History Question Regarding Eisenhower and Overlord Planning

[Whirlwind]

A question for those more knowledgeable than me: are there any documents written in 1943 in which Eisenhower and/or Bedell Smith refers to their thoughts on the  planning for Overlord?  I’m not (for the purposes of this question) interested in anything written between Jan 44 and Jul 44, and even less in anything written after the invasion itself.

[Not Connard Sage]

I’ve not gone through the links, but is there anything here?

https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/d_day.html

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Whirlwind]

Thanks for digging that out NCS, much appreciated.

[Etranger]

There won’t be much from 1943 from Eisenhower since he wasn’t appointed as SHAEF unitl the end of the year and he (& Montgomery) didn’t get to see the initial COSSAC plan until the end of that year. (December 31st if you believe the date on wiki). Beetle Smith came from North Africa with Eisenhower.

[Whirlwind]

Just a very trivial point in regard to something mentioned in D’Este’s “Decision in Normandy”.  D’Este claims that the proposal to have a 5-division assault was decided jointly between Eisenhower, Bedell Smith and Montgomery when Eisenhower showed Montgomery the plan in late 1943, but when Montgomery made his formal appreciation of the COSSAC plan in early January 1944, he made no mention of it being a joint affair, but simply said that he (Montgomery) had proposed it. So I was merely wondering if there was any evidential basis for this claim other than the post-war memoirs of the two American generals.

[Author]

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