Customer Reviews

Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, 1944

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book fills in a nice gap of WWII history in that it covers the initial battles that followed immediately after D-Day. Max Hastings does an excellent job of trying to figure out why certain parts of the Allied plan went so well, while others seemed to take forever. Additionally, he interviewed numerous Germans involved with the Normandy command in order to give perspective on what the German Army was experiencing and how this affected the outcome of certain battles.

I really enjoyed the new material and research that Hastings reveals as he tells the tale following D-Day. His treatment of the US Army is pretty balanced (some units fought well, while other "green units" had a tough time fighting the Germans), and I think he draws some interesting conclusions. His point that American Paratroopers and Ranger units were essential to the success of many battles highlights the success (and misuse at times) of these units.

Hastings goes into great detail about why the British/Canadian army struggled so much to take Caen. He has some critical words about Montgomery performance (he promised much, but deliverd little), but concludes overall that the British had a much more difficult fight against a stronger part of the German defense. I really enjoyed this section of the book because I have not read much about this part of the battle.

Hastings does talk at length about the mistake of letting the German Army escape at Falaise, although he concludes that the US Army would not have been able to close the gap with the units available. I do not totally agree with this conclusion, but it makes for interesting discussion.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in the ETO, especially Operation Overlord. If you are looking for a book specifically about D-Day, this is not the best one, in that it covers all of Operation Overlord, not just the invasion.

When I read history, I want to know both sides of the story. Reading one viewpoint is usually more about propaganda and less about history. Max Hastings satisfies this requirement. When digging into the facts of both the Western Allies (Americans, British, Canadians, Poles, and French) and the Germans and their less enthusiastic allies, Hastings describes bravery and honor on both sides. In addition, you get the warts that many historians gloss over (British reluctance to even embark on a mainland invasion, fairly equal amounts of shootings of POWs by both sides, and others). Most interesting is his indepth look at the contentious relationship between Montgomery and the Americans. Hastings points out that despite lackluster elan demonstrated by British and Canadian forces, it is true that Montgomery (and the USAAF) facilitated the final breakout of American forces (Cobra) by holding down the cream of German forces in Normandy, namely the Waffen-SS Panzer Corps, especially the very aggressive 12th SS Hitler Jugend (Youth) division. Hastings points out that with the exception of scattered German Parachute troops, American forces were tied down by mostly underequipped units made up of old survivors recovered from wounds on the eastern front, so-called volunteers from territories annexed by the Germans on the eastern front, and late-war scrapings of German manpower. Only later in the Normandy campaign did the Americans face some first-rate units, namely 2nd Waffen-SS "Das Reich", whose impact was weakened by constant losses from Allied fighter-bombers before reaching the scene of battle and whose battle-plans were intercepted by Ultra and thus lost the element of surprise (Mortain offensive). Hastings also makes a very interesting point, which does more to praise the U.S. airborne troops recently portrayed in HBO's excellent "Band of Brothers" series. These paratroopers were supposed to be sent back to England once the Allied foothold on the Continent was secured, but because of poor performance by regular infantry divisions, these paratroopers were forced to take the lead again and again in order to make headway against stubborn German resistance. The invaluable contributions made by American Airborne and Rangers and British Commandos should lay to rest the criticisms made by the regular Army leaders that special forces were a drain on top-notch manpower that should have gone to regular units. Though one could argue that these men could have raised the fighting proficiency of regular infantry units, the esprit de corps generated in elite combat units would still be absent. All in all, one gets the impression that Allied victory in Normandy was inevitable given the total Allied superiority in resources (especially air and naval power), but enough unknowns were still in play to make the outcome interesting. One thing is certain, Hitler's manic micromanagement of German strategy certainly was more of a benefit to the Allied cause than anything the Allied General's planned themselves (with the exception of the entire misdirection campaign aimed at confusing the Germans as to the actual location of the invasion), especially following the bomb plot which almost took Hitler's life. German Generals who knew what to do to save their armies were left powerless to watch Hitler destroy them in his own stupid strategies. I believe it humbling to admit that Allied victory in Normandy had more to do with the failings of the Nazi power structure than any magnificent feat of arms displayed on the battlefield, though the Americans certainly demonstrated more willingness to accept losses and risks than their British & Canadian counterparts.

