by Dick Cheney
We’ve got to go to Europe and fight . . . if we’re to keep Russia in, save the Middle East and Burma; we’ve got to begin slugging with air at West Europe; to be followed by a land attack as soon as possible.
On June 8, 1942, Marshall sent Eisenhower to Europe to command all American forces in the European Theater.
The great debate between the Allies in 1942 and 1943 concerned the timing of a cross-channel invasion of Europe. All knew it had to be done. American planners wanted it done soon. Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, whose nonaggression pact with Hitler had proven to be worth as much to him as the Munich agreement had been to the Czechs and the British, was now fighting for his nation’s survival. It was crucial to the Allied cause that Stalin’s forces continue to engage the Germans. It was crucial to Stalin that the Allies open a second front soon.
The British did not believe the Allies were ready for an invasion of Europe and instead urged that we fight Hitler’s forces in North Africa. The American military planners saw North Africa as a diversion and wanted to move more quickly to confront Hitler in Europe. President Roosevelt sided with the British. He realized he could not overcome their reluctance, and he recognized the North Africa operation offered the best option for engaging Hitler’s forces in the near term. On November 8, 1942, Operation Torch was launched when U.S. and British forces landed in Morocco and Algeria. By May 1943, after defeating the Axis forces in Tunisia, the Allies had prevailed.
As historian Rick Atkinson has noted, it was more than territory that we gained in our first campaign against the Wehrmacht:
Four U.S. divisions now had combat experience. . . . Troops had learned the importance of terrain, of combined arms, of aggressive patrolling, of stealth, of massed armor. They now knew what it was like to be bombed, shelled, and machine-gunned, and to fight on.
The North Africa campaign had changed Eisenhower, as well. To the skills that made him a supremely valuable staff officer, he had now added the experience of command.
The period 1942–43 also brought victories for the Allies in the Pacific. The most important of these occurred in June 1942 at the Battle of Midway. The Japanese sent a massive fleet, including four aircraft carriers, to attack the American base on Midway. The Americans, having broken the Japanese codes, knew of the planned attack and prepared to prevent it. Admiral Chester Nimitz deployed three American carriers—Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown—to defend the island. In a surprise attack, planes flying from these ships were able to destroy three of Japan’s four carriers. A fourth Japanese carrier, Hiryu, was also destroyed but not before planes launched off its deck severely damaged the Yorktown, which was sunk the next day. The battle was a decisive victory for the Americans and inflicted severe losses on the Japanese. It changed the course of the war in the Pacific and set us on the path to defeat Japan.
IN THE SPRING OF 1944, Eisenhower had moved his headquarters from London to Portsmouth, on the southern coast of England, to be close to the main embarkation point for the Allied invasion of Europe. He had set D-Day for June 5, and had been meeting twice daily with his weather experts and his chief commanders. When the team gathered at 0400 on June 4 the weather report called for high winds, rough seas, and thick cloud cover. Eisenhower postponed the attack. Ships that had been loaded and launched had to return to port and make themselves ready to launch again in twenty-four hours.
The next day, Eisenhower’s meteorologists told the assembled team that there appeared to be a small window of good weather beginning on June 6. Storms were likely to follow, raising Eisenhower’s concern, as he later wrote, that the Allies might land “the first several waves successfully and then find later build-up impracticable, and so have to leave the isolated original attacking forces easy prey to German counteraction. However, the consequences of the delay justified great risk.” Among the consequences Eisenhower was particularly concerned about were the safety and morale of the troops already aboard ships, “poised and ready.” He gave the order to go.
Successful amphibious landings in North Africa, Sicily, and Salerno had given the Allies valuable experience, but those coastlines had been unfortified. The endeavor to land on the continent, breach Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, and establish a foothold through which to supply the invading forces was unlike anything that had ever been done. In the days after the invasion, Time reported that “the plan had grown to a complexity of detail incomprehensible to the civilian mind.” The Navy’s invasion plans were 800 pages long and a full set of naval orders weighed 300 pounds. Yet the Allies’ objective was clear, as were Eisenhower’s orders from the combined chiefs of staff: “You will enter the continent of Europe, and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.”
If the Allies had been thrown back to the sea, the consequences would have been devastating. Millions of additional lives would have been lost, and there would have been a struggle for domination in Europe between Hitler and Stalin. In an interview in 1994, historian Stephen Ambrose explained the significance of D-Day:
You can’t exaggerate it. You can’t overstate it. This was the pivot point of the twentieth century. It was the day on which the decision was made as to who was going to rule in this world in the second half of the twentieth century. Is it going to be Nazism, is it going to be communism, or are the democracies going to prevail?
