Allied invasion of NW Europe in 1943

CalBear said:
Allies try to land in 1943 the political situation is MUCH worse. They wind up getting repulsed or bottled up as happened in Anzio. The players and parts were just not there yet.





The shore defenses do not matter (unless they are attacking an actual port in which case they are very important indeed). On D-Day even Omaha (by far the best defended section of beach) was secure before sundown on June 6. Now, if you want to attack a port, just look at Dieppe for why that is such a BAD IDEA. Ports are always overdefended, they are also distressingly easy to wreck if the situation seems about to go against the defenders.

The fuel shortage was not an availability problem, it was a transportation issue. The Allies would not have been able to create a fuel distribution pipeline any more quickly in 1943 than 1944.

BTW: Had the entire Atlantic Wall been fortified to Singapore's seaward defense level, the allies would have had a very difficult nut to crack indeed. The Japanese did not choose the jungle route for the fun of it. Had the Coastal Artillery been supplied with enough of the right kind of ammunition (High Explosive instead of or in addition to AP), the Island would likely have never fallen, at least not due to the December attack.


Cherbourg etc took time to be captured (the issue of the estimated position of the Allied foces at D + X days is always going to be controversial), time that gave the defenders plenty of opportunity to wreck it, with less landward defences they may have fallen sooner before as much damage was caused.

I agree you are not going to be able to create a fuel distribution system any quicker but what does having Cherbourg open for business sooner do for the supply situation?

There is probably still going to be the problem caused by loosing several hundred British trucks to valve failiure 4 months later.
 
I'm one to trust logistics more than tactics, so I'd have to say that the prognosis that the Russians would just move west faster in this timeline seems more accurate. Anglo-American casualties would be considerably higher, and I couldn't really see victory any sooner than late 1944. It might even be the same outcome, with the Soviets taking Berlin (the Soviets paused in front of Warsaw for a real long time OTL, and as mentioned before Ike didn't want to have his army chewed up for the sake of prestige). One significant change may be the Soviets not having time to head into the balkans, but these areas have got to surrender to somebody, after all.

So, in the greater analysis, I can't see much change in the post-war situation except an earlier end to the European conflict, just in time for Roosevelt's re-election. The allies would all gang up on Japan (Soviets included) consequently from the beginning of 1945 onwards, with the Soviets making more gains.

So, in this attempt to score more points for western democracy and capitalism, all a 1943 landing would do would give more leverage to Uncle Joe. Ironic, no?
 
When I read the subject, I first wondered whether you meant Norway. But France, in '43, ok... I think too that the war might be over a bit sooner and the Allies would conquer more German territory -> a weaker Soviet block.
 
I'll go with a POD in November of 1942 when the Russians surround the Germans at Stalingrad. If the Allies are on the ball they will figure out that Russia isn't dead yet and might grab Eastern Europe.

The Allies divert half the aircraft, escort carriers, destroyers, landing craft, shipping, troops, fuel, etc, going to the Pacific and send it to the Atlantic. The Atlantic theatre gets seventy percent instead of forty percent of the Allied munitions production. The Allied force in the Pacific is left with the ability to launch half as many invasions as it had in OTL. The submarine war runs along at full speed, but the island hopping war is considerably slowed down, which means the bombing campaign is also slowed down because we don't have range to Tokyo.

The implications of this is that in June of 1943 the Allies can launch two invasions of Europe. One with the armed forces in North Africa as soon as the Tunis pocket surrenders, and the other with the buildup in Britain. This was the case in OTLin 1944. The Allied landings in Normandy were the hammer for the Allied landings in the south of France as the anvil. Once both landings were in place the Germans faced a pincer move and had to move fast to escape in OTL.

