WI: The Nazis learn where D-Day will happen?

I am guessing you are not including the actions of the 21st Pz Div on 6th June?

Given they didn't show up until towards the end of the day? Yeah. Von Luck spent the entire day having to take the long route around after being blocked at Pegasus bridge. By the time the 21st was actually there, the Canadians were fully ensconced. Had the 21st been able to cross those bridges he could have been on the beaches within an hour of the troops landing, without an entire days worth of attrition form mechanical failures, airstrikes and naval artillery. A single division might not have been enough to actually defeat the Canadian landing, but it probably could have inflicted much heftier casualties and imposed significant delays.

Flipping open my copy of 'Salerno' by H Pond , I see the beaches used by the British X Corps were defended by the 15th PzG Div.

A single panzergrenadier division with the elements of a panzer division conducting delaying actions and reconnaissance-by-fire is not the same as a corps-plus level attack with the intent of driving the enemy into the sea. The first truly major such attack only came three days after the beginning and came within a hairsbreadth of collapsing the beachhead before they were beaten off.
 
And if the Germans are able to achieve the same degree of initial success against the WAllies on the morning of June 6th as they did at Kasserine, Salerno, Anzio, Mortaine, or the Bulge, then the invasion is driven into the sea. We have zero examples of a massed armored attack hitting a developing beachhead in the first few hours after landings begin precisely because the WAllies were so effective at duping the Germans as to the timing and location of said landings, but what examples we do have of massed armored attacks against beachheads that are between a few days and a week old is telling.

There are several issues conflated here.

The Germans did launch division sized armoured attacks on the day of landing against the Allies in Sicily, Salerno and Normandy with limited success -e.g. see above re Salerno, at Caen 21st Panzer made little impression against the airborne landings, and got easily stopped by the seaborne landings.

They also launched multi division armoured attacks on a number of occasions - e.g. Alam Halfa, ElAlamein, Kasserine , Medenine, Salerno, Anzio, Operation Epsom, Mortain, Ardennes. Only 2 of these Kasserine and the Ardennes achieved advances of more than a few miles, and others e.g. Medenine were complete failures.

The key problem the Germans have is the length of coastline they have to defend which prevents them concentrating their forces. Even if they guessed right on the location (which they effectively did at Salerno), it still takes time to concentrate and co-ordinate multiple divisions, and German doctrine in any case preferred immediate attacks, rather than waiting to launch larger ones. And we have the evidence from several landings that the immediate attacks did not succeed. For the Germans to be successful, they probably need the location, timing and the landing plan.
 
.... For the Germans to be successful, they probably need the location, timing and the landing plan.

I'll have to check this a bit, but on the evening of 6th June or morning of the 7th German patrols along the Vrie Estuary found the US First Army landing plan and inland objectives in a wrecked landing craft that drifted ashore. The corpse of a staff officer had been left aboard when the boat was abandoned. Both the 7th Army staff & Rommels staff were able to examine it. What effect it had on the battle I am unsure. What is clear is Neither Rommel nor 7th Army were able to organize a deliberate large scale multi corps counter attack, even tho there were mutiple efforts to do so. The efforts instead broke down into smaller division & single corps hasty emergency attacks.

... it still takes time to concentrate and co-ordinate multiple divisions, and German doctrine in any case preferred immediate attacks, rather than waiting to launch larger ones. ...

At Sid bou Zid (Usually misplaced as Kasserine) & the Ardennes the Axis & Germans made deliberate & well planned attacks, against a thin defense. In the other cases the counters attacks were imeadiate as you say. On the surface it looks like the commanders were trying t reproduce the methods that had worked for them in the East, or in Lybia. If so why that was the more common practice & why it did not work is a important question.
 
On the surface it looks like the commanders were trying t reproduce the methods that had worked for them in the East, or in Lybia. If so why that was the more common practice & why it did not work is a important question.

