The Allied landing in 1944 might have ended in disaster. Winston Churchill thought he would be woken up to be told of massive casualties. General Eisenhower prepared a short, solemn broadcast announcing that the enterprise had failed.
D-Day in military parlance is the starting “day” of any offensive. In 1943 there had been both a Sicily D-Day and an Italy D-Day before the cross-Channel assault. But because the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944 marked so significant a turning point in the Second World War, the term “D-Day” has come to signify that day alone. My aim in these pages is to show how that turning point in history came about. The period of preparation, lasting almost two years – amid the strains and uncertainties of war elsewhere – was one of inventiveness, hard work, experimentation, secrecy, and wide ranging deception plans.
This was no chance or accidental turning point, but a calculated, planned, evolving, intricate struggle to ensure the overthrow of a tyrannical regime, and to liberate those who had suffered under its harsh rule for four years. It was a struggle that involved men and women in offices and factories, in training camps and clandestine venues – almost none of them knowing the specific destination – working as a vast team to put together a comprehensive plan that would ensure the destruction of Hitler and his regime and the liberation of the captive peoples of Europe.
The turning point of 6 June 1944 owed its evolution and impact to many individuals and groups of individuals. READ MORE .......................
It began at a cafe in Hampstead though by the time I got to know them, their friendship was already close. Two historians of the twentieth century, focussing on the voices of those who had fought in the trenches and in the skies, discussing their respective work, sharing a sense of humour, the odd bottle of wine, and a love for 1940s-era war films.
Max's found his voice in transcribing oral history of those who had fought. Some had left their recollections on tape, some he met and encouraged to tell their stories. “Forgotten Voices” became a series of books, of those who served in the First World War and the Second, the Royal Navy and D-Day, the Songs that kept them going, the photos that brought them back to life. He made their stories matter, and their losses and their accomplishments profound. Max ensured their voices would not be forgotten.
Martin and Max, consulting the map of their journey, June 2003
In 2003, Max's friend Ruth Cowen was embarking on writing a book on Alexis Soyer, the Victorian chef whose portable cooking stove revolutionised battlefield rations in the Crimean War. To Martin, history was bound up with geography which meant a research “road” trip to Turkey. A “road” trip invariably meant a journey by rail: this one, from the Reform Club in London where Soyer revolutionised the kitchens and the cooking, to the museums of Istanbul and on to the Crimea in Soyer's footsteps. Max and Ruth sailed from Istanbul on a creaky Soviet-era ship, the Heroes of Sebastopol, across the Black Sea, as Martin and I waved them off from the safety of solid ground.
Sir Martin, in D-Day, gives the background to this tragedy and the extraordinary measures taken to ensure the secrecy of the landings:
Practice seaborne landings were taking place on various beaches in southern England. The largest of these exercises, Operation Tiger, was carried out at Slapton Sands between April 26 and 28. It was intended as the final rehearsal for the American troops who would land on Utah Beach (Assault Force U). Their escorting destroyer, HMS Scimitar, the main escort for the convoy, had been in a collision with a landing craft the night before and did not sail from Plymouth after her repairs.
As the exercise proceeded, seven German torpedo boats, which were on a routine night patrol from Cherbourg, came across Operation Tiger while it was at sea READ MORE .....................................
Israel, A History, Martin Gilbert
“Fleeing persecution in Europe, thousands of Jewish immigrants settled in Palestine after World War II. Renowned historian Martin Gilbert crafts a riveting account of Israel's turbulent history, from the birth of the Zionist movement under Theodor Herzl to the unexpected declaration of its statehood in 1948, and through the many wars, conflicts, treaties, negotiations, and events that have shaped its past six decades – including the Six Day War, the Intifada, Suez, and the Yom Kippur War. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand source materials, eyewitness accounts, and his own personal and intimate knowledge of the country, Gilbert weaves a complex narrative that is both gripping and informative, and probes both the ideals and realities of modern statehood.”
“During nearly 80 years of historiographical conflict, numerous revisionist scholars, from AJP Taylor to Martin Gilbert, have risked committing cultural heresy by offering a more understanding assessment of Britain’s strategy — arguing that its political elite in the 1930s enjoyed little in the way of political, financial, military, diplomatic or social freedom to construct a more robust foreign policy.”
“British historian Martin Gilbert estimates that tens of thousands of Arabs immigrated to Palestine in the 1920s and '30s, attracted by the economic opportunities that Jews – fuelled by Western capital and technology – made possible.”
“Wouk once joked in a speech that historical fiction is 'at best a bastard form and highly suspect.' While his dedication to the genre earned him the respect of such scholars as historian David McCullough and Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert, Wouk said he recognized that his most important job was as a storyteller.”
Sir Martin was privileged to be the Herman Wouk Chair in Modern Jewish Studies at the University of California, San Diego for two months in 2002.
One of our upcoming projects is to have an exhibit of Sir Martin's postcards highlighting the (ancient?) practice of writing, stamping, and mailing post cards.
We are currently collecting information on what might be available, so if you were fortunate to be on Sir Martin's postcard list, please let me know the time and place he sent them from, and your connection to him.
