Today is the 68th anniversary of D-Day.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

43. Without question

Last edited Thu Jun 7, 2012, 04:57 PM - Edit history (3)

No one in their right mind is denying it. The Russians BY FAR carried the biggest load in defeating the Nazis. But the fact remains that due to their destruction of bridges, roads, communications lines, supply lines, trains, kidnappings, and hit-and-run attacks, it is universally acknowledged that the Resistance delayed arrival of the Das Reich SS Panzer Division at the D-Day front for two weeks, having a significant impact. The Das Reich was one of the fiercest the Germans had. By the way, did you ever hear or read about the two squadrons of Free French fighter pilots who were integrated into the Russian Air Force through an agreement between DeGaulle and Stalin? Four of the pilots were awarded the highest military honors (like the Congressional Medal of Honor), Hero Of The Soviet Union. They were called the Normandie-Niemen. One of their squadron leaders, Marcel Albert was KIA when he received his medal, after becoming a quadruple air ace, shooting down 21 German planes. Every Russian school kid knows the story.

The Resistance wasn't a professional army. They weren't terribly well equipped for the most part (small arms and machine guns). They had lost at least four of their top leaders at the hands of Klaus Barbi of the Gestapo, who tortured and murdered three of them including the leader of the Resistance, Jean Moulin (the latter died after horrible torture, without giving up any names) and Barbi sent the forth to die in Dachau. The Resistance had suffered terrible losses, such as at the Plateau des Glieres where with guns and supplies dropped in by the British they tried to confront the Germans in an uprising (taking more than 5,000 German soldiers with them). In the Battle of the Vercors, a Resistance army of nearly 8,000 men was surrounded by the Germans and killed to the last man. Their best bet was hit-and-run and general sabotage of communications and infrastructure at which they had become expert at the time of D-Day. Dwight Eisenhower wrote:

"Throughout France the Resistance had been of inestimable value in the campaign. Without their great assistance the liberation of France would have consumed a much longer time and meant greater losses to ourselves."