you guys surprise me…always about ‘without the US, Europe would be nazi’ and on D-day anniversary, not one little post???
Americans need non americans to remind them of their history so we can belittle those who remind us.
just surprised as in France, it’s a very big day, with lots of commemorative events, specially in Normandy etc…
Don’t worry Francois, you could always thanks the English troops that play a part in the landings, and years leading up to it.
Dont forget the Canadians!!!
I don’t…my grandfather was with them…as a half aussie, half belgian, living in Montreal at the time…
Totally slipped my mind. Probably because it’s an odd-year anniversary (61st) and since it’s an odd number…Well…LOOK! MICHAEL JACKSON!!!
Europe wouldn’t be Nazi w/o the invasion; it would be Red.
“It takes a brave man to not be a hero in the Soviet Army” - Stalin
ok, 61 is ok…but it’s prime also. and prime numbers are cool
Yes, I’d noticed it came and went and I didn’t hear any mention on NPR or in NY Times, my main sources of real information (present forum excepted, of course :-)). I did remember it, spent a silent minute as I usually do on these anniversaries.
Cheers
Barry
probably not France and western Europe…without the invasion, the Nazi wouldn’t have been weakened on the east side as soon as the russians would have gotten too close would have had the resources to counter.
well, we got to admit that all this is hypothetical anyway…none of us knows what would have happened…maybe the Nazi would have declared only 2 weeks of holidays a year and 50hrs of work per week. Then the French would have thought, being invaded, ok…germans make nice cars, chicks are cute, but shit…shortening holidays and so much work, screw 'em…REVOLUTION! get rid of the f…kers! 
That may be true, but the Germans were also running out of gas (literally).
because they were stretched out on 2 fronts
.
My daughter and I were talking about it… she is on her way to Russia and then France later this summer. One of her stops will be Normandy. She has one uncle that served in the European Theater in WW2 and he was a navigator on a B-24.
Three of her great grandfathers served in WW1, one as a Marine, one medic, and one sniper. So we looked up some of the WW1 memorials, too. Everybody else one both sides of the family served in the Pacific.
Jay
True, Hitler did consider the Anglophone allies to be a threat…And it didn’t help that he was snookered into keeping a whole (a couple?) panzer divisions in perpetual reserve because he thought the REAL invasion would be at the pas de Calais. And Stalin had been agitating (agitatedly) for a second front for some time. The Dieppe raid failed miserably (as any Canadian on this board will tell you), but the Anglophones already had a foothold in the Italian peninsula, however they were stymied because of the mountainous terrain and tenacious german defense.
Like you said, an interesting “what-if?”, but I still think the Red Army would have overrun the entirety of Europe, given time. A million more dead Reds? Just a statistic to Stalin.
Now that I’ve thought about it though, I wonder what European city would have been nuked first if the Normandy invasion failed.
Many say and it is quite cridible to believe that the atomic bomb was created for Europe all along. It was known that Germany was very close and even ahead of the USA in developing atomic weapons.
The Ardennes Offensive put forth by the Germans severely depleted their manpower and resources to the extent that the bomb was no longer needed.
Replace “known” with “thought” and I’ll agree with you 100%. Relativity and Quantum physics were too “jewish” for Himmler. Besides, you need a lot of (electrical) juice and other resources to build a nuke. There was no German equivalent of the TVA or Oak Ridge.
Rocketry, though…
To some extent I agree with you. “Thought” is probably a better word to use. It’s still argued as to how close Hitler was to a bomb. They were into heavy water plants until we destroyed them and at the beginning of WWII the foundations of fission were discovered by a German…
And of course…their rocket program was well funded and staffed.
To answer the question though…Berlin would probably have been the target…