Normandy - Shelagh Whitaker

“It was the [allied armies’] valor, their endurance, and their ability to adapt that won the battle of Normandy and launched the liberation of Western Europe.”
—from Normandy: The Real Story

For decades, it’s been the conventional wisdom that “brute force” alone beat the German army at Normandy. Now a definitive new history, coauthored by a highly decorated field commander, proves otherwise. Using archival data, oral histories, and exclusive new interviews, Normandy: The Real Story takes the reader deep into the minds, hearts, and souls of the allied armies to show how—despite the shortcomings of their superiors and the inferiority of their weaponry—they destroyed two well-equipped German armies and won the war.

Here is the crucial summer of 1944 as seen by both sides, from the British spy, code-named “Garbo,” who successfully misled the Nazis about the time and place of the D-day landings, to the poor planning for action after the assault that forced the allies to fight for nine weeks “field to field, hedgerow to hedgerow.” Here too are the questionable command decisions of Montgomery, Eisenhower, and Bradley, the insatiable ego of Patton. Yet, fighting in some of the most miserable conditions of the war, the allied soldiers used ingenuity, resilience, and raw courage to drive the enemy from France in what John Keegan describes as “the biggest disaster to hit the German army in the course of the war.” Normandy is an inspiring tribute to the common fighting men of five nations who won the pivotal campaign that lead to peace and freedom.