An invasion in 1942
During the summer of 1942 three plans were under consideration by the western allies: SLEDGEHAMMER, a limited invasion of France in September 1942 to aid the Russians should they be in need; ROUNDUP, a full-blown invasion of France to be launched in 1943; and GYMNAST, a plan to invade North Africa.
Churchill favored GYMNAST, fearing heavy casualties in a premature invasion of France, while Chief of Staff Marshall and Secretary of War Stimson based their planning of the American war effort on an invasion in 1943. During Molotov's visit to Washington in 1942 Roosevelt had promised him a second front that same year and was under heavy pressure from military advisors to avoid the North African venture. Nevertheless, faced with British refusal to support SLEDGEHAMMER, in July 1942 Roosevelt decided on North Africa.
What if Roosevelt had been able to convince Churchill that an invasion of Europe was essential to aid the Soviets? In July 1942 the Soviets were being driven back to the gates of Stalingrad and seemed in need of some action on the part of the west to divert German strength. What would have been the impact on the subsequent history of the war?
Although we must assume that any plan to land in France would not have been a complete surprise, and therefore German dispositions would have been different, the Germans had very few available divisions to add to the garrison in France. They had not been able to replace the losses from the Russian winter offensive and had been forced to reduce the infantry divisions in Army Group Center and Army Group North from nine infantry battalions to six, using the available replacements to build up the divisions in Army Group South.
The German strategy for the summer of 1942 was a breakthrough in the south with the twin objectives of cutting Soviet river and rail communications with the Caucasus oilfields by taking Stalingrad and of occupying the Caucasus, making the oil available to Germany. Stalin, concerned over the safety of the Moscow industrial and communications center, held large reserves in the center. In June 1942 there were six tank corps in the Western Front defending Moscow, seven tank corps in the Bryansk Front defending the southern approach to Moscow, and four tank corps in the Southwestern Front east of Kharkov. In addition, five more tank corps were held in the Stavka reserve, for a total of 22 tank corps. A tank corps was equal to a German two-tank battalion panzer division and twice the strength of the one-tank battalion panzer divisions in Army Groups North and Center. In the three Russian fronts and the reserve were 110 of the 175 tank brigades in the Soviet Army in June 1942. In addition, ten reserve infantry armies were forming in the Stavka reserve.
Given the existence of numerous Soviet reserves, it is doubtful that the Germans would have been able to move significant numbers of divisions from the east to the west. The Germans were able to concentrate their forces, providing local superiority for the attack in the south, but once the Soviets shifted reserves, they were able to inflict a disastrous defeat on the Germans at Stalingrad. Even if the southern campaign had been cancelled and the German Army had remained on the defensive, without the presence of the powerful 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army in the south, the Germans would have been hard pressed to contain Soviet attacks.
The German forces in France probably would not have been reinforced heavily in 1942, regardless of a threatened invasion. However, the Germans already had considerable resources there. In June 1942 the Germans had 34 divisions in the west. The best divisions were fourteen formed in November 1940 for occupation duty. They arrived in France in May and June 1941, equipped with Czech artillery and captured weapons and vehicles. During the summer of 1942 these divisions were being reequipped with German weapons and trained for combat in the east. Four additional divisions were formed by taking combat-fit men from the occupation divisions and training them for the Russian Front. All four left the west in June and July 1942. Another division was formed from new recruits and also left for Russia in June 1942.
Nine of the German divisions were static (bodenstaendige) divisions. These divisions were formed specifically for defensive operations and lacked the horses, wagons, and limited number of motor vehicles assigned to German infantry divisions to move heavy equipment in combat conditions. Static divisions had only six infantry battalions and one artillery battalion. They were more or less tied to the areas, usually ports, that they were assigned to defend. A further seven divisions had suffered losses in the east and had been sent to France to rebuild. Six had arrived in May and June and the 10th Panzer came in April. None had been rebuilt by June 1942.
Therefore, of the 34 German divisions assigned to the west in June 1942, nine were tied to their fortifications, nineteen were ready for combat, and six were being reconstructed. The net result was a thin shell along the coast. This shell was weakened in the following months to provide reinforcement for the east. Ten divisions were sent from the west in June and July. By August 1942 German strength had dropped to 31 divisions, some of the departing divisions having been replaced by newly formed units. Additional new divisions brought the strength up to 33 in September, but the overall quality was dropping rapidly.
