“You are about to embark on the great Crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.”

So began General Dwight Eisenhower’s June 6, 1944, D-Day message to the American and Allied Forces he commanded as they were about to launch their cross-Channel invasion of Nazi-controlled Western Europe.

On the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Eisenhower’s words remind us of how unified the United States was in wartime and how we require similar unity today in defending Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

Eisenhower’s religious language was not hyperbole. His D-Day message was in keeping with the perspective on World War II that dominated American thinking in the 1940s.

In a radio address from the White House, President Franklin Roosevelt asked the nation to join him in a D-Day prayer. “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity,” Roosevelt declared. “With Thy blessing we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies.”

The magnitude of D-Day was unprecedented. The Allies’ assault on Hitler’s Atlantic Wall began with more than 2,200 bombers attacking targets in France. The bombing was quickly followed by 24,000 paratroopers dropping behind German coastal defenses, and 160,000 soldiers crossing the English Channel to land on the beaches of Normandy.

“We will accept nothing less than Full Victory!” Ike concluded his D-Day message.

A massive invasion force was needed to achieve “Full Victory.” After four years, and by May 1944, the Germans had 58 divisions stationed in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. With this advantage, Hitler aimed to throw the Allies back into the sea and prevent them from establishing a beachhead.

At the time, Eisenhower worried about the postponement of the invasion. The natural elements were crucial to success. For the invasion to be successful, the Allies needed tides low enough to expose the mined barriers the Germans had placed in the English Channel and moonlight bright enough for the pilots flying paratroopers behind German lines to find their assigned drop zones. Delaying the invasion would mean bringing a huge invasion force back to England and giving the German high command a preview of the Allies’ strategy.

It’s no wonder that Hollywood has been drawn to making films about D-Day. No added drama has ever been needed to tell the story of D-Day. The dangers of the invasion were, if anything, greater than Hollywood showed.

Eisenhower did not disclose to the public or the men he commanded the note he kept in his pocket in case the D-Day invasion failed.  “The troops, the air, and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do,” Eisenhower wrote. “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

Years later in the Crusade in Europe, his memoir of World War II, Eisenhower would acknowledge he had benefited from circumstances he had no control over. The Germans did not believe the Allies would attack in the weather that prevailed on June 6, and the German commanders were not as prepared as they should have been. At the time, too, Germany had not yet perfected the V-1 rocket, which would later take such a toll on London and could have done the same to any invasion force.

What time would not change for Eisenhower were the emotions he felt about the men who died under his command on D-Day and throughout World War II. On the eve of D-Day, Eisenhower visited the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne before they boarded their planes. Kay Summersby, his driver, remembered seeing tears in his eyes, and eight years later during his 1952 presidential campaign, the tears returned when Ike met with veterans from the 82nd Airborne.

With fewer than one percent of the 16.4 million Americans who fought in World War II still alive, we are in danger of losing sight of how important D-Day was to the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control. Americans today fail to remember the ease of Nazi Germany’s ascent to power in the 1930s. Our national historical memory is fading and our ignorance poses real danger to our nation; we are too frequently misunderstanding our American ethos.

The consequences of such memory loss could not be clearer. Despite the passage of a recent aid bill and the Biden administration’s decision to allow Ukraine to use American-made weapons to strike military targets inside Russia, Americans are divided along party lines over how far the United States should go in helping Ukraine weather a Russian invasion reminiscent of the one Germany launched against the Sudetenland and Austria in 1938.

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