Second Front

In June 1944, an Allied army of British, American, and Canadian troops sought to open up a Second Front in Normandy. But they were not only fighting to bring the Second World War to an end. After decades of Anglo-American struggle for dominance, they were also contending with one another—to determine who would ascend to global hegemony once Hitler’s armies fell.

Marc Milner traces this bitter rivalry as it emerged after the First World War and evolved during the fragile peace which led to the Second. American media and domestic politics dominated the Allied powers’ military strategy, overshadowing the contributions of Britain and the remarkably critical role played by Canada in establishing this Second Front.

Culminating in the decisive Normandy campaign, Milner shows how the struggle for supremacy between Churchill and Roosevelt changed the course of the Second World War—and how their rivalry shaped our understanding of the Normandy campaign, and the war itself.