We watched Rise and Fall of the Third Reich last night on the W̶a̶r̶ History Channel and it certainly supported the view that the Soviets had things more or less under control, combined with RAF and USAAF bombing raids to be sure. What would have happened had there never been a D-Day? Was the invasion as much about securing a Western post-war Europe from the Soviets as it was defeating Germany?
Aren’t you forgetting the Allies attacking through Italy? Normandy was a third front, not a second. But the supply lines from Britain and America were much shorter with Normandy.
I don’t think in war that you want to give your enemy a chance to regroup and prolong the war, perhaps even end up winning it (see Rome in the Second Punic War after some disastrous defeats at Cannae and other places. They wouldn’t sue for peace and ended up beating Carthage, leaving a number of people wondering what would have happened if Hannibal had marched on Rome). Certainly Great Britain has never wanted any one nation to become dominant on Europe, be it Spain, France or Germany, They wouldn’t have wanted the Soviet Union to rule a huge chunk of Europe. The Americans had a Presidential election coming up in November 1944. I don’t know if FDR would have lost if there was no D-Day. But people at home were getting weary about food and gas rationing and having 11 million men away from their families in the military. American and British 'governments could have over estimated how close Nazi Germany was to building an atomic bomb.
They weren’t built since Germany was building V-1, V-2 missiles and jet ME-262 fighters, they may have figured they were close to an atomic bomb. The Allies showed a shocking insensitivity to the Holocaust in publicizing it but some part of them must have wanted to finish the war as quickly as possible to minimize that.
Also, I think by 1944, the Americans and the British had both decided that the end of the war would only be a full and unconditional surrender. No WWI settlement that left Hitler in power with reduced borders.
So, when you pursue that strategy, it is necessary to go all out in pursuit of that goal. Don’t take your foot off the throat of a wounded enemy so that they can set up a defense line that stalls you for years.
Yes, Germany was doomed by mid 1944, but the invasion at Normandy was about defeating Germany not about how post-war Europe would be divided. As can be seen here the Western Allies didn’t stop advancing at the agreed upon post-war demarcation lines since it would be all they would ‘get’ of Germany after the war but neither did they try to keep the occupied territory for themselves. WW2 was a total war, and as jtgain said the only acceptable outcome for the Allies was complete and unconditional surrender. A number of Germans had delusional hopes about being able to reach a separate peace with the Western Allies both earlier in the war to be able to concentrate on the Soviets and at the end of the war to be able to surrender to the West rather than the Soviets, but they were just that, delusional. During the final surrender negotiations
Did the program advance that view, or is it your opinion? Just curious.
In any event, I know of no evidence that D-Day was about securing Western Europe from the Soviets. In fact, the USSR had been pushing for a Second Front since 1942, as a way of diverting the Germans from the Eastern Front. Stalin wanted Churchill to launch something, even if it failed.
This wasn’t at all practical. Churchill, after the failure of Gallipoli that led to the failure of the government in 1915, was certainly in no mood to try anything unless it was going to work. The British and French together were not in a position to invade France in 1942 or even most of 1943. By late 1943, the British and Americans together had enough strength to invade Italy. The strategic importance of that move is under-appreciated. The Italian campaign tied down German forces on a third front, prevented the Italians or Germans from establishing any counter-moves in southern France, and secured the Mediterranean. Having possession of the Mediterranean meant that the Americans could move supplies into the USSR through Iran, while the British could supply India through the Suez.
In mid-1944, the Soviets had stabilized their front with the Germans, but were still primarily fighting a defensive battle. The Normandy invasion tied up even more German forces; by the end of 1944, the western Allies had eliminated the threat of submarines from bases in France. Two weeks after D-Day, the Soviets opened their own offensive.
I seriously think that the Soviets did not want to “invade” all of Europe. They didn’t see the point. It would have put them in direct conflict with the US, and they knew that they’d be hard-pressed to win that battle. Yes, they outnumbered us on the ground, but they didn’t have the logistical support, air power, or sea power. Stalin figured that he could simply get governments that were sympathetic to the USSR, and leave it at that.
D-Day was about winning the war. Not invading was not an option, as the Soviets were an ally and could not be left to carry an overwhelming share of the burden of defeating Nazi Germany by themselves.
If denying the Soviets control of Europe had been so important, the Western Allies would have cut back on supplies to the Soviets and pushed harder to occupy all of Germany for themselves (and quite a few important Germans would have been pleased to help, for fear of Soviet revenge and to attempt to get a softer peace from the Western allies).
That date marked the end of Germany’s LAST offensive in Russia (Operation Citadel/Kursk). Germany fought for 4 weeks, trying to surround 2 Soviet Army groups in a pincer movement.
It didn’t work-the Russians fought them to a standstill-and 56,000 German troops were killed. In addition, over 600 tanks were lost, plus 300 plus aircraft.
These were losses that the Germans cold not make up-from this point on, all the Germans could do was to conduct defensive battles-the end was never in doubt.
That is why the Germans were so dangerous-they kept fighting-long after they had any real chance of winning.
Of course, defeatism was a dangerous philosophy in Nazi Germany-it could get you a bullet in the head.
