"How Much Warning Did The Germans Need To Win D-Day?" Topic

I'm not asking if the Germans could have won. I'm asking how much warning they needed to win. I don't buy the Hitler was asleep myth. It took more than of few hours for the Panzers to deploy and get ready to attack. So what did the Germans need, a day, two days, a week? Your thoughts?

6 years

No amount of warning or additional time to prepare would have resulted in the Germans winning D-Day. The balance of forces is simply too great to overcome. The best outcome the Germans could have hoped for is to exact a bloodier toll on the Americans and allies such that the Allied coalition sues for peace instead of demanding unconditional surrender resulting from political pressure and the outcry on the home front due to unacceptable losses.

Coincidentally I just finished reading an alternate history novel a few weeks ago called 'Himmler's War' which tried to propose a "best case scenario" for Germany. Hitler dies early so Himmler takes over and lets his generals (i.e. Rundstedt) conduct the war pragmatically without interference. And they STILL lost. Interesting read though.

Having a week or so to deploy infantry from the Pas de Calais would have made a big deal – the Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions got chewed up a lot in fighting that the infantry sitting waiting for the invasion that never came near Calais would have been more useful, saving the Panzers for counter attacks

An Allied victory still likely but not assured

I am totally in agreement with Frederick!

I've always wondered what happened to the Luftwaffe around the time of D Day? Air cover could have meant a big difference. I'm not a student of WW2 so apologies in advance if this is a stupid question.

A month to re-deploy everything. The day of the invasion they would have been in place ready to counter attack. You could redeploy Luftwaffe units from Germany and elsewhere. But the Allied Air Force would probably neutralize them, if not destroy them.

Air power is the key. The Allies had spent the previous years establishing air superiority in Western Europe. I don't see the Luftwaffe re-establishing it.

So your redeployment would have to take place largely at night. During the day the fighter-bombers would cut anything on the roads to ribbons. I think the die was cast a year before D-Day.

Besides re-deploying from Pas de Calais and you're talking about how long it would take to deploy the Panzers in Normandy to the beeches. Probably six hours after the order was given. Then they would be facing both Allied Air and targeted naval gunfire.

Not stupid at all – it is an often asked question, Fritz – between the RAF, Eight Air Force and the Red Army the Luftwaffe had their hands full! I think they only had 4 squadrons in Normandy at the time of the invasion- I think about 140 planes total in Northern France

Plus the Allies had bombers hit every airfield they could before the landing and had a constant fighter screen over the beaches

Going out on a limb here but I believe the oft quoted Panzer Reserve in the immediate vicinity was limited to the Panzer Lehr and 12th SS, plus the 21st already in Normandy. The 21st had no Panthers and I believe Lehrs were all entrained enroute to the Eastern Front leaving the 12th SS with sixty odd (66?) Panthers plus the 300 odd Pz. IVs in the 3 divisions. I believe the allies landed over 700 tanks and TDs on D-Day. Plus ATG. Plus naval gunfire.

So my point in relation to my original question is I think the Germans needed to get more than just the Panzer Reserve to the beaches to have any real hope of altering the outcome. Therefore I concur with some of the posts that say you would have had to shift major forces from the Pas de Calais etc. So Hitlers delay in releasing the Reserves on D-Day may just have saved them being decimated by air and naval gunfire if they had reached and attacked the beaches on D-Day.

If the Germans had strengthened Normandy a month in advance the allies might have been able to reallocate air strikes and fire missions on their assembly areas. So if a days warning was not enough and a month might have been too much, the magic number might be 4-5 days or even a week. Always found this a fascinating What If??

But I enjoy your thoughts. Keep em coming!

I suspect that Ultra interceptions would have tipped off the Allies that the Germans knew what was coming and where it would come, giving them time to consider counter measures or alternatives.

Remember, the US had 2 years practice assaulting heavily defended beaches in the Pacific by the time Normandy happened, plus the landings in Italy.

