European retreat: Brexit shows we have learnt nothing from D-Day

Selective memories of wartime victories have fostered a fantasy of Britain and its place in the world today. Patrick Cockburn looks at how meticulous planning would have paid off in Brexit negotiations

American troops helping injured friends after their dinghy was hit by enemy fire during the D-Day landings (Getty)

Above all else, D-Day was a triumph of meticulous preparation by British naval commanders. Some 4,000 ships manoeuvred to land 156,000 soldiers together with their tanks, munitions and supplies in the right order and in the right places on a heavily defended coast. Crucial to winning the battle for Normandy was not only the initial landing but the ability to build up these forces at a faster pace than the German army was able to do.

Victory was won because the US and UK had more men and weapons than the enemy and they had foreseen and resolved many of the difficulties they would face once the invasion had begun. “In scope and thoroughness, in the complexity and scale of the problems solved, they [the royal navy plans] eclipse the renowned performance of the German General Staff from 1866 onwards,” writes Correlli Barnett in Engage the Enemy More Closely, his magnificent history of the royal navy in the Second World War. “They stand today as a never surpassed masterpiece of planning and staff work.”

The plan was drawn up by Admiral Bertram Ramsay, who organised the Dunkirk evacuation as well as the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942 and Sicily in 1943. Little known today, he was unquestionably the British air, sea or land commander with the greatest achievements to his name in the Second World War.