In Normandy there is evidence that German armoured attacks used tactics that had worked on the Eastern Front (attacks by tanks alone, looking to overrun infantry units) eg 12SS Panzer against the Canadians. These did not work against Allied units who were well equipped with 6pdr anti-tank guns (and hand-held anti-tank weapons), and had not in fact worked against the Western Allies since mid 1942. Strangely the poor co-ordination between German tanks and infantry often gets overlooked. ;)

German doctrine reflected in part the problems they had against the British "give the British 24 hours to consolidate and they are immovable", while the British "bite and hold" tactics reflected the need to stop the German counter-attacks; this interplay between doctrines dates back to WW1.

What is clear is Neither Rommel nor 7th Army were able to organize a deliberate large scale multi corps counter attack, even tho there were mutiple efforts to do so. The efforts instead broke down into smaller division & single corps hasty emergency attacks.

It often gets overlooked that the Germans in Normandy, at least in the early days, were not trying simply to hold the Allies but to drive them back into the sea. However the main counterattacks on D-Day (21st Panzer Division, 352nd Division (battalion supported by Stugs), Paratroop battalion IIRC) were either stopped dead or annihilated. Thereafter they never really regained the initiative.
 
If the Germans get their forces defeated on the French coast early in the invasion,they are in serious trouble.
Hitler would never have allowed retreat, they'd have died on the beaches under naval gunfire.
 
....

It often gets overlooked that the Germans in Normandy, at least in the early days, were not trying simply to hold the Allies but to drive them back into the sea. However the main counterattacks on D-Day (21st Panzer Division, 352nd Division (battalion supported by Stugs), Paratroop battalion IIRC) were either stopped dead or annihilated. Thereafter they never really regained the initiative.

The level of confusion among the German reserves during the morning is striking. A large part of this is the invasion fleet was unobserved & unreported until after sunrise. The German radar was effectively nuetralized, night time haze prevented observation, a patrol boat and a service boat that ran into the invasion fleet before dawn were unable to make radio reports. While suprise was effectively lost when the para started dropping at 01:30 & all German units had their battle positions manned by 05:00 the heavy overcast & haze kept the fleet obscured until around 05:45. Lacking knowledge of the fleet one of the regiments of the 352d ID were sent off to deal with paratroopers SE of Carentan. They did not find any DZ & after dawn they were ordered off to Bayeux to defend that town from the Canadians. On the way they marched past Omaha Beach, which the division commander thought was under control. In late afternoon they were reversed gain and during the evening/night redeployed to contain the advance of the US V Corps. Similarly the 21 PzDiv was initially ordered off to clear paras from the Orne bridges. It was not redirected to attack the beaches until after 06:00. The 12th SS was stalled at dawn for the same reason. The German commanders did not know there was a invasion on, until the fleet actually was visible. After that their movement was stalled by air attacks, & the actual contact dominated by Brit AT guns and naval gunfire.

This was in contrast to Sicilly and Salerno where the counter attack forces started moving out of their assembly areas much sooner relative to the invasion H Hour.
 
Flipping open my copy of 'Salerno' by H Pond , I see the beaches used by the British X Corps were defended by the 15th PzG Div.

....
A single panzergrenadier division with the elements of a panzer division conducting delaying actions and reconnaissance-by-fire is not the same as a corps-plus level attack with the intent of driving the enemy into the sea. The first truly major such attack only came three days after the beginning and came within a hairsbreadth of collapsing the beachhead before they were beaten off.

Looking through Pond, Atkinsons 'Day of Battle', & WGF Jacksons 'The Battle for Italy' I cant see evidence for this. All three describe for the German side a corps size attack of three divisions starting the morning of the 9th Sept (the 15tth PG div was also defending the north portion of the gulf). The descriptions also indicate all three were executing counter attacks at large scale from the morning. The movement of the entire HG Div started before the landing. The losses for all three divisions on the 9th appear to high for a reconissance in force. Also since the grenadier and AT battalions of the 15PD & 16Pz divs were directly defending the beaches a reconissance in force seems more than a little unnecessary.
 
Top