Overlord and Bagration: The Vice Closes

CHAPTER 12 · JUN–AUG 1944 · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

The summer of 1944 is the war’s great convergence — two hammer blows, three weeks apart, coordinated at the Tehran conference months before. On 6 June, 156,000 men land on five Normandy beaches behind history’s greatest deception: Operation Fortitude has convinced Berlin the real blow will come at Calais, and a phantom army under Patton keeps German reserves pinned there for seven decisive weeks.

The turn: Omaha Beach, morning of 6 June.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.