Carthago. Delenda asked, hello and welcome to Everything's Political. I'm your host
tay A Shoemake. You can find us online at Everything's Political dot substack dot
com. The email address for the show is podcast at Everything's Political dot org.
Shout out to Magic Man, Joe Strecker, the General Dwight D.
Eisenhower of podcast Producers. The thing about all the power Beatle, it isn't
the big decisions that weigh heavy. Hell, you decide to invade Russia a
dinner, pick Waterloo for battle on a whim. It's the details, the
small stuff. It's easy to gamble a million lies. It's hard it is
to see how that can hurt one single person. And if you can't keep
that straight, well you lose your humanity. I'll watch you. I couldn't
say, sir, indeed, General you know, Ike wasn't perfect, none
of us are. But I can confidently say that we don't have generals like
that anymore. And you've been like before Joe, who was a brilliant strategist,
excellent general through that campaign. But I wanted to bring him up again
because today is a seventy nine anniversary of D Day. The invasion on the
beaches of Normandy, Operation Overlord, as that entire day was called. And
wow, when I think about the impact and I juxtapose that era just two
generations ago with today, Frankly, Joe, I get a little melancholy,
And at the end of the melancholy, I get just a bit bolder in
my approach, if you can believe it. You know, one of our
favorite quotes here is from Aldus Huxley, who wrote A Brave New World,
and he said that men do not learn the important lessons of history is one
of the most important of all the lessons history has to teach. Indeed,
So I want to look a little bit at this history, this amazing history
of the greatest generation that fought and won this war, and a few ancillary
and tertiary reaches of this campaign that we may be familiar with today, or
that we may recognize today, So as we are giving them all the credit,
those brave heroes, those young men who got out of those Higgins craft
boats. I also want to connect dots in order to remind ourselves of the
lessons of history. So I hope you'll bear with me here. You know,
D Day really was a three pronged approach with the psyops campaign on the
side that kind of undergirded the military might. So we fought air, we
fought by land, we fought by sea, and around midnight on D Day
is when the air Force campaign. Actually the air Force wasn't officially founded yet,
I don't think so. It was the Army Aircraft Division that was working
in collusion with the Canadian planes the British planes, and they proceeded to attack
targets along the French coastline there. Okay, when we say the beaches of
Normandy, Normandy is a region, okay, in northern northwestern Europe, and
the beaches are right, just the separate beaches Utah Omaha, Juno, Gold
and a Sword, I think. And the D Day assault for the airplanes
was to attack the coastline and also dropped paratroopers behind enemy lines. And that
I believe was for two reasons, one to work inland, but also to
act as reinforcements for when the Higgins boats approached the beach for the land assault,
and that was precarious because the weather was so unpredictable during those times.
Okay, so you know how they say you can have a low ceiling with
a cloud bank, which means you don't have to go up very far to
be in the cloud bank. Right, They call that a low ceiling,
I believe in the aviation industry. And so when those types of clouds rolled
in, sometimes the planes had to fly lower in order to get where they
were supposed to be, or to drop their paratroopers. Either to attack the
targets or drop their paratroopers. Well, that made them vulnerable to the Germans
on the ground who were shooting at them. And moreover, the paratroopers if
they were too low, some of them hit the ground without even their parachutes
opening and they just died on impact. So again those who did land were
able to regroup, and then they fought to block the Germans again, who
were either sending reinforcements to utah Omaha, because Hitler thought that they were going
to attack up near Calais. Calais, France is the most narrow point on
the France side of the English Channel between England and France. Part of the
Psyop campaign was actually acting like that's where the war was going to be conducted,
or the land assault was going to be conducted, and so Hitler had
much of his reinforcements there and again the task, the objective of Operation Overlord
was to gain a foothold in France right that the Nazis occupied, so that
the Allied forces could push inwards towards Central Europe and then just start knocking over
targets right dismantling Hitler's regime. And this initial aerial assault helped clear the inland
path for the Allies and towards that end right toward the liberation of France.
The land assault man this is this is what you see mostly on the movies
Joe and Saving Private Ryan or Ike count down to D Day again. I
think that was in two thousand and four that series came out. Highly recommend
it. That's the clip at the beginning of the show, and that's when
a lot of these or brings a lot of these iconic images when we think
of D Day of the soldiers wading through water, you know, the front
load ramps dropping from the Higgins boats and soldiers storming the beach and wading through
minds that the Nazis had laid there to sabotage them. We think our men
scaling up these impossibly high cliffs, you know, with tanks sinking in the
ocean and planes flying absolute craziness. So as the air and sea campaigns worked
together, I think it was they started at midnight getting to their locations,
dropping their targets, their paratroopers, trying to clear the beaches of as many
mines as they could before our men approached the beaches in the Higgins boats.
