WW-II: Normandy landing
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Not really.
Churchill proposed in 1943 an extension of the invasion of Sicily in Southern Italy, with possible support of the guerillas in Yugoslawia, Albania and Greece. Yet that consideration also included the invasion in the Normandy. The US feared, that concentrating more troops than necessary in Italy would delay the invasion in France, so Overlord took place as planned.
IMO the invasion on Normandy beach was the only possibility to threaten the german forces in Western Europe. In Italy it would have been necessary to cross the alps to reach german territory. The overall territory in Italy supports a defender because of the narrow passages. So the allied troops deployed to Italy where kept at a limit. This was one of the reasons why german troops where able to keep a presence in Italy until 1945.
Also Germany was forced to move a lot of troops to the Normandy in response of the invasion, troops that would otherwise have been relocated to the eastern front. Athough already superior in terms of manpower, the russians fought a war of attrition and additional german troops might have been able to at least stop further russian advance.
Most german leaders (except Rommel) expected an allied invasion at Pas-de-Calais (little bit to the north of Normandy, closer to UK) and concentrated more forces there. Yet this was only exactly what the allied forces wanted.
Spain was neutral and Scandinavia was no place for an invasion at all. A more direct assault lets say in the Netherlands or north western Germany would have been recognized by german reconaissance and might have been disastrous for allied forces. I dont see other possibilities.
Churchill proposed in 1943 an extension of the invasion of Sicily in Southern Italy, with possible support of the guerillas in Yugoslawia, Albania and Greece. Yet that consideration also included the invasion in the Normandy. The US feared, that concentrating more troops than necessary in Italy would delay the invasion in France, so Overlord took place as planned.
IMO the invasion on Normandy beach was the only possibility to threaten the german forces in Western Europe. In Italy it would have been necessary to cross the alps to reach german territory. The overall territory in Italy supports a defender because of the narrow passages. So the allied troops deployed to Italy where kept at a limit. This was one of the reasons why german troops where able to keep a presence in Italy until 1945.
Also Germany was forced to move a lot of troops to the Normandy in response of the invasion, troops that would otherwise have been relocated to the eastern front. Athough already superior in terms of manpower, the russians fought a war of attrition and additional german troops might have been able to at least stop further russian advance.
Most german leaders (except Rommel) expected an allied invasion at Pas-de-Calais (little bit to the north of Normandy, closer to UK) and concentrated more forces there. Yet this was only exactly what the allied forces wanted.
Spain was neutral and Scandinavia was no place for an invasion at all. A more direct assault lets say in the Netherlands or north western Germany would have been recognized by german reconaissance and might have been disastrous for allied forces. I dont see other possibilities.
It was tactical error to launch a two pronged assault for the germans, I bet there is more that meets the eye!!, i don't know why the germans were so intent on taking control of Moscow at the same time they were trying for Western Europe. all russia realy wanted was arms i think . Turin whenever you have some time and feeling up to the Question go right ahead i'm all ears.
The Turks were also in discussion in 1943-1944. They were only prepared to enter the war if the landing was conducted through the Dardanelles. A Dardanelles approach would not have made logistical and tactical sense, so Turkey didn't enter the war.
Of course it was a tactical error and I think, even a strategical one.
Hitlers decision to attack the SU was largely a political and idiological one. To give some keywords here, one could name "Lebensraum" or the dominance of the germanic race over europe and the inferiour "weak" races.
Yet Russia was always, even back to the 19th century, considered a thread to Europe as a whole. Just have a look at Bismarcks policiy to contain Russia on the Balkans and the UK's actions to prevent them reaching the Dardanelles. When the communist regime was raised in Russia, this became even worse and Russia/SU was always considered a long term thread by the allies as well.
So this drawed a lot of support of the german generals to Hitler (Also remember: we won the war against Russia in 1917! Now with Stalin and his purge of the red army most people thought, its a piece of cake!).
