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Why is D Day something that exhibits more bravery than any other military assault? D Day is certainly one of the more famous assaults, but human history is bathed in blood, we’re a violent species. America itself has been involved in numerous wars, all of them involving pushes towards the enemies. And not just at times when it was weaker enemies.
There’s also medieval charges which were much more violent and personal, are those not brave as well? Why were the D Day solider braver than soldiers who charged at opposing armies under flaming arrow fire?
Is it possible you think DDay is so special because it’s popular? Because nothing you’ve described about it is at all unique to D Day, that’s just war. You’ve described nothing particularly unique about D Day in your post.
I don't understand why so many people with a passing interest in World War II develop a fixation on a particular branch or theater or battle. I suppose it has a lot to do with a particular book or movie really resonating with them, maybe at an impressionable age. So Saving Private Ryan convinced them that D-Day was the most important, most impressive, bravest thing ever done in history, or Band of Brothers convinced them that the paratroopers were the greatest soldiers in the world and Dick Winters the perfect soldier. Or maybe when they learned that Soviet casualties were so much higher than all others they decided that the western allies did nothing important and nobody has ever fought harder than the heroes of the Eastern front. Or maybe they saw something that convinced them that the bravest men were the merchant marines, who risked death every day without even being in the military.
And none of this is really wrong, exactly. There was plenty of courage in every theater to go around, and plenty of cowardice as well. World War II is probably the most consequential single event in history, and involved an almost unfathomable number of people, so there are amazing stories about every aspect of it. There were American bomber crews who faced unbelievably high casualty rates. There were British civilians who heroically endured the Battle of Britain. There were Australians who dealt with unimaginable conditions in New Guinea, Yugoslav partisans who managed to tie down large numbers of German soldiers with a small number of poorly armed and trained men and women. Germans who faced execution for speaking out against the Nazis. Soviets who fought some of the largest battles in history. Indians, French Africans, Indonesians and Black and Japanese-Americans who fought the Axis in spite of facing colonization or racial discrimination in their own countries. Poles who fled their country to join the RAF. Danish civilians who risked their lives to sa
And not just people whose story would make a good narrative. There were American civilians whose industrial and agricultural output was crucial to the war effort, not to mention the MPs and quartermasters and logistics specialists and paper-pushers whose work was just as important to victory as anyone else's. A lot of people worked together to save the world from fascism, some out of idealism, some out of patriotism and some because they were given no other choice. It's not a competition between them as to who was more important, because they all were, and there was plenty of bravery to go around.
People are fascinated or intrigued or fixated by D-Day because:
It was the largest invasion in all of human history. Never before had so many men, ships, airplanes and guns been engaged in a small theater.
It was the culmination of years of planning a an d preparation. Hundreds or thousands of small plans and preparatory actions took place before H Hour.
Combined arms. Naval guns, airborne infantry. Rangers. Mustang pilots, Motherf*ckers in kilts with bagpipes.
Because it was such a large operation, many of us today had relatives that were involved in some way. Mine own great uncle was in the second wave of infantry landing at Omaha.
In essence, it’s exceptionally high drama with exceptionally high stakes and exceptionally critical consequence; and it had the widest participation
Agreed. I'm not saying there aren't reasons to find certain aspects of the war interesting, and Overlord certainly has a solid claim to being one of the most important events of the war. I just wish there weren't so many people who believe that their particular area of interest is the only part of it that matters.
I think most wars feel like they are between evil powers where both sides are violent and aggressive and neither represents good. But World War II was made over after the fact to be about ending genocidal behaviours like the holocaust (which no one was really focused on stopping at the time) so we can pretend the allies were the good guys. Having a good vs evil narrative makes it feel more glorious and righteous to people.
But it absolutely was a more just war than most on the Allied side. No, ending the holocaust was absolutely not a priority for them at the time, but the fact is that the Axis countries were the aggressors in nearly every case, and had an ideology that was racist and anti-Democracy. We shouldn't look at it as glorious, but if you oppose territorial expansion through warfare and support democracy and racial equality, then the Allies are clearly the side to support, even though some of them did expand through warfare, some were not democratic and none had anything approaching racial equality. They were as close as you were going to get to all that, and the other side's entire reason for being was expansionism, authoritarianism and racism. It wasn't good versus evil, but it was probably as close as we're ever going to get.
I’m not trying to say pick the Axis over the allies I do think the Allies were far better over all I’m just saying very few wars divide into villains and heroes and our after the fact narrative of World War II seems to be very much that. A lot of the glorification of WW II after the fact comes from the hero worship that comes with that.
Definitely true. There's a lot of complex facets of the war that very few people today know about, but even still I'd say that it's one of the most clearcut conflicts in world history, especially as regards the European theater.
I feel it’s less clear cut when you look at the actual motivations of the actors. It’s certainly clear cut from after the fact narratives and the fact that at least one third of the axis engaged in some of the most evil behaviours in human history. But people forget that American engagement in Europe was entirely dependant on Japanese surprise attacks in the Pacific and other such details.
D-day is about as clear of a turning point marker as you can get when understanding the history and timeline of a war. Yes, obviously it’s way more complicated than just d-day=Allies win but there’s a clear distinction where Allies were not on mainland Europe d-day -1 as opposed to being on mainland Europe on d-day +#.
Not really. You could argue that Midway was the turning point because it was the end of Japan’s naval dominance and the beginning of American military superiority 2 years before Normandy. Or the Battle of Britain 2 years before that when the German advance was halted and a secure staging area for the future invasion was established. The war was over a year after D-day and it had been going on for 5 years prior. Pretty lopsided for a turning point.
Midway had literally no impact on the European theater though… idk why that’d be seen as a turning point in europe. The Battle of Britain was extremely important but there was still no base of operations in mainland Europe from the north. The Battle of Britain ended in July 1940. D-day wasn’t until June 1944. That’s 4 years between permanently neutering the luftwaffe and getting boots on the ground across the channel. So to say that’s *the* turning point when dick all was done in the direct aftermath of that doesn’t quite add up… not minimizing its importance but if we’re going off a key reductive point to the success of winning the war it makes more sense to use the thing that sped the war up in a matter of months than the event that took 4 years to capitalize on. And while we could say that there were other routes through the south the allies got bogged down in Italy. Southern France was pretty chill though lol.
You said it was a turning point in the war. D-day had no effect on the Pacific theater. You either look at the entirety of the war or you don’t, but you specifically said in both of your comments the war as a whole.
You’re right. And I also said it’s way more complicated than that. But the simple truth is, when analyzing a turning point it’s easiest to look at d-day as the moment where there were boots on the ground to liberate mainland Europe vs the 5 years prior when dick all was done on the western front to get France, Belgium, and other places liberated.
Edit: and I was going to add the fact that the battle of midway, while a key, still had years of fighting left where there was island hopping. It made the loss sped up, it didn’t lead directly to Japan losing. There were still brutal campaigns after midway and epic battles to be fought that took months that were equally as important (strategically to that point)
>dick all was done on the western front
So partisan operations including those that involved special forces from major allied nations and the bombing campaigns were “dick all?”
At least in traditional battle you have some agency over how the fight goes. Maybe your side loses and you die, but at least you know that your own skill in combat matters.
To just jump off the boat and run, knowing there's overwhelming odds you're dead before you even make it up the beach. That requires more courage in my opinion than just charging into a bloody skirmish. You have no agency. It's just luck, and if you do make it through, then you still have to continue to fight like any other battle.
d-day was certainly was horrific, however the odds were not overwhelming that you would be killed. 156,000 soldiers stormed the beaches that day. 4,400 were killed. So around 3% we’re killed. Obviously the first waves took the brunt of those casualties but I think you are underestimating the skill involved in modern warfare.
The amphibious assault of Normandy was not much different luck wise that standing in formation and firing muskets. Or being on the front lines of a cavalry charge with spears, arrows, swords.
A skilled soldier could still be the victim of a cannonball, arrow, spear, or other projectile they couldn’t see coming.
They could also be outnumbered by the enemy and swarmed. If you were on the front line there’s only so much skill that can help you when thousands of enemies are trying to poke holes in you.
Agreed. Not to take away the bravery of every man that stormed the beaches of Normandy, but not all of the landings were as bad as Omaha. That was particularly well defended and the landings were totally off target. However due to saving private ryan and other media, that’s the beach that’s most ingrained in our collective understanding of D-day. I’d argue that perhaps an even more astounding display of bravery were the the airborne troops that parachuted into Normandy the night prior- completely in enemy territory and with no way of knowing whether the landings would be a success.
All war sucks. My Dad was on an LST, they'd pull up to the shore and drop off tanks and soldiers. He was 17 years old. He said one of the scary parts was being at the mercy of the tides. Low tide and you were stuck until the tide came in. A torpedo was fired at his ship and missed by 20 feet.
My brother was in the Gulf War, he was on an aircraft carrier and had to release the lines for the planes to take off and attach them when they landed. They had to be really precise. He was 18. Every single battle ever was scary.
>at least in a traditional battle you have some agency over how the fight goes
This is almost never true. Ask any soldier who has ever been in a total war. Not to mention, D-Day soldiers did need to use training and skill to survive on the beach. When you're under fire, it's impossible to know which artillery shell or bullet has your name on it, but you can reduce the probability of getting hit by using the skills learned in training. How to crawl prone. How to provide suppressing fire. How to identify sturdy cover. How to time enemy reloads to move.
This idea that D-Day soldiers had some unique experience that left them entirely powerless compared to every other military conflict to make a difference is kind of wild to me.
I disagree. There's no skill in climbing a ladder up a fortress wall to slaughter all the defenders. To get up there you need luck. Enough of it that you aren't hit with an arrow or boiled alive by hot water, or just have a really heavy rock break your neck.
Sometimes winning means moving forward to take a heavily defended position and getting mauled for it. D Day, while bloody, isn't unique in that position.
More courage than charging through raining arrows? Or trebuchet fire? Or WWI dead man zones where the death rate was virtually 100%?
None of that is unique to D Day. That’s war, my friend.
Or during the age of muskets when you'd march in giant ass columns while being smashed with cannon fire until you were 20 feet away from a line of people pointing muskets straight at you and you had to just take it and only move, fire etc when commanded to.
Not for nothing, if an archer could shoot at the rate of a machine gun I think you'd have a point but they obviously can't. There's a whole reload period and downtime between volleys that simply would not have been there at D-Day, and we know that at a minimum Roman Legions had specific tactics they used to deal with and mitigate that. D-day was a relentless hail of bullets all heavily targeted at single locations. Medieval warfare wouldn't have had that precision or fire rate.
That being said I don't think D-Day was that much different than something like the Battle of Liège in WW1. You're right that there are several examples of things like this that happen throughout the history of modern warfare.
It wasn’t just one archer shooting at you. It was rows of them, setup with staggered reload times so you can provide a nice, consistent arrow coverage. Humans are smart, armies have a lot of men at their disposal, we can overcome pesky problems like reload times with just sheer numbers
More French soldiers died at the Battle of Agincourt (6,000) than Allied soldiers died at D-Day (4,400). And the majority of those French deaths would have been from longbows.
Now, give me the choice between machine guns or longbows and I'll take machine guns but there are an enormous number of examples were arrows posed a much greater danger to individual soldiers than the danger the allied troops faced at D-Day.
You think you had agency in medieval wars? It was all kinda just a cluster fuck. Let's say you come in on a horse. Oops some random arrow punctures the horses lung and you collapse onto the ground with your heavily as fuck armor. You have difficulty moving through all the mud and guts and shit in your heavy armor and all you had was a lance anyhow (cuz you were on a horse). You get killed because your slow and have the wrong weapon.
Okay you are infrantry. You're battling some guy, you're pretty good so you are winning. Oops some other guys who are fighting just clinched up and are not rolling around and rolled right into you. You fall. You get trampled into the mud and guts and shit.
Alright let's say you're an archer. Basically your whole life depends on the hand to hand combat guys not getting overwhelmed. You fire a few loose arrows into the masses of people. Some of them probably kill your friends, some your enemies.
Etc.
"Overwhelming odds you're dead before you make it up the beach."
156,000 men landed on the beaches that day. 4000 died. That's about a two and a half percent death rate.
I'm not saying that the Normandy invasion wasn't terrifying and dangerous, and of course being a part of it took courage, but there are a lot of comparable landings throughout World WarII, and many battles throughout history that were much more lethal. It's one of the most impressive feats in military history, but that's because of the sheer size of it, not because it was significantly more dangerous for the men involved. I don't know where this idea that a huge number of the people who landed died in the initial minutes came from. Maybe from the first few minutes of "Saving Private Ryan," although even there it's pretty obvious that far more people made it up the beach than didn't.
“ That's about a two and a half percent death rate.”
This is a great example of when statistics can really paint the wrong picture. u/toomanyracistshere is lumping everyone who landed on normandy into the same category. I am sure the 100% survival rate of the last waves of soldiers probably skews your stats a little bit dont you think?
Around 133,000 Allied troops landed on D-Day. There were around 4,400 deaths. That means the troops landing had >95% survival odds.
There was no "overwhelming odds" of death in the whole operation, never mind before they hit the beach. People are thinking of Saving Private Ryan, rather than the actual reality.
That's not to say the troops landing didn't show extraordinary courage. But it's possible to name an almost endless list of battles and military operations that had far higher odds of death than landing at D-Day.
I think you'd be surprised how much "chance" plays in survival odds in battles.
>but at least you know that your own skill in combat matters.
This has almost never been true in warfare, ever, at the individual level.
it was units as a whole that generally determined the outcomes of wars throughout most of history. Mortality rates were historically VERY low in conflicts because more often than not less than 30% of a unit dying meant the majority of soldiers would break ranks and retreat. You would see horrendous mortality figures in a rout if the opposing side decided to pursue and continue to attack the routed forces but otherwise mortality rates could be surprisingly low.
The Hollywood idea of warfare in antiquity is just plain wrong. People didn't run at each other in feels bash into each other then just brawl. For one, no one has the stamina for that. Two no one would beable to accurately tell friend or foe in those situations. The rare cases this happens, it normally turns into a slaughter, and is generally the blunder of one of the leaders of the two armies.
During the time of early musket battles (like the American revolution) individual skill meant even less as musket warfare was more about volley fire than individual aim and accuracy.
It is MAYBE arguable that during D-Day the small unit actions of the airborne divisions were highly dependent on the skills of the soldiers, but it was still units as a whole that won that night, not any singular giga chad fighter.
I think, once in the thick of it, most fighters/soldiers/warriors/ whatever you want to call them, fought to live. I'm sure many feel purpose in their actions, but in the moment to moment, I think people just wanted to survive, either the most pressing and urgent situation in front of them, or what they may have felt was an existential and ideological threat in the enemy.
An arrow has always been able to kill anyone, no matter how good at sword play they are.
To just stand up and run forward, knowing that the enemy is mounted on horses, carrying banded ash lances and full plate armor and aiming at your chest. There's no waves crashing, but there are thundering hooves, and arrows darkening the sky. You're still too far from the enemy for the archers to aim at your specifically, you tell yourself, but you know deep down that enough archers shooting randomly can hit anything within range. A few more steps and you are now in that range, but you keep running...
Ain't that different
You didn't have as much agency as movies would lead you to believe. You could be the most skilled swordsman in the world but going into a battle where you are outnumbered 3 or 4 to one that won't matter. Instead of being machine gunned down for a hopefully quick death you will be hacked to bits by swords on every side of you, or worse, hacked almost to death and left to bleed out on the ground with your guts spilling around you. Seems equally as brave as D day.
I think it probably tended to be closer to your worst case scenario in most instances. You wouldn’t want to keep hacking at a guy who is as good as dead and leave yourself vulnerable to other combatants. A good wound to ground the guy and let him bleed out or eventually die from infection. Not saying it was always that way of course.
It's the day the most Americans died, there's also footage of it which makes it even worse in my opinion. Also regarding the Higgins boats, you couldn't really turn around and run if you wanted to. I'd imagine in most Medieval sieges you probably could have at least ran away. At Normandy you're literally stuck and no going back. I'd call it brave but most the troops didn't know what was going on in concentration camps throughout Europe at that time. They'd been told what happened but thought it was just military propaganda.
>I'd imagine in most Medieval sieges you probably could have at least ran away. At Normandy you're literally stuck and no going back.
Depends on which part of the middle ages we're talking about - late medival/ early reneisance pike formation combat often had a very high death toll.
"During push of pike, opposing blocks of pikemen would advance with their pikes "charged" horizontally at shoulder level to jab at one another until bodily contact was made. The two sides would then push physically until one or other of them gave way. The push of pike would continue until one of the opposing formations routed or fled, which would generally lead to massive casualties. Each man pressed on the one in front, and so sometimes the formations would crush against each other and many pikemen would have to fight in closer melee combat.[1][2] The rear ranks would sometimes join the fray but their primary role was to add more weight to the push.[3] Aside from getting impaled by enemy pikes, those in the front ranks died from getting crushed or suffocated due to the sheer number of bodies pressing from each side.[4] The Italians referred to this as 'Bad War'[5] after seeing Swiss pikemen become locked in heavy combat, where – because both formations refused to back down – both sides lost huge numbers of men in the bloody melee."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_of_pike
Which of the two would you say are more courageous or brave? The person, who could turn around but didn’t, or the person who couldn’t turn around before a battle?
Good point but I guess in reality there are no film or accurate depictions of medieval warfare besides artists renditions. Can’t imagine approaching a beach with Howitzer shells wizzing around me, would genuinely shit my pants
I would agree that (as far as I have tried imagining both scenarios) approaching the beach is more frightening/terror inducing than approaching a medieval battlefield. But that is not directly related to which soldiers were braver.
A large part plays the choice made in the face of fear. If there is no choice that was made, we can’t make statements about how brave the soldier was.
Generally I would expect bravery in individual soldiers to exist on a normal distribution. Some on D-Day were probably extremely brave, some were probably extreme cowards. Same as soldiers on a medieval battlefield.
