D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

AuthorFred L. Borch III
PositionPresently assigned as Regimental Historian and Archivist, U.S. Army, Judge Advocate Gen.'s Corps, The Judge Advocate Gen.'s Legal Ctr. & Sch. (TJAGLCS), Charlottesville, Va.
Pages373-377
2010] BOOK REVIEWS373
D-DAY: THE BATTLE FOR NORMANDY1
REVIEWED BY FRED L. BORCH III2
This is an outstanding book. Anthony Beevor, whose prize-winning
The Battle for Spain,3 Stalingrad,4 and The Fall of Berlin 19455 earned
him accolades from both professional historians and readers generally,
has written another superb book that will appeal to all judge advocates
and is certain to be a best-seller.
While Max Hastings (Overlord6), Cornelius Ryan (The Longest
Day7) and others have written about the Allied invasion of 6 June 1944,
what sets D-Day: The Battle for Normandy apart from these earlier
works is that Beevor views the landings as merely the beginning of a
larger, and more important story: the fierce, bloody, and unbelievably
destructive battle for Normandy that culminated in the liberation of Paris
more than two months later.
This explains why only the first third of the book is devoted to
securing the Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, and Sword beachheads while the
next 300 pages examine the Allied march across France to Paris. The
value of this approach is it allows Beevor to place the amphibious
landings—which are well known—in the context of a larger event, the
Normandy campaign—about which much less has been written.
1 ANTHONY BEEVOR, D-DAY: THE BATTLE FOR NORMANDY (2009).
2 Presently assigned as Regimental Historian and Archivist, U.S. Army, Judge Advocate
Gen.’s Corps, The Judge Advocate Gen.’s Legal Ctr. & Sch. (TJAGLCS),
Charlottesville, Va.; M.A., History, 2007, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.;
M.A., National Security Studies, highest distinction, 2001, Naval War College, Newport,
R.I.; LL.M., 1988, TJAGLCS, Charlottesville, Va.; LL.M., magna cum laude,
International and Comparative Law, 1980, University of Brussels, Belg.; J.D., 1979,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C.; A.B., 1976, Davidson College,
Davidson, N.C. Fred Borch is the author of a number of books and articles on legal and
non-legal topics. See, e.g., FRED L. BORCH, JUDGE ADVOCATES IN COMBAT: ARMY
LAWYERS IN MILITARY OPERATIONS FROM VIETNAM TO HAITI (2001); FRED L. BORCH,
JUDGE ADVOCATES IN VIETNAM: ARMY LAWYERS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA (2004). His latest
book, For Military Merit: Recipients of the Purple Heart was published by Naval
Institute Press in 2010.
3 ANTONY BEEVOR, THE BATTLE FOR SPAIN: THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 1936–1939 (1982).
4 ANTONY BEEVOR, STALINGRAD (1998).
5 ANTHONY BEEVOR, THE FALL OF BERLIN 1945 (2002).
6 MAX HASTINGS, OVERLORD: D-DAY & THE BATTLE FOR NORMANDY (1984).
7 CORNELIUS RYAN, THE LONGEST DAY: THE CLASSIC EPIC OF D-DAY JUNE 6, 1944
(1959).

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