Ironically, today a considerable part of the germans (not being neo-nazis at all!) still believe that an attack by the SU was imminent in 1941 and that, after all, Hitler only made the first move. There arose a heavy debate about this only some years ago in Germany, when new information became available from russian archives.
IMO the best move would have been to continue the campaign in western europe, finishing off the UK. As everybody knows, we lost the battle over britain and that was the main reason (besides the russian campaign) to shelve the invasion plan for the UK (operation "Seeloewe" or "Seal"). We lost the BoB for some reasons, mainly because we had no strategical bomber command and only tactical bombers.
We should have concentrated ops on strategical targets such as industry and the military complex in the south western part (around the invasion area). Then, since no invasion in the SU would have taken place, transfer all available man power to France, build some useful landing fleet (the one we had was crappy to most parts) and even if we had no complete air dominance in Britain, we should have tried the invasion. I firmly believe that as soon as we would have gained a foothold in south western GB they would have been lost since then the transfer of additional troops could take place. We had about 3 million troops to attack the SU, most of these troops battle proven and now available to the invasion of GB.
As for Russia, even if there would have been an imminent risk of attack from their side (and I seriously doubt that regarding their reaction to the invasion in june 1941), I would have strengthened our defenses in Poland and continued relations as usual.
When we would have reached control of GB, you could say "game over". Now we would have been able to transfer large parts of the Luftwaffe to the eastern "front" as well as army units. Our submarines now could operate freely in the Atlantic Ocean without being forced to shut down trade lanes to Britain. The navy yards now would concentrate on builing A LOT more subs (as they did in 1944, when everything was already lost) to effectively deter the US from launching an invasion of some kind. Now we would have concentrated our ressources to the SU. I will wait for responses and post my thoughts about such a campaign another time.
Sorry for writing so much but this is a quite complex issue and would easily fill some pages.
this is good stuff !! you must be a really good student of.. is it!! International politics did you say !! its a good tactical revision of the strategy. but i think if an attack was imminent then Germany should off invaded A part of SU instead of going the full length to moscow. that way they would of needed less troops and resources to control The occupied Russia. the Russians did nothing when they were being invaded i found that odd but Stalin had this weird thinking that the Germans might just retreated or something or was he so obsessed with germany that he would of never minded becoming apart of it. i think german elite were (i apologize for this turin) obsessed with the fact that they were a superior race i think it was this propaganda that gave hitler the Unchallenged controll over his troops and country. they had never dreamed of a defeat and had actually convinced them selves at some mental level that they would of been victorious no matter how much the odds became against you. i think Hitler was obsessed with this feeling and attitude that led to his defeat (not Germany's) and ended him feeling humiliated when he was put on trial by the enemies he thought of inferior. that is too much to bare for a once proud Man wouldn't you think so!!
I totally agree. Therefore I recommended an improved eastern defense while being active against Great Britain. Yet as I said before, a russian attack was IMO unlikely, at least for the year 1941, if not at all. So we would have had all the time in the world to finish the western campaign and IF there would have been a russian offensive, we would have been able to hold them off for a while and maybe, depending on the situation, launch some small counterstrike.
I see just now that I have to explain something additonal:
The double assault against east and west was not intented in the beginning. Actually Hitler thought that Great Britain would accept the new situation in 1939 after the invasion of Poland. He (and most of his generals) did make plans for a short campaign in the west until GB would accept things as they were and make peace with Germany.
When he and his advisors heard about the british declaration of war, they were just stunned.
The invasion of Russia/SU was always in his mind, it was one of his...well... "dreams". Yet he wanted to have good relations with Great Britain (not necessarily with the US and definitely not with France, in fact no one was worried when they heard about the french declaration of war. No offense to french readers intended here, its just plain fact!)
So the western campaign, especially the part against Britain, was rather an "accident" than a planned move.
