Operation Overlord, the landings on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, was the largest amphibious invasion in modern history, epic in every meaning of the word. Most Americans have been taught that this was the beginning of the end for Hitler’s reign of terror across Europe, that we were there to “personally shoot that paper-hanging son of a bitch” as General Patton so pithily promised in his speech before his Third Army.

霸王行动（诺曼底战役），即D-Day在诺曼底海滩上的登陆行动，是现代历史上规模最大的两栖登陆战，无论从哪个方面来说都是史诗级的，大多数美国人都被教导说，这是终结希特勒在整个欧洲的恐怖统治的开始，正如巴顿将军在他的第三集团军演讲中简练地承诺的那样，我们在那里是为了“亲自射杀那个纸糊的狗娘养的”。

But the key is the date D-Day took place: June 6th, 1944.
There is no doubt that almost every man and woman among the Allied nations would have heartily agreed with the general’s statement and would happily have bought tickets to watch the spectacle. By then, the decision among the Allies was “unconditional surrender” (which decision may well have prolonged the war). No cease-fire, no treaty, no letup in combat until the defeated surrendered without any promises of leniency or clemency by the victorious. We were going all-out for the blood of our enemies.

但关键是诺曼底登陆日（D-Day）的日期: 1944年6月6日。
毫无疑问，同盟国中几乎每一个男人和女人都会衷心地赞同将军的声明，甚至乐于买票观看这一壮观场面。当时，盟军的决定是纳粹德国必须“无条件投降”( 这个决定很可能延长了战争)。没有停火，没有条约，没有停战，直到战败者投降，也不会有任何宽大和仁慈的承诺，我们将全力以赴，让我们的敌人血流成河。

And hadn’t America and the United Kingdom moved heaven and earth to bring Nazi Germany to heel? There was the Battle of the Atlantic where we had to overcome Admiral D?nitz’ U-boat wolfpacks from 1942 through the end of 1943; Operation Torch where we invaded French North Africa in Nov. 1942 and our still-green troops were handily defeated by General Rommel’s Afrika Korps at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in Feb. 1943; and the invasion of Italy in Sep. 1943 which culminated in the occupation of Rome on June 4th, 1944, a mere two days before the Normandy invasion. Who could possibly claim we hadn’t done all we could to defeat Hitler? This guy could:

难道美国和英国没有竭尽全力让纳粹德国臣服？
从1942年到1943年底，我们在大西洋战役中战胜了德尼茨海军上将的U型潜艇“狼群”;
1942年11月，我们在火炬行动中攻入法属北非，1943年2月，我们的军队在凯赛林隘口战役轻松地被隆美尔将军的非洲军团击败;
1943年9月，我们进攻意大利，最终在1944年6月4日占领了罗马，此时距离诺曼底登陆只有两天时间，那谁能说我们没有尽全力打败希特勒呢？这个人可以：

Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, one of the most cruel, murderous, and sociopathic humans to have ever lived.
So many Americans to this day don’t realize how the war on the Eastern Front was much greater by orders of magnitude than what our grandfathers faced on the Western Front. All by itself, the Eastern Front is considered the largest and deadliest military confrontation in human history, with nearly twice the total military death toll as in the entirety of World War I, which total does not include up to 24M civilian deaths. This was why as early as summer 1942, Stalin officially requested — begged, in diplomatic terms — both Churchill and FDR to open a second front by invading France. For a bit of perspective, here’s a graphic representation of the price Soviet Russia paid compared to our own (again, not counting the even greater number of civilian lives lost):

苏联领导人约瑟夫 · 斯大林
许多美国人至今没有意识到，东线的战争比我们的祖先在西线所面临的战争要大得多。单就东线而言，它被认为是人类历史上最大和最致命的军事对抗，军队死亡人数几乎是整个第一次世界大战的两倍，这还不包括多达2400万的平民死亡。这就是为什么早在1942年夏天，斯大林就正式要求——用外交术语说是乞求——丘吉尔和罗斯福通过进攻法国以开辟第二战场。为了了解情况，这里有一张苏维埃俄国与我们所付出代价的图表（ 同样，没有计算平民死亡）：


So why didn’t we invade earlier? Was it even possible to do so while the Battle of the Atlantic still raged? And if we had been able to carry out such an invasion, could we have done so without setting our green troops up to be massacred by the Nazis, many of whom were hardened veterans blooded on the steppes of the Eastern Front?
Yes, it does seem we could have, but chose not to do so. Why?

