A nice day for tanning- pre tl discussion and plausibility check

Doing some background research for my upcoming work "a nice day for tanning" the premise of this tl, is that Hitler sides with Rommel in how to allocate the armored divisions in France prior to D-Day. Rommel, feeling the troops would not be able to advance from any central reserve positions due to allied airpower, wanted to position his divisions right behind the beaches... the other school under Schweppenberg and Guderian wanted them in central reserve. Hitler used this conflict to put all the divisions into OKW reserve and reserve their final allocation to him... this saw the divisions completly spread eagled over hundreds of miles and also had them not particularly close to the likely landing zones either

thoughts gentlemen?
 

Hkelukka

Banned
D-Day landing was, in my opinion, remarkably close.

To a point where this might indeed dislodge the allies from north France entirely, though unlikely as the allied air and naval power would most likely prevail in the end but it is possible. Certainly allies would take a massive amount of extra losses.

If allies are pushed back from N-France then expect a public relations disaster in UK and US like of which we have never seen before. 100.000-200.000 dead/wounded or captured allied soldiers in a few weeks. This might have a serious impact on the war effort in general.

Axis would probably move some of the now free divisions in France to the Su-Front, Allies would probably push up through Italy and land again 6+ months later. Though I believe Germany would probably hold on until early winter or 010146 if very likely. Germany might fall to the SU entirely and the Allies might be left with France, Benelux, Italy. But beyond that, they would still lose.
 
Are the Allies going to spot this? I'd say yes. Question is, what does this mean? When do the divisions start moving? The Allies were cutting bridges way before D-Day, and being really careful not to make it clear where they were cutting off bridges to. Can they significantly delay the movement of armor to directly behind the beaches, or destroy them once they get there?
 
The Germasn are rather screwed whatever deployment they use. In OTL, they deployed most of their reserves well back, and they took time to get there. Note that they DID have some reserves forward. It didnt help, as anything far enough forward to be used quickly is also in range of allied naval guns. What some salvoes of 16" shells do to a field full of tanks isnt pretty....
Basically the allies had assumed forces would be brought up and had plans to deal with them. The extra delays on the landing morning were helpfull, but hardly vital.
 
Are the Allies going to spot this? I'd say yes. Question is, what does this mean? When do the divisions start moving? The Allies were cutting bridges way before D-Day, and being really careful not to make it clear where they were cutting off bridges to. Can they significantly delay the movement of armor to directly behind the beaches, or destroy them once they get there?

Between the French resistance and allied air recon, you are certainly right that the allies will detect any movement of forces towards normandy in anything bigger than company strength, even if they moved at night

and they would suffer losses during the march north, and their assembly areas would be constantly visited by fighter bombers
 

Markus

Banned
The Germasn are rather screwed whatever deployment they use. In OTL, they deployed most of their reserves well back, and they took time to get there. Note that they DID have some reserves forward. It didnt help, as anything far enough forward to be used quickly is also in range of allied naval guns. What some salvoes of 16" shells do to a field full of tanks isnt pretty....
Basically the allies had assumed forces would be brought up and had plans to deal with them. The extra delays on the landing morning were helpfull, but hardly vital.

Spot on!

Also where do the Panzers end up? Not necessarily Normandy as the area around Dieppe was considered the most likely spot of the invasion.
 
The Germasn are rather screwed whatever deployment they use. In OTL, they deployed most of their reserves well back, and they took time to get there. Note that they DID have some reserves forward. It didnt help, as anything far enough forward to be used quickly is also in range of allied naval guns. What some salvoes of 16" shells do to a field full of tanks isnt pretty....
Basically the allies had assumed forces would be brought up and had plans to deal with them. The extra delays on the landing morning were helpfull, but hardly vital.

I'm not envisoning the Germans pushing them back into the sea, but I am envisioning positioning of German armored forces similar to operation avalanche; and wondering how the board thinks this would turn out versus otl
 
Rommel's goal was to bleed the English enough in hopes they would agree with a side armistice with him which he believed the U.S. would go along with. What might a side truce have looked like? Who knows, but he would certainly have been willing to give up all of Germany's holdings in France and the Low Countries along with the de-Nazification of Germany.

That is probably the most he could have given the U.S. and U.K. without losing the support for a military coup against the Nazis from the officer corps and other generals and Field Marshals he hoped he would have gained from kicking ass at Normandy.

After the failure at Normandy Rommel started to realize that the best option for Germany was some kind of surrender on the Western Front and was trying to organize that so the war ended early and Germany he hoped would end up with a much easier occupation mainly by the Anglo-Americans not Stalin. Of course he didn't have the power nor the sway after things went bad at Normandy to personally order an effective surrender in the West and had to negotiate with other generals and officers to try to get their support for doing it and as we know was wounded on one of his missions to gain support from the front line officers for a surrender.

The question is could Rommel's origional plan had worked if things happened very differently at Normandy. The odds were certainly against his plan working, but I don't agree with those that believe it was impossible.
 
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I'm not envisoning the Germans pushing them back into the sea, but I am envisioning positioning of German armored forces similar to operation avalanche; and wondering how the board thinks this would turn out versus otl

No deplyment strategy is going to help.
Anything within 16 miles of the coast gets attention from 15 and 16" guns
Anything behind this gets attention from the hordes of allied fighter-bombers just looking for targets.

And how are you going to deploy these tanks anyway? You cant spread them out in a line, they arent mobile customs posts. So where are you going to concentrate them? The closer to the beaches, the more likely most of them are in the wrong place. And as soon as they move, they get hit. If they wait till night, they arent really much more useful than the OTL reserves.
While the airplanes of the time weern't nearly as good at taking out tanks as was claimed, they were very effective against soft skin vehicles. A tank without its supporting logistics is just a big , metal, badly-sited pillbox...
 
No deplyment strategy is going to help.
Anything within 16 miles of the coast gets attention from 15 and 16" guns
Anything behind this gets attention from the hordes of allied fighter-bombers just looking for targets.

And how are you going to deploy these tanks anyway? You cant spread them out in a line, they arent mobile customs posts. So where are you going to concentrate them? The closer to the beaches, the more likely most of them are in the wrong place. And as soon as they move, they get hit. If they wait till night, they arent really much more useful than the OTL reserves.
While the airplanes of the time weern't nearly as good at taking out tanks as was claimed, they were very effective against soft skin vehicles. A tank without its supporting logistics is just a big , metal, badly-sited pillbox...

I don't disagree that they would lose heavily to naval gunfire and air support (warspite and valiant did a very good job shielding the troops during operation avalanche and where vital to keeping 16th panzer and elements of HG division from pushing Clark back into the drink)

I assume he would have placed a couple of divisions close to the normandy beaches (still having the overwhelming majority of his mobile striking power in the pas de calais)... maybe 21st panzer and one other division are some distance closer than otl

Rommel was willing to penny packet the armor out to make sure he had forces close to the landing beaches wherever they might be
 
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