This book describes in detail the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944 and puts them in the wider context of Operation Overlord: the Allied assault on Hitler's Europe.
Eight authors from three different countries describe in eleven chapters the planning, buildup and execution of the D-Day attack. The central chapter of the book describes the landings themselves, hour by hour, beach by beach, and is graphically illustrated with a series of highly-detailed full color maps with explanatory keys. The book goes on to describe the fierce battles for Normandy, the Allied breakout into France and the victorious liberation of Paris.
To do justice to a military operation of this historical importance and monumental scale, nearly two years have been spent assembling the finest collection of visual material seen so far on the Normandy invasion. Fourteen museums and over a dozen private collections in the United States, France and Britain have been visited and their finest and most historically important artifacts photographed.
In this book, amongst much else, you will find uniforms and personal mementos of Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery, Patton, Cota and Gavin: the blueprints of the Mulberry harbors; personal mementos of the US Rangers on Omaha Beach and British airborne troops on Pegasus Bridge; one of the documents by which the Germans surrendered the city of Paris; and uniforms and equipment of every major combatant army including those of America, Britain, Canada, Poland, France and rare German Army and Waffen-SS material collected from the Normandy battlefields.
This book seeks to do justice to the scale and success of Operation Overlord, while never losing sight of the bravery and sacrifice of those who fought and died in it.
—from the dust jacket
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