那么，我们为什么不早点进攻？在大西洋战役仍在进行的时候，有可能这样做吗？如果我们能够发起这样的进攻，我们能否做到不使我们的部队被纳粹屠杀，其中许多人是在东线大草原上浴血奋战的老兵？
是的，看来我们确实可以这样做，但却选择不这样做，为什么呢？

Operation Torch — the invasion of French North Africa — was largely unnecessary. The Afrika Korps had been soundly defeated at the Second Battle of El Alamein by General Montgomery’s Desert Rats and no longer presented a real danger to Egypt, the crucial Suez Canal, and the Persian oil fields.The Battle of the Atlantic was not an obstacle to the invasion itself. One must bear in mind that during the Battle of the Atlantic, U-boats almost never attacked British or U.S. Navy vessels. Their targets were the merchantmen, the cargo vessels carrying not just military supplies, but also the food, fuel, and raw materiel needed so badly by the civilian population of the United Kingdom. The U-boat commanders refrained from attacking Navy vessels because to do so was to court death from the destroyers, cruisers, and — later — the aircraft carriers whose pilots increasingly specialized in sub-hunting. Instead of being used to invade French North Africa in late 1942, they could have been used in the North Atlantic to more safely shepherd the convoys and bring the U-boat threat to an end much more quickly.

“火炬行动”——进攻法属北非——基本上是没有必要的。非洲军团在第二次阿拉曼战役被“沙漠之狐”蒙哥马利将军彻底击败，不再对埃及、至关重要的苏伊士运河和波斯的油田构成真正的威胁。
大西洋之战并不是进攻本身的一个障碍。我们必须牢记，在大西洋之战期间，U型潜艇几乎从未攻击过英国或美国海军的船只。
他们的目标是商船，这些货船不仅运送军事物资，而且还运送英国平民急需的食品、燃料和原材料。U型潜艇指挥官避免攻击海军舰艇，因为这样做会招致驱逐舰、巡洋舰以及后来的航空母舰的致命打击，而航空母舰的飞行员也越来越擅长猎杀潜艇，在1942年末，他们没有被用来进攻法属北非，而是可以在北大西洋被用来更安全地护送护航船队，并更快地结束U型潜艇的威胁。

After losing the Battle of Britain in September 1940, Hitler had effectively ceded air superiority over the English Channel to the Royal Air Force and had sent most of Goering’s vaunted Luftwaffe to support the ongoing invasion of the Soviet unx.In his history of World War II, Churchill stated that one of the major obstacles to Operation Sea Lion — Hitler’s planned invasion of England itself — was that it had to occur before the end of summer, before the notorious weather of the English Channel became unpredictable and made any large-scale crossing impossible. The same dynamic would have applied in the opposite direction as well, so, combined with the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic, it would be understandable for the Allies to not be able to invade in 1942.

1940年9月不列颠战役失败后，希特勒实际上已将英吉利海峡的空中优势让给了英国皇家空军，并将戈林吹嘘的大部分德国空军派去支持正在进行的对苏联的入侵。
丘吉尔在他的二战史中说，希特勒计划入侵英国本土的"海狮行动" 的主要障碍之一是，它必须在夏末之前发生，在英吉利海峡臭名昭著的天气变得不可预测并使任何大规模穿越变得不可能之前。同样的情况也会发生在相反的方向，因此，结合正在进行的大西洋之战，盟军无法在1942年进攻是可以理解的。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


In other words, an invasion of the northern coast of France in the spring or summer of 1943 was entirely doable, especially had it been given the additional resources — men, materiel, supply, and naval support — which had instead been sent to conduct and support the invasions of French North Africa, Sicily, and Italy.
But what was the condition of the Wehrmacht at the beginning of 1943? Did FDR and Churchill have reason to believe an invasion of the northern coast of France was doomed to failure?
Invasion of Sicily by British and American troops. “Sir, I think Hitler’s not here, but in Germany. Why are we here instead, sir?”

