Hope of Israel Ministries (Ecclesia of YEHOVAH):

A Remembrance of Normandy and D-Day

by HOIM Staff

There can be no question as to which is the greatest nation on the face of the earth, today -- and for all of the Twentieth Century. That great honor belongs to the United States of America. Although Britain had her "hey-day" of glory and grandeur, and it was once proudly boasted that the "Sun never set on the British Empire," nevertheless, that proud boast has become one with the proud boasts of ancient "Nineveh and Tyre."

In his remarkable book, End of Empire, Brian Lapping wrote:

"Until 1947 -- within the lifetime of half the world's population -- the Government of London ruled more land and people than any other government in history. In the thirty-three years between India's independence in 1947 and Southern Rhodesia's in 1980 the British Empire ended....After 1980 the dozen territories that remained British -- Hong Kong, Gibraltar and a scatter of tiny islands -- were no longer an empire, merely the left-overs. Relative to its size, no great ship ever sank so quickly" (p. xiv).

Lapping points out that it was the Second World War and its enormous cost that compelled Britain to mortgage a large part of its worldwide imperial assets, in order to fight single-handedly from 1939 to 1941, carrying on the brunt of the war against Hitler during that time, that were "the principal reasons why the British Empire ended so much more quickly than anyone expected" (p. 8). The push for democracy and independence around the world, following World War II, was also largely responsible. In the Middle East, the British did not give up the trappings of imperial policy easily, or cheerfully. Says Lapping:

"The British in the Middle East, it was said, never saw the handwriting on the wall until they hit their heads against it" (p.10).

After the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in World War II in 1942, New Zealand and Australia no longer looked to the British for military aid or presence; they began to look to the United States as their principal ally. During the postwar years, the United States in its desire to contain Communism, "wanted a junior partner to share the role of world policeman" (p. 11). Britain, of course, was the logical choice. Today, however, the role of "world policeman" is considered too big a role for the United States and its allies to fulfill. More and more, modern nations including the United States appear to be willing to look to the United Nations as a final arbiter in the affairs of nations.

Since the end of the British Empire, the mantle of world leadership has swung to the older brother of Joseph's sons -- Manasseh, or America. Whereas England was the dominant power in the nineteenth century, the United States surpassed every nation in power and prestige, authority and economic prosperity, during the twentieth century.

Today, the economy of the United States is a vast, unbelievable $7 trillion a year gross national product. In 1974 the U.S. gross domestic product was about $1 trillion -- just one seventh of its current size.

Today, with the fall and collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is the world's sole remaining true "superpower." But signs of America's potential strength began to be seen during World Wars I and II. In World War I, the world was saved from disaster by American intervention. Writes Alistair Cooke in his monumental book America:

"It is true that the Allies could not have defeated the Central Powers without the intervention of the United States in the last eighteen months of a war which was to record an atrocious pile of casualties: more than half of Russia's mobilized 12 million were killed or wounded; 5 1/2 million of France's 8 million; more than a third of the 9 million recruited by the British Empire and Commonwealth; 1 1/2 million of Italy's 5 1/2 million. When a whole generation of Europeans was maimed and faint with exhaustion, the United States had sent into the battle-fields two million brash and lusty young men. American industry, already geared to a scale of productivity that Europeans could hardly grasp, poured arms and materiel across the Atlantic" (p. 303).

Before the beginning of World War II, the United States produced about one third of the world's manufactured goods. That was more than double the production of Germany, and ten times the production of Japan, or roughly five times the combined production of Germany and Japan put together. When the Axis powers were defeated in 1945, the manufacturing production of the United States stood at over HALF of the world's total manufacturing output! This proportion of dominance has never before in history been obtained by a single nation or empire -- not even the Roman Empire, or the British Empire, at their peaks.

In the book 200 Years, produced by the editors of U.S. News and World Report, celebrating America's proud bicentennial history from 1776 to 1976, we read that in the fateful year of D-Day, and the invasion of Normandy and "Fortress Europa," that U.S. manufacturing production in 1944 was staggering to the human imagination:

"In preparation for an all-out assault on Hitler's Europe, American industry poured forth an astonishing quantity of planes, tanks, ships, guns and ammunition -- more than double the Axis powers' production in 1944. Companies that in peacetime had produced Kodaks and Quaker Oats operated plants turning out bombs and shells. More than half the workers in war plants were women, many of whom had never held jobs before....

