D-Day a COMPLETE FAILURE?

Even with a failed D-day the allies would:
-Keep on with the bombing of the Reich. It means Luftwaffe still decimated, factories and fuel production seriously disrupted, men and guns needed for Flak.
-Fight in Italy and maybe in southern France, fronts that the germans would have to deal with.
-keep the threat on the Atlantic wall. They just need they huge naval power and some divisions.

IMHO, just with the air campaign, the allies would assure a soviet victory over the Reich. But then they would face a soviet Europe.

D-day was decisive in the sense that preserved western Europe from falling in soviet hands, but it was not decisive in Germany's defeat.
 

bard32

Banned
OK... please stop speaking in non-sequiturs.

Any German weather stations that were set up were shortly destroyed, and I don't think there were any when D-Day was being executed.

You have failed to counter any of CalBear's points.

Actually, the German weather station on Greenland was in operation right up
until D-Day. When it came to the weather on D-Day, the Germans just got it
wrong. Wing Commander Stagg got it right.
 
Like I said often before: Unless that nuke kills Hitler, the nuke has been wasted.
You know, there have been scenarios written, where a more ugly and prolonged attack of German cities with huge civilian casialties, caused Hitler to be overthrown.
If Harris and his bomber command teamed up with the USAAF and decided to fight a war of pure aggression against German cities, trying to actually kill as many Germans as possible and not try to hinder the German war effort, you would have many disasters like Dresden and Hamburg happening over and over again in 1943 and 1944.
It has been argued that this may have been enough for a core of German officers to try a series of coups against Hitler in order to make peace with the Allies.
So, what if instead of building an invasion force, the Allied decided to lay Germany in ashes in 1943+1944. USAAF and RAF systematically bomb German cities one after the other, trying to develop firestorms.
Could it work?
Remember we are not talking about the Japanese here, we are talking about the Germans here. They are less fanatic when it comes to defending their commander in chief.
 
If Harris and his bomber command teamed up with the USAAF and decided to fight a war of pure aggression against German cities, trying to actually kill as many Germans as possible and not try to hinder the German war effort, you would have many disasters like Dresden and Hamburg happening over and over again in 1943 and 1944. It has been argued that this may have been enough for a core of German officers to try a series of coups against Hitler in order to make peace with the Allies.
So, what if instead of building an invasion force, the Allied decided to lay Germany in ashes in 1943+1944. USAAF and RAF systematically bomb German cities one after the other, trying to develop firestorms.
Could it work?

I doubt it (by the way I'd suggest the description you apply of 'a war of pure aggression' is unfortunate) mainly because the effort to burn Germany to the ground was already a maximum-strength one. Given conventional bombing limitations, the allied air forces couldn't have done that much more damage than they actually did. So what you're describing isn't really an alternate to historical policy but simply a less evasively-phrased description of what was actually done.

The real problem is that the morale and emotional effects of conventional bombing wear off very quickly - to the point where one formulation for such effects is that each raid has half the impact of the ones that preceded it. We can see that with the raid on Hamburg. After it, Speer famously said that six more raids like it would end the war - Germany had dozens more like it and they didn't.

From an industrial point of view, the problem was that Germany had the industrial organization side of things well sorted out. After a raid, special teams would visit the bombed-out factories and organize putting them back into service by removing facilities from undamaged plants that were of lower priority. So, the effect of the prolonged series of raids is to neck down German industrial capacity by eliminating the least important industries first. It takes time to cripple an industrial structure that way.

The only way to achieve the desired effect is to take every city in Germany out at once. That can only be done with nuclear weapons - its why nuclear weapons were such a dramatic change in "how things were done". With conventional bombing, it takes a large bomber fleet to take down a single city and the rate at which they can be erased is limited (at best two per week). A 1940s atomic bomb is no more destructive than a 1,000 bomber incendiary raid but the same bomber fleet can take all the cities out in one night. A country can live with having two cities a week burned down (especially since it can repair them in the time periods available) but it can't with losing every city at once.
 
The bomb does not nessecarily have to be aimed at Berlin. It could go for Nuremberg, Hamburg... anywhere. My choice target would be to locate the German atomic bomb project(what little of it there is) and blow it up so as to deny the Germans any ability of getting their own bomb.
 
The bomb does not nessecarily have to be aimed at Berlin. It could go for Nuremberg, Hamburg... anywhere. My choice target would be to locate the German atomic bomb project(what little of it there is) and blow it up so as to deny the Germans any ability of getting their own bomb.

I can see there would be a serious debate in political/strategic circles here. It wouldn't be a case like Japan where the enemy was on the ropes and it needed just a small push to send them over; Germany was still a viable entity, especially if D-Day had been defeated (extremely unlikely though that may be). One question would be, do the allies drop each bomb as it becomes available or save a set number for a greater strike (and if so, how many?). Do they target political leadership, scientific capability or industrial capacity? Or do they drop them on the German army and try and blast a hole through the German defenses?
 
