Abstract
The long-awaited Allied offensive against Nazi-occupied Northern Europe began with the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. For the Western Allies, 1944 was a year during which they brought the battle to the enemy on an unprecedented scale. To some, the word “crusade” seemed an apt label, not only for the Normandy invasion but also for Allied offensive operations across the globe. “Crusade” carries deep cultural significance, interpreted by many as the Christian equivalent of the Islamic term jihad. Yet the epic proportions of Operation Overlord, along with the subsequent battles that raged across northwest Europe, seemed to call for expansive terms. Indeed, the Nazis were a demonic foe, and the Allies sought to liberate Europe’s millions from that oppressive regime. We can understand, then, what prompted Eisenhower’s “holy war” rhetoric. Fighting so brutal an enemy called us to live up to our own highest ideals. Make war on the devil and, certainly, one fights on the side of God’s true angels—so the narrative suggests.
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months….Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Address to the D-Day Forces1
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Notes
Eisenhower’s D-Day address, in Robert Torricelli and Andrew Carroll’s edition In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century (New York: Kodansha, 1999), 139.
In the film Gettysburg (1993), based on Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels (1974), Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain makes a speech to his regiment that explores similar mixed motives but still demonstrates importance of the underlying cause for which the men are fighting.
The initials “G.I.” is usually said to stand for “General Issue” or “Government Issue,” identifying standard equipment issued to individual combat troops and their units. See William L. Priest, Swear Like a Trooper: A Dictionary of Military Terms & Phrases (Charlottesville, VA: Rockbridge, 2000), 103.
Figures on total numbers in the U.S. military during the duration of the war vary, but I am using figures cited in James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi, Victory at Sea (New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1995), 321–322. Estimates of total numbers of eligible males are extrapolated from census figures from 1940—see Statistical Abstract of the United States, 71st ed., 1950, Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, DC, 1950, 8–9.
For a detailed discussion of the enforcing and easing of censorship policies during the war see George H. Roeder, Jr., The Censored War: American Visual Experience during World War II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).
My source for the cause of the blurriness of the D-Day photo is Robert Capa’s Slightly Out of Focus, Paperback Edition (1947/1999. New York: Modern Library, 2001), 152.
Randall Jarrell, “Losses,” in The Norton Book of Modern War, ed. Paul Fussell (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 447.
The general release version had an added introduction by General Mark Clark, justifying why we had to destroy the village in order to save it—an army logic that, while associated with Vietnam, also has significance for World War II. See Mike Mayo’s Video Hound’s War Movies (Detroit, MI: Visible Ink, 1999), 358–359.
It should be noted that The Battle of San Pietro and other effective World War II documentaries may owe a great deal to the influence of the Spanish Civil War documentary The Spanish Earth (1937), made by Ernest Hemingway and Joris Ivens. Huston’s understated and subtly ironic narration bears a tonal and structural similarity to Hemingway’s in the earlier film (read by Hemingway himself in one version). Likewise, the integration of elements of daily life with the fighting, especially in a rural village, is also similar. Although The Spanish Earth never gained a wide public audience, Hemingway took it to Hollywood for private showings to movie industry luminaries, to raise money for the Loyalist cause. Certainly, many Hollywood writers, producers, and directors were familiar with its style and subject matter. See Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (New York: Scribner, 1969), 307–312.
Also, it should be noted that Huston had far less access to the actual battle than might be assumed from viewing the film. Historian Rick Atkinson notes that Huston had to reconstruct battle scenes after the fact, not unlike Toland and Ford had done for December 1th. Huston, however, manages to make his reconstructions somewhat more convincing and effective. See Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944, Volume Two of The Liberation Trilogy (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 290, 291–292.
Such grisly images, if seen by the American public when the first version of the film was available in 1944, would have doubtlessly had a shocking effect. The Army may have feared the impact on civilian morale, reediting the film and delaying release until July 1945, after the war in Europe had been decided. See Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 293. Ironically, another film, With the Marines at Tarawa, made about the same time, was released to the public in 1944, and while shocking, stimulated an increased civilian commitment to the war effort (see Ken Burns’ material on this in his own documentary The War, 2007, Episode 3).
Harry Brown, A Walk in the Sun (1944/1971. New York: Carrol & Graff, 1985), 57.
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© 2009 Vincent Casaregola
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Casaregola, V. (2009). “The Great Crusade”. In: Theaters of War. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230100879_5
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