A Bloody Victory. Dan Harvey
the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942–February 1943) with the Soviet victory over the Germans demonstrating that the soldiers of the supposed ‘super race’, the Wehrmacht, were not indestructible after all; following this, the advancing Red Army was threatening the frontiers of Germany, and perhaps beyond. Finally, there was the fear of the unthinkable: possible headway being made by German scientists developing an atom bomb for use!
It is fighting power that achieves objectives in the battlefield. To penetrate German defences demanded a build-up of military assets with force enough to overwhelm. If it were only that, it would be reasonably straightforward, militarily, but the plan also had to provide for an outmanoeuvring. The invasion troops had make it to shore and inland in sufficient numbers, with sufficient capabilities, to resist German counterattacks and maintain their forward thrust across Northwest Europe. The undertaking was breathtakingly enormous and the risks were immense, but it had to be done. The evil of Nazi fascism had to be halted, freedom preserved and democracy defended. A sense of the breadth of the onslaught is indicated in Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery’s D-Day briefing in St Paul’s School, West London, on 15 May 1944:
We must blast our way on shore and get a good lodgement before the enemy can bring sufficient reserves to turn us out. Armoured columns must penetrate deep inland, and quickly, on D-Day. This will upset the enemy plans and tend to hold him off while we build up strength. We must gain space rapidly and peg out claims well inland.
This invasion plan of Northwestern Europe had a geopolitical strategic context; it was advanced incrementally between the USA, Britain and Russia – that is, between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin – over a number of years. As a result, in March 1943, a combined Anglo-American military planning cell was established in London to oversee detailed proposals for the invasion plan. British Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan was appointed Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC) in order to begin planning for Operation Overlord. Getting ashore and forcing the invasion became the work of COSSAC planning staff. Surprise, strength, speed and sustainability were all important elements of this D-Day invasion plan. Selecting options of where to invade and keeping it secret while analysing associated issues posed a significant problem; seeking solutions to the issues kept the COSSAC planners busy throughout 1943.
Among their staff was Commander Rickard Charlie Donovan (Ballymore, Ferns, County Wexford), Royal Navy, who was part of the Plans Division – those co-ordinating Combined Operations (a branch of the Allied military HQ tasked with planning the invasion of Europe) – and so he became immersed in designing D-Day. An exceptional staff officer, he was retained after the war to write the history of Combined Operations. The strains of purism and pragmatism, combined together, also saw new technologies and tactics developed to tackle the beach obstacles; hard at work in this capacity was Irishman Michael Morris (later Lord Killanin), an officer in General Percy Hobart’s unique 79th Armoured Division – Hobart’s parents were also both from Ireland. The 79th Armoured Division developed ingenious innovations, customising armoured vehicles to overcome Rommel’s beach obstacles.
For their part, the Germans were also doing their planning. They knew the Allies were likely to use a support attack in co-ordination with – though not necessarily simultaneous to – the main assault. Perhaps the former as a feint, hoping to draw in the German reserves, and instead undertaking their main landing elsewhere. The Germans heavily analysed previous Allied amphibious landings in Morocco, Sicily and Salerno, and they believed they had a good grasp of how the Allies intended to fight their way ashore. However thorough, methodical and credible their examination and conclusions were, they were still left with the twin conundrums of where and when.
‘Impracticable’ had been the immediate verdict of General Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group (the land component commander for the invasion of Northwestern Europe). ‘Monty’ was from a family with deep roots in Moville, County Donegal, and was one of the best-known British generals of the Second World War; he oversaw victory over Rommel at the Battle of El Alamein, in North Africa (October–November 1942). When first shown the COSSAC D-Day plan very late in December 1943, Churchill immediately considered that the Allied assault needed to be widened from a twenty-five-mile front to a fifty-mile front, taking in five beaches instead of three, and that an additional air division be dropped prior to H-hour (the exact time when Allied invasion troops landed on the beach and the assault commenced). These suggested amendments, and others, were absorbed by the staff of the newly established Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) under General Eisenhower. The COSSAC plan had wisely prepared for what resources were actually available; the SHAEF plan prepared for what was actually needed, and Eisenhower had the authority to get whatever that might be, be it increased strength, ships or more time. His message to the troops on D-Day was as follows:
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.
The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
On Monday 5 June 1944, ‘Imminence of invasion is not recognisable’ was the tone of Oberbefehlshaber West (OB West) in its estimate of Allied intentions, approved by Field Marshal von Rundstedt and sent to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the High Command of the Wehrmacht, later in the day. With the weather as it was and no apparent indicators to the contrary, they were comfortable in that assessment. In fact, many of the German high-level field commanders in OB West had been summoned to conduct a Kriegsspiel (tactical exercise without troops) away from the northern French coastline in order to prepare on maps at Rennes what was, ironically, about to unfold on the ground, on 6 June, at Normandy.
German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (the Desert Fox) of Army Group B, after months of overseeing the defensive preparations against the Allies, intended to bring the Allied invasion to a grinding halt at the water’s edge. Hitler, too, was convinced that the destruction of the Allied landings was the decisive factor in the entire conduct of the war, and would contribute significantly in its final result. Hitler had over-extended himself, fighting on two fronts at once. The decision to invade Russia in 1941, and his interference with his generals in the running of it, saw his offensive campaign on the Eastern Front culminating deep inside Russian territory – and the defeats began to mount. If the Germans could arrest the intended advance of the Allies in the west, Hitler could buy time and space, perhaps even discouraging the Allied army into reorganising and even reconsidering their options. If he succeeded in stopping them on the northern French shoreline, he could make a pact with Stalin or otherwise consolidate his still-not-inconsiderable military might on one front. As it was, most of the best of his forces were on the Eastern Front facing the Soviets. But the forces positioned on the Western Front were not without strength, their resistance stiffened by the impregnable Atlantic Wall and the dogged leadership of Rommel.
While offence is the most decisive type of military operation, defence is stronger, and the Germans had prepared well. The invasion was due – even overdue. It had to come soon, but they did not know where or when. Wherever and whenever it did, they knew it would be a major turning point in the war. A spell of unseasonal and continuing bad weather, the worst seen in June along the northern French coastline in over twenty years, had convinced Rommel to feel confident that the Allied invasion was unlikely to occur over the coming days. And so, after months of devising and driving defence improvements, Rommel felt it appropriate to leave his headquarters in the castle of the Duke Francois de Rochefoucauld at La Roche-Guyon, roughly midway between Normandy and Paris, and make the eight-hour journey to his home in Herrlingen, Ulm, to celebrate his wife Lucie-Maria’s birthday on 6 June. Rommel realised that the coming Allied attack would be decisive – in fact, that the first twenty-four hours of the invasion would be one of the most vital days of the war. What he did not realise was that the vast military machinery and apparatus of the greatest airborne and amphibious force ever assembled was already in motion and was about to unleash its massive might. The Longest Day, the Day of Days, was already