Marshall's plan for SLEDGEHAMMER, presented to General Sir Alan Brooke in April 1942, required eighteen divisions, of which five were to be American. After the initial beachhead had been established, Marshall promised 100,000 Americans per month (equal to about four divisions with service elements).
Marshall's plan was very conservative in estimating available troops. The British Home Army was still a potent force in June 1942. Included were seven armored divisions, 21 infantry divisions, three Canadian infantry divisions, two Canadian armored divisions, and the Polish armored division – a total of 34 divisions. In addition, the 2nd Infantry and 51st Infantry Divisions were sent overseas in June 1942 and would have been held back had an invasion been planned.
American resources were fifty divisions that had been formed by June 1942. In addition to twelve Regular Army infantry divisions, two Marine divisions, and two cavalry divisions in existence prior to Pearl Harbor, eighteen National Guard divisions had been activated by April 1942 and five armored divisions had been formed before December 1942 – a total of 39. Eleven more divisions were formed in the next six months. Of these 50 divisions, seven were in the Pacific and three had been sent to Britain. Of the remainder, 30 divisions had a year of training by June 1942.
Additional demands for the Pacific were not serious. Only two Marine divisions and two infantry divisions were sent there between June 1942 and March 1943, leaving 30 trained divisions as of June 1942. The combined forces of the British and Americans were 64 trained divisions, with three to five new American divisions completing twelve months training every month beginning in March 1943.
To move the divisions to Europe, the United States demonstrated its ability to combat load and lift divisions directly from American ports for the North African invasion. Combat loading wasted shipping because the troops were loaded on the same ships as their equipment and supplies to ensure availability when the landing took place. Items were stored in the order in which they were needed; for example, rations and ammunition would be immediately available, whereas replacement clothing would be at the bottom of the ship.
Once a port was secured, troops and supplies could have been shipped in a more economical fashion. The safest way to move troops was on the fast passenger liners, carrying as many as 15,000 men on a four-day trip to Europe. Relying on their speed to avoid submarines, the liners travelled alone. None were sunk during World War II. In August 1944 eight divisions were delivered to Europe, eight in September, and six in October, indicating the rapid rate at which troops could be delivered.
The problem in 1942 was the U-boat menace to the supply ships, which travelled in slow convoys, further complicated by the inability of the British to break a new German Enigma naval cipher during most of 1942. In February 1942 the German Admiralty introduced a fourth rotor to the Enigma machines used on submarines and at the same time introduced “Triton,” with new keys for the Enigma machines. The new cipher was not broken until December 1942. During that period losses to the U-boats escalated to 652,000 tons in May 1942. After the cipher was broken in December the British were once again able to veer convoys away from the wolf packs and losses dropped. The period of heavy losses coincided with the time that a heavy build-up would have been in progress for SLEDGEHAMMER. However, the Americans were able to move heavily escorted convoys to North Africa in November 1942, and most of the supplies needed for the early months of the invasion were already in Great Britain. In case of dire need, cargo space for British civilian requirements could have been allocated to military use, resulting in a temporary reduction in the standard of living in Britain. Increased conventional methods of antisubmarine warfare would also have alleviated the situation, given the high priority of supporting an invasion.
The British and Americans had nearly double the number of German divisions in June 1942 and the western divisions were of much higher quality. Additional divisions would have been available each month as American divisions completed their training. Based on the North African experience the British would have been able to land at least four against the lightly held beaches in the Cherbourg Peninsula and establish an Anzio -like beachhead. The allies would have won the build-up race. The main contributor to such a landing would have been the British, and in a desperate fight to defend the beachhead, losses might have been heavy. It is doubtful that a major breakout from the beach would have occurred before the spring of 1943, when the continuous supply of trained American divisions would have been assured.
The major impact on the future course of the war would have been the loss to Germany of a rich source of fresh divisions for the Russian Front and a safe haven for the rebuilding of divisions bruised by battle in the east. The campaign in south Russia was a constant drain. Beginning in October 1941 there had been a steady flow of trained divisions from west to east. The west was refilled with new divisions or burned-out units from the east. Had there been active operations in the west in 1942, there would have been no fresh divisions for the east. Between October 1942 and February 1943, seventeen divisions left the west for Russia and one went to North Africa. These divisions played a major role in rebuilding the front after the Stalingrad disaster. Five panzer divisions from France played a major role in the counteroffensive in the spring of 1943. Had these divisions been tied down in the west, the Russians might well have liberated much of the Ukraine a year earlier, sparing many Soviet lives.
