They can do what most states do: take only a part of the product and leave the rest to the population so that they have incentive to produce more. Giving land ownership to the population would also help, IMHO, as would creating or supporting the creation of independent states. This can also help to reduce support for partisans and their number. The soviets were good only when compared to the nazis.
If Germany had had one army more in France by June 1944, could she have repelled the Normandy landings?
- Thread starter Juan de Mariana
- Start date
Yes, I am also considering that POD, but I wanted to give this other a try.
The OTL Soviet operation against Finland was a sizable one. The so-called Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive involved altogether 35 divisions, 4 fortified regions, 4 tank brigades and 17 tank and assault gun regiments. They were supported by over 220 artillery and rocket launcher batteries, and around 1500 airplanes. All in all, maybe over 450 000 men were involved in different ways.
IOTL, the Finns lost Eastern Karelia but managed to stop the Soviet attack on the Karelian Isthmus. By late July, the Soviets wrapped up the operation, not having reached their goal of breaking the Finnish army and knocking Finland out of the war. Practically, they had started to withdraw best units involved in the fighting, to send them to the German front, since the first week of July after the attack bogging down in what the Finns call the Battle of Tali-Ihantala.
Now, if the Germans have withdrawn from the northern Baltic area, especially Estonia, before the crucial stages of this attack, the Soviets gain significant strategic advantages which would have probably turned the battles on the Isthmus and on the Bay of Viipuri to the Soviets' advantage. The Finns fall back in disarray towards Helsinki, and make desperate attempts to create new defensive lines between Viipuri and the Finnish capital. This, in turn, leads in political and diplomatic terms to one of two things - either Finland, as you said, throws in the towel, or it decides, for some time, to continue the fight, even if it seems hopeless.
Why would the Finns continue to fight? The answer is that prior to the battles of the summer of 1944, Moscow's proposal for Finland included punitively heavy terms and practically amounted to an unconditional surrender. IOTL, after the success of the defensive battles, and reaching Germany early being a bigger priority, led to Stalin finally in the fall offering Finland a conditional armistice with comparatively lighter terms. The Finns could not accept surrender in early 1944 because they still thought that their strategic position was good, and they could get a better deal. In August 1944, after losing a lot of land and men, they realized that the conditional deal Moscow now offered was the best deal they could get.
Here, the maths are different. If the Soviets are successful in beating the Finnish army on the Isthmus, they will not give up demanding surrender with heavy terms. And this would in many people's opinion mean that Finland should keep fighting rather than lay down and die. There is, of course the possibility that the Finnish leadership sees the writing on the wall and accepts that surrendering is the logical thing to do, under the circumstances, What ever we can say about the Finnish wartime leadership, fanatics they were not.
The point I would like to make here stems from what I have written above. Whether or not the Finns give up in between June and late August 1944, more Soviet success against Finland would in any case lead to the Red Army needing more-than-OTL troops in the Finnish front for longer - either to beat the Finnish army and finally take Helsinki and the rest of southern Finland, or then kick off the early stages of the occupation of Finland. Or, as it might be, both. When in IOTL the USSR could withdraw the great majority of the troops it had used for the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Offensive and shift them south against the Germans, here a significant part of those men, at a guess from 200 000 to 400 000, would need to stay in Finland and surroundings for months longer than IOTL.
Apart from beating, pacifying and occupying Finland, there would also be the case of the German troops in Finnish Lapland. If there is no conditional deal like IOTL, where the Soviets could use the Finnish military as its catspaw to evict the Germans towards Norway, here the Red Army will need to do this itself, or at least it will need to send enough troops north to contain the German 20th Mountain Army in where it is, awaiting an upcoming operation to attack through Finnish Lapland to Finnmark.
What this all means is that, comparatively speaking, the Soviets have less troops to send against the Germans here than IOTL, in the months following TTL's counterpart to the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Offensive against Finland. While in the great scheme of things 200 000 to 400 000 troops may seem like a drop in the bucket, I'd argue that the absense of these troops would to some extent at least slow down the Soviet advance, especially as the Germans have shortened the lines early, and avoided things like the formation of the Courland pocket.
