'Devil's Brigade' sent to Normandy ?

This qn's been on my mind since I saw INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS on Sat, what with Brad Pitt as Lt Aldo Raine wearing the insignia of the 1st Special Service Force in that initial pep talk scene when we 1st see the Basterds: WI the 1st SSF were withdrawn from Italy to participate in Op OVERLORD in early 1944 ? How much difference would they have made in Normandy, given their previous combat record at Monte La Difensa et al ? What'd be the best POD for the Black devils to have been sent to france- perhaps if the 1st, 3rd & 4th Ranger Bns hadn't been destroyed at Cisterna/Civitavecchia ?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Well, the big problem there is that the targets were divided up by nation and the Devil's Brigade was a bi-national force: US and Canadian.

And since the Omaha and Utah beaches didn't share any operational borders with Juno, the decision on where to put them might cause some dissatisfaction. Also, there were a fair amount of losses cracking the mountain fortifications in Italy.
Yes, their skills seem to be very much suited to taking out the beach defenses or any of the many other special operations that were needed (I'd go so far as to say they were the closest thing to Special Forces in WWII), but the positioning is what would be hard.

As for a difference? I don't know. It was so big of an operation, I'm just not sure. I think they probably would've made a bigger splash, though, if they were deployed somewhere on Juno Beach with the Canadians.

The part of me that knows what happened with the 12th SS in Caen with the Canadian POWs makes me think that perhaps they could've held off the Hitlerjugend and kept the city, but I'm just not sure.
 
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