On this eightieth anniversary of D Day, I want to share with you President Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt speaking to the entire country that night as their young men and women who were risking their lives entering the continent of Europe taking on the Nazi pot and Roosevelt goes in the radio and he leads the entire country in prayer, and when I ask about having a day of prayer, he says, oh A, I hope every American will pray every day while this war goes on. I recommend that highly. I hope you will listen to it. And if you find it as moving as I do, I hope you'll share it with your friends.

On this eightieth anniversary of D Day, I want to share with you President Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt speaking to the entire country that night as their young men and women who were risking their lives entering the continent of Europe taking on the Nazi pot and Roosevelt goes in the radio and he leads the entire country in prayer, and when I ask about having a day of prayer, he says, oh A, I hope every American will pray every day while this war goes on. I recommend that highly. I hope you will listen to it. And if you find it as moving as I do, I hope you'll share it with your friends.

Or by allied sorts.

Or by allied sorts.

Of course.

Of course.

Says that heavy fighting is taking place between the Germans and invasion forces on the Normandy Peninsula, about thirty one miles southwest of Lajavre. Another bulletin, also from Berlin radio and unconfirmed, says the British American landing operations against the western coast of Europe from the sea and from the air are stretching over the entire area between Cherbourg and Lejavre, a distance of about sixty miles.

Says that heavy fighting is taking place between the Germans and invasion forces on the Normandy Peninsula, about thirty one miles southwest of Lajavre. Another bulletin, also from Berlin radio and unconfirmed, says the British American landing operations against the western coast of Europe from the sea and from the air are stretching over the entire area between Cherbourg and Lejavre, a distance of about sixty miles.

On June sixth, nineteen forty four, one hundred and fifty six thousand Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. Paratroopers landed behind the beaches. A huge number of ships were in the English Channel. The airpower was over all of that part of France. And it was the greatest, single complex event in human history, vastly more complicated than going to the Moon or anything we've tried to do. I wanted to share with you because I think that it's really important that we occasionally stop and look at a decisive event, try to understand what would have happened without that event, and try to understand the people who made it possible. Everybody knew that something big was going to happen, they didn't know where, and they weren't sure the details. And frankly, we'd gone to a great links to keep the Germans confused about what we were doing. If you were looking at it from the German side, they all assumed it would be in France, but nobody knew the exact date. Nobody knew the exact location. When I say nobody, I mean among civilian Americans. And when it came I think people were a little stunned by the scale. But to get a feel for that, there are a couple of radio broadcasts that really went straight to people. Remember this is an age when the radio is the only common mechanism of communication, and this is what people are listening to in order to have a sense of what's going on.

On June sixth, nineteen forty four, one hundred and fifty six thousand Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. Paratroopers landed behind the beaches. A huge number of ships were in the English Channel. The airpower was over all of that part of France. And it was the greatest, single complex event in human history, vastly more complicated than going to the Moon or anything we've tried to do. I wanted to share with you because I think that it's really important that we occasionally stop and look at a decisive event, try to understand what would have happened without that event, and try to understand the people who made it possible. Everybody knew that something big was going to happen, they didn't know where, and they weren't sure the details. And frankly, we'd gone to a great links to keep the Germans confused about what we were doing. If you were looking at it from the German side, they all assumed it would be in France, but nobody knew the exact date. Nobody knew the exact location. When I say nobody, I mean among civilian Americans. And when it came I think people were a little stunned by the scale. But to get a feel for that, there are a couple of radio broadcasts that really went straight to people. Remember this is an age when the radio is the only common mechanism of communication, and this is what people are listening to in order to have a sense of what's going on.

Men and women of the United States, this is a momentous hour in world history. This is the invasion of Hitler's Europe, the zero hour of the Second Front. The men of General Dwight Eisenhower are leaving their landing barges, fighting their way up the beaches into the fortress of Nazi Europe. They are moving in from the sea to attack the enemy under a mammoth cloud of fighter planes, under a ceiling of screaming shells from Allied warships. The first news flashes do not say, but a large proportion of this assault is believed to be in the hands of American men. They are making the attack side by side with the British Tommies who were bombed and blasted out of Europe at Dunkirk. Now at this hour they are bombing and blasting their way back again. This is the European Front. Once again being established in fire and blood, not only by the Americans and British, but by many allies in the fight against Axis aggression. This is the supreme test of Allied spirit and of Alied weapons. The world's greatest military undertaking is underway.

Men and women of the United States, this is a momentous hour in world history. This is the invasion of Hitler's Europe, the zero hour of the Second Front. The men of General Dwight Eisenhower are leaving their landing barges, fighting their way up the beaches into the fortress of Nazi Europe. They are moving in from the sea to attack the enemy under a mammoth cloud of fighter planes, under a ceiling of screaming shells from Allied warships. The first news flashes do not say, but a large proportion of this assault is believed to be in the hands of American men. They are making the attack side by side with the British Tommies who were bombed and blasted out of Europe at Dunkirk. Now at this hour they are bombing and blasting their way back again. This is the European Front. Once again being established in fire and blood, not only by the Americans and British, but by many allies in the fight against Axis aggression. This is the supreme test of Allied spirit and of Alied weapons. The world's greatest military undertaking is underway.

