D-Day 75th anniversary: commemorating the Normandy landings
CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault hosts a special broadcast on the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings. The ceremonies in France mark the 75th anniversary of the Allied forces’ invasion of Normandy.
Jeff Pelline is a veteran editor and award-winning journalist - in print and online. He is publisher of Sierra FoodWineArt magazine and its website SierraCulture.com. Jeff covered business and technology for The San Francisco Chronicle for 12 years, and he was a founding editor and Editor of CNET News for eight years, among other positions. Jeff has a bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley and a master's from Northwestern University. His hobbies include sailing, swimming, and trout fishing in the Sierra.
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2 thoughts on “D-Day 75th anniversary: commemorating the Normandy landings”
D Day and the invasion was an incredible feat for sure. Not to take away anything from the heroic soldiers that fought on the Western Front, and the heroic British and US airmen that had been bombing the German war machine, it is the kind of fighting on a large scale that was incredible, but when you read about the battles on the Eastern Front, that is where the German Army was faced at its pinnacle of strength and ground down.
By June of 1944 Army Group Central was in shambles and fleeing west. Army Group North that did the Siege of Leningrad that lasted 900 days with 4000 Russian citizens dying of starvation on just one day on Christmas of 1941, it was in full retreat since January. The Battle of Stalingrad the largest battle in WWII. The battle at Kursk was the largest tank battle, on and on, through one town after another in what is now the Ukraine and Belarus, what the people of the then Soviet Union, both citizens and soldiers faced is something we cannot comprehend. Total war from Berlin to Moscow, from Leningrad down to the Black Sea.
And if you think the fighting and dying ended on VE day in 1945, read: Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II. When the state sponsored fighting ended the beginning of settling of scores began. After reading over a dozen books on the Eastern Front by both German and Russian soldiers, I could not finish reading Savage Continent, it was too much.
Syria and Iraq, as bad as that was, really not much compared to the Eastern Front.
It is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever watched. It speaks of the chaos and violence after WWII was “over”. In the five years past 1944, it speaks of the 60 million displaced residents wanting to get home, the millions of orphaned children, the revenge killings all over the continent. Certainly not our John Wayne version of events.
Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report 
D Day and the invasion was an incredible feat for sure. Not to take away anything from the heroic soldiers that fought on the Western Front, and the heroic British and US airmen that had been bombing the German war machine, it is the kind of fighting on a large scale that was incredible, but when you read about the battles on the Eastern Front, that is where the German Army was faced at its pinnacle of strength and ground down.
By June of 1944 Army Group Central was in shambles and fleeing west. Army Group North that did the Siege of Leningrad that lasted 900 days with 4000 Russian citizens dying of starvation on just one day on Christmas of 1941, it was in full retreat since January. The Battle of Stalingrad the largest battle in WWII. The battle at Kursk was the largest tank battle, on and on, through one town after another in what is now the Ukraine and Belarus, what the people of the then Soviet Union, both citizens and soldiers faced is something we cannot comprehend. Total war from Berlin to Moscow, from Leningrad down to the Black Sea.
And if you think the fighting and dying ended on VE day in 1945, read: Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II. When the state sponsored fighting ended the beginning of settling of scores began. After reading over a dozen books on the Eastern Front by both German and Russian soldiers, I could not finish reading Savage Continent, it was too much.
Syria and Iraq, as bad as that was, really not much compared to the Eastern Front.
National Geographic did a documentary called “After Hitler”.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/watch/8fb1ca039f067359184425face62357b/
It is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever watched. It speaks of the chaos and violence after WWII was “over”. In the five years past 1944, it speaks of the 60 million displaced residents wanting to get home, the millions of orphaned children, the revenge killings all over the continent. Certainly not our John Wayne version of events.