Book Review: 'Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France'
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| British cover of Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France. Note the shorter subtitle. © 2019 Griffon Merlin Ltd |
On June 4, 2019, Grove Atlantic's Atlantic Press Monthly published James Holland's Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France (published by Griffon Merlin Ltd in Britain as Normandy '44: D-Day and the Battle for France), a new history of what the late Stephen E. Ambrose called "the climactic battle of World War II."
The timing of the book's publication was. as the British expression puts it, "bang on." Two days after the book hit bookstore shelves or was sent to customers who bought it on Amazon and other online stores as pre-orders, most of the West (including the U.S., Canada, France, Great Britain, and their former enemy, Germany) observed the 75th Anniversary of D-Day and the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
Holland, who produces, writes, and narrates BBC documentaries and TV specials in addition to writing non-fiction books about the Second World War and novels such as Devil's Pact and The Burning Blue, knows that the events of June 6, 1944 and the 76-day campaign in Northern France comprise perhaps the most familiar chapter of World War II. It's almost a cliche to point this out, but even though the term "D-Day" is simply a term that denotes the date of the start of any military operation and was used throughout much of the Second World War, its association with Operation Overlord and its various elements (Operation Neptune, Operation Boston, etc.) is so strong in the collective memory that D-Day has come to mean June 6, 1944 almost exclusively.
Holland acknowledges this reality, not only in Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France's foreword, but also in the text for his book's promotional material on Grove Atlantic's website:
D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the 76 days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed the Allied landing, have become the defining episode of World War II in the West—the object of books, films, television series, and documentaries. The story is a familiar one—and yet, approaching the 75th anniversary of this epochal event, its traditional narrative is still driven by both myth and assumed knowledge that is often incorrect.
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| The cover for the U.S./Canadian edition. © 2019 Grove Atlantic |
The 720-page-long Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France is, in a way, Holland's follow-up to Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War II, his 2018 book about the Allied effort to destroy the Luftwaffe in order to achieve aerial supremacy over the Germans before Operation Overlord. As in that work, the author devotes several chapters to the preparations by both sides for the opening of the Second Front which Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had been demanding from the Anglo-American Allies since 1942.
Accordingly, the book is divided into the following parts:
- Part I: The Battle Before D-Day (seven chapters)
- Part II: Invasion (seven chapters)
- Part III: Attrition (11 chapters)
- Part IV: Breakout (nine chapters)
The book's narrative, including a postscript that not only covers the outcome of the Normandy campaign but also the fate of many of the individuals whose stories are at the heart of Holland's work, takes 540 pages from the Foreword to the Postscript. The remaining 180 pages are taken up by a glossary, appendices, a detailed timeline for D-Day, and the usual end-of-book stuff you'll find in a non-fiction work.
Normandy '44 also has a section of maps that covers the major events of the invasion and the Battle for France, including the American and Anglo-Canadian landings, the various British and Canadian attempts to capture Caen, the American effort to clear the Cotentin Peninsula and capture Cherbourg, plus Operation Cobra and its immediate aftermath.
There are also two inserts of black-and-white photos, some of them from German sources, but most from Allied, primarily American, archives.
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| Photo of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. It was not included in the book, but it may be found here, in the Normandy '44 Extras section: https://www.griffonmerlin.com/books/normandy44/ |
As the author's webpage on Griffon Merlin's official site describes Normandy '44:
In this new narrative history, James Holland peels back the layers to present a broader overview, one in which much of what think we know about D-Day and the Normandy campaign is challenged. This is an account in which supply and ‘big’ war, as demonstrated by the Allies, ultimately dwarfs the strategic, operational and tactical limitations of the German forces. It is an account in which air power plays a more dominant role and where the mechanics and operational level of war are laid bare, demonstrated through the experiences of those who were there and lived and fought through this extraordinarily brutal campaign. And the shocking violence and carnage of the battle is revealed in disturbing and unflinching detail; in terms of daily casualties, it was worse than any in the First World War.
