Barack Obama Quotes

That road to V-E Day was hard and long, and traveled by weary and valiant men. And history will always record where that road began. It began here, with the first footprints on the beaches of Normandy.

In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.

World War II was a decisive time in our history and June 6, 1944, marked the decisive moment of the war.

D-Day will be a reminder of what can be accomplished when allies work together and when everyone understands what’s at stake.

Granted, it's a long time ago, it's in the 1940s, and, granted, it's warfare that we hopefully will not conduct in a similar fashion ever again, but it is crucially important. And that act, the storming of the Normandy beaches, coupled with the Battle of the Bulge, ending the spread of Nazism throughout Europe, saved the world and it saved the world for freedom. And it was the United States that did it. And it was a bunch of 19- and 20- and 21-year-old people who did it.

Churchill strikes a note in my life because my father worked on Mulberry Harbour, which was the code name for the temporary concrete harbours which were towed across the Channel to make the D-day landings in France possible.

If D-Day - the greatest amphibious operation ever undertaken - failed, there would be no going back to the drawing board for the Allies. Regrouping and attempting another massive invasion of German-occupied France even a few months later in 1944 wasn't an option.

I was in the invasion of Normandy in southern France.

A few weeks ago we were reminded that other peoples - in particular the United States of America - fought so that we Germans could live in liberty. That we should never forget.

When the Normandy Invasion was planned, a very specific strategic objective was given, and that strategic objective was the basis upon which the plan for the Normandy Invasion was derived.

'What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.

Generals make plans. Plans go wrong. And soldiers die.

I must give a most emphatic warning, in the interest of our common cause, of the grave danger with which further delay in opening a second front in France is fraught

Jack Buck fought through Europe during World War II.

Our World War II generation met the challenges of their time.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

there on the beaches of Normandy I began to reflect on the wonders of these ordinary people whose lives were laced with the markings of greatness.

I have returned many times to honour the valiant men who died...every man who set foot on Omaha Beach was a hero.

There has never been a military operation remotely approaching the scale and the complexity of D-Day. It involved 176,000 troops, more than 12,000 airplanes, almost 10,000 ships, boats, landing craft, frigates, sloops, and other special combat vessels--all involved in a surprise attack on the heavily fortified north coast of France, to secure a beachhead in the heart of enemy-held territory so that the march to Germany and victory could begin. It was daring, risky, confusing, bloody, and ultimately glorious [p.25]

The men who died at D-Day did not die shoulder-to-shoulder with their French comrades. They died to liberate the French from a sinister and brutal occupation.

I served in World War II in our fight to defeat fascism.

My two grandfathers fought in World War II.

We must remember both the sacrifices and service of the Greatest Generation who secured freedom and prosperity for our world, as well as the horrors and lessons of the Holocaust.

My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German, and neither will his son.