Remembering D-Day: 80 Years Later

“The best way to honor the memory of D-Day is to recall the eternal lesson that to preserve the peace you must prepare for war.”

Seth Leibsohn: Eighty years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered the largest mass prayer in history up to that point. A radio broadcast for our boys in Europe, about to embark on what General Dwight Eisenhower described as “the greatest amphibious assault ever attempted.” D-Day. In that prayer, FDR described our fight as a “crusade” and asked his fellow Americans to pray to God for His will to “prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy.” In some units, 90 percent of the troops were killed or wounded. But the assault managed to cross the beach and drive the Germans inland. We had established our toehold in northern Europe and the war would soon be over. God bless those boys, those men, and this country (Townhall Review).

U.S. Army: Eighty years ago, the United States’ Greatest Generation faced battle in a conflict that would turn the fate of World War II. Across the globe, units are honoring and remembering the efforts of the armed forces through various commemoration events (U.S. Army).

D-Day in Modern Memory

The sacrifices of that fateful day are what is required when deterrence fails.

By The Editorial Board, June 5, 2024:

But this year’s anniversary is meaningful for more than its famous history, or the sight of the last living veterans of that day. It will mean much more if Americans and the citizens of other free nations take that day’s lessons to heart amid the growing threats from dictators and rogues around the world.

The great sacrifices of D-Day, and those of World War II, are what is required when deterrence fails. Wars are not merely tragic; they represent the refusal of free societies to maintain an adequate national defense. England slept in the 1930s, as Churchill famously put it, but so did the United States.

Isolationists dominated Congress, especially the Republican Party that ignored the rise of Hitler and Tojo by passing the Neutrality Acts. The price was paid at Pearl Harbor, and then at Guadalcanal, Anzio, Okinawa, and most famously in the sands of Omaha Beach.

Will we make the same mistake again? There is reason to think so. The West, as we used to call it when that concept was invoked with pride, has spent the last three decades disarming. Europe especially has been living in the comfort of its welfare states as their militaries eroded. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has awakened some on the Continent, but not enough and not in Germany in particular.

Yet the U.S. has hardly been immune from complacent illusions about a peaceable “international community.” The Obama and Biden Administrations recklessly expanded social and welfare spending while shrinking the military. Mr. Biden has proposed four years in a row of declining defense budgets after inflation. The emergent isolationist wing of the GOP has blocked a necessary debate over defense by putting all of its deterrent hopes in the braggadocio of Donald Trump.

The best way to honor the memory of D-Day is to recall the eternal lesson that to preserve the peace you must prepare for war.

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