I agree that the landing in southern France was attacking into a strategic vacuum and didn’t serve much purpose; however it did provide the benefit of taking Marseilles intact as a major deepwater port, which became all the more important with the failure to secure Antwerp for use as a major supply port as it took until November to clear the scheldt and open up Antwerp to traffic even though the city had fallen on September 4th. From wiki:
I’m sorry but this is complete and utter bunk. The Germans weren’t enjoying anything close to 6-1 casualty rates at any time other than the invasion of the Soviet Union in Barbarossa where huge bags of prisoners were taken in the encirclement battles. By 1945 the casualty ratio was closer to 1-1, and had been since mid-43 at best. Had casualty ratios been anywhere close to 6-1 the Germans would have handily won the war of attrition on the Eastern front. As it was even with the horrific losses in 1941 it was the Soviets who were on the winning side of the attrition once Barbarossa failed to deliver a knockout blow. Barbarossa didn’t come cheap for the Germans either, by November 1, 1941 German casualties had reached 686,000, or 20% of the forces sent to the Eastern Front thus far.
As far as everything west of Moscow being a wasteland, the Soviets were able to relocate huge numbers of factories from the western USSR to east of the Urals before the Germans arrived and were able to maintain a very large lead over the Germans in industrial production throughout the war. They in fact were second only to the US in industrial production, and out produced the US in all categories of ground combat equipment as they had no need to use industry for naval applications and slightly less of a need for aircraft, particularly the more labor intensive 4 engine bombers.
But if D-Day in Normandy had been launched a month earlier and with greater punch Antwerp might have been opened up far earlier. Not just the launch date of Normandy was pushed back by Dragoon but the whole pace of the follow up Divisions and supply coming into the beaches.
Also Dragoon led to the broad front strategy adopted by Eisenhower. If we had concentrated on Normandy alone then the Northern Group of Armies tasked with clearing the Low Countries and the direct route to Germany would have had ample troops and been a proper Allied effort rather than an Anglo-Canadian effort starved of Divisions and resources trying to execute the most important immediate tasks.
German should have been defeated in 1944 and almost certainly would have if Dragood had not been launched.
Dragoon was a fatal distraction - Southern France could have been taken from Italy if Italy had had the supply taps left full on. The United Nations only had the resources for two full blooded ground campaigns in Europe - Italy and Normandy and Dragoon was a key mistake.
Oh, I agree with you; I was just noting an unanticipated positive that occurred. The whole Antwerp situation was another enormous mistake. The Allies were lucky enough to take the city with the port entirely intact unlike for example Cherbourg where the Germans demolished the port requiring a lot of time to be spent repairing it. Unfortunately after taking the port, the British 11th Armored Division missed the opportunity to immediately cross the Albert canal which would have cleared the estuary and forced the defeat of the 80,000 German troops of the Fifteenth Army who were able to cross the estuary and was responsible for the prolonged and brutal fighting to clear the estuary later. The chance to clear it in early/mid September while the German position was still weak was then missed with all of the focus on Market-Garden. Such is the friction of war though.
Speaking of Operation Husky (the 1943 Allied move into Italy, starting with Sicily just like Garibaldi), reading your post made me wonder: What must Allied sea access to the Mediterranean (needed for Malta and the North Africa campaigns as well) have been like trying to get past the Pillars of Hercules? One side of the Strait of Gibraltar being Axis-controlled, and the other side an Axis sympathizer.
Letting American field commanders undertake a British-planned expedition they didn’t understand or agree with may have been a key mistake. Certainly, some commentators would assign much more of the blame to Lucas and much less to Churchill than Dissonance does. At Wikipedia we find
[QUOTE=John Keegan (noted military historian)]
Had Lucas risked rushing at Rome the first day, his spearheads would probably have arrived, though they would have soon been crushed. Nevertheless he might have 'staked out claims well inland… [instead Lucas’s actions] achieved the worst of both worlds, exposing his forces to risk without imposing any on the enemy.
[/QUOTE]
And despite the mistakes, Anzio cannot be considered a complete disaster. Casualties finished up about equal on the two sides; the Anzio landings were useful practice for Normandy; the beachhead did survive and ultimately played a role in the destruction of German forces in Italy.
With the exceptions of the International zone of Tangier and the Rock of Gibraltar, the coasts near the Strait of Gibraltar all belonged to Spain during the War years; and Spain effectively annexed Tangier the same day that Paris fell. Despite his sympathies, Franco maintained neutrality. (Hitler said "“I prefer to have three or four of my own teeth pulled out than to speak to that man again!” in response to Franco’s terms for joining the Axis.)
