Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944

by Joseph Balkoski

Overview

Omaha Beach witnessed the greatest drama and loss of life on D-Day. Across a four-and-a-half-mile front consisting of sand, stones, and cliffs, largely untested American troops assaulted Germany's Atlantic Wall head-on, encountering fierce resistance but eventually securing the beachhead. Their actions paved the way for Allied victory in World War II, yet until now, a truly comprehensive history of the momentous battle for Omaha Beach has not been written. In Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944, Joseph Balkoski picks up where other historians left off and weaves personal recollections and historical analysis into a gripping, unforgettable narrative of one of the U.S. Army's most costly days of World War II. After placing the D-Day preparations firmly within their diplomatic and strategic context -- from Gen. George Marshall's early enthusiasm for a Normandy landing to the Tehran conference, where Stalin's support moved the plan into its final stages -- Balkoski describes the minute-by-minute combat on Omaha Beach. Using a series of detailed maps to illustrate the progress of the invasion, as well as a broad selection of first-person accounts -- many given mere weeks after the fighting -- Balkoski crafts a seamless story of the action as it unfolded. He allows both officers and enlisted men to speak for themselves, as they vividly recount their attempts to maneuver bombers through heavy cloud cover, the claustrophobic terror of manning a tank aboard a landing vessel, and the relentless fire that greeted them as they inched their way across the beach.

A concluding section recognizes Omaha's Medal of Honor and Distinguished Service Cross recipients and lists the minute details of the landings, such as the order of battle, unit-by-unit casualties, and the equipment the men carried. Equal parts oral history and meticulous reconstruction, Omaha Beach is the closest the modern reader can get to experiencing the Normandy landings firsthand. It is a fitting tribute to the veterans and an indispensable history of one of America's -- and, indeed, the world's -- most important days.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940000218013
Publisher:	Stackpole Books
Publication date:	10/01/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Joseph Balkoski is Command Historian of the Maryland National Guard and author of Omaha Beach (978-0-8117-3376-2), Utah Beach (978-0-8117-3377-9), and the classic Beyond the Beachhead (978-0-8117-3237-6). He has appeared as a D-Day expert on MSNBC, and his work has been praised by Joe Scarborough, the New York Post, the Washington Times, World War II magazine, and others. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
Chapter 1.	The End of the Beginning	1
Chapter 2.	Realism, Not Pessimism	15
Chapter 3.	Festung Europa	33
Chapter 4.	Fortune Favors the Bold	52
Chapter 5.	The Greatest Show on Earth	71
Chapter 6.	Forlorn Hope	97
Chapter 7.	The Momentous Now	110
Chapter 8.	Clear the Way	140
Chapter 9.	Bullets like Rain	157
Chapter 10.	Move or Die	191
Chapter 11.	Everyone an Infantryman	237
Chapter 12.	Beyond the Beach	267
Chapter 13.	A Full Measure of Devotion	307
Chapter 14.	To Rest or to Die	329
Appendix I	Allied Casualties on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944	350
Appendix II	Medal of Honor and Distinguished Service Cross Awards for Valor on Omaha Beach	353
Appendix III	U.S. Army and U.S. Navy First-Wave Units on Omaha Beach	362
Appendix IV	Composition of Typical Assault Boat Team, 16th and 116th Infantry	367
Appendix V	Uniform and Equipment of Boat Team Leader, 16th and 116th Infantry	370
	Notes	372
	Bibliography	393
	Acknowledgments	398
	Index	404

Editorial Reviews

Balkoski (Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Division in Normandy) makes officer and enlisted-men's first-person testimony the center of this account, with light contextualization in between, along with 34 b&w photos and 27 maps. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Each decennial anniversary of the Normandy landings has produced its own recounting of this momentous event in World War II. Although written soon after the war, Gordon Harrison's Cross-Channel Attack (1951) remains the starting point for all future accounts, and Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day (1959), which was followed by the Darryl F. Zanuck film, wonderfully popularized the story. In the early 1980s, John Keegan's magisterial Six Armies in Normandy (1982) set a new standard for scholarship, followed a decade later by an equally valuable telling by Stephen Ambrose with his D-Day: June 6, 1944 : The Climactic Battle of World War II (1994). Recently, Russell Hart provided an updated rendering with Clash of Arms: How the Allies Won in Normandy (2001). The Balkoski study is quite good and certainly compares favorably with Adrian Lewis's Omaha Beach: A Flawed Victory (2001). Balkoski (Beyond the Beachhead) has skillfully blended first-person accounts with a well-researched narrative of what happened on that fateful morning and an artful sprinkling of detailed maps. Bastable's Voices from D-Day, however, is a patchwork of interviews and reminiscences interspersed with historical narrative, which reflects his journalistic background but does not break much new ground historiographically. Most libraries would benefit from the Balkoski volume, but only the largest need to consider Bastable's. Ed Goedeken, State Univ. Lib., Ames, IA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

"This is probably the best book ever written about Omaha Beach."

Stone & Stone Second World War Books - Bill Stone