What are some challenges and advantages of d day?

Answer 1

The real merit of the Allied invasion of Europe that started on June 6th 1944, and I mean no disrespect to the thousands of Allied personnel KIA, was to stop the Red Army coming too far west. That and hastening the end of the war in Europe. By the summer of 1944, it was pretty much clear who was going to win the war in Europe, and Germany wasnt it. Germany was by that time doomed and was too far gone the path of destruction to hope to win the war in the East any more, except if they developed atomics ( a highly unlikely situation due to lack of vision from its leadership, in spite the fact that they had the resources in materiel and brainpower to beat the Americans to it) which could have turned the tide to a negotiated peace at least. If D-day had not happened/had failed there would have been nothing to stop the Russians from taking the whole of Germany, France, Northern Italy, the whole of Scandinavia and perhaps even Spain and Portugal, all the way to the Azores. I am sure this terrifying situation had crossed the minds of the strategists planning the opening of a second front in Western Europe in the summer of 1944, although the average GI Joe had a far less wider vision of things. The landings in Normandy hastened the end of the war in Europe by a few months at most. It would have ended anyway with the complete victory of the Red Army sometime in August-September 1945, instead of May as it happened. With 90% of the European Continent under Soviet occupation and being an integral part of the Eastern Bloc, except Britain, South Italy, Turkey and a few islands in the Mediterranean, the strategic setting for the western allies in the post-WW2 world would have been dire. Britain, Turkey and maybe the south of Italy would have been the sole outposts of democracy and freedom in an otherwise barbaric post war European continent. The Soviets would have had unrestricted access to the Atlantic with a very powerful blue-water navy, there would have been no NATO and very possibly a very powerfull USSR might have started WW3 after they had atomics themselves. As things happened however, the successful British-American invasion of France in 1944 stopped the Russians dead-cold on the Elbe in 1945, with only half of Europe under their control.