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Could the Germans stop the dday invasion and what if they did?
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14-10-2015 8:04am#1
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had the Allies been unlucky with the weather..... then it could well have gone awry...
Absolutely. And I also believe that if they hadn't bitten the bullet and gone across on June 6th, after a 24 hour postponement because of bad weather, they wouldn't have been able to attempt an invasion for another month because of tidal and other meteorological issues.
And the only reason they were able to go on the 6th was because of an update report from an Irish weather station in Mayo which indicated that there was going to be a break in the bad weather which would have given them the necessary window to make the landing.
So WE won the war. Even though we weren't in it.
:D 0 -
Snickers Man wrote: »And the only reason they were able to go on the 6th was because of an update report from an Irish weather station in Mayo which indicated that there was going to be a break in the bad weather which would have given them the necessary window to make the landing.
So WE won the war. Even though we weren't in it.:D
Naval Service Recruit Class "Sweeney" just passed out yesterday (Feb 25) at Haulbowline.
Their class, Recruit Class Sweeney, is named after Ted Sweeney, the late Irish Coast Guardsman and lighthouse keeper whose weather forecast from Blacksod in Co Mayo was crucial to the success of the invasion.
Mr Sweeney’s weather forecast from the western tip of Europe on June 3rd, 1944, persuaded Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight D Eisenhower, to delay the D-Day invasion by 24 hours.
Despite Ireland’s neutrality during the second World War, the Irish Free State had continued to send meteorological reports to Britain under an arrangement which had been agreed since independence . . .
D-Day was originally planned for June 5th, 1944, but June 6th and June 7th were also pinpointed as possible dates because moon and tide conditions were deemed ideal for seaborne landings.
Mr Sweeney’s first report at 2am on June 3rd showed unfavourable weather conditions for June 5th, so Gen Eisenhower decided to delay the huge operation to invade Hitler’s Fortress Europe.
Then, at 12pm on June 4th, Mr Sweeney sent another report that offered hope to Eisenhower and the Allied commanders and enabled them give the go-ahead for Operation Overlord on June 6th.
Some 5,000 ships and more than 11,000 aircraft carrying approximately 156,000 Allied troops participated in the Normandy landings which led to the liberation of France and ultimately helped defeat Hitler.
Those events from more than 70 years ago will be recalled at Haulbowline Naval Base in Cork Harbour today, when Mr Sweeney’s son Edward will watch the class named in honour of his father, graduate.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/key-irish-role-in-d-day-landings-to-be-marked-at-navy-hq-1.25481771 -
You know I was really speaking tongue in cheek. But it's interesting how many people claim to be the main agents in the war against Hitler.
The British are convinced that THEY won the war. Because after all didn't they "stand alone" against the might of the Third Reich after France and Poland (and Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway) had all been defeated? Until with some typically tardy help from their American cousins, they finally managed to turn the tide after D-Day.
The Americans, for their part, just know that they had to intervene for the sake of humanity and liberate the poor miserable Europeans who couldn't do the job for themselves. So it was Uncle Sam who came along and won the war against Hitler, without which everybody in Europe would be speaking German now.
The French like to inflate their role in the enterprise. De Gaulle kept "l'honneur et la gloire de la France éternelle" alive from his government in exile while the majority of his countrymen were kept in thrall by a collaborationist government in Vichy.
What few in the West care to acknowledge is that it was essentially the Soviet Union who defeated Hitler. They occupied most of his army, even after D-Day. The war on the Western Front was, literally, a side show.
And anyway, it was the Irish who were responsible for making that victory possible.
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I think you mean the Soviet Union.The Russians won the war in Europe.
While the Eastern Front saw the bulk of the fighting, it was the cumulative effect of being attacked on all sides that won the war. Remove the British or Americans and the war would have been very different.The Russians won the war in Europe.
....
Everything else is a bit part in comparison.
Something like 100,000 men landed on the first day. Within a month, I imagine that was much larger. Squashing them would have needed a vast force, which the Germans didn't have in France. The Allies bided their time to build up their supplies, broke out and barely stopped in the next few months.(3) Because of (1) and (2) above the beachhead had a depth of only approx 20 miles for at least a month. Obviously at risk if the Germans of counterattacked in force.
