Forget What You’ve Been Told About D-Day

0:00 John Tonkin’s secret mission 1:32 Germany prepares for the invasion 4:49 The Allied railway campaign 8:02 Bombing, French lives, and the moral cost 12:24 Fortitude and the deception of Calais 15:40 Why German reserves arrived too late 18:55 Tonkin, Das Reich, and railway sabotage 27:46 The fate and legacy of the SAS men The battle for Normandy was being fought months before the landing craft reached the beaches. I follow the dangerous mission of British SAS captain John Tonkin and the railway campaign designed to keep a German panzer division away from D-Day. I examine the Allied debate over railways, oil, bombing, French civilian casualties, and the deception operations that kept German reserves in the wrong place. I also trace how air power, bridges, sabotage, and the French Resistance slowed German reinforcements. Finally, I look at Tonkin’s survival, the fate of his captured men, and the evidence behind the argument that D-Day was decided as much by railway maps and French forests as by the fighting on the beaches.