D-Day: the Battle for Normandy

Naval War College Review Volume 64 Article 17 Number 4 Autumn 2011 D-Day: The aB ttle for orN mandy David L. Teska Antony Beevor Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation Teska, David L. and Beevor, Antony (2011) "D-Day: The aB ttle for orN mandy," Naval War College Review: Vol. 64 : No. 4 , Article 17. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol64/iss4/17 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 152 NAVAL WAR COLLEGETeska and REVIEW Beevor: D-Day: The Battle for Normandy employees and hearing their complaints scientists with tin ears for the world of about intrusive government and high business. taxes. Though he had spent years in the STEPHEN F. KNOTT film industry, this contact with lower- Naval War College and middle-class Americans rubbed off some of the Hollywood veneer and had the added benefit of teaching him what workedandwhatdidn’tintryingtoap- peal to the “common man.” By 1980, Beevor, Antony. D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. millions of these “common men” would New York: Viking Penguin, 2009. 591pp. $32.95 become known as “Reagan Democrats.” The 6 June 1944 Normandy invasion Yet perhaps most importantly, it was has received ample research over the during his employment with GE that years, with works by such noted histori- Reagan robustly embraced a political ansasCorneliusRyan,StephenE. ideology of free markets, limited gov- Ambrose, and Max Hastings. Known as ernment, and anticommunism. Evans Operation OVERLORD, it was by all ac- believes that Reagan’s GE experience counts a pivotal event of the war in Eu- was his “apprenticeship for public life” rope. Hindsight clearly shows that and his “postgraduate education in po- ending Hitler’s control of Europe re- litical science.” The author argues that quired the Allies to meet the Wehrmacht GE’s vice president, Lemuel Boulware in the field in mainland Europe. (who directed the aforementioned cam- paign against the union bosses of the So what can another book add to the era), was Reagan’s mentor in his con- canon on Normandy? Antony Beevor’s servative apprenticeship. By 1964 Ron- meticulously written and researched ald Reagan had publicly come out of his D-Day: The Battle for Normandy might New Deal closet (he voted in 1960 as a at first blush appear to be simply an- “Democrat for Nixon”), but neither he other treatise on the famed battle. Yet nor the company was anxious to publi- anyonewhobelievesthistobesowith- cize the impact of his GE years on his out reading it will miss out on sweeping conversion. narrative and credible research. This work has all the flair of a govern- Beevor minces no words in telling the ment report on agriculture subsidies, story of this grand operation, the epit- and the author occasionally overstates ome of Allied wartime cooperation and the impact of Reagan’s GE experience a daunting plan to develop and execute. (according to Evans, it was when the There is no shortage of controversies seeds for the Iran-Contra scandal and and points of debate, which Beevor me- Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative ticulously brings out again and again. A were planted). Nonetheless, Thomas fellow countryman, General Sir Bernard Evans’s book is the best kind of history Montgomery, his famous ego well doc- and biography, in that it explores a umented, comes in for pointed criti- facet of a statesman’s life that tends to cism for decisions and actions he made be overlooked, especially, in this in- throughout the battle. In fact, both Al- stance, by historians and political lied and German military leaders face Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2011 1 Naval War College Review, Vol. 64 [2011], No. 4, Art. 17 BOOK REVIEWS 153 Beevor’s scrutiny. The Americans, fix- hands by the end of 6 June, but it did ated on securing a port facility for logis- notfalluntilmid-July.Beevormakes tical support, learned the hard way that the case that British sluggishness al- the entrenched German garrison in lowed a vast portion of the German Brest could hold out for a very long army to escape the Falaise Pocket— time. Despite a highly sophisticated German soldiers who would live to air-ground coordination and the com- fight the Allies another day. mitment of VIII Corps, the Americans A constant thread throughout his book had to pay dearly to pry Brest from res- is the high cost paid by French citizens olute and determined German defenders for the liberation of their land. Nearly —blood spilled for a port that in the end twenty thousand French civilians died was never used. during the liberation of Normandy, in Beevor is a well known historian of addition to the estimated fifteen thou- twentieth-century combat, one who sand killed and nineteen thousand in- knows his topic, capably weaves the jured during the preliminary bombing. broad sweep of the Normandy cam- CDR. DAVID L. TESKA, U.S. COAST GUARD RESERVE paign into a compelling account, and San Diego, California provides the broader context, bringing in aspects of the battle that until re- cently have received short shrift. For ex- ample, he presents an excellent account of the battles fought by the Polish 1st Fukuyama, Francis. The Origins of Political Order: Armored Division. Also, he shows the From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. critical role of the 20 July assassination New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2011. 585pp. attempt against Hitler in how the Ger- $35 man leadership responded to the relent- Two decades ago scholars, government less Allied onslaught. The subsequent policy makers, and military cold war- hunt for conspirators wreaked havoc riors struggled to decipher the meaning with the German military’s ability to of the sudden and drastic change hap- wage a cohesive and effective defense pening in the Soviet bloc. Francis and helped set up the eventual Allied Fukuyama now offers a provocative ap- breakout and defeat of the Wehrmacht proach to this puzzle, which has been in France by the end of the summer. widely debated and perhaps misunder- Without a doubt, the battle for France stood ever since. He cautiously asked in in 1944 saw some of the most ferocious The End of History and the Last Man and savage fighting to take place in the (1992) “whether, at the end of the European theater. There was the unre- twentieth century, it makes sense for us lenting fight by Montgomery to take once again to speak of a coherent and Caen, which was won at great cost— directional History of mankind that will Allied bombing during Operation eventually lead the greater part of human- GOODWOOD ultimately reduced the ity to liberal democracy.” Fukuyama town to rubble. Seeing Caen as pivotal went on to theorize that the fall of to the security of the beachhead, D-Day communism represented a great step planners expected to have it in Allied forward in mankind’s struggle for https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol64/iss4/17 2.

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