Technical Study: Japanese Defense of Normandy

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The Germans thought a instant counter attack with little preparation better as the enemy would be more disorganized. The Japanese seem to have been more like other armies and organized counter attacks by the numbers, with attention to setting up fire support, making sure the groups were organized, and giving out coordinating instructions, ect...

This seems like something that was likely influenced by the Germans experience against the Soviets in the East during 1943. In both river crossings and amphibious assaults, the Red Army generally worked by established their foothold by initiating several "reconnaissance in force" landings, basically large-scale raids. They then would have chosen to reinforce where they had achieved maximum success, allowing the less successful landings to whither on the vine.

By the time the main body began to move, the invasion landing and establishment of a beachhead would already have been completed. The movement of the divisional-sized forces would be more of an administrative/logistical move rather than an opposed landing. As a result, spending time to try and get make sure your counter-attack is in perfect order is not as good an idea since the Soviets could turn even a platoon-sized enclave into a major threat if it was left un-molested for as little as 1 day or even less. So what the Germans learned to do was three things:

1) Make sure every foot of the line is under observation
2) Always keep strong mobile reserves
3) Immediately and ruthlessly counter-attack against any and all beachheads, no matter how small or insignificant they appear to be.

That this might not work against a force which was prepared and organized to encounter resistance from the water's edge-on (as opposed to the Soviets infiltrating ashore at places where they expected no resistance) is not something that appears to have occurred to them, despite the fact that they had ample opportunity to learn it in Sicily and Italy. Maybe this was a function of the Eastern Front drawing more of the Germans attention as a whole?
 
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