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For whatever reason, everything goes right for the Allies that day. They manage to secure all target beaches, and begin an invasion of Nazi-occupied France early on. How early does the war end, and what are the butterflies?
I'll be labeled a nut case here, but after carefuly studying the German commanders and Hitlers views on defending France, and then wargaming this out several times with a team of professional miltiary historians here are my conclusions:
1. Rommels forward defense at the beachs would have still slowed the Allied advance somewhat, this would have led to Hitler insisting yet another "stand fast" defense in Normandy. As against the Red Army there would have been zero flexibility. I know everyone has all sorts of comments about the Desert Fox and all that, but the fact is Rommels could not have effectively manuvered against the Allied fire power. Stone me if you will but the evidence is irrefutable.
2. Allied air power would have destroyed the German lines of communications and left them barely supplied and unable to manuver. Impossible you say? The fact is the USAAF & RAF were capable of putting 14,000 operational aricraft over the battlefield that summer. We have been over the records exhaustively and the fact is it could have been done with proper preperation.
3. After six to eight week of a bloody stand up fight in Normandy the Germans would have collapsed, & the survivors retreated to the old German border & remanants of the Siegfried line. Now I am going to get unbelieveable again, but the collapse would have been so rapid that over 100,000 prisoners would be taken in the rout across France. That would have been in just a short month. The only thing that could stop the Allied army would be the temporary collapse of its own supply system. With the railroads of France destroyed it would be months before the offense could be taken up again.
4. Now I'll suggest all this could be done without nukes.
...and that the Allies could have crossed the Rhine in the early spring without them. The trick is with the Allied tactical airforces in range of Germany from French airfields they can attack and destroy the railroads, thus paralyzing German delivery of supplies from the factories to the field armies.
I realize I have likely destroyed my credibility with many folks here, but our historical studies group gamed this out many times, handicapping the Allies in several ways & the results were consistent. How did we get around the problem of failure on the Normandy beaches? Basically we revived Morgans old forgotten COSSAC plan, boosted it considerablly, and threw out entirely General A E Neumans historical plan.
And please no flame posts on this, its only a WI in a Alt Hist forum.