D-Day: 1943

U.S David

Banned
The Western Allies won't ready in 1943, they were but landing craft was needed in North Africa, Italy, and the Pacific. Stalin was begging them to open a 2nd front, ironicly this puts him in a worst post-war spot.


Lets say D-Day goes in 1943, the war will end by mid to late 1944. The Western Allies will be in Poland. It depends on how they work it out in Yalta. The Soviets wanted a piece of Germany.

I can see the Western Allies giving the Soviets half of Berlin.


This changes the Cold War. The West won't see the Soviet Union as much of a threat, so they won't built up Germany. So Germany stays poorer and may be broken up into serverl countries.


Stalin will then jump into the Pacific War, hoping to get something. Japan is not going to surrender unless at gun point. So the Atomic Bombs will still be used.


Or Stalin dosn't get into Asia.


This would be good if the Iron Curtain is much deeper into Europe. This means Poland, Hungry, and Cheslavia and possible Yulglosiva is free.

And maybe China, Korea, and Indo-China say free from communisim.

The Cold War will be titled much more on our favor.
 
Okay for starters it will be a smaller operation than OTL, because as indicated, the allies don't have as many landing craft, although this might be weighed out by the fact that if this takes place in the middle of 1943 there will be few troops and no fortifications anywhere there isn't also a port (fortification of the beaches didn't really start until late in the year), so we might see a quicker initial advance (the Germans are out of position), but a slow-down later (the allies have less facility to land supplies/reinforcements), although hopefully not before the allies have cleared through most of the bocage.
 
Big change though is that neither the industry, nor the infrastructure or the Luftwaffe are yet bombed into rubble and inefficiency.
 
But nor do the Germans have very much left to throw west, so while the Allies may lack the overwhelming supremacy in the air they had in 1944, they'll still likely have superiority over any and all sectors they wish to contest. Likewise, the Allies have only bog-standard M4s, Cavaliers and Churchill tanks to play with, but this should be okay as the Germans can only field trifling Tiger Is and a trifling number of Panthers.
 
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1943 would - unfortunately - be a disaster.

We have been piling through this a few times and the conclusion has always been:

- No planning for this. Overlord required an immense amount of planning and allocation. Not done in 1943
- Marshall pushed for it and got shot down time and again by Brooke
- No landing craft
- Too few troops
- no specialised armour
- No harbour
- Germany in a better shape
- no air superiority
- ... and all the other things pointed out before

The result might have been that the invasion would fail and that another Overlord would not be doen before 145/6 - in which instance it could be way too late.

On top of, with a failed Overlord, who says that Germany could not utilise the additional troops in the East?

Sorry - it is not a matter of a leisure-drive to Poland. It might be the horror of Germany actually fighting Stalin to a stalemate.

Ivan
 
- No planning for this. Overlord required an immense amount of planning and allocation. Not done in 1943
Agreed

- No landing craft
Fewer landing craft, but if you can fake operation in the Med you'll still have some.

- Too few troops
Yep.

- no specialised armour
Actually they'd have had Valentine DDs in time, if nothing else, which might have been okay, since although they were outdated they'd likely have been facing only very light opposition.

- No harbour
Agreed.

- Germany in a better shape
But with defences only around the harbours, and lacking

- no air superiority
No air supremacy, but they'd almost certainly have been able to gain superiority when and where they could put aircraft.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Heck, in 1943 the vanilla Sherman was no longer the best tank around (as it was when intro'd), but it was still a genuine heavyweight as compared to the bantamweight that it was by 1944.
And that would have all kinds of effects on a 1943 Normandy campaign.
 
Sorry - Supremacy.

Overlord, btw, made use of some 6,000 ships. The amount of planning required to find them, to work out loads and destinations and time tables are staggering.

To 'hope for the best' with 6,000 ships would be a mess (why go for a disaster if you can have a calamity).

I have the feeling sometimes, that we tend to overlook the staff work in these situations. It is fine to criticise Monty for making sure his administrative tail was rolled up (Churchill was especially hard on Monty for this).

However, without the detailed planning it is rather easy to get it messed up. Of course it can be overdone, but Overlord in 1943 was probably not even getting to consider the amount of staff work required.

Monty did put it into shape from the early designs from Cossac.

So, returning the OP:

1943 Overlord without any real planning, etc etc:

Scenario one:
It fails on the beaches. Nothing before 45/6 in which case it would not matter

Scenario two:
They do land but stalemate until winter '43 when Germany attacks and pushes the whole thing into the water

Scenario three:
Landing but Germany cancels Kursk and go for the invasion beaches

The overwhelming material difference is not showing up in 1943 yet. US is not producing at full tilt yet.

Ivan
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Well, if we assume that the staff planning starts months earlier...
Say that it starts out as a "let's prove this isn't possible" exercise at the end of 1942 to show Stalin why they can't go yet, and it gradually morphs into an entirely doable plan to land on (say three) beaches in summer 1943. Meanwhile, a shadow play (standard deception-type stuff) suggests peripheral warfare in Italy and Norway, with a contingency plan to land troops in the north of Italy if that government actually collapses/switches.
 
The path to faster Wallie victory is a bolder, riskier Med strategy.
Instead of always doing the safest thing, and going Tunisia-Sicily-Italy, a faster strategy (much riskier) would be to go straight for Corsica and Sardinia, neutralize Italy through an air offensive, and land in France in the south in 1943.
A safer option would be to still do Torch, but to bypass Sicily and go directly for Corsica and Sardinia. This could considerably acelerate the fall of Italy, and again allow for a landing in the South of France.
Even if the Germans manage to hold a defensive line in the Alps (easy) and somewhere in France (not that hard) being engaged in the West will make maters even more difficult in Russia and further Allied offensives easier.

