Carlo D\'Este - Decision in Normandy torrent

The battle for Normandy was the most complex and daring military operation in the history of modern Warfare. Two years of intense, detailed planning reached its successful conclusion when the Allied forces took the beaches on D-Day. But the seventy-six-day campaign that followed, the Allies' crucial bid for a toehold in western Europe, was one of the bloodiest of the war, and its true story has been concealed in myth.

Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished papers, de-classified documents, diaries, and personal interviews, Carlo D'Este has written the first full account of what actually happened in Normandy—how the campaign went wrong and how it was eventually won. His discovery of General Montgomery's original plan and the failure of its execution has already stirred controversy in Britain where Nigel Hamilton, Montgomery's biographer, has said that Decision in Normandy "will keep historians arguing for a decade."

Step-by-step the reader is taken through the Normandy campaign from the earliest days after Dunkirk when Churchill first considered the idea of a cross-Channel invasion of France, to the Key battles that determined that outcome, with maps explaining clearly the strategy and logistics of each battle.

This is military history at its most dramatic, with a cast of characters that includes Montgomery, Rommel, Patton, Bradley, and Eisenhower. Decision in Normandy is destined to become the definitive account of a campaign Rommel described as "a terrible blood-letting" and whose outcome became the decisive turning point for the Allied victory.


Carlo D'Este was born in 1936. From 1958-78 he was a serving officer in the United States Army. During this time he was posted to Germany, England, and twice to Vietnam. He retired, with the rank of lieutenant colonel to research and write this book.