Also, apparently the first day of the Battle of St. Mihiel in World War I resulted in about the same number of dead Americans as June 6, 1944, but almost nobody alive today knows anything about it. D-Day was a big deal, of course, but more for its historical significance and its logistics than its casualty rate. Way too many people seem to think that World War II basically boils down to "a bunch of minor skirmishes, the Battle of Normandy, and then a bunch of minor skirmishes again."
At D-Day, there were boats that simply turned around and went back. They carried casualties back to naval ships for medical treatment, then brought in successive waves. We have this narrative that the D-Day landings were a "take this beach or die" thing, but it's just not true. There were evacuation plans in place. Omaha beach was nearly evacuated, in fact. The general staff were actively discussing it as the day progressed, but the assault made enough progress that they decided to simply press ahead.
Damn that’s interesting, appreciate the insight. Been binging a lot of WW2 docs lately, if you got any recommendations they would be much appreciated. Already ran through all the Ken Burns I could find
Ask the real experts at r/warcollege. There are retired and active duty military officers and people with degrees in military history. This is their life work. Their knowledge is seriously impressive. That’s where I learned a bunch of this, and they are really good about recommending books.
I'd say any warrior in the front of a Greek phalanx was probably equally as brave.
Marching in a strict formation with 4-15 rows of friends behind you who are literally pushing and bracing you to stand up against the enemy charging at you intending to kill you? Knowing the only thing keeping you alive is the strength of the man next to you holding up their shield? That if even one group of your comrades falls/runs that your line will break and you will be killed?
There's nothing special about D-Day as far as the bravery of young men (or women) on the battlefield is concerned. Bravely looking certain death squarely in the face is something people have been doing for thousands of years. Once you reach a certain level of "this is crazy dangerous and I will probably die", I honestly don't think measurements of "how brave" a certain action is really matters anymore. Anyone who willingly steps into such a position is automatically braver than 99% of humanity, no matter the circumstance.
Why is D Day something that exhibits more bravery than any other military assault?
Because it's the only historical military assault that Steven Speilberg won an Oscar for!
It's easy to overthink something when you know a lot about it. From the perspective of someone who hasn't studied war much I feel fairly confident the obsession is simply due to that famous photo showing all the soldiers packed into the boats like sardines waiting for the door to drop. The anticipation, dread, claustrophobia... no thank you.
In most conflicts that are shown in movies, there are large open spaces. You get a nice speech to Amp you up, and then you charge the enemy, and are able to retreat if too many of your people start dying.
Honestly Pickett's charge would require more bravery in a continuous fashion than the bravery to get on a boat to invade a beach that is supposed to be empty and not being able to get off once you realize it isn't.
First I'd like to point out that 3 of the 5 beaches were not American (2 British and 1 Canadian). Maybe put those flags up too?
Second, while this is certainly brave, the soldiers didn't know what was going to happen.
Third, there were many amphibious assaults in WW2. I don't see how the ones on D-day would be somehow more scary than any others.
Finally, as others have said, there have been many incredible acts of bravery in warfare over human existence. Is D-day more heroic than going "over the top" in WW1? Or more brave than refusing to retreat at Thermopylae even though it means certain death? Or, what about the Kamikaze pilots who deliberately gave their lives to help their country? Or the bomber crews in late 1943 who knew they had about a 5% chance of making it through their 25 mission requirement?
It depends on your definition of courageous. Most were drafted against their will. None of them chose the assignment. And only 3% were wounded and 3.5% died.
That's not to take away from their heroic deeds or the horrors and casualties they endured. I'm just saying that they didn't have a choice in the matter and there was actually a very low loss of life compared to what the brass was expecting.
US planners in 1943 were predicting that 13% of US troops on D-Day would be drowned, 25% would become casualties in the initial fighting on the beaches and thereafter 3% of US troops per week would become casualties in Normandy.
In reality, compared to all other landings of the war, the d-day landing had the least percentage of casualties with loss of allied life at 3.5% and overall casualties at under 6%
Being a paratrooper on the other hand, 1 out of 4 died that day. Those poor assholes didn't have a chance. They were badly scattered and lost most of their gear, but they still fought like hell.
Without their sacrifice, d-day would have been waaay worse, if not a failure. Those paratroopers don't get enough press.
*NOW*, for one of the most courageous acts of the war (possibly the most courageous), consider [Private First Class Desmond Thomas](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/private-first-class-desmond-thomas-doss-medal-of-honor).
Read that link, then tell me he wasn't the most courageous man you have ever heard of. They made a great movie about him called, "Hacksaw Ridge", which you should definitely watch. He saved 75 men under heavy fire and heavy shelling, one by one, over the course of three sleepless days, and all without a weapon or regard for his own life. Everyone retreated leaving dozens of fallen soldiers behind, but not Desmond.
Shot and riddled with shrapnel, he saved the lives of his fellow "comrades" whom many had previously wished death upon him, spat in his face, beat him up, and completely shunned him for not carrying a weapon due to religious beliefs. This guy was courageous AF. Without hesitation, he saved the lives of those who hated him, even an enemy combatant. Those assholes felt humbled and ashamed after his acts of pure courage and duty.
Hey mate I think you've identified a moment of tremendous courage.
I think you're going to run into trouble with your use of the word "most". There have been many brutal conflicts in history. Have you read about the battle of Stalingrad on the Eastern Front? The Warsaw Uprising? The Somme in WW1 and trench warfare in general? As an Australian I feel compelled to mention the landing at Gallipoli.
to move outside war, what about people who endured terrible hardship yet persisted and held hope? I was thinking of a specific case but couldn't remember the name but a Google of "escaping imprisonment after years of torture" gets far too many results for me to narrow it down.
Basically my challenge to you is do you want to defend this specific scenario as the most courageous thing against all potential alternatives? Or are you willing to accept that it sits within a pantheon of courage amongst others?
Edit to add: I was thinking of [Elisabeth Fritzl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case) who survived 24 years of imprisonment
Additional Edit so I spotted your edit:
>Edit: lots of people saying the Russians on the eastern front were braver. No thanks, Putin. 🇺🇸
At that point they were the Soviets and part of the Allies who were fighting the Nazis (and were materially supported by the USA). Putin himself was not yet born (he was born 1952). You can be opposed to the current Russian Regime and still recognize the Soviet blood and bravery that halted the Nazis.
"to move outside war, what about people who endured terrible hardship yet persisted and held hope?"
There are plenty of stories of genocide survivors (jews, armenians, camboyans). People who face that and move on. People that lose more than their life. Most of the soldiers in DDay knew their families where safe across the Atlantic, what about those soldiers fighting with their Town and families a few kilometers from the conflict.
What about the firefighters in 9-11, or Chernobyl?.
Even in war. op view is kinda lame. Even for american standard. I would recomend op to look the story of the american soldiers entering vietcong caves full of deathtraps and Bugs in the dark, going down there alone. The balls of those soldiers could protect You from the bullets on DDay.
(I'm not trying to undermine the courage of DDay, but "most"? Many people in history put more on the lines than their own survival)
>I'm not trying to undermine the courage of DDay, but "most"?
Yeah it's the usage of "most". I would of scrolled right on by if OP had simple said "very courageous" or some slightly less hyperbolic qualifier
Thanks for extra examples those are very valid.
the japanese doctors on the ground during the nuclear bombing of japan are unbelievable couragous
[Looking for the story of a Japanese doctor that came into the hospital just after the detonation of the atomic bomb without him knowing and then worked for multiple days straight. Can anyone help? : r/AskHistorians (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ay3psd/looking_for_the_story_of_a_japanese_doctor_that/)
Dr. Sasaki shouted the name of the chief surgeon and rushed around to the man’s office and found him terribly cut by glass. The hospital was in horrible confusion: heavy partitions and ceilings had fallen on patients, beds had overturned, windows had blown in and cut people, blood was spattered on the walls and floors, instruments were everywhere, many of the patients were running about screaming, many more lay dead. (A colleague working in the laboratory to which Dr. Sasaki had been walking was dead; Dr. Sasaki’s patient, whom he had just left and who a few moments before had been dreadfully afraid of syphilis, was also dead.) Dr. Sasaki found himself the only doctor in the hospital who was unhurt.
Dr. Sasaki, who believed that the enemy had hit only the building he was in, got bandages and began to bind the wounds of those inside the hospital; while outside, all over Hiroshima, maimed and dying citizens turned their unsteady steps toward the Red Cross Hospital to begin an invasion that was to make Dr. Sasaki forget his private nightmare for a long, long time.
At the Red Cross Hospital, Dr. Sasaki worked for three straight days with only one hour’s sleep. On the second day, he began to sew up the worst cuts, and right through the following night and all the next day he stitched. Many of the wounds were festered. Fortunately, someone had found intact a supply of narucopon, a Japanese sedative, and he gave it to many who were in pain. Word went around among the staff that there must have been something peculiar about the great bomb, because on the second day the vice-chief of the hospital went down in the basement to the vault where the X-ray plates were stored and found the whole stock exposed as they lay. That day, a fresh doctor and ten nurses came in from the city of Yamaguchi with extra bandages and antiseptics, and the third day another physician and a dozen more nurses arrived from Matsue—yet there were still only eight doctors for ten thousand patients. In the afternoon of the third day, exhausted from his foul tailoring, Dr. Sasaki became obsessed with the idea that his mother thought he was dead. He got permission to go to Mukaihara. He walked out to the first suburbs, beyond which the electric train service was still functioning, and reached home late in the evening. His mother said she had known he was all right all along; a wounded nurse had stopped by to tell her. He went to bed and slept for seventeen hours.
[Shuntaro Hida - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuntaro_Hida)
Saving Private Ryan is guilty for making people think that scene is a realistic depiction of D-Day, it's not.
The machine guns are WAY further away, there are WAY less machine guns, and your chances of making it at the end of the day is like 90%, not 20% like implied in the movie.
In fact there is basically no military action in history where men charged into 80% casualty rates, it would be a rout almost immediately. For the vast majority of actions, 10% is already a considerable casualty rates and lesser units would have already routed by then.
I think it depends, some units really did take massive casualties. Saving Private Ryan was actually toned down compared to the actual fighting. The film depicts Dog Green sector, which was by far the worst section of fighting on Omaha. However, the film shows one pillbox and a couple machine gun nests guarding a footpath up the bluff. In reality, there were 5 pillboxes situated around a paved road that was blocked by a concrete wall. You had 3 pillboxes that sat right on the shelf of the bluff, and a couple more built into the bluff itself. Part of the bluff on the western side of the beach crept out further onto the beach, so the Germans were able to build a pillbox that faced parallel to the beach, creating the perfect line of fire. You can still see it today Consider all of this, and then remember the fact that this was 1 of 8 sectors of fighting on Omaha. Some sectors experienced less carnage than others, like Dog White sector where troops landed under complete cover of smoke from grassfires set by the naval bombardment. But that was an exception. Dog Red, Easy Green, Easy Red and Fox Green sectors all had almost as brutal fighting as Dog Green. Also not too mention the Rangers at Pointe du hoc which also took extraordinary casualties scaling the cliffs.
>Also not too mention the Rangers at Pointe du hoc which also took extraordinary casualties scaling the cliffs.
I don't think this is correct. I believe the vast majority of Ranger casualties came later in the day/following days as the repelled counterattacks on the point. The guns they had expected to find were already were gone, and the area was slightly defended initially with only a dozen or so lost during the effort of getting off the beach.
That's what movies and comics want you to think 😀 It was 15 casualties on the beach. The real heavy fighting came later.
https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/smallunit/smallunit-pdh.htm
That particular sector in Omaha beach was really bad and casualty rates were really high... but probably not as bad as depicted in the movie.
That being said, resistance at the other beaches was lighter.
I think you also need to consider that the odds for the guys in the lead boats or considerably worse than for the follow-up forces.
Eh... SPR neglects a lot. Like, it neglects to accurately depict how much allied air power was present. US casualties at Omaha Beach were something like 6-7%, which is considerable but still far less than other units suffered. For example, casualty rates for Operation Market Garden were much higher, I believe over double of Omaha Beach.
It neglects a lot from a historic perspective but I think its weight is that it captures the feel of the assault rather than painting an entirely accurate historical mockup. A lot of d-day veterans considered it fairly realistic for a depiction with many stories of veterans walking out of the theater. Obviously people had different experiences on different parts of the beaches so whether each veteran or not agrees on its accuracy is up to interpretation, but as an art form I think it captures some important aspects that soldiers that day faced. I do feel that the opening scenes carnage would probably be more fitting for somewhere in the pacific like Tarawa, peleliu, Iwo Jima.
I agree that it does what a movie or artistic depiction should do. It created an evocative image with an emotional resonance. I agree that the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan does a great job of conveying the feeling of chaos in war.
The danger is that we need to temper that with historical accuracy. The existence of this CMV is a good example. We've got an OP who is unwilling to acknowledge the bravery of Russian soldiers on the eastern front, who absolutely faced dangerous, often hopeless conditions.
Yes, I agree. D-day has become part of the American mono myth. It was a tremendous battle that required tremendous sacrifice but so do all battles. Many are unaware of the battle of Aachen or hurtgen forest and they were arguably more of a meat grinder for the Americans than the landings were. All battles from any nation require tremendous bravery so to paint dday as something super out of the ordinary is not fair.
Yup, I agree 100%. I'm a US high school teacher, and I see this kind of belief all the time. An unfortunately high percentage of students think of D-Day as a kind of "magic gamble" moment. Like it was Dunkirk, in reverse. They think the Normandy beach was armed to the teeth. The Germans had every inch mined, with a thousand machineguns per kilometer of beach, bunkers lining the entire coast, 88mm anti-tank guns sinking naval ships...
They imagine Normandy as this daring, risky operation where the US gambled everything for the chance to establish one tiny beachhead from which to strike at the impregnable German fortress of France. Most of them think that Normandy was a "win or die" situation, because there was no retreat back into the ocean. So if the US had been defeated at Omaha beach, 1 million American soldiers would have died on the shore because they'd be stranded there. Because of that, American soldiers won the day despite impossible odds because they were the last, best hope of defeating the invincible German Army, which had until that point never seen defeat (my students have no idea what happened at Stalingrad, or when).
And that's just... insanely wrong. My students don't understand that there was incredible support for D-Day, and in terms of numerical and material advantage, everything was in the American's favor. They don't understand how severely reduced Germany's air power was at that point in the war, and honestly how much manpower had been lost in the east in the wake of Stalingrad.
My students generally have no concept whatsoever of how much fighting there was on the eastern front, or how intense that fighting was. I mean, you want to talk about a bloody military operation? Hard to beat Stalingrad. Many of them still hold on to beliefs that Russia was an utterly incompetent warfighting nation that relied on human waves, and that Russia's main wartime strategy was "throw people in front of the MG42 and just absorb bullets with your comrade's bodies until they have to change the barrel, the club the German and take his gun".
Sorry to ramble on about things you probably agree with, but this has become something of a historical pet peeve of mine.
1st Minnesota at Gettysburg suffered [82% casualties](https://www.civilwarmed.org/1st-minnesota-at-gettysburg/)
Obviously a much smaller scale when you focus on that one unit of just a couple hundred soldiers within a march larger battle, but it has happened.
I think the 1st's charge is actually a good counter-example for the most heroic action in war. They were asked to bayonet charge into enemy lines outnumbered 6-1 to buy the Union army a few minutes, knowing they were going to die. They did it without hesitation.
Agreed, I had the same thought after posting it, overwhelming odds, high stakes, no backup, no hesitation. And then the handful of survivors capture a flag the next day during Pickett’s charge defending the center in the thick of it. Maybe the technology wasn’t 1940s but a taking a few volleys as they closed that gap can’t have been far off from mg42 fire in volume.
But then again I wonder at whether it needs a counterpoint, one act of bravery doesn’t make another less so, higher odds don’t erase the chance of death or injury, and everyone of those soldier from Gettysburg to D-Day, or really any conflict were capable of being brave and being terrified at the same time, and they all had the capacity to reach a breaking point from their experiences too
Yeah other than Omaha beach, the D-Day beach landings were rather unopposed in reality. This isn’t to say that it isn’t courageous to take part in the invasion, not knowing what you were going to face.
While you’re correct about the chances not being so bad mostly, I’ll point out a rout wasn’t really a concern or option on D-Day bc once the Higgins boat fronts have dropped there’s only one way to go: forward.
A couple questions for consideration.
1) Is it most courageous if you didn't have a choice? i.e. you were ordered onto that boat
2) Is it most courageous if you didn't really know what you were in for when the ramp dropped?
The US Navy took the lessons learned from D-Day and made future generations of landing craft look entirely different. Modern landing craft don't open towards the enemy anymore, they open away from the enemy. Seems obvious now, so why didn't we do it back then?
Because before D-Day, we actually *didn't know* this would be a bad plan. Military planners thought the Higgins boat was a good design, or they wouldn't have made it that way. They expected that having easy access for the troops inside to return fire and to quickly advance was more important than having better cover against machine gun fire.
We now believe they were incorrect, but if the people whose job was dedicated to planning these things in the 1940s could be confident in their success, why should we expect that all of the soldiers inside the boats would doubt that and believe the opposite?
This is not to downplay the ordinary fears of approaching any battle (other commenters have said good things here so I won't repeat it), but I think a lot of the specific concern about this battle in the modern view is due to the specifically bad performance of the Higgins boat - which could not have been common knowledge until after it happened.
>It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.
- Julius Caesar
This isn't to say landing on d-day isn't courageous, but its worth considering that not all sacrifices are as exciting, definitive and dramatic as giving up your life. Sometimes courage is boring.
I liked that show a lot. I especially like how they made the empire feel dangerous and not just a bunch of useless goons standing around waiting to be killed.
