BUILDING FOR BATTLE: Hitler's D-Day Defences

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What awaited the Allied landing forces -- many of them suffering the effects of sea sickness when delivered into the surf on June 6, 1944 -- were key elements in the formidable defenses of Hitler's vaunted 'Atlantic Wall'.

The Wall was a 2500-mile chain of various types of fortifications stretching from the North Cape to the Bay of Biscay. That portion of the German defenses between Caen to the east and Cherbourg to the west was particularly menacing, due largely to the planning and implementations of Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel, appointed by Hitler to take charge of the Atlantic Wall defenses. Includes 75 color illustrations and 75 black and white illustrations.

This revisits many of the locations within the five-beach landing area of the invasion forces. It focuses on the various aspects of the German fortifications, the types of defensive systems employed against the American, British, and Canadian invaders, and the results experienced by both invaders and defenders in the Allied struggle to gain and hold possession of that pathway to Berlin.