D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

Amazing - 9(!) years after I started this, I finished it! I finally found the Nook that it was on!

Longer review coming, but if you like military histories, with lots of detail but, even more importantly, lots of small bits of color, this is your book.

Full Review:

This book tells the details story of the D-Day invasion during World War 2. Beginning with the in depth subterfuge done by the Allied army to confuse the German forces on the other side of the water, and ending with the liberation of Paris, it tells both the big stories and the very little. Don't take the fact that it took my 9(!) years to finish the book - I really enjoyed it! I had it on my Nook and for the longest period, the Nook was missing. It was an original "Nook Simple Touch" - a small "e-ink" reader that is actually a pretty darned good ebook reader. It's not backlit but it is small, easy to carry and has an amazing battery life, as well as works great in the sun.

Anyway - Beevor does an excellent job of mixing the big picture strategy of the invasion with all kinds of amazing small stories. From the terrible to the laughable, nearly every description of big moves by armies includes touching stories of the locals, a soldier in the trenches or the horrors of tank warfare. Some of the numbers he tosses around are simply breathtaking, like telling us that 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied action, which exceeds the total number of British killed by German bombing. Or the descriptions of just how much food and other supplies it requires to keep an army on the move.

While the names and places all started to blend together (despite a reasonable number of maps included, even in the ebook), it was the little stories that still made it eminently readable. He isn't afraid of casting aspersions (he is certainly no fan of Montgomery and some of the lower level commanders really get an evisceration) and of praise. I think he is really impressed with Eisenhower's job of juggling all the competing jingoistic forces and keeping the pressure on.

If you are at all interested in World War 2, or of D-Day in specific, I highly recommend this book. Even if you aren't a big military strategy person, I still recommend it for the human level stories that are peppered throughout.

Beevor has a beautiful written style and specialises in a holistic historical narrative style that is always enjoyable to read. He combines sources from both sides in the conflict and makes sure to include the civilian view of affairs to paint a whole picture of complex events.returnreturnI have enjoyed his previous books and while this has all the hallmarks of his writing I cannot feel that perhaps the history of D-Day has been retrodden once too often.returnreturnBeevor makes sure the German side of events is represented and clarifies the suffering of the French population during the campaign. He does not gloss over the atrocities and friendly fire incidents on both sides. He is clear-eyed on the numerous conflicts within the allied forces. It is a good, balanced piece of history that refuses to make simple judgements in the absence of evidence and tries to provide the reader with the means to draw their own conclusions.returnreturnAnd yet, what more is there that can be said really? Beevor decides against Montgomery in one of the key controversies of the period. He also indicates that he thinks air power was less decisive as a weapon that generally judged while still allowing for its important interdictive effect on supplies and German movement.returnreturnIt is a great introduction but those familiar with the outline of events will find a few interesting bits and pieces (for me I felt the politics and mindsets of both sides were revealing, neither side grasped the psychology of the other instead assuming that their opponents shared their own view of the world) and a well-written narrative history. Stalingrad or Berlin would probably be better choices if you haven't read them already.