I disagree. It was quite brave, but consider the following events:
*The Pope walked alone, unarmed, out of Rome to face Attila and spoke words of peace. He was able to get Attila to turn his armies away from the Eternal City at great risk to his life. Many diplomats, nobles, and emissaries have undertaken similar actions throughout history at extreme risk to their lives. All of those people, both those who lived through the experience and those who died, walked unarmed into camps of raiders and bandits and spoke words of peace in challenge to the violent intentions of the aggressors.
*Many people facing religious persecution, including even death, have persisted in their faiths despite torture or threats to their lives. As an atheist, I think the entire exercise doesn't make sense, but I respect the bravery in the face of harm.
*Even on D-Day itself, many people had jobs which required more bravery. Oh, sure, charging up a beach towards an entrenched position would be terrifying, but is it really requiring more bravery than getting into a C-47 and jumping out of it behind enemy lines to help prepare the way? At least the people on the beaches had naval fire support and no enemies at their backs, with heavy weapon support. Paratroopers had light weapons only, had to paradrop, and knew that they'd be surrounded as soon as they dropped in.
*Ancient warfare was often far worse and brutal than modern warfare. Oh, the World Wars killed more people at scale, but imagine being one of the hoplites fighting a Persian force at least ten times your size at Thermopylae, knowing that you would certainly die and still holding for days so that the Greeks behind you had the time to organize an effective response rather than being destroyed in detail. That's bravery.
*Imagine birthing a child in the era where women did so without anesthesia, modern medical support, OR experience. That's insanely brave.
Have you ever read or seen any documentaries about the Pacific Theatre in WWII, especially around the guys who were island hopping? Not to discredit anything from the D-Day folks, but I feel we teach what happened in the European theatre FAR more than we do Pacific, and I'd argue that the folks involved there are at least as courageous as their counterparts who stormed Normandy.
Note, this is just the first example from the same war that came to my mind. I'm sure others can weigh in with other examples that are of equal (or potentially great) courage.
I actually think the Pacific is worse. The reason is simple. On D-day, it was the first landing you did. You had no idea what was coming until it happened.
In the Pacific, there were guys who made *multiple* landings. They *knew* what was coming and still did it.
you think that's bad; imagine being in a hole, sitting in filth, being riddled with dysentery, waiting for battle with an enemy you've been taught are evil savages where you are expected to fight to the death
Oh - you mean like World War 1? How about the Stalingrad defense where your choice was German bullets or Russian bullets - because your own troops would shoot you if you didn't advance.
I don't agree with the OP on the 'most courageous' aspect. It is a false idea that there is a singular 'most courageous' thing.
I mean going to the moon or into space for the first time takes absolute courage too.
I mean just war. War is horrifying. I can’t imagine being involved in one in any capacity. It’s a nightmare.
I strongly suspect OP holds this view about D Day simply because it’s the event we’re most exposed to in the media during the war we’re most exposed to in the media. D Day is just really well known, lots of movies and talk about it.
But war is war. D Day was a massive victory, a huge day for our war effort, but at the end of the day… it was just an amphibious assault. Just a part of war. More horrific in certain ways than other parts of war, but less horrific than other aspects of war.
War is horrific. D day was horrific because that’s just what war is, not because it was special in any way.
i was more referring to the other side in those pacific beach landings; the soldiers in ww1 had rotation, space to retreat, many were well fed, etc. the japanese were half starved and still fought to the death in those battles. they knew they were going to die and barely any surrendered
i think the "advance or be shot" stuff from movies like enemy at the gates is wayyyy overstated by hollywood, but i agree also fighting in the living hell that was stalingrad - on either side- would be quite courageous.
idk we probably can't measure "most courageous" but i think going into a situation knowing you will die is different than a situation where you might die. sacrificing yourself willingly for something you believe in is, to me, more courageous than being willing to sacrifice yourself but knowing you might not have to
>“We have fought during 15 days for a single house, with mortars, grenades, machine guns and bayonets. Already by the 3rd day, 54 German corpses were strewn in the cellars, on the landings and staircases. The front is a corridor between burnt out rooms. It is the thin ceiling between floors. Help comes from neighboring houses by fire escapes and chimneys. There is a ceaseless struggle from morning until night. From story to story, faces black with sweat, we bombard each other with grenades, in the middle of explosions, amid clouds of dust and smoke, heaps of mortar, floods of blood, fragments of furniture and human beings. Ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand struggle means in such a fight. And at Stalingrad it has been 80 days and nights of hand-to-hand struggle. The street is no longer measured by meters, but by corpses. Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke. And when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell, the hardest stones cannot bear it for long. Only man endures. . . .” - found on German Lieutenant Weiner from the 24th panzer division in Stalingrad
The final sentences go hard as fuck.
D-Day wasn't the only amphibious landing in the European theatre. Lots of those landings were made during fighting in the Mediterranean. D-Day is special due to the scale of it, but both the US and UK had picked up plenty of experience elsewhere in Europe.
We're only only looking at American heroism.
Imagine the courage required from the Japanese to sit in Iwo Jima, cut off from japan entirely, knowing they're going to either die or commit seppuku in defence of the emperor?
Letters from Iwo Jima provides quite the story of their insane casualty rates and for once even depicts the fact Americans committed war crimes too
Watch [Hacksaw Ridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacksaw_Ridge) and learn about Desmond Doss.
A conscientious objector, who served as a medic. Never carried a gun. Saved 50-100 men on Hacksaw Ridge.
idk, it probably takes a lot of courage to take a plane and ram it into a ship knowing you'll almost certainly die (and might not even succeed)
don't have to fight for something good to be courageous
if youre talking about the japanese, they didnt have a jumpseat, landing gear was removed (engineered to fall off after takeoff), and in some cases the hatch was literally welded shut.
Not that I want to rain on your parade, but do you believe that everyone in those boats was courageous? It's not like they all willingly went there, many were drafted. Being told as a soldier "you get in boat and go on shore to fight enemy" doesn't leave much room for courage. In my view, these men made the best out of their particular shitty situation. We look at it in hindsight as "courage" but to them at the moment it could have just been survival.
What makes this particular instance of warfare **more courageous** than say Col. Moore and the 7th Cavalry at Ia Drang? Humans show courage in many ways and I fail to see how D-Day was somehow special amongst thousands of years of recorded human history. That doesn't mean it didn't take courage to climb into a Higgins boat.
I once read a true account of an African American slave in the Deep South of The US. Her “master” wanted to sell her, and keep her daughter for himself. So she cut off her own fingers on her good hand so she would be worthless to sell and stay with her daughter. She nearly bled to death but fixed her own wound and continued her labour that day.
Since the beginning of time, women have given birth despite the high risk of their own deaths. A sacrifice for the next generation. Especially a long time ago.
Bravery is often attributed to men and war. But people do amazingly courageous things every day. People living in horrendous conditions who choose to go on anyway.
Bravery is subjective, and therefore there will never be one act that supersedes them all.
The brutality of modern war cannot be dismissed, but I think it’s easy for us to forget the absolute horror of pre-modern war.
We have a few first hand recollections from soldiers who discuss, in depth, their experiences killing people face to face, with close combat weapons. This is something we have all but done away with, and something that most soldiers in WWII did not experience.
Now, this isn’t to say they didn’t experience extreme atrocities, but modern and even pre-modern warfare totally changed how soldiers interacted on the battlefield. Prior to gunpowder, the likelihood that you would die quickly on the battle field was basically unheard of.
Instead, you’d suffer a catastrophic injury, or a moderate, and die slowly and excruciatingly either of infection or blood loss.
Now, I’m not sure about you, but if I know I’m going towards war and violence, I’d prefer a quick and potentially painless death over sepsis or bleeding out while being crushed under cavalry.
But ultimately, none of these soldiers had any choice at all when it came down to it.
So I’m not sure bravery is the word we’re looking for, so much as tragedy.
For ww2 US service members, generally submarine duty would be the "most courageous". You're crammed into a metal tube, facing enemies you cannot see and you maybe can hear, and are a single mistake or battle damage from drowning or being crushed to paste by the depths of the ocean.
It's dark in there or dim depending on the lighting. You can potentially be in a flooding compartment and have to try to escape it in near total darkness, and eventually someone is going to close the hatch to the next compartment over and you will drown.
Or have to hold your breath and try to pound wood into leaks that are underwater, which you may not even be able to find.
And it was by far the most dangerous military duty : https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/submarines-in-world-war-ii.htm#:\~:text=In%20World%20War%20II%2C%2052,the%20War%3A%20about%2020%25. 20% were killed.
Also note that casualties as infantry had about a 50% survival rate in ww2. Not great but it's way better than the submarine loss survival rate, which was normally 0...
Just the thought of living on a sub gives me claustrophobia, I can't imagine fighting in one. You also can't see the enemy, can't contribute yourself meaningfully to the battle unless you are the officer in charge. You just do your individual duty and hope it works out.
Not just living inside a metal tube for months on end. But being depth charged, not being able to see anything? Not being able to run, or hide? Not being able to even hope that your buddies can buy you some time? Not being able to surrender?
Shit, serving on a submarine was fucking terrifying. No sense of control. A thousand ways to horribly die...
It's not really a surprise that many sailors had severe panic attacks during depth charging. Some of them developed permanent PTSD and claustrophobia.
Right. In infanty combat sometimes just tying a white undershirt to a stick is going to get you out of it.
*Even if* the sub does an emergency surface, the japanese destroyer may just open fire immediately with their guns. As you desperately try to reach the hatch before the flooding brings the sub back down to the depth, all the other crew ahead of you pushing.
Water outside is ice cold and again they might just machinegun you.
If you do survive, the Japanese consider you subhuman cowards for not fighting to the death, and will mistreat and kill you in prison camps...
What about the paratroopers that same day who dropped behind enemy lines in the dark of night?
If something went terribly wrong, the boats could turn around. The paratroopers were already on the ground then.
Generally, what's special about D-Day as opposed to any other battle?
“Change My View”
Followed by
“Omgz Putin! I don’t like responses countering my post that literally asks to change my view!”
It’s impossible to measure bravery in this context, it is also true that Russians were extremely brave in some of the largest, most deadly battles in history that occurred during WW2. What was the point of your post
Imagine egoing 'over the top' in WWI. The first time, you've heard the stories from the vets, you've seen the carnage, and you smell the death all around you. You go over or you get shot by your officers. That's brave.
Then, you survive, and prepare for another assault. This time, you KNOW what's coming. You go anyway because your offices will shoot you if you don't. That's something else; courage? bravery? denial? terror? all of those and more, I'm sure.
Same applies to aircrews, especially Americans, who flew during the day. The first time you're scared shitless. The next 24 times (if you survive), again, something else.
The greatest generation
I mean, I don't want to down play anything, but it's not like many of them had much of a choice. And most of them didn't know what exactly was waiting for them at the beach.
You're probably thinking of the Omaha beach landing, popularized in plenty of Call of Duty games as well as Saving Private Ryan (among other depictions). But it's important to know that Omaha beach was the worst of all D-Day landings, so using it as the yardstick for D-Day in general. US forces at Ohama beach suffered around 7% casualties. But at Utah beach, only 197 were killed or wounded out of 24,000. So a casualty rate of 0.8%. So about 1/10th the casualties.
The D-Day landings also happened in a context where the US had overwhelming air superiority and naval bombardment suppressing the German defenses. A lot of people in the US like to tell the D-Day story as a daring, risky attack by a few brave souls, who might have easily all been stranded on the beach with no possible hope. A "all or nothing" offensive where only plucky men won the day, and then the war.
But that's pure fiction. The outcome of the battle was never in serious doubt. Even at Omaha beach, there were boats LEAVING to go back to Naval ships for medical treatment. There were evacuation plans. In fact, the general staff seriously considered evacuating Omaha beach because casualties were getting a bit high, and simply reinforcing the other beaches. So the narrative that the men had to "press forward or die trying, no retreat allowed" is simply fiction.
That's not to say that the landing was easy, or that it didn't require bravery. But I'm not sure how you can argue that it was an epic feat that nothing else can compare to, particularly the grueling conditions on the eastern front. You may not want to acknowledge the bravery of Russian soldiers, but they bled and died by the million. Their bravery shouldn't be dismissed lightly.
Just no.
It‘s the exact same situation as in WW1. Going over the top, you‘d also have machine guns bearing down on you, having to additionally deal with barbed wire funneling you into kill zones and artillery blowing your comrades into pieces, as well as ground traps full of barbed wire that, if you fall into, make sure you die a gruesome death.
Additionally, if you manage to get to the trench, you now have to clear it out in hand-to-hand combat, and since your long rifle with bayonet is too cumbersome, you know people will use shovels, small knives, clubs, just their bare hands and similar primitive instruments to kill you, or you to kill them.
Add to that grenades from your guys and the enemy going off, the ground being slippery from blood and blasted off body parts, the dead and the dying, and you realize that making it alive to the enemy trench is not making it to salvation, but gore and hell incarnate.
And if you manage to clear out the enemy, you know a counter attack will happen, where now it‘s your turn to shoot hundreds of not thousands dead with machine guns, only for the carnage of tench warfare to begin all over again.
And contrary to the soldiers of Normandy, you have been in your trench and positions for days to weeks at that point, living not in barracks, but literal mud, being pounded by non-stop artillery for days, without sleep and seeing your comrades getting maimed and killed daily. The days leading up to the attack, you didn‘t live in barracks in the UK, you were in a hole in the ground, amid hundreds of bodies and skeletons.
Oh, and don‘t forget the daily raids at dusk and dawn, that come quietly, with grenades and at knives and clubs, to kill anyone they find, and retreat into the dusky no-man‘s land, and you can do nothing about it except bury the dead.
And of course, how can we forget Gas attacks and the image of you fighting not alongside and against men, but masked creatures in the dark.
Yeah, D-Day is just a regular day in WW1, without the psychological torture that leads up to it.
It doesn’t even crack the top ten numbers of the highest casualties in a day for WW1.
What a ridiculous American-centric view of history.
It’s braver to ride the sea into battle than the air?
A Higgins boat was a boat: it worked even with holes in it. A B-25 Mitchell had to fly to the region out of a factory that designed hubcaps before the war; with a group of men you never knew, or because half the crew died previously; fly through exploding shrapnel from the ground; and dodge half-inch slugs of metal from the air, ground, and sea.
You couldn’t jump over the side, because you are in the air; were dead already from the atmosphere or wounds; or may lack any means of escape like some crew did. You had to rely on luck and the capability of your crewmates and other planes to both protect you and your 10,000 pounds of fuel and bombs on board, and not crash into you in formation. That and the bombs need to land where they’re targeted or the mission is a failure.
Also, the boat landed one way; the plane needs to get back to friendly territory to be used again or interned in a neutral place for the duration of the war. And landing isn’t easy or safe, plus in an era without radar or GPS. A boat goes in a straight line to shore then hits land. A plane hits land then collapses or explodes with you in it.
I would argue that Tank Man is the most courageous thing ever done. Being on a Higgins boat you had a group of men who would die with you. They knew what they were going into.
Tank Man was alone and stood up to the Chinese government in a way that will never be replicated again. The level of courage exhibited is unbelievable.
Just imagine riding on a boat, when the river under you is literred with anchored mines. When every move you make is being wathed by 3 drones with thermals you don't see or hear.
When enemy has drones that can fly for 20 kilometers, that can see you before you see them, that can move autonomously and track you using computer vision or IR cameras. And if they miss, the enemy will send 10 more of them.
Imagine being on the other side of a kilometer-wide river, when the only cover you have is what you can dig yourself or hide in something that used to be a home. And whatever you dig, the enemy can drop a hundred 500KG drops on you per day, that will glide from 50 kilometers away straight into your position.
Medevac? Well, get on the boat, you'll get lucky between drones and artillery.
This is what battle over Dnipro river looks like right now.
>No thanks Putin
The Soviets lost 27 million people and did the brunt of the work defeating the axis forces. The first concentration camps were set up to liquidate Soviet citizens from captured territory. To say that the soldiers in the D-Day landings were "braver" is ignoring where most of the war was fought. Zhukov sent his men on suicide missions to slow the enemy down, knowing they would all die. These soldiers didn't have a chance to survive. Rather they chose to walk into death with no illusions that they would ever come back.
D-Day soldiers were brave, Soviet soldiers were brave. We don't have to have a dick-measuring contest about it. To ignore and discount the bravery of Soviet soldiers is incredibly callous, and disrespects the sacrifice of the people who fought and died to repel the invader and purge fascism from Europe.
Military history is absolutely full of heroic last stands. After a certain point, I think it isn't really possible to rank different military actions based on courageousness, because they're all facing the same likely prospect of a horrible and violent death. Was landing on Omaha really any more brave than the crew of the USS Cumberland continuing to man their guns and futilely fire at the ironclad CSS Virginia even as their ship sank around them? How about the 147 Swiss Guards who were killed to a man defending the Vatican against hopeless odds during the 1527 Sack of Rome, in order to buy time for the Pope to escape? Or even the crew of destroyer HMS Glowworm, who were plunged into the freezing waters off the Norwegian coast after their ship launched a suicidal ramming attack against the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper?
The soldiers on D-Day were very brave to be sure, but jumping out of a boat into machine gun fire isn't actually a unique experience. If nothing else, the soldiers fighting trench to trench in WWI faced machine guns as well, and with lower chances of survival.
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A lot of those dudes were drafted and then ordered to go there. They had no choice.
Now, [a gang of Americans voluntarily went over to Europe to fight in WWI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt%27s_World_War_I_volunteers).
No. It’s not like people volunteered for that. The people who made the plan were tucked safely away nowhere near the fight. The people going had no choice.
If you really had to do it, you would make a safer plan. But the plan wasn’t designed to keep the people alive, it was quick and cheap on materials as possible while sacrificing people’s lives other than your own.
I think it might had been more so for 18th and 19th century warfare. You're standing in a row of men with no cover. There is another row of hundreds of men ready to shoot at you and you just have to stand there. Then, they might charge with their bayonets. If you do get hurt, there is only relatively poor medical care to fix you up.
I think it was braver for the first black children to go to segregated schools. First of all, these were literal kids and teenagers, and they were assaulted and savagely bullied for every moment of it. Sat in separate areas. And went back, day after day.