The commitment of the allies to France in 1942 would have eliminated the costly and strategically questionable campaigns in the Mediterranean. The war possibly would have been shortened by about a year. The implications of shortening the war are discussed below.
An invasion in 1943
The allies had sufficient forces in 1943 to launch the invasion. That summer the American Army was nearing its peak. By August 90 Army and four Marine divisions had been formed. Only two Marine divisions and no Army divisions were formed after that date. By June 1943 there were 50 divisions with twelve months training. During the next twelve months 37 more divisions would have completed their year. Only thirteen divisions had been sent to the Pacific by May 1943 and two more went in June, still leaving 37 for Europe. Had the invasion gone forward in 1943, the Army might well have formed an additional ten divisions as originally planned. On 25 October 1942 the War Department had ordered the process of forming divisions slowed down because there were no immediate plans then to make use of them. With a 1943 ROUNDUP, the formation process would have gone on. The American contribution to a 1943 landing and buildup would have been 37 on 1 June 1943, with three to five additional divisions becoming available each month.
The British contribution, as stated in the War Office plan of May 1942, would have been ten British infantry divisions, eight British armored divisions, two Canadian armored divisions, three Canadian infantry divisions, a Polish armored division, a mixed division of Czechs, Belgians, Dutch, and Norwegians, and one or two airborne divisions (the availability of the 6th Airborne was in doubt) – a total of 26 or 27. Although the British Home Army had been depleted by shipments to North Africa and elsewhere by June 1943, some of the divisions would have been returned. The total of American and British divisions available would have been about 63.
In June 1943 the Germans had 44 divisions in France, but the quality left much to be desired. Twenty-one were static divisions without transport. Four were new divisions, including two SS divisions formed from members of the Hitler Youth, too young for combat. The other two had been in existence three months and one month, respectively. Sixteen divisions were formed by giving training units the numbers of the units lost at Stalingrad. The divisions had been in existence only four months or so and were far below strength. For example, in mid-April the 376th Infantry Division had only 3,763 men, including men in hospitals and on detached service. The 16th Panzer Division had only sixteen tanks at that time. Two additional divisions had been returned from Russia for refitting in April and January. The 65th Infantry had been formed in August 1942 and was fairly well trained. Of the 44 divisions, only the 65th and the 328th were comparable to a British or American division.
The only question was the ability to deliver the troops to the combat zone. By May 1943 the battle against the U-boats had been won. The landing in Sicily in July 1943, a seven-division force, was stronger than the 1944 D-Day force. The beaches in Normandy were defended by a far less formidable German force than greeted the Allies in 1944. The defenses built by Rommel in 1944 – including underwater obstacles to fend off landing craft, the “asparagus” poles to close off potential glider landing zones, and coastline emplacements – would not have been in place. The establishment of the beachhead would have been accomplished quickly and the thin crust of defenders brushed aside.
With the rapid occupation of Cherbourg and Brest, the Germans would not have had time for systematic destruction, and these ports would have eased the supply situation. Even if these ports could not have been taken, sinking over-age ships would have provided the breakwaters, as did the Mulberry system in 1944. Without the destruction of the French rail system, necessary in 1944 to prevent the movement of German reserves, the railroads would have been much easier to restore and would have provided a major source of lift from the beach to the front after the breakout.
The Germans would have been hard pressed to find reinforcements, considering the immense pressure of the Russians on the Eastern Front and the need to defend the Mediterranean coastline. The allies probably would have reached the Elbe before the Russians. Given the German's justified fear of Russian retaliation, the Germans would have done their utmost to keep the Russians out of Germany, even at the sacrifice of territory in the west. The western allies probably would have taken Berlin.
The war would probably have ended by the spring of 1944, with far-reaching results. During the final twelve months of 1944-45 the bombing offensive reached its peak, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians as well as costing the lives of thousands of British and American air crewmen. During the same period the process of annihilating the Jews was speeded up. Perhaps two million Jews were killed in the final year of the war. Furthermore, the terrible price that the Soviet Union paid for victory would have been reduced by at least several million. All of that bloodshed would have been avoided in exchange for possible heavy casualties in Normandy, which in the end might not have been much greater than those suffered in the futile campaigns in Sicily and Italy.
Of far greater long-term consequence, had the war in Europe been terminated earlier, the conference at Tehran would have settled the problems of the postwar world while Roosevelt was a comparatively healthy man and able to negotiate more forcefully with Stalin, especially with a strong Second Front in place. With British and American forces in control of most of Germany, there would have been no need to surrender eastern Europe to the Soviets.
