D-Day

by Milton Dank

Discusses the planning and execution of the Allied invasion of Normandy, France and the subsequent battle against the German forces

106 pages, Library Binding

Published December 31, 1984

Reviews

[Samuel Lindgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

D Day, by Milton Dank is an informative piece about Day, the events that led up to it and its impact on the rest of World War Two. In the first chapter Dank summarizes the main events of the war, and what happened during them, up until D Day. Events like the outbreak of war, to Dunkirk, to the Battle of Britain are mentioned. He also mentions Japan’s success in the pacific and hitler's main mistakes like declaring war on the U.S. After this Dank begins to talk about the preparation and planning for D Day. He tells us about the amount of time and materials that went into planning D Day. The viewpoints of the different allied commanders and generals are explained, like how Churchill was scared that the invasion might fail and wanted to postpone or scrap the D Day plan. The reader is also told about the staging and gathering of the men and materials for the invasion. After this, Dank begins to talk about D Day itself. He begins by talking about the American Paratrooper drops. He goes into detail about their objectives and what challenges they faced, like being dropped miles away from their drop zones. He then tells the story of the British Paratrooper drops and their role in D Day. We are told about some British units destroying bunkers that overlooked the beaches, and them capturing vital bridges. Next, we learn about the beach landings and how relatively easy or hard they were to capture. Utah beach was the easiest to capture with less than 200 casualties. The British and Canadian beaches were harder to capture, but Omaha beach was the hardest to capture. The Americans suffered 2,500 casualties there because of the high cliffs and lack of American tanks. After this the race to Berlin and the rest of the battle of Normandy is summarized with the main events highlighted.

D Day, is a very informative account and summary of D Day and everything around it. Dank gives the readers a very good understanding of the giant scale of D Day and the planning of it, even readers that don’t already know much about it. Throughout the book there were pictures of the D Day operations and the people involved. This was a very good idea by Milton Dank because it helps the readers visualize the D Day operations, rather than just read about it. Another smart thing that the author did was explaining what went on before D Day and the effects of It on the rest of the war. This was smart because it pinpoints the importance of D Day. This book is a great book for people that don’t know much about D Day and want to learn or for people that do know about D Day and still want to learn more. In contrast, people that don’t like history probably won’t like this book so I do not recommend it to those people.

[Anita Gross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gave valuable insight on what happened on D-Day in a way that was both engaging and informative.

[Noah Vannoy]

D Day was on June 6th, 1944. It was the day when Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy. On this day 156,000 troops landed. 61,715 of those were British soldiers, 73,000 American soldiers and 21,400 Canadian soldiers. The initial stage of the attack was called Operation Neptune. 6.939 vessels were used to transport troops and equipment for fighting. On this first day of the invasion 4,413 Allied soldiers were killed. The assaults took place on five beaches, codenamed Juno, Gold, Omaha, Utah, and Sword. Even thought this book was written in 1984 it had lots of good information about the war and these battles. I would not recommend this book unless someone was really interested in facts about World War II. It was hard to read and understand.

[Cathy Houston · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but through account of the D-Day invasion. What better day to read it than the 70th anniversary of the event when men like my own father did their best to save the world.