Today marks the 70th Anniversary of the largest amphibious landing in human history. American, British and Canadian troops stormed the beaches of Normandy in a quest to liberate Western Europe from Nazi domination. The heroism of the “Greatest Generation” of Americans will never be forgotten and should be appreciated by all members of the human race globally on this special occasion. So this week instead of covering a Florida related topic on Flashback Friday we focus on D-Day

Without the selfless leadership of the United States and the hundreds of thousands of our lives that were lost in the war, darkness would likely have remained over the European continent. Our nation committed to human liberty and freedom took on a cause that many domestically wanted us to avoid. Germany had not attacked the United States and many right-wing forces in this country had sympathy for Nazism. Some cheered as France fell, and hoped for Britain to suffer the same fate.

During the Battle of Britain when the Nazi’s were perilously close to total victory, isolationists in the United States pressured Franklin Roosevelt to not arm the United Kingdom. Right-wing Republicans rallied their political base to try and prevent American involvement on the British side. I just this week re-read in American journalist William Shirer’s epic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany that the as horrible as the Nazi occupations were of Poland, France and the Netherlands, the plans drawn up by the Nazis for governance of British territory would have been perhaps the harshest occupation in modern human history.

President Roosevelt understood that the future of free peoples depended wholly on a British victory. Despite the well organized domestic occupation that depended on fear mongering, FDR was able to arm the British and once the Soviet Union entered the war, help the Russians as well.

Then came Pearl Harbor. Japan had attacked the USA. Yet within the month Roosevelt agreed that defeat of Nazi Germany was a larger priority than vanquishing Japan who had after all violated American sovereignty with an attack.

The Russians were struggling to hold off the Germans in the East and thus to relieve the pressure the United States and UK began Operation Torch which consisted of several amphibious landings in North Africa. Eventually the Allies fought from Africa into Sicily and Italy itself. But the forces that fought on this front never made it to German territory. Instead it was the bold stroke of D-Day and the invasion of occupied Europe that did that.

The British, American and Canadian forces that fought on the beaches of Normandy and pushed the Germans out of France and the Benalux nations are the very reason we enjoy the freedoms we do today. We are interacting in an open and free way on this blog because of the Anglo-American victory in the west. Had Nazi Germany prevailed this world would be a very different and difficult place.

In today’s war weary America it is important that we remember that freedom has a cost and sometimes wars must be fought and won for us to maintain our way of life.