Bonus Content
Excerpt
The Decision
Southwick House is a large Regency building with a stucco facade and a
colonnaded front. At the beginning of June 1944, five miles to the south,
Portsmouth naval base and the anchorages beyond were crowded with craft of
every size and type-grey warships, transport vessels and hundreds of landing
craft, all tethered together. D-Day was scheduled for Monday, 5 June, and
loading had already begun.
In peacetime, Southwick could have been the setting for an Agatha Christie
house party, but the Royal Navy had taken it over in 1940. Its formerly
handsome grounds and the wood behind were now blighted by rows of Nissen
huts, tents and cinder paths. Southwick served as the headquarters of
Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the naval commander-in-chief for the invasion of
Europe, and also as the advanced command post of SHAEF, the Supreme
Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. Anti-aircraft batteries on the
Portsdown ridge were positioned to defend it as well as the dockyards below
from the Luftwaffe.
Southern England had been enjoying a heat wave compounded by drought.
Temperatures of up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit had been recorded on 29 May,
yet the meteorological team attached to General Dwight D. Eisenhower's
headquarters soon became uneasy. The group was headed by Dr James Stagg, a
tall, lanky Scot with a rather gaunt face and a neat moustache. Stagg, the
leading civilian weather expert in the country, had just been given the rank
of group captain in the RAF to lend him the necessary authority in a
military milieu unused to outsiders.
Since April, Eisenhower had been testing Stagg and his team by demanding
three-day forecasts delivered on a Monday which were then checked against
the reality later in the week. On Thursday, 1 June, the day before the
battleships were due to sail from Scapa Flow off the north-west tip of
Scotland, weather stations indicated some deep depressions forming over the
North Atlantic. Rough seas in the English Channel could swamp the landing
craft, to say nothing of their effect on the soldiers cramped on board. Low
cloud and bad visibility presented another great threat, since the landings
depended on the ability of the Allied air forces and navies to knock out
German coastal batteries and defensive positions. General embarkation for
the first wave of 130,000 troops was under way and due to be completed in
two days' time.
Stagg was plagued by a lack of agreement among the different British and
American meteorological departments. They all received the same reports from
the weather stations but their analysis of the data simply did not match up.
Unable to admit this, he had to tell Major General Harold R. Bull,
Eisenhower's assistant chief of staff, that 'the situation is complex and
difficult'.
'For heaven's sake, Stagg,' Bull exploded. 'Get it sorted out by tomorrow
morning before you come to the Supreme Commander's conference. General
Eisenhower is a very worried man.'
Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
from D-Day by Antony Beevor.
Copyright (c) 2009 by Ocito Ltd.
D-Day
Review by Dennis Showalter
A superb work in conception, research and presentation, D-Day extends and develops the approach pioneered by Cornelius Ryan and continued by Stephen Ambrose. Beevor is a master analyst of modern war from the perspective of the sharp end. He possesses an extraordinary capacity to integrate personal experience from both sides of the line into the contexts of tactical engagements, operational intentions and strategic plans. Stalingrad and Berlin are outstanding. D-Day is better.
Beevor begins with the run-up to the landings and ends with the liberation of Paris. Devoting little time to plans and preparations, he takes readers into the story immediately. The decision to go on June 6 is presented in terms of tensions among the decision–makers—not merely senior generals like Eisenhower, but technicians like RAF meteorologist Group Captain Stagg, who delivered arguably history’s single most important weather forecast.
The landings themselves were characterized by confusion at all levels—not the abstract “fog and friction” of Clausewitz but the elemental chaos of modern high-tech war. The situation on Omaha Beach was saved by the dozen British and U.S. destroyers that closed to grounding range to blast German pillboxes. Prisoners and civilians were shot, some by mistake and others deliberately. Planned Allied moves inland were frustrated by a German resistance that recovered from the invasion’s shock faster than expected.
From there the campaign bogged down in the hedgerows and fields of Normandy—again in good part due to a defense as skilled as it was determined. Beevor appropriately stresses both the Germans’ application of tactics learned in Russia and the iron discipline that sustained flagging morale at gunpoint. He is one of the few authors equally able to describe British and American experiences in the contexts of their respective military systems and operational sectors. His illustrative material—ranging from a medic’s discussion of treating wounded in the front line to a tanker’s description of the “organized slaughter” of a retreating German convoy by white phosphorous, high explosives and machine guns—brings to vivid life experiences that will be alien to the vast majority of his readers, even those with recent service in the Middle East.