No apology necessary here! You hit the point with that. Remember that in 1940 we took down France within two months. That was simply incredible, especially when compared to the brutal fightings of WW I, when France combined with british and american troops proved to be a neverending nightmare to the imperial german forces.
Through this immense victory, achieved through Blitzkrieg-tactics of combined arms, Hitler received the undivided praise and trust of his generals, even the ones criticizing him before did not dare to say anything against him.
Additionally the Wehrmacht now was considered unstoppable. All these factors play a major role as well as the ones I mentioned in my other post before when Hitler and the german forces now thought about the attack against the Soviet Union.
So what was it about the eastern campaign? Very often I hear people comparing Napoleons operation and that of the Wehrmacht and saying that history repeated itself, yet there are some clear differences.
Napoleon, employing about half a million troops, marched in a straight line towards Moscow. He did not care for seizing territory except for securing his flanks and supplying his army. But his army shrinked more and more since he had to secure his rear as well with garrison troops. When he approached Moscow he met the russian winter as well, what proved to be disastrious. Also the russians fled the city reducing his victory to a shiny nothing. Since he was not able to seize the territory permanently, he had to retreat and his army, already heavily battered, simply decomposated.
From the beginning the german army had the task to secure the russian territory as well, not only reaching the capital ASAP. That means the division into three parts marching on a wide front into the SU. As one can see on every map, Russia gets wider and wider from west to east, so did the german front. Hitler personally pressed for the occupation of the northern russian territories around Leningrad as well as the Ukraine in the south and the Donesz area. The "Heeresgruppe Mitte" / "Army group Center" (one of the three army groups the forces where divided in) alone had a front line of about 1.000 km!
This stretched the lines of supply and when heavy rainfalls came around October, especially wheeled vehicles had incredible difficulties overcoming the muddy roads (nearly nothing paved there of course).
If the Wehrmacht would have gone for a direct assault on moscow, decapitating and decentralizig the russian command, I guess, we would have succeeded, at least in proposing a peace treaty comparable to that of Brest-Litowsk in 1917 and finishing this part of operations before the russian winter began. Yet there were considerable forces of the Red Army around and of course they needed to be destroyed if we wanted to prevent counter attacks from various directions. But that would have been not so much a problem if we created more compact army groups avoiding the risk of overstretching the front lines. I would have used the support of the baltic states (their people welcomed the german troops, when they arrived there!) in the north to secure some parts in this area, avoiding further advance beyond the line Leningrad-Moscow-Kharkov.
Yet that goes to far away from Hitlers thinking. He wanted to seize and destroy Stalingrad as a symbolical move, he wanted to get the caucasus, eventually drawing a line at the caspian sea...ridiculous.
Thats why Hitler certainly WASNT the great military leader he is sometimes referred to even today. He was a charismatic politician with a fantasy of ruling an empire way off (and of course his view of the world in terms of social darwinism was just insane). As long as he employed the advice of his generals, he won. When he took over military business, Germany began to lose.
PS: I am aware that this last part already goes off topic, so when responding to new comments, I will open a new thread based on then emerging topics.
Part of Germanys problems stemmed from the fact that everything that they did and planned against Germany after the Rapollo agreement was known by the Russians.
So the absolute effect of surprise was always compromised somewhat. The Russians had the "privelige" of watching the Germans set up, trial and perfect their platform development. By association it also meant that they saw some of their tactics for such platforms evolve. In the early 30's they had already anticipated that Germany could turn on them, some took the potential seriously, others were more naive. BUT, absolute surprise against Russia was never achieved due to this prior knowledge, and due to the fact that Russian Intelligence was substantially better than Germanys (even when it was managed by Canaris).
It's an interesting topic. But I'm curious to see how one of our UK posters named "Winter" sees this.
I must say that I disagree a little with your assessment of how the invasion of england could have been achieved. The german Airforce didn't have dominance for a number of reasons, and to achieve that dominance would have required a substantial shift in airframe production of different types, and it also would have been considerably difficult as Germany did not have the airlift capacity to eject paratroopers over England with relative ease.