Since the Allies are not pinned down to the Italian front in 1943 like in OTL, the Germans are going to be forced to defend the entire line of the Mediterranean and all the islands at the same time as they are forced to defend the entire coastline of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway. They will be stretched even thinner than in OTL. The Germans were especially worried about attacks on Norway and Greece in OTL because of the importance of the iron ore of Sweden and the oil of Rumania. Assume that the distribution of troops is as wide in this ATL as in OTL. The Germans have to guard against landings everywhere.

Another implication is that the German airforce is going to be in sad shape by the summer of 1943. If you have almost twice as much fighters in a dogfight as the opposition, you shoot down almost four times as many enemy fighters. You shoot them down fast enough and they are going to be fielding less competent fighters who get shot down even faster and the new pilots get even less training before going into combat, and it just gets worse and worse. That's what the Allied concentration on the Pacific did to Japan. Now it's going to happen to Germany instead.
The loss of synfuel plants and aircraft factories and ammunition plants and antiaircraftgun factories will also slow the German response to the air war. You wind up in a sort of death spiral.

German intelligence in Britain was pretty much controlled by the British. But German "white" intelligence was not. The Germans would know that they were in for some serious pain in 1943 and that will lead them to cancel Kursk. They will withdraw first to the Dneiper, and then to the Carpathians. Both lines will be hard for the Russians to take and will bleed them severely. The German generals pleaded not to do Kursk, and they will get their way in this ATL.

In this ATL the Italian government will not be able to demonstrate it's complete incompetence to the extent it did in OTL. The Italian people were irritated by it's inability to fight a war, but infuriated by it's inability to arrange a surrender. Two years of the Allies fighting their way up the Italian peninsula and bombing the northern areas cemented this.
The Italian government will survive the war the way Spain's government did, because it avoided the consequences of supporting the Germans. Not Mussolini and Badoglio as party leaders, of course, but other fascisti in their place as a legitimate party leadership after the war.

When the Allies come ashore at Normandy they will face fewer troops and much less fortifications. I assume that they will be through the bocage on the first day as planned, and in tank country on the other side before the Germans can stop them. The Germans will be switching armor and infantry units to the west by the spring, but not enough to defeat them before they are established in tank country where the Allied logistical and munitions superiority will be dominant. The secondary invasion in the south of France that was so critical in OTL will not be important in this ATL.
The Germans will never come close to being cauldroned as at Falaise in OTL. They will withdraw to the Scheldt and the Westwall in good order, demolishing the bridges of France along the way and doing whatever else occurs to them in the way of reducing the Allied capability to move troops and equipment around. The Allies should not assume that they will have any French railroad equipment available after the Liberation of France, or a working bridge or ferry or overpass or tunnel.

The bad news for the Germans is that the destruction of Hamburg will happen with the Allied air forces in close range of the German cities. The Allies never managed to match the Hamburg firestorm till the closing months of the war at Dresden. In this OTL they will have more aircraft and closer bases while the Germans are still ramping up their nightfighter capability and after they have lost half their radar capability with the loss of France and Belgium. Not to mention the increased capability of the Allies to move fuel and bombs to Europe, and the lower rate of losses with all those French air fields for the Allied aircraft to land on when returning from a raid. Hamburg probably won't happen till September of 1943 just because the planes used in OTL will have other priorities before the invasion and therefor the first Hamburg raid will probably hit a lot harder and do a lot more damage than in OTL.

With the Allies bombing Germany from across the Rhineland and the Russians still outside the Carpathians, there will be considerable pressure for the German leadership to negotiate a surrender to the Allies. Further, the Allies will be aware that Russia is still a formidable power. If Roosevelt dies in 1945 as in OTL then he will be able to dictate peace terms. If he dies in 1944 then Wallace will be president. Neither one will allow the Nazis to escape justice the way that Truman did and the consequence is that the war will continue till January of 1945, except that the airwar will be considerably more difficult for Germany.
Germany will suffer far more civilian casualties in this OTL. Not just the cities, but also the towns will be leveled. Any town or city or factory complex or village railroad junction will be destroyed. Germany will collapse to loss of the railroad net in this OTL purely as a side effect of the total destruction of the urban and suburban and rural concentrations by Allied air power in 1944.

