Thoughts on viewing—and hearing—D-Day newsreels
Online you can easily find many clips from documentaries and newsreels about D-Day. If you do (as I did today), you may almost immediately notice—as I did—the narration. The voices used back then had an utterly different tone from anything you hear today, except in parody: the voice of authority, pride, patriotism, trust, and belief in heroism.
It wasn’t always the same person reading the script. But it was always the same sound and the same sensibility. More even than the images themselves, that voice tells us what has changed:
Neo:” But it was always the same sound and the same sensibility. More even than the images themselves, that voice tells us what has changed:”
It also tells us how essential President Trump is. This was also his voice today during his speech. Without him I cannot imagine any current Democrat quoting President Franklin Roosevelt’s prayer from his radio address on June 6, 1944:
“Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day, have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion and our civilization and to set free a suffering humanity,”
Just to be clear, the quote of the Roosevelt prayer was not in today’s speech but in the President’s remarks with Queen Elizabeth at the end of his visit to the UK. Scott Johnson at Powerlineblog has the transcript of his powerful speech at the D-Day commemoration in France.
I was visiting my kid sis in college town over the weekend.
The new family next door dropped by and he’s a psych professor. Somehow we got on the topic of evolutionary psychology and neotony. I mentioned how infantilized many people seemed nowadays, not only in behavior, but in what is considered sexually attractive in younger females. (Then there is Pajama Boy and his flabby soy drinking scant bearded kind as well.)
He agreed; mooted a partial explanation rooted in evolutionary psychology, and suggested that to some extent it might also be socially reinforced fashion.
Sounds about right. When every subject predicate statement comes off sounding like a tremulous question asked by a serf afraid of being backhanded, you know society is in trouble.
The newsreel rather minimized the Allied losses that day. But that was understood, and forgivable in the dire circumstances of the day. Would news media be allowed, or more to the point willing, to do that today? Almost certainly not. Would it be wrong to do so? Most would say yes. I’d add that the narrator was right that as great as our casualties were that day, they were less than expected by the Allied Command.
I was struck that in the comments to the excellent Ernie Pyle article the NY Times ran today there were several saying, well, it was really the Soviets who beat the Germans and D-Day was a sideshow to the real action.
I don’t remember noticing this before. While it’s true the Soviets sustained the heaviest losses by far and their contribution tends to be under-reported, still on the anniversary of D-Day, it’s an odd, ungrateful thing to harp on.
It strikes me as part of the “US was never great” meme, which the left has put on steroids since Trump and MAGA.
I just watched Trump’s speech on youtube (will it stay there??) . A fantastic, moving speech. The Greatest Generation is slipping away. I hope we can keep what Trump has started going: a love of country and the spirit that those D-Day vets brought.
Prior generations had an intuitive grasp of the truism that, the greater the evil, the greater the sacrifice that good must make to defeat it.
Today’s snowflakes? Busily creating the chains of their future enslavement…
Nor do they deserve anything less for they demonize all attempts at preserving individual liberty. The other side of the coin of liberty is acceptance of personal responsibility but identity politics foundation of victimology is mortally threatened by the reality of personal responsibility.
“It is ordained in the eternal Constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions* forge their fetters.” Edmund Burke
* SJWs and their enabling liberal “useful idiots” most fervent ‘passion’ is, at base the rejection of all personal responsibility. It is the rebellious child’s most fervent wish. As upon it hinges everything dear to the Left.
“…really the Soviets….”
That has been a carefully nurtured Soviet line since the end of WWII and throughout the Cold War, and it seems to have been deeply absorbed into the Russian (and Leftist) “narrative” and taken up by the “keepers of the flame” with ever greater fervor and gusto (and disdain).
The same (lovely) people who forget (or ignore, or dismiss) Molotov-Ribbentrop.
The same (lovely) people who forget (or ignore, or dismiss) land-lease to the USSR and the allied sailors who lost their lives transporting materiel to Arkhangelsk and Murmansk.
Merely one more reason why the commandment “Remember! Do not forget” is so vital….
Tonight I’m watching “The Longest Day.” I first saw it in the theater when I was in sixth-grade. I was staggered by the epic scale, the violence and historical import. It seemed the other kids were too. I remember conversations on the schoolyard about the film. The conversations weren’t sophisticated, but I believe we got it.
TLD had the tone neo speaks of: “the voice of authority, pride, patriotism, trust, and belief in heroism.” I miss that scale and that voice.
The recent WW II film, “Dunkirk,” had the scale but not the voice nor any context. As I recall the director stated he emphatically did not want to make a dramatic historical movie. In fact his real inspiration was the movie “Alien,” where bad things inexplicably leap out and attack the ordinary, non-heroic characters.
That’s such a loss. I admit I liked a lot of the anti-hero films which came out of the 50s, 60s and 70s and still do. But geez, if one can’t find D-Day or Dunkirk inspiring, where are we?
huxley:
The Dunkirk din.
“… there were several saying, well, it was really the Soviets who beat the Germans and D-Day was a sideshow to the real action.”
