On June 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan stood atop the windswept cliffs of Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, France, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of D-Day. Behind him stood the battered landscape where, on June 6, 1944, U.S. Army Rangers had scaled sheer cliffs under heavy German fire to seize artillery positions threatening the Allied landings on Omaha and Utah Beaches.
Many of the Rangers who survived that assault were there that day, gathered once again at the scene of one of World War II’s most daring missions. Speaking directly to those veterans, Reagan honored them as the “boys of Pointe du Hoc” and praised their courage, sacrifice, and determination. He reminded the world that they had fought not for conquest, but for freedom, and that their actions helped secure the liberation of Europe from Nazi tyranny.
Reagan also used the occasion to reflect on the broader meaning of D-Day, calling the Allied cause “a crusade in which we were all united” and emphasizing the importance of preserving the freedom and peace won by the Greatest Generation. The speech remains one of the most memorable of his presidency and one of the most powerful tributes ever paid to the men who fought on June 6, 1944.
Listen to President Ronald Reagan’s full Pointe du Hoc address, delivered on the 40th anniversary of D-Day at one of the most iconic battlegrounds of World War II.
📖 Read the Transcript
Lee Habeeb (00:10):
And we return to Our American Stories.
West of and overlooking Omaha and Utah Beach is Pointe du Hoc, a rocky 110-foot cliff in Normandy, France.
Besides being the site where the Germans placed some of their heavy guns along the Atlantic Wall, it was also the location of one of the Second Ranger Battalion’s finest moments—one of our Armed Forces’ greatest moments, too.
Capturing Pointe du Hoc was critical to ensuring the security of the main landing force to its east. It was up to 225 men to take it and ensure the liberation of Europe.
Take it they did, climbing up ladders over the rocky cliffs to do so.
Here’s President Ronald Reagan giving a speech at Pointe du Hoc, honoring those men and all the men who fought in World War II back in 1984.
Let’s get into it.
President Ronald Reagan (01:05):
We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty.
For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen. Jews cried out in the camps. Millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue.
Here in Normandy, the rescue began.
Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men. The air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon.
At dawn on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.
Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns.
The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades.
And the American Rangers began to climb.
They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again.
They climbed, shot back, and held their footing.
Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top.
And in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe.
Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.
Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs.
And before me are the men who put them there.
These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc.
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here.
You were young the day you took these cliffs. Some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you.
Yet you risked everything here.
Why?
Why did you do it?
What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs?
What inspired all the men of the armies that met here?
We look at you, and somehow we know the answer.
It was faith and belief.
It was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right. Faith that they fought for all humanity. Faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next.
It was the deep knowledge—and pray God we have not lost it—that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.
You were here to liberate, not to conquer.
And so you and those others did not doubt your cause, and you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for.
One’s country is worth dying for.
Democracy is worth dying for because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.
All of you loved liberty.
All of you were willing to fight tyranny.
The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home.
They felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know it in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.
Something else helped the men of D-Day: the rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here—that God was an ally in this great cause.
And so the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his paratroopers to kneel with him in prayer, he told them:
“Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we are about to do.”
Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway lay on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua:
“I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”
These are the things that impelled them.
These are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.
When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn.
Above all, there was a new peace to be assured.
These were huge and daunting tasks, but the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here.
They rebuilt a new Europe together.
There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly.
The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies.
The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic Alliance, a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, prosperity, and peace.
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars.
It is better to be here, ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost.
We’re bound today by what bound us 40 years ago: the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs.
Here in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead.
Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for.
Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened:
“I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”
Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.
Thank you very much, and God bless you.
Lee Habeeb (08:30):
And you’ve been listening to President Ronald Reagan in 1984, delivering one of the great speeches of his presidency.
You were young when you took these cliffs. You risked everything. Why did you do it?
And then Reagan described those things: faith and belief, loyalty and love.
The use of force for liberation, not conquest, was the theme here.
And indeed, that’s what we’ve done in this country—or tried to do, as best we can—in our history.
The story of President Ronald Reagan’s Pointe du Hoc speech, and a vow, he said, to our dead: to understand what those men did for us.
What we do here on Our American Stories, as often as possible, is honor that vow.
That story, here on Our American Stories.
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