The Calm Before the Storm: D-Day's Pivotal Preparations

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, 160,000 troops participated in the invasion of Normandy. Today just a few thousand of these veterans are still alive, with the youngest in their late nineties. As their voices, and those of the million combatants and leaders who swept into motion across Europe 80 years ago, fall silent and pass from living history, Garrett Graff has captured and compiled them in a new book: When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day.

Drawing on his project of sifting through and synthesizing 5,000 oral histories, today Garrett takes us back to what was arguably the most consequential day in modern history and helps unpack the truly epic sweep of the operation, which was hard to fathom even then, and has become even more difficult to grasp with the passage of time. We talk about how unbelievably involved the planning process for D-Day was, stories you may never have heard before, a couple of the myths around D-Day, and the sacrificial heroism born of this event that continues to live on.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• AoM Podcast Episode #1: We Who Are Alive and Remain
• AoM Article: The 70th Anniversary of D-Day — Remembrances from the Brave Men Who Were There
• AoM Podcast #514: Remembering D-Day 75 Years Later
• The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-day Sacrifice by Alex Kershaw
• AoM Article: How Eisenhwoer Made the D-Day Decision
• The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff

Connect With Garrett Graff

• Garrett's website