Could D-day actually fail?

We've all discussed previously many times the what-ifs of D-day.

But after many discussions, reading and thinking I am of the opinion that only the Channel could have made it a failure.

Casualties might have been very high, but the Germans simply couldn't do anything to repell the invasion because they had already lost the logistics and build-up campaign.

Even if the Germans could have known that the invasion was imminent some 48 hours earlier… would Allied air power and the French resistance have allowed them to move divisions from the interior or Pas-de-Calais? The units at the coast could have been put to full-alert, but could these 2nd and 3rd rate units do something to stop the invaders?

I am convinced that Panzer attacks on the coast would have been just useless, since the Navy would have blown all Panzer divisions up, which dared to get 10 km from the beacheads.

Maybe the airborne troops would have been almost completely wiped out. But the invasion at the beaches could have just happened anyway and ultimate breakthrough would have been achieved.

What do you think?

 

I agree with you about the weather, Friedrich. Certainly days 1 - 3 were the crucial ; after that overall success was assured.

Weather was the vital factor and thank God 'Hitler Weather' did not prevail on this occasion. Weather in the Channel - as we have seen this 'summer' - can be incredibly changeable and there has recently been considerable pressure on the Met. Office to stop issuing 5-day forecasts as they are so unreliable.

And this is with all the satellites, computers etc which certainly weren't around in 1944....

 

Must say I tend to think the same way that only the Allied themselves could have ruined the whole thing in the end. I think Ike himself made a big gamble on deciding to go on the 6th and it could have been a disaster. I read somewhere that Ike even made a letter on Overlord being a failure but nobody´s ever seen what it included naturally...probably a resignation (?).

However I like to play with the thought of making more forces of the 15th army available as an astonishing number of tanks and troops made it to the Normandy even with the allied supremacy in the air ( of what troops were sent ).

 

Awesome planner, good commander, I don't know man, it was well done.

 

The hand-written statement which Eisenhower had prepared in case the D-Day landings failed is posted on the website of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library:

 

Wow! Thanx DWD! I was totally sure (?) that it was never released... Thanx again. That was quite interesting!!!

 

Ohama Beach was in most ways a worst case scenario. Virtually everything that could go wrong did there. Yet, the US still managed to get ashore, off the beach, and sustain the beachhead. There literally was nothing the Germans could realistically do to stop the invasion.

 

Stop the invasion? Too damned right they could, the main reason why we managed it? was because of one simple fact, That was FUSAG.the imaginery huge "First United States Army Group" It never existed, but the British army and the Sappers made a top class job of giving that impression of this "fairy tale" army!

round the Dover area, Wireless trucks driving around the place making the noises of a huge army group, with rubber tanks and cardboard cut out planes. The enemy swallowed it hook line and sinker! Thus, they waited across from Dover with a huge round and powerful force.

had that force been there ready to greet us, I doubt that we would have managed to land.
Sapper

 

Hi, Sapper! Glad to know from you.

Though I think I see your point, since you were there and know better than any of us how hard it was, it was almost impossible for the Germans to make the whole thing fail.

As T. A. put it, 'Omaha' is the best example. There, a German regular and experienced unit, which was at the time on full-alert, partially equipped, with better terrain conditions and more built defences than the other four beaches and which had not been adequately bombarded by ships and aircraft. At the end of the day the Americans broke through, even if it was at a huge cost.

Did the counterattacks of the 21st Panzer division were of any use? No, because it was delayed by destroyed bridges and sabotaged communications. Allied air power kept them out of open field and the German High's command caothic structure and its personnel's incompetence doomed any success.

Even if the 21st Panzer and other Panzer divisions could have reached went on unmolested and at the first hour against the beaches, the Allied Navy would have annihilated any attempt of these units to get to the beaches.

And there is a precedent for this: Army Group 'C' in the eastern front was surrounded and pushed all the way to the Baltic Sea. There, the Red Army tried numerous times to sweep the Kessel, but was stopped by a couple of Kriegsmarine cruisers. And here we're talking about the 1944 Red Army, well-leaded and experienced, with plenty of reinforcements available, extensive air and artillery support, along with heavy and numerous armoured units.