换句话说，在1943年春季或夏季进攻法国北部海岸是完全可行的，特别是如果它得到了额外的资源：人员、物资、补给和海军支持，而这些资源却被派去进行和支持对法属北非、西西里和意大利的进攻。
但在1943年初，德国国防军的状况如何？罗斯福和丘吉尔是否有理由相信对法国北部海岸的进攻注定要失败？



图：英国和美国军队进攻西西里岛，"长官，我认为希特勒不在这里，而是在德国，为什么我们反而在这里，长官？"
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December 1941, the beginning of the long, slow death of the Wehrmacht

1941年12月，德国国防军漫长而缓慢的死亡的开始

The first major defeat of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front was not at Stalingrad, but at the Battle of Moscow, which had ended almost exactly a year earlier. The Germans had pushed to the very outskirts of Moscow by late November 1941, but the Red Army’s counteroffensive, spearheaded by eighteen fresh divisions from the Soviet Far East, was launched on nearly the same day that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941. Those divisions — all long-accustomed to and trained to fight in the bitter Siberian cold — had been hurriedly transferred after Soviet spy Richard Sorge had informed the Kremlin that Japan was certainly not planning any invasion of Siberia, and by January 7th, 1942, those fresh and winter-hardened Soviet divisions had driven the Wehrmacht nearly 100 miles away from the Soviet capital.

德国国防军在东线的第一次重大失败不是斯大林格勒战役，而是几乎整整一年前结束的莫斯科战役。1941年11月底，德军已经推进到莫斯科的外围，但遭到红军的反攻，由苏联远东地区的十八个新编师率领，几乎就在1941年12月7日日本偷袭珍珠港的同一天发动。这十八个师长期适应并受训在西伯利亚的严寒中作战，并在苏联间谍理查德索尔格告知克里姆林宫，日本肯定没有计划入侵西伯利亚后被匆匆调走，到1942年1月7日，这些新加入的、经过冬季磨练的苏联师已经将德国国防军赶到离苏联首都近100英里远的地方。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


America was soon informed of the Nazi defeat at the Battle of Moscow — the Soviets made sure of it by releasing a propaganda film named “Moscow Strikes Back” in New York City in February of 1942, less than two months after the end of the battle. In fact, the film was one of four winners at the 15th Academy Awards for Best Documentary. We now know that Hitler likely caused the defeat himself by delaying the initial advance on Moscow by two months, thus forcing the Wehrmacht to conduct an offensive to take the Russian capital just as the Russian winter was about to begin, and with precious little winter gear for the troops and equipment. His generals had to be thinking — but were too afraid for their lives to say out loud — “what the hell are you thinking, you blithering idiot?”

美国很快得知纳粹在莫斯科战役中失败的消息——苏联于1942年2月在纽约发行了一部名为《莫斯科反击战》的宣传影片，确保了这一消息的真实性，当时距莫斯科战役结束不到两个月。事实上，这部电影是第15届奥斯卡最佳纪录片奖的四个获奖影片之一。我们现在知道，可能是希特勒自己导致了这场战役的失败，因为他将对莫斯科的进攻推迟了两个月，迫使德国国防军在俄罗斯严寒的冬季即将开始的时候发动进攻，以夺取苏联首都，而且装备和冬装都少得可怜。他手下的将军们不得不思考——但他们太害怕丢了性命，不敢大声说出来——“ 你到底在想什么，你这个喋喋不休的白痴? ”

Soviet trenches outside Moscow, 1941.
At least they had winter clothing. Many of the German soldiers didn’t. (Pinterest)


图：1941年，莫斯科郊外的苏军战壕，至少他们有冬装，许多德国士兵却没有

On a side note, in WWI, when Hitler was but a corporal yet to win his Iron Cross for courage under fire, the German Army was sent to war against France in August of 1914 without being supplied with proper winter clothing. They had been assured by Kaiser Wilhelm II (who assumed they would defeat France as easily as they had in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870) that “You’ll be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees.” It is truly ironic that Hitler, having lived with the results of that very blunder, would make the same mistake after having made the same assumption when he launched Operation Barbarossa.