Before they landed, it was very possible it wouldn't work, certainly. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was deeply afraid. At one point felt that he dreamed rivers of blood because he was so much afraid of trying to land there. The British had run a trial landing and had found that going into a fortified port was a disaster and involved a Canadian unit which was littly massacred, so they were very skittish. On the other hand, we had landed in North Africa, we had landed in Sicily. They had some pretty interesting experiences proving that you could have a combination of paratroopers and people landing from boats and you could force away ashore. But Normandy was different. The Germans had built up their defenses, They had a substantial number of tanks available, and they were prepared to do everything they could to throw us back into the sea, because they knew that if it succeeded if we were ashore that we would inevitably build up our forces and break loose and automately defeat them. In order to achieve this extraordinary landing, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill turned to the general who had served them so well, and that was General Dwight David Eisenhower, or Ike as he was known to his friends. He became the Supreme Allied Commander, and his chief deputy was the most famous hylerrision inspected British general in the Second World War, Bernard Law Montgomery. The two of them arrived around Christmas of nineteen forty three, looked at the plans that had been developed over the previous year and promptly threw them out because the plans were too small, too narrow, and too likely to fail. And so they built a much bigger operation involving many more people. And they were clearly laying it on the line if Normandy had failed, If we had tried to land and not succeeded, it's very likely that we'd have had a hard time doing it a second time. That they'd cost psychologically as well as physically, would have been so great that we would probably have ended up with Russia eventually defeating Germany and occupying all of Western Europe. So this was a key moment in history. Now, to be fair to the Russians, they were losing millions of peace people fighting the Germans, and Stalin as early as early nineteen forty two had been pressuring us to get involved in killing Germans. And he goes fairly bitter about the fact that we didn't land in Europe in forty two. We landed in North Africa. We didn't land in Western Europe. In forty three, we landed in Sicily and Italy. And he wanted an allied force in the west to drain Germans out of Russia and out of the Eastern Front, to reduce the pressure on his own country, and we kept promising we were going to do something. Frankly, we were very worried that at some point the two dictators Stalin and Hitler might get together, create a truce and allow the Germans to reposition their forces in the West, which would cost us huge problems. But it didn't happen. Stalin wanted to defeat the Germans. He was deeply embittered by the way they had attacked the number of people they had killed, the brutality they had displayed in occupying parts of Russia. So in the end he probably never was going to cut a deal with Hitler, but we were afraid that he might, and we kept reassuring him. Both Roosevelt and Churchill kept telling him, we're going to do it, We're going to do it. Then they said we're going to do it in May, but in fact we weren't quite ready in May. We didn't have all of our forces prepared. So then we said we're going to do it in June, and that led to I think one of the most amazing magic moments of the whole war, and in fact in history. What happened was Eisenhower and Montgomery had been practicing with the meteorologists how to land and when to land, and what did the weather mean. And the meteorologists had an advantage over the Germans because we were able to look at weather patterns from Greenland and Iceland, and so we knew a couple days in advance the weather almost always came from the west. The Germans did not have that kind of observational capability, and so they were sort of blind about what was happening. With the weather well. To land at Norman, you had to have the tides just right so you could get ashore. You had to have the right kind of moon, which also affected the tides. You had to have adequate weather to land, because if there was big storms, you just couldn't land or you couldn't sustain yourself. So on the fourth of June the weather was terrible and the troops had all gotten prepared. We were going to go in on the fifth of June. They were on the ships, they were getting ready to get on the airplanes, and suddenly it was postponed for twenty four hours, and Eisenhower was faced with probably the greatest single decision of the war. On the morning of the fifth, the meteorologist called and said, you know, I think you're going to have a brief period of good weather starting on the sixth, and I think you can land now. This is putting over one hundred thousand men's lives at stake based on a weather prediction. First, the Germans, who did not have weather forecasting from the west, saw this terrible weather, assumed it was going to continue, and a lot of their senior leaders dispersed and went to various meetings, because, after all, the Allies couldn't land in this kind of weather, and they had no notion that was going to clear up on the sixth. Second, had Eisenhower been cautious and had he waited till the next availability, which was in July, the fact was those dates in July were one of the largest storms in modern history in the English Channel and would have been an utter total disaster. And so the one moment that worked was the moment we landed on D Day, the sixth of June. Now, to give you a flavor of why this was so important, Roosevelt knew that we were really sending the country to war. That all those one hundred and fifty six thousand allied for horses, many of whom were American, The paratroopers who were going to be landing during the night, the people who were flying the bombers overhead, that people were flying the transport planes, the people on the ships, all these folks were engaged. Every town in America had an interest in what was going to happen at Normandy. It's important to remember that when we totally mobilized, one out of every ten Americans, slightly more than that eleven percent of the population was in uniform, and Roosevelt, who knew it was coming, had been working on this. In fact, he's probably more worried than Eisenhower because he wasn't there. Roosevelt actually went off the weekend before and spent some time at Paul Watson's estate out near Monticello, Virginia, and they talked about what should he do, what should he say when he had to brief the American people that Overlord had begun. His daughter suggested a prayer. Roosevelt asked Grace Toley, his secretary, to start taking dictation, and then he pulled out his family's book of Common Prayer to try to get inspired. Grace ordnarly taped the final version of the prayer. Roosevelt practiced it on Sunday and was ready. Roosevelt on Monday, the fifth of June, goes back to the White House. That's the day originally scheduled. But it didn't happen, and Roosevelt continues to worry about it. General Marshall, who was the top American commander for the War Department, was not particularly nervous. He knew that Eisenhewer was competent. They knew that they'd been working at this thing now for a long time, and he was reasonably sure that it would work. Eisenhower, I think was concerned, but he wasn't particularly nervous. Eisenhower was a guy who believed in deep preparation and then in relaxing and assuming that things would work out all right. It's a wonderful scene of Eisenhower visiting paratroopers.