The D-Day assault plans assumed losses like at Omaha as the 'light' end, and were set up to make the invasion a success even with that level of losses happening.

I'm pretty sure it would have taken several years advance notice to make the Germans able to win.

I don't believe any result is pre-ordained. While the Allies may have in theory been prepared for much heavier casualties than they took, its another matter when they actually are happening.

IF the Germans got intelligence they could trust verifying where and when the Allies were going to attack they could have pushed preparation of the Normandy beachfront defences a little further along. They could have positioned more reserves in Normandy. They could have moved up certain reserves 24-48 hours before the attack so they would have been close enough to intervene when the Allies landed. They could have prepped temporary airfields and brought up squadrons so that enough airplanes would have been available to have an impact in the earliest phase of the D-Day landing. They could have repositioned naval resources so more would have been available to attack the Allied Armada.

Probably 90 days advance notice would have been required to make this kind of maximum effort on D-Day. Would it have been enough? Who knows. One problem (among many) with this though is that it takes resources the Germans committed to fighting the Allies in Normandy and simply makes them available on Day 1. Under the alternate timeline it is possible the Allies could chew them up quicker leading to a faster break out from Normandy.

Try setting up AHGCs Day with the Allies telling the Germans which beaches they are going to assault. The Germans will win on turn one. The Germans have sixty divisions in France, but are forced to spread them thin precisely because they don't know whee the invasion is going to come.

Lion in the Stars, was anyone else involved at all?

Knowing in advance would only set them up for a feint attack followed by a real strike elsewhere. Pas de Calais was of course where the Germans "knew" the real assault was going to happen.

If you are really interested it is easily gamed GMT has Normandy 44 where you can simply send in German reinforcements in days earlier to experiment. Even increased German air power might be easy to factor in by reducing Allied air support and minuses on Jabo rolls.

Having a week or so to deploy infantry from the Pas de Calais would have made a big deal

Not unless the German's realized that the invasion was not going to be in the Pas de Calais.

The Allies stacked the deck and won the intelligence war. The entire German spy network in England was compromised, Patton's army opposite Calais, etc., so it wouldn't really matter how much *time* they had, they needed the *intelligence* to know where the Allies would strike, and their intelligence was under the control of the British.

I've always wondered what happened to the Luftwaffe around the time of D Day?

It was in Germany, trying to defend German towns from the US 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command. When the invasion came, a bunch of it was re-deployed to their old bases in France, where it was promptly destroyed on the ground, the Germans having found it easier to re-deploy the aircraft than the logistical elements needed to support them.

This is according to Galland's memoirs (he was the commander of German fighter forces). He was pretty disgusted by the whole thing.

Remember, the US had 2 years practice assaulting heavily defended beaches in the Pacific by the time Normandy happened, plus the landings in Italy.

Very little if any of the lessons learned in the PTO was shared with the ETO. The fact is the Army in the ETO by 1944 was more experienced at large scale invasions than the Army or Marines in the PTO. The planning for Overlord, began in 1943 after the defeat of the German army in the North Africa campaign, and the subsequent invasion of Sicily.

By this time, the US experience with Pacific landings was limited to Guadalcanal, New Britain, and New Guinea in the Southern Pacific. Most of the major island hopping invasions in the Central Pacific were launched in mid 1943 through late 1944. So lessons learned at Dieppe, Torch and Husky were what they had.

The conundrum I can't seem to solve is that the closer to the beach the Germans intervene the more firepower can be brought to bear on them. If you put your tanks overlooking the beach there were 1000 ships in sight all with cannons. Even 5 miles back would give the Allies enough room to come ashore, and you still wouldn't be out of range of battleship and cruiser fire. And, if the Germans massed their armor the Allies could redirect their airforces to attack the panzers. I can't figure out how the Germans could push the Allies off the beach without actually approaching it.

The Luftwaffe had to be in much better shape than it was in 1944 for the Germans to have a chance in winning D-Day.

