V.

Significance of D-Day

Most historians regard D-Day as the turning point of World War II. There were certainly other pivotal moments: moments when great battles were won or important decisions made. But in sheer magnitude of accomplishments, nothing compared to D-Day. Churchill deemed it “the most difficult and most complicated operation ever to take place.” That was saying a lot. For it was a rare day during the war when something crucial did not transpire somewhere in the Pacific, Burma-India-China, the Middle East, North Africa, the Soviet Union, the North Atlantic, or Europe.

D-Day represented a turning point of a different sort. For the first time land conquered by the Nazis was taken back for democracy. It was only a narrow strip of sea-sprayed beach, but it was land, hard-fought for, and it was the beginning of the end for Hitler. “In the column I want to tell you what the opening of the second front entailed,” Stars and Stripes’ reporter Ernie Pyle wrote shortly after D-Day, “so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you.”