To start I should clarify two things, firstly, I like Max Hastings as a writer and historian. I like the way he incorporates the entire spectrum of participants in the story which takes the 'grind' out of reading an historic account. He also doesn't 'romanticise' topics like D Day which, of recent times, has received a number of glowing commentaries as we celebrate those who took part. I don't want to take away from those who fought, as I have genuine respect for their contribution, but recently I believe Hollywood and some historians have glorified the actual events, clouding the realities of the battle and the 'knife edge' it was fought on for the first few weeks.Thank God for the Russian Front as I don't believe the Allied armies would have succeeded had they faced more units such as Hitler Jugend,12th SS Panzer, Panzer Lehr and the Parachute Divison.Enough emphasis cannot be placed on the importance and contribution of FORTITUDE in the ultimate success!
Back to the book,looking at it from a resident of a country that didn't have troops committed to the battle (we were getting ground up in Italy!)I find it very balanced in its criticisms of the generalship and quality of troops from the various nations. Far from coming away with negative thoughts regarding Allied superiority in quality of troops I come away with a feeling of awe that they accomplished what they did, sticking to their task in very unpleasant conditions, considering Britain had been at war for 5 years and America didn't have any great animosity toward Germany and nearly all their troops were new to the battlefield.
I agree with Hastings that German forces were superior to Allied forces (excluding Airborne and Special Forces)on the whole. Unit for unit the Germans showed greater tenacity and initiative than the average Allied formation. Wittmans feat of arms with a single tank, Fritz Langangke's 'one man war'near St Denis and countless other defensive efforts showed, that with more resourcing, the Wehrmacht, in all liklihood, would have defeated the Allies. As quoted by Brigadier Williams, "The Germans adjusted much better to new conditions than we did. By and large they were better soldiers than we were.The Germans liked soldiering. We didn't."
Overall I found the book very readable, concise and balanced. It showed well the magnitude of the task in forming armies from numerous countries, the personalities that could have defeated the forces prior to any landing,the ebbs and flows which determine the outcome and the fact that numerical and logisitcal superiority will,over a period of time,win out.
If I was to choose one book to learn about the overall conduct of the battle, not in-depth analysis of a particular battle or battles, from top to bottom, this is the one. Well worth it. Not sugar coated, telling it how it was, sharing the criticisms in a fair and even-handed manner.

I am an italian enthusiast of the battle of Normandy and I read a lot of books on this battle and I must say this is my preferit book. It's similar to the Cornelyus Ryan's "a bridge too far","the longest day" because it uses massively the tales of the soldiers to validate the various problems ,the armies who fought in Normandy had to face in order to try to win this battle that only on the russian front had fightings of a such an intensity. After you read this book you have a clear vision of the problems had the german ,british and american soldiers in two months of fightings. No other book explain,for what I read and I can assure you I read a lot about it,better this point of view and the tactical differences of combat between the german and allied armies. It can be defined an historical treatise for this reason. An excellent book even because it's easy to read and it catches immediately you at difference of other books probably more detailed but that can't offer this splendid insight view for a battle that it has been so important for this century.

Max Hastings has with this book produced yet another masterpiece. Having read Carlo D'Este's brilliant "Decision in Normandy," I had doubts that anyone could do it better - but Hastings certainly has.
For several years, authors writing about the campaign have had a tendency to repeat comfortable half-truths and myths, and have conveniently forgotten all the problems that dogged the Allied advance. Much space has been devoted to the terrible bocage and to Montgomery's mistakes, but little to the fact that many of the Allied troops - American as well as British - fought poorly and were in the end regarded as unreliable by their own commanders.
Personally, I found it refreshing that the problems the Americans had were finally analized thoroughly. Irritatingly, the British have been blamed for just about everything that went wrong in the campaign, while the American failures(which were just as numerous as the British) have been "forgotten." That is what makes this book so refreshing! Hastings describes the lacklustre performance of numerous American units in great detail, and points out that the airborne divisions had to be kept longer in battle than what was originally intended because other American units fought poorly. At the same time, he describes the similar British problems with brutal honesty.

In the end, one gets a far better understanding of this battle. It becomes clear that the British attacks on Caen was the key to the battle, and that the reason that it took them so long to take it was that the Germans concentrated the bulk of their armour to stop them - leaving the unexperienced Americans a better chance to succeed. It also becomes clear that the Germans fought exceptionally well, and that their superiority over the Allied soldiers time after time frustrated the great plans of the Allied commanders. And above all, it becomes clear that Montgomery - that master of warfare - had to fight with his hands tied because of the lack of British replacements.