Originally posted by CalBear
I have to disagree regarding the Red Army and it's capacities. By mid-late 1944 Ivan was all that & a bag of chips. I also have to disagree that the Heer would have been able to move forces from the West to the east in any greater number than occurred IOTL. Even if D-Day had been an utter disaster, the lesses inflicted would not have been sufficient to knock the Western Allies out of the war (Ike might well have been a goner, but not the threat of invasion). That being the case, the Germans would still have needed to defend the Atlantic Wall, perhaps even reinforced it further as the Allies took out their frustrations on any target that a fighter or bomber could find.

Originally posted by Karlos
Even with a failed D-day the allies would:
-Keep on with the bombing of the Reich. It means Luftwaffe still decimated, factories and fuel production seriously disrupted, men and guns needed for Flak.
-Fight in Italy and maybe in southern France, fronts that the germans would have to deal with.
-keep the threat on the Atlantic wall. They just need they huge naval power and some divisions.

It is no doubt that without Soviet Union the german defeat probably had not been possible (although Soviet Union played an important role in the initial german victory, the germans through the Soviet Union obtained a great quantity of raw materials and supplies previous to Barbarossa, nowadays it seems clear that the germans obtained more of the Soviet Union in question of strategic suplies during 1939-41 than in all the period of sacking of the occupied zones of Soviet Union in 1941-44, Barbarossa was not only an enormous mistake, also a complete disaster for the germans), by 1944 also the Red Army had learnt of the bad experiences of 1941-43 (in 1943 the soviets had suffered a setback during the german winter counteroffensive of Kharkov in february-march 1943) and was clearly an experienced and tough army, the question in any case is if the germans had could offer a better defensive position against the soviets in an AH where D-Day was a defeat, so more than questioning the soviet military capacity I think the key is know if the german military capacity had been the sufficiently better than in OTL to could slow and could be stop in determined circumstances and fronts the soviet advance.

But before of analizing this through of a determined element that I will explained soon, some reflexions about what would happen in other fields in a Europe with a defeat in D-Day, this is mentioned by Karlos:

--Keep on with the bombing of the Reich. It means Luftwaffe still decimated, factories and fuel production seriously disrupted, men and guns needed for Flak.

This is an interesting and complex situation: what effects would have a D-Day defeat in the strategic bombing, first of all an important part of fighters and bombers were deployed to Normandy during the period of june-august 1944, this meant that the strategic bombing effort was decelerated because the need of total air superiority over Normandy and air support and interdiction missions over this front, in this ATL the strategic bombing had been continous and possibily centered in a great part in trying to destroy the oil german industry -my logic is that once that the allies had suffered a defeat that surely had postponed a new invasion of mainland France until spring 1945, they would try to find a quick solution to made the harder damage to the german army, in this aspect bombing oil industry was by 1944 the supposed and true magic solution-, in other aspect the Luftwaffe could be in a better situation to confront this bombing offensive, not only because the Luftwaffe would not suffer the great losses in the west that his force of 1300 fighters that were deployed to confront the allied Normandy campaign received. (an interesting article about this http://www.bergstrombooks.elknet.pl/normandy.htm) also such destructive operations as Operation Bodenplatte had not existed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodenplatte.

- Fight in Italy and maybe in southern France, fronts that the germans would have to deal with.

Italy would be reinforced with new divisions, for the moment it would be the only allied front in Europe and it surely would receive a greater number of reinforcements in this ATL than in OTL (in other aspects but Italy geography favoured the defender as the Italian campaign of OTL showed it).

Respect to Southern France it seems that Churchill was partidary to reinforce Italy more than proceed to made Operation Anvil, in this ATL after the disaster of Normandy there would more reluctance to made a great landing in Europe apart of Normandy, also in OTL at the time of Anvil the germans were in complete rout and retreat in the Normandy Front and they were not capable to send great reserves to Southern France but in this ATL Anvil without Normandy would be considered too much risky and with the opposition of Churchill -at the end Churchill could say that he had prefered instead Normandy an strategy to attack the Germans with a landing in the Mediterranean Front, but not in France, in this ATL Churchill politically and morally would have more force in press to only reinforce the Italian Front-.

I think so that probably not Anvil.

In any case with more allied troops in Italy and the germans surely concentrated in the East against the soviet onslaught, although combined with the presence of important defensive german positions and the italian geography, with all these elements in mind I think than in this ATL by the end of 1944 the allied had occupied Bologna, Modena, Parma and La Spezia and could be Ferrara and begin to encounter the german positions at the Po Line.

- keep the threat on the Atlantic wall. They just need they huge naval power and some divisions.

