Was D-Day Necessary?

We are approaching another anniversary of D-Day.  For most Americans D-Day, June 6, 1944, the allied invasion of Normandy, was the turning point of World War II in Europe.  For most Americans D-Day marks the beginning of the end of the Third Reich.  I in no way wish to minimize the sacrifice, the suffering, and the bravery of the Americans and other allied soldiers by participated in the D-Day invasion nor to dismiss or minimize the loss suffered by the spouses, the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers who lost loved ones in that invasion.  Yet as a student of history, and of Russian history in particular, in seems clear to me that D-Day was not the turning point of the war in Europe.  Consider these facts. 

In 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.  The Nazi armies pushed east.  They moved fast and they moved far.  They blockaded Leningrad and pushed to the outskirts of Moscow.  Father south they pushed even further east, driving toward the strategically crucial oil fields of Azerbaijan and other areas of southern and eastern Russia.  They came to Stalingrad, the city formerly called Tsaritsyn and now called Volgograd on the southern Volga river east of Ukraine.  There the Soviets dug in an determined to stop them.  The Battle of Stalingrad raged from August, 1942, to February, 1943, more than a year before D-Day.  Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in human history.  Casualties for both sides combined ran to something like two million men.  After Stalingrad the German advance in Russia was stopped and the German retreat began.  It ended when the Red Army entered Berlin in April, 1945.  Stalingrad is undeniably the true turning point of World War II in Europe.  It was fought by the Red Army of the Soviet Union, not by the western allies.

Then there is the great battle of Kursk.  In July and August, 1943, almost one year before D-Day, the Germans tried one last desperate offensive in the eastern front.  In a battle that has gone into history as the greatest tank battle ever, the Soviets stopped that last German offensive.  The Germans never mounted another one on the eastern front.  Their retreat was continuous from that time until they surrendered in May, 1945.

Americans by and large don’t know this history, but by June, 1944, the Germans were already on the run in the east.  By June, 1944, Germany’s fate had already largely been sealed by the Soviets on the eastern front.  It is always problematic to say what would have happened in history if something significant had not happened as it did, but it seems to me to be a reasonably safe conclusion that by June, 1944, the Germans were already defeated.  The Soviets would have marched to Berlin regardless of what the allies did in the west.  True, it may have taken them longer.  True, they may have sustained even more than the massive casualties that they in fact sustained.  Yet it seems to me undeniable that the Soviets would have defeated the Germans even without the allied invasion of France on D-Day.

So was D-Day necessary?  To defeat the Germans almost certainly no.  There is, however, another consideration for which D-Day was very much necessary.  It wasn’t the reason Americans were given for the invasion of France.  It wasn’t the reason most Americans understood for the invasion of France.  Yet it is surely the real reason why the Americans and their western allies had to invade France in 1944.  That reason is precisely that the Soviets would have defeated the Germans even without the allied invasion of France.  The reason the allies had to invade France in 1944 was, it seems to me, not to defeat the Germans.  It was to prevent the Soviets from dominating all of Europe after the war came to its inevitable end with the defeat of the Germans by the Soviets.

I don’t know if President Roosevelt, General Eisenhower, and the other American leaders of the time had this thought in their minds.  All Americans were committed to doing whatever it took to defeat the Nazis.  Everyone wanted to be a part of defeating the Nazis even without any consideration of what letting the Soviets do it alone would mean.  Yet, from the perspective of over sixty-five years later, with knowledge of the reality of the war on the eastern front, and with the experience of having lived in the Soviet Union thirty years after the end of the war, the inevitability of a Soviet victory even without the allied invasion of France seems obvious to me.  It seems that the inevitability of a Soviet victory even without the allied invasion of France must have occurred to someone in the American leadership.  Whether stopping the Russians was anyone’s reason for ordering the invasion of France or not, preventing the Russians from dominating all of Europe unchallenged after the war was the major long-term effect of the allied invasion of France. 

So  was D-Day necessary?  To defeat the Germans, no.  To keep the Soviets from dominating all of Europe rather than just the eastern half of it after the war, yes.  Was it worth it?  Is war ever worth it?  Were there nonviolent means of achieving the same end?  There always are, at least in theory, even if they often aren’t apparent to those of us so conditioned to resort to violence as the first resort.  Does any of this matter?  Does understanding history ever matter?  I am among other things a professionally trained historian, so of course my answer to that question is yes.  Understanding the true dynamics of history as opposed to the myths and legends of the popular understanding of history is the only way we can truly learn from history.