The European Jews had been essentially all murdered by the summer of 1943 in OTL, except for the Hungarian Jews. In this OTL, the Hungarians will still be behind the German lines. As to whether the Hungarians will allow their Jews to be murdered in this ATL, I do not know. In OTL Horthy's son was captured by the Germans and Horthy surrendered the Hungarian forces in return for his release, and the Jews were promptly rounded up and killed. If Horthy's son is not captured in this ATL the Hungarian Jews may survive.

Rumania will have ethnically Rumanian areas between the Dniester and the Carpathians. This may make them more or less likely to negotiate a separate peace. It will not make the Germans less likely to hold their lines because the Germans will have more troops without the losses at Kursk, the armored losses at Kursk, and the troops of the Courland pocket. Those Courland pocket troops will be pulled out because with France and Belgium in Allied hands the airbases to bomb Berlin, etc, will be closer to the south and west than to the north and east. Holding Courland will not offer the Germans any advantages and they will withdraw and redeploy those troops.
 
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CalBear

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Max Sinister said:
I thought the Western Allies had a "Germany first" policy...

They did.

The Pacific Theater get by on about 30% of the industrial output of the United States. The carriers, BB's, etc. that went to the Pacific would have had little to no impact on the European War. They were the wrong tool to deal with the U-Boat threat, and the new construction was not available until mid 1943 (Essex was COMPLETED December 1942 with the next of the class Yorktown not being launched until 5/16/43). The same rough timeline carries over for the Light & escort carrier classes, cruisers; destroyers & DE's were somewhat earlier.

For the most part, the aircraft used in the Pacific, pre-Hellcat/Corsair era, were those that had been rejected for use in the European Theater. Most bombers were mediums (B-25's for the most part) and early model B-17's & B-24's that were not as well defended as the later models. Fighters were P-40's, P-39's, P-400's, F4F's, as well as Brewster Buffalo's. There were some P-38's and a very few P-47's. The Army units went were mostly National Guard (vital to the defense of Australia & as replacements on the 'Canal) and of course the the main amphibious force was the Marine Corps.

The thought that diversions of these forces would have allowed for an Allied invasion into Mainland Europe in 1942 is not supportable by facts. The United States wound up producing sufficient landing craft by 1944 to support virtually simultaneous landings in Normandy (6/6/44) and Saipan (6/18/44), but in 1942 these vessels were few & far between. The United Stated managed to put 74,000 men on-shore in North Africa in ALL of NOVEMBER 1942, where they were rather roughly handled in their initial encounters with the Germans. The Allies put 125,000 men on the beach on just June 6, PLUS 24,000 Airborne troops. That's on the first day. The logistics that allowed this simply did not exist in 1942 or 1943. The allies also had not yet even achieved Air Parity in 1942. You CAN NOT sucessfully conduct an invasion without mastery of the air (see the threads on the Sea Mammal that must not be mentioned for details on this).

Do the math:
Invasion in 1942 of mainland Europe = Total failure.
Invasion in 1943 = Anzio.
Invasion in 1944 = VE Day.
 
CalBear said:
They did.

The Pacific Theater get by on about 30% of the industrial output of the United States. The carriers, BB's, etc. that went to the Pacific would have had little to no impact on the European War. They were the wrong tool to deal with the U-Boat threat, and the new construction was not available until mid 1943 (Essex was COMPLETED December 1942 with the next of the class Yorktown not being launched until 5/16/43). The same rough timeline carries over for the Light & escort carrier classes, cruisers; destroyers & DE's were somewhat earlier.

For the most part, the aircraft used in the Pacific, pre-Hellcat/Corsair era, were those that had been rejected for use in the European Theater. Most bombers were mediums (B-25's for the most part) and early model B-17's & B-24's that were not as well defended as the later models. Fighters were P-40's, P-39's, P-400's, F4F's, as well as Brewster Buffalo's. There were some P-38's and a very few P-47's. The Army units went were mostly National Guard (vital to the defense of Australia & as replacements on the 'Canal) and of course the the main amphibious force was the Marine Corps.