Yes, it would be the logic measure as mentioned by other partners in the thread, to see how this could affect the possible german forces in the East in this ATL and as I say at the beginning of this post I will analize how in this ATL could be affected respect to OTL a key figure that could give a light about what real capacities would have the germans in the East in TTL, I am refering to the armored divisions, while in the West an important part of the infantry divisions were of the kind of second rank and so it would not affect too much if some of these were sent to the East, the real key factor would be the armored divisions, what fate would have the armored divisions in this ATL, how many of them would be deployed in the east?.

By luck we have this great site specialized in the different branchs of the German Military Forces (and one of the best respect to the land forces) http://www.feldgrau.com/ to made an analysis division by division respect to the Heer and the Waffen SS:

First the Waffens SS armored division, they had the best equipment and were one of the toughest formations in the East Front.

1.SS-Panzer-Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler: At june 1944 it was situated in Belgium for rest and refitting after great losses in East Front, in july-august it was sent as reinforcement to Normandy Front, in this ATL it would be sent to the East.

2.SS-Panzer-Division Das Reich: At june 1944 the most part of the division -with the exception of a small formation organized as Kampfgruppe in the East- was situated at Toulouse zone from february 1944, in OTL it was sent to Normandy front as reinforcement, in this ATL is probable that it remains in France as reserve of the 7Armee. -as mentioned by Karlos and other partners respect to keep the threat on the Atlantic Wall this would be made to have armored reserves in case the allies try some operation in France after the defeat of D-Day-.

3.SS-Panzer-Division Totenkopf: during 1944 and 1945 ever deployed in the East Front.

5.SS-Panzer-Division "Wiking": During 1944 and 1945 ever deployed in the East Front.

9.SS-Panzer-Division "Hohenstaufen": at 12 june 1944 was sent to Normandy as reinforcement from the East Front, it would remain in the Western Front until his participation in the Hungary offensive of 1945, in this ATL so the Hohenstaufen had not been sent to Normady, it had remained in the East Front.

10.SS-Panzer-Division "Frundsburg": Received orders to go to Normandy in 11 june 1944 from the Eastern Front, in this ATL it would continue in the Eastern Front (BTW: according to Feldgrau "11 June, 1944: Hitler orders cancellation of a planned offensive near Kowel, division ordered to France", so a first butterfly in a D-day defeat would be that germans continue with the preparations of an offensive at Kowel)

12.SS-Panzer-Division "Hitler Jugend": Situation of reserve of the OKW at Evreux. Could be remain at West even with a D-Day defeat.

The Heer:

1.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
2.Panzer-Division: A veteran of the Eastern Front, it was sent to rest and refitting at France in december 1943, nearly destroyed at Falaise Gap and another time suffered a lot in the Ardennes Offensive. In this ATL surely sent to the East Front after its time of rest and refitting, probably as reinforcement once that the Soviets begin their Summer Offensive of june 1944.
3.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
4.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
5.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
6.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
7.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
8.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
9.Panzer-Division: Rebuilding and refreshing at Avignon after its combat experience at the East Front. Used at Ardennes Offensive. Probably sent to the East Front once the soviets begin the Summer Offensive.
11.Panzer-Division: sent from Jassy to France at may-june 1944 for refreshing. Probably sent to East Front once that it rest and refit (could be july-august).
12.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
13.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
14.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
16.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
17.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
19.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
20.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
21.Panzer-Division: At France. Considered unfit for service in Eastern Front. I would remain in this ATL in France.
23.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
24.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
25.Panzer-Division: At East Front during 1944 and 1945.
26.Panzer-Division: At Italy during 1944 and 1945. I would remain at Italy.
116.Panzer-Division: Formed at France in 1944. Deployed at Pas de Calais. Probably would remain at the West.

Not mentioned in Feldgrau but without doubt important

Panzer Lehr Division: (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerlehrdivision) situated at Normandy at the time of june 1944, elite division. An incognita although is probable because its great military capacity that in an ATL where D-Day is a defeat it could be sent as reinforcement once that the soviet summer offensive begin.

For a composition of each panzer-division of the Heer and Waffen SS (what kind of tanks had, number of battalions, names, etc) I recommend the web panzertruppen (beware it is in spanish), for the SS http://www.panzertruppen.org/ss/index.html
for the Heer http://www.panzertruppen.org/heer/panzer/index.html

Conclusion of the analyisis: between 6-7 panzer-division (Heer and Waffen SS) would be deployed in East Front during 1944-45 that in OTL were deployed in west.

There was 19 panzer-division at East at the end of june in OTL, 7 panzer-division more would be a total of 26 panzer-division (so almost 37% of more panzer-division than in OTL, also the 3 Waffen SS divisions and the Panzer-Lehr are supposed to have first quality equipment this would made of this 4 divisions specially valuable), it is difficult to say if it would mark a difference in the East, probably depending of how they would be used, an use of armored reserve of at least 4-5 of the divisions could be interesting at the hour of confronting the soviet offensives.

Exists also an interesting analysis about this topic at Dale Cozort page http://members.aol.com/althist1/Sept02/dday.htm
 
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