The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - Dennis Wheatley in World War II: a supplement

The final assault was not always going to be on Normandy …

General (later Field Marshal) Alexander

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There is a tendency to think that what happened in the past was somehow inevitable, but the assault on the Normandy beaches at D-Day as the means of the Allies final liberation of Europe was a far from unanimous decision, and there were many, including DW, who believed that an attack via ‘the soft underbelly of Europe’ would have been the better strategy.

However, as DW wrote in ‘The Deception Planners’:

‘… Nothing would any longer dissuade the Americans from a head-on assault against the well-defended and easily reinforced ‘Atlantic Wall’, so Churchill had to accept Overlord…’

DW himself believed strongly that it was a great mistake to take troops away from Italy in order to augment the numbers to be used in the Normandy invasion, and he quoted General Alexander (who was Johnny Bevan’s brother-in-law) as saying:

“Leave me my present strength in Italy, and I promise you that I will be in Vienna before Monty is in Berlin.”

The decision on Normandy was however made.