“It strikes me as part of the “US was never great” meme, which the left has put on steroids since Trump and MAGA.” — huxley
I’ve heard something like that before, but not in the context of D-day. And it pisses me off. Three things come to mind.
1) The Nazi Einsatzgruppen (sp?) were very active in the invasion eastward past Poland. When people in the Baltics and Ukraine first saw the Nazis win their territory they cheered them. Shortly thereafter, they learned that the Einsatzgruppen actually studied the Bolshevik atrocities so that they could learn from them and duplicate them.
2) Most everyone should know that FDR pumped vast U.S. resources into the Soviet Union through their east, prior to the Soviet defeat of the Nazis in Russia.
3) What many may not know is that Herbert Hoover and his private U.S. funded sources saved millions in the Soviet Union from starvation in the 20’s.
From Wikipedia:
I had read elsewhere that the Bolsheviks had stupidly confiscated all of the grain from many Kulaks such that there was nothing left to plant for next year’s crops. America and Hoover to the rescue!
Then of course there was the Soviet behavior in conquered East Germany in contrast to the U.S. behavior. Oooo! Those Soviets were so wonderful.
My father in-law fled Europe ahead of the Nazi invasion and he was one of those on Omaha beach. I think I mentioned it before, but he also subsequently was busted down in rank because of his aggressive interrogation of a Nazi soldier that definitely had critical information.
My father was set to be trained on artillery when an officer quizzed him on his background. With two years of college level management education and a bit of practice, he ended up managing the U.S. railway personnel in Antwerp. See kids, a college education could save your life.
What I didn’t know until a couple years before he died, was that about 33% of his railway personnel were relieved from duty because of “shell shock” or whatever they were calling it. It was the constant and random threat of death from the sky from the V-1 and V-2 buzz bombs and rocket bombs.
He said that the V-2 rockets were relatively ineffective because the ground blast was mostly funneled upward by the dirt itself. But … There was one very large and very popular movie theater, perhaps a converted stage theater with several balconies. One night the theater was largely full and a V-2 came straight down the middle of the theater killing nearly everyone, including many U.S. Army people.
“… there were several saying, well, it was really the Soviets who beat the Germans and D-Day was a sideshow to the real action.”
“The same (lovely) people who forget (or ignore, or dismiss) land-lease to the USSR and the allied sailors who lost their lives transporting materiel to Arkhangelsk and Murmansk.”
unfortunately both are true. Half the forces the invaders faced were foreign volunteers , invalids wounded on the Easter Front and old men. Truthfully our efforts saved Western Europe from the Soviets.
And if we want to credit lend-lease for enabling the Soviet Victory , then we have to credit the soviets for pushing us back from the Yalu river , and losing in Nam. Moreover we then get the blame for Stalin taking over Eastern Europe. a smart move would have been to curtail lend-lease after Normandy.
Now its true that the Soviets were the true victors -BUT- had FDR and Ike ignored DeGaulle and not wasted precious time with his “liberating” French cities and wasted resources on Monty’s “Market Garden” and fully supplied Patton, the 3rd army would have taken Berlin, Prague and some of the Balkans before Zukov. Then we could have truly claimed victory.
Barry Meislin, TommyJay: Yes, the Soviet Union’s role in WW II was complicated, so before handing the Soviets their “We Won WW II!” merit badge, it should definitely be remembered that Stalin was as responsible as Hitler for starting WW II on account of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, which led to the Nazi and Soviets attacking Poland and dividing it, thereby forcing Britain,the Commonwealth and France to declare war on Germany.
Then, when Hitler double-crossed Stalin and invaded the USSR, Stalin was caught by surprise and came close to defeat in 1941, at least according to Georgy Zhukov, one of the top Soviet commanders. The interview where Zhukov admitted that was almost lost to history as the Soviet authorities destroyed all copies, save one which emerged in 2010.
America’s Lend-Lease contributions to the USSR during the war were substantial and no doubt helped the USSR, though it remains controversial how key a part Lend-Lease played. I err on the side of “a very important part.”
And if there were no D-Day, no second front for Hitler to worry about, the Soviets might have been able to defend their homeland, but I doubt they would have been able to drive to Berlin. Hence, Stalin’s constant insistence FDR and Churchill open that front, i.e. D-Day.
I was eleven on D-Day. The video took me back to those days of my childhood. Newsreels from the war were generally more upbeat and certainly more patriotic than anything you would see today.
Things were not going well in 1942 and I asked my grandfather if it was possible we could lose the war. I’ll never forget what he told me. Paraphrasing here, but he said that we were just holding our own while our country was building the ships, planes, tanks, jeeps, and artillery our boys needed to get on the offensive. He said that once our boys had the tools they needed they would win because our boys were better soldiers than the Germans and Japanese. They were better soldiers because they knew what they were fighting for – freedom. And that our boys knew how to take the initiative. If the lieutenant went down, the sergeant would step up and take his place. And the corporal would step up if the sergeant went down, and the private would do the same if the corporal went down. He said that free men know how to think for themselves and take the initiative. That sure worked out on D-Day. Many soldiers went down, but others kept going and looking for ways to get off the beach. Small units of men taking the initiative found the weak spots and took the high ground. Free men thinking for themselves with an objective in mind. My grandfather was a wise man.
