Reinforcing the deception campaign, the Calais area was bombed twice as hard as Normandy in the weeks running up to the invasion.
Had the landings failed, most of the German troops in Western Europe would have been redeployed to the East. Probably wouldn’t have stopped the Russians, but it would have staved off final defeat for a while at least.
The original A-bomb target was Berlin.* Had Germany not fallen when it did, it certainly would have been the first country to suffer nuclear attack.
Here I’m reminded of Joan Pujol Garcia and his success in convincing the Nazis that D-Day was going to fall somewhere else, as detailed in the fascinating documentary Garbo the Spy.
All of the bombing of the French rail network and bridges that was isolating Normandy from being rapidly reinforced was also isolating troops in Normandy from rapidly moving to reinforce Calais, for example.
I remember growing up in Canada, the general feeling here was that the British high command sent the Canadians on a futile understaffed suicide attack on Dieppe simply to appease the Russians and show them the channel crossing was too difficult at the time (1942?).
As others have indicated, if the Germans figure out the Allies want Normandy, and start deploying forces accordingly, they run the risk of tipping their hand to the RAF and USAAF (who could fly recon flights directly over Berlin, never mind the short jog to Normandy), who could respond by just not invading. The initiative was entirely in the hands of the Allies. It’s not like the Allies had a deadline to meet (well, a deadline short of the fall of Berlin to the Russians, anyways), and if the Germans could stage an attack on the staging areas in England, they would have launched an invasion force of their own (of course, to do that, they’d need air superiority over England and Naval superiority in the English Channel, both things they lacked in 1940 and the Brits and Americans had in 1944).
So yeah, if the Germans figure out the Allies intended to invade Normandy in June of 1944, maybe the Allies instead land in July, or at Pas-de-Calais in September, or Toulon in 1945. If they do land and the Germans throw the invasion force into the sea, the RAF and USAAF continue their bombing missions, destroying Germany’s dwindling industrial and logistical capacity and thus accelerating the Soviet onslaught. It’s kind of like the Alternate-History story someone wrote asking the question of what would happen if Napoleon had defeated Wellington at Waterloo, and concluding that his weakened forces would be defeated by von Blücher’s army of 50,000 Prussians the next day.
To be technically accurate, if Overlord failed at the onset, there still would have been a D-Day. It just wouldn’t have been June 6, 1944. And it would have been part of Operation Overlord 2: Overlorder or whatever name they wanted to give it.
It’s not like Normandy and the Pas-de-Calais are super far apart. A two hour drive at the most. What the Germans should have done is stage forces in a pivotal point between the two, ready to run towards the “right” site. Which is, in fact, exactly what they did… except those rapid reaction forces never got their marching orders. Oops.
Even if they hadn’t been able to move more forces, the ones that were there could have concentrated on the invasion beaches themselves, rather than trying to cover all of Normandy against an invasion.
They could have moved all their artillery within range of the beaches, registered their fires better, moved more of the infantry into prepared positions, and done more in the way of mines and obstacles specifically on the invasion beaches and not elsewhere.
They could have maximized the effectiveness of what they already had in a week, even if they didn’t get more forces. This might have doomed Omaha beach, and made the other 4 much more bloody.
One thing that’s always made me wonder about was what seemed to be the inefficiency of the Allied naval bombardment of the German positions on/overlooking Omaha Beach. Did they have any artillery spotters in L-4s flying at 4Kft or so to keep an eye on stuff?
They did get the orders to move, the problem was more in the ability of a rapid reaction force to actually be rapid in the face of total Allied domination of the air. The French rail system more or less entirely collapsed in June and July; over the objections of Arthur Harris the French transportation network became the primary target of the combined bomber offensive from March of '44. The sheer numbers of planes made road marches during daylight hours slow going and costly. This combination of the destruction of the transportation network by strategic bombers and the interdiction of movement by tactical aircraft made what would have been relatively quick movements very long ones. In the weeks and months after the landings, the Allies were reinforcing Normandy much faster than the Germans were able to despite having to move forces across the English Channel to do so.