In all, a brilliant book from a brilliant author, and one which I will recommend to anyone interested in learning about this legendary campaign.

Hastings strips away the mythology of the "triumphant" march across Western Europe from D-Day to the Falaise Gap. We see instead often confused, all too timid generalship, poor training and worse execution that may have lengthened the European war by months.

Hastings is the very best of the current crop of WWII historians.

Jerry

Americans who read this study of the Normandy invasion will be astonished to learn how little U.S. troops contributed to Overlord, and how clueless American generals, soldiers, and airmen were. Hastings makes it clear that Montgomery was a fatuous braggart, and that just about all his initiatives went wrong (and that's before the debacle of Market Garden!), but forgives him because he was able to "read" the battlefield. By contrast, Eisenhower, Bradley, and such lesser American commanders as Patton were sadly lacking in strategic vision, no matter that virtually all *their* initatives went right.

When things go badly in the east, where the British and Canadian divisions landed, Hastings generally refers to them as "the Allies," and sometimes even "the British and the Americans," even though there were no Americans in the two-month stalemate at the gates of Caen.

On the west, where the American army quickly broke out of its beachead and romped through thousands of square miles of Britanny and the Cherbourg peninsula, their success is passed over as of no importance. The Germans feared Montgomery the most, Hastings explains, so they put their best divisions in front of the Anglo-Canadian forces, while assigning second-rate and understrength units on the American side. Curiously, the Americans suffered half again as many casualties in the first three months of the campaign. I was left scratching my head over Hastings's skewed vision of the campaign.

I go on at length about this aspect of the book because it is likely to turn off the American reader, and that would be a mistake. Hastings is a good and serious historian, unlike such earlier chroniclers as Stephen Ambrose and Cornelius Ryan; his analysis of German strengths can't be beat, and he interleaves these military-history lessons with scores of personal accounts, some from his own interviews, some from previously unpublished documents. The book should be read by every student of World War Two.

Just don't place much faith in Hastings's view of the comparative merits of the American army on the one hand, and the British and Canadian armies on the other. (His follow-up study, "Armageddon", is much more even-handed.)

-- Dan Ford at the Warbird's Forum

Succinctly: This is a well written account of the events which took place upon and immediately after the invasion of Normandy. Like many accounts, it relies upon the anecdotes of the soldiers and commanders involved. Instead of the Olympian rhetoric usually found in a Stephen Ambrose book, this book is often quite critical of the individual qualities of Allied soldiers and commanders-with exceptions, of course. The Germans, by contrast, are often described as superior warriors, despite the fact that the German formations opposite the Allies involved were considered unfit for service on either the Russian or Italian fronts. Altogether not quite as interesting as the author's follow up account of events in the west, Armaggedon, but interesting and worthwhile nontheless.

Sir Max Hastings' work "Overlord" provides a meticulous and objective perspective of the Allied landings in Normandy and the subsequent campaign in Northwestern France during the summer of 1944. The book is free of nationalistic sentimentality in that Hastings recognizes the many imperfections within the Allied war machine and the general superiority of the German soldier. He argues that despite several flaws in Allied performance, the eventual victory at the end of August more than compensated for the early difficulties encountered in the Normandy Campaign.

His book starts with a chapter entitled "Much the greatest thing we have ever attempted." The Allied landings were indeed a feat of technical and logistic brilliance. This ability to coordinate an enormous industrialized force did not come without snags, as Hastings shows the rather large learning curve that the Americans, British and Canadians experienced upon landing in Normandy on June 6. While the landing on the British and Canadian beaches of Gold (50th), Juno (3rd Canadian) and Sword (3rd) were relatively successful they stagnated once established on the beach. Hastings notes a reticence in their fighting spirit-a feeling that the landing alone was the central task and the push inland to be accomplished further on. The failure to take the strategic city of Caen in a few short days is attributed to Montgomery's somewhat cautious approach (he was content to stick to the plan of drawing the Germans into a continual battle of attrition on the eastern flank while the Americans were charged the task of substantial gains of territory in the west). The story on the American beach at Omaha was somewhat worse, as the Ranger Battalions, and RCTs from the 1st and 29th Divisions were hammered while taking a toehold, without the aid of the sinking DD tanks and poor preparatory bombardment. Utah beach was in complete contrast to the situation at Omaha, as casualties at the latter dwarfed those of the former, with all three regiments of the 4th Division making the landing. The Germans did flood the fields around the exit causeways at Utah, but were unable to send a blocking force in strength due to the chaos caused by the paratroopers of the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions.

