Believe me, Lang, the first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive…the fate of Germany depends on the outcome…for the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day.
— Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to his aide, April 22, 1944
June 6, 1944 is one of the most important dates in world history. On this day, the Allied forces of England, USA, France, Canada and many other nations jointly invaded the northern coast of France at Normandy. The purpose of this mission was very clear. To free France and other occupied nations from Germany and to end the Third Reich. While many movies have been made on WWII, the 1962 movie The Longest Day remains my favourite. Here’s why.
Language
If a movie has got the language and diction right, I am almost sold on the movie. And in this sense, The Longest Day outperforms almost all WWII movies. This movie was made in 1962 and it had five different directors for British, German and French scenes. The French characters in this movie are played by French actors and speak French, likewise the Germans. There was another version made simultaneously where everyone speaks English and I am never going to watch it. Remember this was 1962. Foreign languages and subtitles were rare and yet the first English dialogue in this movie is spoken after 10 minutes! Compare this to Where Eagles Dare. Great script by Alistair MacLean but it is very difficult to accept Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton as German officers with everyone speaking English to everyone else.
The Look
This movie has a great advantage because it was made in 1962. People from that era looked quite different. There are many reasons for this. They lived in a different zeitgeist – the clothes they wore, the way they walked or talked, their body shapes – everything was different. Healthy individuals did not have a V-shaped body, unless they were athletes or body builders. Most of the lead male characters looked mature. Later on as the target audience became younger, so did the lead actors. Spielberg selected the lead characters in Saving Private Ryan on the basis that they looked like from the WWII era. Normally in a period movie, if the lead actor is good, she summons all the reserves of her talent and tries to get as close to the character as possible and it works. To play a woman from the early 1800’s in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson studied how women walked during that time. Women wearing corsets walked much differently than women of today. But in a war movie, you have to show hundred of soldiers from that era and it is impossible to get it right for every soldier. That’s why The Longest Day works. It was made only 18 years after the event. The
CGI
I am getting a little tired of the CGI. For one, the surprise factor is long gone. Dinosaurs on screen no longer evoke awe. Saving Private Ryan did a great job in presenting the most gruesome portrayal of invasion till that time. Later day CGI made the most graphic violence so routine that the reality aspect lost its shine. It is clear that a reviewer who places high value on the fact that the battle ‘looks’ real will be seriously disappointed with the close-up fighting scenes of The Longest Day. However, it must be said that the aerial scenes in the movie are still spectacular. Another interesting point is if you think that all invasion battle was like the one shown in Saving Private Ryan, you would be wrong. That scene is from Omaha beach which was guarded most heavily. The German defense was not uniform throughout the coast so on some other beaches, the Allied soldiers just walked in unopposed. The Longest Day covers all these variations.
The music
I am speaking of the three-dots-and-a-dash music taken from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This will sound like a cliche in an era that has seen John Williams work wonders with original soundtracks. I still get goosebumps when the helicopter lands on Jurassic Park to a breathtaking John Williams soundtrack. Still, Beethoven works. Instrumental music is a dynamic abstract art form. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony has been and will be performed thousands of times and each performance will have a different interpretation. Beethoven left some aspects – like the tempo in which the symphony is played – at the discretion of the conductor. That’s why the Fifth Symphony – or any other classical music piece – sounds different with each conductor. Karajan plays it fast but Wilhelm Furtwängler, who is my favourite plays it slow. Beethoven’s Fifth is a battle between evil (minor chord) and good (major chord). I like to imagine the first movement representing Allied landings, with each minor chord as battle scenes and each major chord as another town liberated.
The canvas
The Longest Day has a story line featuring the Who’s Who of Allied and German military. I have not seen any other movie having so many major characters. Of course, most of these have just cameo appearances but even then first half hour of the movie simply introduces the major players – from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to General Normal Cota (US 29th Division) to the Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower aka Ike. Interestingly the part of Ike was played by a non-actor. Even after half an hour when the story finally progresses, new characters keep on making their appearances. The shear breadth of this cast shows how gigantic the whole operation, code named Operation Overlord, must have been.
It’s too simplistic
There is a tendency to treat movies that do not go into psychological depths of characters as too simplistic. A movie or a book should perform well within the constraints of its type and its genre. You will not find much psychological depth or complexities in Isaac Asimov’s novels because the main characters there are new scientific concepts. The human characters are simply means of testing out those concepts. That’s why I found Gravity misleading. There is no science fiction in that movie. The plot could take place anywhere – in a mine, in Antarctica or in a lift. Placing the characters in outer space is nothing more than a gimmick. The Longest Day is about the tactical and strategical maneuvers of D-Day. There is no time to go deeper into a character who has undergone a trauma. The Longest Day performs well within the constraints that it has set for itself.