The thought that diversions of these forces would have allowed for an Allied invasion into Mainland Europe in 1942 is not supportable by facts. The United States wound up producing sufficient landing craft by 1944 to support virtually simultaneous landings in Normandy (6/6/44) and Saipan (6/18/44), but in 1942 these vessels were few & far between. The United Stated managed to put 74,000 men on-shore in North Africa in ALL of NOVEMBER 1942, where they were rather roughly handled in their initial encounters with the Germans. The Allies put 125,000 men on the beach on just June 6, PLUS 24,000 Airborne troops. That's on the first day. The logistics that allowed this simply did not exist in 1942 or 1943. The allies also had not yet even achieved Air Parity in 1942. You CAN NOT sucessfully conduct an invasion without mastery of the air (see the threads on the Sea Mammal that must not be mentioned for details on this).

Do the math:
Invasion in 1942 of mainland Europe = Total failure.
Invasion in 1943 = Anzio.
Invasion in 1944 = VE Day.

Husky had seven divisons afloat simultaneoulsy vs five for Overlord. I agree, without a change in policy, an invasion in 1943 was likley to fail but the argument is with changes in policy - i.e. a commitment to land in 1943 (thus keeping LC's a high priority), the resources not being spread around, the Bomber Chiefs reigned in and being made to follow orders or get sacked then a successful invasion become more likely.
 

CalBear

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PMN1 said:
Husky had seven divisons afloat simultaneoulsy vs five for Overlord. I agree, without a change in policy, an invasion in 1943 was likley to fail but the argument is with changes in policy - i.e. a commitment to land in 1943 (thus keeping LC's a high priority), the resources not being spread around, the Bomber Chiefs reigned in and being made to follow orders or get sacked then a successful invasion become more likely.

Husky did indeed have more men afloat. It just didn't have the 3 MILLION men waiting to follow up, nor the 3 divisions of paratroopers that took part in Overlord. It also lacked most of the 5,000 vessels that took part in June of '44. The difference between the two invasions is like the difference between Lake Superior & the Atlantic Ocean. The Lake seems pretty big until you put things into perspective.

Could the Allied have invaded in 1943? Certainly. Could they have succeeded? Not within 11 months of landing (as happened IOTL), perhaps not at all. I personally see an Anzio-type debacle, but the landing may just have been repulsed outright.

I have to agree with Rasputin; the idea of invading in 1943 is to reduce the Red Army's reach and the resulting area under Soviet control. It would likely have had the opposite effect. Other may have differing opinions, and that is one reason this board exists, to air differing view. To each their own.
 
Other may have differing opinions, and that is one reason this board exists, to air differing view. To each their own.

If we are having this discussion now imagine what it would have been like in 42 when plans for 43 were being 'discussed'.

:D
 
CalBear is right, we could not have had simultaneous, or even sequential as in OTL landings in north and south France in 1942. Landing in north Africa is the best we could do in 1942. Otherwise he is wrong.
We would have had to divert our escort carriers and shipping and convoy escorts from the Pacific to the Atlantic to have been able to provide the antisubmarine and logistics capability to even get the troops and supplies to Britain and Algeria. That is what this POD is, the decision to transfer half of the effort from the Pacific to almost double the effort in the Atlantic. Instead of 60% for Japan and 40% for Germany (counting only munitions) we get 30% for Japan and 70% for Germany.
Without sending twice as many aircraft to the Atlantic, we could not have ground down the German air force to the point necessary to make the north and south landings successful. This is key. We really need to do that.
If CalBear would provide the data to back up his claim that only 30% of the industrial capability of the US was going to the Pacific I would be pleased. I think it is true if we are discussing nonmunitions. We were shipping large amounts of nonmilitary aid to Britain. But I was talking about munitions such as aircraft, etc. For military effort it was Japan first till 1944, and that was after the Russians had beaten the Germans at Kursk.
I'm assuming in my POD that we switch emphasis to Germany in 1942 for a landing in 1943, instead of OTL where we did not switch emphasis to Germany till 1943 for a landing in 1944.
Ellis in "Brute Force" discusses the Japan first policy, noting that the switch in casualty rates was in 1944. If I get the book I can get you the page and quote. His book analyses the war in terms of industrial capability and choices.
 
