by Ben Kritz

Created on: January 25, 2009   Last Updated: November 25, 2011

The term "D-Day" and its little brother "H-Hour" first appeared in U.S. Army manuals during World War I, and are arbitrary time markers that serve the purpose of keeping the actual day and hour of an operation secret, as well as providing a scheduling tool for planning when the time for an operation has not yet been fixed. The "D" and "H" are abbreviations for "day" and "hour" respectively, which is a sublime comment on the imagination of military doctrinaires.

Thanks to the best-known of all history's D-Days, the Allied invasion of Normandy known as Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944, the popular understanding of the term is that "D-Day" means the start of an invasion, preferably one which involves sea-borne troops storming a beach under heavy fire. World War II saw plenty of D-Days; besides the mother of all amphibious assaults in Normandy, there were similar operations in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Southern France, and scores of islands across the Pacific. Many other large-scale operations that did not particularly feature water and sand also had their own D-Days as well.

From a historical perspective, there is another, more expansive way to define a D-Day. The deeper significance of the Normandy invasion, the biggest D-Day of all, was that the Allies launched the offensive that would ultimately lead to Nazi Germany's defeat. With Soviet forces pressing hard from the East, and an Allied drive through defeated Italy drawing German attention and resources to the South, the Normandy landings were a blow from the West that would overload Germany's capacity to defend itself. As significant as the action on June 6, 1994 was, it was the long-term effect that was more important. In that light, history suddenly reveals many D-Days, moments of significant change in the course of a war and the course of history. These days might not have seen a huge and decisive battle, but their importance was just as great.

HANNIBAL CROSSES THE ALPS: D-Day, as it were, was the sixteenth day of the Carthaginian general's epic crossing of the mountains separating Gaul and Italy in 218 BCE. The difficult journey brought Hannibal into the plains of northern Italy, from which he would start a campaign that would bedevil the Roman Republic for the next 16 years. The war he forced upon Rome, who would eventually defeat him at Zama in North Africa in 202 BCE, forever diminished Carthage as a nation, and led to Rome's becoming the world's first superpower for the better part of the next

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