Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944 (Latin America at War)

"If the Germans knew the Allies were going to invade, why were defenses in Normandy so unevenly prepared on June 6, 1944? Countdown to D-Day offers a unique perspective to answering this question through its detailed day-by-day perspective to the months leading up to D-Day - vividly tracing the daily activities and machinations of German High Command as they prepare for an expected Allied invasion." -- Back cover. A WWII historian takes readers inside the day-to-day drama of Nazi military commanders in occupied Europe as they brace for the Allied invasion. In December of 1943, with Allied forces planning to invade Fortress Europe, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is named General Inspector of the Atlantic Wall. His mission is to assess their readiness, and what he finds disgusts him. The famed Atlantikwall is nothing but a paper tiger, woefully unprepared for the forces being massed across the English Channel. His task—to turn back the Allied invasion—already seems hopeless. The crust old theater commander, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, awaits the inevitable defeat from a plush villa outside Paris. The corps commander on the ground in Normandy attempts to fulfill Rommel’s demands, but supplies are woefully inadequate. Meanwhile, all focus is on defending the coastline at Calais—the area that High Command believes to be the Allies’ most likely objective. All of the Western Theater commanders are subject to the whims of Adolf Hitler, hundreds of miles away and issuing orders that are increasingly divorced from the reality of the war. Countdown to D-Day takes a detailed day-to-day journal approach tracing the daily activities and machinations of the German High Command as they try to prepare for the Allied invasion. Part I: Der Atlantikwall 1 December 1943 2 January 1944 3 February 1944 4 March 1944 Plate section1 Part II: Les Sanglots Longs 1 Spring 2 April 1944 3 May 1944 Plate Section 2 4 June 1944. An accurate, exciting diary-like chronicle of the day-to-day machinations of the German generals as they struggle to prepare to meet the enemy in the West.