Drawing on archives and testimonies from around the world and introducing a cast of eye-witnesses that includes foot soldiers, tank men, fighter pilots and bomber crew, sailors, civilians and resistors, and commanders through to those at the coal-face of the violence, this is a narrative of those defining moments of 1944, rich in fresh analysis but rooted in human drama, that will stand for a generation and more.
My Take
To be honest, I wasn't planning on buying yet another book about D-Day; I've owned various copies of Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day (1959) since the late 1970s (including a battered copy of the 40th-anniversary paperback), plus Max Hastings' Overlord (1984), Steve Ambrose's D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (1994), and, more recently, Antony Beevor's D-Day and the Battle for Normandy.
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| This was a 65th-anniversary book by Antony Beevor. © 2009 Viking/Penguin Books |
Add to that the many times that I've watched 1962's The Longest Day, 1998's Saving Private Ryan, 2001's Band of Brothers (which devotes two episodes to D-Day and the Normandy campaign), as well as various documentaries about World War II, and you'd think I was "D-Day'd out."
And yet, the sheer drama of that battle and its impact on modern Western history still holds my interest just as strongly as it did when I first read excerpts from Ryan's 1959 classic back in 1969 at the age of six.
As the publisher's blurb - which itself is a summation of Holland's foreword cut down to Internet promotional style - explains, much of what we know about D-Day is a mix of facts, figures, and myths or misunderstandings passed down over the past 75 years.
One of the many examples Holland points out as a misunderstanding is a belief that the German 352nd Infantry Division, the unit that gave the U.S. 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions such a hard time at Omaha Beach was an elite outfit. This notion that the 352nd was one of the best divisions stationed on the coast is mentioned in every major work about Operation Overlord, yet Holland makes a good case for its description in Normandy '44 as well-trained and placed in the right spot to give any landing forces a bloody nose. However, he disputes its oft-cited status as elite, noting that once the Americans had gotten ashore at Omaha the 352nd was forced out of most of its positions by the end of June 6.
Holland also devotes several chapters to the oft-overlooked or misunderstood topics of Allied doctrine versus German military tactics and strategies. Normandy '44 goes out of its way to debunk certain myths about the war in the West during 1944 and 1945, including:
- The myth that German weapons were qualitatively superior to most of their Allied counterparts
- The myth that Gen. Bernard Montgomery was overrated as a field commander
- The myth that German tactics were more refined than those used by their Allied opponents and that only sheer numbers and weight of explosives carried the day for the Overlord forces
Holland defends the controversial Montgomery's handling of Overlord by pointing out his skills as a planner, trainer of soldiers, and gritty determination to defeat the Germans in a calculated war of attrition. As a historian, Holland does not dispute Monty's various human flaws - his lack of social graces, his inability to get along with other generals in both the American and British armies, and his penchant for diva-like self-promotion and exaggeration. But he also explains that some of the "mistakes" Monty made - such as promising his superiors certain results of operations according to overly-optimistic estimates - can be explained as attempts to set goals for his subordinates and motivate his troops to perform well in combat, even though most of Montgomery's 21st Army Group was made up of citizen soldiers and not professional warriors.
Holland also dissects the notion that German tanks, especially the Mark V (Panther) and the Mark VI (Tiger) were inherently better than anything fielded by the Allies. He comes to the conclusion that German tanks of the late-war period were indeed formidable, but they were not designed for the close-quarters battles in Normandy's bocage countryside, with its narrow hedgerow-lined roads and stout Norman stone farmhouses and small villages. The Panther and Tiger tanks were intended to be used in wide-open spaces such as Russia's steppes and the North African desert, where their big 75- and 88-mm guns would have been second to none. But they were too difficult to maintain due to their overly complicated design, and they were even harder to deploy in the confined fields of the Norman bocage than the M4 Shermans used by the Allies.
Overall, Normandy '44 is a worthy - and sorely needed - addition to any World War II buff's library. It is well-written, highly informative, and enormously fascinating.
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