– If only Hilter woke up earlier on June 6, 1944.
This year is the 70th anniversary
of Normandy Landings, the beginning of the ending of World War
II. It was also the largest seaborne
invasion in history, an operation that eventually led to the liberation of the
French Republic from Hitler.
Seventy years ago, General Eisenhower alerted
the Allied armies with the green light to go for war. Members of the French
resistance received coded messages through BBC broadcast to cut railway lines
throughout the country and they were successful in nearly all the targets. The troops of American, British, and Canadian
all took their assignments in going after different sectors along the shore of Normandy.
The target 50-mile stretch of the Normandy
coast was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beach. The attack started with extensive aerial and
naval bombardment and an airborne assault.
The infantry and armored divisions began landing on the coast of France
starting at 06:30.
Strong winds blew the landing craft east of
their intended positions, particularly where American troop was heading at
Omaha. The landing craft had dropped
them off too far from the shore, the men landed under heavy fire from gun
emplacements on the cliffs overlooking the waterfront, and the shore was mined
and covered with obstacles such as wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed
wire, making the work of the beach clearing teams difficult and dangerous. Furthermore, the air and naval bombardment
did not soften up the defensive line at Omaha, an elite German infantry
division, was far stronger and better trained than Allies had expected.
Almost nothing went according to plan on June
6th for the Allies; in fact, they failed to achieve all of their goals on the
first day.
German casualties on D-Day were around 1,000
men; Allied casualties were at least 10,000.
Anyone who had seen the opening scene in
“Saving Private Ryan” (1998), a movie directed by Steven Spielberg, could
definitely understand how horrible and devastating the D-Day was. Still, Normandy Landings was indeed the
beginning of the ending of World War II.
Similar to the Allies, the Germans had also made
numerous fatal miscalculations. The most important was their conviction that
the invasion would be elsewhere, so they were caught by surprise at Normandy. Nevertheless, the deepest trouble lied in
Hitler’s distrust of his generals and their fear of acting without his
approval.
In fact, when Commander Gerd
von Rundstedt ordered two panzer divisions to Normandy on D-Day, he first
requested General Alfred Jodl’s approval. However, Jodl
told Rundstedt that Hitler was sleeping. No one had the nerve to wake Hitler for
approval and since he was a night owl mostly slept until noon, so the tanks
were not moved into position.
There were numerous other
examples how Hitler had denied the consultation from his high commanders. Here is another example of why dictatorship
doesn’t work.
Intelligence wise,
Germans are indeed a clever bunch. The
German Air Force had many innovative designs over the Allies if not for
Hitler’s interference. One week before
the beginning of WWII, in Aug, 1939, a German aircraft made the first jet-powered
flight in history. This was two years
before the British or American flights, but Hitler stalled production and
ordered only a few initial prototypes.
Germans also had the world’s
first operational fighter with turbojets, ME-262 (Messerschmitt Me 262 Swallow). It had a speed of 540 MPH and
faster than any allied aircraft by 200 MPH. However, it had a slow start due to the fact
that Hitler insisted on a bomber, not a fighter. Because of his objections,
they hung two 500 pound bombs under it and of course slowed the fighter jet down
from “Swallow” to “Sparrow”. When using
as fighters as originally intended, here is a statistic to show off the
superiority of ME-262, in March 1945 the German jet fighter wing shot down six
American bombers and two fighters, and lost only one 262.
Here is another tale.
Early in WWII, German scientists tried to get Hitler's permission to work on
the development of radar but Hitler refused. Why not? Because the research might take several
years, and Hitler required any scientific research produce usable applications
for the military within a year's time.
Indeed, the world should probably
all be thankful for Hitler’s stubbornness and monumental stupidity. And lucky for us (or unlucky?), almost all
dictators are egotistic and lacks logics and common sense , even those who have
risen to power through democratic legitimate means like Hitler.
*** As a footnote, below is
an old article written in April 2013.
Operation Horseley （馬桶作戰計劃）
Winston Churchill was
famous for plotting spy and secret operations in his days. In fact, he clearly enjoyed it.
As the World War II
approaching its final years, in the summer of 1944, Churchill was losing his
patience in bringing Germany down.
During the closing months
of World War II UK secret agents hatched a plan to kill Adolf Hitler.
According to top secret
British government papers revealed in 1998, the assassination plans were
approved by the then prime minister, Winston Churchill.
This was called Operation
Foxley.
So, what to do? Explosives, bullets or poison?
However, there was
substantial opposition within the Special Operations Executive, the agency
responsible for operations behind the enemy lines, and they felt that Hitler
was more valuable left in placer.
Even though the plan was
approved by Churchill already, at the end, his was advised against the
operation: "Killing Hitler would be a bad idea. We could make him a martyr
and force Nazi to fight back harder.
Besides, He was such a poor strategist and making numerous mistakes, so
why should we take out the person who was already ruining Germany for us?"
Indeed, learning from
history, we should all fully support Mr. Ma Ying-Jeou （馬英九）to run
again for party chairman of KMT (Kuomintang), the Chinese Nationalist Party.
Ma would do Taiwan a
great favor for staying in KMT.
As Hsu Sin-Lein（許信良）, an
ex-chairman of DPP once said "Let KMT disappear from the planet of
earth", Ma had been very diligent in making this happen in the past 5
years or so.
It will be recorded in the
history as the "Operation Horseley".