Before they landed, it was very possible it wouldn't work, certainly. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was deeply afraid. At one point felt that he dreamed rivers of blood because he was so much afraid of trying to land there. The British had run a trial landing and had found that going into a fortified port was a disaster and involved a Canadian unit which was littly massacred, so they were very skittish. On the other hand, we had landed in North Africa, we had landed in Sicily. They had some pretty interesting experiences proving that you could have a combination of paratroopers and people landing from boats and you could force away ashore. But Normandy was different. The Germans had built up their defenses, They had a substantial number of tanks available, and they were prepared to do everything they could to throw us back into the sea, because they knew that if it succeeded if we were ashore that we would inevitably build up our forces and break loose and automately defeat them. In order to achieve this extraordinary landing, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill turned to the general who had served them so well, and that was General Dwight David Eisenhower, or Ike as he was known to his friends. He became the Supreme Allied Commander, and his chief deputy was the most famous hylerrision inspected British general in the Second World War, Bernard Law Montgomery. The two of them arrived around Christmas of nineteen forty three, looked at the plans that had been developed over the previous year and promptly threw them out because the plans were too small, too narrow, and too likely to fail. And so they built a much bigger operation involving many more people. And they were clearly laying it on the line if Normandy had failed, If we had tried to land and not succeeded, it's very likely that we'd have had a hard time doing it a second time. That they'd cost psychologically as well as physically, would have been so great that we would probably have ended up with Russia eventually defeating Germany and occupying all of Western Europe. So this was a key moment in history. Now, to be fair to the Russians, they were losing millions of peace people fighting the Germans, and Stalin as early as early nineteen forty two had been pressuring us to get involved in killing Germans. And he goes fairly bitter about the fact that we didn't land in Europe in forty two. We landed in North Africa. We didn't land in Western Europe. In forty three, we landed in Sicily and Italy. And he wanted an allied force in the west to drain Germans out of Russia and out of the Eastern Front, to reduce the pressure on his own country, and we kept promising we were going to do something. Frankly, we were very worried that at some point the two dictators Stalin and Hitler might get together, create a truce and allow the Germans to reposition their forces in the West, which would cost us huge problems. But it didn't happen. Stalin wanted to defeat the Germans. He was deeply embittered by the way they had attacked the number of people they had killed, the brutality they had displayed in occupying parts of Russia. So in the end he probably never was going to cut a deal with Hitler, but we were afraid that he might, and we kept reassuring him. Both Roosevelt and Churchill kept telling him, we're going to do it, We're going to do it. Then they said we're going to do it in May, but in fact we weren't quite ready in May. We didn't have all of our forces prepared. So then we said we're going to do it in June, and that led to I think one of the most amazing magic moments of the whole war, and in fact in history. What happened was Eisenhower and Montgomery had been practicing with the meteorologists how to land and when to land, and what did the weather mean. And the meteorologists had an advantage over the Germans because we were able to look at weather patterns from Greenland and Iceland, and so we knew a couple days in advance the weather almost always came from the west. The Germans did not have that kind of observational capability, and so they were sort of blind about what was happening. With the weather well. To land at Norman, you had to have the tides just right so you could get ashore. You had to have the right kind of moon, which also affected the tides. You had to have adequate weather to land, because if there was big storms, you just couldn't land or you couldn't sustain yourself. So on the fourth of June the weather was terrible and the troops had all gotten prepared. We were going to go in on the fifth of June. They were on the ships, they were getting ready to get on the airplanes, and suddenly it was postponed for twenty four hours, and Eisenhower was faced with probably the greatest single decision of the war. On the morning of the fifth, the meteorologist called and said, you know, I think you're going to have a brief period of good weather starting on the sixth, and I think you can land now. This is putting over one hundred thousand men's lives at stake based on a weather prediction. First, the Germans, who did not have weather forecasting from the west, saw this terrible weather, assumed it was going to continue, and a lot of their senior leaders dispersed and went to various meetings, because, after all, the Allies couldn't land in this kind of weather, and they had no notion that was going to clear up on the sixth. Second, had Eisenhower been cautious and had he waited till the next availability, which was in July, the fact was those dates in July were one of the largest storms in modern history in the English Channel and would have been an utter total disaster. And so the one moment that worked was the moment we landed on D Day, the sixth of June. Now, to give you a flavor of why this was so important, Roosevelt knew that we were really sending the country to war. That all those one hundred and fifty six thousand allied for horses, many of whom were American, The paratroopers who were going to be landing during the night, the people who were flying the bombers overhead, that people were flying the transport planes, the people on the ships, all these folks were engaged. Every town in America had an interest in what was going to happen at Normandy. It's important to remember that when we totally mobilized, one out of every ten Americans, slightly more than that eleven percent of the population was in uniform, and Roosevelt, who knew it was coming, had been working on this. In fact, he's probably more worried than Eisenhower because he wasn't there. Roosevelt actually went off the weekend before and spent some time at Paul Watson's estate out near Monticello, Virginia, and they talked about what should he do, what should he say when he had to brief the American people that Overlord had begun. His daughter suggested a prayer. Roosevelt asked Grace Toley, his secretary, to start taking dictation, and then he pulled out his family's book of Common Prayer to try to get inspired. Grace ordnarly taped the final version of the prayer. Roosevelt practiced it on Sunday and was ready. Roosevelt on Monday, the fifth of June, goes back to the White House. That's the day originally scheduled. But it didn't happen, and Roosevelt continues to worry about it. General Marshall, who was the top American commander for the War Department, was not particularly nervous. He knew that Eisenhewer was competent. They knew that they'd been working at this thing now for a long time, and he was reasonably sure that it would work. Eisenhower, I think was concerned, but he wasn't particularly nervous. Eisenhower was a guy who believed in deep preparation and then in relaxing and assuming that things would work out all right. It's a wonderful scene of Eisenhower visiting paratroopers.

