Eisenhower and the Road To D-Day
BOOK REVIEW: The Light of Battle, Eisenhower, D-Day and the Birth of the American Superpower
By Michel Paradis / Mariner Books
Reviewed by: Doug Wise
The Reviewer — Douglas H. Wise served as Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from August 2014 until August 2016. Following 20 years of active duty in the Army where he served as an infantry and special operations officer, he spent the remainder of his career at CIA.
REVIEW — As we approach the 80th anniversary of the extraordinary events of D-Day, it is no surprise the attention of the world turns towards a celebration of the courage and sacrifices of The Greatest Generation and the Greatest Generation’s leaders. Our reconnection to these events of 80 years ago is beneficially enhanced by the publishing of award-winning author, Michel Paradis’ well-researched and exceptionally well-documented book The Light of Battle, Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower.
There have been many excellent books written about World War II, its causes and its history. Michel Paradis avoids competing with these many volumes. He has not gifted us here with a broad history of the Second World War, nor another full biography of an important military figure of that period. What he has skillfully given us is unique insight and perspectives on momentous events and momentous figures by shining a light on the most important six months of General Dwight Eisenhower’s professional life. These six months might also be described as the most important six months of modern history. This is the story of Eisenhower’s critical role as the commander of Operation Overlord, the experiences which made him successful in this impossible task and the forging of the character of a man who would in the future be known as the “leader of the free world.”
Rather than provide us a traditional timeline of the events leading up to D-Day, Paradis tells a complicated, yet familiar, history by stitching together the stories of Ike’s relationships with the key people in his life from his first assignment out of West Point to the last meeting with Allied leaders in London where he made the decision to send the Allied troops onto the brutal beaches of Normandy. Each chapter centers on an individual who was instrumental during this six months of Eisenhower’s story, whether they were a leadership mentor from early in his career, a family member, contemporary ally or antagonist. Rather than examining the role of these relationships from a dispassionate and external perspective, Paradis used newly discovered records, diaries, and first-hand accounts to allow us to see these relationships from Ike’s personal perspective. His prose lets us into Eisenhower’s private thoughts and allows us to be present at key discussions and meetings and to not just see and hear what Ike was seeing and hearing, but to feel what Ike was feeling. We get to see Eisenhower not as Eisenhower the outwardly confident general, but Eisenhower the person with his own fears, apprehension, and personal worries whether he was up to the existential task of freeing Europe. Paradis puts it best when he writes what Eisenhower was most certainly thinking, “There were so many uncertainties. No easy answers. And everything … was now subject to intense scrutiny…” While The Light of Battle is an emotional literary journey, Paradis’ extraordinary talents as a historian and writer figure very prominently when he poignantly describes when Eisenhower sat down to pen the message he would have to release if the invasion failed. Through Paradis’ words we feel Ike’s pen in our hand, we hear scratching on the paper, we share his struggles to properly capture what would have been a failure born out of courage and sacrifice, and to take deep, personal ownership of that failure. Through this vignette we intimately see the character of a man in very human terms and immediately recognize it is the trait which brought him to this point in history and ultimately would propel him into our Nation’s highest office.
It is an intimately personal look at the period of time in the six months preceding June of 1944. This book reveals how Eisenhower saw these six months, not how a historian saw them. It is educational and entertaining in the same moment, highly readable and gripping. The Light of Battle will be a welcome addition to any World War II afficionado’s library.
The Light of Battle earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
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