Why Is Remembering D-Day Important to America’s Future?

Tomorrow is D-Day, so it is only fitting that my VIPs for this week are the Greatest Generation, those men and women who saved the world from Nazi Germany. They were the brave warriors who fought and died for freedom and opportunity. Seventy-nine years ago on June 6, 1944, the massive army of Allied forces invaded Normandy. Dakota Wood wrote the following about the occasion. 

In the five years that preceded it [D-Day], Europe had been thrown into convulsion as Adolf Hitler’s war machine raged across the Continent. In the days, weeks, and months that followed D-Day, victory was assured (though at unknown additional cost), accompanied by a future that did not include domination by the Nazi regime.

But that day itself, the beginning of Operation Overlord, first had to happen, and it had to be successful. If it had failed, then the future of Europe, and likely much of the world, would have been very dark for a very long time.

By mid-1944, a slew of countries had been conquered, occupied, or severely damaged by Germany: Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, San Marino, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia.

Great Britain had held out, with sheer determination and the aid of essential American military support, against the onslaught of German airpower. Even North Africa was embroiled, as German forces rampaged across Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

Germany kept a stranglehold on the Mediterranean and sank more than 3,000 merchant ships in the Atlantic, with the loss of 60,000 civilians and military personnel, before Allied navies managed to gain the upper hand.

D-Day, June 6, changed all of that. It was a singular event, to be sure, but just the tip of a much fuller story. The herculean effort of D-Day was the physical, visible manifestation of America’s human and industrial potential, harnessed for war in the years that preceded it.

The landings on Normandy’s beaches and the Allied push into occupied France involved more than 5,000 ships, nearly 200,000 troops, 4,500 bombers, and 3,800 fighters, the vast majority contributed by America. The military power assembled from across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain represented the forces of good determined to defeat the forces of evil and the commitment of the United States to this cause.

There are lessons to be learned from the war to defeat Nazi Germany. All war is evil, and World War II was no exception. The heroes and heroines of that war are mostly gone, but we should remember their lessons. Again, in the words of Wood:

Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Iran’s obsession with acquiring nuclear weapons and the destruction of Israel, and China’s relentless pursuit of hegemony hint at the sort of world envisioned by Hitler. D-Day showed what might be required to prevent such a future from taking root.

America helped to save the world from Nazism. Are we prepared to save the world again from Russia, Iran, and China – the next Axis of Evil? Is the woke military capable of such sacrifice and valor? Are Americans willing to put America first? The answers to these questions and many others will be known by the results of the 2024 Presidential Election.