Book Review OVERLORD: THE D-DAY LANDINGS BIBLIOGRAPHICA

INFORMATION:
FORD, Ken and ZALOGA, Steven J. Oxford: Osprey Publishing,
2009, hardcover, sea pages, $27.-as, ISBN: an-1a4s03424-4
Reviewed by Lieutenant-Colonel Tod Strickland

 

 

Osprey is a well-known publishing house out of the UK that specializes in military
history, tackled with a fairly basic formula that works very well. Their basic concept
is to look at both sides in a given battle or campaign, painting a general strategic
overview and then going into tactical level detail that almost always appeals to
the amateur historian or military enthusiast. The formula works well because of
two factors. 

One is the calibre of historian that they get to write; many well-known
academics and more than the occasional up-and-comer have authored titles
in Osprey’s extensive library of military histories. Second, they generally do an
exceptional job ot making the events come to lite, through the use of excellent
multi-coloured maps and charts, a heavy reliance on photographs and well-written
narratives. Overlord: The D-Day Landings, co-authored by scholars Ken Ford and
Steven J. Zaloga, is one of their recent releases.

There can be little doubt that the D-Day landings were among the most significant events of the
Second World War and, although the subject of numerous other books, are certainly worth another
examination—particularly when one considers the rapid rate at which we are losing our veterans of this
notable event in world history. Looking back with the benefit of over sixty years of hindsight, one cannot help but be amazed at the scope and immensity of the task that both the Allies and the Axis had before them. That hundreds of thousands of men, machines and munitions would fight over strips of sand on the Atlantic coast of Europe is hard to conceive and without equal in contemporary military history. It is a topic that begs for study and understanding, and it is a natural choice for the authors, and Osprey, to tackle with a new book.

Unfortunately, this is not a “new” book and is instead a compilation of five different titles previously
published by Osprey as separate volumes. Although this has the benefit of speeding production of 

the book itself, it does introduce several issues, about which more will be said later. In general terms, the volume works from beach to beach, detailing the opposing forces and then going into detail on both the amphibious and airborne landings. With a few exceptions the scope has been deliberately limited to the events that took place on 06th June 1944 with very little detail on what occurred before or after.