In early 1944 the allied planners for Operation Overlord, the cross-Channel invasion of Normandy, initiated the most daring deception operation of the war. Under the code name of Fortitude, its purpose was nothing less than to convince Hitler and the German commanders in the west that the Normandy landings were merely a feint and that main allied invasion was to be launched against the Pas de Calais sector north of the River Seine by six allied assault divisions. Eventually this force was to establish a bridgehead that included both Antwerp and Brussels with 50 divisions.
By playing to the German propensity to believe that the main invasion would be against the Pas de Calais, the architects of Fortitude fulfilled the most essential ingredient of any successful deception operation: that there be sufficient elements of truth to reinforce an already existing belief. In the case of Fortitude, the Germans not only believed that the Pas de Calais was the most likely site of the cross-Channel invasion, but that the allies would be obliged to invade there in order to eliminate the V-1 and V-2 rocket sites. The German terror campaign against England (primarily against London) had left the Germans with an exaggerated sense of the effect these weapons were having against the British populace. In short, the German belief in the probability of the invasion coming against the Pas de Calais had by February 1944 reached a fixation that was aided and abetted by the Fortitude planners.
The crux of Fortitude was the creation of a fictional 1st U.S. Army Group (FUSAG) under the command of the flamboyant Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr. The Germans had long feared Patton as the most able battlefield commander on the allied side and the most likely candidate to command the allied invasion force. Patton, who had only recently emerged from months of virtual isolation in Sicily after the slapping incidents the previous August, had been relegated to the command of the Third U.S. Army which was secretly being trained in England during the spring of 1944 for a post-invasion role in Normandy. The Germans were encouraged to believe this because of their logical belief that Patton was the commander of the fictional FUSAG.
While the real Overlord force was assembling and training all over England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, this fictional army group was created in East Anglia. Dummy troop concentrations were established using cleverly designed wooden and rubber replicas of tanks, guns, boats and vehicles. Double agents working for allied intelligence were fed information that confirmed the presence of a large invasion force in East Anglia. To give even further credence to these fake installations, a signal network was established whose sole purpose was to transmit a steady stream of phony message traffic twenty-four hours a day. In this way the illusion was created that there were at least six divisions operational in East Anglia.
Between the fake intelligence and the equally fictitious message traffic the Germans soon built up the intended picture of an entire army group preparing to invade the Pas de Calais. By the spring of 1944 there was clear evidence that the Germans had fallen for Fortitude hook, line and sinker.
Let it now be assumed that it was not until well after the war ended that it was confirmed just how the allied invasion plan was compromised. Unknown to the allies, both Overlord and Fortitude came apart sometime in the final month prior to the cross-Channel invasion, which was now due to take place during the first week of June. As tempting as it had been to believe the wealth of information flowing through German intelligence channels into the headquarters of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) in Berlin, there were more than a few skeptics who had learned well the lesson of just how effective and tricky the allied deception planners had become. Thus, while it was generally accepted within OKW that the allied invasion would be in the Pas de Calais, there were some, most of them intelligence officers, who nourished doubts. Perhaps it was nothing more than skepticism borne from having been duped by previous allied deception tricks in the Mediterranean, but not everyone in Berlin had fallen for Fortitude. The drawback was that the skeptics had no evidence to contradict the prevailing thinking. To convince Hitler and the senior staff officers in OKW, solid evidence would soon have to be uncovered.
Fortunately for these German officers, an extraordinary stroke of providence caused the allied plan to become fatally compromised in the spring of 1944. For several months the allies had conducted a series of amphibious exercises designed to train the invasion forces for the Normandy landings. One of these exercises took place in late April off the Devonshire coast of southern England. Code-named Operation Tiger, it was one of the largest and most ambitious exercises yet attempted. Designed to simulate the forthcoming landings by the US VII Corps in the Cotentin peninsula, Tiger called for a corps-sized force to be landed on the beaches of Slapton Sands, an area of Devon southeast of Dartmouth. This force was to consist of the entire VII Corps and included an American engineer group whose task was land and clear the beaches for the invasion force.
