D-day: 75th Anniversary

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for introducing this debate, and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Reay, on his maiden speech.

I was going to read the excellent speech that my adviser prepared for me, but I realise that it is not valid. I have no relations who were involved in the Second World War; my father was a hospital worker throughout that period. Little bits of the story have been so well told this afternoon that I will limit myself to commenting on what came out of the quite extensive reading I did in preparation for this debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for reminding me how useless it is preparing speeches.

The first thing that comes across to me is particularly relevant given the present visit of the President of the United States: the role of America in the 20th century, in particular its great President, Franklin D Roosevelt, and how he managed that presidency. The decision to enter the Second World War, in a country that had been isolationist for many years after its experience in the First World War, was enormously difficult for Roosevelt, who had seen that it was going to be necessary to gradually move to that decision. Fortunately for Europe, it was aided by first the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, and then by Hitler declaring war on America two or three days after that event—a tactical and strategic error of enormous proportion.

To me, there is no obvious reason why the Americans then committed themselves to a Europe-first strategy. They had an enormous threat in their own back yard—the Pacific—but they decided that the best way to face it was to commit to Europe. That commitment, not just in the Second World War but in the peace that followed and with the Marshall plan and the creation of NATO, has been the bedrock of the very privileged peace that we—particularly our generation—have enjoyed. When an unfortunate person, in my view, becomes President, we must not lose sight of just what western democracies owe to the commitment of Americans—both in blood and treasure—to that peace.

We also lose sight of the importance in this story of the Russians. Hitler once again helped there by not reading his history. Had he studied Bonaparte more carefully, he might have worked out that attacking Russia had never been a successful enterprise. But he did not do that, and he declared war on Russia. That drew the Russian people into the war, whether they liked it or not. One cannot do other than admire their enormous fighting retreat. The Germans got within artillery range of Moscow, but they fought back at enormous cost, in people and resources. By the time of D-day, they had stopped the advance at Stalingrad and effectively won that battle. The battle of Kursk, the biggest tank battle of all time, had taken place, and the Germans were effectively in retreat and devoting a substantial part of their military capability to the eastern front. D-day and the campaign that followed it would have been very different if the Germans had been able to focus their total military effort on the second front.

Today of course has to be a commemoration, but to a degree it also should be a celebration. D-day was one of the most brilliant pieces of logistics in all history. The bringing together of the resources—the men, the machinery, the supplies and the training, all working together to get the procedures right—was so successful; anyone who, like myself, was involved in bringing things together will know that. It was an exercise that was not, I am sure, on budget, but it was certainly on time. It is not an easy thing to assemble 2 million people, ready to attack. Things must have gone wrong, but the machine barely paused. The extremely clever, in-depth logistics had self-amending built in, so that when things went wrong they were corrected, and everything came together on time. It was also a magnificent example of co-operation, between nations and between senior people and those working at all levels of the machinery. There was interaction between the three Armed Forces—the Navy and the Air Force and the Army—and between those of different nations, coming together. It was a brilliant piece of logistics.

Sitting alongside it was an incredible deception. It started with the code breaking, but the security services were able to ensure that every spy that the Germans tried to infiltrate into this country was caught. As far as we know from the records, no German spy was successful in England. They were caught and executed or turned. The successful turning of those agents meant we were able to build this tremendous deception, which carried on many days after D-day—forces actually turned back to Calais again. The Royal Air Force made a brilliant contribution by dropping pieces of foil in its progress across to Calais which looked on the German radar as if there really was an invasion about to happen.

One of the few things that I know a bit about, having been an aviator, is the contribution of Group Captain Stagg. People do not notice how good modern weather forecasts are. If we think back, we would not believe it. We get a very good picture now of the weather about seven days ahead with only relatively minor variations. The world was nothing like that in 1944. There was not even an agreed allied way of doing forecasts. There was a very clear difference between the American view and the British view. Because of his eloquence and his ability to explain things, Stagg’s view prevailed. He and his team had one advantage. A book by John Ross states:

“The Allies had a much more robust network of weather stations in Canada, Greenland and Iceland; of weather ships and weather flights over the North Atlantic and observations by secret agreement from weather stations in the neutral Republic of Ireland … Those weather stations, in particular one at a post office at Blacksod Point in the far west of Ireland, proved crucial in detecting the arrival of a lull in the storms that Stagg and his colleagues believed would allow for an invasion on June 6”.


It had been a dreadful summer and the weather on 6 June was crucial. The invasion would have failed on 5 June or 7 June because of the weather. The next slot in terms of the moon, tide and those sorts of things was 14 June, when the worst summer storm for years destroyed one of the Mulberry harbours. The contribution of Stagg and his team would not have been easy. One has to admire Stagg, who would have had to stand up to considerable debate, and the bravery of Eisenhower backing him to go on 6 June that made it possible. I am just in awe that all these things worked. I wish things I have planned had gone so well and I bet that the Government do too—imagine if they could have done universal credit like D-day. But we put that to one side.

If I were of the age then I suppose I could have had a go at the logistics. If I had done the training I could have had a go at the meteorology. But I cannot understand the raw courage of those young men, many of them conscripts and most of whom had never been in combat before, who knew in the first wave that they may lose half of their people. I do not how they got into those boats or how they got out of the landing craft. I cannot look at myself and be sure that I could do it. There were very ordinary people who had the raw courage and selflessness to do it. It is impossible to express my awe and admiration for them and the leadership that made it a success.

We are commemorating and, as I said, in a sense celebrating D-day because it is crucial that we remember it. I am not a historian, but my vague feeling for the history of Europe is that, broadly speaking, over the last 1,000 years, Europe has either been at war, recovering from a war or preparing for a war. That may be a slight overgeneralisation, but the 70-plus years of peace that we have enjoyed since the Second World War is a very special period in European history. It is so dangerous to forget what it came from. We must remember how to avoid war. We must spend our time preaching that and of course deterring war. Commemoration is essential so I applaud the work of the Royal British Legion and of the Government in their co-operation in the commemorations. D-day and the subsequent campaign was a brilliant success. Things went wrong, but it was a brilliant success. It was born and persisted out of selflessness, courage, sacrifice and co-operation. If only we could show more of those qualities today, the world be a better place.