Richard Dannatt and Allen Packwood, Churchill’s D-Day: The British Bulldog’s Fateful Hours During the Normandy Invasion (London: Hodder & Stoughton; New York: Diversion Books, 2024), 352 pages, $29.99, Amazon $20.70, Kindle $18.99.

There is something satisfying about a confluence of important anniversaries. Churchill’s D-Day, marking the eightieth anniversary of the Normandy landings, and the 150th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s birth, fall together gratifyingly. This book about Normandy is well-written, sensible, and above all, instructive.

The authors are Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, and General Sir Richard Dannatt, former Chief of the British Army. Together they approach D-Day as the high point in a long, unfolding tale. The road to Normandy followed many twists and turns, successes and setbacks. in a long and complex evolution.

Normandy in context

While Churchill is more often considered in the light of 1940, he sits at the heart of the Normandy narrative. Any thorough study of the factors that led to D-Day’s success must ponder Churchill’s role. Yet that role is a matter of some controversy. An intermittent but longstanding criticism is that he deliberately delayed and obstructed attempts to launch the cross-channel assault, thus prolonging the war.

Churchill’s D-Day demonstrates that the best way to address this charge is to consider D-Day in its context, as the culmination of years of planning and preparation. Equally important is the need to consider the challenges of Churchill’s wartime leadership.

The first chapter is titled “Hindsight is a Wonderful Thing.” That is certainly an understatement. Historians can examine an accomplished deed from every angle and form a fulsome judgment. But hindsight, as that title suggests, can be seriously misleading. In terms of historical understanding, it can lead to the casual acceptance of facile judgements. The essential uncertainty of human life and decisions made at the time are removed.

The Churchillian method

Dannatt and Packwood help us to escape this trap by focusing on events “as they were seen at the time.” That means, as events were seen by those directly involved, whose decisions did not necessarily guarantee success. Upon their shoulders fell the weight of awful uncertainty, grim possible outcomes. Accordingly the authors reproduce contemporary documents and a breakout text, showing the many difficult military and political questions.

This approach mirrors that of Churchill himself, as explained in his memoirs of the Second World War. His narrative was based on “directives, telegrams, and minutes upon the daily conduct of the war and of British affairs.” These he composed as events unfolded. “Only in this way,” he continued, “can the reader understand the actual problems we had to face as defined by the knowledge then in our possession.”

Churchill’s method reminds us that human beings must make their way the best they can with limited knowledge in an uncertain world. The decisions of politics and war are made with no guarantee of success. Similarly, Churchill’s D-Day invites the reader to put Churchill’s decisions and actions into the context that surrounded them. This removes the temptations of hindsight, enabling a true understanding of Churchill’s leadership.

How and when?

To understand Operation Overlord, Dannatt and Packwood trace its development from the start of the war. In 1940 France had fallen and the British had been driven from the continent. Yet Churchill never ceased to think about returning, liberating France, and taking the fight to the enemy. The questions were: how and when? Churchill formed Combined Operations to contemplate “a lodgment on the continent.” But Britain alone lacked the strength to strike a decisive blow.

The road ahead was long, and the strength of allies would be needed alongside Britain’s. Some of the enormous practical difficulties would diminish, though they never disappeared. But other, new complications would be added.

Churchill found more than one occasion to reflect that the only thing worse than fighting with allies was fighting without them. Opportunity came when Hitler turned away from Britain and attacked Russia in June 1941. Churchill could only be thankful for the breathing room and, despite his past criticisms, welcomed the Soviet ally. Then after Pearl Harbor, America joined in, agreeing to a “Germany first” strategy. Churchill greeted the news as a herald of deliverance and ultimate victory.

Fighting with allies

Both the Soviets and Americans would prove trying allies at times, particularly regarding the invasion of Europe. Stalin continuously demanded the opening of a Second Front to relieve the German pressure on Russia. In Churchill’s opinion, Stalin lacked appreciation for the difficulties involved in such an operation. The Americans, he thought, were over-eager to invade France, and also minimized the difficulties. Churchill was zealous for American participation, but steered them toward preparatory operations in North Africa and the Mediterranean.

