This week marks the 81st anniversary of the D-Day invasion, when the armada of the Allies crossed the English Channel and began the bloody, brutal, march from Normandy to Berlin.

The western Allies — Americans, Brits, soldiers of the Commonwealth countries, members of the Free French Forces and remnants of armies that had already been overrun by the Nazis — had begun what would become the final push to retake Europe in July of 1943 with the invasion of Sicily. By January of ’44, the Allies were landing at Anzio.

In retrospect, the Allied victory seems assured — we don’t like to imagine a world where the Nazis won. We don’t like to imagine a world with a “negotiated peace.” But, few, if any, of the victories of World War II were easy.

The planning for the D-Day invasions was shaped by th

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