The essence of what the Allies accomplished on D-Day is captured in two photos. The first was taken from inside a Higgins boat as American GIs disembarked, laden with their backpacks and weapons, heading through the surf toward Omaha Beach. The silhouette of each soldier reminds us that it was individual men whose heroism that day saved civilization.
The second photo was taken from the heights above Omaha Beach at the end of the day on June 6, 1944. Thousands of Allied men, ships, trucks, and tanks fill the image, stretching to the horizon. The results of the massive American mobilization and production effort of the previous four years can be seen pouring onto the continent of Europe. In an oral history, John Reville, who was a lieutenant with F Company, 5th Ranger Battalion, recalled being on top of the bluff with his runner, Private Rex Low, at the end of that day of days. “Rex,” Reville said, pointing out at the thousands of ships filling the English Channel, “take a look at this. You’ll never see a sight like this again in your life.”
June 6, 1944, was a day when America’s greatness was on full display, from the unparalleled heroism of the soldiers who stormed the beaches; to the ingenuity of men like Henry Higgins, who invented the landing craft that made the invasion possible; to the courage and fortitude of the Rangers who took the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc; to the business leaders like Bill Knudsen and Henry Kaiser who had driven American industry to turn out the thousands of ships and planes necessary to win the war; to the commanders like Marshall, Eisenhower, and Omar Bradley who built the force and planned and commanded the invasion. The world had never seen anything like it.
And on that day, the eyes of all the world were on the coast of France. First news of the invasion broke overnight while most Americans slept. By 4:00 A.M. “every church was lighted and in every church people prayed,” Time reported. As the nation awoke to the news, the mood across the land was solemn:
There was no sudden fear, as on that September morning in 1939 when the Germans marched into Poland; no sudden hate, as on Pearl Harbor day. This time, moved by a common impulse, the casual churchgoers, as well as the devout went to pray.
At 10:30 A.M., families knelt together by their radios as President Roosevelt led the nation in prayer:
Almighty, God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
American GIs fighting on other fronts were gripped by the news, for they knew the way h
ome led over the beaches of France. And in Amsterdam, one young fifteen-year-old girl tracked the movement of the Allied forces, hour by hour, through BBC broadcasts over her wireless. In her diary, she wrote:
My dearest Kitty, “This is D Day,” the BBC announced at twelve. The invasion has begun! This morning at eight the British reported heavy bombing of Calais, Boulogne, Le Havre, Cherbourg, as well as Pas de Calais. . . . According to German news, British paratroopers have landed on the coast of France. . . . BBC broadcast in German, Dutch, French and other languages at ten: The invasion has begun!
Anne Frank and her family dared to hope the news meant the liberation was at hand. “A huge commotion in the Annex!” she wrote. “Will this year, 1944, bring us victory?” No one could know, but the prospect gave them courage. “Where there is hope, there is life,” Anne wrote.
Anne Frank and her family were arrested in their annex on August 4, 1944, before the liberation came. Anne and her sister, Margot, were taken to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died in the early spring of 1945. The British liberated the camp on April 12.
LIEUTENANT FRANCES SLANGER AND three other U.S. Army nurses waded ashore on D-Day plus four. Over the next five weeks they cared for more than three thousand wounded and dying soldiers. In her tent one night, as she thought about all she had seen, Frances wrote a letter to Stars and Stripes honoring the American GI:
To every GI wearing an American uniform—for you we have the greatest admiration and respect. . . . We have learned a great deal about our American soldier and the stuff he is made of. The wounded do not cry. Their buddies come first. They show such patience and determination. The courage and fortitude they show is awesome to behold.
Frances did not live to see her letter published. She was killed the next night when a German shell ripped through her tent.
Born in Lodz, Poland, in 1913, Frances, together with her mother and sister, secured passage on a ship bound for America in 1920. They were Jews hoping to escape persecution and build a better life. As a young girl, Frances sold fruit on the streets of Boston with her father and dreamed of becoming a nurse. In 1937 she graduated from Boston City Hospital’s School of Nursing.
Frances kept a scrapbook, as did many young girls in those days. In one of hers, she copied this:
There was a dream that men could one day speak their thoughts. There was a hope that men could stroll through the streets unafraid. There was a prayer that each could speak to his own God. That dream, that hope, that prayer became America.
FORTY YEARS AFTER D-DAY, President Reagan stood at Pointe du Hoc where American Rangers had secured the cliffs. Looking out at an audience filled with veterans of the landing, he said:
Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are the men who in your “lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.”
