Is it too much to say that the fate of the Western world hung in the balance on D-Day, June 6, 1944? Think of the possible consequences had the massive cross-Channel Allied attack on the shores of Normandy failed. Even after capturing the beaches and establishing a toehold on the Continent, it took the Allies almost another year of hard fighting to kick the Nazis out of France and conquer Hitler's Germany.
Failure 50 years ago -- and it could have happened -- would have emboldened Hitler. The myth of his invincibility would have soared. He would have had more time, prestige and power inside Germany (and Vichy France) to rule and ruin -- doubtless to add to the figure of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. (Hitler had mobile gas ovens ready to kill prisoners.) Allied defeat would have severely taxed Britain's morale and her already strained ability to fight. Would the heroic French Resistance have collapsed?
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the principal architects and the supreme commander of Operation Overlord, forever added to his luster at D-Day. Soon after that day when "the history of the world was changed" (to quote a war correspondent), Ike assumed command of the troops in the field and led them to victory. Afterward, his popularity at home guaranteed him the presidential nomination of either major party. When he accepted the GOP's offer in 1952 (and chose Richard Nixon as his running mate), Eisenhower left a permanent mark on history, not just American politics.
To date, the best exploration of that glorious (and terrible day) in 1944 has been Cornelius Ryan's 1959 book, "The Longest Day: June 6, 1944," now reissued in paperback (Touchstone Books, Simon and Schuster, 338 pages, $11). Ryan, a journalist and correspondent at D-Day who is now dead, did his homework. He interviewed hundreds of survivors, from German foot soldiers to the top brass in the United States. He read diaries, regimental histories and war reports.
"The Longest Day" (and also its Hollywood incarnation with a star-studded cast) is still a crisp, readable, reliable, action-packed account. Ryan's eye for telling anecdotes combined with an awareness that war is always, finally, about human beings -- as well as tactics and tanks -- has enabled his book to hold up well.
Anyone hungering for more on the first 24 hours of the Normandy Invasion -- and D merely stands for the first day -- should turn to Stephen Ambrose's monumental "D-Day, June 6, 1944" (Simon and Schuster, 655 pages, $30). Dr. Ambrose needs twice as many pages as Ryan did because he knows so much about what he calls "the climactic battle of World War II." (The Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 might be thought climactic, but by then the direction of the war was clear.)
Readers of Dr. Ambrose's earlier, authoritative works will know to expect a sprinting narrative studded with detail and enlivened by stinging arguments. He is never shy about thrusting his chips on the table. He knows he has aces to play. His two-volume, highly favorable biography of Eisenhower is still respected; he needed three installments to get Nixon explained, and often defended.
A veteran scholar of military history, Dr. Ambrose begins "D-Day" with the passionate argument that the invasion's success represented "a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism." U.S. servicemen knew they were fighting for freedom; this made them better soldiers, sailors and flyboys. The German army had many fine units, but it was hardly the invincible force some have said. Too many in Hitler's Wehrmacht at Normandy were browbeaten conscripts, some from conquered lands.
Dr. Ambrose explores the great buildup of an armada of more than 155,000 troops, thousands of jeeps, "swimming" tanks, bazookas, 12,000 aircraft and 5,333 vessels -- more ships, one admiral noted, "than there were in all the world when Elizabeth I was Queen of England." This force, Dr. Ambrose writes, "was the greatest mass movement of armed forces in the history of the British and American armies."
No one who was at Omaha Beach that day, or who looks at the many photographs Dr. Ambrose includes, will easily forget the mangled bodies, many of them floating in the surf alongside disabled landing vessels and tanks. For more images see Donald Goldstein, et al., "D-Day Normandy: The Story and Photographs" (Brassey's, 180 pages, $30.)
Ernie Pyle, the correspondent whose dispatches in World War II became classics, shook his head at the carnage on Omaha Beach and called the final success a "miracle." No, says Dr. Ambrose, who is in many ways an old-fashioned but hardheaded romantic about war, "it was infantry."
Is the historian a partisan? Yes, but years of research convinced him that D-Day was a great success. Luck, of course, played its part -- the weather, while not great, made the Channel crossing and landing rough, but possible. More than fate, it was leadership, planning, training, the colossus of American industry and raw courage in the field that did the trick. Only Allied Intelligence, with its failure to take into account the French hedgerows, is faulted in Dr. Ambrose's pages.