And that worked in concert right for those thousands of soldiers to give them as
much cover as possible. And again, the US was mainly involved with Utah
and Omaha beaches, while the British and Canadian forces tackled the others that I
just mentioned Juno Sword in Gold And because the weather and the tide schedule had
been so unpredictable, many of the US landing crafts, those Higgins boats ran
aground on sandbars. So imagine that that's all the further that you have to
go. Once that load ramp drops in the front of the boat, you
can imagine those Higgins boats. I think Joe carried thirty six soldiers, well
four crew members, I think, and so I always envisioned a four across
by eight array of soldiers that would plow out of these out of these Higgins
boats and storm the beaches. And frankly, I don't know that's a courage.
You talk about courage. You're going over the English Channel. Lord knows
how big the swells were. I mean, I've I've read ranges from you
know, two to three meters. That's a big swell. And they couldn't
always see land in those boats, so a lot of them are hurling.
Now, imagine hurling your guts out because you're seasick. That front ramp drops
and you've got to go out and storm the beach. Moreover, two or
three guys that just went ahead of you took bullets between the ice, and
you're eighteen to twenty two some years old. You're in a foreign country,
called upon by your country to stop evil that wants to dominate the world.
Man, can you imagine that courage today? Joe, Well, I can
only imagine it. So if they made it past the sea sickness, and
if they made it past the guy, you know, imagine having to step
over the guy in front of you on or over in order to get to
your next destination, which could have been having to scale a cliff while people
are shooting at you to get to the destination. Of the Nazis to take
over the beach. And I don't know if any of you remember Reagan's speech
about the Boys of Planto Hoc, but they were part of the sea campaign,
and they were the USS Texas, the Satterly in Talibant, and they
kept a steady rain of fire in order to rescue the injured. They supported
the Ranger battalions. Those were the Rangers, the badass Rangers that were scaling
those cliffs, and they were doing that so that they could disable the German
guns that secured the beach for the Germans. And eventually they accomplished the mission,
but while at a cost. According to my notes from several years back,
of the men two hundred and fifty five men who landed on that beach
the Rangers, only ninety six survived. So they were part of the sea
campaign. Land, air, see, weather, radio, communications, A
lot of things worked to their favor, to the Allied forces favor, and
ultimately they were able to break through inland, secure those beaches, break through
inland secure France, liberate France, and ultimately and the war liberate Europe.
And when I consider that verb to liberate, that is really the difference.
And Reagan says that in his speech, and it's such a great distinction.
As I've mentioned and before, we like to think God is always on our
side and we can do whatever we want, whether it's domestically or on foreign
soil. But those boys over there, eighteen to twenty some year old boys
that storm the beaches of Normandy, the rangers that scaled those cliffs, they
were there to liberate. And do you know why, because they didn't want
it coming on their land. And it's a damn shame that what passes for
general now uses that very excuse to send our young men and women to die
overseas. And we've done it too much. There was one other aspect of
the strategy here, and I'm going to read the notes. I think it's
in this day or on this day in nineteen forty four, and according to
America in World War two, which is a magazine during the prosecution of that
war, took place the greatest deceptive enterprise ever seen in a war. That's
a pretty grand charge, and that took place in England. I think there
was a movie made, Joe the Man that never existed or something like that.
It's a very old movie. Before our time. But it was about
the radio program that was used to spread misinformation to the Nazis in favor of
the Allies, and it was deception. Here this piece says deception was the
name of the game on a massive scale. It included an imaginary army of
a million men, supposedly led by America's General George Patton. And they do
cover this in that series Ike countdown to D Day, and they had him
headquartered in England across from Kelais, where Hitler thought most of the enforcements were
going. So they used double agents, bogus radio transmissions and many other means
to create this deception. Now I want you to pay attention to this next
part. Tent cities. Tent cities were created all over eastern England. There
were fake mess halls, hospitals, AMMO depots, and even sewage treatment farms.
