D-Day fails.

Great Debates
1

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Harve area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. If any blame or fault attaches to this attempt, it is mine alone.”

  • Eisenhower’s drafted speech in case of failure.

Fortunately, he never had to deliver it. But the success of Operation Overlord was by no means guaranteed. In a short essay called D-Day fails: Atomic Alternatives in Europe Stephen Ambrose argues that had the notoriously unpredictable English channel weather suddenly turned on the 6th, the results would have been disastrous - turning the Normandy landings into a Dieppe, but on a much grander scale. If the weather turned, there could be no follow-up landings, no airborne support and limited naval support - those who made it ashore would be killed or captured, while the rest of the invasion fleet retreated back to England.

So; there’s the counterfactual - just after the invasion is launched, the weather turns, dooming the operation from the start. What next?

Obviously, we could just try again - but not straight away. The next available date was also damned by fierce storms in the channel, pushing the operation further back. In addition, any element of surprise has been lost - the meticulous planning, as well as the counter-intelligence that went into fooling the Germans that the real landings would be in Calais has been completely wasted (including a dead body, phony tanks and double agents - who even after the real landings kept feeding the Germans balony).

In other words, if we did try again casualties would be through the roof. Victory would be in even more doubt than it was the first time round. We could try supplementing Operation Dragoon in southern France with the force still in England, presenting a logistical nightmare and strategic clusterfuck - attacking up through Vichy France leaves us miles from the Reich heartlands.

Obviously the Soviets grab a lot more territory. But how much more? Stalin apparently quipped “Tsar Alexander reached Paris”, when congratulated on reaching Berlin by an American diplomat. Would the Red Army reach the Atlantic? What would be the reaction of the western Allies (the likes of Patton and Monty were muttering about the Reds in unfavourable terms in 1945 as it was)?

Then there’s the political fallout. Eisenhower resigns in disgrace, taking full blame for the debacle. So, no President Eisenhower. Who replaces him as head of SHAEF? Could Churchill’s government survive? Could we have a President Dewey elected in November 1944 (and thus no President Truman)? Would Dresden and Hamburg see the detonations of Fat Man and Little Boy? Last but not least - the implications for the Pacific theatre - would the U.S. abandon the Germany first policy, pursuing the Pacific campaign with increased vigour (maybe even necessitating an invasion)?

Lots of tangent questions there, so TL;DR - if D-Day failed, what would happen?

2

It seems more likely that a weather problem would require a retreat, instead of sinking the fleet or leaving only the first landing force stranded. The Nazis assumed an invasion was coming, they just didn’t know where. If the location were tipped we could have just picked a different location. Even launching other feints that could have kept them hopping around or spreading their forces too thinly. It doesn’t have to be a disaster.

3

(1) The Soviets will still beat the Germans. By D-Day, this was essentially inevitable.

(2) Once the Soviets enter Germany, German control over Western Europe will likely collapse.

(3) With the collapse of German forces in the West, the Free French and probably the rest of the allies take control of France and the Low Countries.

At that point, it would be very difficult to see the Soviets continuing to roll into Western Europe. That would be a tremendously long supply line, over hostile territory. It’s doubtful that they could have maintained the necessary air superiority. If they did attack, they probably would successfully take Western Europe, depending on how much men and material the Western Allies had in France. End result? Moscow gets nuked in 45 and the USSR negotiates a partial surrender.

If Moscow stops at Germany, there would be no East/West Germany, just a communist puppet Germany. The biggest effect is probably the lack of access to German scientists by the West, but that is probably overblown. I imagine things would progress essentially as they did, subject to the butterfly effect of course.

4

If D-Day failed, and no quick appropriate alternative was successful, western Europe would be speaking Russian.

5

I agree that the Soviets could have won the rest of the war without D-Day. But I don’t agree that the length of supply lines, etc. would have stayed Stalin’s hand. It would only have meant more casualties establishing the iron fist of his rule. Such a consideration might have given Eisenhower pause, but not Stalin.

