D-Day/Battle Of NormandyEssay Preview: D-Day/Battle Of NormandyReport this essayAn Overview In the years since 1945, it has become increasingly evident that the Grand Alliance forged between the British Commonwealth and the United States was often beset with disagreement over the correct strategy to insure the final defeat of the Axis powers. Early on, both British and American staffs could agree that Germany represented a greater military threat than Japan, but they did not often see eye to eye on the strategy that would most efficiently defeat the Reich.
The Americans were early and persistent advocates of a direct strategy – a cross-Channel attack that would first destroy German military power in the West, then drive deep into the heart of industrial Germany to end the war. The British, on the other hand, sobered by their disastrous experiences at Dunkirk and Dieppe, preferred to stage a number of small-scale attacks around the perimeter of fortress Europe. They thereby hoped to weaken German defenses before leaping precipitously across the Channel into the teeth of the still powerful Wehrmacht. The British simply could not afford the staggering losses entailed in a frontal assault on the northwest coast of Europe. “Memories of the Somme and Passchendaele,” wrote Sir Winston Churchill years later, “were not to be blotted out by time or reflection.” British Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC), put it more bluntly in his memoirs: “Certain British authorities instinctively recoiled from the whole affair, as well they might, for fear of the butcher bill.” It is not surprising, then, that the harder the Americans pressed in 1942 and 1943 for a firm commitment on a cross-Channel attack, the more the British seemed to vacillate.
After a debate lasting through much of 1942, the Americans agreed to postpone any cross-Channel attack in favor of the November landings in North Africa-Operation Torch. The strategic outcome of Torch was what American Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall had predicted. Success in Tunisia-the first the Allies had experienced against the Wehrmacht-inspired Churchill and his Chief of the Imperial Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, to devise a Mediterranean strategy aimed at knocking Italy out of the war and at protecting British sea-lanes to the oil-rich Middle East. The July 1943 invasion of Sicily was followed by the landings at Salerno and Anzio, the collapse of Mussolinis government, and the beginning of the bitter and protracted fight up the Italian peninsula.
Thus it was not until the Teheran Conference in November 1943 that the British, prodded by the Russians, reluctantly agreed to launch a cross-Channel attack, code-named Operation Overlord, in May of 1944 and to allow President Franklin D. Roosevelt to name a commander for the operation. Although both Marshall and Brooke coveted the appointment, had even been promised it, both were passed over. Instead, all concurred in the selection of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then commanding United States forces in Europe. On 14 January 1944, Eisenhower, now titled Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, arrived in London to begin work on the final invasion plan.
Months before Eisenhowers appointment as Supreme Commander, General Morgan and his COSSAC staff had produced a preliminary plan for the seaborne invasion of Europe. Constrained by the range of fighters based in southern England and by the availability of suitable landing beaches, COSSAC planners options narrowed quickly to the Pas-de-Calais area and a section of the Calvados coast on either side of the Norman town of Arromanches-les-Bains. The Pas-de-Calais beaches, attractive because of their closeness to England and the shortness of the lines of advance to the German border, were rejected because of their limited number, their remoteness from a major port, and their highly developed defenses. Normandy, almost by default, became the designated “lodgment area.”
COSSAC planners proposed to land three divisions (two British and one American) abreast onto Normandys sand and shingle beaches, followed immediately by two more and flanked on the east, near Caen, by elements of a British parachute division. Many details, including the exact landing date, were not specified by COSSAC in order to leave some flexibility to the Supreme Commander. However, the weather, tides, and light conditions required for the landing were outlined and calculated so that the precise calculations for H Hour on D Day could be made in the future. The absence of an adequate port along the Calvados coast led the planners in two directions. On one hand, they specified the port of Cherbourg, located on the tip of the Cotentin Peninsula, as an immediate post-D Day objective. On the other, they began planning for the construction of two artificial ports (code-named Mulberries) to be towed from England after the initial landings.
The Overlord plan also called for the pre-invasion strategic bombing of selected targets in Germany and France in an effort to destroy German tactical aircraft, “since only through air power can we offset the many and great disabilities inherent in the situation confronting the attacking surface forces.” Later air strikes would seek to interdict troop movements toward the lodgment area. Bombing patterns were to be carefully designed to avoid disclosing the actual landing sites. The landings themselves would be immediately preceded by massive air strikes at the beach fortifications.
Lastly, the Overlord plan called for feinted landings in southern France and in the Pas-de-Calais area, although the details of neither effort were spelled out. The Mediterranean feint ultimately became an actual landing, Operation Anvil, while the elaborate Pas-de-Calais deception-Operation Fortitude-was maintained until well after D Day.
On 3 January 1944, COSSAC staffer Brigadier Kenneth McLean briefed General Bernard Law Montgomery, recently appointed to command the Second British Army, and General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhowers chief of staff, on the various complicated elements of Overlord. Montgomery, as was his wont with plans not specifically his own, objected to various parts, specifically the weight of the initial assault landing. McLean later characterized Montys position as simply “give me five divisions or get someone else to command.” Backed by Eisenhower, he won his point-an additional American infantry division would now be landed at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, covered by two airborne divisions dropped behind the landing beach. However, Montys victory came at the expense of both Anvil, which had to be postponed until D Day plus 30, and the early May date for Neptune (as the assault landing phase of Overlord was now named) to allow for the production of a thousand additional landing
*. This resulted in a delay of the launch of the COSSAC in 1 July 1944, followed by subsequent delays on other important matters.
In late January 1944, McLean and Bedell Smith were to participate in discussions with the British Chief of Staff and general, for discussion regarding the possible deployment of the remaining major American offensive operations. This was to take place after the launch of the first Allied amphibious assault (or, as it should be called, over-landing), where, although no major casualties were reported, the landing forces and supply divisions would have been the deciding factors in which decision was made. A number of changes also occurred in the overall operation. Overlord would be the last British assault force to withdraw from Normandy, the last major U.S. assault force to enter the German-occupied German salient, by September of 1944, and, from it, lay the last major Allied assault force that had to be retaken by the next Allied occupation, United States Army. The last Allied occupation, which has not yet finished, would begin the second of two larger assault movements: an advance force from the West Coast into Germany, followed by a larger U.S. assault force at the end of May of 1944 with the British and some other Western amphibious units. Once this process began, however, there would be significant difficulties in building the force of 477,828 troops that was to be deployed to Normandy. It was not enough to go through Germany’s two major amphibious installations, the Bagram Airfield and the Barracks of Ordered. The first large attack, launched in May 1944, would have required a much larger force of 475,000 troops than those already in the U.S., and at least 100,000 additional troops. But the Germans had been defeated at the end of September, and in May the Allies had finally withdrawn from Normandy.
There were other factors associated with the first U.S. assault. One was the sheer number of amphibious assault and landing forces in Normandy. With one-quarter of the troops now in Normandy, some 90% would have left behind their bases upon their return to their home bases in the U.S., while some 3% would become lost on the sea or the shore. This would be an enormous problem to have by the end of the war to prevent the loss of these amphibious forces from returning to their home bases at home. This was even more so because over half of the British, French and American forces being involved in these three operations, including both airborne and air assaults, were based in Normandy. If these are to continue, many of those forces will still be deployed with much less effective protection and manpower than they had before. This will limit the overall Allied force to 485,000 forces over the coming years.
Overlord was the last major U.S. assault force to leave its headquarters at Düsseldorf after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in January 1945. This move was to be made up of American infantry battalions (four on the 1st Line), British infantry divisions (two on the 2nd Line, one at Dover Air Force Base) and British transport and transport company (one with a main support force in Normandy) with British staff and advisers on the 1st Line in the British Army under command of General, Warrant Officer L. Frank Ziegler.
In August a large contingent of COSSAC personnel were sent from all over the world to be redeployed, under the command of Colonel Paul G. Stelzinger. Stelzinger’s men would go north until the American forces left and would remain there until the day they were evacuated.
A major event of the second half of 1944 occurred immediately after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Allies. After a period of some eight months, a large convoy of Allied convoys