I think the effect of these are boosted by propaganda / popular culture during and after the war.There's no doubt that the Eastern front was the decisive campaign of WWII in respect of Germany, but I think it's always worth remembering that while the US & Brits only had a series of land campaigns that, in comparison, were small, if not tiny, compared to the Red Army's efforts, they still had to do almost all the heavy lifting in respect of the naval and strategic air campaigns.
The 'bigging up' of the Battle of the Atlantic was as much about managing expectations ("no, you can't have fancy tea every day") on the home front as winning the battle. A lot of the strategic bombing was wasted - not much use in sinking ships of iron ore off Norway if that ore can be replaced by ore from France or Poland. The latter policy of targeting fuel, railways and ball bearing manufacture was much more effect - hundreds of nearly fully-complete tanks 200km behind the front with no ball bearings and no fuel is a much greater waste of German resources than making people homeless.0 -
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I think you mean the Soviet Union.
I know exactly what I mean.While the Eastern Front saw the bulk of the fighting, it was the cumulative effect of being attacked on all sides that won the war. Remove the British or Americans and the war would have been very different.
Of course the war would have been different. But there is still no German victory, even if the western allies were absent.
Hitler's plans for Russia were simply too ambitious. The best they can hope for was a stalemate of some description, but even then there is an uneasy cold war that would threaten to be come hot in a serious way over the slightest provocation.0 -
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You kind of overlook the fact that the German resources tied up by the Western Allies through prosecuting the air and naval campaigns were pretty significant.
Take the Brenner Pass - by late 1943 it was the mostly heavily defended air space in the world - the Germans had over 2,000 AAA pieces along its length including over 800 88's or heavier, at a time when there were barely 200 88s along the entire Eastern Front - and every shell going up, was one that wasn't going out.
Likewise, the resources poured into the air defence of the Reich, to building and - to a degree, manning - the Atlantic Wall were also resources that couldn't be deployed in the east.
None of which would have made any difference and we've had this conversation before.
German needs a decisive victory in Russia in 1941. Without it, Hitler's plans are doomed. 1941 is THE year that Germany needs the knockout blow to occur.
1943 is simply too late and by then every German offensive had failed in its goals. There may be a chance of holding Russia to a draw of some description after that, but that's it.0 -
None of which would have made any difference and we've had this conversation before.
German needs a decisive victory in Russia in 1941. Without it, Hitler's plans are doomed. 1941 is THE year that Germany needs the knockout blow to occur.
1943 is simply too late and by then every German offensive had failed in its goals. There may be a chance of holding Russia to a draw of some description after that, but that's it.
No, I'm not arguing. I think even if the Western Allies had not fought or been forced from the war, then Germany still couldn't have defeated the USSR.
They might have occupied a large chunk of European Russia, Ukraine etc and they might even have precipitated a heave against Stalin, but that wouldn't have amounted to a Soviet defeat at the USSR would have persisted and no doubt rallied a few years subsequent to any such occupation and recovered most if not all of any lost territory.
One point worth noting though is that the US and the Brits did a lot of the R&D heavy lifting - between penicillin, radar, high efficiency fuel refining, radio comms gear & radio navigation aids, computers and computational analysis, cryptography and crypto-analysis, proximity fuses, napalm etc Even the slinky was invented during WW2 as an accidental part of a US Navy research project.0 -
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Take the Brenner Pass - by late 1943 it was the mostly heavily defended air space in the world - the Germans had over 2,000 AAA pieces along its length including over 800 88's or heavier, at a time when there were barely 200 88s along the entire Eastern Front - and every shell going up, was one that wasn't going out.
An interesting point as Manstein wanted to plaster the eastern front with 88's and let the Russians break themselves in '43.Hitler's plans for Russia were simply too ambitious. The best they can hope for was a stalemate of some description, but even then there is an uneasy cold war that would threaten to be come hot in a serious way over the slightest provocation.
Personally I believe that without western involvement the Eastern Front would most likely have ended this way.
