The Normandy Invasion is the subject of innumerable books and films. The titles recommended below fall into three general categories: overviews of the invasion, official histories, and documentaries available on video.
Overviews
In John Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy (1982, reissued with a new introduction, 1994), the eminent British military historian closely follows six different actors on the Normandy stage—U.S., British, Canadian, German, Polish, and French—at six crucial episodes in the planning and execution of the invasion. Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (1983, reprinted 1994), by one of America’s most prominent military historians, analyzes the controversial command decisions made from the period of the buildup through the campaign in Normandy. Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (1984, reissued 1993), compares the Allied and German performances in the campaign.
Recorded interviews and reminiscences submitted by veterans and held by the Eisenhower Center for American Studies, New Orleans, Louisiana, are collected on audio compact discs and provided to supplement the historical text in Douglas Brinkley and Ronald J. Drez, Voices of Valor: D-Day, June 6, 1944 (2004). The Eisenhower Center’s interviews and oral histories are also employed in Stephen E. Ambrose, D-Day, June 6, 1944 (1994), a closely personalized account by an American historian that focuses on the achievements of the enlisted man, noncommissioned officer, and platoon or company commander—particularly in the U.S. Army but also in the British, Canadian, and German armies.
Official histories
The first exhaustive accounts of the invasion, written by accomplished historians and illustrated with maps and photographs, were provided by the armed forces of the belligerent countries. The official U.S. histories are Gordon A. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack (1951, reissued 1995); and Martin Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit (1961, reprinted 1993). L.F. Ellis et al., Victory in the West, Vol. 1, The Battle of Normandy (1962, reissued 1993), is the official British history; the reissue contains source references to primary official documents. An excellent account of Normandy is given by C.P. Stacey, The Victory Campaign: The Operations in North-West Europe, 1944–1945 (1960), vol. 3 of Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War.
The multivolume official history of World War II by the German Armed Forces Historical Research Office is Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg (1979– ), published in English under the title Germany and the Second World War (1990– ); vol. 7 of the series covers the war in western Europe from the Normandy Invasion to the Battle of the Bulge.
Video
D-Day Remembered (1994), produced by WGBH-TV as part of the Public Broadcasting System’s American Experience series, features skillfully edited archival film and new footage, overlain with voices of D-Day veterans and narration by historian David McCullough, in an elegiac tribute to the American GI’s self-sacrifice. Morning, June–August 1944 (1973), produced as part of the acclaimed World at War series by Thames Television and narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, is organized around original film footage and contemporary interviews, placing Operation Overlord squarely within the huge global struggle of World War II. The True Glory (1945), produced by the U.S. Office of War Information and the British Ministry of Information, employs dramatized voice-overs of participants from most of the Allied countries in an often sentimentalized and stereotyped film that stresses the truly international effort of the Normandy campaign.
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