Almost seventy-five years have passed since D-Day, the day of the greatest seaborne invasion in history. The outcome of the Second World War hung in the balance on that chill June morning. If Allied forces succeeded in gaining a foothold in northern France, the road to victory would be open. But if the Allies could be driven back into the sea, the invasion would be stalled for years, perhaps for ever.
An epic battle that involved 156,000 men, 7,000 ships and 20,000 armoured vehicles, the desperate struggle that unfolded on 6 June 1944 was, above all, a story of individual heroics. Their authentic human story - Allied, German, French - has never fully been told.
Giles Milton’s bold new history narrates the day’s events through the tales of survivors from all sides: the teenage Allied conscript, the crack German defender, the French resistance fighter. Ranging from the military architects at Supreme Headquarters to the young schoolboy in the Wehrmacht’s bunkers, D-Day: the soldier’s story also gives voice to those hitherto unheard - the French butcher’s daughter, the panzer commander’s wife, the chauffeur to the general staff.