Book Review: 'D-Day and the Battle for Normandy'
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| (C) 2009 Viking/Penguin Books |
Beevor, formerly a lieutenant in the British Army who studied under Professor John Keegan (Six Armies in Normandy) at Sandhurst as a young cadet, had written several books about World War II and one about the Spanish Civil War before he tackled Operation Overlord; most of his previous work either focused on the Eastern Front (Stalingrad, Berlin: The Downfall) or the less-familiar Mediterranean Theater (Crete: The Battle and the Resistance). He also wrote Paris: After the Liberation with his wife, writer Artemis Cooper.
Beevor wrote D-Day after his friend, the late American military historian Martin Blumenson, suggested that he should turn his attention and considerable writing talent to the campaigns in Normandy and the Western Front. The intent was to make a comparison between the German-Soviet war in the east and the Anglo-American-Canadian forces' struggles to liberate Western Europe from its Nazi occupiers.
D-Day and the Battle for Normandy begins its narrative on Monday, June 5, 1944 at Southwick House, a mansion near the British port city of Portsmouth that served as both the headquarters for Operation Neptune (the Allied naval element of the invasion of France) and the advanced HQ for Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). On a rainy and windy late spring day, Eisenhower and his senior commanders wait tensely for a meteorology report from Group Captain J.M. Stagg - a report that hopefully will indicate better weather for Tuesday, June 6. If the rain and wind clear up before midnight, the invasion - which has already been postponed by 24 hours - will go on. If not, the Allies will have to delay the largest amphibious operation in history by another month.
Fortunately, Stagg and his team of Anglo-American meteorologists inform Ike that although the weather conditions for June 6 will be less than ideal, they will be sufficient to allow the great armada to take the invasion force ashore. The alternative - to wait two weeks for tidal conditions that will be similar but without the no-moon requirement for the predawn airborne assault - is not palatable to the Supreme Commander, who must make the awesome decision to "go" or cancel the landings altogether.
The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was simply awesome. What followed them was some of the most cunning and ferocious fighting of the war, at times as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front. As casualties mounted, so too did the tensions between the principal commanders on both sides. Meanwhile, French civilians caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing endured terrible suffering. Even the joys of Liberation had their darker side. - from the author's website, www.antonybeevor.com
The book goes on to describe the two-and-a-half months-long campaign in Normandy, starting with the massive sea-air-land assault on the Normandy beaches and the supporting airborne drops made famous by The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, and Band of Brothers. To cover the Allied and German preparations for the inevitable assault on Adolf Hitler's Atlantic Wall, the events of June 6, and the pre-invasion bombardment of France from the air and sea, the author devotes 10 chapters of the book.
The balance of D-Day and the Battle for Normandy covers the frustrations the Allied forces faced once they were ashore and established a beachhead, including the Germans' fierce resistance, the difficulties of fighting in Normandy's hedgerow (bocage) country, and the inevitable personality clashes that seem to plague all multi-national alliances over issues of command, national prestige, and rivalries between commanders with large egos and even larger ambitions.
My Take
The story of D-Day and the battle for Normandy is, for readers of history and World War II buffs alike, a familiar tale full of drama, political intrigue, and a case study in the psychology of command in battle. In most accounts of Operation Overlord, we are given a tale full of triumph and folly, improvisational thinking and massive self-delusion, masterful planning and mediocre execution, and the sad spectacle of professional military officers vying for headlines and personal glory while the men under their command fight and suffer casualties against a fierce and determined enemy force.
Beevor's D-Day and the Battle for Normandy doesn't stray far from the basic outline of a story that has been told by Ambrose, Hastings, Ryan, or Rick Atkinson. After all, he is not trying to reinvent the wheel or writing revisionist versions of World War II history here. Using the same tried-and-true storytelling techniques of mixing personal anecdotes culled from interviews and other primary sources with meticulous research in the archives of all the nations involved, including the Soviet Union/Russian Federation as other chroniclers of the Normandy campaign, Beevor takes the reader down a familiar path while at the same time providing new details and revealing insights.
Per the book's dust jacket blurb:
This is the first book to describe not only the experiences of the American, British, Canadian, and German soldiers, but also the terrible suffering of the French caught up in the fighting. More French civilians were killed by Allied bombing and shelling than British civilians by the Luftwaffe.
Beevor, who served in the British Army in the late 1960s before resigning his commision and becoming a full-time writer, is highly critical of the various commanders - on both sides - whose decisions led to the fierce fighting on the Normandy beaches and the bocage that lay to the south of the invasion coast. In Beevor's judgment, Dwight D. Eisenhower is a genial and well-meaning American who is fine as a diplomat but mediocre as a field commander. Adolf Hitler is a tyrant whose delusions will lead the German nation to utter ruin during the Battle of Normandy and beyond. Bernard Montgomery is conceited, and George Patton is a prima donna whose bellicose persona is redeemed somewhat by his talents at mobile warfare.
Beevor is not only a meticulous researcher who delves into aspects of the Normandy campaign from various angles, but he's also a perceptive observer of human nature and a wonderful storyteller. Here, he paints a vivid image of the liberation of Paris in August of 1944:
The Petit Palais had been taken over, with a large sign announcing the distribution of free condoms to U.S. troops. In Pigalle, rapidly dubbed 'Pig Alley' by GIs, prostitutes were coping with over 10,000 men a day. The French were also deeply shocked to see U.S. Army soldiers lying drunk on the pavements of the Place Vendôme. The contrast with off-duty German troops, who had been forbidden to even smoke in the street, could hardly have been greater.
This is a wonderful book and a fine addition to any World War II buff's library. It's also a book I'd recommend to the general reader who may not have read any other book about the Second World War. That's how good D-Day and the Battle for Normandy is.
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