"Working night and day and using prefabricated sections, a shipyard turned out cargo ships in 17 days. On the assembly lines, women waged war on Hitler and Tojo with acelylene torches. Boeing's Seattle plant rolled out its last B-17 in April, 1945...Wartime America produced nearly 300,000 aircraft, 87,000 tanks, 320,000 artillery pieces, 12,000 war and cargo ships, 65,000 landing craft, plus 42 billion bullets" (p. 186-187).

Because of the arming of the allied forces by America, the "Arsenal of Democracy," when the invasion of Normandy, D-Day, June 6, 1944, finally arrived, the German troops were astonished to see the fruits of years of Allied planning. Say the authors of 200 Years:

"The gray, hazy dawn revealed calm seas in the Channel; the meteorologists had been right. In their coastal emplacements German troops stared in stunned silence at the sight revealed to them -- a panorama of ships spreading solidly, without a break, across the horizon. The armada totaled nearly 5,000 vessels, 900 of them warships, carrying 174,000 troops and over 20,000 vehicles" (p. 288).

Never in the history of all mankind had such an armada been assembled. By contrast, the fateful battle of Midway, in the Pacific, involved a relatively modest 26 U.S. ships, and 125 Japanese vessels. The ships of the assembled armada on D-Day, June 6, 1944, by contrast seemed to fill the ocean, stretching all across the horizon -- the vast majority of them built and produced in America! By the end of what Field Marshall Irwin Rommel had prophetically called "the longest day," as darkness fell and reinforcements continued to pour in, the Allies had successfully breached Adolf Hitler's "Atlantic Wall."

The toughest fighting was at a beach code-named Omaha, a narrow beach tangled up with concrete and steel obstacles, barbed wire, backed up by bluffs honeycombed with pillboxes and bunkers hiding artillery and machine guns which commanded every approach and every inch of the beach. For the American soldiers, it was like "entering the mouth of hell; two-thirds of the first wave was shot down in the surf" (p. 189). Things looked so bad that for a time the high command debated evacuating the beach. But here and there, a handful of men began creeping forward to get at their tormentors. "They're murdering us here! Let's move inland and get murdered!" yelled one officer. "Get your ass up that hill," a sergeant bellowed at every soldier he saw. Some 2,500 men died on that beach that day, but the Allies secured their primary objectives.

Writes historian S. L. A. Marshall, "one of the 47 immortals of Omaha" was Lieutenant Walter Taylor who led his men crawling over the beach and seawall, and straight up the bluff. In a two-hour fire-fight they whipped a German platoon without losing a man. They advanced nearly one half mile ahead of anyone else in the American army. "We saw no sign of fear in him," said Staff Sergeant Frank Price later. "Marching or fighting, he was leading. We followed him because there was nothing else to do." Says historian Marshall, "The high ground was won by a handful of men like Taylor who on that day burned with a flame bright beyond common understanding" (p. 191-193).

There is no doubt about it. The United States of America is by far the greatest nation, economic superpower, and military superpower, on the face of the earth, today. What is little realized is that this greatness was prophesied to the firstborn or oldest son of Joseph, the oldest son of Jacob by his wife Rachel. Jacob foretold, of the oldest son of Joseph, Manasseh: "He also shall become a people [United States], and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother [Ephraim-Great Britain] shall be GREATER than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of goyim [Hebrew, plural, #1471 in Gesenius' Hebrew-Chalee Lexicon to the Old Testament, meaning "peoples" -- political entities such as states or nations]..." (Genesis 48:19). This was fulfilled in the English-speaking nations of first the British Empire and then the British Commonwealth.

The United States -- a truly "great" people -- fulfills the prophecy of Manasseh to a "T." Truly, YEHOVAH God has blessed Manasseh-America!

Hope of Israel Ministries -- Preparing the Way for the Return of YEHOVAH God and His Messiah!

Hope of Israel Ministries P.O. Box 853 Azusa, CA 91702, U.S.A. www.hope-of-israel.org

Scan with your Smartphone for more information