Of course the Wallies could risk a defeat in one of this operations, but it would be a managable risk, and even if they take one blow, they can always fall back on a more conservative strategy.

The problem was that the British were emphatically against any option that would increse the risk of large casualties, being determined to win the war with US factories and Russian lives.
 
Thing is though, Sicily is in a very important strategic position, so the Allies will go after that first simply to secure safe passage through the Strait of Sicily, and then you can think about where to head next. Also, once you have Sicily the obvious next step is Italy proper, which is useful assumption for the enemy to make if you actual next step is Sardinia.
 
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Saphroneth

Banned
Thing is though, Sicily is in a very important strategic position, so the Allies will go after that first simply to secure safe passage through the Strait of Sicily, and then you can think about where to head next. Also, once you have Sicily the obvious next step is Italy proper, which is useful assumption for the enemy to make if you actual next step is Sardinia.

What is the plausibility of trying to take Sicily on the bounce in 1942? Probably low, I know, but...
Alternatively, could enough logistics capacity be freed up for two amphib ops in 1943 by shutting down the Pacific offensives?
 
Don't forget the battle of the Atlantic is still raging, only in the second half of 1943 are the U-boats being overcome. So getting the unready US army and equipment across to the UK is going to be problematical.
 
I do remember one absolute best case scenario where the Allies manage to hold on to a beachead but even then it's certainly not going to be the lightning victory of OTL, the Germans will have time to right themselves and it's going to take a while, possibly a year, for the Allies to build up enough resources to properly smash through. Provided this takes place in June, you've probably butterflied Operation Citadel and the subsequent catastrophe for the Germans as their forces are moved west, so even in this 'best' case scenario you might see a slightly improved German strategic situation going into 1944.
 
German tank strength in June 1943 was something like this:

26th panzer had 77 tanks, only 14 of which were panzer IVs.
24th panzer had 24 tanks, 4 of which were panzer IVs.
14th panzer had 19 tanks, none of which were IVs.
9th SS had 3 Stugs.

Most of the non-Panzer IVs were captured French tanks or Panzer IIIS. For infantry and artillery strength only 24th a Panzer division was in reasonable shape with 11,000 men; the rest were basically a few thousand veterans plus whatever replacements they could receive. Most guns and prime movers were a mix of obsolete AT guns and captured artillery. Infantry divisions were in even worse shape; most were recent conscripts with obsolete artillery and next to no mobility.

The real nail in the coffin is that 26th and 24th Panzer, the only "strong" German divisions, were held deep in reserve. Movement will take several days with very few horses or trucks available, allowing the landing to secure a significant lodgment which would include Caen and Cherbourg. After that the Germans are caught in a battle of attrition which they will lose very quickly.
 
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Saphroneth

Banned
German tank strength in June 1943 was something like this:

26th panzer had 77 tanks, only 14 of which were panzer IVs.
24th panzer had 24 tanks, 4 of which were panzer IVs.
14th panzer had 19 tanks, none of which were IVs.
9th SS had 3 Stugs.

Most of the non-Panzer IVs were captured French tanks or Panzer IIIS. For infantry and artillery strength only 24th a Panzer division was in reasonable shape with 11,000 men; the rest were basically a few thousand veterans plus whatever replacements they could receive. Most guns and prime movers were a mix of obsolete AT guns and captured artillery. Infantry divisions were in even worse shape; most were recent conscripts with obsolete artillery and next to no mobility.

The real nail in the coffin is that 26th and 24th Panzer, the only "strong" German divisions, were held deep in reserve. Movement will take several days with very few horses or trucks available, allowing the landing to secure a significant lodgment which would include Caen and Cherbourg. After that the Germans are caught in a battle of attrition which they will lose very quickly.

And remember, the Sherman's still pretty much the best tank around at this point. It's got a gun comparable with the workhorse tanks of other powers, there's no Panthers to mess it up, and it's the most reliable thing on the planet. In other words, the Allies (for once) have the qualitative advantage in tanks.
 
And remember, the Sherman's still pretty much the best tank around at this point. It's got a gun comparable with the workhorse tanks of other powers, there's no Panthers to mess it up, and it's the most reliable thing on the planet. In other words, the Allies (for once) have the qualitative advantage in tanks.

Indeed, a single Allied infantry division with an attached armored battalion would be qualitatively superior and quantitatively equal or superior to one of those Panzer divs.
 

Redhand

Banned
The Germans would have a substantial reserve still in place by this point an the Allies would probably not be able to make paratroop landings work without experience. Air superiority would be harder to win, and the Italians would probably still be kicking by this point. Also, the French Resistance groups would likely lack the organization and manpower that they would have in 1944 as the invasion was planned for quite a while in advance.

I don't think this would work out well for the allies, at least not nearly as well as it did in 1944. The Soviets would not have been able to pull off Bagration and the Germans would have manpower to throw west in this case. This light however take away Kursk, which could raise the chances for stalemate in the east.
 
The Germans would not have a significant reserve in place, as I showed above. The air war would be a massacre for the Luftwaffe and bleed it to death even faster than IOTL. With Kursk cancelled in May/June 1943 the Germans would still suffer significant defeats equivalent to OTL's.
 
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