General Eisenhower and D-Day

!Learn about the people, places, and events surrounding General Eisenhower and D-Day!

By 1939, the war was raging in Europe and England. Churchill was practically begging for our involvement. While the British and Russians struggled against the German Reich, the United States remained officially neutral and refused to enter the war. Prior to Pearl Harbor, we supported the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany while maintaining official neutrality and boosting its own industrial capacity, acting as the "arsenal of democracy". This included: rifles, machine guns, artillery, and, by late 1941, American tanks and planes, but no troops. Then, On December 8th, 1941, while the wreckage of Pearl Harbor was still smoldering, the decision to go to war with Japan was made, and all the hesitation and desire for neutrality was no more than a memory.

The European campaign was a conventional battle of massive scale and destruction, while the Pacific campaign was a technologically driven, fast-paced, and highly brutal, scattered campaign. Both campaigns had to be won, but today we will first focus on the European theater leading up to victory.