Martin Gilbert - D-Day

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D-Day

Also by Martin Gilbert

THE CHURCHILL BIOGRAPHY

Volume III: The Challenge of War 19141916

Document Volume III: (in two parts)

Volume IV: World in Torment 19171922

Document Volume IV: (in three parts)

Volume V: Prophet of Truth 19221939

Document Volume V: The Exchequer Years 19221929

Document Volume V: The Wilderness Years 19291935

Document Volume V: The Coming of War 19361939

Volume VI: Finest Hour 19391941

Document Volume VI: At the Admiralty September 1939May 1940

Document Volume VI: Never Surrender MayDecember 1940

Document Volume VI: 1941: The Ever-Widening War

Volume VII: Road to Victory 19411945

Volume VIII: Never Despair 19451965

Churchill: A Photographic Portrait

Churchill: A Life

Churchill at War: His Finest Hour in Photographs, 19401945

OTHER BOOKS

The Appeasers (with Richard Gott)

The European Powers 19001945

The Roots of Appeasement

Childrens Illustrated Bible Atlas

Atlas of British Charities

Atlas of American History

Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Atlas of British History

Atlas of the First World War

Atlas of the Holocaust

The Holocaust: Maps and Photographs

The Atlas of Jewish History

Atlas of Russian History

The Jews of Arab Lands: Their History in Maps

In Search of Churchill

The Jews of Russia: Their History in Maps

Jerusalem Illustrated History Atlas

Sir Horace Rumbold: Portrait of a Diplomat

Jerusalem: Rebirth of a City

Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century

Exile and Return: The Emergence of Jewish Statehood

Auschwitz and the Allies

The Jews of Hope: The Plight of Soviet Jewry Today

Shcharansky: Hero of Our Time

The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy

The Boys: Triumph over Adversity

First World War

Second World War

The Day the War Ended

Empires in Conflict: A History of the Twentieth Century 19001933

Descent into Barbarism: A History of the Twentieth Century 19341951

Challenge to Civilization: A History of the Twentieth Century 19521999

Israel: A History

Never Again: A History of the Holocaust

From the Ends of the Earth: The Jews in the Twentieth Century

Letters to Auntie Fori: The 5,000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith

The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

EDITIONS OF DOCUMENTS

Britain and Germany Between the Wars

Plough My Own Furrow: The Life of Lord Allen of Hurtwood

Servant of India: Diaries of the Viceroys Private Secretary 19051910

Copyright 2004 by Martin Gilbert. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Gilbert, Martin, date.
D-Day / Sir Martin Gilbert.
p. cm. (Turning points)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-471-42340-8 (alk. paper)

1. World War, 19391945CampaignsFranceNormandy.2. Normandy
(France)History, Military20th century. I. Title.II. Turning points
(John Wiley & Sons)
D756.5.N6 G58 2004
940.542142dc22

2003023858

Dedicated to my fellow travelers in Normandy
during our visit in 2003

Dr. Carl Herbert
Michael Phillips
Bernard Pucker
Daniel Solomon
David Solomon
and
Sir Harry Solomon

Preface

The Allied landings in 1944 might have ended in disaster. Winston Churchill thought he would be woken up to be told of massive casualties. General Eisenhower prepared a short, solemn broadcast announcing that the enterprise had failed.

D-Day in military parlance is the starting day of any offensive. In 1943 there had been both a Sicily D-Day and an Italy D-Day before the cross-Channel assault. But because the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944 marked so significant a turning point in the Second World War, the term D-Day has come to signify that day alone. My aim in these pages is to show how that turning point in history came about. The period of preparation, lasting almost two yearsamid the strains and uncertainties of war elsewherewas one of inventiveness, hard work, experimentation, secrecy, and wide-ranging deception plans.

This was no chance or accidental turning point, but a calculated, planned, evolving, intricate struggle to ensure the overthrow of a tyrannical regime, and to liberate those who had suffered under its harsh rule for four years. It was a struggle that involved men and women in offices and factories, in training camps and clandestine venuesalmost none of them knowing the specific destinationworking as a vast team to put together a comprehensive plan that would ensure the destruction of Hitler and his regime and the liberation of the captive peoples of Europe.