Churchill's D-Day - by Allen Packwood & Richard Dannatt (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Do you realize that by the time you wake up in the morning, twenty thousand men may have been killed?
--Winston Churchill to Clementine Churchill, 5 June 1944

From the world's greatest collection of Winston Churchill's personal papers comes the genesis, execution, and aftermath of D-Day through the eyes of the British Bulldog.

On June 6, 1944, the landings from the greatest armada of ships ever assembled began at 0630hrs. Overnight, paratroopers from the British 6th Airborne Division had secured the eastern flank of the landing zone with the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Division securing the western flank to reduce the risk of German counterattacks.

The Allied battle, codenamed Operation Overlord, had begun.

In Churchill's D-Day, Richard Dannatt former leader of the British Army, and Allen Packwood, one of the world's foremost Churchill experts, capture the British Bulldog's emotional turmoil and epic decision-making before, during, and after the world-defining action of D-Day. Culled from the official Churchill Papers at the Churchill Archives Centre, this book features historical documents, photographs, letters, and more, for a documentary Churchillian experience of D-Day leadership, military strategy, and humanity.

As the people of Great Britain awake to the news of the landings on their radios, the burden of making a formal statement to the House of Commons falls on the shoulders of their prime minister. While Churchill is aware of the huge responsibility he bears for the British soldiers and French civilians, knowing his political opponents will question his leadership, no one else in the world is aware of the conversations, innermost thoughts, and deliberations leading up to the decisions he's made and will continue to make on this day. Everything hangs in the balance.

Churchill's D-Day is history come alive--the Invasion of Normandy as the British Bulldog experienced it himself.

Review Quotes

Praise for Churchill's D-Day

Adds much new light to the greatest Combined Operation of all time...This is a fascinating book which reexamines events that liberated and thus shaped the future of Europe.

--Lord Nicholas Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill

Praise for the Work of General Sir Richard Dannatt

Boots on the Ground

A vital read for any politician making decisions about military intervention.

--The Times, must-read military books of the year

Leading from the Front

A passionate and searingly honest account of four decades of army service, it offers both a sober caution of the past and a carefully thought-out blueprint for the future.

--Sunday Telegraph

Praise for the Work of Allen Packwood

How Churchill Waged War

A detailed, engaging, and fair-minded study of Winston Churchill's wartime leadership.

--Journal of Military History

Letters for the Ages: Winston Churchill (coeditor)

An edifying peck at what 'Wine' wrote behind the scenes. A treasure trove of Churchill's correspondence.

--Washington Independent Review of Books

About the Author

Allen Packwood, BA, Phil (Cantab), is a Fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge, the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was awarded an OBE for services to archives and scholarship in the 2016 Queen's Birthday Honors. His book How Churchill Waged War was published in 2018, and he has since edited the Cambridge University Press Companion to Winston Churchill and coedited Letters for the Ages: The Private and Personal Letters of Sir Winston Churchill.

General Sir Richard Dannatt became Chief of the General Staff in 2006, leading the British Army as it fought two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He handed over his position forty years to the day from when he first joined the Army. In 2009, Her Majesty The Queen appointed him Constable of the Tower of Land, and in 2010, he was appointed as Crossbencher to the House of Lords. Sir Richard Dannatt is also Chairman of Trustees of the British Normandy Memorial.