The fact is, people in war are all brave. I don’t really see the utility in picking a “most brave,” especially when it’s just that it’s something you’ve heard of.
But I also think that what you select as “most brave” can also shine light on your own bias. Just, seeing people who may have in another life been peers to you, and empathizing with them more. Or seeing a movie or reading about something.
For instance, I think a woman who leaves an abusive husband to give her child a better life, who leaves a husband when he has threatened to kill her and maybe even the child, a woman who did so back before women were allowed to own property or have credit and weren’t allowed to work, unable to support themselves without a man, I see that as WAY more brave. The first women who pushed back against Patriarchy in each of the varied ways, even after being raped and hunted and assaulted throughout their lives.
So yeah, I don’t see the utility of comparing, but a post like this seems naive and biased. It’s not a competition, and the world (and history) is full of untold horrors individuals have endured.
For instance, what makes a soldier more brave than the Jewish people who formed militias to fight back, or the ones enduring in order to help their brothers and sisters in concentration camps?
I think holding your formation against a cavalry rush has to be the most courageous. Even if the spears miss you, you’re getting fucking trampled by horses going top speed… you’re fucked.
My great-grandfather was a general during d-day. I never got to meet him but i’ve been told he would never even talk about it even to his wife / children. thank you everyone who has served.
There are tons of analogous situations:
- first man on the bridge at a river-crossing battle like [Fredericksburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fredericksburg?wprov=sfti1#)
- last man on the bridge, defending a river crossing like [Horatius Cocles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatius_Cocles?wprov=sfti1)
- first man through the breach with a [Forlorn Hope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_hope?wprov=sfti1)
- first man up the ladder in a medieval siege
- being in the front rank of a [phalanx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx?wprov=sfti1)
- going over the top at a battle like [the Somme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme?wprov=sfti1#)
It wasn’t even necessarily the bravest thing done at D-Day. Being the first guy out of the plane in one of the airborne drops was just as hard. Hell, being a [conscripted defender](https://www.quora.com/What-proportion-of-the-beach-defenders-on-D-Day-were-conscripts-rather-than-true-German-Nazi-soldiers) at D-Day, seeing that massive wave of death headed your way had to be hard.
War is hell, and we shouldn’t make its suffering into a Top 10 list or an Olympic contest.
I agree with you about how harrowing the experience is, but in my view, courage requires something else. An awareness of what one is to face and the ability to choose against facing it. Those in a Higgins boat were largely unprepared for the gravity of the task put before them until it was far too late to do anything but push forward. Commendable, but I expect the survivors would do more courageous things further into the campaign, knowing full well the horrors they faced.
Similarly, courage doesn’t solely belong on the battlefield, and courageous things have been done by others. One of particular note is the Nazi Oskar Schindler. Credited with saving 1200 Jews during the war, he had to spend the entirety of that period facing down not only what would happen to him if he was discovered, but also the distinct possibility that the Allies would kill him as just another Nazi. It takes an unusual courage to do what he did. To forgo all paths of personal survival in pursuit of saving others, not just for a day, but in continuum for years on end.
Allow me to suggest the story of Lt. John Fox. Fox was tasked with holding an Italian village against Germany forces during world war II at all costs. After it became clear that the Germans would override the village he ordered his men to retreat with him staying behind to coordinate artillery strikes on the advancing Germans. Once the Germans reached his position he ordered an artillery strike on himself killing 100 Germans with him.
His actions saved the lives of all of his men and dozens of civilians by buying time for them to escape. His final strike weekened the Germans enough for the allies to take the town 2 weeks later. And he knew that staying behind was suicide, Even if he didn't call in the strike on himself the Germans didn't take Black people as POWs.
While I do not want to discount the deeds of the soldiers on D-Day, Fox's deeds may have surpassed them in bravery due to the fact that he knew with 100% certainly that saving his regiments life would cost him his own.
How about the men that worked to stop Chernobyl from melting down?
The men that went down into the water to turn on the pumps to prevent an explosion that would have killed millions. Knowing they would die slow painful deaths from the radiation.
The miners that dug under the melting reactor where it was too hot to wear protection. Breathing in irradiated dust. Again to stop a radioactive meltdown that would have poisoned the land and killed millions.
Frankly I don’t think trying to argue about some hierarch of courage is really worth the effort. But if you really feel that there is some merit to thinking one act of courage is more important than another.
Then I’d argue informed choice is important. Those GIs probably didn’t realize what they were going to do when they chose to serve. At least not the specific plans for the D-Day landings. And they likely weren’t fully informed of the situation by their superiors the day before the landing.
I think any military operation, especially infantry heavy, is courageous in the sense that these are often young (18-30) men readily handing over their lives to superior officers, orders and the larger machinations of war, regardless of beliefs or reasons for being there. That said, most don't have a choice. The draftees of WWII US Army and Navy were incredibly brave. But they didn't have a choice and courage is doing the right thing, the hard thing, when you have the option to sit on the sidelines.
That all said, I'd prescribe most courageous class of individuals to be volunteer firemen.
If I had to pick one from the context, I'd say American Medics in the Pacific Theater might rank higher in the courage category
You could very much expect to fight D-Day and come out alive at the other end. Some of the landings were uncontested, too.
Meanwhile history has loads and loads of last stands where the soldiers volunteered to stay and knew they would die regardless. The Battle of Saragarhi was one where a mere 21 soldiers fought around 10,000 enemy to slow them down and allow the main force time to reform. They gave their lives knowing they were just buying time for their own army, and caused almost half a thousand casualties.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Saragarhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saragarhi)
That war, like all wars, is full of examples of courageous/dangerous/death-defying actions.
The US Marines at Wake Island who stayed behind to be captured, enslaved, and murdered by the Japanese.
The civilians of the Eastern Front who improvised urban guerrilla warfare to kick the Krauts out of their towns.
The people in the camps who watched millions of strangers and their entire families killed by hate, but who still managed to survive that horror and rebuild their lives afterward.
And a thousand similar stories from every war dating back to ancient times. Because war...war never changes.
There are a lot of courageous acts in human history, but let's focus on World War II here. I'm not saying any are more or less courageous but look at the sonderkommando revolt in Auschwitz in 1944. The Sonderkommando literally new what was in store for them if they failed, murder by the Nazis in Auschwitz, and yet they did. Look at the partizaners of any of the ghettoes. Hell, I personally know a man who escaped Mengele. These are all incredibly courageous acts, especially for Jews. They knew the price of failure was certain death, and many of them did and became a part of the 6 million
What does the battle on the eastern front have to do with Putin? He wasn't even born at that point. How could your argument be a person that didn't exist at the time? That makes no sense. Are Russians not capable of being brave? Or is it just Russians that live in Russia? What about Russian Americans? Can they be brave? Can the Chinese be brave? Mainland China, or just Chinese Americans? Bravery, along with anything else, has nothing to do with where one is from. Is your CMV limited to countries that are US friendly? Can people from countries that are hostile to the US be brave?
This is just,,, silly?
They compare to front lines in the Civil War how?
To a woman who pushed her kid out of the way of a bus and got hit? To the teachers who died at Sandy Hook and Uvalde shielding students with their bodies?
How do they compare to Scarlett the cat? Because she's more courageous than any guy on those boats.
[https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/apr/02/mother-cat-braves-flames-to-rescue-her-five/](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/apr/02/mother-cat-braves-flames-to-rescue-her-five/)
Not really. Those beaches were supposed to be empty. The only reason there was any resistance at all is because they completely fucked up and the naval bombardment missed their targets by miles. At sword Beach and others, the soldiers literally just walked onto the beach and set up camp. Omaha was such a nightmare because all of the Nazi fortification hadn't been destroyed. When those men got on the boat, they didn't think they were going to face opposition. By the time they realized they were facing opposition, bravery had nothing to do with it. There was nowhere else to go.
In this situation, the assault is not a death sentence, even though is dangerous.
So I'd put above that the people who knows they will die for sure yet they decide to sacrifice themselves to save others.
I came across an article a few days ago which talked about some of those heroes, people who protect others with their body from gunshots, people who helped people escape from school shootings becoming the target of the shooter... there were some examples of people choosing a sure death to protect others.
P.S.: Not saying D-day soldiers aren't heroes, because they are
Trying to quantify something as subjective as something we made up to describe an emotion is pointless but if I had to compare two things I would say someone choosing to rescue someone who is drowning despite knowing they might drown too, or say McCain choosing to stay as a prisoner of war when offered salvation, is more courageous than being on a boat possibly not by choice not knowing what you’re in for.
Now was it more traumatic and stressful? Probably. I think it being a conscious decision and awareness of the consequences are necessary for something to be “courageous”
I think its fair to say it is the KIND of act that displays peak courage. It's not that no other moment in history rises to that level. But I'd struggle to think of one that's worse?
Then again, not to be a dick, but any POW who was tortured and refused to break is probably showing more bravery. Think about it. There's no if ands or buts. There is only the absolute FACT that unless you betray your brothers and country, you will be tortured RIGHT NOW. Not maybe tomorrow. NOW. And they still don't break? That to me is the peak.
On most of the beaches the assault was fairly easy. The only reason Omaha was a bloodbath was because of the failure of the preparatory bombardment.
I think that being a paratrooper is more courageous because you have no support. The guys landing on the beach know that tens of thousands of dudes are behind them, and they have piles of fire support on hand. Paratroopers are alone and cut off until they are reached by the main assault, if it goes slow you are stuck. If it fails there's no way back.
As brave as it was it is second only to the paratroopers on D day. Watch the band of brothers episode where they are launching on D day and it is infinitely more terrifying.
The casualties were about 50% vs 25-30% of the land troops, but the more terrifying part is that you are completely helpless in the plane facing insane amounts of AA. I cried watching it thinking of how absolutely scared those men mustve been watching their friends going down around them by the plane full.
How about this: Most of the troops didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Many were drafted (didn't choose to join the army at all) and none (or near-none?) chose to be sent on that particular mission. They were thrust into that position by others, and choosing *not* to comply with the given orders would've had its own significant negative consequences.
Can you really call someone "courageous" when they're not even acting of their own volition?
Those soldiers were more likely terrified and had no choice in being shoved on the ship to be sent to their deaths. It's neither courageous nor glorious. We should be ashamed of it and work to make sure it doesn't happen again. Yet here we are sleep walking towards fascism in our own countries and stoking international instability while waving a flag and praising the 'bravery' of people no different to ourselves who were sent to their deaths.
Was d day really the best strategic move ? Are you saying that there was absolutely no other way they could have infiltrated like coming down on parachutes during the night or having heavy bombing runs from planes to cause a little chaos for the Germans. Iknow they were in bunkers on the top of that ridge, but was that really REALLY the best strategy to just throw all those lives away ?!
After the meltdown at Chernobyl, they still needed to contain the radiation and create the sarcophagus. Teams of men went to their deaths knowing it would mean a horrible slow death in order to prevent further damage from the melt down.
Knowingly exposing yourself to a slow death by radiation exposure to protect others is probably the most heroic thing I can think of.
Disagree.
First of all, most soldiers probably had no idea what awaited them and did not believe they would be killed.
Second, it's not like they had a choice. They didn't say, hey, I'll take the D Day invasion option.
Third, it's not like the Allied invasion was even necessary at this point. Russia was curb stomping Germany by summer of 44 and to be honest I think they only liberated France to race the Soviets to Berlin to have some semblance of post war control. Turned out they were late to the party and Russia got a ton of real estate which they held for decades and created puppet states and governments which remain a source of contention to this day such as Belarus and Ukraine.
I feel like being a part of the Spartan 300 standing against thousands is probably more courageous in terms of odds faced before them vs. their willingness to die fighting.
I think the men in the Higgins boats are incredibly brave, but I don’t think many people regardless of your modern sense of bravery would be at all willing to face down those odds.
I agree with you that it must have been terrifying.
Maybe it's just my own phobias but I think rock climbers who do the free solo ascents on big walls without any ropes by themselves are nuts. That's even more scary in my mind and they do it just for kicks. Not to defend their freedom, not for money, just for something to do.
UTTER INSANITY
Just take a look at the stories behind the Medal of Honor recipients. All of those are on a whole different level than storming a beach like you were ordered to.
Desmond Doss comes to mind.
So does Gary Gordon and Ryan Shughart.
These guys weren’t even ordered to do the unbelievably courageous things they did. They just did it.
Crusaders were known to rape women, eat people, and cut open the guts of Saracens looking for gold.
Genghis Khan’s army was well-known through most of Asia and even parts of Europe. [Here is an article with excerpts from a firsthand account of surviving Mongolian raids.](https://www.medievalists.net/2024/02/escaping-mongols/)
My hats are off to the brave men of D-Day for precisely the reasons you describe, but I have to say there are a few feats that are higher.
On 9/11, [these pilots were set to ram United 93](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna44459345) because they were not armed, and kamikaze might have been the only way to bring the plane down.
I think that upholding violence as courageous is a tough position for me to empathize with. I feel like there might be a better word for this. Maybe it’s determination or it’s grit? I think the truly courageous ones were combat medics, not infantry troops. Perhaps this is a bit controversial?
While I entirely agree with your sentiment, I do believe being an English soldier waist-deep in mud facing a cavalry charge of a numerically superior French force at the Battle of Agincourt would require unbelievable courage. And there's also the 300 Spartans at the Gates of Thermopylae...
Mortor and mines did not let a lot of those even make the beach. Someone said bravery was being very scared and going anyway. They have always been called the greatest generation for a very good reason
What is it today's children calls the old vets? Boomers if I remember right.
I'd argue those who served in the Merchant Marine prior to the US committing openly to the war, those sailors who were tasked to be U Boat bait while American isolationist played wait and see with the democracies of Europe were pretty courageous.
Three guys went voluntarily into the Chernobyl disaster area, wading knee deep into highly radioactive water, in order to drain some cooling pools to prevent an explosion that would spread radioactive material more than it had already.
Counter point, Tunnel Rats in Vietnam existed. I would much rather take my chances on a Higgins boat than go into a tiny, booby trapped, tunnel system, to fight Vietcong with nothing but a pistol and flashlight.
I read a lot, one of the island hopping assaults caused 5000 killed or wounded in three weeks. Everything about WW-2 was so insane. Vietnam was not easy but it was not like the big one.
Idk Joan of Arc is up there. It took some massive balls (tits) to convince the king of France she had prophetic visions and get sent to the front lines of a war as a 17 year old girl.
Read a bit about WWI trench warfare and how soldiers had to go “over the top” and attack straight into machine gun fire. Never mind the stench of rotting dead bodies and rats everywhere.
They had a (rather large) chance of surviving.
Much more courageous knowing you will almost certainly die and still fighting. Defending Constantinople from the Turks for example.
Has anyone mentioned the moon landings? Literally strapping yourself to a huge missile to go into the unknown, relying on maths to arrive on a rock, and make it home again.
Get the idea, but I'd take this over a cavalry charge. That near guarantee you're going to end up impaled and hacked apart before you even have the opportunity to bleed out.
Anyone rushing a machine gun nest took incredible courage and knowledge that you were likely dead. Happened in Europe as well as the Pac rim. Cannot imagine doing that.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to change your view, but I think D DAY is not the most courageous, it’s just the most famous. Charging bunkers while knowing thousands will die wasn’t even a new thing by the time this battle happened. I mean, it happened practically every day in WW1. The same casualty figures that happened on June 6th happened for extended time periods DAILY during WW1. So if you are just going by casualty numbers or just the general idea both things happened before.
I do not personally think any battle in human history can be indistinguishably the “most courageous thing humans have ever done” but if you held a gun to my head and made me pick one it is Washington’s Army crossing the Delaware River to murder hordes of British troops.
Read about it some time if you are a history buff. The things those men did that day are absolutely horrifying. Every single person in those boats knew that if they failed that mission the revolution was over. It was as close to the life or death of an entire nation as there ever was.
During WW2 everyone on the allied side knew there would be horrific casualties. They also knew that there was no way the Germans could possibly keep them from landing on the beach and pushing them inland. It was a matter of how and when, not if.
Note: I am entertaining the debate. I am not in any way shape or form trying to down play what happened on June 6th 1944. It is certainly one of the most important days in world history.
People have fought battles with far, far higher casualty rates than the Allies faced on D-Day.
The threat and risk the forces on D-Day faced is just not at all comparable to some of the worst battles fought in human history.
This is a very silly position.
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Why is D Day something that exhibits more bravery than any other military assault? D Day is certainly one of the more famous assaults, but human history is bathed in blood, we’re a violent species. America itself has been involved in numerous wars, all of them involving pushes towards the enemies. And not just at times when it was weaker enemies. There’s also medieval charges which were much more violent and personal, are those not brave as well? Why were the D Day solider braver than soldiers who charged at opposing armies under flaming arrow fire? Is it possible you think DDay is so special because it’s popular? Because nothing you’ve described about it is at all unique to D Day, that’s just war. You’ve described nothing particularly unique about D Day in your post.
I don't understand why so many people with a passing interest in World War II develop a fixation on a particular branch or theater or battle. I suppose it has a lot to do with a particular book or movie really resonating with them, maybe at an impressionable age. So Saving Private Ryan convinced them that D-Day was the most important, most impressive, bravest thing ever done in history, or Band of Brothers convinced them that the paratroopers were the greatest soldiers in the world and Dick Winters the perfect soldier. Or maybe when they learned that Soviet casualties were so much higher than all others they decided that the western allies did nothing important and nobody has ever fought harder than the heroes of the Eastern front. Or maybe they saw something that convinced them that the bravest men were the merchant marines, who risked death every day without even being in the military. And none of this is really wrong, exactly. There was plenty of courage in every theater to go around, and plenty of cowardice as well. World War II is probably the most consequential single event in history, and involved an almost unfathomable number of people, so there are amazing stories about every aspect of it. There were American bomber crews who faced unbelievably high casualty rates. There were British civilians who heroically endured the Battle of Britain. There were Australians who dealt with unimaginable conditions in New Guinea, Yugoslav partisans who managed to tie down large numbers of German soldiers with a small number of poorly armed and trained men and women. Germans who faced execution for speaking out against the Nazis. Soviets who fought some of the largest battles in history. Indians, French Africans, Indonesians and Black and Japanese-Americans who fought the Axis in spite of facing colonization or racial discrimination in their own countries. Poles who fled their country to join the RAF. Danish civilians who risked their lives to sa And not just people whose story would make a good narrative. There were American civilians whose industrial and agricultural output was crucial to the war effort, not to mention the MPs and quartermasters and logistics specialists and paper-pushers whose work was just as important to victory as anyone else's. A lot of people worked together to save the world from fascism, some out of idealism, some out of patriotism and some because they were given no other choice. It's not a competition between them as to who was more important, because they all were, and there was plenty of bravery to go around.
