D Day June 1944 Done Earlier— An “Ounce of Prevention” Which Could Have Been “Worth A Pound of Cure”
By A D Hemming
07 June, 2014
Countercurrents.org
It all seemed to be going so well for the anti Nazi coalition plan on that day in June 1944 in England and in the English Channel to stage the invasion of the northwestern part of the European continent to liberate it from the clutches of the Third Reich and take pressure off the Russian bear. What could have made it even better?
What about this same second front opening up at the very first part of January 1943 if not in 1942? This is what the Britiish military chiefs approved in April 1942 with the backing of no less than Dwight D Eisenhower and George Marshall as this reveals.
How many millions of lives could the Anglo US Russian alliance have saved? That's a crucial point.
Why didn't the Second Front go forward in if not 1942 at least as early as the very start of 1943? In two words— Winston Churchill! This was due to his dogmatic obsession with the Russian bear and Bolshevism as he had often referred to it. This here reveals the fact that Winnie never intended to back the Second Front to relieve pressure on the Russian bear. As Max Hastings, the British “journalist” here reporting on this genuflects so much over Winnie's dead body with even the silly reference of the British couldn't have won the war without him which they didn't anyway says volumes about his own Anglocentric, ethnocentric bias to the extreme and how anything but fair to either Uncle Sam or the Russian bear he was as to make what he said carry even more weight when showing something so damning about Churchill, the untreated bi polar loony so boozed up that were he not nobility he would have been in a straight jacket or asylum instead of Number 10 as he was.
As David Carleton, a solidly independent and esteemed British historian has made the case Winnie from the time of the US official entry into the war against the Third Reich saw the major threat as the Russian bear and how to best rein in that nation. This shows why all ended up as it did with millions more lives lost in those concentration camps and elsewhere among non combatants and millions more lost on the battlefields, over those battlefields, and at sea as combatants in that war.
As both the British top military officers had approved the second front already cited for either 1943 or even 1942 on an emergency basis with the support of both Marshall and Eisenhower, it's clear it was a militarily viable option then with another question arising. What else would have made it easier to launch a second front at this time instead of later? The Nazi war machine's lack of its heavier Tiger and Panther tanks whose armor the anti Nazi coalition forces tanks and anti tank guns couldn't pierce frontally as shown here in reference to the decisive Battle of Kursk on the Eastern Front in Europe same problem there for the Russian military nor did the Nazi war machine have the near as a large a force of troops defending the beaches along the English Channel as well as other defenses of various types with all the fortifications which the later assault gave so much longer to prepare.
How many lives could a second front started at the very earliest in January 1943 have saved would be an estimate as are all figures for the whole war. But by using applying a certain amount of common sense it should be possible to conclude even with some force that the war and specifically the war in Europe would like have ended the same amount of time or less given the substantially lower level of defenses from number of troops, to tanks, to artillery pieces, ammunition of various kinds as well less quality equipment especially tanks which would have left VE Day or end of the war in Europe occurring in December 1943 this writer estimates with all those lives lost in the concentration camps during that period saved. Likely more than a few million! This would be for combat and non combat deaths. Not a bad bargain!
The fact that the Russian army using such a schedule would still be fighting on its own soil is also significant as any whining about a threat from the Russian bear would have had virtually no power. Any army will defend the country it serves. Odds are even good if the Russian army was deep enough on Russian soil Western forces would have come to their relief and seen first hand the more insane path the war took in that country as Noam Chomsky makes clear by his reference to the Eastern front in one blunt statement here.
The Cold War would have died a still birth. Churchill had he wanted to make an “Iron Curtain” speech the year following the war's end would have looked like a fool or worse with VJ Day and end to the war in the Asia/Pacific theater coming no later than March 1944 and no use of nuclear weapons as none existed at the time. Another good bargain! The double cross Winnie pulled on the USA's OSS and Franklin D Roosevelt in December with the British army smashing the resistance which the OSS and FDR had backed earlier but toward the end of 1944 could never have happened as the Ardennes offensive of December 1944 would never have happened with the air power of the anti Nazi coalition grounded by the worst winter in ages in Europe. Another benefit of this early second front.
AD Hemming has been an activist for progressive causes since the early 1960s, has been a researcher, poet, journalist, historian and got his feet wet as a progressive in the civil rights movement in US South as a teenager and who identifies as black and provides a perspective of a person of color from the US South.
A D Hemmoing* is a pseudonym used by this writer on a regular basis.
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