All the attempts made by the Red Army to reduce the pocket at Courland and later at East Prussia was stopped by naval guns. Whole mechanised corps, hundreds of tanks, men and field guns were literally blown up by a dozen 8" + guns' fire accurate and long-range fire.

 

Do you think that if the Germans were less cocky and realized that their enigma machine wasn't perfect and possibly could be decoded that they would have had a better chance at surviving at Normandy especially, but during the whole war itself? I mean, the Allies did have a network of spies, which included the IFF and other resistence and double agents the Germans thought were working for them. However, the Allies would have had a harder time with propaganda, and also, they used decoded German messages to figure out just how much their espionage was taking effect on the Nazis. It just seems that the main reason for the success at Normandy was the increadible effort that went into fooling the Germans and basing plans around that. Of course, the invasion would not have gotten anywhere if it wasn't for the courage and initiatve of the troops deployed into Normandy .

 

Actually, the deception was far more elaborate than that. Operations Taxable and Glimmer were also carried out on D-day. These operations were carried out by 617 Squadron and the Royal Navy using chaff, jammers and, deception repeaters to make the squadron of aircraft and 8 motor launches towing radar reflecting barrage balloons look like a fleet of several thousand ships headed towards Calais at 6 knots.
The Allies knew enough about German radar operations to know that the few operators that could still see this "fleet" would report it up the chain where it would turn from suspicion into fact until the Germans could actually get a ship, boat or, plane out to look and see if it was real.
These two operations along with the deception army were the cause in large part of Hitler's delay in releasing reserves in the Calais area. The OKW was reporting an invaison headed there as fact!

 

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/fusag.htm




The First US Army Group was activated 1943 in London, England to prepare the plans for the invasion of the European continent. Omar Bradley's headquarters deployed to England in October 1943, and Bradley took on the dual task of First Army commander and acting commander of the skeletal 1st U.S. Army Group (subsequently redesignated the 12th Army Group). This Army Group had been established on October 19, 1943, to plan United States participation in the forthcoming invasion. Bradley would command the American army group when it was activated. But until the landings were secure, all American ground forces in northern France would be under the temporary command of General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery. Bradley activated 12th Army Group on 01 August 1944, and assumed command of 21 divisions comprising some 903,000 men.

Although its staff was largely transferred to the Twelfth Army Group in July 1944, the First US Army Group continued to exist on paper as a deception device until its inactivation on 18 October 1944. To mislead the Germans into believing that the Pas de Calais, rather than Normandy, would be the site of the invasion, Eisenhower's staff created a mythical 1st Army Group, with an order of battle larger than that of Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Basing the phantom force near Dover, just across the Channel from the supposed target, Eisenhower assigned Patton, the American general the Germans most respected, to command the phantom army. The Germans became so convinced that the Pas de Calais would be the Allied target that they held to the fiction until long after the actual attack had begun. As a result, nineteen powerful enemy divisions, to include important panzer reserves, stood idle on the day of the invasion, awaiting an assault that never came.

 

To be brutal! The idiots bought that deception hook line and sinker.

But is was done quite beautifully, And what is more had its desired effect.
Sapper

 

Indeed! No wonder the allied did not want anyone else to lead the Reich ( did not try to murder Hitler or much help the German resistance ) as Hitler was their "best" help when it came to war buzinez in summer-autumn 1944....




[ 28. September 2004, 07:20 AM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

 

Besides, which intelligent person would negotiate with the German resistance? They started plotting only when the war changed fortunes and even if these men —many General Staff officers— would have made peace by withdrawing German forces from the USSR, they surely weren't willing to give up Silesia, the Sudetenland, Danzig, Austria or defeated France…

 

Besides, which intelligent person would negotiate with the German resistance? They started plotting only when the war changed fortunes and even if these men —many General Staff officers— would have made peace by withdrawing German forces from the USSR, they surely weren't willing to give up Silesia, the Sudetenland, Danzig, Austria or defeated France…