The Steel Wave - Part II of Jeff Shaara's WWII trilogy

The Steel Wave – Jeff Shaara

The second installment of his World War II trilogy, Shaara shares both the American and German perspective of the build up and execution of Operation Overlord – the Normandy invasion – D-Day – through the perspective of historical figures such as Eisenhower, Patton, Gavin, and Rommel, along with an assortment of fictional characters. Shaara intertwines the story of veteran units bloodied in North Africa and Sicily and newly formed divisions who will see their first action of the war on Omaha Beach and the hedgerows of Northern France, with the perspective of German units building the Atlantic Wall.

This historical-fiction offering humanizes the names and events we have read and studied associated with the Normandy invasion through fictional characters, some carried forward from Sharra’s first installment of the trilogy – The Rising Tide.

Shaara's works on WWII are a good read to accompany Rick Atkinson's - An Army at Dawn and The Day of Battle.

Reading The Steel Wave inspired me to also read Beyond Band of Brothers by Major Winters and Stanley Hirshson’s biography - General Patton, a Soldier’s Life.