Why did Germany lose WW2?
r.fox
Active member
yeah. the problem that the germans had at that point was that they had absolutly no air cover. another thing is that the allies had either captured or destroyed most of the bridges in Normandy. i dont think that the lightly armed parachuters could have stopped the tanks but if threatened they would have blown the bridges.
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MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
But lack of air power was exactly Rommel's point, in having armour close to the beaches and in contact with the enemy right from the start it nullified both allied air and naval power for fear of hitting their own troops.
Where the German armour was vulnerable was in the rear staging areas, Rommel had seen the effects of allied air superiority in North Africa, von Rundstedt's experiences were all under the protection of German air superiority so in this case I believe Rommel was absolutely correct in his defence plans.
Don't you think that if Rommel did have the Panzers close to the beaches ,the allied strategy would have been changed to counter that?
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
Maybe but either way they had to land and only if they knew what he wanted to do, I do not remember reading a whole lot about about allied knowledge of German plans for the defence of Normandy prior to the actual landing.
Lets face it they still devoted time and energy to silencing guns that were not there and lost hundreds of paratroopers to flooded fields and the 21st Panzer survived intact to oppose the landings and make it to the coast (despite heavy losses to naval gunfire) so clearly they did not know everything and the things they did know they sometimes failed to counter for example the bombing the shoreline defences missed altogether.
I am not a great fan of Rommel and while I believe he was one of a multitude of effective German leaders I tend to think that because of his fate he has been somewhat romanticised in Western minds into more than he actually was but in this case I believe he was entirely correct in his plans.
Lets face it they still devoted time and energy to silencing guns that were not there and lost hundreds of paratroopers to flooded fields and the 21st Panzer survived intact to oppose the landings and make it to the coast (despite heavy losses to naval gunfire) so clearly they did not know everything and the things they did know they sometimes failed to counter for example the bombing the shoreline defences missed altogether.
I am not a great fan of Rommel and while I believe he was one of a multitude of effective German leaders I tend to think that because of his fate he has been somewhat romanticised in Western minds into more than he actually was but in this case I believe he was entirely correct in his plans.
It surely was a far better plan than what the others had.
On one hand the invasion was very risky, on the other who could stop them? It was very massive.
It amazes me how many mistakes were made by both sides on such a short period of time and how luck would change the outcome of battles.
On one hand the invasion was very risky, on the other who could stop them? It was very massive.
It amazes me how many mistakes were made by both sides on such a short period of time and how luck would change the outcome of battles.
r.fox
Active member
the germans thought that the Normandy invasions were a distraction from the pas de calis 'invasion'
and the allies thought guns were placed in different places to where they actualy were. though i'd have to say that the Germans mistakes were worse(thanks to operation Fortitude)
and the allies thought guns were placed in different places to where they actualy were. though i'd have to say that the Germans mistakes were worse(thanks to operation Fortitude)
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
My belief is that Rommels plan was the only chance the Germans had to stop the Allies in the West, Guderian and von Rundstedt's ideas on the defence of France were at best fool hardy and at worst suicidally naive bordering incompetence, a set piece armoured battle without air cover was just idiotic.
In my opinion the very size of Overlord was the key to its downfall, if the landings were bottlenecked on the beaches for any length of time it could easily have failed as landing craft became fewer and fewer the ability to both land and supply troops on the beaches would have become harder and harder.
Actually I think the Fortitude operations kind of failed, the greatest deception in terms of the landings were not allied deceptions but German thinking.
In 1940 when the Germans were planning Operation Sealion they believed that it would be necessary to land 13 Divisions on the English coast so I think that when the Allies landed on the Normandy beaches with only 5 Divisions they felt it had to be a feint rather than the actual landings.
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Der Alte
Banned
The ability to decode a variety of German communications was important. For years, the Allies had read traffic the Germans encoded on their Enigma machines. But just weeks before the landings, British cryptanalysts began using a high-level German cryptomachine codenamed TUNNY. From its decoded messages, Allies identified previously unlocated units and learned of German defense plans.
In addition, the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, Lt. Gen. Hiroshi Oshima, reported often to Tokyo on German Army operations. His messages, and those of the Japanese military attaché in Germany, used a code that American cyptologists had solved in 1940. He unknowingly provided detailed information on German strategies and deployments in Normandy.
Senior Allied commanders received detailed information on German strength and activities from signals intelligence and photo-reconnaissance. Officers not cleared for communications intelligence still received orders based on that secret knowledge. Cryptology supported Allied planners in charting the German order of battle, understanding Hitler's defense plans, and determining the best places to strike enemy forces. Last-minute information from the TUNNY system, for example, was crucial in determining final drop zones for British and American paratroopers.
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
I am not sure I understand the first part of this I was under the impression that TUNNY refered specifically to a device attached to the Lorenz SZ series cypher machines to encrypt its output not a specific code.
SZ42A was in use from 1943 and SZ42B came into service in June 1944 which would indicate that data from it could not have helped D-Day planning weeks earlier.
I am guessing I have some information wrong here but I am not sure where.
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Der Alte
Banned
The Tunny machine, was a cipher attachment. Attached to a teleprinter, it automatically encrypted the outgoing stream of pulses produced by the teleprinter, or automatically decrypted incoming messages before they were printed. The Tunny machine was manufactured by the German Lorenz company. The first model bore the designation SZ40, ‘SZ’ standing for ‘Schlüsselzusatz’ (‘cipher attachment’).A later version, the SZ42A, was introduced in February 1943, followed by the SZ42B in June 1944.
The first Tunny radio link, between Berlin and Athens/Salonika, went into operation on an experimental basis in June 1941. In October 1942 this experimental link closed down, and for a short time it was thought that the Germans had abandoned the Tunny machine. Later that same month Tunny reappeared in an altered form, on a link between Berlin and Salonika and on a new link between Königsberg and South Russia. At the time of the allied invasion in 1944, when the Tunny system had reached its most stable and widespread state, there were 26 different links known and read by the British.
From time to time German operators used the same wheel settings for two different messages, a circumstance called a depth. It was thanks to the interception of depths, in the summer of 1941, that the Research Section at Bletchley Park first found its way into Tunny. Tunny could now be tackled operationally, and a Tunny-breaking section was immediately set up.
And from the early months of 1944, an unparalleled window on German preparations for the Allied invasion had been provided. Decrypts also revealed German appreciations of Allied intentions. Tunny messages supplied vital confirmation that the German planners were being taken in by Operation Fortitude, the extensive programme of deceptive measures designed to suggest that the invasion would come further north, in the Pas de Calais.
The majority of information about Tunny remained classified, however: the 500 page General Report on Tunny written at Bletchley Park in 1945 by Jack Good, Donald Michie, and Geoffrey Timms was, Thanks largely to Michie’s tireless campaigning, declassified by the British Government in June 2000, finally ending the secrecy.
The first Tunny radio link, between Berlin and Athens/Salonika, went into operation on an experimental basis in June 1941. In October 1942 this experimental link closed down, and for a short time it was thought that the Germans had abandoned the Tunny machine. Later that same month Tunny reappeared in an altered form, on a link between Berlin and Salonika and on a new link between Königsberg and South Russia. At the time of the allied invasion in 1944, when the Tunny system had reached its most stable and widespread state, there were 26 different links known and read by the British.
From time to time German operators used the same wheel settings for two different messages, a circumstance called a depth. It was thanks to the interception of depths, in the summer of 1941, that the Research Section at Bletchley Park first found its way into Tunny. Tunny could now be tackled operationally, and a Tunny-breaking section was immediately set up.
And from the early months of 1944, an unparalleled window on German preparations for the Allied invasion had been provided. Decrypts also revealed German appreciations of Allied intentions. Tunny messages supplied vital confirmation that the German planners were being taken in by Operation Fortitude, the extensive programme of deceptive measures designed to suggest that the invasion would come further north, in the Pas de Calais.
The majority of information about Tunny remained classified, however: the 500 page General Report on Tunny written at Bletchley Park in 1945 by Jack Good, Donald Michie, and Geoffrey Timms was, Thanks largely to Michie’s tireless campaigning, declassified by the British Government in June 2000, finally ending the secrecy.
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
So do you think the D-Day landings could have been repulsed had it not been for the rather confused heirachy of the German forces in the region on June 6th?
Do you believe Rommel or von Rundstedt had the better plan for the defence of France?
A few people often allude to Rommel's part in the July bomb plot as an indication that he really wasn't planning to stop the Allied invasion of France but had to look like he was doing something and yet the changes he implemented when he took charge of the process clearly caused the Allies a lot of consternation.
Do you believe Rommel or von Rundstedt had the better plan for the defence of France?
A few people often allude to Rommel's part in the July bomb plot as an indication that he really wasn't planning to stop the Allied invasion of France but had to look like he was doing something and yet the changes he implemented when he took charge of the process clearly caused the Allies a lot of consternation.
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Der Alte
Banned
It would be very difficult. The sheer overwhelming amount of men and material facing the Germans across the Channel was probably more than we could hold back.
The only way I see that it would be possible would be to attack the invasion fleet in the channel. Surface ships would be devastated by the large numbers of battleships present, so submarines, attacking only the landing craft and the LSTs would be the way to go. Still, you would need a hell of a lot of subs to make a serious impression. In the end, I don't think there was any way to stop the Allies getting a foothold. They had complete air-superiority, the complete firepower of one of the greatest fleets ever assembled not to mention very advanced amphibious assault techniques (for the time). Once a foothold is established, there is little chance.
I will say that between Rundstedt's and Rommel's opinions on Course of Action, Rommel's followed the German way of war more closely. German's typically do not wait for their enemy to attack and then counterattack, Germans attack. But was Rommel right? He wagered everything, but in my opinion it was a properly assessment when you take the circumstances into consideration. Gambling is only good when you have to "do or die" Rommel understood this.
Rundstedt was convinced that armour needed to be deployed further inland so that the required forces in the event of a landing could be mustered and then deployed in to the battle to deal a powerful blow inland that would require an Allied withdrawal. Rommel believed that the fate of the battle would be decided in the first 24 hours and that with armour near the beaches that the Allies could be pushed in to the sea. Basically, the Allies had one shot at Normandy, they couldn't have just sent another wave, and another after that. Attrition doesn't work on beach landings, it either you do it and it is a success, or you don't and everyone dies. Rundstedt's plan was best suited when Allies had only a small number of men on a spread-out area. A military axiom is you want to begin a combat action with as few of your units making initial contact as possible, especially defending. This offers you flexibility to operate and make changes. By deploying them off the beach, Rundstedt kept his operational flexibility so if the Normandy landings were a feint he can move elsewhere, or if he could attack the flimsiest beach or force. He could keep making decisions and react rather than having his forces already engaged like Rommel would have. In Rommels plan there was no flexibility. Once the fight started he couldn't have changed the plan.
You can be all mobile in your plan but the fact is that your force cannot reach Normandy as Allies' air power would isolate that region completely. Rommel's strategy was based on facing such strong air power of Allies, he realized that the main force would simply pin down at the back, unable to move and be forced to see Allies threw in hundreds thousands troops into Normandy. The only realistic chance we had was to prevent Allies even get such foothold, hence why Rommel proposed to gamble everything on Normandy. Hitler's problem was that he overestimated Allies, thinking Allies had enough manpower to try two landings at one time. Hence he could not ignore such threat and locked down considerable reserve for the "second beach attack".
The Normandy landings are a tricky one to discuss, as both plans to defeat the landings were extremely risky: Deploy everything you have at a front and risk losing most of it to naval gunfire and air strikes before the landings even begin, which will mean you'll have no chance at repulsing it as all your forces would be spent. Or, deploy your armour further back in safer positions and use them to counter-attack once the Allies had their beaches secured, though this runs the risk of being unable to stem the tide: once the Allies had their beaches men and material began pouring ashore, the number of boots on the ground was growing rapidly and only speeding up.
Rommel had no great love for Hitler, but he was a loyal German officer. So I do not believe that story.
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
Surely the weakest point of the invasion was not the ships at sea nor the men already landed but rather the link between ship and shore, the finite element in the invasion was the ability to move troops and material from the ships to the beach therefore the longer the shore defences held the more landing craft would be damaged or destroyed the greater the problems facing the landings and ultimately the weaker the landing forces would have become.
My belief is that Rommel understood the effects of Allied air/naval power as he had to contend with it in North Africa and as such he believed that the only chance to defeat the Allies in the West was at the shore and when you consider that General Montgomery admitted to Field Marshal Alan-Brooke on June 13th that had Rommel been able to launch strong counter attacks against the Allied beachheads on D-Day the Allies may well have been driven off the beaches, it would seem to me that Rommel's plans were right.
As far as Hitler overestimating the allied ability to carry out two landings I still think part of this goes back to the aborted Operation Sealion and the estimation that 13 Divisions would be needed to carry out successful landings so when five Allied Divisions landed in Normandy he perhaps thought it was a feint and that eight Divisions were still to be deployed, obviously this is just a guess but I am not sure it is an unreasonable belief.
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Der Alte
Banned
There were 170,000 troops in Denmark and 280,000 in Norway.
Not until ten days after D-Day was the first German division withdrawn from Norway, and it did not go to Normandy-but to the Pas de Calais!
Interviews with German generals after the war bear out both the wisdom and the success of the Fortitude deception. When von Rundstedt was asked why he had believed the invasion would come in the Pas de Calais, his reply was rote, like a man who had repeated it so many times that he did not have to think about his answer. "Narrowest part of the Channel." "Closest to Germany." "Quickest route to the Rhine." "The location of the V-weapons." Rundstedt claimed that about two weeks after the invasion he decided "a second landing was not coming but Hitler's headquarters were still convinced it was, and were reluctant to let us move forces westward to Normandy."
Not until ten days after D-Day was the first German division withdrawn from Norway, and it did not go to Normandy-but to the Pas de Calais!
Interviews with German generals after the war bear out both the wisdom and the success of the Fortitude deception. When von Rundstedt was asked why he had believed the invasion would come in the Pas de Calais, his reply was rote, like a man who had repeated it so many times that he did not have to think about his answer. "Narrowest part of the Channel." "Closest to Germany." "Quickest route to the Rhine." "The location of the V-weapons." Rundstedt claimed that about two weeks after the invasion he decided "a second landing was not coming but Hitler's headquarters were still convinced it was, and were reluctant to let us move forces westward to Normandy."
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1)To send a division from Norway was useless:it never would arrive at time,the critical period would be gone
2)The quality of these divisions was that that they could not hold the front against the allied mobile divisions .The German mobile divisions had to stop the gaps in the front,and,thus,could not be used in an offensive role.
3)Everything depended on the possibility of the Germans to send in a few days a sufficient number of mobile divisions to repel the allies
4)Immediately after Overlord,the Germans did send from everywhere mobile divisions to Normandy .
5)Does this mean that they believed that Normandy was the deciding,the real attack ? No,and this was indeed irrelevant :Normandy had to be eliminated,because if there was a second landing (who could be the deciding one/or not),the Germans were not strong enough to fight in Normandy and in the Pas de Calais.
And,if there was no second landing,everything had to be sent to Normandy,otherwise,the Allies would be in Paris before july
6)About the post war
wink declarations of von Rundstedt:there were no forces left to send to Normandy,unless the "Bodenständige" divisions of the 15th Army
7)Conclusion :the whole strategy of the Germans was not decided by what they believed what would be the real landing,but by the forces they could commit,and,these were totally insufficient to counter even one landing .
2)The quality of these divisions was that that they could not hold the front against the allied mobile divisions .The German mobile divisions had to stop the gaps in the front,and,thus,could not be used in an offensive role.
3)Everything depended on the possibility of the Germans to send in a few days a sufficient number of mobile divisions to repel the allies
4)Immediately after Overlord,the Germans did send from everywhere mobile divisions to Normandy .
5)Does this mean that they believed that Normandy was the deciding,the real attack ? No,and this was indeed irrelevant :Normandy had to be eliminated,because if there was a second landing (who could be the deciding one/or not),the Germans were not strong enough to fight in Normandy and in the Pas de Calais.
And,if there was no second landing,everything had to be sent to Normandy,otherwise,the Allies would be in Paris before july
6)About the post war
wink declarations of von Rundstedt:there were no forces left to send to Normandy,unless the "Bodenständige" divisions of the 15th Army7)Conclusion :the whole strategy of the Germans was not decided by what they believed what would be the real landing,but by the forces they could commit,and,these were totally insufficient to counter even one landing .
I am only an amateur
,but,compliments from you are highly estimated.
An other point :immediately after 6 june,it was all hands on deck in Normandy (on the German side),because there was a risk that the front would collaps :
on 8 june,77,353 and 3th FJD were moving from Brittany
on 11 june,the first elements from the 17 SS(Götz von Berlichingen) were arriving from Tours
on 28 june,idem for the 2SSPz from Toulouse (starting on 6 june!)
on 10 june,2 SSPzD on the east front received the order to go to Normandy .
but,on 5 june,the 2nd Pzbatallion of the Panzerlehr was moving to ...the east,where there was an other crisis;the battalion was in Magdeburg on 6 june and had to return to Normandy .
Finally,it all depended on a few divisions:
12 SS
2 Pz
21 Pz
Panzerlehr (which was weakened)
If these 4 divisions (ALL of them) were in Normandy on DDay,the Germans had a chance to eliminate the bridge-head in the first hours/days,BEFORE the allies would be to strong .
I forgot :OTOH,there WAS a second landing (Anvil/Dragoon) which was planned for june.If this had happened,IMHO,the result would have been catastrophic for the Germans,the Allies would be on the Siegfriedline in july .
,but,compliments from you are highly estimated.An other point :immediately after 6 june,it was all hands on deck in Normandy (on the German side),because there was a risk that the front would collaps :
on 8 june,77,353 and 3th FJD were moving from Brittany
on 11 june,the first elements from the 17 SS(Götz von Berlichingen) were arriving from Tours
on 28 june,idem for the 2SSPz from Toulouse (starting on 6 june!)
on 10 june,2 SSPzD on the east front received the order to go to Normandy .
but,on 5 june,the 2nd Pzbatallion of the Panzerlehr was moving to ...the east,where there was an other crisis;the battalion was in Magdeburg on 6 june and had to return to Normandy .
Finally,it all depended on a few divisions:
12 SS
2 Pz
21 Pz
Panzerlehr (which was weakened)
If these 4 divisions (ALL of them) were in Normandy on DDay,the Germans had a chance to eliminate the bridge-head in the first hours/days,BEFORE the allies would be to strong .
I forgot :OTOH,there WAS a second landing (Anvil/Dragoon) which was planned for june.If this had happened,IMHO,the result would have been catastrophic for the Germans,the Allies would be on the Siegfriedline in july .
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MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
For interests sake here is website with a break down of the German 352nd Infantry Division at Normandy, it gives some interesting insights into the German thinking and preparedness.
Much of the information is a translation of Lt Col. Fritz Ziegalmann's (Chief of Staff of the 352ID) work written immediately after the war.
http://www.omaha-beach.org/US-Version/352/352US.html
Much of the information is a translation of Lt Col. Fritz Ziegalmann's (Chief of Staff of the 352ID) work written immediately after the war.
http://www.omaha-beach.org/US-Version/352/352US.html
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