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If the Ostheer was allowed to withdraw to a more defensible and rational line, it could reduce its frontage considerably. This would allow it to pull divisions out of the line.
Let’s say a veteran army is sent to France/Belgium as an anti-invasion force and held in reserve. It has 12 somewhat decent infantry divisions and suitable army assets such as StuG brigades, PAK and Flak battalions etc.
In and of itself, this is not a war-winning proposition but I do believe this could have had a major impact on the war. Assuming the Germans believe the Normandy invasion is the real thing and not a diversion, it could have provided the infantry German lacked in the battle. And by travelling at night, most of them would have reached Normandy from their staging areas, just like most German reinforcements did historically.
The historically available infantry divisions in the Normandy battle were mostly second-rate and required considerable stiffening with panzer divisions. These were subsequently burned out in semi-static attritional fighting to which they were unsuited and left them too weak to counter-punch effectively.
Now imagine a ring of 20+ German infantry divisions holding the ring around the Wallies, supported by the 10 panzer divisions which fought there historically (2, 9, 21, 116, Lehr, 1SS, 2SS, 9SS, 10SS, 12SS).
I don’t think an ultimate victory was possible (too much allied air power and naval support close to the actual beaches) but it would have been a much more difficult battle with far higher casualties.
There was a genuine fear of facing the Germans on the continent instead of peripheral campaigns against a handful of German divisions at the arse-end of a logistics pipeline. This would be the real thing and the Wallies had prepared for two years for this invasion. Having it stalled with rising casualties would have had repercussions (morale and political) and perhaps even a major shift in strategy.
Let’s say a veteran army is sent to France/Belgium as an anti-invasion force and held in reserve. It has 12 somewhat decent infantry divisions and suitable army assets such as StuG brigades, PAK and Flak battalions etc.
In and of itself, this is not a war-winning proposition but I do believe this could have had a major impact on the war. Assuming the Germans believe the Normandy invasion is the real thing and not a diversion, it could have provided the infantry German lacked in the battle. And by travelling at night, most of them would have reached Normandy from their staging areas, just like most German reinforcements did historically.
The historically available infantry divisions in the Normandy battle were mostly second-rate and required considerable stiffening with panzer divisions. These were subsequently burned out in semi-static attritional fighting to which they were unsuited and left them too weak to counter-punch effectively.
Now imagine a ring of 20+ German infantry divisions holding the ring around the Wallies, supported by the 10 panzer divisions which fought there historically (2, 9, 21, 116, Lehr, 1SS, 2SS, 9SS, 10SS, 12SS).
I don’t think an ultimate victory was possible (too much allied air power and naval support close to the actual beaches) but it would have been a much more difficult battle with far higher casualties.
There was a genuine fear of facing the Germans on the continent instead of peripheral campaigns against a handful of German divisions at the arse-end of a logistics pipeline. This would be the real thing and the Wallies had prepared for two years for this invasion. Having it stalled with rising casualties would have had repercussions (morale and political) and perhaps even a major shift in strategy.
That would only be feasible IF the Germans were able to feed their forces mainly from outside the USSR. They couldn't so they decided to seize food from the rural areas and starve the population of the cities in the occupied zone.
Now, I suppose by 1943, once they've been pushed back to the Dniepr and improved the rail links, there might be enough leeway for the policies you mention to be workable . But it is almost certainly too late. The rural population will have experienced two harvests being seized, leaving their relatives in cities to starve. Or women to work in Field Brothels to keep themselves and maybe children alive. Two years of atrocities to keep the Untetmensch in their place. You think they're be receptive them to a change of policy? Especially when the rumours of Nazi defeats and eventual "Liberation" will be spreading.
Too Little, far Too Late is my view of such a change of tactics. But, you or someone else , might be able to make it sound plausible. Good Luck!!
Yes that's a valid POD to strengthen the German forces in the West without weakening the Eastern Front too much.