There was too much of a mismatch between platform types, and platform availability. The biggest mistake made was discouraging Rommel from completing his surge to Dunkirk and the surrounding evacuation points. If that had been achieved then it would have altered the time scale and pressure matrix on the UK by a considerable margin.
The other factor is that Germany as far back as 1865 had determined that the US was going to be a world power, that had been reinforced in 1898, and Germany would never have been able to dominate the US due to resource and capability mismatch. They could have only begun to have contested US resource and production capability if they had total dominance and military control of every country that they defeated. Their fronts would have been too large, and in the end I believ they would have suffered from a disintegrating empire as they would have ended up fighting on two fronts, with two determined enemies. Germany would not have had the scale and depth of delivery to absolutely control Russia across it's girth, and then deal with a UK which never would have submitted easily.
Mackinders Theory is very much dominant when you consider what Germany would have had to do to sustain and hold an empire that could have been bigger than what Genghis Khan achieved.
So the absolute effect of surprise was always compromised somewhat. The Russians had the "privelige" of watching the Germans set up, trial and perfect their platform development. By association it also meant that they saw some of their tactics for such platforms evolve. In the early 30's they had already anticipated that Germany could turn on them, some took the potential seriously, others were more naive. BUT, absolute surprise against Russia was never achieved due to this prior knowledge, and due to the fact that Russian Intelligence was substantially better than Germanys (even when it was managed by Canaris).
It's an interesting topic. But I'm curious to see how one of our UK posters named "Winter" sees this.
I must say that I disagree a little with your assessment of how the invasion of england could have been achieved. The german Airforce didn't have dominance for a number of reasons, and to achieve that dominance would have required a substantial shift in airframe production of different types, and it also would have been considerably difficult as Germany did not have the airlift capacity to eject paratroopers over England with relative ease.
There was too much of a mismatch between platform types, and platform availability. The biggest mistake made was discouraging Rommel from completing his surge to Dunkirk and the surrounding evacuation points. If that had been achieved then it would have altered the time scale and pressure matrix on the UK by a considerable margin.
The other factor is that Germany as far back as 1865 had determined that the US was going to be a world power, that had been reinforced in 1898, and Germany would never have been able to dominate the US due to resource and capability mismatch. They could have only begun to have contested US resource and production capability if they had total dominance and military control of every country that they defeated. Their fronts would have been too large, and in the end I believ they would have suffered from a disintegrating empire as they would have ended up fighting on two fronts, with two determined enemies. Germany would not have had the scale and depth of delivery to absolutely control Russia across it's girth, and then deal with a UK which never would have submitted easily.
Mackinders Theory is very much dominant when you consider what Germany would have had to do to sustain and hold an empire that could have been bigger than what Genghis Khan achieved.
I guess that was the reason why hitler wanted to conquer soviet union.i hve heard that he had this over confident attitude that he can run over USSR in no time.and the initial successes seemed to prove that.that may also be the reason why he wanted the caucusses badly(his obsession with psychological victory over stalin defeated his aims i guess,when he ordered his army group to split and attack caucusses and stalingrad at the same time).as we can see hitler was his own nemesis.
another thing i want to ask u guys is that i have heard allies could have made the beach landings in the western front as far back as 1943 and that churchill was so very obsessed with his 'soft underbelly' theory that he didnt give it adequate support and hence that half hearted abortive raid where the germans mowed down canadians(i forgot the name-was that dieppe raid????).and further that if they had opened the front in 43 they could have won the war in weeks....please comment
Dieppe was not an invasion attempt at all, it was a test and as such was very successful in helping the allies determine the best way to assault Normandy.
Why did Hitler invade Russia in the first place? It was his intention to all along. In Hitlers book "Mein Kempf" he clearly and in no uncertain terms outlines his belief that Germany was not nearly big enough (physically) to support the Germans and that it was a matter of natural selection that Germany "take" all of eastern europe. He further explains in his book that eastern europeans would be used as slaves, and would spend their lives toiling away on farms and in factories strictly to support the German people.
