A truly wonderful essay by Varifrank on Churchill and D-Day invasion of Normandy. [Thanks to The Anchoress] A sample from the middle:

World War II was a horrible experience for the bulk of humanity. It was in a very true sense, a ”World War” as virtually every part of the world was effected. The estimates are of 52 million killed and 200 million wounded or displaced as a result of the war. We in the modern age have nothing to compare to those days. The losses we see for an entire war don’t add up to a single hour at the Battle of Okinawa. In that new mechanical and technological age when men for the first time could travel to all parts of the globe and weapons could be produced such astronomically vast numbers, Men of all nations fought with one thing in mind, to fight and win meant simply the hope of being able to stay alive, to lose was most certainly to be enslaved or worse, exterminated by the “ubermen” of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. There was no hope to be remain neutral in light of such stakes. Life or death, slavery or freedom, collaborator or partisan, there is no grey shadow cast under the yellow Sun.
(…)
We all live today in the bright light of freedom provided by the courage they found on that day. We should all be thankful for the men who had the selflessness to stand in the ocean going flatbottomed boats, covered with vomit and fear of a generation to face the enemies machine guns manned on the shore by other men who were a part of a system so devoid of humanity that it was exterminating people with the same efficiency that other men put bumpers on their cars.

My father wasn’t in the European theater, but he served for over three years in the war. Many of my uncles saw combat, and my mother’s oldest brother was slain in Okinawa. My deep and humble gratitude goes out to all that have served, and to those who continue to do so . . . (db)

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