There are some motives other than Hitler's obstinacy why this wasn't done OTL. The loss of the Baltic as a safe zone for training Uboats is one. Exposing vital trade with Sweden to air and maybe naval attack is another downside. And Finland is left exposed to the Soviets. What IF it is offered reasonable terms to let the Soviets through to attack Norway, cutting the rail line to Narvik for Swedish iron ore exports. Or just to be able to threaten Sweden with invasion in turn if it refuses to cut off trade with Germany?
Garrison
Donor
Which I'm afraid illustrates that you really need to do more research on the Hunger Plan and the functioning of the Nazi economy. They needed far more in the way of grain than can be obtained simply from the surpluses of the Ukraine and they certainly have no means to pay for such food, or for the labour they desperately needed.
Even if somehow Geraman and the USSR signed a peace treaty you still can not put everyone on the western front,
Only a complete MORON will be 100% trusting in a treaty. I mean Germany had been respecting its treaties so well........
So at best you are moving maybe 50 of troops and equipment (and hoping they don’t back stab you). And probably 90% of supplies and 75% of replacement equipment.
That still leaves you with getting this to someplace useful. That is no easy task. Much of the transportation infrastructure is at a pretty full capacity with the OTL requirements adding the move and the suppil for these new troops may over burden that. (Something to be looked into).
And you have the Wallies bombing a lot of the trains and roads and such so that will A) slow down the movement and B) cost you a lot of troops and equipment destroyed in transit.
As for using them in a counter attack.. Well once again you have to guess where the invasion is going to happen. So you can get them close enough to counter attack and you need to have a way to move them to counter attack. Personally I doubt if you tripled the army in France that you are going to see all that many more troops in the counter attack on day one or two of then in OTL as you have to figure out what is happen, decide what to do. Issue the orders to whatever units then they have to get ready and start the move then you need to have a way to get them there and you have to have room for them then you need to keep them supplied.
Of all these issues putting them in the right spot, moving them and keeping them supplied are going to be the problem. So let’s examine these one at a time.
Location: Even with the Whole German Army you don’t have enough troops to cover the entire coast to the point of repelling the landing at every possible location. So you have to pick your point, Now obviously with and extra army you have more places you can station troops as you hav e more troops to station, But the. Wallies get to choose the beach AFTER Germany is committed. So they will have a good idea where the Germans are and thus pick the weakest location. You may see a different location depending on where these troops are located. But the Wallies are not going to hit the beach that they reinforced the Wallies are. Not dumb.
You also have the problem that for then most part no invasion in WW2 was stopped at its beachhead. (Once again because you simply go where the enemy is weakest).
Moving them. This is a multi stage issue. Moving them into initial position while the Wallies are attacking them and the railroads from the air is going to cost you more then a few. But moving them into the counter attack is not easy. As noted above you are not going to get these new troops to be right next to where the Wallies landed, So you will have to move them up via roads, trains or cross country. But there is a limit to ho many troops can move on any given route. Even Sherman had to worry about this on his march to the sea and his troops and wagons were easier to move then a modern army with heavy artillery and tanks. So you will start running into a bottle neck on getting the troops close enough to the Wallies to shoot at them. The Wallies did a pretty good job of making mass movement of troops less then optimal. So you are not going to counter attack with every thing that was used in OTL + an additional army. You will only get a marginal increase. Also odds are these additional troops will be located farther away then those used in OTL. This is simple logic that you will have to spend then out, on the plus side the OTL troops may be closer. Basically you can only stiff so many troops so close together. So if you want more troops you have to pull them in from farther away.
But you will be able to keep pouring them in longer then in OTL.
Supply. This was always the single largest weak spot with Germany. If you didn’t have trubl getting the meterials, you had truobl building the supplies if you could pull off those to things you had trouble moving it to where it is needed.
So simply getting things like food fuel and ammo to these new troops as well as theOTL troops s going to be a huge issue. As the transportation is stretched tight in France in OTL. And on top of supporting more troops that same transportation network has to move them in to the staging location and then movecthem close enough to actually attack. All while supplying ore troops the OTL. Not sure Germany can pull that off.