WW2 would have never happened if the French and the British would have honored their treatise and agreements with Poland and Czechloslovakia as well as taken action against Germany when they broke the Versailles Treaty by invading the Sudetenland and Austria. Hitler was emboldened by France and Britains total lack of conviction to her allies and the documents they had signed at the end of WW1. Hitler was in fact scared to death that France and or Britain would attack from the west when he invaded the Czechs and in fact, Germany's 2 divisions on the western front were outnumbered by the French by more than 12 to 1. France could have ended WW2 before it ever started.
Without the allied invasion of Normandy, Germany could have IMHO turned the course of the war around in their favor within the next 12 months.
Why did Hitler invade Russia in the first place? It was his intention to all along. In Hitlers book "Mein Kempf" he clearly and in no uncertain terms outlines his belief that Germany was not nearly big enough (physically) to support the Germans and that it was a matter of natural selection that Germany "take" all of eastern europe. He further explains in his book that eastern europeans would be used as slaves, and would spend their lives toiling away on farms and in factories strictly to support the German people.
WW2 would have never happened if the French and the British would have honored their treatise and agreements with Poland and Czechloslovakia as well as taken action against Germany when they broke the Versailles Treaty by invading the Sudetenland and Austria. Hitler was emboldened by France and Britains total lack of conviction to her allies and the documents they had signed at the end of WW1. Hitler was in fact scared to death that France and or Britain would attack from the west when he invaded the Czechs and in fact, Germany's 2 divisions on the western front were outnumbered by the French by more than 12 to 1. France could have ended WW2 before it ever started.
Without the allied invasion of Normandy, Germany could have IMHO turned the course of the war around in their favor within the next 12 months.
Germany had intended to invade Russia even when they signed the Rapollo agreement - the problem is the Russians had broken their intel codes so had a fair idea of what was about to come.
As for your Dieppe theory and a change in time for wars end. No
As for your Dieppe theory and a change in time for wars end. No
france was in great political turmoil during that period.governments kept coming and going.there was one that lasted just 30 days or so,moreover french army was still in ww1 mode,relying on static defense offered by maginot line.whatever armour they had was dispersed-defensively.the french generals were clearly in a defensive frame of mind and conservative and rigid in their outlook towards modern war.the concept of blitzkrieg was already around then,even within french army(general de gaulle was a prominent supporter),but the higher upswouldnt budge...that cost them the war,i guess.
i doubt it .hitler had already committed all his forces-he had no fresh divisions(that was the case in 1943 at the time of stalingrad),whereas red army was growing in size day by day.i heard they had 300+divisions and they were winning and on the roll.in the eastern front the germans were clearly finding the going getting tough and allied bomber raids were wreaking havoc.german industries suffered,critically maiming their war machine and they lost their oil fields with the lose of romania.the war would have carried on for a bit more,but i doubt that the germans could turn the tide.
More to the point. What would have been a possible change in outcome if:
1) Hitler has relinquished interference and blessed autonomy to the Theatre Commanders
2) If the germans had adequate logistics and bypassed Stalingrad and Moscow and pushed further behind
1) Hitler has relinquished interference and blessed autonomy to the Theatre Commanders
2) If the germans had adequate logistics and bypassed Stalingrad and Moscow and pushed further behind
then they would have had a chance at winning the war.but it could still have gone either way...but then,hitler delegating authority to his commanders would mean hitler not being hitler...remember he was an autocrat and not a democrat.he had to be in control all the time atleast he had to show people who was in command.
the important point here is adequate logistics i guess.but the russians could still fight on until their oil fields and their industries at urals were taken.infiltration of irregulars behind german lines and sabotage of supply lines and other logistics by them would have been the major headache for the germans and holding the land they captured would have tied them down i guess.