In the end German means and German will were alike eroded by constant Allied pressure and high Allied learning curves, from army headquarters to rifle squads. Beevor offers a balanced critique of the operations that created but failed to close the Falaise Gap. His conclusion that German desperation had more to do with that than did Allied mistakes cuts through a great deal of nationalist-influenced wordage on the subject. And his concluding chapters on the breakout leading to the capture of Paris eschew triumphalism in favor of a look at liberation’s darker sides: the death and destruction inflicted on French civilians, the obscene revenge taken on women accused of “collaboration” whose crime might have been working as a cleaning lady in a German headquarters. At the end one is reminded inescapably of Niall Ferguson’s term—the pity of war.
Hardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: Viking Penguin/Div of Penguin Putnam ( October 13, 2009 )
Item #: 14-1778
ISBN: 9780670021192
Product Dimensions: 6.0 x 9.0 x 1.22 inches
Product Weight: 33.0 ounces
Not a lot new
March 22, 2010
Having read and studied the Normandy operation, I was a bit skeptical about orderting the book, but an associate whose father was on the staff of a corp. commander was excited about this work. Unfortunately, I did not find a lot of new information nor the detail I sought, tales from the "sharp end" were very disappointing. After reading this book, I immediately re-read Paul Carrell's book, "Invastion, they're coming!" which was told more from the German side, which I had read over 20 years ago. Carrell's book was in my opinion, more interesting from the stand point of individual tales of battle and the overwhelming sense of frustration on the German side due to indecision at the "top" and the unbelievable strength of Allied air superiortiy.
This book is a good starting point but when asked I shall recommend Carrell's book and others in order to provide not only balance, but a better sense of what war is like on the ground.
Reviewer: Barry K
Extremely good, but not great
March 02, 2010
First let me talk about the positives. Mr Beevor does an excellent job describing the generals, prime ministers, and presidents, and how they interact with each other. After reading the book my respect for General Montgomery and General DeGaulle, went down dramatically, and yes Mr Beevor is a British writer. He is also excellent when describing the everyday life of a soldier, and what he saw and experienced on the battlefield. The chapter "The Battle of the Bocage" is a masterpiece. There a some stories he tells about indivual soldiers and their bravery, that are just capitvating, that you want more. It would have been nice if Mr. Beevor, did tell what happened to some of these soldiers. He does a good job describing how the war impacted the French citizens, and how the French citizens viewed the was nad the Allies. In the book he describes what the French people did to women who were viewed as collabrators. But he then went that extra step to explain why some of these women slept with the Germans. He explained how De Gaulle viewed the French Communists as more of a a threat than the Germans. As you can tell, there are many positives in this book.
I could not give the book 5 stars for two reasons. The primary is that Mr Beevor is not good at describing the action at the company and above level. Some writers, but not many, are extremely good describing what the companies and divisions are doing, where you can vision it in your mind. Mr Beevor is not one of those authors. Many times I was confused at what the companies and diviions were at, and what they were trying to achieve. As I stated above, once he started descibing the action at the unit level, he is excellent, but anything above an unit, he s just average. Mr Beevor also does a good job pointing out that the allies comprised of Americans, British, Polish, French, and others. He does not explain how Eisenhower kept everything togeter. Especially with so many Prima Donna generals.
Reviewer: B G
Indepth Reserach
February 16, 2010
I have read so much about D-Day I was at first disapponted, but I stayed with it. I am glad I did. The materail on the Falaise Pocket is worth the cost of the book. Stay with it, Beevor came thru again!
Reviewer: center50
compelling
January 26, 2010
The closest comparison to this book is "The Longest Day" by Cornelius Ryan, published fifty years ago. There is in Beevor's work the same attention to individual stories that capture a reader's attention more than battle details alone ever could. The description early in the book of the horror attendant to glider landings is a stunning example. What has changed since Ryan did his work is our distance from the event of World War II, which may improve our perspective. Beevor repeatedly exhibits an even hand in describing the faults and strengths of Allied leaders and the confused but determined state of German defenses. This is a good story, well told.
Reviewer: Jim W
I expected more
January 16, 2010
I read both Stalingrad and the the last days of Berlin. Those books were simply outstanding. Perhaps I have read so much on D-Day that there was nothing else to add. It is a good book, but not the level of the first two.
Reviewer: mike m
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