Summary Of The Longest Day By Cornelius Ryan

This well written book, The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan is well named as this book is about the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France June 6,1944. Cornelius Ryan does a fantastic job of giving the reader multiple points of views, as he gives the reader the view of the Allied, German, and French resistance leading up to the invasion. At the beginning he begins to go over the different circumstances that lead to the invasion of Normandy to continue as planned, such as the German panzer division stayed inland, German leader Rommel, in charge of the Normandy area, left to go home for his wife’s birthday, and the change of the weather for the better. As the book begins to go into further detail about the invasion itself you will begin to realize

So a large sum of German forces was focused on that particular area, which meant not as many forces as the Germans could have used at Normandy were there. This D-Day invasion will be known to some as the beginning of the end of the Second World War in Europe. When it comes to the actual invasion its self he tells the reader about the airborne drops deep behind enemy lines in the middle of the night, and begins to go into depth about their mission to begin to make a way for the seaborne landings. He goes into detail about certain events that happened that night such as St-Mere-Eglise, the Merville Battery attack and then he discuses how the German forces reacted to these events. He begins to go into great detail about the events that took place throughout the invasion of the beaches. He discusses into depth about Omaha Beach and the just how awful it was on that beach for U.S.

The lesson I learned from these mistakes made by the Germans is that it is better to be over prepared and take action on things rather then to blow something off thinking it is nothing or not a big deal and it cost you. For instance, if I am a 2nd lieutenant of a platoon and we got word from some locals that ISIS is planning on attacking our location that night I would over prepare instead of blow the warning off because I’m not sure whether or not I can trust them. The saying it is better to be safe then sorry definitely is the lesson I would say I take out of this particular part, because you definitely do not want to be the man in charge of those soldiers that get killed or wounded due to you not taking action on something that could have easily been prevented if you would have taken the steps to do so. One lesson I would take from the Allies in what I gathered is how well thought out and planned this invasion was. The main lesson I think you can take from this is even though there were a ton of casualties on the Allied side, they were still able to accomplish the mission of getting a foothold in France do to how well planned this mission was helping prevent many mistakes that could have taken place. As long as you