[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: May 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF ASTOUNDING EVENTS IN WORLD WAR II
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I wish I had an hour special order tonight.
I may get a chance to do one tomorrow to talk about some of the 50th
anniversary of just astounding events in World War II that will be
coming up during this district work period break when there will be no
one on the floor to just cause a moment of pause and reflection to
think about the age of heroes that I experienced from my 8th to, well,
through my 12th year as a young person.
Like many Americans of my generation and teenagers, older than I, and
even people like my younger brother, younger than I, we had maps on the
walls; in my case, my brothers and I had a map of the Pacific area on
one wall and the North Africa-Mediterranean-Italian-Europe theater on
another wall, and we followed the course of the war.
And to show you how we have gone all through 1992 and 1993 with
hardly a moment's pause here to reflect on the dark years for America
and for our European allies in World War II, 1942 when we were not sure
at all we could beat the axis powers, Japan, the Fascist forces of
Mussolini and the Nazi forces of Hitler, and then the turnaround year
of 1943.
Just today, for example, just today, 50 years ago, Allied troops,
Polish forces, American forces, Canadian, British, particularly the
Americans at the Anzio bridgehead where we had been stuck for 4 months
and 3 days, we broke out of Anzio, and 10 days later, almost eclipsed
by the incredible landings on the beaches of Normandy, the enternal
city of Rome was liberated by Allied forces June 4, 1944.
And this House Chamber will be dark on that 50th anniversary. Two
days later the Normandy invasion.
My first 15 years here, 15\1/2\ years, I had a living, breathing
reminder of that incredible event sitting right here in this chair, a
good pal of my colleague here, Chris Heil used to sit there, looking
for all the world like a gentle leprechaun, taking down our words, and
yet Chris had been one of the engineers that had defied belief when
trying to comprehend heroics.
People often say when they see these incredible black-and-white
newsreel shoots of the first ramps dropping on the very First British,
Canadian, or United States little small landing craft, and you could
see the waterspouts of machine gun fire just popping up all in front.
You would read the accounts of men hearing the bullets hitting the
ramp, the face of the ramp door before it would drop, and you would
charge out into this hail of fire.
Over the next 2 weeks, we will see over and over again those tragic
shots of four or five Americans coming up the beach, one drops, two,
then three, then four, and then only one is standing.
{time} 2220
What could be worse than being the first one or two men off of the
landing barges at the British and Canadian beaches of Gold and Soar and
Juneau, the beaches that ring with the historical name Omaha, Utah,
where the American 1st and 29th, our divisions went in hitting those
beaches? And yet there is a tougher job. Chris Heil, who sat here for
decades, was one of the engineers who went in in the dead of night
before the dawn and tried to make the beach safer for landing by
swimming from tank trap to tank trap and cutting the barbed wire,
trying to make the beach more safe for men just his age, young men in
their late teens, early 20's, who would come after him. Chris was
wounded that day, later in the day, an Army engineer. He went to a
hospital, recovered, went back into the fighting, wounded again, back
to the hospital, recovered, wounded again in the Ardennes/German
offensive, the Battle of the Bulge, in December. We will not be in
during December, the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. What
I would like to put in the record today in just these short moments is
an article from Newsweek magazine that describes the unthinkable,
``What if our allied forces had been thrown off the beaches?'' One of
the most poignant stories is the message that President Eisenhower
prewrote, carried in his pocket, that he would read to the press if we
failed and were pushed off in what would have been a near-massacre,
back into the water. Why the allies won and what would have happened if
we had been repulsed on those beaches in that tremendous battle which
Rommel himself called the longest day of the war.
Mr. Speaker, I submit these for the Record.
First, ``What if D-Day had failed:''
Adolph Hitler could have used the time gained to continue
development and use of his ``Vengeance'' weapons--V-1 and V-2
ballistic missile and just contemplate, we still have no
defense today against a modern V-2 ICBM. We should not wait
for another Hitler to use similar weapons. Instead we should
immediately develop near-term, a low cost ballistic missile
defense (BMD) systems such as Navy upper-tier the LEAP
option, which could provide wide-area BMD coverage to our
allies and forward deployed forces using existing Aegis
cruisers and destroyers, an improved ``Standard'' air defense
missile and the LEAP kinetic energy interceptor.
Second, the crucial role of intelligence:
British intelligence controlled all information going to
Hitler from German spies around the world. This is why it is
so important to prevent treason within our own intelligence
community such as the Ames case which could have cost the
lives of over ten foreign agents. Such intelligence was vital
then and remains so today in the post-Cold War ear.
Third, importance of bombers:
Frontline Panzer divisions recall the carpet-bombing of
American B-17s and B-24s during the invasion. Had we been
unable to quickly deploy ground forces to Saudi Arabia during
Desert Shield, bombers would have been our only option to
stop the advancing armor formations of the Iraqi military.
