Doing research into any period of history also reveals a lot of popular misconceptions that spread and reinforce by repetition by people who don't check.
This time of year particularly reinforces one: D-Day or Operation Overlord was the biggest invasion in military history. It was the biggest amphibious assault, certainly, but it was dwarfed by the German invasion of the USSR in 1941.
D-Day had 1,450,000 men approximately in the attack on the Allied side, against 380,000 German soldiers. In attacking the USSR in 1941, the Axis sent 3.8 MILLION personnel and 4,300 tanks, along with 7,200 artillery pieces and thousands of planes against almost 3 million Soviet soldiers with 15,000 tanks.
In Operation Bagration, the Soviet push to clear the war out of the Belorussia, the Baltic countries and Poland in 1944, the Soviet forces featured 1.6 million men, 5800 tanks, 33,000 artillery pieces and nearly 8,000 planes against some 886,000 Axis personnel and only 800 tanks.
Those statistics also point out how the German forces had been worn down over the years of war. Just look at the numbers of tanks: from 4,300 sent into the Eastern Front in 1941, down to 800 in 1944, despite the factories working flat-out to replace those destroyed, and new models coming almost continuously.
This time of year particularly reinforces one: D-Day or Operation Overlord was the biggest invasion in military history. It was the biggest amphibious assault, certainly, but it was dwarfed by the German invasion of the USSR in 1941.
D-Day had 1,450,000 men approximately in the attack on the Allied side, against 380,000 German soldiers. In attacking the USSR in 1941, the Axis sent 3.8 MILLION personnel and 4,300 tanks, along with 7,200 artillery pieces and thousands of planes against almost 3 million Soviet soldiers with 15,000 tanks.
In Operation Bagration, the Soviet push to clear the war out of the Belorussia, the Baltic countries and Poland in 1944, the Soviet forces featured 1.6 million men, 5800 tanks, 33,000 artillery pieces and nearly 8,000 planes against some 886,000 Axis personnel and only 800 tanks.
Those statistics also point out how the German forces had been worn down over the years of war. Just look at the numbers of tanks: from 4,300 sent into the Eastern Front in 1941, down to 800 in 1944, despite the factories working flat-out to replace those destroyed, and new models coming almost continuously.