So it is going to take a lot of work and luck to truly effect the outcome of D-Day. Or even D+1 or D+2. Where this will be most noticeable is D+4 thorough D+80 . As you Germany will have more reserve. But once the Wallies get a stable beachhead I am not sure Germany can push them back into the sea. And once they get a stable beachhead AND take a port Germany is NOT pushing them back into the sea. (This assumes competent officers running competent tactics/strategy. The Wallies just have to much of an advantage to be stopped.
Now that being said D-Day may be delayed and it may go in someplace else. But eventually it will happen.
That being said if the transportation in France allowed it the best option for Germany may have been to keep this extra Army on the move at all times. Doing so means that at any given moment the spot all the invasion planning was made for could suddenly find itself home to a lot of Germans. This may make the Wallies a bit nervous and have to keep changing plans. And planning and invasion of this size is not done overnight so if you move your troops enough that the Wallies have to make new plans then you just delayed the invasion for months. Of course once you have two or three options then you look at the location of this moving army and choose a location the Army is not at and invade that.
So yes it is possible to make the fight harder but you are not going to stop it.
The real difference is that with the USSR out of the fight in order to free up the extra German troops you will see a much different post WW2 Europe as the USSR is not going to get to keep / occupy any of the places it did OTL. If they stopped fighting they are not getting rewarded with a chunk of Europe. And without that they will be much weaker and may round out of resources much sooner. So the USSR may ultimately collapse sooner then in OTL
Only a complete MORON will be 100% trusting in a treaty. I mean Germany had been respecting its treaties so well........
So at best you are moving maybe 50 of troops and equipment (and hoping they don’t back stab you). And probably 90% of supplies and 75% of replacement equipment.
That still leaves you with getting this to someplace useful. That is no easy task. Much of the transportation infrastructure is at a pretty full capacity with the OTL requirements adding the move and the suppil for these new troops may over burden that. (Something to be looked into).
And you have the Wallies bombing a lot of the trains and roads and such so that will A) slow down the movement and B) cost you a lot of troops and equipment destroyed in transit.
As for using them in a counter attack.. Well once again you have to guess where the invasion is going to happen. So you can get them close enough to counter attack and you need to have a way to move them to counter attack. Personally I doubt if you tripled the army in France that you are going to see all that many more troops in the counter attack on day one or two of then in OTL as you have to figure out what is happen, decide what to do. Issue the orders to whatever units then they have to get ready and start the move then you need to have a way to get them there and you have to have room for them then you need to keep them supplied.
Of all these issues putting them in the right spot, moving them and keeping them supplied are going to be the problem. So let’s examine these one at a time.
Location: Even with the Whole German Army you don’t have enough troops to cover the entire coast to the point of repelling the landing at every possible location. So you have to pick your point, Now obviously with and extra army you have more places you can station troops as you hav e more troops to station, But the. Wallies get to choose the beach AFTER Germany is committed. So they will have a good idea where the Germans are and thus pick the weakest location. You may see a different location depending on where these troops are located. But the Wallies are not going to hit the beach that they reinforced the Wallies are. Not dumb.
You also have the problem that for then most part no invasion in WW2 was stopped at its beachhead. (Once again because you simply go where the enemy is weakest).
Moving them. This is a multi stage issue. Moving them into initial position while the Wallies are attacking them and the railroads from the air is going to cost you more then a few. But moving them into the counter attack is not easy. As noted above you are not going to get these new troops to be right next to where the Wallies landed, So you will have to move them up via roads, trains or cross country. But there is a limit to ho many troops can move on any given route. Even Sherman had to worry about this on his march to the sea and his troops and wagons were easier to move then a modern army with heavy artillery and tanks. So you will start running into a bottle neck on getting the troops close enough to the Wallies to shoot at them. The Wallies did a pretty good job of making mass movement of troops less then optimal. So you are not going to counter attack with every thing that was used in OTL + an additional army. You will only get a marginal increase. Also odds are these additional troops will be located farther away then those used in OTL. This is simple logic that you will have to spend then out, on the plus side the OTL troops may be closer. Basically you can only stiff so many troops so close together. So if you want more troops you have to pull them in from farther away.
