LAURENCE REES: And the single best decision of the war?

MAX HASTINGS: Not to launch D Day until 1944. Although a huge price was paid by surrendering Eastern Europe to Soviet oppression after 1945, for the British and American people the loss of life if we’d gone back into Europe in 1943 would have been vastly greater. I think our parents and grandparents have good cause to be very, very grateful that Churchill was successful in delaying D Day until 1944. I don’t entirely share the admiration of Andrew Roberts for Alanbrooke. I don’t think Alanbrooke was quite as clever as he himself thought he was, and he was certainly wrong in 1945 to say that the strategy of the war had conformed to his vision. But Alanbrooke understood one big thing, and the big thing was that the British and American Armies could not - and should not - take on the Germans until they could do so on absolutely favourable terms.