This is why we need to maintain a modern, capable bomber
force and that means B-1 lancers and B-2 spirits with
conventional enhancements including precision guided bombs
and weapons.
Fourth, Germans had better weapons but Allies had more
mobility:
Despite outstanding German weapons, the Allies were able to
outmaneuver the Germans because of systems such as the C-47
transport aircraft which could ``land almost anywhere'' and
the 2\1/2\ ton truck which could literally smash through
small trees.
The C-17, like the C-47, can really land U.S. troops almost
anywhere in the world (10,000 more runways, unimproved, than
a normal airlift aircraft).
The V-22, ``Osprey'' like the 2\1/2\ ton truck, can
overcome nearly any obstacle in the delivery of troops and
supplies.
Mobility is a direct function of technology, this is why we
must develop systems such as the C-17 and V-22
Fifth, overwhelming superiority of firepower and forces:
D-Day did not take place until we knew we had overwhelming
superiority as the attacker to invade an area with superbly
built up fortifications.
Today, civilian ``Armchair Generals'' in this
Administration talk about ``Desert Storm Equivalents'' and
forces required for two ``nearly simultaneous conflicts''
believing we need only the bare minimum of force to achieve
victory. The ``arsenal of democracy'' which won World War II
did so with overwhelming American force, not ``equivalents.''
Let's not risk more American lives through senseless cuts to
a strong U.S. military.
Sixth, personal valor:
Some claim that individual bravery did not carry the day
during the invasion. I must disagree. The one consent
throughout the history of the U.S. military has been the
courage and innovation of our soldiers, sailors, pilots,
aircrewmen, and marines who sometimes despite inferior
numbers, inferior training, and inferior weapons, always
prevailed. We cannot guarantee such courage. Even with modest
pay increases deleted by the administration but restored by
Congress morale is going down. But we can make sure that our
military has the number of forces, the proper training, and
the most modern technology to deter, and if necessary fight
and win the wars of the future. Let us never forget the
victory of D-Day, and why allied forces prevailed that day.
Why the Allies Won
(By John Barry)
H-Hour on D-Day, The Hour on The Day. Every one of the
370,000 soldiers and sailors aboard the 5,300 Allied vessels
steaming toward the Normandy beaches on the morning of June
6, 1944, was carrying a mimeographed piece of paper, the
``order of the day'' from Allied commander Dwight Eisenhower:
they were, he told them, embarked on ``the Great Crusade.''
Churchill called D-Day ``the most difficult and complicated
operation ever to take place.'' With British phlegm, the
chief of naval operations for the invasion, Adm. Sir Bertram
Ramsay, felt obliged to apologize to his staff a few days
before the landings: he was sorry about all the superlatives,
he said, but this time they were true.
How important was Operation Overlord? Had it failed, the
map of Europe might look quite different today. Mounting a
second try would have taken a year--``at least another year,
if you take account of the psychological impact of such a
disaster,'' says Martin Blumenson, the author of the U.S.
Army's official history of the Normandy campaign. While the
shattered armada regrouped, Hitler would have time to
complete the Atlantic Wall, to rain V-1 and V-2 missiles on
London and to finish off the Final Solution. Meanwhile,
Stalin's Red Army would have pushed on to the West--perhaps,
in time, right across Germany. ``It's not too far-fetched to
wonder if the Iron Curtain might have been on the Rhine,''
says D-Day historian Carlo D'Este.
That is, unless the Western Allies struck first with
nuclear weapons. ``If D-Day had failed, then by August 1945
America would have been dropping the atomic bomb on
Germany,'' says William O'Neill, professor of history at
Rutgers and a World War II authority. ``Instead of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, we'd remember, say, Berlin and Frankfurt.''
The prospect of risking so much on a single battle--a
single day--gave real pause to Allied leaders. Remembering
the carnage of World War I, Churchill muttered morosely about
``Channel tides running red with Allied blood'' and
``beaches choked with bodies of the flower of American and
British manhood.'' The Americans were more confident, but
not without their private qualms. In mid-May, with the
invasion only three weeks away. Eisenhower's chief of
staff, the choleric W. Bedell Smith, had ``premonitions of
disaster.'' He put the chances of success at 50-50.
Such fears seem exaggerated, in retrospect. Consider the
odds: the Allies could put more than 10,000 warplanes over
France that day; the Luftwaffe had 890. Allied naval forces
included five battleships and 23 cruisers: the German Navy in
the Channel was reduced to a few light E-boats and
submarines. In two months the Allies put more than 8,000
tanks into Normandy; the Germans could muster only 1,350.
Still, victory was not a sure thing. The weather was the main
element of uncertainty. Eisenhower's meteorologist gave him a
36-hour window between Channel storms. Had he guessed wrong,
the fragile landing craft would have foundered in the gale.