wkwillis said:
CalBear is right, we could not have had simultaneous, or even sequential as in OTL landings in north and south France in 1942. Landing in north Africa is the best we could do in 1942. Otherwise he is wrong.
We would have had to divert our escort carriers and shipping and convoy escorts from the Pacific to the Atlantic to have been able to provide the antisubmarine and logistics capability to even get the troops and supplies to Britain and Algeria. That is what this POD is, the decision to transfer half of the effort from the Pacific to almost double the effort in the Atlantic. Instead of 60% for Japan and 40% for Germany (counting only munitions) we get 30% for Japan and 70% for Germany.
Without sending twice as many aircraft to the Atlantic, we could not have ground down the German air force to the point necessary to make the north and south landings successful. This is key. We really need to do that.
If CalBear would provide the data to back up his claim that only 30% of the industrial capability of the US was going to the Pacific I would be pleased. I think it is true if we are discussing nonmunitions. We were shipping large amounts of nonmilitary aid to Britain. But I was talking about munitions such as aircraft, etc. For military effort it was Japan first till 1944, and that was after the Russians had beaten the Germans at Kursk.
I'm assuming in my POD that we switch emphasis to Germany in 1942 for a landing in 1943, instead of OTL where we did not switch emphasis to Germany till 1943 for a landing in 1944.
Ellis in "Brute Force" discusses the Japan first policy, noting that the switch in casualty rates was in 1944. If I get the book I can get you the page and quote. His book analyses the war in terms of industrial capability and choices.

The suggestion is landing in 1943 in NW France not 1942 and ignoring Italy and the South France only comitting enough to the region to keep the germans guessing.

As I said, the book is an intresting read and does make you think.
 
I think I need to get the numbers from the Ellis book. Maybe the Barnett book, too. Check the cites on aircraft, armor, escort carriers, shipping, etc. One factoid I remember is that the US army had more ships than the navy because we were shipping so much stuff around and the army was providing the guns and gun crews for antiaircraft for shipping. The army was mostly in Europe and the Marines in the Pacific, so why did the army have more ships than the navy?
 
The Battle of the Atlantic

The Battle of the Atlantic is still ongoing in mid 1943, attempting the necessary build up would be extremely risky.

Presumably work on this operation would start after the end of Africa, with no Sicily/Italy expedition
even with some pre-emptive planning it is hard to see how everything will be ready before the winter.
The western Allies do not need to take the risk too soon, so why should they?

In mid 43 the Germans will push a lot more forces West, both before and after the assault. They may even cancel Kursk and roll with the punch instead.

The Allies might indeed pull it off, but why take the risk?

The issue regarding the Soviets in E.Europe is interesting.

There would still be an East Germany - the Soviets are going to get an occupation zone whatever happens.
They also have scope to change their strategy, re-taking Belarus before Ukraine for example. They could do this and still get to Berlin first and move south afterwards -potentially.
 
