D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy is a 2009 non-fiction book by Antony Beevor. The book covers the June 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy as well as the following weeks as the Allied armies fought eastward across France, and ends with the liberation of Paris. Beevor, who had previously written accounts of the Siege of Stalingrad and the Battle of Berlin, focused his narrative primarily on the experience of the individual soldier, writing more about life in the trenches and less from a bird's-eye perspective on tactics and strategies. He also took pains to emphasise the contributions and sacrifices of the French citizenry and members of the Resistance.

D-Day sold more than 100,000 copies in the first four months after its printing. Critics largely praised Beevor's ability to alternate between wide-scale descriptions of troop movements and small-scale anecdotes about bravery and cruelty on the front lines, as well as his depiction of German soldiers as human beings rather than villains. Some believed his treatment of central command and its tactics to be lacking, particularly in regards to his portrayal of the British general Bernard Montgomery.

Beevor was an officer in the British Army's 11th Hussars before becoming an author. He wrote a book on the Spanish Civil War which led him to become engrossed with World War II. He wrote bestsellers on the battles of Stalingrad and Berlin, and by 2009 had sold over a million copies of his books in the UK. Beevor's publisher requested that his next book be on the siege of Leningrad, but he had become so shaken from his experience writing about Stalingrad – stories of starvation and cannibalism had "literally put [him] off his food" – that he opted to write about the invasion of Normandy instead.^[1] He felt it had been too long since a general history of that theatre of war had been written, and that the existing literature rarely wrote about D-Day and the Battle of Normandy together, as he intended to do.^[2]

The book took Beevor over three years to research.^[1] He was helped in that regard by Russian World War II archives that had been unsealed during the Yeltsin administration.^[3][1] He also found and used audio recordings of interviews with Allied soldiers following their return from battle. These contemporary interviews meant the subjects' memories about the war were fresher and more likely to be accurate than later ones with veterans.^[2] The soldiers tended to be more candid in these interviews as well, with many casually admitting to the shooting of German prisoners.^[1]

D-Day opens at the beginning of June 1944 with Allied personnel agonising over inclement weather in preparation for their invasion of the Normandy coast.^[4] In his narrative, Beevor bypasses the months of Operation Overlord's planning, with the exception of some description of the deceptive Operation Fortitude.^[5] The events of D-Day itself comprise relatively little of the book's content, with its recount of the invasion's first day consisting of less than a third of the book^[6] and Beevor's description of the events of Omaha Beach totaling just 25 pages.^[7] The remainder of the book covers the following weeks as Allied forces fought eastward across France.^[8]

Beevor's account focuses less than many similar books on the wider scope of the Battle of Normandy and more on the experiences of its participants, both soldier and civilian.^[7] He often alternates between the war's large-scale movements and small-scale anecdotes as well as between dark moments and lighter ones.^[9] He also recounts tales of heroism and bravery alongside those of lawlessness and cruelty.^[7][10] Many of the battle's participants were simply trying to make it home alive and wanted "somebody else to play the hero"; he notes that there were frequently zero shots fired by up to half of the soldiers in a given battle.^[9] Beevor also emphasises the extreme stress soldiers were under, particularly those subjected to prolonged artillery fire. The US Army treated 30,000 soldiers for combat exhaustion, he writes, adding: "While some soldiers resorted to self-inflicted wounds [in order to leave combat], a smaller, unknown number committed suicide."^[7]

The book emphasises the contributions made by the French Resistance as well as the sacrifices made by French civilians.^[10] Beevor estimates that between the bombings leading up to the invasion and the Normandy campaign itself, more than 34,000 French civilians were killed, with 3,000 dying in the first 24 hours alone.^[10][11] Beevor draws a contrast between the general bravery of the citizens and the behavior of French mobs who enacted "épuration sauvage", or unofficial purges, following liberation. People suspected to have collaborated with the Nazis often had their heads shaven and were paraded through streets, and many were killed. At least 14,000 died during the purges, many of them women.^[12] Beevor is sympathetic to the French citizenry overall, and writes that "the cruel martyrdom of Normandy had indeed saved the rest of France".^[13]