But you will be able to keep pouring them in longer then in OTL.
Supply. This was always the single largest weak spot with Germany. If you didn’t have trubl getting the meterials, you had truobl building the supplies if you could pull off those to things you had trouble moving it to where it is needed.
So simply getting things like food fuel and ammo to these new troops as well as theOTL troops s going to be a huge issue. As the transportation is stretched tight in France in OTL. And on top of supporting more troops that same transportation network has to move them in to the staging location and then movecthem close enough to actually attack. All while supplying ore troops the OTL. Not sure Germany can pull that off.
So it is going to take a lot of work and luck to truly effect the outcome of D-Day. Or even D+1 or D+2. Where this will be most noticeable is D+4 thorough D+80 . As you Germany will have more reserve. But once the Wallies get a stable beachhead I am not sure Germany can push them back into the sea. And once they get a stable beachhead AND take a port Germany is NOT pushing them back into the sea. (This assumes competent officers running competent tactics/strategy. The Wallies just have to much of an advantage to be stopped.
Now that being said D-Day may be delayed and it may go in someplace else. But eventually it will happen.
That being said if the transportation in France allowed it the best option for Germany may have been to keep this extra Army on the move at all times. Doing so means that at any given moment the spot all the invasion planning was made for could suddenly find itself home to a lot of Germans. This may make the Wallies a bit nervous and have to keep changing plans. And planning and invasion of this size is not done overnight so if you move your troops enough that the Wallies have to make new plans then you just delayed the invasion for months. Of course once you have two or three options then you look at the location of this moving army and choose a location the Army is not at and invade that.
So yes it is possible to make the fight harder but you are not going to stop it.
The real difference is that with the USSR out of the fight in order to free up the extra German troops you will see a much different post WW2 Europe as the USSR is not going to get to keep / occupy any of the places it did OTL. If they stopped fighting they are not getting rewarded with a chunk of Europe. And without that they will be much weaker and may round out of resources much sooner. So the USSR may ultimately collapse sooner then in OTL
The Germans had the majority of their troops on the Eastern Front. Even getting 50% of the Ostheer would be a massive reinforcement, to the point that the Wallies probably couldn't have won at an "acceptable" casualty rate, considering their fumbling efforts in North Africa and Italy against only a handful of German divisions.
While the Allies eventually wrecked the French railroad system, it didn't stop the Germans historically from bringing in reinforcements and supplies. Not as much as they needed but far more than the Allies had expected. The Allies also already threw everything they had regarding air power against the Germans in France including their heavy strategic bombers. So there wasn't more to send. And they couldn't fully stop German reinforcement and supply. So you could argue if they can't stop 20 divisions moving to Normandy, how are they going to stop 100 divisions moving to Normandy? It would seem that they underestimated the amount of movement at night the Germans undertook because daylight was too dangerous.
In May 1944, Germany had 160 divisions on the Eastern Front and 63 divisions on the Western Front. In your example, this would mean that 80 divisions would be relocated to the West, effectively doubling the strength. And they wouldn't all be deployed along the coastline, I'd expect the bulk to be held back so they could be used once the invasion had started (especially with the influx of eastern veteran commanders supporting von Schweppenburg's tactics instead of Rommel's). Supply would be an issue but not more than it already was. Problemwise, the allied air power is probably equal to long distances, partisans and poor infrastructure on the Eastern Front.
As to the Allies knowing where the Germans are and thus picking the easiest location to invade, historically the Allies were often clueless about the presence of German divisions. Market-Garden is only the most famous example. Such surprises happened at D-Day too and they had months to get it right...
I don't think any kind of peace treaty between Germany and Russia was possible after Kursk and thus this scenario is very unlikely but never forget that the Russians did the heavy lifting. If the Wallies had to face 100+ German divisions in the West, their increased casualties would have put a lot of pressure on both the political alliance and their American-inspired strategy of frontal assault.
