A Formidable Proposition
R.W. Johnson
- D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor
Viking, 591 pp, £25.00, May 2009, ISBN 978 0 670 88703 3
In his account of D-Day Antony Beevor comes to many surprising conclusions: that the Germans were by far the better soldiers, more experienced, disciplined and confident; that their weapons were generally better, not just the Tiger and Panther tanks and the 88mm anti-tank gun but even their MG42 light machinegun, which was far superior to its British and American equivalents; that the Allies shot many prisoners and committed all manner of atrocities; that French civilians caught in the middle often suffered more from the Allied onslaught. On the other hand, very little of this would come as a surprise to anyone teaching at Sandhurst or West Point.
You are not logged in
- If you have already registered please login here
- If you are using the site for the first time please register here
- If you would like access to all 12,000 articles subscribe here
- Institutions or university library users please login here
- Learn more about our institutional subscriptions here
[*] Even less celebrated – not mentioned by Antony Beevor – is Lawrence Hogben, a naval instructor, who also played a part in persuading Eisenhower to postpone the invasion from the 5th to the 6th and wrote about it in an LRB Diary (26 May 1994). He has a walk-on part in Giles Foden’s novel, reviewed on the previous page.
Vol. 31 No. 17 · 10 September 2009 » R.W. Johnson » A Formidable Proposition
pages 21-22 | 2479 words