FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — It’s been 80 years since D-Day turned the tide of World War II against Nazi Germany, but the lessons from that day remain relevant for military operations as we learned during a D-Day commemoration Tuesday at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
“Leavenworth is very much the education hub of the Army,” Dr. Chris Carey, the historian director for Army University Films, said. “... There’s a rich legacy of education here at Leavenworth and so many people who were involved in D-Day were here or we have buildings now that are named after them.”
The Eisenhower Auditorium inside the college’s Lewis and Clark Center was a fitting place for 1,400 people to recall the bravery and sacrifice of D-Day, which remains an incredible teaching tool for the U.S. armed forces.
“It’s one of the most complex operations in history at that time,” Cafey said. “There was a naval component, there was an air component, there was an airborne component, there was a deception operation. All of these things kind of come together here to make D-Day. At the end of the day, after 24 hours of this operation, 156,000 soldiers had landed in Nazi-occupied France, leading to the liberation and the ultimate downfall of the Nazi regime.”
Three weeks after D-Day, there were 800,000 Allied troops who’d journeyed across the English Channel to the beaches of Normandy, France, and within a year Germany had been defeated.
But the actual fighting was only a small piece of the puzzle.
“It’s then winning the battle of the reinforcements, because the Germans are rushing forces to the coast,” said Dr. Dirk Ringgenberg, an assistant professor of military history at Command and General Staff College. “We now have to rush forces across the Channel, which is a lot more challenging than putting them on a train and sending them. These were the calculations that had to be made — the rate at which we needed to put individuals from England, across the Channel and onto the coast required immense effort, more than even the fighting that was going to be taking place.”
Years of planning went into getting enough soldiers to France with enough food and weapons to gain a foothold and begin to beat back Nazi forces. Even the moonlight, tides and weather had to be just right.
“It’s a human problem,” Ringgenberg said. “Leadership, logistics, firepower — how do you apply all these at the exact place and time to get the desired effects?”
That was the challenge Eisenhower, as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, and his staff faced.
Specialized landing craft had to be designed and built, makeshift ports capable of supporting an invading army needed to be conceived and constructed, supply lines had to be created and secured, and a formidable German army had to be tricked and overrun.
“D-Day is the largest amphibious invasion in history and the lessons that we drew from Operation Overlord — specifically the invasion operation, Operation Neptune — are still applicable today,” Ringgenberg said. “We still apply them in principles we teach at the Command and General Staff College."
The students, who are mostly majors in the various U.S. military branches, spent an hour watching a presentation about D-Day, which will always remain a revered day at Fort Leavenworth.
“If the Allies had not succeeded at D-Day, the outcome is almost unfathomable,” Carey said. “The losses — just in terms of man and material — would have been massive. But also the morale component that would have been lost would have been huge. Likewise, the blow that it struck against the Axis was massive. It led to the liberation of all of Europe. It’s a day that I think can be celebrated not just by Americans, but it should be celebrated globally in so many ways.”
For all the planning and preparation, ultimately it proved to be the resilience of the soldiers — U.S., British and Canadian — that ensured D-Day’s success.
“What really makes D-Day successful is that the soldiers were able to adapt on the move,” Carey said. “Things did not go the way that they were planned, so soldiers had to overcome.”
D-Day remains the most meticulously planned and largest-scale amphibious invasion operation in world history.
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