Now do that analysis for Panzer divisions; the combat power of the German Army is heavily skewed towards them.
(edited for minor rewording)
If Hitler (or a replacement) decides to throw Finland under the Soviet juggernaut in early 1944, so that he can pack Normandy with troops that his 'spider sense' tells him will be needed there, that has diplomatic consequences, and starts dominos falling earlier than in the original timeline. Maybe Roumania switches sides earlier than it did in the original timeline. Maybe Turkey decides to get in the war, to have a place at the victor's table, since the Germans are so obviously in retreat now, apparently overawed by the Soviet forces massing against them.
And the Western Allies, as I have pointed out in a previous one of these threads have 'air supremacy' over Normandy by 1944. They are sending out reconnaissance aircraft and small naval vessels regularly to check what is going on. They have (some) eyes and ears on the ground too, in the shape of resistance members sending occasional reports.
If the Germans park an army in Calvados large enough to make the western Allies think 'uh-oh, this landing could go badly wrong', absent some kind of magical ASB camouflage or mind-whammy, the Western Allies will see it and think: 'okay, we need to land somewhere else instead.'
And never mind whether the Finns actually need 'occupying' by huge Soviet armies if the Finns see that Germany is abandoning them. They may conclude an immediate side-switch is the way to go...
If Hitler (or a replacement) decides to throw Finland under the Soviet juggernaut in early 1944, so that he can pack Normandy with troops that his 'spider sense' tells him will be needed there, that has diplomatic consequences, and starts dominos falling earlier than in the original timeline. Maybe Roumania switches sides earlier than it did in the original timeline. Maybe Turkey decides to get in the war, to have a place at the victor's table, since the Germans are so obviously in retreat now, apparently overawed by the Soviet forces massing against them.
And the Western Allies, as I have pointed out in a previous one of these threads have 'air supremacy' over Normandy by 1944. They are sending out reconnaissance aircraft and small naval vessels regularly to check what is going on. They have (some) eyes and ears on the ground too, in the shape of resistance members sending occasional reports.
If the Germans park an army in Calvados large enough to make the western Allies think 'uh-oh, this landing could go badly wrong', absent some kind of magical ASB camouflage or mind-whammy, the Western Allies will see it and think: 'okay, we need to land somewhere else instead.'
And never mind whether the Finns actually need 'occupying' by huge Soviet armies if the Finns see that Germany is abandoning them. They may conclude an immediate side-switch is the way to go...
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Abandoning Finland does not in itself necessarily give Germany significantly more troops for Normandy. There is only a limited number of troops the Germans could in the short term withdraw from Finland itself, I'd say five divisions or so (most coming from Finnish Lapland), and then it is not a given that Stalin would after this go against Finland with the same determination as in the summer of 1944 IOTL. Like the Finnish leadership expected (/hoped) at the time, the Red Army could just disregard Finland (save a small screening force on the Finnish front) for the time being and throw all its forces against the German lines. It would be highly unlikely at this point that Finland would again go on the offensive, after all, and Germany itself, and Central Europe in general, always was a bigger priority for Stalin than Finland was. Even in terms of naval action in the Baltic Sea, taking Finland is not necessary after you have secured the Estonian and Latvian areas. Hence, you could always deal with Finland after Germany is beaten.
Abandoning Finland early also risks Germany losing the trade goods it is getting from Finland : nickel and molybdenum, and all sorts of wood products, for example. On that first count, already in 1943 Finnish nickel from Petsamo amounted to 73% of all nickel used by the German war industry. Consequently, like I have said before, the Kolosjoki mine area up north was one of the most heavily protected German fortified areas nobody has heard of. Strategically (to be able to control the Baltic Sea) and in terms of crucial war production (protection of the Swedish iron ore trade, too), Finland was important to Germany, and on balance throwing it under the bus would not be an easy choice.
Yes and no...
As to actual panzer divisions, the West certainly got a fair amount and pretty good ones at that. Normandy sucked in 10 panzer divisions.
