A draft speech to be delivered by American president General Dwight Eisenhower in case the D-Day had ended in a failure has been published to mark the 70th anniversary of the famous Normandy landings.
The speech draft has been published by the British military online in the archive Forces War Records, as veterans and world leaders mark the 70th anniversary of the successful invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
The document stated that General Eisenhower and British prime minister Winston Churchill would have withdrawn troops sent to the Normandy beaches in northern France, rather than let them fight to the death if they were defeated, the Daily Express reported.
The note penned down by General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during the Second World War revealed that the US leader would have accepted the full blame for probable defeat at the hands of the Nazis.
The message is dated July 5, 1944, but it is thought General Eisenhower wrote the wrong month in error due to exhaustion because in reality the event took place on June 6, 1944 and was a success.
Tom Bennington from Forces War Records said that the note is simple yet very chilling describing what was at stake and it shows how easily it could have gone the other way.