"Rommel and Von Rundstedt plans..." Topic

… to fight the Allied landing in France contemplate the withdrawal of most of the German troops in Norway, leaving Italy in the hands of the Allies and maintain a defensive line across the Alps, and move the most important units in southern France to reinforce the defensive line of Channel .
But that idea, of course, was rejected by Hitler.
(Speidel, Chief of Staff Army Group B, FMS B-718.710)

That's a very interesting "what if" scenario with maybe a balance result in a wargame?
Or the Allied would won even with that movements of troops?

Thanks in advance for your guidance.

Amicalement
Armand

lose Norway and you lost your access to iron ore and precision ball bearings from Sweden.

A defensive line in the Alps would be longer than the line in Italy.

You don't need to withdraw ALL the German troops from Norway just some, it didn't really need a garrison of 350,000. Even just pulling out 200,000 is another ten divisions.

The withdrawal to the Alps is an interesting one. Napoleon rated mountains as the second most difficult barrier to penetrate (after deserts) and the Alps are spectacularly high and impeneterable. There some passes and ways around, but these are easily blocked – the Italians conducted no less than 17 offensives to try and cross the Isonzo in WW1 and got nowhere. Italy also had the most heavily defended front (in terms of divisions per mile) of any German theatre, so maybe thin the 25 divisions down to 15.

Now we have twenty extra divisions to defend France. Yes the Allies could still invade around Marseilles, but the logistic reach of that attack, even unopposed, is barely enough to reach the Saar.

The Germans are still going to defend the Pas de Calais and Le Havre etc strongly (say six of our new divs go there). Then beef up Normandy (another six), the Brittany (another six) and finally the Bay of Biscay (two).

(Thinking of AHGCs D-Day 77 here….) The standard forces are enough to make the close approaches to Germany very hard, while Biscay and Brittany are easy, Normandy do-able. With the new deployment the close approaches are impregnable, Normandy is very hard, Biscay and Brittany are doable.

So the Allies land in Brittany and the war lasts three months longer (much harder to break out of Brittany).

With hindsight it might have been a good move. But to actually carry out such a move far enough in advance to have made any difference by June 6, seems unlikely. Such a redeployment would have taken months (pulling the troops out of Norway requires sea transport and the defense of the Alps strategy would require time to set up a fortified line in the strategic passes). The Germans were expecting the cross-channel attack as early as May so the redeployment would have had to start in February at the latest and that's smack in the middle of winter. So realistically, the redeployment would have had to start in the fall of 1943 and I doubt that most of the high command would have seen the situation as desperate enough at that point to go ahead.

They'd need to defend not only the Alps between Italy and Austria but also those between Italy and France and Italy and Yugoslavia. Also, there'd be no fall-back position -- if an Alps line was once penetrated they'd need a LOT more defenders to hold a line behind the mountains!

I don't know how dependent the Germans was on Swedish iron ore. Could they have lived without it for the sake of adding 350,000 men to their other fronts?

Martin Rapier idea is what I tried to post.
There were no plans to invade Norway by the Allied on those days.
And for one reason or another, the germans sustain their line in Italy.
Not the Norgewian, but the Italian german units were more veterans than those in France.
Maybe six month longer?
Still an interesting wargame for me.

Amicalement
Armand

In Third Reich I always kept the Norway garrison to a minimum (but it was so easy to defend as long as you kept enough ships and planes there that it didn't need a big land garrison). I only ended up defending the Alps once, and it was indeed a very crust type defence. Tough to break but once through, it was all over for Germany. I lost the war on the last turn that way (the Allies broke through a three deep defence with cunning redeployment of airpower and paras and exploited to Berlin).

Much better to pour resources into Italy to keep Italy in the war, but defending the Alps means you've lost Italy anyway.

Generally the troops freed by keeping Italy and not worrying about Norway meant there was zero chance of the Allies taking Berlin or even getting across the Rhine. The fortified Rhine could be made into a literally impregnable position. Those pesky Russians though….

By memory there were 950.000 german troops in Italy?
And 485.000 in Norway/Dennmark?.

Half of that amount could turn the result of the landing on "D" Day?.

If the german could transport the Swedish Iron and much more stuff from that zone, I guess they could transport troops too.

Amicalement
Armand

And 485.000 in Norway/Denmark?.

I think Hitler saw the region as critical to the U-boat war. It would seem Fortitude North did a good job of stoking his paranoia but I agree that the transfer of 10 divisions to France in the winter would have been useful; did they not have transfer rights through Sweden?

What intrigues me is why the Kriegsmarine had more manpower than the Royal Navy. What were they all doing? As I recall they had about 100,000 for U-boat manning and 100,000 for running the bases so what were the remaining three-quarters of a million doing?

I believe the Kriegsmarine also manned shore defenses, did it not?

They manned anti-shipping COASTAL batteries [as distinct from the anti-invasion army artillery defences inland] but how many did they have from the Pyrenees to the Arctic? Might be good for 25,000; also some marines – 10,000? I am not aware that they had any other role on land. Still think we have circa 700,000 to explain and find it difficult to believe the surface fleet justified so many. AFAIK both air services, including float planes, and anti-air artillery were Luftwaffe serviced so that has to be ADDED to compare with the allied navies who ran their own aircraft and manned their own AAA.