In November 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met at Teheran to discuss military operations in the following year. As always, first on Stalin’s agenda was a cross-Channel front. Having little patience for indirect action, he minimized the importance of Mediterranean operations. Resources being expended in Italy, he argued should be redirected to Western Europe. Launching “Overlord” in France was his constant theme.

The conference frustrated Churchill because Stalin’s bluntly stated positions were closer to those of the American military planners than to his. It also became clear that the partnership Churchill did so much to nurture with America was an unequal one. United States advantages in resources, production and troops were only amplified by differing strategic aims and opinions.

Churchill’s priorities

Troubled by the increasing camaraderie between Roosevelt and Stalin, Churchill attempted to correct their misconceptions about British views. He had, he explained, always favored a cross-Channel invasion. He also believed the Mediterranean operations were worthwhile, and worried about narrowing Allied options to one throw of the dice.

Critics have charged that Churchill’s maneuvering merely masked his real concerns. The primary criticism is that Churchill was haunted by the ghosts of the failed amphibious landing on Gallipoli in 1915. The unsuccessful British intervention in Norway in 1940 supposedly reinforced his opinion. Dannatt and Packwood note that Churchill’s war memoirs demonstrate that he was aware of this charge. There he pointed out that he had been responsible for creating much of the apparatus that made Normandy possible. Their book supports that claim in detail.

It is true that Churchill in the past had experienced the hazards of amphibious operations. But his appreciation of the risks, Dannatt and Packwood argue, did not cause him to agonize fruitlessly, or to dismiss Normandy out of hand. Rather, it spurred him to insist that the operation be planned and executed with precision.

We see clearly in these pages that Churchill’s effort was to ensure that preconditions for success were met before the assault was launched. British and American interservice cooperation, combat experience, mastery of sea and air, sufficient landing craft, and resources and manpower all ensured that the initial attack could succeed and be reinforced. None of them could be achieved immediately.

“Empire first”

A second criticism, more common recently, is that Churchill eschewed a 1942-43 invasion in order to preserve the British Empire. Dannatt and Packwood equally demolish this theory.

It is true that Churchill highly valued the British Empire. He said so. That concern was tied up with the shape of the postwar world, and the threat of Soviet expansionism. It seems clear that the Americans should have shared his worries to a greater extent than they did. But the authors marshal a host of documents to demonstrate that Churchill’s primary commitment was always the end of Nazi Germany. Honestly assessed, Churchill never subordinated that goal for imperial concerns.

Hindsight tempts us to underrate the difficulties of past successes and to discount the uncertainties and competing demands weighing upon those who made decisions. We often want momentous events to be straightforward and easy to evaluate. In reality, they never are. Churchill’s D-Day provides us with something far more valuable than retroactive approval or disapproval. It offers a picture of a great statesman grappling with immense difficulties, dangers, and possibilities. In pursuing this end, this book becomes more than an historical account; it becomes a source of political and military education.

The author

Justin D. Lyons, Professor of Political Science at Cedarville University in Ohio, is author of “Churchill and de Toqueville;” “Churchill on Statesmanship: Pope Innocent XI”; “Churchill, Shakespeare and Agincourt”; “On War: Churchill, Thucydides, and the Teachable Moment”; and “Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar: Parallels and Inspirations.”

Related articles

Andrew Roberts, “D-Day +80: how the Allies Won at Normandy and Changed History,” 2024.

Bradley P. Tolppanen, “The Churchill Day Book: Beginning of the End, 1944,” 2024.

Richard M. Langworth, “Bowman on Churchill and D-Day: ‘What’s Not Trite is Not True,” 2023.

Raymond A. Callahan: “George Marshall and America at War (2),” 2024.

The Churchill Project, “Testing Churchill at Teheran,” 2016.