The reviewers for The New Leader,^[5] The Wall Street Journal,^[6] The Journal of Military History,^[10] and The Contemporary Review^[13] all acknowledged that there is a copious amount of existing literature on D-Day and that there may not seem to be a need for another. However, they variously argue that the length of time since another major retrospective,^[10] as well as Beevor's approach of extending the narrative beyond D-Day itself and into the rest of the Normandy campaign^[6][13] along with his focus on previously under-analysed aspects of the battle^[5] justify the book's existence. The reviewer for Foreign Affairs noted the shifting norms of historical literature as a reason the book was welcome in the 21st century, writing that "there is now an expectation that war will be described not solely from the viewpoint of the politician and the general but from that of the soldier, too".^[14]

Writing for the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley observed that Beevor found himself drawn to the individual level of the war more often than a bird's eye view: "Beevor is less interested in moving troops from pillar to post than in telling us what war was like for them and for the civilians whose paths they crossed".^[7] Similarly, Giles Foden wrote in The Guardian that "it is the personal narratives of ordinary servicemen that drives this book",^[4] and the reviewer for The Journal of Military History remarked that one of the book's strengths is its inclusion of the "human experience".^[10] Of particular note to The Guardian's Dominic Sandbrook was Beevor's treatment of Germans, saying that "in stark contrast to Hollywood war films, the Germans appear here as real people with virtues as well as vices".^[9] Alistair Horne also wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the book's depiction of the war experience for the typical German soldier was "fair".^[6]

Some reviewers were mixed in regards to the book's treatment of the operation's high command, particularly its portrayal of the British general Bernard Montgomery. Giles Foden wrote that Beevor approached the debate of Montgomery's performance during the war with "balance and judgment",^[4], while the reviewer for The New Leader agreed with Beevor that Montgomery's behavior was a "diplomatic disaster", writing that "A less politic supreme commander than Eisenhower would have had him sacked for insubordination on more than one occasion."^[5] The Montgomery biographer Allistair Horne, however, was critical of both Beevor's description of Montgomery ("almost every reference to him contain[ed] a slur") and his diminishment of the general's role in the Allied success.^[6] The reviewer for The Contemporary Review similarly wrote that the book "does not do justice to Montgomery's great contribution" to the war effort.^[13]

D-Day sold over 100,000 copies in the four months following its publication.^[15] Reviewers for both the Washington Post and The Guardian were impressed with Beevor's focus on the war's massive toll, with the Post's Jonathan Yardley writing "the [war's] cost, which Antony Beevor is at pains to emphasize in this fine book, was awful beyond comprehension",^[7] and The Guardian's Dominic Sandbrook saying that the Normandy campaign "was a turning point in the war and we are right to celebrate it. But the tragedy, as this splendid book makes clear, is that it came at such a cost."^[9]

Writing for Time Magazine, the author Lev Grossman wrote that "D-Day is a vibrant work of history that honors the sacrifice of tens of thousands of men and women. Which is serious praise."^[8] The reviewer for Foreign Affairs, Lawrence Freedman, praised Beevor's accounting of the unpredictability of war,^[14], while in The Sunday Telegraph, historian Andrew Roberts appreciated "this most humanitarian work of military history" and its attention to the individual.^[11] Kirkus Reviews wrote that "Beevor gets better with each book."^[16]

In The Boston Globe, military historian Nigel Hamilton acknowledged the "intelligently told and nicely documented" opening section of the book, but believed that Beevor faltered when describing the rest of the Normandy campaign. He argued that the omission of details regarding the overarching Allied plan harmed the narrative, and continued: "By page 400, most general readers will be lost in the fog of names, ranks, regiments, villages, and hilltops, the account having turned into a hop-scotching circus in the bocage of Normandy that becomes a battle of attrition aimed primarily at the reader."^[17] The Wall Street Journal's Alistair Horne also praised aspects of D-Day but was critical in other regards, writing that the book's "serious fault" laid in Beevor's "failure to comprehend the problems and challenges faced by higher command. He criticizes but produces no new insights."^[6]