Overviews and Histories

Multi-page Overviews | Official Histories | Pocket Histories | Other

Amazon. D-Day June 6, 1944 : The Climactic Battle of World War II by Stephen E. Ambrose. Also available in hardcover. See my Books section for reviews. There's a lot of good stuff on the web, but if you're interested in the best narrative history and can wait a few days for the book to arrive, there's really no better choice than Ambrose.

Multi-page Overviews

Normandy (Britannica.com). The premiere D-Day site on the web. The backbone of the site is a five-part history of the allied efforts in Normandy by John Keegan. Spiraling off from this are a multiplicity of subsections, including film clips, photographic essays, biographies, maps and organizational charts. Links to many of these subpages are given here. Perhaps the site's one drawback is its somewhat over-complex hyperlinking and lack of a site map. I have developed my own sitemap.

Web Archive: Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6th, 1944 from softwhale.com and the Whaleys. This excellent site has profiles of many participants, including Father Joe Lacy and Brig. General Norman "Dutch" Cota and special sections on other topics.

D-Day Web: The Real Normandy. Edited by Trent White. Created for a "Countdown to Private Ryan" site. It has a good images page, as well as a personal accounts page.

In Desperate Battle: Normandy 1944. Part of the Canadian documentary The Valour and the Honour: Canada at War, an attempt to get "real war" onto the screen. Revisionist in approach.

Web Archive: D-Day, Analyzed! A lengthy narrative history by Dave Depickere, a 23-year-old Belgian, broken up into dozens of pocket-histories. In Normandy Today he presents dozens of photographs of D-day remains. Part of WWII, Analyzed!

Web Archive: Patrick McGinnis' D-day Site. Based largely on Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day, the site includes page on the guns used on D-day.

Official Histories

The Normandy Invasion. Official site from the US Center for Military History. Includes complete listing of the forces, short biographies of D-Day Medal of Honor Recipients, four unit studies and an enormous official history and an excellent story in pictures.

American Forces in Action Series: "Omaha Beachhead (6 June-13 June 1944)" 160+ page history created by the War Department in 1945 and put on the internet by Larry W. Jewell. According to G. C. Marshall the American Forces in Action Series was created for the following reason.

AMERICAN FORCES IN ACTION is a series prepared by the War Department especially for the information of wounded men. It will show these soldiers, who have served their country so well, the part they and their comrades played in achievement which do honor to the record of the United States Army.

United States Army in World War II, the European Theater of Operations: Cross-Channel Attack by Gordon A. Harrison for the Department of the Army, 1951. Five-hundred page review of D-Day and the Normandy campaign. Interneted by Larry W. Jewell.

American Forces in Action Series: "Utah Beach to Cherbourg (6 June-27 June 1944)", also available in smaller sections.

Pocket Histories

Pocket/outline history of D-Day by Joek Hulsmann.

Web Archive: Largish pocket history from The Normandy Tourism Board. Includes handy The Battle of Normandy Sites and Museums .

Web Archive: Eleven newspaper-style explanatory graphics from the "Nando Times." In honor of the 50th anniversary in 1994.

Fact Sheet D-Day, 6 June 1944 Normandy, France (University of Kansas)

Pocket history attached to a first solo record by Lee Saunders (former lead-man to "Crysal Void"), who designed an album around the idea that WWII was a "hollow victory" because we have not learned the right lessons from it.

D-Day: The Allied Invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944. Pocket history of the D-Day landings from North Park University's chronology project.

Other

A promising but mostly broken D-Day page.