As the parachutists and glider troops of the U.S. and British airborne divisions went in on the night of June 5th, 1944, Allied shipping began massing out in the Channel. At dawn on June 6, waves of assault craft hit the Normandy beaches, a first step in restoring freedom to Europe. British, American, Canadian, Polish, and Free French troops began to stream ashore to storm the defenses of the Atlantic Wall in the teeth of overwhelming enemy firepower. Here Nigel Cawthorne tells the story of the largest and most meticulously organized seaborne invasions in the history of warfare, and he also details how the Allies began the process of consolidating the beachheads and pushing inland toward victory.