Fact Check
Washington Post’s live fact check finds Obama out-and-out wrong on several counts but has to parse and pick apart assiduously to find McCain at fault. Whatever. A telling exercise. Where it gets bizarre is in the grand finale, where the fact checkers tack on this astonishing McCain bash:
John McCain kicked the evening off with a wild exaggeration by describing the allied invasion of Normandy as “the greatest invasion” in history.
Such historical comparisons are always dangerous. In scale, the D-Day landings were far exceeded by Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, in June 1941, and the Soviet invasion of Germany at the end of World War II.
A total of 326,000 allied troops took part in the initial D-day Landings in June 1944. By comparison, Hitler’s sent an army of 4.5 million men into the Soviet Union in June 1941along a 1,800 mile front.
If you really want to get into it, the Siegfrieds and the Ivans did it across land. The western allies did it over water.
As well as from the air.
Universally regarded as the greatest sea invasion, in contention for the greatest single technological and organizational operation of all time; a massive and highly complex harnessing of industrial, sea, air and land forces, conducted under strict secrecy, cloaked by highly successful deception.
Different. Greater. And on unconditional greatness alone, it’s important to note that the jackbooted bucketheads, several months in, when it started snowing and they were all still in their summer uniforms and not in Moscow as planned, weren’t feeling so great any more. Historical schadenfreude ensued. As for the Soviets, they didn’t launch an invasion of Germany as much as they pushed multiple fronts forward, out of Russia and into Germany, over a period of two years. Sort of like we did after we invaded Normandy.
We could dicker over the semantics of what makes an invasion, and technically, maybe the Washington Post is right. The Russian front certainly stands as history’s greatest meatgrinder, and we owe the Russian peasantry that were fed into it a debt of gratitude for that. They bled Germany, at great cost, and contributed greatly to the pacification of one of history’s more belligerent peoples.
But as the WaPo scribblers note, “such historical comparisons are always dangerous.” And what it comes down to in the end, Clintonianly speaking, is what you think “great” is. Greatness is in fact conditional. The Nazis wanted to own Russia, and killed every Jew and most of the other Russians they met. If the Washington Post thinks that’s great, so be it. The Russkies, meanwhile, raped every woman they met on the pushback, and enslaved half of Europe for 45 years. Washington Post informs us that’s also greater than Normandy, where the Americans, British and Canadians went ashore, fought and died to liberate.
Topics: Nazis, commies, history, media, pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 2:15 pm on Saturday, September 27, 2008
11 Responses to “Fact Check”
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September 27th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I’m not sure an “invasion” really counts when you’re subsequently thrown out.
September 27th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
But the facts must fit the narrative, you understand. If they don’t, well, then they’re not relevant.
September 27th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I hope you won’t take it amiss when I say that, even on those grounds, WaPo has it wrong. The single most difficult and dangerous military operation is an amphibious assault over a defended beach. Normandy was, indeed, the “greatest.” It was the most difficult and certainly the one with the greates effect upon history.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
A lot gets glossed over in the remembering of history.
One of those things lost is that prior to Tarawa, the prevailing military wisdom was that forced amphibious invasions against a defended beach were impossible.
September 28th, 2008 at 7:44 am
This just in: Washington Post calls Hitler´s invasion “Great”.
The point is, if the WaPo applied this degree of nitpicking scrutiny on anything Obama says - or Nancy Pelosi, heaven help us - they´d be occupied from now til hell freezes.
September 28th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Bizarre is putting it kindly. Just stunningly weird and depressing.
Hi Grimmy, nice to see you back here on the monkeybars, I missed you over the summer! Interesting comment, as usual.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:01 am
The could have always checked with Stalin who called it the most amazing feat of Arms ever. And I think he might have been an authority on the comparisons.
September 29th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Interesting side point, D-day was mechanized, barbarosa was only partly mechanized.
September 29th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
It’s debatable, barely, whether or not the Normandy invasion was the greatest in history or not. There can be no debate that to call McCain’s statement a “gross exaggeration” is to show an appalling lack of the size and complexity of the effort required to move that amount of men and machines across the Atlantic and then organize a widespread series of landings on a hostile shore.
The writer of such tripe is wholly unqualified to opine on the statements of anyone.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Well, of course the libs at WaPo would have to pick other invasions as greater than Normandy. Normandy was a triumph for America, as well as her allies, and therefore per se bad, because America is bad. Bad, bad America.
October 10th, 2009 at 9:07 am
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