US Navy, Destroyers
USS Corry
USS Harding
USS Satterlee
US Navy, Command and Transport Ships
USS Ancon
USS Bayfield
USS Samuel Chase
USS Shubrick
Utah beach(map)
V-1 flying bomb (‘Diver’)
‘anti-Diver’ operations
Valognes
Vannes
Varaville
Vaucelles
Vercors, FFI battle
Verrières ridge
Vichy regime (Etat français)
Viénot, Pierre
Vierville (Cotentin)
Vierville-sur-Mer (Omaha)
Villebaudon
Villedieu-les-Poêles
Villers-Bocage (map)
Vimoutiers
Vire, town
Vire, river and valley
Volksdeutsche
Waffen-SS
advance to the front
discipline
and Hitler
indoctrination
morale
rivalry with German Army
Waffen-SS, Corps
I SS Panzer
II SS Panzer
Waffen-SS, Divisions
1st SS Pz-Div Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler
2nd SS Pz-Div Das Reich
9th SS Pz-Div Hohenstaufen
10th SS Pz-Div Frundsberg
12th SS Pz-Div Hitler Jugend
17th SS Pzgr-Div Götz von Berlichingen
Waffen-SS, Regiments etc.
1st SS Pzgr-Rgt
2nd SS Pz-Rgt
Deutschland-Pzgr-Rgt
Führer-Pzgr-Rgt
19th SS Pzgr-Rgt
20th SS Pzgr-Rgt
21st SS Pzgr-Rgt
25th SS Pzgr-Rgt
26th SS Pzgr-Rgt
37th SS Pzgr-Rgt
38th SS Pzgr-Rgt
101st SS Heavy Pz Bn
102nd SS Heavy Pz Bn
Wagner, Gen Eduard
War damage
Warlimont, Gen d. Art Walter
Warsaw uprising
Weintrob, Maj David
Weiss, Lt Robert
Westover, Lt John
Weyman, Brig Gen
Whistler, Lt Rex
Whitehead, Don
Williams, Brig E. T.
Wilmot, Chester
Witt, Brigadeführer Fritz
Wittmann, Obersturmführer Michael
Witzleben, GFM.
Wolfsschanze, Rastenburg
Wood, Maj Gen John S.
Ziegelmann, ObLt
Zimmermannn, GenLt Bodo
Acknowledgements
College Park, Maryland; Dr Conrad Crane, director of the US Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and his staff; the staff of the National Archives at Kew; the Trustees and staff of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives; Alain Talon at the Archives Départementales de la Manche; Frau Jana Brabant at the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg-im-Breisgau; and Frau Irina Renz of the Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte in Stuttgart. As well as Sebastian Cox, I am also grateful to Clive Richards, the senior researcher at the Air Force Historical Branch, for his assistance.
At the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Dr Gordon H. Mueller, Jeremy Collins and Seth Paridon could not have been more welcoming while I worked on the Eisenhower Center archive. I was also deeply touched by the kindness of everyone at the Mémorial de Caen: Stéphane Grimaldi, Stéphane Simonnet, Christophe Prime and Marie-Claude Berthelot, who put up with me for so long and so often.
I also owe a great deal to those who so kindly lent me their own diaries and letters or those of their parents. I am most grateful to David Christopherson, who sent me the diary of his father, Colonel Stanley Christopherson; Professor J. L. Cloudsley-Thompson; James Donald; L. B. Fiévet (the great-nephew of Raoul Nordling); Brigadier P. T. F. Gowans, OAM; Toby and Sarah Helm for the diary of their father, Dr Bill Helm; the late Myles Hildyard; and Charles Quest-Ritson for the collected letters of his father, Lieutenant T. T. Ritson, RHA. Others, such as Morten Malmø, Miles d’Arcy-Irvine and Philip Windsor-Aubrey, have offered leads and supplementary material, and William Mortimer Moore sent me his unpublished biography of General Leclerc. Dr Lyubov Vinogradova and Michelle Miles have helped with research and Angelica von Hase has again checked my translation and provided many useful details.
Once more, this whole project has been immeasurably assisted by Andrew Nurnberg, my literary agent for the last quarter of a century, by my editor Eleo Gordon at Penguin and by Lesley Levene, the copy-editor. But as always, my greatest thanks go to my wife, Artemis Cooper, who has edited, corrected and improved the text from start to finish.
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS
ADdC Archives départementales du Calvados, Caen
AdM Archives de la Manche, Saint-Lô
AFRHA Air Force Research Historical Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama
AHB Air Historical Branch, Ministry of Defence, Northwood
AN Archives Nationales, Paris
AVP Archives de la Ville de Paris
AVPRF Arkhiv Vneshnoi Politiki Rossiiskii Federatsii (Foreign Policy Archives of the Russian Federation), Moscow
BA-MA Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg-im-Breisgau
BD Bruce Diary, Papers of David Bruce, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia
BfZ-SS Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Sammlung Sterz, Stuttgart
CAC Churchill Archive Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge
CMH Center of Military History, Washington, DC
CRHQ Centre de Recherche d’Histoire Quantitative, University of Caen
CWM/MCG Canadian War Memorial/ Mémorial Canadien de la Guerre
DDEL Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas
DTbA Deutsches Tagebucharchiv, Emmendingen
DWS Department of War Studies, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
ETHINT European Theater Historical Interrogations, 1945, USAMHI
FMS Foreign Military Studies, USAMHI
HP Harris Papers, RAF Museum, Hendon
IfZ Archiv des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte, Munich
IHTP-CNRS Reports from the German Military Commander in France and the synthesis of the reports from the French prefects 1940-44, edited by the German Historical Institute Paris and the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, revised by Regina Delacor, Jürgen Finger, Peter Lieb, Vincent Viet and Florent Brayard
IMT International Military Tribunal
IWM Imperial War Museum archives, London
LHCMA Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, London
LofC Library of Congress, The Veterans’ History Project, Washington, DC
MdC Mémorial de Caen archives, Normandy
MHSA Montana Historical Society Archives
NA II National Archives II, College Park, Maryland
NAC/ANC National Archives of Canada/Archives Nationales du Canada
NWWIIM-EC National World War II Museum, Eisenhower Center archive, New Orleans
OCMH-FPP Office of the Chief of Military History, Forrest Pogue Papers, Forrest C. Pogue’s interview notes for Supreme Command, Washington, 1954, now with USAMHI
PDDE The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Vol. III, The War Years, edited by Alfred D. Chandler, Baltimore, MD, 1970
PP Portal Papers, Christ Church Library, Oxford
ROHA Rutgers Oral History Archive
SHD-DAT Service Historique de la Défense, Département de l’Armée de Terre, Vincennes
SODP Senior Officers’ Debriefing Program, US Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
SWWEC Second World War Experience Centre archive, Horsforth, Leeds