Hitler’s Reich was irretrievably lost the moment the first German soldier set foot on Soviet soil, in 1941. From that point on, it was simply a matter of time. Yamamoto’s line about “awakening a sleeping giant,” though spoken with regard to Pearl Harbor, applies perfectly to the German attack on the Soviet Union.
The Normandy invasion was considered a mighty risky undertaking by the Allies at the time. From today’s perspective however, it really was a sure thing. Sure, the Germans had more troops in France, but they were trying to garrison an entire nation AND guard hundreds of miles of coastline. The Allies, on the other hand, concentrated 175,000 troops in essentially one spot, all with the goal of kickin’ some Nazi butt.
BUT, assuming for the sake of argument that the invasion had failed, I think the first mushroom cloud of the atomic age would have been seen over Berlin. And I think the Soviets would have moved right in to pick up the pieces.
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
It was. OVERLORD, the invasion of Normandy, was planned in conjunction with DRAGOON, the invasion of southern France. DRAGOON was planned to be nearly simultaneous with OVERLORD but the lack of shipping and landing craft forced its postponement until August 1944.
Why? The Pas de Calais was the most heavily fortified of all the French coastal areas since it was an obvious invasion site.
One of the primary goals of the invasion was to quickly secure ports that would allow the buildup of the armies. While the Pas de Calais is much closer to Antwerp and Rotterdam, the area has many easily defensible rivers and canals. In any event, DRAGOON captured the ports of Toulon and Marseille in good condition and were able to handle the majority of the supply needs of the Allied armies.
How so? German was able to force Russia to sue for peace in WWI. And Stalin did have at least one major crisis of confidence during the war that led him to consider making a separate peace.
Hogwash. It was a mighty risky even from today’s perspective. It gambled on Germany’s unwillingness and inability to concentrate sufficient force to at least contain the beachhead.
Take a look at Richard Overy’s “Why the Allies Won” for a cogent argument why the Allied victory was not preordained.
Warinner said, “How so? German was able to force Russia to sue for peace in WWI. And Stalin did have at least one major crisis of confidence during the war that led him to consider making a separate peace.”
The fact that Germany was able to sue for peace with Russia in WWI had a LOT more to do with the series of revolutions taking place within Russia than it did with German force of arms. The Russians WANTED OUT! Their departure from the war is typically characterized as a ‘withdrawal’ by authorities. Let’s keep in mind that Germany facilitated Lenin’s return to Russia from exile for a very good reason!
During WWII, Germany’s advances into Soviet territory peaked early – during the summer of '42 – and by D-Day the Soviets were doing most of the advancing, in spite of the lack of a significant ‘second front’ from the other Allies. Even without that diversion, the ‘Eastern Front’ devoured Hitler’s men and materiel at a rate he could never hope to sustain.
For that reason, and for the reasons I’ve already mentioned, the success of the Normandy invasion, with any reasonable degree of excellence in execution, was a foregone conclusion. I DID say that it was considered ‘iffy’ AT THAT TIME. From today’s perspective, however, it WAS pretty much a sure thing.
By mid-1944, after nearly five years of waging war, the Wehrmacht was already conscripting teenagers and middle-aged men. The German Navy, except for the U-boats, was gone. The Luftwaffe was a mere shadow of what it had been, especially in terms of the quality of its pilots. The Eighth Air Force was bombing hell out German cities and factories almost at will, thanks to the arrival in quantity of long-range escort fighter planes like the P-51.
As it turned out, the war in Europe could have been finished probably by the end of 1944, if not for a few monumental Allied blunders, the most significant of which, IMHO, is Montgomery’s failure to take the port of Antwerp. He took the city, yes, but left the valuable port facilities in German hands for months! (He also allowed the German divisions defending the port facilities to escape practically intact.) The use of that port could have alleviated the horrible supply-line problems that the British and American land armies had to face during the latter half of '44.
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
I’ll echo TBone2 as to the inappropriateness of comparing Russia’s situation in 1917 to that of the Second World War. Besides that, and to not quibble about smaller details (that, yes, Mr. Warinner, can make a difference), by the end of the first Winter Campaign in Russia, Hitler took command of the German military personally and micromanged his generals thereafter. I’m not looking anything up at the moment, so there’s room for quantitative dispute - but, I think, not for qualitative. That’s part of the equation - the Germans were militarily dysfunctional AT THE TOP. The July bomb failed, as did a few other attempts on Hitler’s life. So he remained a debilitating part of the command. That’s one part the German generals couldn’t beat, and I think, by mid-1942, most of them knew the game was up.