Now.

Now.

Remember he's ordering them to fly into France, jump out of the airplane in the dark, and in the process he had been warned by the British Royal Air Force officers that they should expect seventy percent casualties. That is, seven out of every ten young men he was sending in would die. And eisnear said that he hoped it wasn't true, but that we had to throw every thing we could at stopping the Germans. So Eisenhower is visiting a unit where his Air Force advisors have told him seven out every ten of these young people would probably die. And there's a very famous scene of Eisenhower. I was talking to a young soldier and he said where are you from? And he said, oh, I'm from Michigan. And eisner said, oh, I fly fish in Michigan, and the young guy said really, he said, I fly fish too, so said, no, this is how I cast. How do you do it? Eisenhower's literally standing there showing this young paratrooper how he would flick his hand to cast during fly fishing. And that's what got to be a picture. And nobody for years knew what he was talking about till somebody finally said, what are you doing? And you couldn't quite tell what he was up to. Well, what he was up to was getting everybody to relax, just be calm, do your job. As we're getting ready to land at Normandy. Something very positive happened on the fourth of June the Allied forces and at Rome. Now we have been fighting our way up the Italian peninsula. Italy has lots and lots of mountains, and it's a very hard peninsula to wage war in, very easy if you're on defense, and so we had slugged our way north and had several amphibious landings. Finally, on the fourth of June, Rome itself was liberated. We were very fortunate in that we had maneuvered around the Germans so that they did not destroy the city, but instead withdrew and pulled back as we occupied Rome. It gave Roosevelt something good to say to the American people. So on the night of the fifth of June, Roosevelt goes and has a fireside chat and talks about Italy and talks about the importance of the city of Rome.

Remember he's ordering them to fly into France, jump out of the airplane in the dark, and in the process he had been warned by the British Royal Air Force officers that they should expect seventy percent casualties. That is, seven out of every ten young men he was sending in would die. And eisnear said that he hoped it wasn't true, but that we had to throw every thing we could at stopping the Germans. So Eisenhower is visiting a unit where his Air Force advisors have told him seven out every ten of these young people would probably die. And there's a very famous scene of Eisenhower. I was talking to a young soldier and he said where are you from? And he said, oh, I'm from Michigan. And eisner said, oh, I fly fish in Michigan, and the young guy said really, he said, I fly fish too, so said, no, this is how I cast. How do you do it? Eisenhower's literally standing there showing this young paratrooper how he would flick his hand to cast during fly fishing. And that's what got to be a picture. And nobody for years knew what he was talking about till somebody finally said, what are you doing? And you couldn't quite tell what he was up to. Well, what he was up to was getting everybody to relax, just be calm, do your job. As we're getting ready to land at Normandy. Something very positive happened on the fourth of June the Allied forces and at Rome. Now we have been fighting our way up the Italian peninsula. Italy has lots and lots of mountains, and it's a very hard peninsula to wage war in, very easy if you're on defense, and so we had slugged our way north and had several amphibious landings. Finally, on the fourth of June, Rome itself was liberated. We were very fortunate in that we had maneuvered around the Germans so that they did not destroy the city, but instead withdrew and pulled back as we occupied Rome. It gave Roosevelt something good to say to the American people. So on the night of the fifth of June, Roosevelt goes and has a fireside chat and talks about Italy and talks about the importance of the city of Rome.

