[ecrea] call for papers: ‘Ghost landings’ and their consequences in Europe: 1940-1944

‘Ghost landings’ and their consequences in Europe: 1940-1944 .



The Allied landings in Sicily, Anzio, Normandy and Provence are well 
known today. But there are also those that never took place.

The fall of France and the British Expeditionary Force’s retreat to 
Dunkirk, followed by its evacuation thanks to a rather disparate fleet, 
may have led the German High Command to think that a quick landing on 
British beaches was possible (Operation Sea Lion).

For their part, some Allied plans to liberate Europe were abandoned, for 
example because of strategic developments–such as Churchill’s plan for a 
landing in the Balkans in 1943. Some Allied plans also turned out to be 
deception stratagems to convince the enemy that the Allied invasion 
would take place in the Pas de Calais (Operation Fortitude / Operation 
Quicksilver) or in Norway (Operation Skye), or that the German code had 
not been broken.

The real landing of June, 6 1944 was preceded by failures, whether 
raids- such as on Dieppe- or ill-fated large-scale rehearsals, such as 
Operation Tiger on Slapton Sands in Devon.

All these preparations required planning and the implementation of 
combined operations involving land, sea and air units–the difficulty or 
the challenge for the attacker being to cross the sea so as to set foot 
on enemy territory.

 On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of D-day Landing, ULCO 
(Université du Littoral & de la Côte d’Opale) will welcome an 
interdisciplinary conference on those themes on November 27 and 28, 
2014. The chosen location, Boulogne-sur-mer, matches the theme as it was 
where gathered and trained from 1803 to 1805 part of the Army of the 
Ocean Coasts for Napoleon’s aborted invasion of England.

The conference aims to address from the Allied and the German sides how 
the aforementioned ghost landings and preparations contributed to the 
success of the landings in Normandy and in Provence in 1944.

What kind of images and representations did they also give birth to? How 
were they reflected in cultural media, and more particularly how were 
they portrayed in literature and film ? For example these themes 
appeared in novels like Fortitude, which then became a feature film, or 
in The Eye of the Needle, which also became a film, in documentaries 
(for example on Operation Tiger), or in television series (such as Foyle 
's War) .

 Proposals in French or in English (with a title and an abstract of 
about 300 words), as well as a short biography, should be sent by 
January 30, 2014 to :

Xavier Boniface ((Xavier.Boniface /at/ univ-littoral.fr)) and Nathalie Dupont 
((Nathalie.Dupont /at/ univ-littoral.fr)).

Participants will be notified in February.

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