Advocating OVERLORD: The D-Day Strategy and the Atomic Bomb
Available: NOW Hardcover, Paperback and E-book
Publisher: Potomac Books
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1612349625
ISBN-13: 978-1612349626
“Well there it is. It won’t work, but you must bloody well make it,” said the chief of Britain’s military leaders when he ordered the start of planning for what became known as Operation Overlord. So challenged and with little to build on in 1943, the Allies did develop a viable plan for and won commitment to the European liberation strategy whose first phase would be a cross-Channel assault in 1944, D-Day.
Focused on the creation and acceptance of the D-Day strategy, Advocating Overlord also applies new information to reinterpret Anglo-American discussions in 1943, the critical “year of conferences.” The book describes afresh an under-told story: how at a decisive point, among the few with the “need to know,” resolution of the debate on the best strategy to liberate Europe apparently became linked to World War II’s other great secret, Anglo-American cooperation to develop an atomic bomb.
Talk on military strategy then shifted to action to seal the deal. Against a tight deadline, convoys surged over one million U.S. and Allied troops across the Atlantic to Britain. The concentration of forces for invasion became a new fact on the ground making irrevocable the commitment to execute D-Day on schedule.
Advocating Overlord tells how the leaders of great nations at the intersection of national destinies overcame mutual suspicion to trust each other and make common cause against a shared threat. Their struggle and its solution is a story with lessons for our time.
Advocating Overlord is based on eight years of research and site visits in the United States, Canada, Britain, and France. Hundreds of primary documents were consulted in archives and libraries. Oral histories from these sources illuminated relationships important to the story. Especially helpful with new insights were the recent published works of historians from many countries written free of the national biases that burdened generations closer to the trauma of that war.
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