"Hitler spent hours studying the maps showing German installations along the Atlantic Wall. He demanded reports on building progress, the thickness of the concrete, the kind of concrete used, the system used to put in the steel reinforcement - these reports often ran to more than ten pages. But, after ordering the creation of the greatest fortification in history, he never bothered to inspect any part of it. After leaving Paris in triumph in the summer of 1940, he did not set foot on French soil again until mid-June 1944. Yet he declared this was the decisive theater!" Chapter 1, pg. 38.

"That a cross-Channel attack against the Atlantic Wall could even be contemplated was a tribute to what Dwight Eisenhower called 'the fury of an aroused democracy.' What made D-Day possible was the never-ending flow of weapons from American factories, the Ultra and the Double Cross System, victory in the...