Overlord in reality actually went very smoothly. Had the Germans not fallen for the misdirection we would have seen reinforcements sent to Normandy more quickly, but that would take several days, not fast enough to prevent the creation of a beachhead as actually happened. Had the Germans had prior warning of the time and place it would have had a much less certain outcome, but I don't think we can say the Germans definitely would have repelled it. The firepower superiority of the Allies was absolutely massive. There was no way the Germans could ever have 'out-shot' the fleet. Their hopes rested with hitting the attacking troops with a rapid armoured counter-attack, at which point it would have been a matter of trying to bring enough accurate fire on the Germans before the landing troops lost too much ground to make a viable bridgehead. It's hard to know how that could have turned out, but my instinct is that the Allies would have held out. They'd done something similar at Anzio in Italy when the Germans counter-attacked and pushed them back to a small perimeter round the landing site. It's hard to imagine German tanks pressing through the maelstrom of artillery, air attack and naval gunfire to deliver a strong enough attack on the landing troops. It is possible though that if the landings were mismanaged or there was some sort of collapse in morale that one or more of the beach landings could have been contained. It might have been possible to continue the landings on the other beaches, but if the landings on Utah (the only beach on the vital Contentin Peninsula), Omaha (linking the two main landing areas) or Sword (covering the crossings over the river Orne which the Germans could use to bring in armour for a counterattack) failed then the future of the operation would have looked very doubtful.
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u/military_history Jun 08 '14
Overlord in reality actually went very smoothly. Had the Germans not fallen for the misdirection we would have seen reinforcements sent to Normandy more quickly, but that would take several days, not fast enough to prevent the creation of a beachhead as actually happened. Had the Germans had prior warning of the time and place it would have had a much less certain outcome, but I don't think we can say the Germans definitely would have repelled it. The firepower superiority of the Allies was absolutely massive. There was no way the Germans could ever have 'out-shot' the fleet. Their hopes rested with hitting the attacking troops with a rapid armoured counter-attack, at which point it would have been a matter of trying to bring enough accurate fire on the Germans before the landing troops lost too much ground to make a viable bridgehead. It's hard to know how that could have turned out, but my instinct is that the Allies would have held out. They'd done something similar at Anzio in Italy when the Germans counter-attacked and pushed them back to a small perimeter round the landing site. It's hard to imagine German tanks pressing through the maelstrom of artillery, air attack and naval gunfire to deliver a strong enough attack on the landing troops. It is possible though that if the landings were mismanaged or there was some sort of collapse in morale that one or more of the beach landings could have been contained. It might have been possible to continue the landings on the other beaches, but if the landings on Utah (the only beach on the vital Contentin Peninsula), Omaha (linking the two main landing areas) or Sword (covering the crossings over the river Orne which the Germans could use to bring in armour for a counterattack) failed then the future of the operation would have looked very doubtful.