顺便说一下，在一战中，当时希特勒还只是一个下士，还没有因为在战火中的勇气赢得铁十字勋章，德国军队于1914年8月被派往法国作战，却没有获得合适的冬装。德皇威廉二世曾向他们保证: “你们会在树叶落下之前回家。”威廉二世认为，他们会像1870年在普法战争一样轻易地击败法国，真正具有讽刺意味的是，希特勒是经历了这一失误的严重后果的，但他还在发动巴巴罗萨行动时犯下了同样的错误。

In other words, by early 1942 both FDR and Churchill knew that history was likely beginning to rhyme once more, that the Wehrmacht were about to relive Napoleon’s greatest blunder. But in early 1942, America was still recovering, getting its wits together following the attack on Pearl Harbor. There was no real hope that they could invade the northern coast of Nazi-occupied France before the English Channel would make such a crossing untenable in September.
Seen in this light, the Battle of Stalingrad, in every respect the most terrible battle of the war, was not the turning point of the war as it has been considered for generations. Instead, it was more of a horrific speed bump on the way down the steepening decline of the once-invincible Wehrmacht. That, and it was — it had to be — final confirmation to the West that the Red Army was going to defeat the Wehrmacht, that it was only a matter of time before General Georgy Zhukov would be knocking back shots of vodka in Berlin.

换句话说，1942年初，罗斯福和丘吉尔都知道，历史很可能再次重演，德国国防军即将重蹈拿破仑犯下的最大失误。
但在1942年初，美国仍在恢复中，在经历了珍珠港的袭击事件之后，美国人开始变得机智起来，在英吉利海峡于9月使这种穿越无法维持之前，他们没有真指望能够进攻纳粹占领的法国北部海岸。
从这个角度来看，这场战争中最可怕的战役——斯大林格勒战役，并不是几代人所认为的战争的转折点。相反，它更像是曾经战无不胜的国防军在日益衰落的道路上的一个可怕的减速带，这是——也必须是——向西方证明了苏联红军将打败德国国防军的最后证据，格奥尔基 · 朱可夫将军在柏林大口喝伏特加只是时间问题。


The Red Army raises the Soviet flag above the Reichstag in Berlin

图：红军在柏林国会大厦上方升起苏联国旗

Cruel calculus

残酷的算计

Still, why would Churchill and FDR — being the two men in whose hands lay the final decision — decide to delay an invasion of Nazi-occupied France, but instead send the troops to places where they did not present a clear and present danger to the Third Reich? Because the cruel calculus of America’s and the UK’s national interests presented a serendipitous opportunity for payback — not just against Nazi Germany, but against the Soviet unx.The antipathy of the western democracies towards communism was implacable long before Russia’s October Revolution in 1917. American captains of industry were continually on the watch for the next Eugene Debs or Huey P. Long, for the next demagogue who would push for socialist reforms in a capitalist nation. Both America and England had been horrified at Lenin’s successful revolution — we even sent a few thousand troops to support Kerensky’s White Army against Lenin’s Red Army in 1919.

尽管如此，为什么丘吉尔和罗斯福——这两个掌握着最终决定权的人——会决定推迟对纳粹占领下的法国的进攻，而把部队派往不会对第三帝国构成明显和现实威胁的地方？
因为这是美国和英国国家利益的残酷考量，这提供了一个偶然的报复机会——不仅报复纳粹德国，还报复苏联。
早在1917年俄国十月革命之前，西方民主国家对共产主义的反感就已经不可调和。美国的工业巨头们一直在密切关注下一个尤金 · 德布斯或休伊 · P · 朗，等待下一个在资本主义国家推行社会主义改革的煽动家。美国和英国都对列宁成功的革命深感恐惧——1919年，我们甚至派出几千人的军队支持克伦斯基的白军对抗列宁的红军。

So when America and the United Kingdom saw Nazi Germany making war on Soviet Russia, they didn’t see “bad guy versus good guy”, but “bad guy versus bad guy”. In fact, the future president Harry S. Truman stated:
“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.”
Of course we never helped Nazi Germany as Truman suggested…unless it was by not invading France to start that second front that Stalin wanted so badly.
That, and Churchill wanted — in modern terms — payback. Up until the very month Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet unx had been sending hundreds of thousands of tons of raw materials for the Nazi war effort, even after the Wehrmacht had crushed France and the Luftwaffe was warring for supremacy in the skies over London. Churchill had to know that at least some of those aircraft dropping bombs on London were there because of the raw materials the Soviets had supplied to Hitler.

