The Crusade for Europe remembered...

Click here for the audio.

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

-- Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower

On this day, you could camp out at your computer or in the public library and never run out of great stories. Here is the story of a 23 year-old infantryman meeting a Normandy veteran. Perhaps you remember Red Buttons' parachute getting snagged on the steeple of a church in The Longest Day. Here is the story of Pvt. John Steele of F Company, 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

The invasion of Normandy is the glory and sacrifice of my parents' generation. It was only glorious because the Nazis were defeated. The combined American, British, Canadian, French civilian, and German casualties in the summer of 1944 were ghastly, yet they were only a fraction of the casualties on the Eastern Front, where two ideologies that hated life battled to the death. One of the great achievements of the victories on the Western Front is that we spared at least half of Europe a forty-year occupation by the also-victorious Stalinists.

Here is the D-Day as told by Thomas B. Allen in National Geographic in 2002. The photos are excellent, as should be expected from NG.

[Photos above: an unidentified landing craft, the defended terrain at Point du Hoc, and the U.S.S. Tuscaloosa, a heavy cruiser which supported the invasion with its 8-inch guns and saw plenty of action during the war.]

Today we commemorate all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Resistance, and civilians from all countries who helped defeat National Socialism.