After the link up of the Utah and Omaha beachheads, the Americans began the rapid charge up the Cherbourg Peninsula, taking the city on June 27. The resistance was fairly light in comparison with the fierce SS Divisions who defended the Caen area, though the hedgerows of the bocage were a constant disruption to momentum. American performance during this period was somewhat inconsistent; some divisions such as the 79th and 90th were considered disorganized and lacking initiative while others such as the 9th and 4th possessed good field grade leadership which kept the advance in motion. The main credit for assault rests with General Collins, the commander of 7th Corp who was considered one of America's best, and would also spearhead the breakout of Normandy during Operation Cobra at the end of July.

While the Americans secured the Contentin, the situation around Caen was dire, as many grumblings about Montgomery's British and Canadian troops began to circulate through HQ. Failed offensives at Villers Bocage in mid June, across the Odon River in late June and early July, and Operation Goodwood on July 18th caused some serious concern at Allied HQ. Many felt Monty was overly cautious, satisfied to merely hold the bulk of the German Army in his sector while the American's fought around the flank, which Hastings points out had been the design from the start, but still did not excuse or make up for the fact that the German's simply outfought the Allies in the Caen sector for nearly two months, despite the utter lack of air support.

Hastings quite accurately points out how the battle in June reflected the limitations of airpower during the second world war, as divisions among the Air Force and Army leadership caused some poor coordination between air and ground forces. Air War was still in an early stage of development as targets were missed due to human error and the role of aircraft was hotly disputed between branches of service. The Air marshalls such as Connigham and Harris did not want their command subordinated to the infantry; they felt it was their job to keep the Lufwaffe off the battle field and harass German resupply efforts while destroying Industry in Germany, not act as air artillery for the ground troops. Though these rifts were often at the root of poor air-ground coordination during the Normandy campaign, Hastings argues they alone cannot account for failure to break through the German front, as Allied Infantry soldiers, many of whom were inexperienced, simply did not having the fanatical desire to fight and die for the country that the Germans possessed. The combination of the quality of the German fighting man and his superiority of equipment (from machine guns and grenades to the all important Tiger and Panzer tanks) is what Hastings argues made the Normandy campaign a much more brutal and questionable affair then many recognize it to be. It is only with the unquestionable dominance of the skies and seemingly endless quantity of men and material did the Allies finally prevail in Normandy.

Hastings essential argument is that quantity not quality was the key to victory, which began with a successful air-ground assault named Cobra on July 25 in the St Lo sector. Though the American planes dropped many "short rounds" on their own troops, the ground-air cooperation had greatly improved, much to the credit of General Quesada of the USAAF. Only after 2 months of brutal attrition from the land, sea and air did the German war machine finally crumble with the Allied breakout on the Western flank and their subsequent entrapment in the pocket between Falaise and Argentan. Hastings cites this period as perhaps the most awful spectacle of the whole campaign, as the German army ran the gauntlet in an attempt to escape, only to be ravaged by artillery fire and air strikes. By August 22 the Germans had lost nearly half a million men, wounded, killed or captured and the Allies raced across the rest of France. Hastings ends with another example of the tenacity of the German army, who after such a decisive defeat was able to regroup and hold Siegfried line for nearly six months in the face of an overwhelming two-front war. Though he states more than once his reluctance to exalt the fighting abilities of the Germans for the utter atrociousness of their cause, in an objective historical analysis there can be no conclusion that their army faced one of better quality during the whole war. Their defeat, Hastings points out, was a mathematical certainty by 1944, made so by insurmountable odds.

"Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy" by Max Hastings is an excellent short history of the Normandy campaign of WW2. It will be most useful for those who have not already read extensively about the subject, but useful as well to those whose readings have been largely limited to triumphal, Allied-centric works.

Hastings looks at both sides of the campaign, and does so at every scale, from the individual soldier to the grand strategic. This alone makes the book worthwhile. The fact the he manages to do so in so few pages, and does so in a style that engrosses the reader make this book a near masterpiece. The fact that I disagree with a number of his conclusions (many pointed out in previous reviews) is the only thing denying this work a 5th star. But I nonetheless heartily recommend it as an introduction to the subject. Rare is the military history that gives such a good synopsis at so many scales.