因此，当美国和英国看到纳粹德国向苏维埃俄国开战时，他们看到的不是 "坏人vs好人"，而是 "坏人vs坏人"。
事实上，未来的总统哈里杜鲁门曾表示：
" 如果我们看到德国赢了，我们就应该帮助俄国，如果俄国赢了，我们就应该帮助德国，这样可以让他们尽可能多地相互杀戮，尽管我在任何情况下都不想看到希特勒胜利。"
当然，我们从来没有像杜鲁门建议的那样帮助纳粹德国......除非是不入侵法国来开辟斯大林非常希望的第二战场。
这一点，以及丘吉尔想要--用现代的话说--回报。直到希特勒发动巴巴罗萨行动的那个月，苏联一直在为纳粹的战争努力输送数十万吨的原材料，甚至在德国国防军击溃法国和德国空军在伦敦上空争夺霸权之后。丘吉尔必须知道，在那些向伦敦投掷炸弹的飞机中，至少有一部分是因为苏联向希特勒提供了原材料。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


A political cartoon published after the German-Russian Nonaggression Pact was signed in 1939

《苏德互不侵犯条约》1939年签署后发表的政治漫画

The western Allies knew that Hitler was beaten, that he had no hope of stopping the advance of the Red Army. By the end of April 1944, the Red Army had beaten the Wehrmacht back almost completely outside the Soviet unx, all the way to the Polish frontier. The problem, the Allies saw, was no longer Hitler, but the Soviet unx. Once the Soviets took over Nazi Germany, what was to stop them from continuing their march westward through the Low Countries into France, to “save” Western Europe from Nazi occupiers that still remained? They realized that if they did not invade France, it too would soon be behind what Churchill in a 1946 speech termed the “Iron Curtain”.

西方盟国知道，希特勒被打败了，他没有希望阻止红军的前进。到1944年4月底，红军几乎把德国国防军完全打回了苏联境外，一直打到波兰边境。盟军看到，问题不再是希特勒，而是苏联。一旦苏联占领了纳粹德国，又有什么能阻止他们继续向西进军，通过低地国家进入法国，从仍然存在的纳粹占领者手中 "拯救 "西欧？
他们意识到，如果他们不进攻法国，法国也将很快被置于丘吉尔在1946年一次演讲中所称的 "铁幕 "之后。

This, then, is why America, the United Kingdom, and the British Commonwealth invaded the beaches of Normandy on June 6th, 1944: not to defeat Hitler, but to prevent the Soviet unx from taking over the rest of continental Europe.
Addendum: Several readers disagreed with my article’s contention, and I was able to respond effectively (IMHO) to all of them…except for one. John Griswold pointed out that by invading Italy, we were able to keep 70 divisions pinned down and unable to assist the 33 German divisions sent to repel the invasion at Normandy. I don’t have a good argument against that, so I must admit that it looks like I could very well be mistaken, and he deserves the credit (and my gratitude) for pointing out my error. Give him a follow — the man knows whereof he speaks.

因此，这就是为什么美国、英国和英联邦国家在1944年6月6日发起诺曼底登陆战役的原因：
不是为了打败希特勒，而是为了阻止苏联接管欧洲大陆的其余部分。
补充：有几位读者不同意我的文章的论点，我能够有效地 ( 恕我直言 ) 回应所有的读者，只有一个人除外，John Griswold，他指出，通过进攻意大利，我们能牵制住德军70个师，使其无法协助被派去击退诺曼底进攻的33个德国师，我没有很好的理由反对这一点，所以我必须承认，看起来我很可能是错的，他指出了我的错误，理应得到赞扬 ( 和我的感激 )，请给他一个关注——这个人知道自己在说什么。