Flint Whitlock is the editor of WWII Quarterly magazine and the author of several books, including “If Chaos Reigns,” which chronicles the activities of the parachute and glider forces that descended upon Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He spoke to the Trib regarding the 70th anniversary of D-Day, which occurs on Friday.
Q: Do you think interest in this significant anniversary of D-Day is being piqued because the number of participants in the battle is dwindling fairly rapidly?
A: I think that's a major contributing factor to the interest in this particular anniversary.
Most of the participants in World War II who are still alive are in their 80s and 90s now. The Greatest Generation, as Tom Brokaw called them, is quickly vanishing, and we don't have much more time to have these gentlemen and ladies with us who lived through and contributed so greatly to the victory of World War II for the Allies.
I think that's a major reason why you might call this a last hurrah for these veterans, a last chance they'll have to be really recognized by their fellow citizens.
Q: In your opinion, what was the most important military lesson to be learned from D-Day?
A: There wasn't one particular thing that ensured victory, but a series of interrelated activities took place.
You know, part of it was the deception plan that fooled the Germans into thinking the attack was going to take place someplace else and at some other time.
There were the tremendous buildup of supplies, there were the artificial harbors that were built in England and towed across the (English) Channel when the harbor facilities had been destroyed during the fighting; the artificial harbors enabled the supplies to come in that were necessary to sustain the battle.
If any one of those factors had failed, the whole operation would have suffered and possibly failed. But for the most part, everything that was supposed to go right did go right and what the Germans thought was an impregnable coastal defense was broken within the span of a morning.
Maybe the deciding factor was the fact that the individual soldiers performed with such courage and ability that they were able to overcome the obstacles that the Germans had thrown in and the obstacles of making this trans-channel voyage by ship and plane and landing on a hostile shore.
You have to lay (the victory) at the feet of the individual soldiers, sailors and airmen who accomplished what a lot of people thought was impossible.
Q: What do you expect the atmosphere to be like in Normandy on June 6?
A: I just got back from Normandy, leading a D-Day excursion for the Smithsonian (and) as you might imagine, the French are doing everything they can to make things run as smoothly as possible.
But because there are going to be so many heads of state there, security is going to be ramped up. It's going to be incredibly tight.
They already have signs up saying this road's closed, that road's closed. (As for tourists), if people don't already have their hotel reservations and their car rental reservations, they're going to be out of luck.
There are probably going to be as many tourists there as there were German defenders and (Allied) attackers. So you could say (the French) are getting ready for a new invasion.
Eric Heyl is a staff writer for Trib Total Media (412-320-7857 or eheyl@tribweb.com).
