This has not been discussed much. Hitler believed, once this happens, he can send a lot more troops from west to the Ostfront, as a new invasion would not take place for a year, at least. Say, the invasion failed. Would the Allied be ready for another try in summer 1945 ( the earliest )? Would this give Hitler a year to use his army against Stalin for a year in its biggest form? Or another faster solution. Attack from Southern France? Or other place? Hitler had some 300,000 men in Norway for some reason. The southern solution Italy/France or Brittany? I guess Normandy is out of question? Thanx for any views and answers!
...hitler is not defeating Russia, even without an invasion....Allied air power is getting stronger and stronger ----and more destructive ..these ''what ifs''' are very complex/difficult/a morass/etc
Given the Allied fighters strafing anything that moved in 1944, I'd imagine such a large shifting of troops would be dangerous and costly. I wonder how many would have made it, and what their combat efficiency might be in the couple of months after arrival.
The Germans managed to bring quite a few troops to Normandy despite Allied air superiority, from southern France and eventually from 15th Army*. Not to mention Germany itself and the Eastern Front (II SS Panzerkorps, 9th and 10th divisions). * Allied deception operations had the Germans convinced that a landing in the Pas de Calais was possible in addition to Normandy, a sort of one-two punch. Obviously the situation changes if the first punch is defeated, but we might consider how long it would take the Germans to realize that a second landing no longer needed to be guarded against. It's not just a question of shifting forces or keeping units like II SS in the east. Much of Germany's combat power came from the weapons and supplies coming off the production lines, which in our scenario could be devoted to the east. German industrial production peaked in the summer of 1944, largely due to the diversion of Allied bombers to preparing for the invasion. The southern France landing was necessary as a complement to the cross-Channel operation, but there would be less of a case for it if Overlord was defeated. Churchill and the British were against it even with Overlord successful and would no doubt have renewed their objections and their insistence on slogging the rest of the way up Italy and into a dead end in the Balkans. Defeating Overlord would give the Germans an opportunity to concentrate against the Russians, but I think the best they could achieve would be a stalemate. Ironically this might end up roughly along the 1941 borders, which could be a basis for ending hostilities. Stalin would have expelled the invaders, and he could blame the western allies for not being able to bring the war to a more satisfactory conclusion. If their only ongoing effort was in the Balkans, he could see that his "allies' were as much interested in forestalling him as in defeating the common enemy.