Nevertheless, control of the Straits by Britain’s Gibraltar fortress, despite repeated bombings by the Axis, does seem remarkable.
Keegan was criticizing Lucas’ actions, which he surely deserved, not assigning a greater share of the blame to Lucas than to Churchill. There were plenty of poor decisions and leadership at all levels from Churchill down through Alexander to Clark and to Lucas, but the ultimate failure was the insistence to carry out the flawed operation rests with Churchill. Clark, an Anglophobe and rather inept commander who has the dubious distinction of being the only general to have his own men get Congress to hold a hearing on his conduct had told Lucas not to stick his neck out. It wasn’t an American expedition; half of the landing force was British. As far as driving into Rome or staking claims inland, meaning the Alban Hills, the words of Major General W.R.C. Penny, commander of the 1st British Division who was enormously critical of Lucas sums it up best “We could have had one night in Rome and 18 months in P.W. camps.” The size of the landing force was simply too small, and size and speed of arrival of German forces for the counterattack to large and swift for the landing to have accomplished anything.
It wasn’t a disaster, but it was as much of a folly as Gallipoli. None of the troops who landed at Anzio were at Normandy so it wasn’t of much use as practice for that; the forces at Anzio that later invade France did so in Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France. The whole point of landing at Anzio was to break the stalemate in Italy on the Winter Line and Cassino in particular. Instead of achieving that, all it did was create another stalemate. Carlo D’este wrote an excellent, detailed and evenhanded account of the battle in Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome.
Any argument that “forces could have been better used in Italy” is suspect – the long axis of the Italian peninsula was the most defensible terrain in Europe, and the Allies never did entirely get through it. Germany collapsed from every other direction while still holding on in the Italian front, and anyone with a relief map could have predicted it. Every man and bullet sent to Italy was subtracted from the war as well as if he’d been stranded on the moon.
Isn’t the argument that Germany maintained a large Army in Italy that they could have sent to another front if there was no large Allied Army in Italy?
Quote:
I’m sorry but this is complete and utter bunk. The Germans weren’t enjoying anything close to 6-1 casualty rates at any time other than the invasion of the Soviet Union in Barbarossa where huge bags of prisoners were taken in the encirclement battles. By 1945 the casualty ratio was closer to 1-1, and had been since mid-43 at best. Had casualty ratios been anywhere close to 6-1 the Germans would have handily won the war of attrition on the Eastern front. As it was even with the horrific losses in 1941 it was the Soviets who were on the winning side of the attrition once Barbarossa failed to deliver a knockout blow. Barbarossa didn’t come cheap for the Germans either, by November 1, 1941 German casualties had reached 686,000, or 20% of the forces sent to the Eastern Front thus far.
Correct-and this total included over 240,000 dead-the best of the front line troops.
That is why a meeting of the top Nazi leadership was held in November 1941-and Hitler uttered the phrase “how shall I end this war?”. That was really an admission that Barbarossa was more that the Germans could handle.
Yes, the Germans were still able to be on the offensive through 1942-but the end was never in doubt-Germany would lose-time was NOT on their side.
Correct and for illustration just look at 1941, 42 and 43. In 41, the Germans launch a big offensive across three fronts. In 1942, its just on the Southern Front. In 1943, its in one sector of one front. They were bleeding men and were being worn down.
Further, the “Western Democracies would not tolerate these kind of casualties” is frankly bullshit. Any country which has a genocidal war imposed on it would react they way the Soviets did, they it was literally victory or death for them.
IMHO it wasn’t all that large. But more to the point, to ATTACK against prepared positions, the Allies needed a proportionately larger army. The traditional ratio is 3:1 for “generic” assaults, but of course, the mountainous spine that dominates Italy and is cut repeatedly by rivers running perpendicular to the axis of Allied advance (say that three times fast!) would suggest using more than 3:1 odds.
All those Allied troops and resources could have been used elsewhere just like the Germans they were supposed to be tying down…and that “elsewhere” would almost certainly have terrain better suited to breakthrough and advance.
Imagine you’re a German strategist. You know the Allies are going to attack you, with significant force – you can’t avoid it. Given that, where would you be least concerned about the results? I imagine there was relief in the German General Staff HQ when they learned of the Allied advance into the toe of the Italian boot.
Surely the more likely scenario if the Germans manage to stave of defeat a few months is the regieme going down in a string of nuclear fireballs, Berlin first, until they did unconditionally surrender.
The suggestion was that the Dieppe raid in 1942 was a suicide mission to demonstrate to Stalin that the Normandy front was a difficult problem which would require massive resources.
