On this episode of Neutral, I want to take you back to a podcast we did in 2019.

I'm doing it because I think it was such an important date in history and such an important date in American history that it's worth revisiting.

77 years ago, on June 6th, the United States, Great Britain and their allies landed in France in the most complicated single operation ever undertaken by human beings.

With so many people landing from the air, so many people landing across the beaches, so many people involved in the ships offshore, so many people flying in the sky, keeping all of that coordinate.

Getting it to happen against aggressive, professional, German opposition was a remarkable achievement.

And I felt strongly at the time that I wanted to share particularly with younger people who may not realize how really important it was.

That this was the decisive moment.

Had we failed, we would in fact probably have found ourselves in a totally different world, one in which the Nazis might still dominate Europe.

So I wanted to take a moment to emphasize the importance of the date, but I also wanted to use it as an opportunity to show you how much things have changed.

Because you see that evening, and we were because of the time different six hours behind France, so we knew by the evening that we had landed successfully.

And at that point, President Franklin Del Nerozo, probably the most popular president in 20th century history, the leading Democratic liberal, or the man who created the modern Democratic majority, went on radio, which was the medium of the time.

And he asked the American people to pray, and it is such a spectacular prayer, and the very notion of an American president saying, please pray with me.

And then at the end, he says, some people have asked me to announce a day of prayer, but I think instead, I'm going to ask each of you to pray every day until the war's over, and I'll win and come back.

Now, I think that so remarkable, and when you hear it, you'll understand that with his voice, with a country which had now had him as president since 1933, with the power of his beliefs, that it was a remarkable moment.

Imagine today, if instead of having the government sue religion, and having the government dominated by secular, anti-Christian, anti-Jews, anti-Muslims, you name it, if it involves God there against it.

Imagine you had a president who could say, please join me in prayer, and I think that was a remarkable time.

You will listen to it carefully, and think about the emotions of the mothers and the fathers and the loved ones, the brothers and the sisters, as they join the president of states in prayer.

A confirmed by a live sources, of course, says the heavy fighting is taking place between the Germans and invasion forces on the Normandy Peninsula, about 31 miles southwest of Lahavra.

Another bulletin, also from Berlin Radio, and Unconfirmed, says the British American landing operations against the Western coast of Europe, from the sea and from the air, are stretching over the entire area between Sherberg and Lahavra, a distance of about 60 miles.

On June 6, 1944, 156,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. Paratroopers landed behind the beaches.

A huge number of ships were in the English Channel. The air power was over all of that part of France, and it was the greatest single complex event in human history, vastly more complicated than going to the moon or anything we've tried to do.

I wanted to share with you, because I think that it's really important that we occasionally stop and look at a decisive event, try to understand what would have happened without that event, and try to understand the people who made it possible.

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