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Well, ok, so tomorrow is the 6th of June, and you will have ample opportunities to watch "The longest day", "Saving private Ryan" and truckloads of documentaries full of explosions. The spectacular stuff. Time to discuss some boring stuff. (thread)
(By the way, now that I got your attention, can I have a few upvotes to myu quora post on Omaha Beach? quora.com/Why-did-they-a…
Back to business. What I would like to discuss here is: why did it take 2 and a half years between the US entering the war and the landing in Normandy? After all, weeks after the German invasion of the USSR started, Stalin already implored Churchill to open a "second front". /
Of course, Stalin's plea was partially the result of the disastrous situation facing the Red Army, who had lost close to 4 million men in just the few months after the start of the German invasion. But it also reflected the actual thinking of a continental power, /
for whom crossing the Channel was a bit like crossing the Wolga or the Dniepr on steroids. And, to be fair, that other continental power (Germany) also had seriously planned to invade Great Britain with Rhine barges. As a maritime power, Britain knew better, and this is /
what I will elaborate upon (This being said, Stalin's idea was of course completely ridiculous: Britain was still recovering from the disastrous campaign in May 1940 and needed all its spare troops to keep control of the Middle East, where it had just barely saved the day /
during the Iraq and Syria campaigns). But, now, lo and behold, just a few weeks after Pearl Harbour, the Americans came up with their own plan for invading Western Europe: operation Roundup, which would consist in 18 British and 30 IUS divisions landing in northern France in/
the autumn of 1942. This plan was quickly put of the table by the British. (For people without military background: in world war 2, depending on the army, a division would typically have between 10000 and 20000 man). So why didn'nt the British share the gung-ho approach of the /
Americans? Well, because the British had learned the hard way that storming the beaches is the easy part of an amphibious operation. No, seriously. We should not forget that, in 1942, the Atlantic coast wasn"t fortified like it was in 1944. /
So it is conceivable that, by concentrating men at the place of their choosing, the Western allies could have put men on the ground. But what after that? (cliffhanger.... there's a kid who needs to be put in bed now - I will return ) /
Just like the continental powers, the Americans underestimated what such an operation would entail. Basically, they thought it was a bit like sending the Marines to a Caribean Island. They didn't even consider seriously the problem of what would happen after the initial assault/
So when the British asked: "even assuming that you will be able to equip and train these troops in the next 6 months (a big if), what are your follow up troops?" the Americans answered : "well, we thought you would take care of that" Which gives an indication of how deeply US /
military planners were disconnected from reality. You see, it is difficult to believe nowadays, but in the 1930s, the US had become a deeply anti-miltaristic society. Its armed forces were poorly equipped and trained. In 1942, they were simply not ready for a large scale /
battle with the Wehrmacht. But there were more fundamental reasons that the British had learned the hard way. There was, first of all, the disaster of Galipoli during the first World War, which had illustrated the importance of a good coordination between the Navy and the Army/
The 1940 campaign in Norway (even if it was actually fairly succesful from an allied perspective) had shown the difficulty of operating far from your bases without appropriate air cover. In 1941, the evacuation of commonwealth troops from Greece and Crete had led to very heavy /
losses for the Navy as the result of air bombings. On the other hand, the British had seen how Rommel was unable to exploit his tactical victories because his supply lines were constanly under attack from the Royal Navy and the RAF /
So, when faced with the ambitious American plans, the British estimated that the minimal capacity that would be needed to sustain an expeditionary force in France was the harbour of Cherbourg. And they estimated that, with the resources that the Luftwaffe had in 1942, it would /
take around two weeks to completely destroy the harbour. There was thus a very simple implication: an assault over the Channel was out of the question as long as the Luftwaffe was a power to reckon with. And a significant part of the Allied war effort in the next two years would/
indeed consist in eliminating the Luftwaffe. The Allied Air Campaign over Germany has often been derided in being completely ineffective. While I think personally that this is not very convincing (counterfactual thinking, anyone?) /
one of the side effecst was that the Luftwaffe had to massively divert resources to fight the Allied bombers. Especially once the American were able to equip the Mustang fighters with the belly fuel tank, this campaign bled the Luftwaffe to death. /
(by the way, this also had side effect that it put a lot of pressure off the Soviets as well). In the meanwhile, the Allied were also able to reverse the tide in the Atlantic: we should not forget that, until mid-1943, the allied naval losses often exceeded their production of /
new ships. While Britain never came close to starving (contrary to Bengal, but that's another story), it was clear that it would not be able to fulfill its role as advanced logistic base unless this threat was eliminated as well. /
In the meanwhile, the events on the ground fully vindicated the British view. While the landing in North Africa in November 1942 (operation Torch) was a major strategic surprise, in the months following the first success, the US troops's performance against battle hardened /
German troops was not very impressive. One does not one want to consider what would have happened had these troops been sent to battle in France, against German troops that did not suffer from long supply lines /
In Sicily, the landings in July 1943 went relatively smoothly, but after that, the outnumbered German troops succeeded in keeping the island for more than a month. More importantly, the landing at Salerno in September 1943 was an outright disaster, and the only thing that /
saved the Allies from being thrown back in sea was the artillery support from the Navy (which would also be crucial in saving the day at Omaha Beach). And while the landings at Anzio were an initial success, the absence of follow up forces allowed the Germans to recover, /
resulting in months of quagmire. So, if we are honest, it's really difficult to believe that, in 1943, an Allied invasion of Northern France would have been very successful. The "soft underbelly" approach advocated by Churchill has often been ridiculed, but, in the process, /
the Allies had learned a lot about how to conduct large scale amphibious operations. One of the true innovations of that period (which now everybody takes for granted) was the joint and integrated staff: the landings in Normandy were prepared /
