Publishers and military historians don’t allow a significant anniversary to pass without offering something new. It is 80 years since VE Day, marking Germany’s surrender in World War II. Sir Max Hastings has chosen as his contribution a “micro-history” of the British army’s role in the Normandy invasion of June 6, 1944.
The title, Sword, refers to the beach on the Normandy coast, one of five creating a front of 80km where the Allied forces landed in history’s largest military exercise of its kind. In his previous books, which number some 30 titles, Hastings has been a macro-historian, recounting the big-picture events of WWII and the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as wars and conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and Northern Ireland.
His first on WWII, Overlord: D-Day and the battle for Normandy, published in 1984, was among the first by the Baby Boomer generation, the sons and daughters of participants. Earlier war correspondents, such as Australia’s Chester Wilmot, provided eye-witness accounts; Wilmot’s The Struggle for Europe appeared in 1952.
That was followed in 1959 by the American-focused The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan. It sold tens of millions of copies in 18 languages and became one of Hollywood’s biggest war movies.
By the 1980s, a new generation of historians had access to memoirs on both the Allied and Axis sides, as well as official papers and communications. Other heavyweight military historians, such as Antony Beevor, Carlo D’Este and John Keegan, added to a pile of more than 200 books, including those by young soldiers (Richard Todd, Huw Wheldon, Woodrow Wyatt).
It’s a hard act to add something new by way of eyewitness accounts, since all of those involved are now dead. But this also makes it easier to write about contentious events for those interested in analysis of leadership, strategy and execution. Hastings urges caution in considering some sources: “Many published memoirs of old soldiers of all ranks bear scant relation to the record of events in which they participated.”
He adds: “Oral history is unreliable on points of fact, but at its best conveys an incomparable sense of time and place, to lend colour and shade to a historian’s narrative.”
That narrative takes 330 pages, starting with the buildup as 29,000 “virgin soldiers” faced their first contact with enemy fire. Most had spent four years of boring inaction waiting for the opportunity to avenge Dunkirk, and the failed Dieppe Raid of 1942.
The British commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, had promised PM Winston Churchill the key city of Caen could be taken in the first 24 hours. Hastings says, while Montgomery was “foolish” to set an impossible target, he was “arrogant and reckless” to give an undertaking to Churchill.
Hastings makes judgments on all the British divisions’ achievements and failures, which include an airborne force that missed its targets and some of the infantry’s lack of urgency in making the rapid advances that are critical to overcoming enemy resistance. One description was that they were “cautious, hesitant, dilatory and fearful of loss”. But Hastings also points out that by 1944 they knew they were on a winning side, and to alter that risk-averse mentality would require a cultural change.
“It would have needed senior officers with [German Field Marshal] Rommel’s inspiration and dash, together with a suicidal spirit such as lay far outside its doctrine and traditions.”
As it happened, much favoured the British, who were at the easternmost end of the front and closest to the Germans’ most powerful weapon, a Panzer division. Rommel himself was in Germany celebrating his wife’s birthday.
The much-vaunted Atlantic Wall was defended by German officers, who had to depend on Polish, Ukrainian and Russian recruits. They were not motivated to resist the invaders when faced with the option of surrender or worse punishment in their home countries.
As with his other books, Hastings pays much attention to the plight of non-combatants. The 3000 French civilian D-Day casualties were equivalent to those of the entire Allied forces. Caen and its surrounding villages were pounded from soon after midnight on June 6, as paratroopers arrived to take out key targets ahead of the landings. Some French resented or were indifferent to troops arriving on their doorsteps and flattening their farms or homes. But most, like one café owner who dug up his stash of champagne, welcomed an end to occupation.
This had its tragic side. One teenage girl who helped British soldiers was later summarily executed by the Germans, as happened to others caught in such acts. While D-Day losses were lower than expected, due largely to a lot of luck and a slow response from the Germans, worse was to come for the “virgin” survivors, who spent the next 11 months fighting their way across northern Europe to the Elbe River.
Sword: D-Day trial by battle, by Max Hastings (William Collins, $45), is out now.