Our country was different then. We were united. We had belief in our country and what it stood for. We weren’t as wealthy as a country and life wasn’t as easy it is today. Maybe that’s part of our problem.
Walter Cronkite’s voice was similar, both in his history series on the 20th Century as well as his fine coverage of the US Space Program.
When fighting for good, imperfect mostly good folk, was noble. The failures to tell the truth about the very different war in Vietnam, seems to have made so many patriots from WW II turn against America, then against the Republicans who continued supporting patriotism. Cronkite among those who turned Left most strongly.
Also don’t forget the tens of thousands of Americans and British/Canadien/Australian/NZ who died in the air above Germany. The Western Allies were pounding the Germans on the ground AND in the air. More US Army Air Force men died bombing Germany than all US Marine deaths and US Navy deaths in the Pacific.
I don’t believe the Soviets participated in this level of activity as well.
J J – your grandfather was correct.
My dad never talked about The War (except to tell us that he never went camping afterwards, because after sleeping on the ground all winter in Europe, he was never doing that again). However, my mother did compile some letters and other information later, and we discovered that he rose from Private, in a Browning Machine Gun unit, to First Lieutenant, in little over a week of combat.
First, as to newsreels and other news sources during the war, there is no doubt that they obscured as much as they revealed. Some could call them propaganda, with justification. On the other hand, those newsreels were being viewed by mothers, wives, and other loved ones of men who were dying in terrible ways. They did not need to have the facts brought home vividly.
I was younger than JJ; but, the atmosphere at home is forever etched. I don’t know what the older folks really thought during the early days because they would certainly not burden a kid with their concerns. As for my peers, we never doubted. Our fathers, brothers, cousins, neighbors were fighting, and they would not lose.
It is not surprising that Soviet propaganda extols the nation’s sacrifices and exploits in WWII. Certainly, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, with whom they had a friendhip pact took the rest of the world, as well as the Soviets, by surprise. At that point, there was no reason for anyone to aid Russia, and good reason to let the two tyrannical regimes devour each other. But, to assert that they stood alone against the German war machine throughout much of the war is far from true. The Soviet Union was initially spared in large measure by the brutal winter of ’41-’42, and Hitler’s maniac intransigence. Then its largely decimated war fighting capability was re-built on the shoulders of American industry, and the significant sacrifices made to deliver the supplies to Russia (google “Murmansk run). The effort was huge and largely forgotten. A family friend, a railroad engineer, spent his Army service running trains through Iran from Persian Gulf ports to the southern border of Russia. Meanwhile, on various fronts the German war machine was distracted. In the intervening years before the Normandy invasion, Germany lost access to mid-eastern oil because of the British and American African campaign. German forces were spread from Greece, through North Africa to Sicily, Italy and Southern France to defend the borders of the Thousand Year Reich.
Stalin, ignoring all that was in progress, continued to demand a “second front in Europe”. But, people who uncritically accept his myth that the USSR stood alone, simply ignore the facts. By 1943, the North African campaign had been fought and won; the Sicilian campaign fought and won; and the invasion of Italy proper had begun.
By 1945, the Soviet Red Army was a massive force; but, they faced an enemy that had been engaged on many different fronts for years, and was a shell of its former self.
Just to note one point of personal interest that was introduced by RomeoBravo. By the time Russia invaded, the bombing campaign against Germany’s industrial heartland had reached epic proportions. My personal hero, an older cousin, was part of the U.S. 8th Air Force, so I have always been fascinated by their history. They endured unimaginable losses during this historic and unprecedented campaign.
Tom Grey:
If you haven’t read it already, please read my 2-part post on Cronkite and Vietnam reporting.
Oldflyer: “They endured unimaginable losses during this historic and unprecedented campaign.”
Romeo Bravo: ‘More US Army Air Force men died bombing Germany than all US Marine deaths and US Navy deaths in the Pacific.”
My uncle was a bombardier/navigator on a B-17. He died on his 20th mission. Another man from our village was B-24 pilot that survived 25 missions – a couple over the Ploesti oil fields, described as a target where the flak was so dense you could “walk on it.” Another uncle was a waist gunner in a B-17. He survived 25 missions and was loathe to talk about his service. One day, when it was cold, he did tell me it reminded him of his days as a B-17 gunner. The B-17s were not insulated or heated and flew as high as they could – 18,00 to 25,00 feet. Numbing cold was an ever present companion on those long missions. They had heavy weight clothes to help them, but they had to take off their gloves to man their guns. Frostbite was also their enemy.
As both Oldflyer and Romeo Bravo have pointed out, the Air War over Europe was deadly and deadly serious.
Following on Romeo Bravo, Oldflyer and J.J.’s excellent remarks on the Allied air campaign it occurs to me to say that without that air campaign having largely achieved its objectives D-Day wouldn’t have gone on the successful way it did, if it were to have been attempted at all. One cannot imagine such an invasion undertaken while Germany enjoyed air superiority . . . not even possibly with air parity. The air war was simply the crucial strategic move, and worked as intended.