This book covers the invasion of Europe by the Allies from the landings in Normandy to the liberation of Paris. As the subtitle indicates, most of the space is devoted to the fighting in Normandy. This was almost unimaginably savage, not least for the French civilians. ‘It is a sobering thought that 70,000 French civilians were killed by allied action during the course of the war, a figure which exceeds the total number of British killed by German bombing.’ Yet the ‘cruel martyrdom of Normandy’ spared the rest of France. Continue reading