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entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello and welcome to the opening episode of our special Battleground 44 series with me, Patrick Bishop and Saul David.

Well, as we explained in our curtain razor last week, the idea is that throughout

this year, we're going to follow closely the epic events of 1944 as they unfolded. 80 long years

ago, examining the battles, the controversies, the themes and the personalities. In our first

proper episode, we're going to look at a character who cast a long shadow

over the war in the West that year.

I'm talking, of course, of the American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who on the 16th of

January arrived in London to take up his post of Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary

Force that was scheduled to land in France

one day, as yet to be exactly decided, in late spring. His decisions, his judgments, would be

absolutely crucial to the success of this enterprise, which one historian has described as,

quote, the most complex and daring military operation in the

history of modern warfare, the culmination of over three years of conception, argument,

counterargument, and the most detailed planning ever undertaken. We'll come on to all that

in a moment. But first off, Ike, that's what everyone called him, he never really expected

to get this job,

did he saw? No, he didn't. The job of Supreme Commander for the Normandy invasion,

...