Ten Days to D-Day: Citizens and Soldiers on the Eve of the Invasion

by David Stafford

Book Overview

Instead of retracing the much-dissected actions of heads of state, Stafford brings to life the preparations for history's most formidable invasion through the eyes of the ground-level participants.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316605611
• ISBN13: 9780316605618
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Windsor Jr. High-Kyle W.

No doubt one of my favorite books of all time. I got this book as a birthday present a year or two again, and kept on putting it off. I don't know why, I'm interested in the war, I just didn't start it for a while. But when I got into it I knew that I'd love it. It was researched down to... well, let's just say that if it's a minute detail that happened back then, it's in the book. And you can prove it by looking at the bibliography! But the book is so emotional and intense that once you get into it there's no putting it down. I loved this book and would recommend to anyone.

Fascinating "behind the scenes" history

Most books published about D-Day give scant mention to the background of the invasion, and concentrate on the invasion itself, and its aftermath. This extremely well-written book covers the 10 days that preceeded the invasion, through the lives not only of the important political and military folks involved, but also the common people. We share the lives of paratroopers, ground troops, signal interceptors, spies, prisoners, and others, and learn about their contributions, however small, to the ultimate success of the invasion. It is writing of personal history at its best, and we do get to be informed as to what happened to these people we grew to care about after the invasion. Several of them are still alive, and they, and the multitude of others who have gone to their rest deserve our eternal gratitude for what they all did for us that glorious 6th of June, 1944.

Superb contribution to understanding D-Day and people at war

There are so many aspects of this book that are praise worthy it's difficult to know where to start. The dramatic build up to the D-Day invasion. The superb pacing. The fully drawn historical figures. The variety of people and places depicted. The important contribution to our understanding of D-Day.David Stafford's "Ten Days to D-Day" is one of the best and most important works on World War II I've read in recent years. It is a testament to Stafford's amazing talents as a researcher and a writer. The author acquaints us with such disparate figures as Adolph Hitler, a young English woman supporting the war effort as a WREN, an American paratrooper, Charles DeGaulle, a Gestapo prisoner in Norway, a member of the French resistance to name a few. We follow these people and numerous others in the ten days before the greatest sea-to-land invasion ever contemplated. We share their anxieties, fears, hopes and plans. We get to know not only where they were in those ten days but how they got there. Stafford never lingers with any person to long, deftly going from one person to the next while ultimately still managing to give full justice to each story. Because of the breadth of characters, Stafford hardly ever needs to step away to offer perspective, it's there. He also eschews "cheating," almost never framing his stories with latter-day knowledge.This would be a useful to students of World War II especially those with a particular interest in D--Day. At the same time it would serve as a great introduction to the war and this aspect of it to a newcomer. Yet at the same time it would be an entertaining for someone just looking for a good read. Remarkable.

A Riveting Account of the Normandy Invasion

The iconography --- or, to be more accurate, the cinematography --- of the Normandy invasion is so compelling that it threatens to drown out all other discussion of the battle. The Airborne divisions, huddled aboard flimsy cargo planes, waiting to jump into the heart of darkness. German troopers in coastline bunkers, marveling at the line of ships, spreading across the horizon. Soaking-wet infantrymen going once more into the breach at the Omaha landing. The Rangers assaulting the guns of Pointe du Hoc. These are the images we remember, and treasure, but they are not the be-all and end-all of Normandy, nor could they be.TEN DAYS TO D-DAY is about the preparation and the waiting. "We defy augury," Hamlet tells us. "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all." The readiness, not the eventual conflict itself, is the theme of the book; the anxiety and the curiosity that enveloped the two sides, both waiting for the hammer-blow to fall, not knowing where or when, hostage to the weather and to fortune.David Stafford's book starts in medias res --- literally, in the middle of a daring parachute jump behind enemy lines. It is concerned with two groups of people --- one group familiar to the reader, the other group not. The familiar group is the generals and politicians and other assorted leaders who were making the preparations for what would come on June 6th, 1944. This is the group responsible for the high politics: determining where the Allied blow would fall on the German side, and ensuring strategic surprise, French cooperation and combat readiness on the Allied side. (This involves interesting trivia, like the details of Hitler's medical care and the kerfuffle regarding whether Churchill would be allowed to hit the beaches with the troops personally.) This is the group that you expect to read about --- Eisenhower, Rommel, Montgomery, DeGaulle, Roosevelt --- and Stafford does a stellar job of explicating their thoughts, feelings and strategies, right down to Eisenhower managing stress by putting invisible golf balls on his office carpet.The second group whose actions are highlighted in TEN DAYS TO D-DAY is much more diverse, having really only one thing in common. All of them were inveterate diarists, which means something. We are now, as of this writing, sixty years from June 1944, and the members of the D-Day generation are seeing their numbers dwindle into infinity. Interviews and oral histories are becoming increasingly more difficult to obtain. Stafford's choice --- going back into the library to retrieve diaries and letters --- is a sad one, but increasingly necessary.Stafford's diarists cover a wide swathe of the D-Day events, including some people who were completely uninvolved. The idea apparently is to choose the most interesting diary entries for the time frame, and that necessarily involves people who had little or nothing to do with the invasion. There i

As gripping as fiction, but more important

In Norway, a captured member of the Resistance keeps a secret diary by poking tiny holes in toilet paper. In the relative safety of Britain, a young member of the Women's Royal Naval Services, a Wren, works long, grueling hours underground, coding and decoding ships' messages. Also in Britain, a young Canadian soldier fights frustration and boredom, waiting for the order to move out. In France, a member of the Resistance listens anxiously to the BBC on a tiny radio hidden inside a soup can. A German soldier stationed in France writes home wishful assurances that all is well. TEN DAYS TO D-DAY follows these and many others as they count down the minutes to H-hour and what happenS when the signal is given. There is much pain and struggle ahead, but it marks the beginning of the end of the War.Drawing from diaries, official records and first-hand accounts, David Stafford has compiled a gripping history of extraordinary courage and sacrifice in the most dramatic, agonizing days of the European front in World War II. Especially appropriate at the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day, it is every bit as exciting as Tom Clancy's best. And it's all true.Reviewed at Myshelf.com