Authenticity
Most war movies are criticised for taking liberties with the historical narrative. Border, the Hindi movie based on 1972 India-Pakistan war is one of my favourites but one feels a bit let down with the disclaimer in the beginning stating that the story has been fictionalized. I wonder why. Why not use actual events? The Longest Day is based on a book by the same name by Cornelius Ryan. Ryan was one of the preeminent war correspondents of his time. The book is based on extensive research, involving documents, diaries, logs, letters etc. Ryan also interviewed large number of persons who gave a first hand account of the events. The list of persons alone is forty pages. So almost all the incidents that you see in the movie – the soldier who won $2500 the night before landing and then thinking it was bad luck lost it all or the Frenchman who greeted the invading Allied army with a bottle of wine in the middle of gunshots flying around – they are all based on actual events. The only character I could not find in the book was the cameo played by Sean Connery. Also, Eisenhower gave the final go-ahead at 4.30 a. m. on June 5 and not at 9.30 p. m. as shown in the movie.
The most interesting part in the movie for me is the first hour. It captures the conditions all across Europe on 5th June 1944. The fact that it is black and white makes it more interesting. Spielberg shot Schindler’s List in black and white because that’s the way he remembered the Holocaust – through newspaper cuttings and badly shot footages. That’s how I feel about WWII. There is always something off while watching WWII in colour. A sense that it’s not real. I also like the way the German officers are portrayed – characters with normal human emotions. It’s tedious to watch all Nazi officers in a constant evil state, who never get frustrated or happy or sad. German military commanders like Rommel were highly regarded even by the Allied forces. They cannot do anything but watch the strategic and tactical disaster that was happening with Hitler in command. This frustration is shown beautifully in the movie.
War is a kaleidoscope of all human emotions. The book goes much deeper into the various aspects of the operation that the movie barely manages to touch upon. The men waiting near the British shore left their positions to say goodbye to their buddies in other boats. They exchanged addresses, “just in case.” On the Gold beach, Sargent Donald Gardner of the 47th heard someone say, “Perhaps we are intruding, this seems to be a private beach.” On Sword beach, there was so little resistance that the men were surprised. Here and there along the seafront, group of elated French yelled at the troops, “Vive le Anglais!” When Sargent Paddy de Lacy landed on the Juno beach, they captured 12 Germans who had surrendered. He then walked away to make himself a cup of tea. When one officer scolded him, he said, “Sir..why don’t you come back in five minutes and have a cup of tea?” The officer did.
The long sobs of the violins of autumn
The allied forces were in contact with the French underground. Daily, after the regular BBC news broadcasts, coded instructions in French, Dutch, Danish, and Norwegian were read out to the underground. These were meaningless to anyone who did not know the code. For instance, “Sabine has just had mumps and Jaundice” or “John has a long Moustache.” However, the German intelligence did manage to decode one very vital message. It was first line of a poem of Verlane, Songs of Autumn. The first line “The long sobs of the violins of autumn” was to be transmitted on first or fifteenth of a month and it will represent the first half of a message regarding the Allied invasion. When the second line – “Wound my heart with a monotonous languor” was broadcast, it would mean that the invasion will begin within forty-eight hours.
On June 1, 1944 the BBC broadcast contained the message, “The long sobs of the violins of autumn.” The second part was broadcast on the night of June 5th.
Fortunately, with the exception of few middle ranking officers, none of the German high command took the message seriously. Other messages broadcast at that time contained “It is hot in Suez” which was the go-ahead for sabotaging of railroad tracks and equipment and “The dice are on the table” which was the signal for cutting of telephone lines and cables. These proved very effective when the front-line German command posts finally realized that the invasion was happening but could not communicate to their superiors inland.
Where and when?
It was no secret that the invasion was going to happen someday. The Germans knew it and that’s why they were building the Atlantic Wall – a fortification of the beaches of France and Belgium. The real two questions were : At which beach the invasion will take place and when? The most obvious choice would be Calais which was at the shortest distance from the British shore. The Allies had done their earlier landings in Africa on bright, sunny days and there was no reason to believe that they will deviate this time. Through elaborate design that consisted of false intelligence leaks, intense bombing at Calais, a dummy command post set up on the shore opposite Calais that showed lot of false activity, the allies were able to deceive the Germans so successfully that even on the morning of 6th June, 1944, when the forces had landed and were rapidly moving inland, many in the German high command still believed that this was a diversionary attack and the main attack will occur at Calais.
The ‘when’ was a very difficult decision for the Allies. It had to be night so that darkness would conceal the strength and direction of attacks. It had to be a moon-lit night so that airborne assaults could be successful. It had to be a low tide to enable uncovering of the obstacles placed by Germans. This combination would occur on June 5, 6 and 7th of 1944. If they missed this deadline, the next opportunity would be after fourteen or possibly twenty-eight days. This would have consequences that were too horrifying to imagine. The secrecy would be lost and more than two million men who were waiting for the order would be left in suspended animation.