(As it was, 10 troop craft launched off Omaha Beach were
swamped instantly, drowning perhaps, 1,000 men.)
It would be romantic to think that bravery carried the day,
and the green and seasick young men dodging bullets in the
surf along 59 miles of Normandy beach were brave indeed. But
in reality D-Day was won far from the beaches of Normandy, by
forces larger than courage. The decisive factors:
The Russians: If the Red Army had not tied down--and chewed
up--the Wehrmacht, the Longest Day would have been longer
still. The Allies faced 56 depleted German divisions; in
Russia. Hitler had 157. Two weeks after Operation Overlord,
Stalin launched an offensive that dwarfed D-Day. In 10 days,
130 Russian divisions destroyed three entire German armies,
killing, wounding or capturing 350,000 men.
Hitler: The fuhrer was obsessed with defeating Bolshevism
and never grasped the peril of a second front. He rejected
the pleas of his top generals in the West, von Rundstedt and
Rommel, to smash the Allies by consolidating in the East and
shifting divisions to France. Nor would he resolve the
dispute between them on how best to deploy the tanks they did
have. Von Rundstedt wanted to hold the Panzer tank
divisions in the rear, for massed counterattack; Rommel
believed the invaders had to be driven into the sea in the
first hours of battle. Hitler's indecision was fatal; the
Panzers came too late. ``I'd like to shake him by the
hand,'' Britain's chief of staff, Gen. Alan Brooke,
remarked later to a startled group of generals. ``He was
worth 40 divisions to us.''
Deception: The Germans were crucially delayed by the most
successful intelligence operation in history. The Allies
created two phony armies under Gen. George S. Patton
(temporarily in purdah for slapping a soldier) to con the
German General Staff into believing that they were crossing
the Channel closer to Germany, at the Pas de Calais. Under
``Double Cross,'' British intelligence controlled all German
spies in England and had them sending false reports about
Patton back to the Reich. The Allies were able to tell the
ruse was working through the supersecret Ultra operation,
which broke German codes.
Detroit: ``They can make cars and refrigerators, but not
aircraft,'' scoffed Hermann Goring, the chief of Hitler's air
force, the Luftwaffe, in August 1941. He found out
differently by 1943, when the American Eighth Air Force began
daring daylight raids deep into Germany. A hundred miles from
the Normandy beaches. Edward R. Murrow, the CBS newsman,
could hear the engines of the Allied bomber fleet as H-Hour
approached. ``It was the sound of a giant factory in the
sky,'' said Murrow. For all the individual heroics. D-Day is
ultimately the story of how Roosevelt's ``arsenal of
democracy'' simply overwhelmed all opposition. ``In the East,
we were fighting men against men.'' said one of the German
soldiers caught in the Normandy firestorm. ``Here it is men
against machine.'' Rommel despondently told his son a few
weeks after D-Day, ``All the courage didn't help. It was a
terrible bloodletting. . . Every shot we fire now is
harming ourselves, for it will be returned a
hundredfold.''
The Wehrmacht by 1944 may have been exhausted and
outgunned, but the Germans still had nearly a year of bitter
fight left in them. There dramatic breakouts and sweeping
envelopment by the Allies, but most of the fighting was a
hard slog, from the hedgerows of Normandy to the banks of the
Elbe. ``For the ordinary rifleman in the infantry divisions,
life expectancy at the front was no better than that of the
Tommies and the Doughboys of the First World War,'' wrote
historian John Ellis. The average casualty rate for 11
American divisions cited by Ellis was 76 percent. In one
division, the Fourth, which fought for the full 11 months, 83
percent were killed or wounded.
German casualties were beyond belief. Most German units
suffered more than 100 percent casualties over 11 months: in
other words, they were wiped out. The most formidable force
facing the Allies on D-Day was the crack 21st Panzer
Division, which began the day with 127 tanks, 350 officers
and 12,000 men. When the remnants of the 21st straggled
across the Seine 10 weeks later, it consisted of 300 men and
just 10 tanks. The commander of another frontline division
the Panzer Lehr, recalled being carpet-bombed by American B-
17s: ``It was hell . . . the planes kept coming overhead like
a conveyer belt . . . the fields were burning and smoldering
. . . My front lines looked like a landscape on the moon, and
at least 70 percent of my personnel were out of action--dead,
wounded, crazed or numbed.'' After one battle in Normandy,
the German dead lay so thick in the summer sun that pilots of
the light-artillery observation aircraft flying overhead
could smell the stench below.
After the war, the commanders of the NATO forces allied
against the Soviet Union were almost all veterans of D-Day
and the battle for Europe. Until the fall of the Berlin wall.
NATO relied for its defense on the threat of nuclear weapons,
for a simple reason: no one wanted to fight D-Day again--
ever.
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