OK, well this is a hypothetical question, so it’s like a board game, right? If we do away with Hitler and you just have the assets and situation of the German High Command as of, what, January 1944(?), how do you play it out for German victory?
The atom bomb would have been the ace-in-the-hole for the U.S. Those NAZIs would’ve been blowed-up real good, and the Russians would’ve thought twice about moving any further westward.
Beatle said, “If we do away with Hitler and you just have the assets and situation of the German High Command as of, what, January 1944(?), how do you play it out for German victory?”
I’ll repeat that, in light of the invasion of the Soviet Union, German victory was out of the question, with or without the second front. As Beatle also pointed out, the Russian situation in the 40’s can hardly be compared with that of 1917!
The Russians ‘opted out’ of WWI because the political and social structure of their nation was coming apart at the seams. One of the central causes of the series of revolutions that culminated with ‘Red October’ (1917) was involvement in the war.
By contrast, the Soviet Union that Hitler attacked in 1941 was a different nation altogether! Stalin and his generals were backward, inept in many ways and poorly equipped at the beginning, but they controlled a relatively massive potential for making war, and their monolithic determination to defeat – even destroy – Nazi Germany was utter and complete. We’re talking about people who dismantled and transported east ENTIRE FACTORIES so that their war-making capability could be preserved! To this day, Russians refer to WWII as the “Great Patriotic War.” They have no such fond appellation for WWI.
If Hitler had somehow vanished by January 1944, I think the war would have been over in Europe by June of that year. Without the force of his will and power, there was little to sustain Germany’s efforts, especially in the face of what had become by then an irresistible tide of defeat. And Germany, perhaps even more than the other combatants, wanted to avoid the spectre of Soviet presence in Europe; a negotiated peace early in 1944 could have precluded that presence.
The nuclear question, then, is moot, since the option wasn’t available until the summer of 1945. As I said in a previous post, I think if Hitler had survived and D-Day had failed, Truman would have nuked Germany before he did it to Japan, but had Hitler disappeared at the beginning of 1944, neither D-Day nor nuking Germany would have been necessary.
In any case, the real and potential effects of the A-bombs in 1945 were quite limited, and have been vastly overrated ever since. (Now THERE’s a can o’ worms!)
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
TBone, while I said before that the Soviet Union was clearly winning by 1944, I certainly don’t feel their victory was preordained in 1941 or 1942. Germany was certainly capable of defeating the USSR at the start of the war and came very close to doing so.
Nor were the Soviets as monolithic as you describe. German recruitment of Soviets was conducted very unofficially, so the exact numbers are unknwon. But some estimates say that as many as a million Soviets fought on the Axis side. And this was despite the open and extreme anti-Soviet stance the Nazis took. If the Germans had made even a token effort to officially co-opt the Soviet people, the Soviet government would almost certainly have lost.
An autocratic state with a moderately efficient system of political control backed by a booming economy and a populace that enthusiastically supported a war
A totalitarian state that had systematically murdered at least three million of its citizens, liquidated 60% of its military officers, harbored significant minorities with divergent nationalist ambitions, destroyed its agricultural production so that millions of its citizens starved to death and distorted its industrial development through inept economic planning
Simply put, Stalin alone held the political power to make war or sue for peace. If Stalin felt that the war threatened his stranglehold on power, Stalin would have willingly sacrificed blood, territory and treasure to obtain peace. And we know that Stalin did have at least consider making a separate peace at least once during the war.
Montegomery captured Antwerp with its port facilities nearly intact on September 4th, 1994. What Montgomery failed to do in a timely fashion was clear the northern banks of the Scheldt estuary that led to the port of Antwerp. The Scheldt, in particular South Beveland and Walcheren Island, not Antwerp alone, was defended by the German 15th Army.
The 15th Army did manage to escape with 86,000 men, though hardly intact as it had engaged in the fighting in France since the end of July.
Even if Montgomery had cleared the Scheldt allowing the use of Antwerp in September 1944, it would not have alleviated the logistical crisis that the British and American armies labored under and made possible victory in 1944. Montgomery was still 650 kilometers from Berlin. The American armies were no closer and arguably on a more difficult strategic path into Germany. At no point had the Allies decisively breached the German border fortifications. No vital German industrial area had been seized or destroyed.