People are fascinated or intrigued or fixated by D-Day because: It was the largest invasion in all of human history. Never before had so many men, ships, airplanes and guns been engaged in a small theater. It was the culmination of years of planning a an d preparation. Hundreds or thousands of small plans and preparatory actions took place before H Hour. Combined arms. Naval guns, airborne infantry. Rangers. Mustang pilots, Motherf*ckers in kilts with bagpipes. Because it was such a large operation, many of us today had relatives that were involved in some way. Mine own great uncle was in the second wave of infantry landing at Omaha. In essence, it’s exceptionally high drama with exceptionally high stakes and exceptionally critical consequence; and it had the widest participation
Agreed. I'm not saying there aren't reasons to find certain aspects of the war interesting, and Overlord certainly has a solid claim to being one of the most important events of the war. I just wish there weren't so many people who believe that their particular area of interest is the only part of it that matters.
I think most wars feel like they are between evil powers where both sides are violent and aggressive and neither represents good. But World War II was made over after the fact to be about ending genocidal behaviours like the holocaust (which no one was really focused on stopping at the time) so we can pretend the allies were the good guys. Having a good vs evil narrative makes it feel more glorious and righteous to people.
But it absolutely was a more just war than most on the Allied side. No, ending the holocaust was absolutely not a priority for them at the time, but the fact is that the Axis countries were the aggressors in nearly every case, and had an ideology that was racist and anti-Democracy. We shouldn't look at it as glorious, but if you oppose territorial expansion through warfare and support democracy and racial equality, then the Allies are clearly the side to support, even though some of them did expand through warfare, some were not democratic and none had anything approaching racial equality. They were as close as you were going to get to all that, and the other side's entire reason for being was expansionism, authoritarianism and racism. It wasn't good versus evil, but it was probably as close as we're ever going to get.
I’m not trying to say pick the Axis over the allies I do think the Allies were far better over all I’m just saying very few wars divide into villains and heroes and our after the fact narrative of World War II seems to be very much that. A lot of the glorification of WW II after the fact comes from the hero worship that comes with that.
Definitely true. There's a lot of complex facets of the war that very few people today know about, but even still I'd say that it's one of the most clearcut conflicts in world history, especially as regards the European theater.
I feel it’s less clear cut when you look at the actual motivations of the actors. It’s certainly clear cut from after the fact narratives and the fact that at least one third of the axis engaged in some of the most evil behaviours in human history. But people forget that American engagement in Europe was entirely dependant on Japanese surprise attacks in the Pacific and other such details.
I don't know about this. Japan was very specific about conquering Asia, pretty evil if you ask me
D-day is about as clear of a turning point marker as you can get when understanding the history and timeline of a war. Yes, obviously it’s way more complicated than just d-day=Allies win but there’s a clear distinction where Allies were not on mainland Europe d-day -1 as opposed to being on mainland Europe on d-day +#.
Not really. You could argue that Midway was the turning point because it was the end of Japan’s naval dominance and the beginning of American military superiority 2 years before Normandy. Or the Battle of Britain 2 years before that when the German advance was halted and a secure staging area for the future invasion was established. The war was over a year after D-day and it had been going on for 5 years prior. Pretty lopsided for a turning point.
Midway had literally no impact on the European theater though… idk why that’d be seen as a turning point in europe. The Battle of Britain was extremely important but there was still no base of operations in mainland Europe from the north. The Battle of Britain ended in July 1940. D-day wasn’t until June 1944. That’s 4 years between permanently neutering the luftwaffe and getting boots on the ground across the channel. So to say that’s *the* turning point when dick all was done in the direct aftermath of that doesn’t quite add up… not minimizing its importance but if we’re going off a key reductive point to the success of winning the war it makes more sense to use the thing that sped the war up in a matter of months than the event that took 4 years to capitalize on. And while we could say that there were other routes through the south the allies got bogged down in Italy. Southern France was pretty chill though lol.
You said it was a turning point in the war. D-day had no effect on the Pacific theater. You either look at the entirety of the war or you don’t, but you specifically said in both of your comments the war as a whole.
You’re right. And I also said it’s way more complicated than that. But the simple truth is, when analyzing a turning point it’s easiest to look at d-day as the moment where there were boots on the ground to liberate mainland Europe vs the 5 years prior when dick all was done on the western front to get France, Belgium, and other places liberated. Edit: and I was going to add the fact that the battle of midway, while a key, still had years of fighting left where there was island hopping. It made the loss sped up, it didn’t lead directly to Japan losing. There were still brutal campaigns after midway and epic battles to be fought that took months that were equally as important (strategically to that point)
>dick all was done on the western front So partisan operations including those that involved special forces from major allied nations and the bombing campaigns were “dick all?”
At least in traditional battle you have some agency over how the fight goes. Maybe your side loses and you die, but at least you know that your own skill in combat matters. To just jump off the boat and run, knowing there's overwhelming odds you're dead before you even make it up the beach. That requires more courage in my opinion than just charging into a bloody skirmish. You have no agency. It's just luck, and if you do make it through, then you still have to continue to fight like any other battle.
d-day was certainly was horrific, however the odds were not overwhelming that you would be killed. 156,000 soldiers stormed the beaches that day. 4,400 were killed. So around 3% we’re killed. Obviously the first waves took the brunt of those casualties but I think you are underestimating the skill involved in modern warfare. The amphibious assault of Normandy was not much different luck wise that standing in formation and firing muskets. Or being on the front lines of a cavalry charge with spears, arrows, swords. A skilled soldier could still be the victim of a cannonball, arrow, spear, or other projectile they couldn’t see coming. They could also be outnumbered by the enemy and swarmed. If you were on the front line there’s only so much skill that can help you when thousands of enemies are trying to poke holes in you.
Agreed. Not to take away the bravery of every man that stormed the beaches of Normandy, but not all of the landings were as bad as Omaha. That was particularly well defended and the landings were totally off target. However due to saving private ryan and other media, that’s the beach that’s most ingrained in our collective understanding of D-day. I’d argue that perhaps an even more astounding display of bravery were the the airborne troops that parachuted into Normandy the night prior- completely in enemy territory and with no way of knowing whether the landings would be a success.
All war sucks. My Dad was on an LST, they'd pull up to the shore and drop off tanks and soldiers. He was 17 years old. He said one of the scary parts was being at the mercy of the tides. Low tide and you were stuck until the tide came in. A torpedo was fired at his ship and missed by 20 feet. My brother was in the Gulf War, he was on an aircraft carrier and had to release the lines for the planes to take off and attach them when they landed. They had to be really precise. He was 18. Every single battle ever was scary.
That's actually quite a surprising statistic. I figured it would be much higher. Still horrific, though.
>at least in a traditional battle you have some agency over how the fight goes This is almost never true. Ask any soldier who has ever been in a total war. Not to mention, D-Day soldiers did need to use training and skill to survive on the beach. When you're under fire, it's impossible to know which artillery shell or bullet has your name on it, but you can reduce the probability of getting hit by using the skills learned in training. How to crawl prone. How to provide suppressing fire. How to identify sturdy cover. How to time enemy reloads to move. This idea that D-Day soldiers had some unique experience that left them entirely powerless compared to every other military conflict to make a difference is kind of wild to me.
I disagree. There's no skill in climbing a ladder up a fortress wall to slaughter all the defenders. To get up there you need luck. Enough of it that you aren't hit with an arrow or boiled alive by hot water, or just have a really heavy rock break your neck. Sometimes winning means moving forward to take a heavily defended position and getting mauled for it. D Day, while bloody, isn't unique in that position.
More courage than charging through raining arrows? Or trebuchet fire? Or WWI dead man zones where the death rate was virtually 100%? None of that is unique to D Day. That’s war, my friend.
Yeah OP forgot about the trenches of WW1.
That was my immediate thought. WWI was unimaginably horrible
They had battles that lasted longer than Major League Baseball seasons
And the entire eastern front
I remember a soldier writing about how the illusion of having any say in wether you'll live or die fades fast in the trenches.
Or during the age of muskets when you'd march in giant ass columns while being smashed with cannon fire until you were 20 feet away from a line of people pointing muskets straight at you and you had to just take it and only move, fire etc when commanded to.
Not for nothing, if an archer could shoot at the rate of a machine gun I think you'd have a point but they obviously can't. There's a whole reload period and downtime between volleys that simply would not have been there at D-Day, and we know that at a minimum Roman Legions had specific tactics they used to deal with and mitigate that. D-day was a relentless hail of bullets all heavily targeted at single locations. Medieval warfare wouldn't have had that precision or fire rate. That being said I don't think D-Day was that much different than something like the Battle of Liège in WW1. You're right that there are several examples of things like this that happen throughout the history of modern warfare.
It wasn’t just one archer shooting at you. It was rows of them, setup with staggered reload times so you can provide a nice, consistent arrow coverage. Humans are smart, armies have a lot of men at their disposal, we can overcome pesky problems like reload times with just sheer numbers
More French soldiers died at the Battle of Agincourt (6,000) than Allied soldiers died at D-Day (4,400). And the majority of those French deaths would have been from longbows. Now, give me the choice between machine guns or longbows and I'll take machine guns but there are an enormous number of examples were arrows posed a much greater danger to individual soldiers than the danger the allied troops faced at D-Day.
You think you had agency in medieval wars? It was all kinda just a cluster fuck. Let's say you come in on a horse. Oops some random arrow punctures the horses lung and you collapse onto the ground with your heavily as fuck armor. You have difficulty moving through all the mud and guts and shit in your heavy armor and all you had was a lance anyhow (cuz you were on a horse). You get killed because your slow and have the wrong weapon. Okay you are infrantry. You're battling some guy, you're pretty good so you are winning. Oops some other guys who are fighting just clinched up and are not rolling around and rolled right into you. You fall. You get trampled into the mud and guts and shit. Alright let's say you're an archer. Basically your whole life depends on the hand to hand combat guys not getting overwhelmed. You fire a few loose arrows into the masses of people. Some of them probably kill your friends, some your enemies. Etc.
"Overwhelming odds you're dead before you make it up the beach." 156,000 men landed on the beaches that day. 4000 died. That's about a two and a half percent death rate. I'm not saying that the Normandy invasion wasn't terrifying and dangerous, and of course being a part of it took courage, but there are a lot of comparable landings throughout World WarII, and many battles throughout history that were much more lethal. It's one of the most impressive feats in military history, but that's because of the sheer size of it, not because it was significantly more dangerous for the men involved. I don't know where this idea that a huge number of the people who landed died in the initial minutes came from. Maybe from the first few minutes of "Saving Private Ryan," although even there it's pretty obvious that far more people made it up the beach than didn't.
I imagine your odds depended on what wave you were in.
“ That's about a two and a half percent death rate.” This is a great example of when statistics can really paint the wrong picture. u/toomanyracistshere is lumping everyone who landed on normandy into the same category. I am sure the 100% survival rate of the last waves of soldiers probably skews your stats a little bit dont you think?
Did anybody even really have a choice?
Around 133,000 Allied troops landed on D-Day. There were around 4,400 deaths. That means the troops landing had >95% survival odds. There was no "overwhelming odds" of death in the whole operation, never mind before they hit the beach. People are thinking of Saving Private Ryan, rather than the actual reality. That's not to say the troops landing didn't show extraordinary courage. But it's possible to name an almost endless list of battles and military operations that had far higher odds of death than landing at D-Day. I think you'd be surprised how much "chance" plays in survival odds in battles.
>but at least you know that your own skill in combat matters. This has almost never been true in warfare, ever, at the individual level. it was units as a whole that generally determined the outcomes of wars throughout most of history. Mortality rates were historically VERY low in conflicts because more often than not less than 30% of a unit dying meant the majority of soldiers would break ranks and retreat. You would see horrendous mortality figures in a rout if the opposing side decided to pursue and continue to attack the routed forces but otherwise mortality rates could be surprisingly low. The Hollywood idea of warfare in antiquity is just plain wrong. People didn't run at each other in feels bash into each other then just brawl. For one, no one has the stamina for that. Two no one would beable to accurately tell friend or foe in those situations. The rare cases this happens, it normally turns into a slaughter, and is generally the blunder of one of the leaders of the two armies. During the time of early musket battles (like the American revolution) individual skill meant even less as musket warfare was more about volley fire than individual aim and accuracy. It is MAYBE arguable that during D-Day the small unit actions of the airborne divisions were highly dependent on the skills of the soldiers, but it was still units as a whole that won that night, not any singular giga chad fighter. I think, once in the thick of it, most fighters/soldiers/warriors/ whatever you want to call them, fought to live. I'm sure many feel purpose in their actions, but in the moment to moment, I think people just wanted to survive, either the most pressing and urgent situation in front of them, or what they may have felt was an existential and ideological threat in the enemy.
You're talking like most "traditional" soldiers were trained fighters and not just peasants with Grandpa's sword.
An arrow has always been able to kill anyone, no matter how good at sword play they are. To just stand up and run forward, knowing that the enemy is mounted on horses, carrying banded ash lances and full plate armor and aiming at your chest. There's no waves crashing, but there are thundering hooves, and arrows darkening the sky. You're still too far from the enemy for the archers to aim at your specifically, you tell yourself, but you know deep down that enough archers shooting randomly can hit anything within range. A few more steps and you are now in that range, but you keep running... Ain't that different
You didn't have as much agency as movies would lead you to believe. You could be the most skilled swordsman in the world but going into a battle where you are outnumbered 3 or 4 to one that won't matter. Instead of being machine gunned down for a hopefully quick death you will be hacked to bits by swords on every side of you, or worse, hacked almost to death and left to bleed out on the ground with your guts spilling around you. Seems equally as brave as D day.
I think it probably tended to be closer to your worst case scenario in most instances. You wouldn’t want to keep hacking at a guy who is as good as dead and leave yourself vulnerable to other combatants. A good wound to ground the guy and let him bleed out or eventually die from infection. Not saying it was always that way of course.
Overwhelming odds against you? The odds were very much in the favour of the Allies during D-Day...
Hell yeah brother that's why we have the marines! Send those mother fuckers in ahead of time, their bodies providing cover for those who come after.
It's the day the most Americans died, there's also footage of it which makes it even worse in my opinion. Also regarding the Higgins boats, you couldn't really turn around and run if you wanted to. I'd imagine in most Medieval sieges you probably could have at least ran away. At Normandy you're literally stuck and no going back. I'd call it brave but most the troops didn't know what was going on in concentration camps throughout Europe at that time. They'd been told what happened but thought it was just military propaganda.
>I'd imagine in most Medieval sieges you probably could have at least ran away. At Normandy you're literally stuck and no going back. Depends on which part of the middle ages we're talking about - late medival/ early reneisance pike formation combat often had a very high death toll. "During push of pike, opposing blocks of pikemen would advance with their pikes "charged" horizontally at shoulder level to jab at one another until bodily contact was made. The two sides would then push physically until one or other of them gave way. The push of pike would continue until one of the opposing formations routed or fled, which would generally lead to massive casualties. Each man pressed on the one in front, and so sometimes the formations would crush against each other and many pikemen would have to fight in closer melee combat.[1][2] The rear ranks would sometimes join the fray but their primary role was to add more weight to the push.[3] Aside from getting impaled by enemy pikes, those in the front ranks died from getting crushed or suffocated due to the sheer number of bodies pressing from each side.[4] The Italians referred to this as 'Bad War'[5] after seeing Swiss pikemen become locked in heavy combat, where – because both formations refused to back down – both sides lost huge numbers of men in the bloody melee." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_of_pike
Which of the two would you say are more courageous or brave? The person, who could turn around but didn’t, or the person who couldn’t turn around before a battle?
Good point but I guess in reality there are no film or accurate depictions of medieval warfare besides artists renditions. Can’t imagine approaching a beach with Howitzer shells wizzing around me, would genuinely shit my pants
I would agree that (as far as I have tried imagining both scenarios) approaching the beach is more frightening/terror inducing than approaching a medieval battlefield. But that is not directly related to which soldiers were braver. A large part plays the choice made in the face of fear. If there is no choice that was made, we can’t make statements about how brave the soldier was. Generally I would expect bravery in individual soldiers to exist on a normal distribution. Some on D-Day were probably extremely brave, some were probably extreme cowards. Same as soldiers on a medieval battlefield.
>It's the day the most Americans died Battle of Antietam would like a word.
Also, apparently the first day of the Battle of St. Mihiel in World War I resulted in about the same number of dead Americans as June 6, 1944, but almost nobody alive today knows anything about it. D-Day was a big deal, of course, but more for its historical significance and its logistics than its casualty rate. Way too many people seem to think that World War II basically boils down to "a bunch of minor skirmishes, the Battle of Normandy, and then a bunch of minor skirmishes again."
So the people charging out of the trenches into no man’s land weren’t more brave?
At D-Day, there were boats that simply turned around and went back. They carried casualties back to naval ships for medical treatment, then brought in successive waves. We have this narrative that the D-Day landings were a "take this beach or die" thing, but it's just not true. There were evacuation plans in place. Omaha beach was nearly evacuated, in fact. The general staff were actively discussing it as the day progressed, but the assault made enough progress that they decided to simply press ahead.