One man had to take a decision and that was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, Dwight Eisenhower. How do you take a decision that involves over two million men, thousands of ships and bombers and possible the fate of humanity? This attack was the final thrust of the Allied efforts against the Third Reich. If it failed, it was doubtful if there could be another attempt and the consequences would be unimaginable. That is too much burden for one man to carry.
To find out more about how he took this decision, I read Eisenhower’s book, Crusade in Europe. Ike is typically modest about the incident. He goes to his tent alone, and sits down to think. Then he outlines all the possible choices and their consequences. He had already postponed the attack by a day on June 5 due to bad weather. On June 6, there was not much improvement but the meteorologists did promise a short spell of reasonably good weather.
Contrary to all Nazi expectations, the Allied attack commenced in foul weather and at the farthest point : Normandy.
Eisenhower’s book takes us deep into the intricacies of the war. For instance, French countryside had small areas surrounded by dense hedges. These provided ready made trenches for the Nazi machine gunners or small combat forces and were difficult to attack. The Allies found an ingenious solution. The tanks were fastened on the front side with two blades that cut through the hedges. Things were difficult on the political side as well. The French population was tired of the occupation and disgusted with the debacle of the French army. General de Gaulle, who escaped to London after the occupation, wanted to have as much control as possible. Then, there were officer corps in the French army who considered de Gaulle a disloyal soldier. Navigating through such complex positions was a delicate affair.
Eisenhower comes across as an honest, fearless leader who knew how to control the gigantic armada under his command. He maneuvered beautifully from the highest echelons like Roosevelt and Churchill to the lowest ranks of the military. It is hard enough to be the commander of a single army. Eisenhower had to deal with not just the armies, but also the naval and air forces of several nations and their highest ranked officers. To create a cohesion between different armies having different work cultures and unite them was a mammoth task. He was also an optimist to the core. At one point during the campaign when the morale was low, he said at one meeting, “The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not of disaster. There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table.”
While reading the book, one thing becomes crystal clear. From a purely strategical and tactical point of view, the allied forces were helped tremendously by one man : Adolf Hitler. At one point, Ike says, “We owed much to Hitler.” Germany had two massive Panzer divisions near Paris, ready to attack in case of an invasion, the 12th S.S. and the Panzer Lehr. However, the decision to release those divisions rested not with the commander in field as is usually the case but with Hitler. On the night of the invasion, Hitler took a sleeping draft and went to sleep. As the invasion reports began coming in the next morning, no one dared to wake him up. When he finally woke up, he threw up such a tantrum that no one dared to raise the topic. This was a routine throughout the campaign and in fact for all of the war. Hitler had zero experience in military strategy and tactics. Yet, he refused to let his commanders take control of the battle. Also, he never gave permission for a tactical retreat, ordering the soldiers to fight till the end. When the commanders disobeyed, he fired them. Even when the invasion was well under way, Hitler continued to believe that the real invasion would happen later at Calais. 12 the S.S. arrived at beachhead on the morning of the 7th June while the Panzer Lehr made in on 9th June. By that time, it was too late.
While Ike criticizes Hitler, he has nothing but praise for Winston Churchill. Churchill did try to intervene many times during the campaign but the difference between the Allied and the Nazi camps was that unlike the Nazis, the final strategic and tactical decisions were left to the military commanders. At one point in the book, Ike also praises Churchill thus : “In spite of all his preoccupations, Mr Churchill constantly evidenced an intensely human side.”
And it is at this point I am faced with a dilemma. Churchill is often praised for his determination during WWII and there is no doubt that he played a major role in the Allied victory. I am sure he was human in those situations that Ike described. At the same time, when it came to India and Indians, Mr Churchill seemed to undergo a transformation. India, which was under the British rule at the time, contributed heavily in terms of supplies to the Allied efforts in WWII. Thousands of Indian soldiers fought the Nazis in Africa. And yet, when there was a famine in 1943 in Bengal, Mr. Churchill refused to help. As a result, over three million Indians starved to death. These two drastically different images of Churchill are akin to the one in Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I find it very difficult to reconcile these two images.
With the clear benefit of hindsight, I think the Indian National Congress was right in supporting the British during WWII. The alternative of Nazi Germany ruling the world was too terrifying to contemplate. This may be hard to believe but Hitler is becoming popular in India. There is also a tendency to underplay his evil deeds and praise his so-called leadership. Even a cursory look at the photographs from Auschwitz or Dachau should convince any sane person of the atrocities that were committed there but this does not happen. There is a reason why Holocaust denial is illegal in many countries in Europe.
And that is why we should always commemorate occasions like the D-Day. A promise to make every effort not to forget our past and not to repeat the mistakes – that will be a true homage to the brave souls who fought to save the humanity.