The whole issue of Hitler being asleep and not authorizing the release of panzer reserves is overplayed a bit; they weren’t going to arrive at the beaches on D-Day if Hitler had been awake and had given the order. Rommel was used to facing total Allied domination of the skies and wanted the panzer divisions forward deployed all along the coast; von Rundstedt wanted them kept as a mobile reserve. Hitler split the difference and gave some to each. Rommel had operational authority over 3 panzer divisions deployed close to the shore, the 21st in Normandy and the 2nd and 116th in Calais. The 21st unsuccessfully counterattacked the British beaches on D-Day. The 2nd and 116th stayed in Calais awaiting the ‘real’ invasion, but they didn’t need Hitler’s okay to move; they weren’t going to anyway, they remained in Calais for two weeks. The only divisions really impacted were the 12th SS Panzer which wasn’t given orders to move until 1430 on June 6 but was in action by 1000 on June 7 (delays due to incessant air attacks kept them from reaching their assembly areas until 2200) and Panzer Lehr which was in action on June 8. The rest of the divisions were simply too far away: 1st SS was in Belgium, 17th SS PzGr south of the Loire, 2nd SS in Southern France, and 9th SS and 10th SS in transit from the Eastern Front.
Another factor that is often overlooked in these sort of discussions is the tremendous weight of the naval bombardment the Allies were able to deliver. Even if Rommel got his wish and brought the Panzers right up to the beaches in advance, they faced the real possibility of being hammered flat by the big guns.
The Germans really were in a bad position - have the tanks far from the beaches, and they get intercepted by the Allies’ air superiority; move them right up to the beaches, and they face a rain of 16 inch shells.
The problem for the Germans was Allied air superiority. The Germans could really only move troops at night. So troops that weren’t at the landing site weren’t going to get there on the day of the landing.
eta: I hadn’t noticed there was a second page on this thread now where other people had already made these points.
Fog of war. A lot of smoke and confusion, both from actual combat and smokescreens laid by both sides to hinder enemy attempts at laying in accurate fire, plus the fact that many of the defenses were camouflaged and hardened with emphasis on protection from near misses and overhead hits. Example.
By the end of the day, several American and British destroyers finally decided to simplify their problem by moving as close as possible to the beach, nearly grounding themselves, so they could engage the German emplacements directly. Turns out having a battery of 5 inch guns open up on you from a few hundred yards away is bad for one’s morale.
Interesting question! Maybe if you start a new thread it will get the attention it deserves. I always figured it was because the British high command were all drunks, but that is my go-to explanation for the stupid decisions of history. Except Hitler’s. He was mean and vain, but he came by that naturally.
Dieppe was, depending on who you ask, either a mis-managed undermanned operation doomed to failure, or a valuable learning experience. Both folks are probably right, but I don’t recall ever getting the impression that there was ever a long-term plan for that operation. I’ve noticed that history is filled with people doing things in mind-bogglingly stupid ways (check out the first aircraft carrier, HMS Furious, with the flight deck that originally only covered the front third of the ship, for example) simply because nobody had ever figured out how to do it in the common-sense correct way yet.
Point of trivia, this was also, IIRC, the first combat operation of the US Army Rangers, with 50 Rangers attached to one of the British Commando units. The Commandos trained the first Rangers, which is why the Army Rangers wear berets (and the Rangers trained the first Air Force Security Policemen, which is why AF Security Forces wear berets… as for everyone else in the Army… I dunno)
Also coupled with desperation to reverse a three year losing streak. The British couldn’t help Poland, they were kicked out of France and the low countries, Greece, Crete, much of North Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, heavy U boat losses. Only a few naval victories over “Graf Spee” and “Bismarck” and the Battle of Britain.
Panzer Lehr was kind of a big ticket item, though. It was one of those “teacher’s pet” divisions, equipped with all the best toys and made up of hardened East Front veterans and troop instructors. And Wittmann :). One of the few 100% mechanized units in the whole German army, too (contrary to popular imagery, the Wehrmacht relied heavily on horses and jackboots rather than snazzy half-tracks to move about. I know *you *must know this, I’m saying this for the benefit of our listeners)
I suppose it would have been kind of a waste to use all that talent for a turkey shoot on the beaches.
There’s still a million of those blockhauses all over the waterfront, BTW. Also at many rail yards. We never tore them down.
Of course, now they smell of hobo piss, heroin sweat and illicit love rather than MG-42 grease, but seeing them “in person” it’s not hard to believe what a tough nut they must have been to crack.