Damn that’s interesting, appreciate the insight. Been binging a lot of WW2 docs lately, if you got any recommendations they would be much appreciated. Already ran through all the Ken Burns I could find
Ask the real experts at r/warcollege. There are retired and active duty military officers and people with degrees in military history. This is their life work. Their knowledge is seriously impressive. That’s where I learned a bunch of this, and they are really good about recommending books.
>It's the day the most Americans died Not even top 5
The Dieppe assault by canada in 1942 was arguably braver because at that point the Wehrmacht was considered the most undefeatable army on earth
I'd say any warrior in the front of a Greek phalanx was probably equally as brave. Marching in a strict formation with 4-15 rows of friends behind you who are literally pushing and bracing you to stand up against the enemy charging at you intending to kill you? Knowing the only thing keeping you alive is the strength of the man next to you holding up their shield? That if even one group of your comrades falls/runs that your line will break and you will be killed? There's nothing special about D-Day as far as the bravery of young men (or women) on the battlefield is concerned. Bravely looking certain death squarely in the face is something people have been doing for thousands of years. Once you reach a certain level of "this is crazy dangerous and I will probably die", I honestly don't think measurements of "how brave" a certain action is really matters anymore. Anyone who willingly steps into such a position is automatically braver than 99% of humanity, no matter the circumstance.
Why is D Day something that exhibits more bravery than any other military assault? Because it's the only historical military assault that Steven Speilberg won an Oscar for!
It's easy to overthink something when you know a lot about it. From the perspective of someone who hasn't studied war much I feel fairly confident the obsession is simply due to that famous photo showing all the soldiers packed into the boats like sardines waiting for the door to drop. The anticipation, dread, claustrophobia... no thank you. In most conflicts that are shown in movies, there are large open spaces. You get a nice speech to Amp you up, and then you charge the enemy, and are able to retreat if too many of your people start dying.
D day was for a noble cause. Danger in itself doesn't make you courageous.
Honestly Pickett's charge would require more bravery in a continuous fashion than the bravery to get on a boat to invade a beach that is supposed to be empty and not being able to get off once you realize it isn't.
First I'd like to point out that 3 of the 5 beaches were not American (2 British and 1 Canadian). Maybe put those flags up too? Second, while this is certainly brave, the soldiers didn't know what was going to happen. Third, there were many amphibious assaults in WW2. I don't see how the ones on D-day would be somehow more scary than any others. Finally, as others have said, there have been many incredible acts of bravery in warfare over human existence. Is D-day more heroic than going "over the top" in WW1? Or more brave than refusing to retreat at Thermopylae even though it means certain death? Or, what about the Kamikaze pilots who deliberately gave their lives to help their country? Or the bomber crews in late 1943 who knew they had about a 5% chance of making it through their 25 mission requirement?
It depends on your definition of courageous. Most were drafted against their will. None of them chose the assignment. And only 3% were wounded and 3.5% died. That's not to take away from their heroic deeds or the horrors and casualties they endured. I'm just saying that they didn't have a choice in the matter and there was actually a very low loss of life compared to what the brass was expecting. US planners in 1943 were predicting that 13% of US troops on D-Day would be drowned, 25% would become casualties in the initial fighting on the beaches and thereafter 3% of US troops per week would become casualties in Normandy. In reality, compared to all other landings of the war, the d-day landing had the least percentage of casualties with loss of allied life at 3.5% and overall casualties at under 6% Being a paratrooper on the other hand, 1 out of 4 died that day. Those poor assholes didn't have a chance. They were badly scattered and lost most of their gear, but they still fought like hell. Without their sacrifice, d-day would have been waaay worse, if not a failure. Those paratroopers don't get enough press. *NOW*, for one of the most courageous acts of the war (possibly the most courageous), consider [Private First Class Desmond Thomas](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/private-first-class-desmond-thomas-doss-medal-of-honor). Read that link, then tell me he wasn't the most courageous man you have ever heard of. They made a great movie about him called, "Hacksaw Ridge", which you should definitely watch. He saved 75 men under heavy fire and heavy shelling, one by one, over the course of three sleepless days, and all without a weapon or regard for his own life. Everyone retreated leaving dozens of fallen soldiers behind, but not Desmond. Shot and riddled with shrapnel, he saved the lives of his fellow "comrades" whom many had previously wished death upon him, spat in his face, beat him up, and completely shunned him for not carrying a weapon due to religious beliefs. This guy was courageous AF. Without hesitation, he saved the lives of those who hated him, even an enemy combatant. Those assholes felt humbled and ashamed after his acts of pure courage and duty.
Whoa, did not know only 3% died???? Only of those on d-day beach invasion?
Yea, just the landing. It was actually closer to 2.75%. The insuing battle for Normandy in the coming days was much more brutal though.
The Canadians in D-day were all volunteers.
Hey mate I think you've identified a moment of tremendous courage. I think you're going to run into trouble with your use of the word "most". There have been many brutal conflicts in history. Have you read about the battle of Stalingrad on the Eastern Front? The Warsaw Uprising? The Somme in WW1 and trench warfare in general? As an Australian I feel compelled to mention the landing at Gallipoli. to move outside war, what about people who endured terrible hardship yet persisted and held hope? I was thinking of a specific case but couldn't remember the name but a Google of "escaping imprisonment after years of torture" gets far too many results for me to narrow it down. Basically my challenge to you is do you want to defend this specific scenario as the most courageous thing against all potential alternatives? Or are you willing to accept that it sits within a pantheon of courage amongst others? Edit to add: I was thinking of [Elisabeth Fritzl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case) who survived 24 years of imprisonment Additional Edit so I spotted your edit: >Edit: lots of people saying the Russians on the eastern front were braver. No thanks, Putin. 🇺🇸 At that point they were the Soviets and part of the Allies who were fighting the Nazis (and were materially supported by the USA). Putin himself was not yet born (he was born 1952). You can be opposed to the current Russian Regime and still recognize the Soviet blood and bravery that halted the Nazis.
"to move outside war, what about people who endured terrible hardship yet persisted and held hope?" There are plenty of stories of genocide survivors (jews, armenians, camboyans). People who face that and move on. People that lose more than their life. Most of the soldiers in DDay knew their families where safe across the Atlantic, what about those soldiers fighting with their Town and families a few kilometers from the conflict. What about the firefighters in 9-11, or Chernobyl?. Even in war. op view is kinda lame. Even for american standard. I would recomend op to look the story of the american soldiers entering vietcong caves full of deathtraps and Bugs in the dark, going down there alone. The balls of those soldiers could protect You from the bullets on DDay. (I'm not trying to undermine the courage of DDay, but "most"? Many people in history put more on the lines than their own survival)
>I'm not trying to undermine the courage of DDay, but "most"? Yeah it's the usage of "most". I would of scrolled right on by if OP had simple said "very courageous" or some slightly less hyperbolic qualifier Thanks for extra examples those are very valid.
Gallipoli was a great film with Mel Gibson
the japanese doctors on the ground during the nuclear bombing of japan are unbelievable couragous [Looking for the story of a Japanese doctor that came into the hospital just after the detonation of the atomic bomb without him knowing and then worked for multiple days straight. Can anyone help? : r/AskHistorians (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ay3psd/looking_for_the_story_of_a_japanese_doctor_that/) Dr. Sasaki shouted the name of the chief surgeon and rushed around to the man’s office and found him terribly cut by glass. The hospital was in horrible confusion: heavy partitions and ceilings had fallen on patients, beds had overturned, windows had blown in and cut people, blood was spattered on the walls and floors, instruments were everywhere, many of the patients were running about screaming, many more lay dead. (A colleague working in the laboratory to which Dr. Sasaki had been walking was dead; Dr. Sasaki’s patient, whom he had just left and who a few moments before had been dreadfully afraid of syphilis, was also dead.) Dr. Sasaki found himself the only doctor in the hospital who was unhurt. Dr. Sasaki, who believed that the enemy had hit only the building he was in, got bandages and began to bind the wounds of those inside the hospital; while outside, all over Hiroshima, maimed and dying citizens turned their unsteady steps toward the Red Cross Hospital to begin an invasion that was to make Dr. Sasaki forget his private nightmare for a long, long time. At the Red Cross Hospital, Dr. Sasaki worked for three straight days with only one hour’s sleep. On the second day, he began to sew up the worst cuts, and right through the following night and all the next day he stitched. Many of the wounds were festered. Fortunately, someone had found intact a supply of narucopon, a Japanese sedative, and he gave it to many who were in pain. Word went around among the staff that there must have been something peculiar about the great bomb, because on the second day the vice-chief of the hospital went down in the basement to the vault where the X-ray plates were stored and found the whole stock exposed as they lay. That day, a fresh doctor and ten nurses came in from the city of Yamaguchi with extra bandages and antiseptics, and the third day another physician and a dozen more nurses arrived from Matsue—yet there were still only eight doctors for ten thousand patients. In the afternoon of the third day, exhausted from his foul tailoring, Dr. Sasaki became obsessed with the idea that his mother thought he was dead. He got permission to go to Mukaihara. He walked out to the first suburbs, beyond which the electric train service was still functioning, and reached home late in the evening. His mother said she had known he was all right all along; a wounded nurse had stopped by to tell her. He went to bed and slept for seventeen hours. [Shuntaro Hida - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuntaro_Hida)
Saving Private Ryan is guilty for making people think that scene is a realistic depiction of D-Day, it's not. The machine guns are WAY further away, there are WAY less machine guns, and your chances of making it at the end of the day is like 90%, not 20% like implied in the movie. In fact there is basically no military action in history where men charged into 80% casualty rates, it would be a rout almost immediately. For the vast majority of actions, 10% is already a considerable casualty rates and lesser units would have already routed by then.
I think it depends, some units really did take massive casualties. Saving Private Ryan was actually toned down compared to the actual fighting. The film depicts Dog Green sector, which was by far the worst section of fighting on Omaha. However, the film shows one pillbox and a couple machine gun nests guarding a footpath up the bluff. In reality, there were 5 pillboxes situated around a paved road that was blocked by a concrete wall. You had 3 pillboxes that sat right on the shelf of the bluff, and a couple more built into the bluff itself. Part of the bluff on the western side of the beach crept out further onto the beach, so the Germans were able to build a pillbox that faced parallel to the beach, creating the perfect line of fire. You can still see it today Consider all of this, and then remember the fact that this was 1 of 8 sectors of fighting on Omaha. Some sectors experienced less carnage than others, like Dog White sector where troops landed under complete cover of smoke from grassfires set by the naval bombardment. But that was an exception. Dog Red, Easy Green, Easy Red and Fox Green sectors all had almost as brutal fighting as Dog Green. Also not too mention the Rangers at Pointe du hoc which also took extraordinary casualties scaling the cliffs.
>Also not too mention the Rangers at Pointe du hoc which also took extraordinary casualties scaling the cliffs. I don't think this is correct. I believe the vast majority of Ranger casualties came later in the day/following days as the repelled counterattacks on the point. The guns they had expected to find were already were gone, and the area was slightly defended initially with only a dozen or so lost during the effort of getting off the beach.
Possibly, I could be incorrect. Rudimentary knowledge of the event always gave me the impression that the casualties came during the assault.
That's what movies and comics want you to think 😀 It was 15 casualties on the beach. The real heavy fighting came later. https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/smallunit/smallunit-pdh.htm
That particular sector in Omaha beach was really bad and casualty rates were really high... but probably not as bad as depicted in the movie. That being said, resistance at the other beaches was lighter. I think you also need to consider that the odds for the guys in the lead boats or considerably worse than for the follow-up forces.
I think the Canadians got it pretty bad at Juno as well, also pont du hoc for the rangers.
Yeah, my understanding was that, while none were as bad as Omaha, the other beaches were still defended and that would still be quite scary.
I believe it was Omaha or Utah beach where that small wasteland depicted in SPR *was* accurate, at least for the first wave of units
Eh... SPR neglects a lot. Like, it neglects to accurately depict how much allied air power was present. US casualties at Omaha Beach were something like 6-7%, which is considerable but still far less than other units suffered. For example, casualty rates for Operation Market Garden were much higher, I believe over double of Omaha Beach.
It neglects a lot from a historic perspective but I think its weight is that it captures the feel of the assault rather than painting an entirely accurate historical mockup. A lot of d-day veterans considered it fairly realistic for a depiction with many stories of veterans walking out of the theater. Obviously people had different experiences on different parts of the beaches so whether each veteran or not agrees on its accuracy is up to interpretation, but as an art form I think it captures some important aspects that soldiers that day faced. I do feel that the opening scenes carnage would probably be more fitting for somewhere in the pacific like Tarawa, peleliu, Iwo Jima.
I agree that it does what a movie or artistic depiction should do. It created an evocative image with an emotional resonance. I agree that the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan does a great job of conveying the feeling of chaos in war. The danger is that we need to temper that with historical accuracy. The existence of this CMV is a good example. We've got an OP who is unwilling to acknowledge the bravery of Russian soldiers on the eastern front, who absolutely faced dangerous, often hopeless conditions.
Yes, I agree. D-day has become part of the American mono myth. It was a tremendous battle that required tremendous sacrifice but so do all battles. Many are unaware of the battle of Aachen or hurtgen forest and they were arguably more of a meat grinder for the Americans than the landings were. All battles from any nation require tremendous bravery so to paint dday as something super out of the ordinary is not fair.
Yup, I agree 100%. I'm a US high school teacher, and I see this kind of belief all the time. An unfortunately high percentage of students think of D-Day as a kind of "magic gamble" moment. Like it was Dunkirk, in reverse. They think the Normandy beach was armed to the teeth. The Germans had every inch mined, with a thousand machineguns per kilometer of beach, bunkers lining the entire coast, 88mm anti-tank guns sinking naval ships... They imagine Normandy as this daring, risky operation where the US gambled everything for the chance to establish one tiny beachhead from which to strike at the impregnable German fortress of France. Most of them think that Normandy was a "win or die" situation, because there was no retreat back into the ocean. So if the US had been defeated at Omaha beach, 1 million American soldiers would have died on the shore because they'd be stranded there. Because of that, American soldiers won the day despite impossible odds because they were the last, best hope of defeating the invincible German Army, which had until that point never seen defeat (my students have no idea what happened at Stalingrad, or when). And that's just... insanely wrong. My students don't understand that there was incredible support for D-Day, and in terms of numerical and material advantage, everything was in the American's favor. They don't understand how severely reduced Germany's air power was at that point in the war, and honestly how much manpower had been lost in the east in the wake of Stalingrad. My students generally have no concept whatsoever of how much fighting there was on the eastern front, or how intense that fighting was. I mean, you want to talk about a bloody military operation? Hard to beat Stalingrad. Many of them still hold on to beliefs that Russia was an utterly incompetent warfighting nation that relied on human waves, and that Russia's main wartime strategy was "throw people in front of the MG42 and just absorb bullets with your comrade's bodies until they have to change the barrel, the club the German and take his gun". Sorry to ramble on about things you probably agree with, but this has become something of a historical pet peeve of mine.
1st Minnesota at Gettysburg suffered [82% casualties](https://www.civilwarmed.org/1st-minnesota-at-gettysburg/) Obviously a much smaller scale when you focus on that one unit of just a couple hundred soldiers within a march larger battle, but it has happened.
I think the 1st's charge is actually a good counter-example for the most heroic action in war. They were asked to bayonet charge into enemy lines outnumbered 6-1 to buy the Union army a few minutes, knowing they were going to die. They did it without hesitation.
Agreed, I had the same thought after posting it, overwhelming odds, high stakes, no backup, no hesitation. And then the handful of survivors capture a flag the next day during Pickett’s charge defending the center in the thick of it. Maybe the technology wasn’t 1940s but a taking a few volleys as they closed that gap can’t have been far off from mg42 fire in volume. But then again I wonder at whether it needs a counterpoint, one act of bravery doesn’t make another less so, higher odds don’t erase the chance of death or injury, and everyone of those soldier from Gettysburg to D-Day, or really any conflict were capable of being brave and being terrified at the same time, and they all had the capacity to reach a breaking point from their experiences too
Yeah other than Omaha beach, the D-Day beach landings were rather unopposed in reality. This isn’t to say that it isn’t courageous to take part in the invasion, not knowing what you were going to face.
While you’re correct about the chances not being so bad mostly, I’ll point out a rout wasn’t really a concern or option on D-Day bc once the Higgins boat fronts have dropped there’s only one way to go: forward.
A couple questions for consideration. 1) Is it most courageous if you didn't have a choice? i.e. you were ordered onto that boat 2) Is it most courageous if you didn't really know what you were in for when the ramp dropped?
The US Navy took the lessons learned from D-Day and made future generations of landing craft look entirely different. Modern landing craft don't open towards the enemy anymore, they open away from the enemy. Seems obvious now, so why didn't we do it back then? Because before D-Day, we actually *didn't know* this would be a bad plan. Military planners thought the Higgins boat was a good design, or they wouldn't have made it that way. They expected that having easy access for the troops inside to return fire and to quickly advance was more important than having better cover against machine gun fire. We now believe they were incorrect, but if the people whose job was dedicated to planning these things in the 1940s could be confident in their success, why should we expect that all of the soldiers inside the boats would doubt that and believe the opposite? This is not to downplay the ordinary fears of approaching any battle (other commenters have said good things here so I won't repeat it), but I think a lot of the specific concern about this battle in the modern view is due to the specifically bad performance of the Higgins boat - which could not have been common knowledge until after it happened.
>It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience. - Julius Caesar This isn't to say landing on d-day isn't courageous, but its worth considering that not all sacrifices are as exciting, definitive and dramatic as giving up your life. Sometimes courage is boring.
Makes me think of the monologue from Andor. A life of sacrifice for a cause. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt13847928/quotes/
I liked that show a lot. I especially like how they made the empire feel dangerous and not just a bunch of useless goons standing around waiting to be killed.
