Normandy in the Time of Darkness
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This narrative history tells the story of the German occupation of Normandy and Northern France in the years from the fall of the country in the summer of 1940 through to liberation four years later. Over these years, the region was pivotal to the strategic thinking of the occupying German forces as well as the British and the other Allied nations with severe implications for the region's population.
On the coast vast defences were built up, and large numbers of German troops were stationed throughout the region, all in the midst of the local population. Throughout the occupation, as the local population struggled with the twin aims of leading their lives and dealing with a military occupation, innumerable decisions were made about individual defiance and co-operation. At the same time the Resistance and Allied agents were working clandestinely against the German military.
Throughout the occupation the civilians as well as the German military were in the front line - Allied bombing of ports and other strategically important sites killed tens of thousands, and many more lost their homes or became refugees. Much of the story is told in the words of French, German and Allied participants, including last letters of executed hostages and résistants, accounts of everyday life and eyewitness reports of aerial, naval and ground combat operations during the Liberation. Followed the Allied invasion in June 1944, battle raged throughout Normandy for the next three months - a period when the success of the invasion and the war was held in the balance. Only when the Allies broke out of Normandy did the liberation of France become a reality but at the cost of massive destruction. This is the story of the nightmare that was Northern France's war.