That's correct, Wozza, the battle of the Atlantic lasted until summer of 1943 in OTL. Doenitz recalled what was left of his boats then.
The POD in the ATL is that begining in 1942 around November we decide to send most of our subsequent aircraft and ship production to the Atlantic instead of the Pacific. So the sub war ends earlier than in OTL as the packs get wiped out earlier, so we can do the buildup that lets us send not one but two armies to France in 1943, instead of the one army to Italy in 1943 in OTL.
More escorts for the convoys, more antisub aircraft for the Biscay and North Sea run, more ships in bigger convoys to divert the subs attention, etc, because twice as many escorts can guard four times as many convoy ships. At least, the antisub convoy people thought so, and they should know.
In this ATL there is going to be some serious sub attrition that we didn't have in OTL. There might not be any subs for Doenitz to recall.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Winners and losers in a successful 1943 invasion

and end of war in 1944-

Winners (in a comparative sense to OTL only)-

Soviet troops who take fewer losses
Slavic, Jewish, Roma and homosexual civilians (Even with absolutely equal Soviet sphere of influence and equal Soviet repression, much of the German-induced death is cut short - shortening of war, plus less chance for Germans to occupy minor Axis countries)
Italian soldiers and civilians in Italy and Italian-occupied Balkans (No replacement of kid-gloved Italians by Germans)
Albanian noncommunists
German guys in western Germany who wouldn't reach draft age until 1945
Israelis (more survivors to join them)
Depending how much further east the meeting is, some German civilians not exposed to Soviet occupation, Czechs, maybe some west Poles or west Hungarians
Chinese communists
Viet Minh (on an outside stretch)
If there's any earlier Japanese capitulation- some of the civilians in Japanese occupied territory.

Losers-
American and Commonwealth and Free French troops who take greater losses
Hokkaido Japanese (assumed Soviet occupation)
More Japanese soldiers and expats in Korea and China sent to Siberia
South Koreans (likely Soviet occupied)
Chinese nationalists (but they were going to lose anyway)
Arabs in Palestine (more formidable foes mean less land for them in the first wat)
French civilians (a slower grind of combat in France).
 
CalBear said:
The arguement that the West could have taken all of Germany, saved the Czechs, Poles, Hungarians & the rest Communist occupation is baseless. It both overlays political hindsight and dismissal of the reality on the ground in one specious arguement. No one knew what Stalin would do (some may have suspected, but no one really fought for the position) with the occupied Eastern European states. It is easy to look back & say 'Stalin was BOUND to do that'; doing it at the time...

I disagree. I don't think we could have liberated them, but a strong stance against Stalin would have done the trick, at least for Poland, and possibly Czechoslovakia (though the latter is doubtful). He was desperate for US aid, and in many ways, our failure to recognize fundamental Russian security concerns and an idiotic diplomatic culture on the part of the British had more to do with the loss of Eastern Europe than Soviet expansionism.

The refusal of several Soviet request for loans by the US (when everybody else was getting them), the cancellation of lend lease, and two level diplomacy in which the UK and US acted as ad hoc negotiators for Poland, (while Poland was still negotiating independently), and several other political mishaps more or less conviced Stalin that the Allies could not be trusted, and he had to seize Eastern Europe. At any one of these points, the US and UK could have concievably made the difference.
 
If Wallace was vice president in 1945 and became president, could he have simply bought Eastern Europe from Russia? Food, consumer goods of various kinds, etc?
 
wkwillis said:
If Wallace was vice president in 1945 and became president, could he have simply bought Eastern Europe from Russia? Food, consumer goods of various kinds, etc?
He would have given in to Moscow, not reduced its power.
 
Let us bear in mind that after the losses the Soviets had already suffered, a joint occupation of Germany and presumed Soviet seiziure of Poland, the Baltic States, and Czechoslovakia is the minimum Stalin can expect to receive.

Neither do I see any chance of FDR or Churchill accepting a negotiated settlement with Germany if Hitler were to have an unfortunate 'accident'.

Bulgaro, this is the same Stalin who refused to cooperate with the West regarding captured German u-boat specifics while the war was still going on.
 

Gremlin

Banned
With all this talk of logistics - when did the ideas and application of the (Mulberrys?) artifical harbour and the undersea oil line come about?

As I see it without these 2 inventions the Allies would have to chance at seizing a port and as dieppe showed, this wasn't easy.
 
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