He constantly criticizes German leadership. Hitler kept his commanders divided, too terrified to make independent moves. The Fuhrer fixated on the Pas de Calais as the invasion site, fortified it and concentrated valuable troops there, and refused to move them for two weeks after D-Day. He ordered his prize weapon, the V-1 rocket, fired at London (where it did little damage) rather than at U.S. warships punishing Germans at Normandy.
Dr. Ambrose enlivens virtually every page with a human-interest story, whether it's the uses soldiers found for condoms or Field Marshall Erwin Rommel handing out accordions to German troops that had pleased him. The German high command preferred to operate from a luxurious Parisian hotel. Eisenhower picked humble digs in London.
The home front merits a chapter in this expansive, definitive account of D-Day and America. The news of the invasion stopped the country cold. Church bells tolled. The Lord's Prayer sprang to many lips. Baseball games were canceled. Stores and factories closed. Even the money moguls on Wall Street delayed stock trading for all of two minutes for prayer. Prices then soared.
Dr. Ambrose concentrates his attention on the common man, who was the real hero that day. There are references to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, Ike's field commander on D-Day. Dr. Ambrose doesn't like "Monty" very much, or share Monty's exalted opinion of himself and disdain for Yanks. Eisenhower's subordinates, weary of Montgomery's arrogance, dubbed him "Chief Big Wind."
Montgomery doesn't fare much better in Norman Gelb's "Ike and Monty: Generals at War" (William Morrow, 480 pages, $25). Here, too, Monty's hauteur appears in stark contrast to Ike's openness.
Eisenhower betrayed his nervousness by smoking four packs of cigarettes a day. Montgomery carried a swagger stick. Ike listened; Monty talked. The British commander barely concealed his contempt for the farm boy from Abilene, Kan. Ike worked smoothly with his superiors, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gen. George Marshall. On the eve of D-Day, Montgomery refused to allow Winston Churchill, the prime minister, to attend a key briefing session.
Eisenhower bore his swaggering subordinate with patience until was forced to demote him and take his place in the field. Eisenhower said in a moment of exasperation: "Monty is a good man to serve under; a difficult man to serve with; and an impossible man to serve over."
In "Ike and Monty," Mr. Gelb, author of a number of books on World War II, has written an engaging study for the general reader.
Specialists, or those who want to think hard about World War II's longest day, will find much to concentrate their minds in the essays collected by Theodore Wilson in "D-Day 1944" (University Press of Kansas, 420 pages, $45). Essays range from "The Air Campaign," not the finest part of D-Day, to a sensitive piece on the French people at Normandy. The scholars agree: The Normandy invasion is to be celebrated, as well as studied.
U.S. survivors of D-Day offer a loud amen. For more than a decade, they've been tape-recording their memories for the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, headed by Dr. Ambrose. Almost to a man, the veterans consider their day (and years in World War II) their finest hour.
That's not to say they didn't know fear. They cried, they cowered, they threw up -- but they endured. While none would ever want to go through it again, they wouldn't trade their memories or medals for mere money. Such truths are revealed over and over again in "Voices of D-Day" (Louisiana State University Press, 310 pages, $24.95) edited by Ronald J. Drez, and in David Kenyon Webster's memoir, "Parachute Infantry" (Louisiana State University Press, 262 pages, $29.95).
A soldier's tone pervades these books: pride, patriotism, duty, honesty, unwillingness to complain, courage, an acknowledgment that life can be hard, unfair, cruel, capricious and finally mysterious.
Many in Mr. Drez's pages admit they feared dying. They beseeched God to spare their lives, or their friends. If they had to die, they hoped to die with courage. They felt, as one survivor put it, "the cold fingers of fear." They remember as though it were yesterday administering morphine to a comrade whose chin had just been shot off, or who was slowly bleeding to death -- and knew it.
Some thought of striking a deal with God. One youngster, before landing on Omaha Beach, prayed that if his life was spared, he'd become a priest. "Then I thought that was a bad deal, and especially a bad bargain, either for Him or for me, so I said I'd take my chances."
There were about 5,000 Allied casualties on D-Day; no one knows the exact figure. As one looks down on Omaha Beach, one sees an American cemetery. On the chapel wall an inscription quietly admonishes: "Think not only upon their passing. Remember the glory of their spirit."
Dr. Clayton is the Harry A. Logan Sr. Professor of History at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa.