Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Say German leadership gets lucky and manages to find out where and when D-day would happen do you think they could have successfully repulsed it or do you think it would still succeed albeit with a lot more resistance and dead/injured men?
Quote:
Originally Posted by North Beach Person
Yes. Amphibious landings are always dicey, Normandy especially so. As it was it was a near thing to an extent. . . .
Eisenhower had prepared a "Failure Message" in anticipation of it not being successful.
Quote:
Originally Posted by markg91359
My personal opinion is that if the Germans had been prepared that they could have caused an immense number of casualties. . . .
The die was cast for Hitler when he chose to invade the USSR and declare on the United States in 1941. German was simply stretched too thin and too few resources compared to the countries that opposed him.
Quote:
Originally Posted by North Beach Person
Maybe. But if, since we're playing what if, the Germans had been able to throw back the invasion the whole strategy of the Western Allies would have had to change. The failure could have pushed Stalin to seek a negotiated ceasefire/peace, something that Roosevelt and especially Churchill were very concerned about. . . .
There was serious concern almost until the Fall of Berlin that Stalin would seek a negotiated peace with Hitler. Whether that was really a legitimate fear is another question. With Stalin nobody ever really knew.
An interesting question. I'm no deep scholar of WW2, but based on what I've learned, I would have to think the Germans could have repelled the Normandy invasion. And, if they had, the course of the war would certainly have changed. They WERE stretched thin, though, so probably would ultimately have failed.
However, Stalin was a real wild card. And the Russian forces, while individually brave and sometimes skilled, were not all that much of a force. Which is part of why, today, we stereotype the Russian forces as numerous, but succeeding because of massive numbers, not superiority.
I have to wonder if such a scenario would have led to Stalin making a deal with Berlin. And how much longer would Nazi Germany have been able to hold out? Perhaps long enough to recover a bit? And what would the Allies have done should D-Day have failed? Push up through Italy?
The alternatives, to me, seem like we would be discussing at least a couple more years of war. OR, one other possibility does occur to me - nuclear bomb drops in Berlin and oh, where else? Where would a 2nd German target have been for a nuclear bomb? And how long would it have taken for more nukes to be built? We should have some good answers to these questions on this board.
Say German leadership gets lucky and manages to find out where and when D-day would happen do you think they could have successfully repulsed it or do you think it would still succeed albeit with a lot more resistance and dead/injured men?
You could draw some comparison to the battle of Anzio where Allied troops were bottle up for four and a half months after a successful amphibious landing with little opposition. One difference was the German General Kesselring was able to react quickly with contingency plans to surround the beachhead.
At Normandy, the Allies benefited from lessons learned at Anzio and Hitler's control of the German response. The German army still controlled part of Northern Italy when they surrendered on April 29, 1945.
The Germans had a very long coastline to guard and they were well aware of allied plans for an invasion. It was inevitable and they knew it was coming and prepared the best they could. If they had more info on the exact time and place, they no doubt would have extracted a higher price from the Allies.
But their options were limited. The Luftwaffe was kaput. They had no naval strength at all to challenge the invasion force. If you read accounts of the Normandy invasion from the German troops who opposed it, their sense of the battle was that they were simply being overwhelmed at all locations.
Say German leadership gets lucky and manages to find out where and when D-day would happen do you think they could have successfully repulsed it or do you think it would still succeed albeit with a lot more resistance and dead/injured men?
No. The allies ruled the sky and ruled the waves. There is only so much you can do with fixed concrete emplacements, which were already manned and need more time than weeks to construct. After that it is Germans digging trenches and tanks in the open. The Germans are good fighters on the move, but Japanese digging caves, living on rice rations, and dedicated to suicide they are not. Remember also the Normandy landing was done on an extremely broad front to prevent Germans massing troops in one specific location to prevent landing. Tanks also - pfft they would have been destroyed by our tank busters before our first troops hit the beach, as long as skies were clear.
The one thing that could have failed us, is not the Germans, but weather. Weather was the key.
If they had succeeded in pushing the invasion back into the sea, delaying the end of the war, it would just have resulted in Hamburg, Munich, or Berlin being nuked.
If they had succeeded in pushing the invasion back into the sea, delaying the end of the war, it would just have resulted in Hamburg, Munich, or Berlin being nuked.
If the war against Germany had lasted as long as the war against Japan, I don't think Truman would have been prepared to use nuclear bombs on Germany. I think the decision to drop the bombs on Germany was much easier for Truman to make. Invading Japan was going to much more difficult than finishing off Germany.
If the war against Germany had lasted as long as the war against Japan, I don't think Truman would have been prepared to use nuclear bombs on Germany. I think the decision to drop the bombs on Germany was much easier for Truman to make. Invading Japan was going to much more difficult than finishing off Germany.
Not to divert the topic too much from D-day, but, the bomb was planned to be used against Germany until maybe mid or late 1944. And why not? We had already been bombing their population areas for years, sometimes with larger loss of life in one bombing raid than occurred in Hiroshima. Allies were also nervous that Germany was establishing it's own nuclear bomb.
At the beginning of 1945, indeed, the fate of the war in Europe was sealed and the allies noted that Germany was no where as far advanced in it's nuclear program, so target was shifted.
Not to divert the topic too much from D-day, but, the bomb was planned to be used against Germany until maybe mid or late 1944. And why not? We had already been bombing their population areas for years, sometimes with larger loss of life in one bombing raid than occurred in Hiroshima. Allies were also nervous that Germany was establishing it's own nuclear bomb.
At the beginning of 1945, indeed, the fate of the war in Europe was sealed and the allies noted that Germany was no where as far advanced in it's nuclear program, so target was shifted.
The development of the atomic bomb was originally intended as a counter to the Nazi's atomic program. By 1943 the Allies had decided the German atomic bomb program was not going to be a threat. After the break-out from Normandy, it looked like Germany would collapse in the fall of 1944 so planning assumed that Japan would be the target due to the expectation that Germany would be out of the war by the time the bomb was ready. However, during the Battle of the Bulge, Roosevelt had directed Groves to be ready to use the atomic bomb against Germany if it was still in the war when the bomb became available.
The Normandy invasion was going to succeed due almost total air and sea superiority, and the logistical capabilities of the Allies. It was just a matter of the number of casualties.
A better question for this topic is, "If the United States was closer to testing the atomic bomb, would it have been used against Berlin to kill Hitler and convince the Germans to surrender, and avoid the invasion of France?"
Also keep in mind that Truman replaced Roosevelt after his death on April 12, 1945. Truman made the decision to drop the bombs on Japan but wasn't even aware of the Manhattan Project until after Roosevelt's death.
Last edited by villageidiot1; 08-15-2018 at 03:10 PM..
Realistically I wonder if Truman would have ever used the atomic bomb on Germany. We had hundreds of thousands of German Americans living in the United States. Would it have been a post war political liability especially for a President who intended to make a run for a full term in the White House. In that era America was decidedly Eurocentric whereas the Japanese were just Asians.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
