Stephen A. Schuker from The University of Virginia’s Corcoran Department of History joins Les Sinclair to talk about D-Day’s importance and the role Charlottesville played:

Quote: “The D-Day landings of June 6, 1944 took a combination of careful preparation, uncommon bravery, first-class intelligence and good luck. Planners had in mind the failure of the attempt to seize Gallipoli in 1915 and the lamentable outcome of the Dieppe raid in August 1942. American troops remained quite unskilled at the time of the North African landings of November 1942 and might not have succeeded if not for the cooperation of the Vichy French. By 1944 they had substantially improved.

“General Eisenhower and his staff assembled a huge armada in Southern England for the Normandy landings, and the plans required close cooperation of Army, Navy and Air Force assets and an unprecedented degree of logistical preparation. The American, British and Canadian forces worked together very well. Unfortunately, the so-called Free French under General de Gaulle declined to participate. The Russians had borne the brunt of the land war up to June 1944. They had 300 divisions in the field, compared with 32 for the Western allies in the initial landings. Nevertheless, the success of the landings (and of a secondary landing in Southern France later in the summer) marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. We justly celebrate the heroism of the men who climbed the steep cliffs off the beaches in the initial landings.”