Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6813 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Synopsis
The famous D-day landing of 6th June 1944 marked the beginning of Operation Overlord, the battle for the liberation of Europe. Max Hastings has overturned many traditional legends to write this study. Drawing together the eyewitness accounts of survivors from both sides and sources and documents, this text provides a controversial perspective on the devastating battle for Normandy.

Customer Reviews

Rather subjective and certainly over-rated!
Hasting's 'Overlord' has earned a reputation of being almost as close as one can get to becoming a definitive history of the 1944 landings in Normandy.

Whilst far superior to the work of 'historians' such as Stephen Ambrose, there is still an overwhelming feeling of this book being authored by a journalist and not an historian. Hastings makes many sweeping statements, many of which are totally unfounded, yet does very little to substantiate his claims. He constantly enforces the popular misconception, which have almost become fashionable, to criticise rather than to focus on the positives. Reading 'Overlord' found me actually questioning myself as to whether or not the Allies actually won the Battle of Normandy or not.

There is far too much unbalanced emphasis on the conceived failures, failures which can only be called such with the benefit of no small amount of hindsight. Operation Overlord was the biggest and best operation the western allies launched in WW2 and should be celebrated for what it achieved, not disected to an extent that only with that valuable aid of hindsight can decisions be doubted and triumphs blunted beyond recognition.

Hasting plays up the superiority of the German forces but, in my opinion, fails to give due credit to the forces (prodominantly British) that took on the bulk of the German elite, and beat them into submission within just 71 days in Normandy.

Whilst I dont agree with every sentiment expressed by historians like John Keegan, Carlo D'Este, Denis Whitaker and Terry Copp, these historians make much more effort to present an objective and substantiated account than Hastings achieves in this publication.

I'm afraid to say it but I do have a sense of real disappointment that Hastings may be becoming Britain's very own Stephen Ambrose in so much that he is only interested in sensationalising popular history for a popular audience with more of an eye on book sales than the recording of an accurate, academically robust, history.

Monty's Lying Circus.
Much of what has been written about D-Day is strictly from the Allied side and heaving under a weight of self-glorification. Whilst it is patently true that the Allies achieved victory, Hastings attempts to uncoverd the real price of that success. He is also hampered by the lack of German documents and survivors, but draws heavily on those of Americans and to a vast extent, British.
The whole build up is described, examinations of the various strategic proposals to invade, and the associated code-names. Then come the personalities who made up the Allied Supreme Command. This analysis sets the tone of the book. How they diagreed and in a couple of instances intensely disliked one another. Not the sort of thing that propoganda allowed the public to see at the time. It seems that Leigh- Mallory was completely sidelined. However the sad self-seeking behaviour of Monty both during and more intensely later hangs like a shadow over the whole preceedings. Hastings reports: "Montgomery was now compelled to endure a crisis of confidence in his leadership which would have cracked the nerve of a more sensitive man. He had always been the object of animosity within the huge headquarters staff at SHAEF in England, and unloved by many of Bradley's Americans." It's an important revelation because it shows what level of dishonest leadership he preferred. Even worse is the numbers of British soldiers whose lives it cost. Eisenhower is also portrayed in less than glowing terms, as weknesses in his leadership are also examined.
Combat operations focus on the ground war, though Hastings refers to his own works on Bomber Command to explain air operations, and the Third Reich to prove the relativistic morals of the Nazi forces This is too short an explanation, as he makes the point himself that the ground forces were inadequate against the German army. It is this revelation which shatters the myth of Allied victory, and is a great balance to the triumphalism of the time. It turns out that the Nazi's had the greatest army in the world. The British and American forces were inferior in every way, especially in what was needed in Normandy, tanks and an infantry with fighting spirit. The Sherman tank is described in less than glowing terms, with almost every engagement against German Panther or Tiger tanks leaving only a wreck and many dead. Terrible mortars and one-shot throw away anti-tank weapons proved that the German army was better equipped for fighting amongst the hedgerows. The question is posed as to why the allied armies had no matching equivalents or even copies like the Jerry-can Just how the ground war was won in Normandy seems almost miraculous bearing in mind that the Allied infantry's performance was almost always mediocre against a German army that had been fighting continually for naerly five years. So it seems, that wars are fought from moment to moment learning only what is gathered in the field, rather than remembering previous wars. The tragedy of unleashing the British and US heavy bombers against the front line is discussed on three occassions, each one bringing hundreds of allied soldiers lives to an end and proving that the airmens capabilities were better employed against German cities and industrial targets, such was their inaccuracy.
In spite of all this, the victory is related in terms of a battle of attrition being won by superior allied production, and air supremecy (not just superiority). The US could simply throw more Shermans into the fight, whereas the German tanks were maintenance heavy and couldn't hope to be replaced once lost. In this way the allied bomber effort played a major part that Max Hastings is reluctant to admit. The role of the fighter bombers, however is given its due. At the end Hastings remarks how the forces broke out of the Falaise Gap and into an acceleration that perhaps could have been won earlier in June at Cean. He makes a good theoretical examination of this. Other details are covered, the minimal and unnecessary role of the British "Funnies" and Mulberry Harbours. Good maps help understand the strategies with almost every photo containing the human face of the battle.

Well written, but flawed in analysis and missing content
I admire the Max Hastings. He isn't just an accomplished journalist and editor, but a serious historical writer too. His anecdotes and stories from soldiers who took part in the combat are intriguing and thought provoking. His observations concerning the qualitative fighting power of the various armies involved is undoubtedly true. But from a journalist of Hastings’ calibre, I would expect to have read more of the motivations behind the combatants, and better diagrams to explain the conflicts that made up the Overlord campaign.

In his later book, “Armageddon”, Hastings claims it is the natural successor to this book. Why then, does he leave such a huge gap between his two narratives concerning the progress of the allied armies across central and Eastern France? The Falaise Gap is covered here, and 'Market Garden' is the next book, but what happened in-between? And why does he almost ignore the role of the American invasion from the South of France or the Allied climb through Italy?

If Hastings ever revises “Overlord” – and the emergence of more evidence since its writing would suggest he should – then I would like him to include better analysis of personal and political motivations, and to include some of the less well documented but equally important military events of the time.