June 6, 1944

Shortly after midnight, the BBC interrupts its program and broadcasts lines from a poem by Paul Verlaine: The long sobs of the violins of autumn wound my heart with a monotonous languor.

The "longest day of the war" has begun.

Almost 75 years have passed since the Normandy landing, or D-Day as it became known in history, the largest seaborne military landing.
The outcome of World War II was being decided on that cold morning of June 6, 1944. If the Allied forces managed to establish a beachhead in northern France, the road to victory would be open and Nazi Germany would suffer a serious blow.

An epic battle followed:
23,400 paratroopers, 5,300 tons of bombs, 20,000 armored vehicles, 7,000 ships, 156,000 men

In Giles Milton's new historical work, the events of that day are described from all perspectives through the stories of the survivors: the teenage American conscript, the elite German defender, the French resistance fighter. For the first time in a book, the authentic accounts of those trapped on the front line.