audiobook Napoleon: The End of Glory by Munro Price in History

Description

Seventy years ago; more than six thousand Allied ships carried more than a million soldiers across the English Channel to a fifty-mile-wide strip of the Normandy coast in German-occupied France. It was the greatest sea-borne assault in human history. The code names given to the beaches where the ships landed the soldiers have become immortal: Gold; Juno; Sword; Utah; and especially Omaha; the scene of almost unimaginable human tragedy. The sea of crosses in the cemetery sitting today atop a bluff overlooking the beaches recalls to us its cost.Most accounts of this epic story begin with the landings on the morning of June 6; 1944. In fact; however; D-Day was the culmination of months and years of planning and intense debate. In the dark days after the evacuation of Dunkirk in the summer of 1940; British officials and; soon enough; their American counterparts; began to consider how; and; where; and especially when; they could re-enter the European Continent in force. The Americans; led by U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall; wanted to invade as soon as possible; the British; personified by their redoubtable prime minister; Winston Churchill; were convinced that a premature landing would be disastrous. The often-sharp negotiations between the English-speaking allies led them first to North Africa; then into Sicily; then Italy. Only in the spring of 1943; did the Combined Chiefs of Staff commit themselves to an invasion of northern France. The code name for this invasion was Overlord; but everything that came before; including the landings themselves and the supply system that made it possible for the invaders to stay there; was code-named Neptune.Craig L. Symonds now offers the complete story of this Olympian effort; involving transports; escorts; gunfire support ships; and landing craft of every possible size and function. The obstacles to success were many. In addition to divergent strategic views and cultural frictions; the Anglo-Americans had to overcome German U-boats; Russian impatience; fierce competition for insufficient shipping; training disasters; and a thousand other impediments; including logistical bottlenecks and disinformation schemes. Symonds includes vivid portraits of the key decision-makers; from Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill; to Marshall; Dwight Eisenhower; and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay; who commanded the naval element of the invasion. Indeed; the critical role of the naval forces--British and American; Coast Guard and Navy--is central throughout. In the end; as Symonds shows in this gripping account of D-Day; success depended mostly on the men themselves: the junior officers and enlisted men who drove the landing craft; cleared the mines; seized the beaches and assailed the bluffs behind them; securing the foothold for the eventual campaign to Berlin; and the end of the most terrible war in human history.