Ladies and gentlemen, The President of the United States, my friends, yesterday on June fourth, nineteen forty four, wrong fell.

Ladies and gentlemen, The President of the United States, my friends, yesterday on June fourth, nineteen forty four, wrong fell.

To American and Allied troops. The first of the access capitals is now in our hands. One up and two to go.

To American and Allied troops. The first of the access capitals is now in our hands. One up and two to go.

It's a victory speech. We've now captured the first of the fascist capitals. Our forces are on the march. Italy. Is a good sign. And of course, in the process of working our way up, we had drained a lot of German soldiers away from Russia and away from the Western Front, and that had been part of our strategy all along, was to force them to defend everywhere and to not be able to master their forces in any one place. The other thing they had been going on in preparation for landing was the tremendous air campaign. Eisenhower was determined to bomb the French railroad lines to stop the Germans from reinforcing the front. Show was against it, he said, because our bombers were pretty inaccurate back then. He said, we're going to kill a lot of civilians. The French will hate us for a generation. But General de Gaulle, who was the head of the Free French, intervened and said no. He said, I will make a speech at the right moment to the French people. If bombing the rail lines helps liberate us from the Nazis, then I am for doing whatever it takes to get the Nazis out of France. So with his support Eisenhower, who felt so strongly about this that he threatened to resign, and said, if I can't wage the battle I believe in, you need to get a new general because I'm not going to be responsible for not doing everything possible. I want to emphasize this. Everybody at the senior level understood this was the great test of the war. If we could land, if we could stay ashore, then sooner or later our build up from the ocean would be dramatically greater than the Germans' ability to build up by land using railroads and roads, and therefore eventually we would break out and eventually we would liberate all of France and ultimately fight our way into Germany. On the other hand, because the Germans also knew that they were going to do everything they could to throw us back into the water and to stop the invasion before it really got started, and they had signed Rommel, who had in some ways was their most famous general in the West, to really do everything he could to create what they called Fortress Europe. And they had built in all sorts of bunkers. They'd put in lots of concrete, they'd put in a lot of barboire, they'd put in obstacles under the water. One of the challenges was to be able to go in and blow up the obstacles so that the ships could actually get to the beach. A lot of what we today would probably call seals, but back then were underwater demolition teams. We're spending a lot of time on the fifth of June preparing to blow up these various obstacles so ships could literally get to the sand to begin to deliver tank and troops. The Germans also knew what were the places you could probably land that and they had put forces in those particular places, and the result was that at Omaha Beach. Now we ended up in a buzzsaw and lost a lot of people very quickly, were pinned down on the beach for several hours, and just gradually fought our way through. But this is where the sheer scale of the operation really mattered, because while the Germans were able to slow us down pretty dramatically at Omaha, there were four more beaches, and there were French, there were Polish, there were Canadian, there were and there were American forces who were all coming ashore simultaneously. In addition, both we and the British had dropped parachute divisions behind the lines, so they were there to cut off German reinforcements and to further unnerve the Germans because if you have people behind you, it makes it a little harder to focus on stopping people in front of you. So all of this is going on simultaneously, and to show you the scale of it, I'd like you to listen just for a minute to General Eisenhower's statement which he made on the radio in which they taped for which was read on every single ship before the landings began, and it gives you a sense of the seriousness with which you have to take this entire event.

It's a victory speech. We've now captured the first of the fascist capitals. Our forces are on the march. Italy. Is a good sign. And of course, in the process of working our way up, we had drained a lot of German soldiers away from Russia and away from the Western Front, and that had been part of our strategy all along, was to force them to defend everywhere and to not be able to master their forces in any one place. The other thing they had been going on in preparation for landing was the tremendous air campaign. Eisenhower was determined to bomb the French railroad lines to stop the Germans from reinforcing the front. Show was against it, he said, because our bombers were pretty inaccurate back then. He said, we're going to kill a lot of civilians. The French will hate us for a generation. But General de Gaulle, who was the head of the Free French, intervened and said no. He said, I will make a speech at the right moment to the French people. If bombing the rail lines helps liberate us from the Nazis, then I am for doing whatever it takes to get the Nazis out of France. So with his support Eisenhower, who felt so strongly about this that he threatened to resign, and said, if I can't wage the battle I believe in, you need to get a new general because I'm not going to be responsible for not doing everything possible. I want to emphasize this. Everybody at the senior level understood this was the great test of the war. If we could land, if we could stay ashore, then sooner or later our build up from the ocean would be dramatically greater than the Germans' ability to build up by land using railroads and roads, and therefore eventually we would break out and eventually we would liberate all of France and ultimately fight our way into Germany. On the other hand, because the Germans also knew that they were going to do everything they could to throw us back into the water and to stop the invasion before it really got started, and they had signed Rommel, who had in some ways was their most famous general in the West, to really do everything he could to create what they called Fortress Europe. And they had built in all sorts of bunkers. They'd put in lots of concrete, they'd put in a lot of barboire, they'd put in obstacles under the water. One of the challenges was to be able to go in and blow up the obstacles so that the ships could actually get to the beach. A lot of what we today would probably call seals, but back then were underwater demolition teams. We're spending a lot of time on the fifth of June preparing to blow up these various obstacles so ships could literally get to the sand to begin to deliver tank and troops. The Germans also knew what were the places you could probably land that and they had put forces in those particular places, and the result was that at Omaha Beach. Now we ended up in a buzzsaw and lost a lot of people very quickly, were pinned down on the beach for several hours, and just gradually fought our way through. But this is where the sheer scale of the operation really mattered, because while the Germans were able to slow us down pretty dramatically at Omaha, there were four more beaches, and there were French, there were Polish, there were Canadian, there were and there were American forces who were all coming ashore simultaneously. In addition, both we and the British had dropped parachute divisions behind the lines, so they were there to cut off German reinforcements and to further unnerve the Germans because if you have people behind you, it makes it a little harder to focus on stopping people in front of you. So all of this is going on simultaneously, and to show you the scale of it, I'd like you to listen just for a minute to General Eisenhower's statement which he made on the radio in which they taped for which was read on every single ship before the landings began, and it gives you a sense of the seriousness with which you have to take this entire event.

Soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, You are about to embark upon the 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 nineteen forty four. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of nineteen forty forty one. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats in open battle. Man de man Our heir 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 freemen 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 blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, You are about to embark upon the 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 nineteen forty four. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of nineteen forty forty one. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats in open battle. Man de man Our heir 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 freemen 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 blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

To me, this is always one of the most quietly heroic events that I've ever studied, because Eisenhower knew that even with those great words and even with those great troops, it could fail. And so Eisenhower, being a very methodical and responsible person, had sat down, written out a statement if it failed, and carried that statement in his pocket for the entire operation. Now, think about the moral courage knowing you're throwing one hundred and fifty six thousand troops at the beach, that you have mobilized, the Canadian, British and American forces, that your President and the Prime Minister have entrusted you with getting the job done, and yet you might have to turn to them and say it didn't work. And I want you to listen to how Eisenhower had written it and realized what moral courage it took because he didn't say the troops failed. He only said one person failed. He'd written the following, which he kept in his pocket for the entire day. Our landings in the Cherbourgjavre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold, and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air, in the Navy did all the bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone. Now that's courage. And he was prepared. I mean he understood that this could be an enormous success or it could be a stunning disaster. All day long, he seemed calm, understood what was going on, and he understood a key thing for senior leaders, which is, once you've done all the planning, once you've done all the training, once you've done all the preparation, try not to screw up the people who are implementing. They're too busy getting things done to talk to you. You have to have an enormous sense of scipline, which Eisenhower did. They waited patiently, and they began getting reports first that the paratroopers had landed and that the losses were dramatically lower than the experts had predicted. Instead of losing seventy percent, they were losing much more like ten percent. The paratroopers were out there actively doing what they had been trying to do. Now they were scattered all over the place. We still had not perfected nighttime landings in a combat zone. Remember, they didn't have GPS, they didn't have any kind of capacity to know where they were except using compasses, and the planes tended to scatter when anti aircraft guns fired at them. So people were being dropped all over the place. But they were rallying, they were getting organized, they were slowing down the Germans, and they were causing a great deal of disruption for the German command system. At the same time, Eisenauer was hearing back from the air forces who were over the beach. We had absolute air control. The once powerful Luftwaffe, the German air Force simply couldn't put up anybody that mattered. I think there only one or two German airplanes over Normandy Beach for the entire day. And we meanwhile have hundreds and hundreds of aircraft both strafing the Germans, bombing them, interdicting further inland. The Germans are trying to move units up to the front. They can't move them, something which Rammel had warned them about. Rammel had faced Allied airpower in North Africa, and he kept telling the German high command. Once the Americans started landing on the British start landing, you're not going to move people. They're going to cut you off with air power. And nobody in Berlin could quite understand. This was very different than the Russian Front. The Russian Front had enormous artillery, but the Russians did not have total air superiority. Eisnower knew all day that the landings were working, that we had problems at Omaha Beach, but that overall we were breaking through. We were gradually getting more and more forces ashore, and he was able to report that back through General Marshall to President Roosevelt, and that set the stage for the President, knowing that this great landing was succeeding, to go to the nation and to report to them. Now, just the day before he'd reported to them on the great victory in Rome, but that had been really sort of a political governmental report. It was not a sense of anxiety, not a sense of commitment. It was the President saying, Hey, we're winning, and here's what happened, and here's why Rome matters. Now, he had a different situation. He had well over one hundred thousand troops in combat. He was about to send more troops into combat, first at France and then at Germany, and so he wanted to speak with the American people in a way that would bring them together and would rally them. And that's why I've always believed that Roosevelt's radio address on the sixth of June should be really heard by people, just to remind them both that so much was at stake, so many people were at stake, and that we had a president who didn't mind praying and having everybody pray. So I want you to join me and listening to President Roosevelt's addressed to the nation in which he asked the whole country to join him in prayer for the young men who are risking their lives in France.

