"The Full Story of D-Day is More Complex Than the Myth" Topic

"June 6 marks the 75th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, in German-occupied France during World War II. "D-Day" means different things in different places. In America, the operations of June 6, 1944 under the leadership of U.S. Army Gen. Dwight Eisenhower are remembered as a monumental invasion, the beginning of an unprecedented marshalling of men and material for a decisive strike on Normandy's coast.

To the French, who were taken by surprise that day, it suggested liberation from the Nazis, but also opened up old wounds and new uncertainties. Jennifer Sessions, an associate professor in the University of Virginia's Corcoran Department of History, specializes in European and French history and is author of the book "By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria." She describes the Battle of Normandy as a time when farms, villages and shops became the battleground, all with the underlying fear that the Germans could turn the tide and resume their occupation…"
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Amicalement
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Sessions: When the French step back and think about the bigger picture, it becomes ambiguous very quickly, because their liberators also brought destruction.

There have been a number of absurd statements lately but this one has to be in the running for number one. The allies are trying to defeat the Germans, it is war. How else would they be liberated? Send police in to arrest the Germans peacefully? Of course their social fabric would be changed, they had been occupied for 4 years! Ambiguous? Things would have been better off if the Germans remained in control?

My complaint would rather be that this is a statement that lacks any novelty. Even during the bombardment of the railway system before D Day and the flattening of Caen and St Lo after it, the Allies did worry about the deaths and possible hostility of the French civilians.

Civilians cannot easily understand how inaccurate contemporary bombing was, it must be hard to say C'est la Guerre and it is worth it pour la France, if you just lost your family to carpet bombing. It must have seemed senseless to them at the time. (Imagine how they still feel about Mers El Kebir etc however much we feel made essential by their intransigence) Fortunately the rest of Metropolitan France then got off relatively lightly (well at Allied hand's anyway)

Not to mention that the statement itself is backwards.
There was, sadly, destruction and tragedy certainly. But when the French "step back and think about the bigger picture", it becomes about liberation and freedom from Nazi domination.

What exactly is ‘The Myth'?

From an operational planning standpoint the D-Day Invasion was massive, complex, etc. Hindsight is 20/20 …

No, come on folks.

I accept this a forum for you who throw dice, to try reproduce what happened when one lot of human beings, who happened to be soldiers, tried to slaughter the chaps on the other side of the hill. In military custom….

The point here is to try and empathise with the civilians of Normandy and the catastrophic destruction inflicted on them. It was inevitable, probably 100%, as they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The rest of France got off "Lightly", well until the late Autumn (late Fall, to US readers).

"My family died in the bombing of St Lo or Caen. I am the only survivor, after I bury my wife and two children, whatever I can find of them". This is the reality of 28mm figs when we argue about which mark of Sherman, which suspension, which hull we should be showing.

Trust me, I want to get every tiny detail of Napoleonic Uniform right. I want to know about every variant of LCTs, or Free French 2e DB, or Flying Tigers, or every single detail of USS Arizona on the evening of December 6th 1941…….I make models.

All these folk are saying is that theirs is a human suffering story. All I am saying is that their argument is absolutely 75 years out of date…not wrong….just totally lacking in any novelty

@deadhead: well said!

Civilian deaths far outstripped military deaths in WW2. While it is natural for people trying to game the 'military killing' part, it is natural for us to focus on the military aspects, but civilians from France through to the Soviet Union and China (and indeed, Germany, Italy and Japan) were faced with the prospect of sudden, violent death.

If we can empathize with 'British pluck' during the Battle of Britain, we can empathize with others who may have seen things differently too.

Or at least, I hope we can.

Yes with all the bombing, FA fire, etc. many non-combatants died, sadly during WWII.

I found this the other day online. Thought it was interesting and looks generally accurate…

Interesting WWII Stats …

World War II Statistics[quotes.html]
[quotes.html]

By the Numbers

America's Fight versus the Overall World Fight

Estimated number of people serving in World War II worldwide: 1.9 billion

Estimated number of deaths sustained worldwide during World War II: 72 million

Number of Americans who served in World War II: 16.1 million

Average amount of time each U.S. military serviceman served overseas during World War II: 16 months

Estimated number of U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines killed in battle during World War II: 292,000

Who perished outside of battle during World War II: 114,000

Wounded during World War II: 672,000

Deaths, in total, sustained by U.S. forces during World War II: 405,000
Deaths as a percent of the total United States population: 0.4%

Estimated Number of Deaths Sustained by Military Forces During World War II

Polish: 123,000

French: 213,000

British: 373,000

Chinese: 1.3 million

Japanese: 1.3 million

German: 3.5 million

Russian: 11 million

Estimated Number of Civilians Killed During World War II

British: 93,000

French: 350,000

Japanese: 672,000

German: 780,000

Polish: 5.7 million

Russian: 7 million

The Holocaust
Estimated total number of European Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust: 6 million

German Jews killed in the Holocaust: 125,000

Polish Jews killed in the Holocaust: 3 million [//go.saambaa.com]

Not as complete as I'd like but it is a good "snapshot". Regardless a lot of death all the way around … sadly …