DBWI: The 1944 Normandy Invasion succeeds

WI the Normandy Invasion of June 1944 had not been a total failure? Perhaps the Germans do not have that unknown mole in Allied HQ who told them that the Pas de Calais bombing raids were a diversion and where they should really concentrate their defenses. Perhaps the destroyers decide to risk it all on Omaha Beach by going in and risking beaching themselves to support the troops.

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?
 
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Do you have any idea how bad Nazi infighting was? Sure, Goering, Himmler, Goebbels etc could pull together in the face of the Soviets, but they hated each other and were rather eager to surrender to the west. So I think if the 1944 Normandy raid was a success and the Allies established a strong foothold in France, within two weeks maximum the Third Reich would have imploded openly into feuding factions. All factions would have proclaimed loyalty to the Fuhrer while he was alive, of course, but my gut feeling is that Allied troops will be home for Christmas 1944. Also, post-war Germany would have become allied with the west, instead of Soviet troops pushing to the Rhine in early 1946.
 
Biggest single butterfly: They don't use nukes in France to clear a path for the 2nd invasion attempt. Probably results in cities in Germany getting A-Bombed instead.
 
Biggest single butterfly: They don't use nukes in France to clear a path for the 2nd invasion attempt. Probably results in cities in Germany getting A-Bombed instead.

In any case the nukes in France were unnecessary from a military standpoint. Even when the Allies were encircling Paris from the north and south through pincer movement, rival SS divisions throughout France and western Germany were shooting each other. The Allies could have simply picked each division off for surrender instead of dropping A-bombs on a friendly country.
 
WI the Normandy Invasion of June 1944 had not been a total failure? Perhaps the Germans do not have that unknown mole in Allied HQ who told them that the Pas de Calais bombing raids were a diversion and where they should really concentrate their defenses. Perhaps the destroyers decide to risk it all on Omaha Beach by going in and risking beaching themselves to support the troops.

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?

TBH, it's not likely the War would have continued for much longer. The Germans were lucky enough to last up until April 1946 IOTL, as it is.

As to whether or not all of Germany would have been allied with the West, instead of broken apart, with the Republic of South Germany remaining largely neutral and only the Empire of Germany[OTL: the Rhineland and Upper Saxony, plus the northern half of Hesse] becoming a member of the Western Alliance(and Schleswig-Holstein going completely independent, with Hamburg, as it's own republic......or at least, those parts that weren't given to Denmark, anyhow), with East Germany(sans East Prussia) as a Soviet satellite.....well, that's always been up for debate. More than likely, we'd have seen something similar to OTL.

Also, Shadow Hawk, you been reading Tom Clancy again? :D

OOC: Sorry, Shadow Hawk, but I'll have to ignore this post of yours. It's just too far-fetched to be plausible.
 
Also, Shadow Hawk, you been reading Tom Clancy again? :D

OOC: Sorry, Shadow Hawk, but I'll have to ignore this post of yours. It's just too far-fetched to be plausible.

OOC: No problem. First thing I thought of was "German cities get nuked instead of Japanese", and somehow it morphed into "nukes used to clear landing beaches" like some of the Downfall plans... if the war had lasted long enough, the first atom bombs would have hit German cities vice Japanese, though.
 
Would France still have been split into North and South (and East and West Paris)? I suppose it depends on how fast the Russians can make it past the Rhine.
 
Would France still have been split into North and South (and East and West Paris)? I suppose it depends on how fast the Russians can make it past the Rhine.

OOC: Sorry, but this couldn't happen now; as I implied here earlier, the Soviets did not actually keep all of Germany in their sphere, and it isn't even implied that they definitively ever went beyond the Rhine in the first place, so this is definitely not canon, at this point.

IC: If the Russians had indeed made it past the Rhine, perhaps they could have broken up France(there were plans in place to be considered as early as the summer of 1945.). But West & East Paris would not be doable, even under those circumstances.
 
OOC: Could we have a PoD that is actually plausible please? The number of things you have to change to make D-Day actually unsuccessful is enormous, probably enough so that the situation in which the planning of Operation Overlord is either completely different or doesn't happen. A mole in the allied HQ for example requires a pre-war PoD more-or-less since by the time war was declared Britain basically already had tabs on all the Abwehr spies, courtesy of having planted their own spy inside Abwehr, but if you remove that one guy, you change the whole conduct of the war, not just the run up to D-Day.
 
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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.
 
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It is, although turned on its head, D-Day has very little chance to actually fail.

OOC: AFAIK, even Eisenhower thought it was a gamble, but one he was certain enough would work, to launch it.
If circumstances had been against the Allies, it COULD have failed. Although it wouldn't have meant a Fatherland-like scenario; it would have meant a Europe "liberated" *shudder* by the USSR.
 
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