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or the next. It was the deep knowledge—and pray God we have not lost it—that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
In the Normandy American Cemetery, above Omaha Beach, 9,387 Americans are buried, young men who gave all. The inscription in the central colonnade at the cemetery is a tribute to them and to all the Americans killed fighting to liberate Europe and preserve our freedom: “This embattled shore, portal of freedom, is forever hallowed by the ideals, the valor and the sacrifices of our fellow countrymen.”
VICE PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN was presiding over the United States Senate at 4:45 P.M. on April 12, 1945, when Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage in his cottage at Warm Springs, Georgia. Unaware of Roosevelt’s death, Truman recessed the Senate at five o’clock and headed through the Capitol to a meeting with Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn in his hideaway office, the “Board of Education.” When Truman arrived, Rayburn told him he had a message to call the president’s press secretary. Steve Early asked the vice president to come immediately to the White House. Two hours later, Truman was in the Cabinet Room being sworn in as president of the United States.
He’d been vice president for eighty-nine days, and in that time he’d met with President Roosevelt three times, once when they were being inaugurated on January 20 and twice in the Oval Office with members of the congressional leadership. Truman had no office in the West Wing and rarely used the vice president’s ceremonial office in the Capitol building, preferring instead to continue working out of his Senate office in Room 240 of the Senate Office Building. Of his time as vice president, Truman said, “I enjoyed my new position as Vice-President, but it took me a while to get used to the fact that I no longer had the voting privileges I had enjoyed for ten years as a senator.” Indeed, Truman had lost virtually all his power—he could no longer vote in the Senate, and he had no role in Roosevelt’s White House.
The nation was in the midst of the largest war in history. America had, in Truman’s words, “created military forces so enormous as to defy description.” Yet there was no question but that we would have a peaceful passing of the control of this mighty force from one civilian to another. In fact, Truman noted, “When the nation’s greatest leader in that war lay dead and a simple ceremony was about to acknowledge the presence of his successor in the nation’s greatest office, only two uniforms were present. . . . This passed unnoticed at the time, and the very fact that no thought was given to it demonstrates convincingly how firmly the concept of the supremacy of the civil authority is accepted in our land.”
Forty-six hundred miles east, the American generals commanding the Allied forces in Europe despaired. Earlier that day, Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley had come face-to-face with evil when they visited the Nazi concentration camp Ohrdruf-Nord, the first camp to be liberated by the Americans. Eisenhower wrote to General Marshall upon his return from the camp:
The things I saw beggar description. . . . The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were overpowering. . . . I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.
Now the three generals learned their commander in chief was dead. The man replacing him, a virtual unknown, would have responsibility for waging a global war on two fronts, a more massive military effort than any before in history. His generals did not know whether he would be up to the task.
Twelve days after Roosevelt’s death, the new president learned of a project under way in the New Mexico desert that would ultimately bring an end to the war: the Manhattan Project, an effort to develop an atomic weapon. On Tuesday, April 24, Truman received a note from Secretary of War Henry Stimson: “I think it is very important that I should have a talk with you as soon as possible on a highly secret matter.” The subject was of such import, Stimson wrote, “that I think you ought to know about it without further delay.” At the bottom of the note, Truman wrote, “Put on list tomorrow, Wed. 25. HST.”
Secretary Stimson and General Leslie R. Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project, briefed Truman at the White House at noon on April 25, 1945. Stimson had prepared a memorandum for the president that began, “Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.” Stimson wanted to ensure that Truman was fully briefed on every aspect of
the program, its current status, possible implications of the use of the weapon, and safeguards for its oversight in the future. Truman agreed to his request that a committee be established to provide recommendations on these and other issues relating to an atomic bomb.
On June 1, 1945, the committee, after meeting with members of its scientific advisory panel, including Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, issued three recommendations:
1. The bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible.
2. It should be used on a dual target—that is, a military installation or war plant surrounded by or adjacent to houses and other buildings most susceptible to damage, and
3. It should be used without prior warning [of the nature of the weapon].
In the years since America dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a number of arguments have been made concerning alternative courses of action. Some have said, for example, that the United States should have alerted the Japanese that we had a devastating new weapon and then conducted a test for them to see. What if we had announced a test and then it had failed? The damage to Allied morale and the consequent improvement in Japanese morale would likely have extended the war. What if we had alerted the Japanese to the location of the test and they had moved American POWs there? The Japanese had not surrendered following the massive firebombing of their cities with death tolls in the tens of thousands. Nor did they surrender after an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The argument that a test firing would have convinced them to surrender ignores historical fact.
Others have argued that the loss of life caused by the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was simply too great, and, therefore, the United States was wrong to deploy this devastating new weapon. This line of thinking ignores the reality of the much greater loss of life that would have occurred had the United States not used the bombs and instead been forced to invade the Japanese home islands.
