 17 when his staff car was strafed by British fighters. After D-day, as Mungo Melvin notes, 'Hitler's armies were numerically reduced, overextended, undersupplied and vulnerable.' Under such circumstances, John Buckley recalls that as a consequence of D-day 'Axis alliance and resistance was rapidly falling apart.' In the pacific war, Japanese forces had suffered major defeats and an allied invasion of Japan became a distinct possibility. In the European theatre, Hungary and Romania would soon surrender to the Russians. 'In the post D-day period, Hitler no longer had any viable allies.' D-day was made possible by vital victories in Russia, North Africa and the Air war and the fact that Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt were all concerned first and foremost with shaping the contours of the post-war world at this stage, undercut any vital contribution of D day, as allied victory was already assumed during its planning.German defeat at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk and Leningrad ensured they couldn't win WW2. Western Allied success in North Africa allowed both the Americans and Canadian assistance to build up massive forces in Britain in preparation for the Normandy campaign. The strategic bombing campaign also forced the Germans to concentrate on fighter production for the home defence which put them on the defensive on various battle fronts by late 1943. More significantly, by March of 1944 the Luftwaffe had been defeated guaranteeing overwhelming Allied air superiority over Normandy. Ken Ford highlights the importance of this at Normandy, as Allied air forces outnumbered the Luftwaffe 12,000 to 100, significantly facilitating victory. Such air superiority hindered Germany’s capacity and ensured the successful use of Ingenious devices such as Pluto and artificial harbours called mulberries as the capture of Cherbourg allowed the allies to build up their forces for the breakout. Samuel Newland encapsulates this , 'Normandy and eventual allied success was only made possible by the destruction of the Luftwaffe.'Moreover, as Dominique Fran?ois shed light on, 'Overload was designed not to satisfy a simple military purpose but to prepare the way for achieving a set of geographical goals.' Uppermost in Churchill's mind were the political benefits he foresaw from a successful thrust through France was to seize Germany before the Russians arrived. This subordination of the tactical impact of Normandy by Churchill himself, hamper the degree of its importance in the final outcome of the war. As Mark Grove supports, 'Allied success after Russia was always certain, D day however, ensured that post war Germany was not Russian occupied.' A noteworthy point that Historian Jane Penrose brings up is that the longer Germany occupied France, the 'crisis of confidence' seemed to grow as there was much conflict between allied Generals. A 1981 account by controversial historian David Irving dubbed the entire campaign in northwest Europe 'the war between Generals' and suggested that the allied brass were more interested in preserving their reputations than in defeating the Germans. The British 'indirect approach,' espoused by military theorist Basil Hart, was to unbalance the enemy by forcing him to attack and commit his reserves, then strike hard at his most vulnerable point. The enormous disparity between the two (British and American) diametrically opposed doctrines of war was too deep to ever be resolved, and Montgomery's post-war observation that 'when it came to the conduct of war,' he and Eisenhower were 'poles apart' could not have been more accurately stated. On a practical level, this resulted in misunderstandings, bad feelings, and controversy. The central proposition emphasised here by Dan Van Der Vat is that the successful implementation of operation Overload relieved these tensions and allowed further allied progress to be made, and had it not been for D day, German command may have been able to capitalise on the situation. However it is generally accepted that due to the colossal scale of resources at the hands of the allies, the high command had 'the luxury of tactical errors' (Olivier Wieviorka) and that any potential altering of the outcome of the war at this stage was highly unlikely. ................
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