D-Day > Strategy
Why was D-Day necessary?
What was, in 1944, the strategic situation in the European theater?
The strategic situation had already for some
time forced Germany onto the defense. As often happens in history, the tyrants
and conquerors are victims of their own greed and the Reich of Hitler in 1943
had conquered more territories than how much it could realistically control.
Considering that the Allies had control of the sea since the beginning of the
war, it is easy to comprehend how irrational it was to presume to defend a
territory so vast and so exposed to amphibious actions.
The strong points of the entire German military apparatus were the mobility and
rapidity of positioning, tactics that had determined the success of the
Blitzkrieg and could have permitted the control of an empire. Instead all the
materials and the research effort aimed at heavier armored means, but also
slower and more costly like the tanks Tiger, Panther, Elephant, which gave the
illusion of invincibility.
Hitler, after the enormous defeat of the campaign in Russia, the surrender at
Stalingrad and the failed offensive Kursk, seemed to look for refuge in the
idea that the fortifications and a defensive war could offer a solution.
Enormous and costly works of fortification began in all of Europe, especially
along northern coasts of France.
The war industry began to have difficulty with the supplying of raw materials.
The war effort active on diverse fronts forced greater compromises in the
quality and quantity of the weapons. Fuel, one of the primary goods, in the
continuation of the war assumed a greater and greater importance. One of the
major supply sources on the continent was the zone of oil wells of Ploesti in
Romania, ever more within the reach of the Soviet forces and the raids of
Allied bombardiers.
"He who wants to defend everything defends nothing"
Frederick the Great
The Extension of the Third Reich before the D-Day For the Allies continuous progress was made
in North Africa, liberated from the presence of the Axis at the end of spring
in 1943, and in Italy, with the disembarkation in Sicily in July of 1943
(Operation "Husky"), that would bring about in almost a year the liberation of
Rome June 5, 1944. No other open fronts existed in the European theater and the
necessity of engaging the Axis brought about the approval of Operation Overlord
in Normandy. A decision that had already been made for some time.
The industrial production of the US had reached levels unattainable for the
Axis and was destined still to increase. The flow of reinforcements toward the
United Kingdom and the Soviet Union could have been considered secure by then
and fed the confrontation. The invasion of Normandy would also be an encounter
between different industrial systems, between the quantity and trustworthiness
of the weapons and materials of the Allied forces and the quality of the arms
of the Reich.
For the Soviets the Great Patriotic War had
frightening human and material costs. Russia had been the only European power
to sustain the continuous pressure of the Axis for the greater part of the
conflict. In 1943 the strategic situation improved, Stalingrad had fallen and
Kursk had given a hard blow to the Axis armies putting them on the defensive,
but the Axis, mostly German forces, sustained an ever strenuous defense and
were not yet on the edge of collapse, despite the losses. Stalin in the course
of the years asked with constantly greater insistence that a new front in
Europe be opened; and for the Allies the fear became sharper that if they were
not capable of giving an adequate response to the strategic necessities of
Stalin, the Soviet Union would have been forced to find a political compromise
with the Axis. This scenario is plausible considering that the Soviet Union and
Germany had already made advantageous bilateral diplomatic agreements like the
Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939, that had resulted in the partitioning of
Poland. It is a suggestive scenario also because it hypothesizes the
verification of exactly what happened in World War I, when in 1918 Russia
signed a unilateral peace and the German troops redirected themselves onto the
western front.
D-Day > Strategy
|