The Neptune Monograph Project

Posted on Friday 27th July 2018


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Explain, for those who don't know, what exactly is the neptune monograph?
The Neptune Monograph is a 122-page top-secret intelligence report that the absolute top of the allied command received six weeks before D-day. The information in it was collected through daring missions by the French resistance, frogmen, commandos, pilots, naval intelligence and weather experts. As an example frogmen swam to Omaha beach at night to collect samples of the sand to be able to analyze the possibility to land heavy tanks. This document was extremely secret and filled with vital information. Only a few men saw the Neptune Monograph before D-day and after the war, it almost disappeared from history.

How did you get involved in the project?
I have worked for ten years writing, editing and publishing books and magazines about history. Whilst researching an article I accidentally stumbled across a full copy of the Monograph. I had never heard about the document and was immediately dazzled by the amount of information in it. I spent the next few weeks researching the Monograph, and discovered that it is named after Operation Neptune, the landing operation on D-Day, and found out how special it is. It has been described as the single most important document in relation to securing success on D-Day and was originally stamped Top Secret Bigot – the absolute highest security clearance.

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tell us about the fundraising project?
We are a new, small, independent publishing house that specialises in crowdfunding unique books about WW2. This is our first product and we looked to crowdfunding because we really like the concept that you have to produce something truly special to earn the trust of your backers. Besides that, we hope to secure funding to improve the product with extra pages, full-size maps and folios.

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why was this particular piece of the d-day story important?
It is the top-secret plans behind the D-Day invasion that has never been published before and almost disappeared from history. We think it speaks for itself. Anybody who has an interest in World War 2 will get the chance to read first hand how allied intelligence prepared for D-Day.
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The second world war stands as perhaps the most well-documented event of the twentieth century. What other hidden soures of information might still be out there?
From our point of view, these authentic documents are extremely interesting and tell history in another way. The last decade has seen a lot of storytelling in history books, which we love. But here you get the real deal. Intelligence reports, invasion maps. Its history coming to life through an overload of facts and details and we love it.
what other projects might you be working on going forward?
First, we will concentrate on making the Neptune Monograph into a great book. We will restore every single of the original pages and add rare photos and historical background for better understanding. If the project is a success (gets funded) we have two similar projects in our pipeline. But this time we will change perspective and look into the German, Russian and later Japanese secret plans from WW2.
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Of further interest...