Barring Hitler making peace or being overthrown, there was no chance for victory in 1944.
OK, Warriner, my mistake! Montgomery captured the port facilities at Antwerp in early September, 1944. His failure was to capture both sides of the Scheldt estuary, a piece of water without which the port facilities were utterly useless. In other words, he captured the port facilities, but failed to follow up by taking the estuary that made the port facilities useful.
Even a quick glance at a map of northern Europe will yield the fact that the capture of the port of Antwerp – along with its access to the sea, the Scheldt estuary – could have shorted the supply lines for Montgomery and about half of the Allied armies by something like 250 land miles. Given the land transport used then (i.e., the ‘Red-Ball Express,’ et. al.), it’s hard to imagine how the proper capture of Antwerp – i.e. the capture of EVERY necessary component – could NOT have shortened the war.
Whether he actually believed it was possible or not, Montgomery proposed operations – most notably Market-Garden – that were devised to end the war in Europe by the close of 1944. If, in fact, such an early conclusion was beyond the realm of possibility, Montgomery himself, and Eisenhower and Marshall, were guilty of malfeasance, at the very least.
More than any other factor, LOGISTICS played the trump card in the Allied advance across Europe in late 1944. By his decision to bypass the securement of the Scheldt estuary, thereby rendering the capture of Antwerp useless, Montgomery prolonged the war in Europe by months.
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
I offer my most humble apology, Andrew. I misspelled your name. I should have typed ‘Warinner’ when I typed ‘Warriner.’ No insult was intended, honest!
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
Hardly, at best they were guilty of undue optimism.
Logistics was the Allies problem in late 1944 but the problem was already a crisis by the time Antwerp was captured.
If any blame attaches to Montgomery or Eisenhower it is because they did not devote the same attention to the Allied logistics planning as they did to the invasion planning.
Allied logistics planners planned a relatively gradual advance through France that envisioned the Allied armies standing along the line of the River Seine at D+90 (ninety days after D-Day, in other words September 1944). There they anticipated a halt in the advance that would allow the captured ports to be brought into service, the French rail network repaired and a buildup of supplies to support an advance across the Seine to clear the remainder of France. At no time did the pre-invasion logistical planning count on the possession of Antwerp.
Events worked out quite differently. By September 1994, the Allies were far past the Seine and had in fact already liberated Paris, Antwerp and Brussels and were threatening the borders of Germany. There was no pause in the tempo of operations that would have allowed a buildup of supplies and many of the assumptions that the logistical planning was based on did not come to pass (chiefly the use of the Atlantic ports, especially Cherbourg, was far below expectations). It is not surprising that the Allies suffered a logistical crisis in September 1944.
Here is an illustration of the tyranny of logistics:
mid-August 1944: Montgomery proposes transferring control of the US 1st and 3rd Armies to himself to support a thrust by the 21 Army Group (British and Canadian) through Holland into Germany and Berlin, a total of more than forty divisions. Note: this was before the Allies had closed the Falaise gap, captured Paris and destroyed the bulk of German armies in France. Also note: this was before the rapid advance of the British armies and shortly after the failure of TOTALIZE.
September 2, 1944: Montgomery proposes an advance into Germany of 14 to 18 divisions. Note: Montgomery reduced his proposals due to logistical shortfalls.
September 4, 1944: Montgomery captures Antwerp, though not the Scheldt.
September 17, 1944: Montgomery mounts MARKET-GARDEN. I’m not sure of the actual number of divisions that participated in the ground advance but it was even less than the 14 - 18 division he had proposed two weeks earlier. It is doubtful if Antwerp were functioning it would have had much of an effect on MARKET-GARDEN.
Of course, MARKET-GARDEN failed. But among the many reasons it failed was that as the German armies were defeated in France and the occupied countries, they fell back towards Germany, thus shortening their supply lines. The farther the Allies advanced, the farther they moved away from their logistical centers.
In fairness, there it was impossible for Eisenhower or Montgomery to forecast the battle for France three months in advance. Possesion of Antwerp would have made easier the battles to close to the border of Germany and it would have put the Allied armies in better shape to resist the Ardennes counterattack. But the failure of MARKET-GARDEN and the ‘Miracle of the West’ show how much fight the German army had left in it.