6

The long supply lines might not have stayed his hand, but they certainly would cause him to lose the war.

7

Against whom? The Dutch? The French?

8

Fall back 10 yards & punt.

That is, wait for the Manhattan Project to bear fruit.

The Reich dies in an instant, by fire.

9

The Americans and British. If the USSR gets into Berlin, Germany surrenders and the Western Allies will begin to occupy France.

10

A minor nitpick for a majorly interesting thread, but : by “a dead body” are you referring to The Man Who Never Was? That would be referring to the deception before the invasion of Sicily.

11

But this is predicated on the presumption that D-day fails. If you want to add a D-day V 2.0, well, ok, but thats not the original premise.

12

It’s not D-Day V2.0. It is occupying France after a German surrender. There isn’t any realistic scenario where Germany continues to fight on the Western front once Berlin falls.

13

I was sure it was part of the general deceptions before Overlord, but Googling reveals Operation Mincemeat was before Sicily, not Normandy. Although apparently a similar but geniune cache of documents was found just after D-Day, but was disregarded by Hitler as a deception, probably what muddled up the old memory.

14

The Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, even the Ukrainians or Belarusians don’t speak Russian. Why would a Red Germany or France do so?

15

That’s unlikely. We already had troops in Europe on the Italian peninsula, and had captured Rome a few days before D- Day was launched. In the OP’s scenario, with D-Day scuttled by weather and the loss of the element of surprise leading to the cancellation of the entire invasion, all those troops would be free to join in the push into Northern Italy, and from there into Southern Germany. Probably a much harder fight, given the terrain, and there’s good odds that Russia would capture the whole of Germany, rather than just the eastern portion, but once the Germans were in serious collapse, we’d be able to push west from our positions in Italy and secure most of western Europe before Russia could arrive on the scene.

16

That’s phrase to denote the Soviet takeover of Europe. It doesn’t mean every European will adopt the Russian language.

17

Nobody but the scientists working on the project and FDR himself knew of the project. Hell, even Truman didn’t know at the time of D-Day. Eisenhower and all the brass would keep trying.

Eventually, the 8th Air Force would eventually get B-29s and pound the everloving hell out of German industry. At some point, they would fall back and try to devote everything to stopping the Russians, and their Western flank would be weak and undefended. If the Russians did look like they were going to overrun Western Europe, I could see an alliance between the Western Allies/non-Nazi German coup d’etat faction vs. the Soviets much more likely.

18

read from time mag decades ago that, if the ground offensive at germany failed, radioactive poisoning of much of germany was approved (roosevelt/truman or just stimson/marshal?)

19

Nitpick: Northern Italy was pretty much going our way well before D-Day. In February, the 10th Mountain Division succeeded in capturing the crucial strategic high ground called Riva Ridge. Once this was taken, the other strategic hill, Mount Belvedere (where Bob Dole was injured, by the way) was a tough, ugly slog, but one that we were pretty much guaranteed success as long as we had Riva Ridge. This opened the Po Valley, allowing us to push out the Germans.

20

My take on the politics would be that Eisenhower would be reassigned. It wouldn’t be an unofficial demotion but he’d be given a staff job rather than another field command. With Eisenhower out, the Americans would have to produce another general who had equal or greater stature to replace him for a second attempt at a landing. That leaves you two names: Marshall and MacArthur. I don’t see Roosevelt moving MacArthur to Europe so Marshall would get the command he had wanted under circumstances he hadn’t.

The political debacle would probably be what you suggested. Churchill would probably be replaced by Atlee and Roosevelt by Dewey.

As for German nuclear targets, there was never any official target list - Germany surrendered before the planning had progressed to that point. But I’ve always thought Peenemunde would have made an ideal target - a major military target with great symbolic value, relatively limited civilian casualties, and blowing it up would have kept it out of Soviet hands.

And if the Germans don’t surrender, you blow up Berlin three days later.