To me, this is always one of the most quietly heroic events that I've ever studied, because Eisenhower knew that even with those great words and even with those great troops, it could fail. And so Eisenhower, being a very methodical and responsible person, had sat down, written out a statement if it failed, and carried that statement in his pocket for the entire operation. Now, think about the moral courage knowing you're throwing one hundred and fifty six thousand troops at the beach, that you have mobilized, the Canadian, British and American forces, that your President and the Prime Minister have entrusted you with getting the job done, and yet you might have to turn to them and say it didn't work. And I want you to listen to how Eisenhower had written it and realized what moral courage it took because he didn't say the troops failed. He only said one person failed. He'd written the following, which he kept in his pocket for the entire day. Our landings in the Cherbourgjavre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold, and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air, in the Navy did all the bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone. Now that's courage. And he was prepared. I mean he understood that this could be an enormous success or it could be a stunning disaster. All day long, he seemed calm, understood what was going on, and he understood a key thing for senior leaders, which is, once you've done all the planning, once you've done all the training, once you've done all the preparation, try not to screw up the people who are implementing. They're too busy getting things done to talk to you. You have to have an enormous sense of scipline, which Eisenhower did. They waited patiently, and they began getting reports first that the paratroopers had landed and that the losses were dramatically lower than the experts had predicted. Instead of losing seventy percent, they were losing much more like ten percent. The paratroopers were out there actively doing what they had been trying to do. Now they were scattered all over the place. We still had not perfected nighttime landings in a combat zone. Remember, they didn't have GPS, they didn't have any kind of capacity to know where they were except using compasses, and the planes tended to scatter when anti aircraft guns fired at them. So people were being dropped all over the place. But they were rallying, they were getting organized, they were slowing down the Germans, and they were causing a great deal of disruption for the German command system. At the same time, Eisenauer was hearing back from the air forces who were over the beach. We had absolute air control. The once powerful Luftwaffe, the German air Force simply couldn't put up anybody that mattered. I think there only one or two German airplanes over Normandy Beach for the entire day. And we meanwhile have hundreds and hundreds of aircraft both strafing the Germans, bombing them, interdicting further inland. The Germans are trying to move units up to the front. They can't move them, something which Rammel had warned them about. Rammel had faced Allied airpower in North Africa, and he kept telling the German high command. Once the Americans started landing on the British start landing, you're not going to move people. They're going to cut you off with air power. And nobody in Berlin could quite understand. This was very different than the Russian Front. The Russian Front had enormous artillery, but the Russians did not have total air superiority. Eisnower knew all day that the landings were working, that we had problems at Omaha Beach, but that overall we were breaking through. We were gradually getting more and more forces ashore, and he was able to report that back through General Marshall to President Roosevelt, and that set the stage for the President, knowing that this great landing was succeeding, to go to the nation and to report to them. Now, just the day before he'd reported to them on the great victory in Rome, but that had been really sort of a political governmental report. It was not a sense of anxiety, not a sense of commitment. It was the President saying, Hey, we're winning, and here's what happened, and here's why Rome matters. Now, he had a different situation. He had well over one hundred thousand troops in combat. He was about to send more troops into combat, first at France and then at Germany, and so he wanted to speak with the American people in a way that would bring them together and would rally them. And that's why I've always believed that Roosevelt's radio address on the sixth of June should be really heard by people, just to remind them both that so much was at stake, so many people were at stake, and that we had a president who didn't mind praying and having everybody pray. So I want you to join me and listening to President Roosevelt's addressed to the nation in which he asked the whole country to join him in prayer for the young men who are risking their lives in France.

My fellow Americans, last night, when I spoke with you about the all of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far. And so in this poignant hour I ask you to join with me in prayer, Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation. This day of set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true, Give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard, for the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again. And we know that by Thy grace and by the righteousness of our cause, our suns will triumph. They will be soret cried by night and by day, without rest, until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war. For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end the conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home, some will never return. Embrace these father and receive them thy heroic servants into Thy kingdom. And for us at home, fathers, mothers, show wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them, Help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in THEE in this hour of great sacrifice. Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts. Give us strength to strengthen our daily tasks, to readdouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces. And let our hearts be stout to wait out the long travel, to bear sorrows that may come to impart our courage unto our sons, wheresoever they may be. And Oh Lord, give us faith, Give us faith in Thee, faith in our sons, faith in each other, faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, our temporal matters of but fleeting moment. Let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose. With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations, into a world unity that will spell a sure peace, a peace invulnerable to the schemings of our unworthy man, and a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest tile. They will be done, Almighty God. Amen.

My fellow Americans, last night, when I spoke with you about the all of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far. And so in this poignant hour I ask you to join with me in prayer, Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation. This day of set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true, Give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard, for the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again. And we know that by Thy grace and by the righteousness of our cause, our suns will triumph. They will be soret cried by night and by day, without rest, until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war. For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end the conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home, some will never return. Embrace these father and receive them thy heroic servants into Thy kingdom. And for us at home, fathers, mothers, show wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them, Help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in THEE in this hour of great sacrifice. Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts. Give us strength to strengthen our daily tasks, to readdouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces. And let our hearts be stout to wait out the long travel, to bear sorrows that may come to impart our courage unto our sons, wheresoever they may be. And Oh Lord, give us faith, Give us faith in Thee, faith in our sons, faith in each other, faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, our temporal matters of but fleeting moment. Let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose. With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations, into a world unity that will spell a sure peace, a peace invulnerable to the schemings of our unworthy man, and a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest tile. They will be done, Almighty God. Amen.

Now imagine that you were a mother or a father, a brother or a sister, a husband or a wife, and you're listening to that people you love are risking their lives doing something so terribly important that we have to win. I always thought one of the most fascinating points in that prayer was when he said many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I asked there are people to vote themselves into continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, their words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts. I think to really get a sense of the impact of that, you have to think back to a time when almost every family had somebody in the military, when we had mobilized fifteen million people. You didn't know what was happening, and so you're clinging to every piece of news you can get. And what President Roosevelt is trying to do is both give you an immediacy. This is happening now, and we should pray together now. But in addition, he understands that this fight's not going to end in a week or two, and in fact, of course, it goes on from June sixth, nineteen forty four to May the eighth, nineteen forty five, and we have a number of very tough fights in that period, and so he wants to condition people together to be committed to praying for our troops. I wanted to share with you both the importance of Normandy Well. I also wanted to share with you that here is a president who nonetheless felt that at a time of great crisis, it was totally authentic and totally legitimate to invite every American to pray for their loved ones, recognizing that when you have eleven percent of the country in uniform, virtually every American had a loved one who was genuinely at risk. I think that these kind of historic dates D Day the sixth of June is a good example, are important lessons for people. What did it take to be free? What did it take to defeat tyranny? What was the nature of the people who had that kind of courage and who then, by the way, quietly came back home, took the gi bill, went to school, got married, they raised their children, They had a good life. They are the greatest generation because they were committed to their country and to their fellow Americans for virtually their whole lifetime. It survived the Great Depression, that survived the Second World War. They're the people who created the framework to win the Cold War, and in the process they made America the most prosperous nation in history did an immense amount of good in a wide range of ways. And my hope is that you will take a little time every d Day to think about what it's taken to be free, the risks that we have to take, the sacrifices we have to make, and the power of bringing all of us together in prayer for a great cause and what was in fact a genuine crusade. Thank you for listening. You can read more about D Day and FDR's prayer on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Mitch World is produced by Gangward three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarns Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks the team at Gingrich three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newts World can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingrichthree sixty dot com. Slash newsletter I'm Newt gingrich, This is newtsworld.

Now imagine that you were a mother or a father, a brother or a sister, a husband or a wife, and you're listening to that people you love are risking their lives doing something so terribly important that we have to win. I always thought one of the most fascinating points in that prayer was when he said many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I asked there are people to vote themselves into continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, their words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts. I think to really get a sense of the impact of that, you have to think back to a time when almost every family had somebody in the military, when we had mobilized fifteen million people. You didn't know what was happening, and so you're clinging to every piece of news you can get. And what President Roosevelt is trying to do is both give you an immediacy. This is happening now, and we should pray together now. But in addition, he understands that this fight's not going to end in a week or two, and in fact, of course, it goes on from June sixth, nineteen forty four to May the eighth, nineteen forty five, and we have a number of very tough fights in that period, and so he wants to condition people together to be committed to praying for our troops. I wanted to share with you both the importance of Normandy Well. I also wanted to share with you that here is a president who nonetheless felt that at a time of great crisis, it was totally authentic and totally legitimate to invite every American to pray for their loved ones, recognizing that when you have eleven percent of the country in uniform, virtually every American had a loved one who was genuinely at risk. I think that these kind of historic dates D Day the sixth of June is a good example, are important lessons for people. What did it take to be free? What did it take to defeat tyranny? What was the nature of the people who had that kind of courage and who then, by the way, quietly came back home, took the gi bill, went to school, got married, they raised their children, They had a good life. They are the greatest generation because they were committed to their country and to their fellow Americans for virtually their whole lifetime. It survived the Great Depression, that survived the Second World War. They're the people who created the framework to win the Cold War, and in the process they made America the most prosperous nation in history did an immense amount of good in a wide range of ways. And my hope is that you will take a little time every d Day to think about what it's taken to be free, the risks that we have to take, the sacrifices we have to make, and the power of bringing all of us together in prayer for a great cause and what was in fact a genuine crusade. Thank you for listening. You can read more about D Day and FDR's prayer on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Mitch World is produced by Gangward three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarns Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks the team at Gingrich three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newts World can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingrichthree sixty dot com. Slash newsletter I'm Newt gingrich, This is newtsworld.