Churchill, along with the British general staff were rightly opposed to attempting an invasion of France in 1942 or even 1943 and Churchill was able to persuade FDR against it. The American general staff was much more gung ho about landing in France at the earliest date, even early 42 in Operation Sledgehammer and pushed for a landing in spring 43 in Operation Roundup which eventually became the basis for Overlord.
However, Churchill was still enamored with wild ideas like Gallipoli. He pushed hard for sending the Royal Navy into the Baltic in early 1940 using his idea to heavily modify several Revenge class battleships with super-bulges in Operation Catherine which was thankfully never carried out. The disastrous Dodecanese Campaign in 1943 was also his brainchild, as was the landing at Anzio which he insisted on being pushed through even though there was much less naval lift and available ground troops than he had anticipated. He tried to wash his hands of the whole affair, notably his famous “I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat into the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale.” General Lucas became the scapegoat for the failure and was relieved of command. He was a mediocre corps commander at best, but the failure of the operation wasn’t his fault; it was faulty at its core and pushed through regardless at Churchill’s insistence.
I’m a bit confused as to what you mean by this. The Germans were fully on the defensive and continuously being driven back by the Soviets since mid-1943. They were only on the offensive in mid-43 in the failed limited offensive at Kursk; prior to that they had been on the defensive since the Soviet 42/43 winter offensive.
No, I was just wondering what a post-war Europe might have looked like had there never been a D-Day invasion for whatever reason.
The first front being air attack from Britain?
Nope, there was the invasion of Italy through Sicily.
Also worth remembering the 2nd lot of landings in the South of France - mainly a US show. Worked well too since the Germans were all tied up trying to defend Northern France.
As I recall, the program advanced little in the way of views. It was a strictly a collection of contemporary home movies made by various people with some narration. No interviews or new footage.
What is worth considering is the what if scenario had the D-Day landings failed. Eisenhower had considered the possibility and even had a handwritten note prepared in advance and in his pocket on June 5th/6th, taking all responsibility for the failure as solely his own. Lets say there had been more effective beach defenses, less solid individual initiative by the Allied troops and a faster, more vicious German counterattack on the beachheads - all things that could have happened. The outcome would have been catastrophic for the Allies in the West, both a humiliating setback and at the same time an opportunity for the Germans to gain some sort of initiative in the ensuing shock upon the Allies’ morale. There could have been very damaging side effects upon Allied cohesion as well, perhaps with finger-pointing, blaming and political spinoffs on the home fronts on both sides of the Atlantic.
The overall effect might have been to prolong the war long enough to make the Allies’ unconditional surrender demand less viable. There might have been increasing political will in the Allied countries to push for some sort of conditional surrender, with some form of German-designed and designated government, instead of the Allies being able to dictate the form of the postwar German state as they did historically.
If the Germans, by this D-Day defeat, got the time and space to manage to put off the Russian advance, such a scenario might have occurred, with unknown implications for the postwar world. Fascism Nazi style might not have been totally stamped out, but instead remained muted and concealed, to fester in postwar years and provide a further irritant in East-West relations.
The likely outcome would have been a much messier Cold War, in other words, with the possibility of a nuclear armed, independent and quite unpredictable German state in the mix.
My two bits, your mileage may vary, etc.
So there is an Italian front-Sicily, Anzio, Salerno, a French front-Normandy and Southern France. The third front mentioned above was where?
I thought we were talking about the US and Brits. :smack:
Thanks.
The Southern France front strategically was worthless - the resources required to support it would have been far better retained in Italy and used to accelerate the Normandy landings (especially specialist shipping of which there was a critical shortage).
The USA insisted upon it in part to deliberately hamper the Italian front as they did not trusted Churchill to resist getting them involved in the Balkans. But the Southern France front only happened as a support to Normandy and if Normandy had not happened then Italy would have been going full speed ahead by default.
As an aside, Normandy simply could not have been launched any earlier than Spring 1944 (1 May being original planning date) due to the critical path being a shortage of Landing Ship (Tanks) - LSTs being key to transporting armoured vehicles.
Once it was agreed the Southern France landing had to go ahead (there was a drive from the UK to cancel them and transfer their shipping allocation to the Normandy planning) then D-Day got inevitably delayed from May to June due solely to the need for more LSTs to be delivered to Europe. That month later proved critical in running out of time to finish off Germany before General Winter (weather) intervened.
Amateurs study tactics, professionals follow logistics - which is where the Normandy landings and indeed WW2 was won.
Given that the Soviets themselves had been screaming for a second front, to the point that they suspected Britain and the US of deliberately stalling in order to weaken the USSR as much as possible, it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that “they had things more or less under control”. The USSR had broken Germany’s advance but at a cost western democracies probably couldn’t have survived: Everything west of Moscow was more or less a wasteland, Soviet soliders were dying like flies and Soviet workers were almost literally being worked to death as they froze and starved. As late as early 1945 the Germans were inflicting six to one casualties against the Soviets.
The Eastern front was like a velociraptor against an apatosaurus: an incredibly vicious and dangerous attacker against an opponent that only won because it could afford to lose huge amounts of blood and keep fighting.
Heh. William Manchester quoted a War Cabinet aide as saying something like, "When Churchill was right, there was no one better, but when he was wrong, my God…!"