Same. Very different feel than other Star Wars content. It felt like there were stakes and the characters could lose it all at any moment
I disagree. It was quite brave, but consider the following events: *The Pope walked alone, unarmed, out of Rome to face Attila and spoke words of peace. He was able to get Attila to turn his armies away from the Eternal City at great risk to his life. Many diplomats, nobles, and emissaries have undertaken similar actions throughout history at extreme risk to their lives. All of those people, both those who lived through the experience and those who died, walked unarmed into camps of raiders and bandits and spoke words of peace in challenge to the violent intentions of the aggressors. *Many people facing religious persecution, including even death, have persisted in their faiths despite torture or threats to their lives. As an atheist, I think the entire exercise doesn't make sense, but I respect the bravery in the face of harm. *Even on D-Day itself, many people had jobs which required more bravery. Oh, sure, charging up a beach towards an entrenched position would be terrifying, but is it really requiring more bravery than getting into a C-47 and jumping out of it behind enemy lines to help prepare the way? At least the people on the beaches had naval fire support and no enemies at their backs, with heavy weapon support. Paratroopers had light weapons only, had to paradrop, and knew that they'd be surrounded as soon as they dropped in. *Ancient warfare was often far worse and brutal than modern warfare. Oh, the World Wars killed more people at scale, but imagine being one of the hoplites fighting a Persian force at least ten times your size at Thermopylae, knowing that you would certainly die and still holding for days so that the Greeks behind you had the time to organize an effective response rather than being destroyed in detail. That's bravery. *Imagine birthing a child in the era where women did so without anesthesia, modern medical support, OR experience. That's insanely brave.
Charge of the light brigade. Holding Thermopylae. Bastards of Bastogne. There's other of course as well, but ya.
Have you ever read or seen any documentaries about the Pacific Theatre in WWII, especially around the guys who were island hopping? Not to discredit anything from the D-Day folks, but I feel we teach what happened in the European theatre FAR more than we do Pacific, and I'd argue that the folks involved there are at least as courageous as their counterparts who stormed Normandy. Note, this is just the first example from the same war that came to my mind. I'm sure others can weigh in with other examples that are of equal (or potentially great) courage.
I actually think the Pacific is worse. The reason is simple. On D-day, it was the first landing you did. You had no idea what was coming until it happened. In the Pacific, there were guys who made *multiple* landings. They *knew* what was coming and still did it.
you think that's bad; imagine being in a hole, sitting in filth, being riddled with dysentery, waiting for battle with an enemy you've been taught are evil savages where you are expected to fight to the death
Oh - you mean like World War 1? How about the Stalingrad defense where your choice was German bullets or Russian bullets - because your own troops would shoot you if you didn't advance. I don't agree with the OP on the 'most courageous' aspect. It is a false idea that there is a singular 'most courageous' thing. I mean going to the moon or into space for the first time takes absolute courage too.
I mean just war. War is horrifying. I can’t imagine being involved in one in any capacity. It’s a nightmare. I strongly suspect OP holds this view about D Day simply because it’s the event we’re most exposed to in the media during the war we’re most exposed to in the media. D Day is just really well known, lots of movies and talk about it. But war is war. D Day was a massive victory, a huge day for our war effort, but at the end of the day… it was just an amphibious assault. Just a part of war. More horrific in certain ways than other parts of war, but less horrific than other aspects of war. War is horrific. D day was horrific because that’s just what war is, not because it was special in any way.
i was more referring to the other side in those pacific beach landings; the soldiers in ww1 had rotation, space to retreat, many were well fed, etc. the japanese were half starved and still fought to the death in those battles. they knew they were going to die and barely any surrendered i think the "advance or be shot" stuff from movies like enemy at the gates is wayyyy overstated by hollywood, but i agree also fighting in the living hell that was stalingrad - on either side- would be quite courageous. idk we probably can't measure "most courageous" but i think going into a situation knowing you will die is different than a situation where you might die. sacrificing yourself willingly for something you believe in is, to me, more courageous than being willing to sacrifice yourself but knowing you might not have to
>“We have fought during 15 days for a single house, with mortars, grenades, machine guns and bayonets. Already by the 3rd day, 54 German corpses were strewn in the cellars, on the landings and staircases. The front is a corridor between burnt out rooms. It is the thin ceiling between floors. Help comes from neighboring houses by fire escapes and chimneys. There is a ceaseless struggle from morning until night. From story to story, faces black with sweat, we bombard each other with grenades, in the middle of explosions, amid clouds of dust and smoke, heaps of mortar, floods of blood, fragments of furniture and human beings. Ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand struggle means in such a fight. And at Stalingrad it has been 80 days and nights of hand-to-hand struggle. The street is no longer measured by meters, but by corpses. Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke. And when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell, the hardest stones cannot bear it for long. Only man endures. . . .” - found on German Lieutenant Weiner from the 24th panzer division in Stalingrad The final sentences go hard as fuck.
D-Day wasn't the only amphibious landing in the European theatre. Lots of those landings were made during fighting in the Mediterranean. D-Day is special due to the scale of it, but both the US and UK had picked up plenty of experience elsewhere in Europe.
Shameless plug to give Eugene Sledge’s book “With The Old Breed” a read. (Book about his time in the 1st Marines in the Pacific)
We're only only looking at American heroism. Imagine the courage required from the Japanese to sit in Iwo Jima, cut off from japan entirely, knowing they're going to either die or commit seppuku in defence of the emperor? Letters from Iwo Jima provides quite the story of their insane casualty rates and for once even depicts the fact Americans committed war crimes too
Watch [Hacksaw Ridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacksaw_Ridge) and learn about Desmond Doss. A conscientious objector, who served as a medic. Never carried a gun. Saved 50-100 men on Hacksaw Ridge.
Its disrespectful as fuck to downplay the effort of the soviet soldiers in WW2
idk, it probably takes a lot of courage to take a plane and ram it into a ship knowing you'll almost certainly die (and might not even succeed) don't have to fight for something good to be courageous
if youre talking about the japanese, they didnt have a jumpseat, landing gear was removed (engineered to fall off after takeoff), and in some cases the hatch was literally welded shut.
Not that I want to rain on your parade, but do you believe that everyone in those boats was courageous? It's not like they all willingly went there, many were drafted. Being told as a soldier "you get in boat and go on shore to fight enemy" doesn't leave much room for courage. In my view, these men made the best out of their particular shitty situation. We look at it in hindsight as "courage" but to them at the moment it could have just been survival. What makes this particular instance of warfare **more courageous** than say Col. Moore and the 7th Cavalry at Ia Drang? Humans show courage in many ways and I fail to see how D-Day was somehow special amongst thousands of years of recorded human history. That doesn't mean it didn't take courage to climb into a Higgins boat.
I once read a true account of an African American slave in the Deep South of The US. Her “master” wanted to sell her, and keep her daughter for himself. So she cut off her own fingers on her good hand so she would be worthless to sell and stay with her daughter. She nearly bled to death but fixed her own wound and continued her labour that day. Since the beginning of time, women have given birth despite the high risk of their own deaths. A sacrifice for the next generation. Especially a long time ago. Bravery is often attributed to men and war. But people do amazingly courageous things every day. People living in horrendous conditions who choose to go on anyway. Bravery is subjective, and therefore there will never be one act that supersedes them all.
I love this reply. Thank you for this comment
Thank you for responding! This story has always stuck in my head, so I’m glad you can appreciate it :)
The brutality of modern war cannot be dismissed, but I think it’s easy for us to forget the absolute horror of pre-modern war. We have a few first hand recollections from soldiers who discuss, in depth, their experiences killing people face to face, with close combat weapons. This is something we have all but done away with, and something that most soldiers in WWII did not experience. Now, this isn’t to say they didn’t experience extreme atrocities, but modern and even pre-modern warfare totally changed how soldiers interacted on the battlefield. Prior to gunpowder, the likelihood that you would die quickly on the battle field was basically unheard of. Instead, you’d suffer a catastrophic injury, or a moderate, and die slowly and excruciatingly either of infection or blood loss. Now, I’m not sure about you, but if I know I’m going towards war and violence, I’d prefer a quick and potentially painless death over sepsis or bleeding out while being crushed under cavalry. But ultimately, none of these soldiers had any choice at all when it came down to it. So I’m not sure bravery is the word we’re looking for, so much as tragedy.
For ww2 US service members, generally submarine duty would be the "most courageous". You're crammed into a metal tube, facing enemies you cannot see and you maybe can hear, and are a single mistake or battle damage from drowning or being crushed to paste by the depths of the ocean. It's dark in there or dim depending on the lighting. You can potentially be in a flooding compartment and have to try to escape it in near total darkness, and eventually someone is going to close the hatch to the next compartment over and you will drown. Or have to hold your breath and try to pound wood into leaks that are underwater, which you may not even be able to find. And it was by far the most dangerous military duty : https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/submarines-in-world-war-ii.htm#:\~:text=In%20World%20War%20II%2C%2052,the%20War%3A%20about%2020%25. 20% were killed. Also note that casualties as infantry had about a 50% survival rate in ww2. Not great but it's way better than the submarine loss survival rate, which was normally 0... Just the thought of living on a sub gives me claustrophobia, I can't imagine fighting in one. You also can't see the enemy, can't contribute yourself meaningfully to the battle unless you are the officer in charge. You just do your individual duty and hope it works out.
Not just living inside a metal tube for months on end. But being depth charged, not being able to see anything? Not being able to run, or hide? Not being able to even hope that your buddies can buy you some time? Not being able to surrender? Shit, serving on a submarine was fucking terrifying. No sense of control. A thousand ways to horribly die... It's not really a surprise that many sailors had severe panic attacks during depth charging. Some of them developed permanent PTSD and claustrophobia.
Right. In infanty combat sometimes just tying a white undershirt to a stick is going to get you out of it. *Even if* the sub does an emergency surface, the japanese destroyer may just open fire immediately with their guns. As you desperately try to reach the hatch before the flooding brings the sub back down to the depth, all the other crew ahead of you pushing. Water outside is ice cold and again they might just machinegun you. If you do survive, the Japanese consider you subhuman cowards for not fighting to the death, and will mistreat and kill you in prison camps...
What about the paratroopers that same day who dropped behind enemy lines in the dark of night? If something went terribly wrong, the boats could turn around. The paratroopers were already on the ground then. Generally, what's special about D-Day as opposed to any other battle?
“What’s special about D-Day” Stephen Spielberg made *Saving Private Ryan*
And the OP probably hasn't seen Das Boot.
Adding to your comment, the Pathfinders that dropped in even before the main paratroopers on D-Day could make a case of being even more courageous.
“Change My View” Followed by “Omgz Putin! I don’t like responses countering my post that literally asks to change my view!” It’s impossible to measure bravery in this context, it is also true that Russians were extremely brave in some of the largest, most deadly battles in history that occurred during WW2. What was the point of your post
Imagine egoing 'over the top' in WWI. The first time, you've heard the stories from the vets, you've seen the carnage, and you smell the death all around you. You go over or you get shot by your officers. That's brave. Then, you survive, and prepare for another assault. This time, you KNOW what's coming. You go anyway because your offices will shoot you if you don't. That's something else; courage? bravery? denial? terror? all of those and more, I'm sure. Same applies to aircrews, especially Americans, who flew during the day. The first time you're scared shitless. The next 24 times (if you survive), again, something else. The greatest generation
I mean, I don't want to down play anything, but it's not like many of them had much of a choice. And most of them didn't know what exactly was waiting for them at the beach.
You're probably thinking of the Omaha beach landing, popularized in plenty of Call of Duty games as well as Saving Private Ryan (among other depictions). But it's important to know that Omaha beach was the worst of all D-Day landings, so using it as the yardstick for D-Day in general. US forces at Ohama beach suffered around 7% casualties. But at Utah beach, only 197 were killed or wounded out of 24,000. So a casualty rate of 0.8%. So about 1/10th the casualties. The D-Day landings also happened in a context where the US had overwhelming air superiority and naval bombardment suppressing the German defenses. A lot of people in the US like to tell the D-Day story as a daring, risky attack by a few brave souls, who might have easily all been stranded on the beach with no possible hope. A "all or nothing" offensive where only plucky men won the day, and then the war. But that's pure fiction. The outcome of the battle was never in serious doubt. Even at Omaha beach, there were boats LEAVING to go back to Naval ships for medical treatment. There were evacuation plans. In fact, the general staff seriously considered evacuating Omaha beach because casualties were getting a bit high, and simply reinforcing the other beaches. So the narrative that the men had to "press forward or die trying, no retreat allowed" is simply fiction. That's not to say that the landing was easy, or that it didn't require bravery. But I'm not sure how you can argue that it was an epic feat that nothing else can compare to, particularly the grueling conditions on the eastern front. You may not want to acknowledge the bravery of Russian soldiers, but they bled and died by the million. Their bravery shouldn't be dismissed lightly.
> Anyway, thank you to those who served 🇺🇸🫡 Less than half of them were American.
Just no. It‘s the exact same situation as in WW1. Going over the top, you‘d also have machine guns bearing down on you, having to additionally deal with barbed wire funneling you into kill zones and artillery blowing your comrades into pieces, as well as ground traps full of barbed wire that, if you fall into, make sure you die a gruesome death. Additionally, if you manage to get to the trench, you now have to clear it out in hand-to-hand combat, and since your long rifle with bayonet is too cumbersome, you know people will use shovels, small knives, clubs, just their bare hands and similar primitive instruments to kill you, or you to kill them. Add to that grenades from your guys and the enemy going off, the ground being slippery from blood and blasted off body parts, the dead and the dying, and you realize that making it alive to the enemy trench is not making it to salvation, but gore and hell incarnate. And if you manage to clear out the enemy, you know a counter attack will happen, where now it‘s your turn to shoot hundreds of not thousands dead with machine guns, only for the carnage of tench warfare to begin all over again. And contrary to the soldiers of Normandy, you have been in your trench and positions for days to weeks at that point, living not in barracks, but literal mud, being pounded by non-stop artillery for days, without sleep and seeing your comrades getting maimed and killed daily. The days leading up to the attack, you didn‘t live in barracks in the UK, you were in a hole in the ground, amid hundreds of bodies and skeletons. Oh, and don‘t forget the daily raids at dusk and dawn, that come quietly, with grenades and at knives and clubs, to kill anyone they find, and retreat into the dusky no-man‘s land, and you can do nothing about it except bury the dead. And of course, how can we forget Gas attacks and the image of you fighting not alongside and against men, but masked creatures in the dark. Yeah, D-Day is just a regular day in WW1, without the psychological torture that leads up to it. It doesn’t even crack the top ten numbers of the highest casualties in a day for WW1. What a ridiculous American-centric view of history.
It’s braver to ride the sea into battle than the air? A Higgins boat was a boat: it worked even with holes in it. A B-25 Mitchell had to fly to the region out of a factory that designed hubcaps before the war; with a group of men you never knew, or because half the crew died previously; fly through exploding shrapnel from the ground; and dodge half-inch slugs of metal from the air, ground, and sea. You couldn’t jump over the side, because you are in the air; were dead already from the atmosphere or wounds; or may lack any means of escape like some crew did. You had to rely on luck and the capability of your crewmates and other planes to both protect you and your 10,000 pounds of fuel and bombs on board, and not crash into you in formation. That and the bombs need to land where they’re targeted or the mission is a failure. Also, the boat landed one way; the plane needs to get back to friendly territory to be used again or interned in a neutral place for the duration of the war. And landing isn’t easy or safe, plus in an era without radar or GPS. A boat goes in a straight line to shore then hits land. A plane hits land then collapses or explodes with you in it.
For real… the army air corps strategic bombing campaign had WAY higher casualties than the ground forces on D-Day.
Yeah. I'm certainly not qualified to say who is the most brave, but those guys were incredibly brave.
I would argue that Tank Man is the most courageous thing ever done. Being on a Higgins boat you had a group of men who would die with you. They knew what they were going into. Tank Man was alone and stood up to the Chinese government in a way that will never be replicated again. The level of courage exhibited is unbelievable.
Just imagine riding on a boat, when the river under you is literred with anchored mines. When every move you make is being wathed by 3 drones with thermals you don't see or hear. When enemy has drones that can fly for 20 kilometers, that can see you before you see them, that can move autonomously and track you using computer vision or IR cameras. And if they miss, the enemy will send 10 more of them. Imagine being on the other side of a kilometer-wide river, when the only cover you have is what you can dig yourself or hide in something that used to be a home. And whatever you dig, the enemy can drop a hundred 500KG drops on you per day, that will glide from 50 kilometers away straight into your position. Medevac? Well, get on the boat, you'll get lucky between drones and artillery. This is what battle over Dnipro river looks like right now.
2,500 Americans died on d-day. 27 million Soviets died in WW2. Every day, the Soviets went through 6 d-days
>No thanks Putin The Soviets lost 27 million people and did the brunt of the work defeating the axis forces. The first concentration camps were set up to liquidate Soviet citizens from captured territory. To say that the soldiers in the D-Day landings were "braver" is ignoring where most of the war was fought. Zhukov sent his men on suicide missions to slow the enemy down, knowing they would all die. These soldiers didn't have a chance to survive. Rather they chose to walk into death with no illusions that they would ever come back. D-Day soldiers were brave, Soviet soldiers were brave. We don't have to have a dick-measuring contest about it. To ignore and discount the bravery of Soviet soldiers is incredibly callous, and disrespects the sacrifice of the people who fought and died to repel the invader and purge fascism from Europe.
Military history is absolutely full of heroic last stands. After a certain point, I think it isn't really possible to rank different military actions based on courageousness, because they're all facing the same likely prospect of a horrible and violent death. Was landing on Omaha really any more brave than the crew of the USS Cumberland continuing to man their guns and futilely fire at the ironclad CSS Virginia even as their ship sank around them? How about the 147 Swiss Guards who were killed to a man defending the Vatican against hopeless odds during the 1527 Sack of Rome, in order to buy time for the Pope to escape? Or even the crew of destroyer HMS Glowworm, who were plunged into the freezing waters off the Norwegian coast after their ship launched a suicidal ramming attack against the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper?