The answer, I think, is however long it would take to re-position and entrench better divisions in Normandy. Look what happened at Omaha. Unless the allies called it off it could've all been a very close-run-thing.

Murvihill's got a very good point. As long as the Allies have sufficient naval and air superiority in the Channel and over the coast, they can concentrate a stunning amount of firepower at any point from Brest to Amsterdam.

The Normandy invasion fleet alone would outmass the entire history of the Kriegsmarine, even if half of it didn't lie rusting on the ocean floor. The numbers I've seen for airpower still favor the Allies even if Germany was completely stripped of defenses.

The initial waves may suffer heavier casualties if there was more warning, and weather could delay the operation, but by mid-1944 I really don't think it's possible for German combat efforts to throw it back into the sea. It would require the Allies to lose their patience and go off half-cocked, and that simply isn't going to happen; there has been thorough intelligence and logistical preparation for *years* leading up to Overlord.

The conundrum is real, but not insurmountable.

The question (for dealing with the conundrum, as articulated above) is less warning time and more understanding of the correlation of forces and likely tactical impact.

The best defensive tactical approaches for overcoming overwhelming firepower from supporting units are enfiladed direct-fire positions (with overlapping fields of fire) and indirect (and concealed) supporting fire position.

To defeat the landings, the Germans could have placed fewer of their resources facing the ocean, and more facing sideways across the beaches. And placed fewer of their indirect fire weapons to provide anti-shipping fire (a match they were never going to win) and more, further inland, to provide pre-registered barrage coverage on the beaches and tidal zones.

They didn't need to stop the allies from getting ashore. They needed to stop them from getting off of the beaches. So long as the beaches were combat zones, the allies had no area for logistical build-up. Beach congestion was a great threat to the D-Day landings. Pile up more damaged landing craft in the waves, and more casualties on the beaches, and the whole thing grinds to a halt.

But I don't think the Germans had enough experience with mass amphibious operations, or a full enough appreciation of Allied naval and aerial resources, to arrive at this tactical approach.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

As to bringing panzers up to the beach they did… at Salerno. Panthers are good, Cruiser fire is better.
To bring sufficient Panzer Divisions to defeat D-Day would take 3-5 weeks, by rail, from the Russian front. The air campaign over France at that time was directed at the rail net and it was wrecked.
Operation Bagration began just over two weeks after D-Day (17 days). It would not make a big difference there. Army Group Center had already been stripped of it's panzers to reinforce Army Group North Ukraine.
With those Panzer Divisions sent to France, following Bagration, the Lvov-Sandomierz and Lublin-Brest offensives would not have faced counter-attacks and likely Bucharest (the Ploesti oil fields) and perhaps Warsaw (that was kinda political) would have fallen.
By the time those Panzer Divisions (less loses to the Jabos) could get back to the Russian Front they would be defending Germany.
So maybe Anvil-Dragoon would exploit faster? Another try in North-West Europe would liberate France and the low countries? Get as far as the Ruhr?

Operation Fortitude, etc., helped convince Germans that if and when the Allies land it will be a Calais. And that was generally believed by many of them.

Even as prep firers were going in on Normandy, many thought it was just a diversion, etc. And that misconception lasted for at least a day or two.

But I don't think the Germans had enough experience with mass amphibious operations, or a full enough appreciation of Allied naval and aerial resources, to arrive at this tactical approach.

I believe that as well. The conundrum of heavily defending the beaches. And not let the landings get a beach head(s). Or defending inland. Is something that the IJF's in the PTO had to decide many times.

Albeit, in many cases the IJFs just were going to die in place. And fight a battle of attrition. The Germans were generally not of that mindset … Regardless any forced entry operation is bound to be costly. It just comes down to how much blood and treasure will be spent to accomplish the mission.

In some landings the IJFs didn't contest the beaches. For a variety of reasons. And the bloody battle of attrition took place inland.