Also the history of the book Fatherland. 0 -
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In truth the German's could have stopped D-Day if someone had woke up Hitler so that the tanks would be released. The addition of German Panzer's would have crushed the lightly armed airborne units that were meant to hold back the Germans and the beachheads would have been too lightly defended in the beginning to hold back the Germans. IMO
However, the affect this would have had on the overall war would be negligible. Likely the Allies would just try again. If not then all the troops that would eventually participate in Operation Overlord would probably have been sent to Italy, where the Allies had already practically won and they would have just had to cross the alps. More people would have died in the mountain warfare which the allies wouldn't have been equipped for and would stretch their supplies thin as would the extra deaths on D-Day.
Even if the Italian front never went anywhere though the German's had already lost the war. Their was a story in a Stephen E. Ambrose book which I think was called the Victors about Rommel in North Africa in 1942 after Stalingrad had been lost. Where he tells a fellow soldier that the war is already over. That true. Once Russian concentrated their ENORMOUS manpower the Germans had lost.
That's my rant over. 0 -
BeardedNomad wrote: »In truth the German's could have stopped D-Day if someone had woke up Hitler so that the tanks would be released. The addition of German Panzer's would have crushed the lightly armed airborne units that were meant to hold back the Germans and the beachheads would have been too lightly defended in the beginning to hold back the Germans. IMO
However, the affect this would have had on the overall war would be negligible. Likely the Allies would just try again. If not then all the troops that would eventually participate in Operation Overlord would probably have been sent to Italy, where the Allies had already practically won and they would have just had to cross the alps. More people would have died in the mountain warfare which the allies wouldn't have been equipped for and would stretch their supplies thin as would the extra deaths on D-Day.
Even if the Italian front never went anywhere though the German's had already lost the war. Their was a story in a Stephen E. Ambrose book which I think was called the Victors about Rommel in North Africa in 1942 after Stalingrad had been lost. Where he tells a fellow soldier that the war is already over. That true. Once Russian concentrated their ENORMOUS manpower the Germans had lost.
That's my rant over.
In all probability if OVERLORD had failed the Yanks would have just folded their tents and left for the Pacific, leaving some token support and promises to supply the Soviets who would have been effectively left to finish the job on their own.
The anglophobic Admiral King would have got his way as regards supply and personnel being routed away from Europe into the Pacific, and this, crucially, would have included the Higgins' boats and various other landing craft.
Also, the Brits were tapped out. One of the reasons Monty was so timid in his handling of his ground forces and why such reliance was placed on armour by him was because the British were scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel at this point in the war. It was a real struggle to field infantry divisions and replace casualties, and even the veteran formations were war weary - there's likely no way they could have run another major amphibious operation in Europe for several years.
In the event of OVERLORD failing they would more likely have used what reinforcements they could field to shore up Alexander's campaign in Italy, but more likely with the Yanks switching to the Pacific, they'd have reinforced Slim's (by far their best general) campaign against the Japanese in Burma, which in mid to late '44 was achieving some notable successes.
In mid to late 1944 and into 1945, the Italian campaign was not amenable to to receiving reinforcement beyond replacing casualties - at the point it was still mired in the mountains between Florence and Bologna - it was mountain fighting which meant despite having nearly 500,000 personnel in the country and 14 field divisions and overwhelming air power, the fighting often came down to a company or two slogging it out against a prepared German defensive position because that's all the narrowness of the valleys permitted - it was brutal, attritional fighting, and during the winters it was every bit as terrible as the Eastern Front, but on a much smaller scale.
Beyond the mountains lay the Emilia Romagna - which because of it's flatness the tankers were dying to get loose in. When they eventually broke out they found it was an alluvial plain, criss-crossed by an infinity of irrigation and drainage ditches which made perfect anti-tank obstacles. And because it was alluvial it turned to a tread clogging mud at the first drop of rain and rose in choking clouds (which made close air support difficult) when it was dry.
Alexander's assessment was that he'd need 28 divisions to drive the Lubjana Gap, and probably another 10/12 for a drive on Vienna. Even if OVERLORD had ended in tatters the Yanks wouldn't have provided that kind of manpower and the Brits didn't have it - the Italian campaign was never going to lead to a German defeat, its value lay in the fact that it forced the Germans to tie up divisions they could ill afford and could put to better use elsewhere, it also forced them to supply those divisions (which tied up more precious resources operating and protecting lines of communication) and it drove a certain amount of innovation in combat practice on the Allied side that proved very useful elsewhere, particularly in relation to combined arms warfare, close air support and indirect fire support.0 -
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