Ten Days to D-Day Citizens and Soldiers on the Eve of the Invasion

by Stafford, David

• ISBN13: 9780306814228
• ISBN10: 0306814226
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-05-25
• Publisher: Da Capo Press

Summary

Ten days before the largest operation of World War II was launched, it was still one of the century's best-kept secretsthanks to countless ordinary people participating in one of history's most remarkable moments. David Stafford has written a riveting account of ten of those ordinary men and womenincluding an American paratrooper, a German soldier, a nineteen-year-old English woman working on secret codes, a Parisian Jew in hiding, and a daring French resistance cellas they lived through ten very extraordinary days. Drawing on previously unpublished diaries and letters, Stafford gives readers a fresh point of entry into one of the most significant battles ever fought.Ten Days to D-Daybuzzes with the pace of a novel, as Stafford moves from country to country, from character to character, including some of D-Day's leaders: Hitler, Rommel, Eisenhower, and Churchill. Stafford compellingly brings to life the final days before the invasion through the eyes of its participants, the citizens and soldiers that made history on June 6, 1944.

Author Biography

David Stafford is an expert in Britain's wartime intelligence operations and the author of numerous books, among them Spies Beneath Berlin, Churchill and Secret Service and Roosevelt and Churchill, which was a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. A former diplomat who has written extensively on intelligence history, he is currently Project Director at the Centre for Second World War Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Map of Southern Britain and Northern France	xvi
1 What Victory Means	3	(29)
Sunday, May 28
2 It Can't Be Far Off	32	(35)
Monday, May 29
3 Hit the Beach Hard	67	(32)
Tuesday, May 30
4 Rumors Get Around	99	(33)
Wednesday, May 31
5 The Hour of Combat Is Coming	132	(35)
Thursday, June 1
6 Soldiers it Very Good Heart	167	(33)
Friday, June 2
7 The Nadir of Strain	200	(34)
Saturday, June 3
8 One Hell of a Mess	234	(29)
Sunday, June 4
9 OK, We'll Go	263	(32)
Monday, June 5
10 It Must Be the Landings	295	(39)
D-Day
Epilogue What Became of Them?	334	(9)
Appendices	343	(3)
Acknowledgments and Sources	346	(8)
Select Bibliography	354	(9)
Index	363