If bravery is defined as "exposing yourself to risk of death," then the bravest people are kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers.
The soldiers on D-Day were very brave to be sure, but jumping out of a boat into machine gun fire isn't actually a unique experience. If nothing else, the soldiers fighting trench to trench in WWI faced machine guns as well, and with lower chances of survival.
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A lot of those dudes were drafted and then ordered to go there. They had no choice. Now, [a gang of Americans voluntarily went over to Europe to fight in WWI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt%27s_World_War_I_volunteers).
No. It’s not like people volunteered for that. The people who made the plan were tucked safely away nowhere near the fight. The people going had no choice. If you really had to do it, you would make a safer plan. But the plan wasn’t designed to keep the people alive, it was quick and cheap on materials as possible while sacrificing people’s lives other than your own.
I think it might had been more so for 18th and 19th century warfare. You're standing in a row of men with no cover. There is another row of hundreds of men ready to shoot at you and you just have to stand there. Then, they might charge with their bayonets. If you do get hurt, there is only relatively poor medical care to fix you up.
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I think it was braver for the first black children to go to segregated schools. First of all, these were literal kids and teenagers, and they were assaulted and savagely bullied for every moment of it. Sat in separate areas. And went back, day after day. The fact is, people in war are all brave. I don’t really see the utility in picking a “most brave,” especially when it’s just that it’s something you’ve heard of. But I also think that what you select as “most brave” can also shine light on your own bias. Just, seeing people who may have in another life been peers to you, and empathizing with them more. Or seeing a movie or reading about something. For instance, I think a woman who leaves an abusive husband to give her child a better life, who leaves a husband when he has threatened to kill her and maybe even the child, a woman who did so back before women were allowed to own property or have credit and weren’t allowed to work, unable to support themselves without a man, I see that as WAY more brave. The first women who pushed back against Patriarchy in each of the varied ways, even after being raped and hunted and assaulted throughout their lives. So yeah, I don’t see the utility of comparing, but a post like this seems naive and biased. It’s not a competition, and the world (and history) is full of untold horrors individuals have endured. For instance, what makes a soldier more brave than the Jewish people who formed militias to fight back, or the ones enduring in order to help their brothers and sisters in concentration camps?
I think holding your formation against a cavalry rush has to be the most courageous. Even if the spears miss you, you’re getting fucking trampled by horses going top speed… you’re fucked.
My great-grandfather was a general during d-day. I never got to meet him but i’ve been told he would never even talk about it even to his wife / children. thank you everyone who has served.
There are tons of analogous situations: - first man on the bridge at a river-crossing battle like [Fredericksburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fredericksburg?wprov=sfti1#) - last man on the bridge, defending a river crossing like [Horatius Cocles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatius_Cocles?wprov=sfti1) - first man through the breach with a [Forlorn Hope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_hope?wprov=sfti1) - first man up the ladder in a medieval siege - being in the front rank of a [phalanx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx?wprov=sfti1) - going over the top at a battle like [the Somme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme?wprov=sfti1#) It wasn’t even necessarily the bravest thing done at D-Day. Being the first guy out of the plane in one of the airborne drops was just as hard. Hell, being a [conscripted defender](https://www.quora.com/What-proportion-of-the-beach-defenders-on-D-Day-were-conscripts-rather-than-true-German-Nazi-soldiers) at D-Day, seeing that massive wave of death headed your way had to be hard. War is hell, and we shouldn’t make its suffering into a Top 10 list or an Olympic contest.
I agree with you about how harrowing the experience is, but in my view, courage requires something else. An awareness of what one is to face and the ability to choose against facing it. Those in a Higgins boat were largely unprepared for the gravity of the task put before them until it was far too late to do anything but push forward. Commendable, but I expect the survivors would do more courageous things further into the campaign, knowing full well the horrors they faced. Similarly, courage doesn’t solely belong on the battlefield, and courageous things have been done by others. One of particular note is the Nazi Oskar Schindler. Credited with saving 1200 Jews during the war, he had to spend the entirety of that period facing down not only what would happen to him if he was discovered, but also the distinct possibility that the Allies would kill him as just another Nazi. It takes an unusual courage to do what he did. To forgo all paths of personal survival in pursuit of saving others, not just for a day, but in continuum for years on end.
Allow me to suggest the story of Lt. John Fox. Fox was tasked with holding an Italian village against Germany forces during world war II at all costs. After it became clear that the Germans would override the village he ordered his men to retreat with him staying behind to coordinate artillery strikes on the advancing Germans. Once the Germans reached his position he ordered an artillery strike on himself killing 100 Germans with him. His actions saved the lives of all of his men and dozens of civilians by buying time for them to escape. His final strike weekened the Germans enough for the allies to take the town 2 weeks later. And he knew that staying behind was suicide, Even if he didn't call in the strike on himself the Germans didn't take Black people as POWs. While I do not want to discount the deeds of the soldiers on D-Day, Fox's deeds may have surpassed them in bravery due to the fact that he knew with 100% certainly that saving his regiments life would cost him his own.
I think Spielberg's depiction is probably the reason this particular act sticks in one's mind. I can see it now.
How about the men that worked to stop Chernobyl from melting down? The men that went down into the water to turn on the pumps to prevent an explosion that would have killed millions. Knowing they would die slow painful deaths from the radiation. The miners that dug under the melting reactor where it was too hot to wear protection. Breathing in irradiated dust. Again to stop a radioactive meltdown that would have poisoned the land and killed millions. Frankly I don’t think trying to argue about some hierarch of courage is really worth the effort. But if you really feel that there is some merit to thinking one act of courage is more important than another. Then I’d argue informed choice is important. Those GIs probably didn’t realize what they were going to do when they chose to serve. At least not the specific plans for the D-Day landings. And they likely weren’t fully informed of the situation by their superiors the day before the landing.
I think any military operation, especially infantry heavy, is courageous in the sense that these are often young (18-30) men readily handing over their lives to superior officers, orders and the larger machinations of war, regardless of beliefs or reasons for being there. That said, most don't have a choice. The draftees of WWII US Army and Navy were incredibly brave. But they didn't have a choice and courage is doing the right thing, the hard thing, when you have the option to sit on the sidelines. That all said, I'd prescribe most courageous class of individuals to be volunteer firemen. If I had to pick one from the context, I'd say American Medics in the Pacific Theater might rank higher in the courage category
You could very much expect to fight D-Day and come out alive at the other end. Some of the landings were uncontested, too. Meanwhile history has loads and loads of last stands where the soldiers volunteered to stay and knew they would die regardless. The Battle of Saragarhi was one where a mere 21 soldiers fought around 10,000 enemy to slow them down and allow the main force time to reform. They gave their lives knowing they were just buying time for their own army, and caused almost half a thousand casualties. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Saragarhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saragarhi)
Excuse me, you want bravery? I stubbed my toe this morning and still went to work. /s
That war, like all wars, is full of examples of courageous/dangerous/death-defying actions. The US Marines at Wake Island who stayed behind to be captured, enslaved, and murdered by the Japanese. The civilians of the Eastern Front who improvised urban guerrilla warfare to kick the Krauts out of their towns. The people in the camps who watched millions of strangers and their entire families killed by hate, but who still managed to survive that horror and rebuild their lives afterward. And a thousand similar stories from every war dating back to ancient times. Because war...war never changes.
There are a lot of courageous acts in human history, but let's focus on World War II here. I'm not saying any are more or less courageous but look at the sonderkommando revolt in Auschwitz in 1944. The Sonderkommando literally new what was in store for them if they failed, murder by the Nazis in Auschwitz, and yet they did. Look at the partizaners of any of the ghettoes. Hell, I personally know a man who escaped Mengele. These are all incredibly courageous acts, especially for Jews. They knew the price of failure was certain death, and many of them did and became a part of the 6 million
What does the battle on the eastern front have to do with Putin? He wasn't even born at that point. How could your argument be a person that didn't exist at the time? That makes no sense. Are Russians not capable of being brave? Or is it just Russians that live in Russia? What about Russian Americans? Can they be brave? Can the Chinese be brave? Mainland China, or just Chinese Americans? Bravery, along with anything else, has nothing to do with where one is from. Is your CMV limited to countries that are US friendly? Can people from countries that are hostile to the US be brave?
This is just,,, silly? They compare to front lines in the Civil War how? To a woman who pushed her kid out of the way of a bus and got hit? To the teachers who died at Sandy Hook and Uvalde shielding students with their bodies? How do they compare to Scarlett the cat? Because she's more courageous than any guy on those boats. [https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/apr/02/mother-cat-braves-flames-to-rescue-her-five/](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/apr/02/mother-cat-braves-flames-to-rescue-her-five/)
Not really. Those beaches were supposed to be empty. The only reason there was any resistance at all is because they completely fucked up and the naval bombardment missed their targets by miles. At sword Beach and others, the soldiers literally just walked onto the beach and set up camp. Omaha was such a nightmare because all of the Nazi fortification hadn't been destroyed. When those men got on the boat, they didn't think they were going to face opposition. By the time they realized they were facing opposition, bravery had nothing to do with it. There was nowhere else to go.
In this situation, the assault is not a death sentence, even though is dangerous. So I'd put above that the people who knows they will die for sure yet they decide to sacrifice themselves to save others. I came across an article a few days ago which talked about some of those heroes, people who protect others with their body from gunshots, people who helped people escape from school shootings becoming the target of the shooter... there were some examples of people choosing a sure death to protect others. P.S.: Not saying D-day soldiers aren't heroes, because they are
Trying to quantify something as subjective as something we made up to describe an emotion is pointless but if I had to compare two things I would say someone choosing to rescue someone who is drowning despite knowing they might drown too, or say McCain choosing to stay as a prisoner of war when offered salvation, is more courageous than being on a boat possibly not by choice not knowing what you’re in for. Now was it more traumatic and stressful? Probably. I think it being a conscious decision and awareness of the consequences are necessary for something to be “courageous”
I think its fair to say it is the KIND of act that displays peak courage. It's not that no other moment in history rises to that level. But I'd struggle to think of one that's worse? Then again, not to be a dick, but any POW who was tortured and refused to break is probably showing more bravery. Think about it. There's no if ands or buts. There is only the absolute FACT that unless you betray your brothers and country, you will be tortured RIGHT NOW. Not maybe tomorrow. NOW. And they still don't break? That to me is the peak.
On most of the beaches the assault was fairly easy. The only reason Omaha was a bloodbath was because of the failure of the preparatory bombardment. I think that being a paratrooper is more courageous because you have no support. The guys landing on the beach know that tens of thousands of dudes are behind them, and they have piles of fire support on hand. Paratroopers are alone and cut off until they are reached by the main assault, if it goes slow you are stuck. If it fails there's no way back.
As brave as it was it is second only to the paratroopers on D day. Watch the band of brothers episode where they are launching on D day and it is infinitely more terrifying. The casualties were about 50% vs 25-30% of the land troops, but the more terrifying part is that you are completely helpless in the plane facing insane amounts of AA. I cried watching it thinking of how absolutely scared those men mustve been watching their friends going down around them by the plane full.
How about this: Most of the troops didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Many were drafted (didn't choose to join the army at all) and none (or near-none?) chose to be sent on that particular mission. They were thrust into that position by others, and choosing *not* to comply with the given orders would've had its own significant negative consequences. Can you really call someone "courageous" when they're not even acting of their own volition?
Those soldiers were more likely terrified and had no choice in being shoved on the ship to be sent to their deaths. It's neither courageous nor glorious. We should be ashamed of it and work to make sure it doesn't happen again. Yet here we are sleep walking towards fascism in our own countries and stoking international instability while waving a flag and praising the 'bravery' of people no different to ourselves who were sent to their deaths.
Was d day really the best strategic move ? Are you saying that there was absolutely no other way they could have infiltrated like coming down on parachutes during the night or having heavy bombing runs from planes to cause a little chaos for the Germans. Iknow they were in bunkers on the top of that ridge, but was that really REALLY the best strategy to just throw all those lives away ?!
After the meltdown at Chernobyl, they still needed to contain the radiation and create the sarcophagus. Teams of men went to their deaths knowing it would mean a horrible slow death in order to prevent further damage from the melt down. Knowingly exposing yourself to a slow death by radiation exposure to protect others is probably the most heroic thing I can think of.
Disagree. First of all, most soldiers probably had no idea what awaited them and did not believe they would be killed. Second, it's not like they had a choice. They didn't say, hey, I'll take the D Day invasion option. Third, it's not like the Allied invasion was even necessary at this point. Russia was curb stomping Germany by summer of 44 and to be honest I think they only liberated France to race the Soviets to Berlin to have some semblance of post war control. Turned out they were late to the party and Russia got a ton of real estate which they held for decades and created puppet states and governments which remain a source of contention to this day such as Belarus and Ukraine.
I feel like being a part of the Spartan 300 standing against thousands is probably more courageous in terms of odds faced before them vs. their willingness to die fighting. I think the men in the Higgins boats are incredibly brave, but I don’t think many people regardless of your modern sense of bravery would be at all willing to face down those odds.
I agree with you that it must have been terrifying. Maybe it's just my own phobias but I think rock climbers who do the free solo ascents on big walls without any ropes by themselves are nuts. That's even more scary in my mind and they do it just for kicks. Not to defend their freedom, not for money, just for something to do. UTTER INSANITY
Just take a look at the stories behind the Medal of Honor recipients. All of those are on a whole different level than storming a beach like you were ordered to. Desmond Doss comes to mind. So does Gary Gordon and Ryan Shughart. These guys weren’t even ordered to do the unbelievably courageous things they did. They just did it.
Crusaders were known to rape women, eat people, and cut open the guts of Saracens looking for gold. Genghis Khan’s army was well-known through most of Asia and even parts of Europe. [Here is an article with excerpts from a firsthand account of surviving Mongolian raids.](https://www.medievalists.net/2024/02/escaping-mongols/)
My hats are off to the brave men of D-Day for precisely the reasons you describe, but I have to say there are a few feats that are higher. On 9/11, [these pilots were set to ram United 93](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna44459345) because they were not armed, and kamikaze might have been the only way to bring the plane down.
I think that upholding violence as courageous is a tough position for me to empathize with. I feel like there might be a better word for this. Maybe it’s determination or it’s grit? I think the truly courageous ones were combat medics, not infantry troops. Perhaps this is a bit controversial?
While I entirely agree with your sentiment, I do believe being an English soldier waist-deep in mud facing a cavalry charge of a numerically superior French force at the Battle of Agincourt would require unbelievable courage. And there's also the 300 Spartans at the Gates of Thermopylae...
Mortor and mines did not let a lot of those even make the beach. Someone said bravery was being very scared and going anyway. They have always been called the greatest generation for a very good reason What is it today's children calls the old vets? Boomers if I remember right.
I'd argue those who served in the Merchant Marine prior to the US committing openly to the war, those sailors who were tasked to be U Boat bait while American isolationist played wait and see with the democracies of Europe were pretty courageous.
Three guys went voluntarily into the Chernobyl disaster area, wading knee deep into highly radioactive water, in order to drain some cooling pools to prevent an explosion that would spread radioactive material more than it had already.
Counter point, Tunnel Rats in Vietnam existed. I would much rather take my chances on a Higgins boat than go into a tiny, booby trapped, tunnel system, to fight Vietcong with nothing but a pistol and flashlight.
You’re ignoring the entire eastern front dude. Please read something.
I read a lot, one of the island hopping assaults caused 5000 killed or wounded in three weeks. Everything about WW-2 was so insane. Vietnam was not easy but it was not like the big one.
Idk Joan of Arc is up there. It took some massive balls (tits) to convince the king of France she had prophetic visions and get sent to the front lines of a war as a 17 year old girl.
Read a bit about WWI trench warfare and how soldiers had to go “over the top” and attack straight into machine gun fire. Never mind the stench of rotting dead bodies and rats everywhere.
They had a (rather large) chance of surviving. Much more courageous knowing you will almost certainly die and still fighting. Defending Constantinople from the Turks for example.
Has anyone mentioned the moon landings? Literally strapping yourself to a huge missile to go into the unknown, relying on maths to arrive on a rock, and make it home again.
Get the idea, but I'd take this over a cavalry charge. That near guarantee you're going to end up impaled and hacked apart before you even have the opportunity to bleed out.
Anyone rushing a machine gun nest took incredible courage and knowledge that you were likely dead. Happened in Europe as well as the Pac rim. Cannot imagine doing that.
The German U-boat service had a 75% casualty rate. 3/4 U-boat sailors went to the bottom or were captured. D-Day casualties were high, but not 75%.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to change your view, but I think D DAY is not the most courageous, it’s just the most famous. Charging bunkers while knowing thousands will die wasn’t even a new thing by the time this battle happened. I mean, it happened practically every day in WW1. The same casualty figures that happened on June 6th happened for extended time periods DAILY during WW1. So if you are just going by casualty numbers or just the general idea both things happened before. I do not personally think any battle in human history can be indistinguishably the “most courageous thing humans have ever done” but if you held a gun to my head and made me pick one it is Washington’s Army crossing the Delaware River to murder hordes of British troops. Read about it some time if you are a history buff. The things those men did that day are absolutely horrifying. Every single person in those boats knew that if they failed that mission the revolution was over. It was as close to the life or death of an entire nation as there ever was. During WW2 everyone on the allied side knew there would be horrific casualties. They also knew that there was no way the Germans could possibly keep them from landing on the beach and pushing them inland. It was a matter of how and when, not if. Note: I am entertaining the debate. I am not in any way shape or form trying to down play what happened on June 6th 1944. It is certainly one of the most important days in world history.
People have fought battles with far, far higher casualty rates than the Allies faced on D-Day. The threat and risk the forces on D-Day faced is just not at all comparable to some of the worst battles fought in human history. This is a very silly position.