We are going to do this the way the Republicans do it...

[flashman13]

37. I am not going to argue the point with you. I stand by everything I have said. It is historical fact.

Feel free to say anything you want. You are not going to hurt my feelings.

I have spent the last 60+ years studying 20th century history with particular focus on WWII. My personal library has over a thousand volumes covering that era and I have read them all. By reading a large number of authors with both diverging and over lapping stories will produce a clear and accurate picture. Over the years many of the myths have been replaced by sober analysis. I am currently reading the third volume of The Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson. It paints a picture primarily of American forces in Europe. It strips away much of the rah rah mythology and replaces it with an honest appraisal of American forces and their evolution into a fighting force. It also details the shear brutality of war. It is very well written. You might find it interesting reading.

The Normandy invasion was without a doubt the greatest single military campaign ever undertaken in any age. The forces of America, Britian, Canada, France, Poland and a dozen other nations acquitted themselves with great bravery, sacrifice and honor. Contrary to the myth however, the invasion was not what won the war. Our biggest single contribution of the war was to provide the food, fuel, supplies and especially over 400,000 trucks and other vehicles to power and move the Russian armies. On June 22, 1944 those Russian forces opened their summer offensive in the east and destroyed 25 divisions of German Army Group Center in a matter of days. That effectively ended the war. All that was left was much more dying, because at that point the Germans were effectively defeated. But because Roosevelt had made his surprise announcement at the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 that we would accept nothing less that "Unconditional Surrender, the Germans (especially Hitler) felt compelled to carry on the fight.

May I also suggest you read The Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Lowen. It is very enlightening, but it does call a great deal of what we generally accept as history into question. As I said, the victors write the first histories and leave later generations of historians to restore some truth and perspective.