The Heer raised about 30 panzer divisions, the Waffen SS raised 7 and even the Luftwaffe had a panzer division.
So about 40 although not all were active at the same time.
Yet, without grabbing my OOB books, 10 in Normandy and a few in Italy still leaves the majority on the Eastern Front.
Tanks on strength is a different matter but in general it was about equal IIRC.
Take the troops from Italy and not the east? Germany just held up the Allies with not much hope of attacking them in the overall plan of things.
That is the curse of perfect intelligence: great care is needed in taking advantage of it. (See Coventry.)
The Germans really need to find some way to get all these units - well, a sufficient quantity of them - to the Normany beaches without detection. That's almost impossible, of course, given the superiority of the Allies in the air and the role of the Resistance.
So in the first place, you'd have to find some way to do it only at the literal last minute. Move them into place, by night, on the two or three nights before the landings. No sooner than that.
And because the overall movement of a multi-corps force into France is going to be just about impossible to hide, you likely need to create your own maskirovka, creating the impression for the Resistance and Allied intelligence that you're shipping them somewhere *else* in France - the Pas de Calais, most likely, or maybe even the Riviera.
I think it would be extraordinarily difficult. It's such a big force to hide, and Allied intelligence was very good by that point. They were watching the railways and the roads like hawks.
And it remains my conviction that on one narrow point, Rommel was right: The only way to defeat the Allied invasion is to do it on the high water line. Once they're established ashore, beating them is impossible. You can slow them down, drive up their casualties, but you're just playing for time.
And perhaps it's possible that you don't need to repulse the landings on all five Allied beaches. What if the Germans could manage to force Ike to withdraw at (say) Omaha, Gold, and Juno? Ike and his commanders might see Utah and Sword as untenable, especially once they detect the remainder of this new German army's armored forces moving in fast. The beaches he was going to erect his Mulberrys on are lost, he has no ports, and the bridgeheads remaining are too far away to link up or provide mutual support. It's just possible that Ike cuts his losses and extracts what he can off the beaches. I've not studied it enough to have a strong idea what the threshold would be, but I think there's a strong probability that the Germans don't need to be 100% successful at the high water line.
Of course, it could well be that doing even this is not possible for the Germans. Maybe they take the fallback result of moving a ton of troops in, detected, and force the Allies to call off OVERLORD and rethink. I mean, there's only so many "good" weather months to use in the Channel, and only so many places to land. Even the Allies can't improvise 5-8 division amphibious invasion on short notice. Maybe the Germans even buy themselves a campaigning season in the West, which I am sure will be a great comfort as Zhukov and Konev are blasting their way over the Oder River.
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No doubt about it.
In the great Rommel-Runstedt debate, I think Rommel was right on principle. The problem is, while he was painfully familiar with what Allied air power could do, he was less acquainted with what naval gunfire support could do. He underrated the difficulty.
Still, what happened at Omaha Beach is instructive. A single, frontline German infantry division, the 352nd, previously undetected by the Allies, fighting from prepared coastal positions on cliff frontments, had broken up enough of the American first and second assault waves that Bradley seriously considered withdrawing from Omaha. The tanks could not get ashore, and naval gunfire support struggled to identify targets. So set aside the armor: what if the Germans could have managed to get a second, full strength, quality infantry division to Omaha along with the 352nd? Would that have been enough to defeat the Omaha landing? I think it would have to be a significant possibility - though German casualties would be extensive.
Of course, geography aided the 352nd's job: it was well suited to defense. That would be less true at Gold or Juno, say - harder to hide your deployments there.
marathag
Banned
When things looked dicey, DDsand DE got in close to shallow water for better accuracy, and one, USS Emmons, got in at 800 yards from shore and opened up with the 40mm, direct fire on sighted German guns
Absolutely. Not exactly part of the plan, but they adapted. And because those DD commanders did, in the end, the 352nd was not enough to stop Omaha.
But they made enough of a fight of it that you can start to ponder a possible reinforcement that *could* have been sufficient and not have been...exorbitant in size.