June 6 The Longest Day

D-Day is a good time to remember the sacrifices Allied soldiers made to liberate Europe, but us in the West tend to overstate its importance in winning the war.

Failure of the Normandy landings would have been a setback, but it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war. In all likelihood, it probably would have just allowed the Russians to motor right on through to the Atlantic.

There is really no debate. The decisive battle and the turning point of the war in Europe was at Stalingrad, followed by the destruction of the German Panzers at Kursk the following summer. From that point on, the only question was how long it would take to get the Nazis to surrender.

 

Ditto.

 

The more I learn about the whole thing, I really wonder if the invasion was a tactical mistake. The beach was too heavily fortified, which led to far too many casualties.

 

What were the other options? We had to go in somewhere. The entire North Atlantic coast was fortified the same. There were about 400,000 German soldiers stationed in Norway anticipating an invasion from the north. We pretty much had control of Italy by that point, but crossing the Alps into Germany was decided to be too difficult.

 

The naval portion of D-Day was dominated by the British, but the U.S. provided the majority of the forces (i.e., men) on the ground.

 

there was also a need for a 2nd front, a western front, to relieve the Russians. The Americans liberated Europe while the Russians reclaimed Russia (and occupied but did not liberate Eastern Europe). Americans dont appreciate the Russian contribution and losses because of the Cold War. But Western Europe needed Russia to occupy the German troops while the USA got its shit together

 

Of course it was an action by the Allies. For whatever reason, I'd always thought the overwhelming majority of troops and equipment was U.S.

Read this in a CNN story; I apologize if any of it is incorrect.


Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, was American, but his deputy, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder was British, as were all three service chiefs. Air Marshal Sir Arthur "Mary" Coningham, commander of the tactical air forces, was also British. The plan for Operation Overlord -- as D-Day was codenamed -- was largely that of Gen. Bernard Montgomery, the land force commander. The Royal Navy had overall responsibility for Operation Neptune, the naval plan. Of the 1,213 warships involved, 200 were American and 892 were British; of the 4,126 landing craft involved, 805 were American and 3,261 were British.

Indeed, 31% of all U.S. supplies used during D-Day came directly from Britain, while two-thirds of the 12,000 aircraft involved were also British, as were two-thirds of those that landed in occupied France.

 

"D-Day Dispatch - The first reporter on the beach" - The late Reuters correspondent Doon Campbell, who was 24 at the time, in his memoir: "The ramp thrown down from the landing-craft was steep and slippery, and I fell chest-deep into the sea lapping the mined beaches. The commandos, their faces smeared with camouflage grease, charged ahead. I struggled. My pack, sodden and waterlogged, strapped tight round my shoulders, seemed made for easy drowning. But a lunge forward, helped by a heave from a large corporal already in the water, gave me a first toehold.

"Ahead lay the beach. It was a sandy cemetery of the unburied dead. Bodies, some only half-dead, lay scattered about, with arms or legs severed, their blood clotting the sand. Behind me, through fountains of water raised by exploding shells from the coastal batteries, little ships were nudging into the shallows, and behind them a vast armada of battleships, cruisers, destroyers and close support vessels put down a paralysing bombardment. ... [E]very step was an effort under the backbreaking load of my pack. ...

"We fought to stay alive in [a] shallow furrow, clawing at the soggy soil for depth that ... made us feel a little less exposed to the withering mortar and shellfire. ... t never let up. With every pause in fire, I was wrestling to ease myself out of the commando pack harness. ... I ... found my portable typewriter undamaged. I got a sheet of paper in and started pecking at the keyboard, but it was hopeless; every time I tried to type, a mortar exploded a few yards away or hit the lip of the ditch and a shower of dirt clogged the keys." http://goo.gl/eBWYjL

 

Hitler's worst tactical move was invading the Soviet Union. If he had stopped at Poland, the Soviets would have left him alone, regardless of what he did or did not do in Western Europe. Heck, if Hitler had not invaded the Soviet Union and France, the Allies would have been content to let him have all of Central Europe rather than engage another war.

The real time for Britain to act was when France was invaded, but Chamberlain wasn't willing to go to war over that and IIRC Churchill had just been named PM very shortly before France was invaded.

As for Normandy, those guys were running into a wall of gunfire. It seems like the Allied intelligence had sorely underestimated the extent of German resistence there would be at Omaha Beach. Lots and lots of men and boys lost their lives.

The other thing that struck me deeply about Normandy was how young a lot of those guys were, many just out of high school. Not really grizzled combat veterans at all.

 

If anyone is unfamiliar with just how horrific the fighting on the Eastern Front was, I can't recommend highly enough Dan Carlin's "Ghosts of the Ostfront" series. It's almost frightening how cheap human life was there.
http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&cPath=3&products_id=184&zenid=fbdf073c3f8ed08084ea80b6625914f6

He also has an episode, which is still available for free, on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The title, "Logical Insanity", offers a good insight into his thoughts on the matter.
http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php/hharchive/Show-42---%28BLITZ%29-Logical-Insanity/Second%20World%20War-World%20War%20Two-World%20War%20One

 

Sportswriters should never complain about their press box again.

 

Do you mean Czechoslovakia in 1938?
When France was invaded in 1940, Britain had troops on the ground and they got their ass kicked. It led to the evacuation at Dunkirk, which was another huge tactical blunder by the Germans. If they'd finished off the British Expeditionary Force then, they might have been able to waltz into Britain uncontested.
Instead, the Brits lost a ton of equipment but were able to keep the core of their army for future actions.
There was also a decision by the RAF, once it was obvious France was lost, to stop risking aircraft on bombing and air support runs over France and the Channel. That helped save the bulk of the RAF to defend against invasion.

Dunkirk was just one example of a number of miscalculations that cost the Germans dearly. They didn't finish off the Brits then, or in the Battle of Britain, and of course that allowed the British Isles to function as the staging ground for the Normandy invasions. The Isles were referred to as "the world's largest stationary aircraft carrier."

The Battle of Britain, as desperate as it was, was also pursued a bit half-assedly by the Germans. They never were able to achieve air supremacy, likely didn't have enough landing craft for a successful amphibious invasion, and didn't have a rock-solid invasion plan for England itself. Even if they'd won the air battle, there was a whole other phase that they weren't necessarily well-suited to pull off.

In Russia, Operation Barbarossa was poorly executed. It started late, and the push for Moscow was undertaken after the Germans had gone hard throughout the summer. The German tank crews needed time to refit and maintain their tanks, and replenish lost numbers. Instead, they tried to take Moscow before winter set in and failed, in large part because their men and equipment were fatigued and their supply lines were too stretched out.
That set the stage for the Soviet comeback in 1942-43. Stalingrad was a tipping point, but Moscow the previous winter was really the first time the German ground forces were soundly defeated.

Looking at the totality of everything, and German defeat seems almost inevitable. They had an incredible military, but they were also incredibly self-destructive in their actions.