‘You can’t expect the armies of a democracy to fight the same way as the armies of a totalitarian regime’

In D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, best-selling historian Antony Beevor (Stalingrad, The Fall of Berlin 1945) has delved into World War II’s most worked-over turf. As he burrowed into new sources, his keen eye for telling details also turned up some larger issues that have recently begun to surface—like the price the French paid for liberation. Other themes emerged from his parsing of the U.S. Army’s postbattle interviews: “These are absolute gold, far more important than interviewing living veterans, because they’re immediately contemporary to the events. Not that later memories are dishonest, just that they’re often filtered through what veterans have read and seen since.”

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Why D-Day?
There’d been no general history of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy since the 1980s. Since then, a huge amount of material—diaries, letters, and so forth—was deposited in different countries. Diaries give you the eyewitness accounts you need to build up the level of detail that conveys what being there was like. There’s also been a tendency to separate D-Day and the battle for Normandy. That left a lot to be reassessed.

For instance?
The very nature of the fighting. One of the great, terrible paradoxes is how the armies of democratic nations tend to use bombs and shells to reduce their casualties, leading to far greater civilian casualties. So the issue of French casualties needed to be examined.

How did you approach it?
From its context. French-American relations were excellent in 1940. Huge numbers of Americans were living in France. The American ambassador was entrusted to negotiate the surrender of Paris.

Why did relations sour?
Roosevelt was very influenced by Admiral Leahy and French figures in Washington; they deeply distrusted DeGaulle, thinking he was an adventurer and potential dictator. Churchill welcomed DeGaulle in 1940 but then found him exasperating. He didn’t handle DeGaulle very well, and DeGaulle was ready to bite the hand that fed him, out of French pride. Yet if he hadn’t had that intense belief in France, he would never have achieved what he did.

For example?
The Americans, even more than the British, were unaware of the threat of civil war in France. So they failed to understand why DeGaulle’s priority was sorting that out and getting regular French troops to Paris, in case of a communist uprising. Whether an Allied military government, as Roosevelt mistakenly wanted, or a French provisional government should administer France was crucial. Churchill was more sympathetic; he realized the liberation of France should actually involve the French.

And the Resistance?
It is a part of the myth that France liberated herself, a necessary bandage to 1940’s deep wounds. But Patton’s remark, “Better than expected, less than advertised,” is slightly unfair.

Why?
He should have realized how much the Third Army in Brittany owed to the Resistance. He couldn’t have released so many of his divisions for the advance on the Seine if it hadn’t been for the Maquis: from the start, they interfered with German communications and provided good intelligence.

Why were so many French civilians casualties?
Allied generals like Bradley and Montgomery had not appreciated how inaccurate heavy bombers were. Only about 20 percent of bombs fell within five kilometers of the target. That’s pretty terrifying.

Why didn’t they adjust?
Bomber Harris, one of the most obstinate characters in the whole war, refused to acknowledge this—partly, as with the U.S. Army Air Corps, because of interservice rivalries. Both were very conscious of being junior services and were desperate to establish their strategic credentials. This tended to make them ignore deficiencies.

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