Fuel depots were constructed in parks for trucks, tanks, jeeps and ambulances
and they were all laid out like the buildings. The tanks, trucks,
and other vehicles were made of fabric and wood or were rubber inflatables, and
the soldiers used tools to make tread and tire marks for the benefit of spying
German planes. So they allowed these planes to take pictures of what they thought
was real. And folks, I gotta tell you, as soon as I
read that tent cities, the first thing that popped into my mind were the
triage and quarantine cities at the beginning of COVID were never used. History rhymes
and we need to learn the important lessons of history. This piece continues.
On top of all that, the deceptions extended to England's ports and waterways with
the help of the British movie industry. So they employed a Hollywood type industry
huh, which was called to make fleets of dummy landing craft. The resulting
vessels, made of wood or fabric and floating on oil drums, were moored
in harbors and rivers and looked convincing to the German pilots at thirty thousand feet.
So all of that again shifted German attention away from Normandy. And that,
in addition to the other plans, was when Eisenhower gave the order for
the invasion to begin. So I genuinely believe our men were intent on liberating
Europe. They didn't want anything. They weren't there to conquer. They weren't
there to dominate. They did not want world domination. And I can't help
but note the irony that that very evil, the desires world domination, has
manifested and resurfaced in each of the allied powers that stopped its first attempt Canada,
England, the US. Yes, there were other countries, but those
were the main three. And that's a tough pill to swallow. That alongside
the fact that I'm not sure, Joe, I know thirty six men or
even thirty two men that would recognize that same evil in our own country,
the psyops that has been turned against our own people and perfected because, as
we stated before, our enemies, enemies of liberty, learned from their mistakes
and right when we think there is a lull in the action, that is
merely the deep breath before the plunge, because they're trying to hone in their
skills for the next attack. So do you know thirty two men, Joe,
that recognize that? Additionally, do you know thirty two men that would
step off that LCVP after three people in front of them got shot in the
head. I don't think I do. And that's a problem that the best
we can do is learn the lessons of history try to be more strategic with
them. And it occurs to me that our founding fathers actually wrote letters back
and forth about Sparta, Athens, the Persians. They knew that a great
empire that outnumbers you, outguns you, or whatever their warfare is at the
time, they can be defeated with strategy. There were people that thought the
war for American independence was ludicrous. They didn't want to fight it. It's
the British Empire. It's the largest empire in the world. They outnumber us,
they outgun us, And the founders said, there are some things worth
dying for, and if you don't have the freedom, what do you have.
I think we knew that in World War two, and if nowhere else,
certainly on that beach, the beaches of an Omaha was I believe it
was Omaha that was particularly overloaded with German reinforcements. We were outnumbered and outgunned,
but small pockets of men who were persistent persevered to ultimately take that beachhead.
It's a miracle. It is a dagon miracle, just like us seceding
from the British Empire. That was a Dagon miracle, just like Greece against
the Persian Empire. That was it does not take a majority to prevail,
but a small, tireless minority to stir the brush fires of liberty in the
minds of men. I believe that was Samuel Adams. Got to keep persevering.
We got to keep getting off that Higgins boats may not be a bullet.
It might who knows the power structure does not like to be challenged.
But metaphorically, their bullets are cancelization. And I'm done with that. I've
been done with that. Keep the men on that beach in mind, if
only for today, And when you get intimidated or perhaps a little shy about
speaking your mind, you don't have to speak it like I do. But
just think that there is a price for liberty. There's another quote. I'm
going to probably massecure it, but it's a massacre it Thomas Payne. Those
who expect to reap the blessings of liberty must, like men, undergo the
tasks to preserve it. There were real men during the War for Independence.
There were real men on the beaches of Normandy. We thank them and all
who serve this country. Okay, we're going to stop there. We have
updates for you next time on Oh the Crazy Mayor in New York City and
on our other initiative, homeschool Ready or Not dot com. But I do
want to leave you with Reagan's speech part of it, and I want to
thank you for listening. Thank you as always too, Magic man Joe Strecker.
Until next time, who will stand at either hand and keep the bridge
with me? Have a great day. Forty summers have passed since the battle
that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs.
Some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life
before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why why did you do it?
Well? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self preservation and
risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the
armies that met here. We look at you, and somehow we know the
answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love. The
men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that
they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy
on this beachhead or on the next It was the deep knowledge, and pray
God, we have not lost it, that there is a profound moral difference
between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.
You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those
others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt the
u N. Reporting world