Not only was Tiger a major failure as an exercise (everything that could have possibly gone wrong, did), but it turned into an unmitigated disaster when the naval force was unexpectedly attacked by a flotilla of German E-boats operating from Cherbourg. The E-boats attacked with torpedoes and automatic weapons just as LSTs were attempting to land the engineers on Slapton Sands. The result was death and chaos as the marauding German torpedo boats sank two fully laden LSTs and damaged two more. Men were machine-gunned in the water; others drowned and it was later determined that many had improperly fitted life jackets. In all, 749 men lost their lives in the icy seas off Slapton Sands and the incident became a postwar cause célèbre in the 1980s when it was learned that the dead had been secretly buried in mass graves and their loss covered-up to avoid tipping the hand of the allies.
Unfortunately, the attack had a wholly unknown effect that soon wrecked the secrecy of the Overlord plan. On the corpse of one of the dead, an American colonel, later fished from the sea by an E-boat, were found fragments of the real invasion plan. Against orders, the officer had been carrying a copy of the Overlord plan. To their surprise German intelligence learned that Normandy was the true focus of the cross-Channel invasion, not, as thought, the Pas de Calais. Within the intelligence directorate of OKW there ensued a series of probing re-evaluations of allied intentions. So secret was this endeavor that only a handful of the most trusted intelligence officers participated. Fearing Hitler's wrath, they worked around the clock painstakingly assessing every scrap of information known to them in what was later determined to have been the most intense intelligence effort of the entire war. Past assumptions were discarded, difficult questions were posed and every single piece of evidence, both pro and con, was closely examined. Had the dead officer been yet another plant, similar to “The Man Who Never Was,” or had they fortuitously discovered intelligence of momentous importance? They soon ruled out coincidence when it was clearly established that the E-boat attack had come strictly by chance. Obviously the allies would not kill hundreds of their troops merely to perpetrate their deception operations.
After some three weeks the evidence was sufficient for them to conclude that Fortitude was an elaborate and clever deception operation. They had been able to establish by independent means that Normandy was not only the real invasion site but that there was to be no invasion of the Pas de Calais at a later date.
So sensitive was the German evaluation that only a single copy of the document detailing the true allied intentions was produced By the third week of May, nearly a month after the attack on the allied convoy, the report was secretly presented to General Alfred Jodl, the OKW chief of staff and the officer who briefed Hitler twice each day. Bypassing Jodl's boss, the weak and ineffectual Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the OKW intelligence staff had presented their report to the man most likely to convince Hitler of the momentous significance of their discovery.
Jodl waited to brief the Führer until Keitel was given a rare day off. Stunned by the report, Hitler nevertheless readily conceded its conclusions. Although he had long accepted the prevailing belief that the allies would attack the Pas de Calais, he had nevertheless nurtured a foreboding that perhaps Normandy was the real allied objective.
Although the Germans never learned that their Enigma cyphers had been broken more than three years earlier, Hitler was determined to guard against a leak of the report by establishing the most stringent security ever employed. Nothing was to be put into writing or communicated to others, even via the supposedly secure Enigma system. There was too much risk of a cypher-clerk or someone in the chain of command learning of the deadly secret of Fortitude and Overlord. Hitler hastily ordered the commander-in-chief West, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and the commander of Army Group B, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden. The two officers had no idea why they had been summoned and expected the usual abusive harangue from Hitler.
Thus, on 31 May 1944, exactly one week before the allies would invade a fifty-mile length of Normandy beaches from Caen to Cotentin peninsula, the two field commanders responsible for defending France were told the truth of what was expected to occur sometime within the next two weeks. Their orders from Hitler were clear: the Normandy invasion was to be defeated on the beaches. Under no circumstances were the allies to be permitted to gain a bridgehead in France.
What if the allied high command had learned that Fortitude had been compromised?
When it was learned that one set of Overlord documents was missing after Operation Tiger, there was near panic in the top echelon of SHAEF, the allied high command. A number of bodies had not been recovered from the Tiger disaster, among them the colonel, a member of Major General J. Lawton Collins's VII Corps staff, who it was determined had been illegally carrying a copy of the plan. It was finally concluded that even in the unlikely event the Germans had found his corpse, the Overlord document would have been water soaked and unreadable. There was little that could be done except to carry out the Overlord and Fortitude plans on the assumption that there had been no compromise. Eisenhower personally briefed Churchill and after considerable discussion the Prime Minister came to the same conclusion as his supreme allied commander. Despite his occasional wild schemes, Churchill's pragmatic side took over. More than a million troops had been brought into the United Kingdom and southern England had been turned into an armed camp. These men could not be sustained indefinitely in such cramped conditions. The only opportunity to invade Europe was during the full moon period of June. If the invasion were abandoned on the basis of incomplete evidence that the plan might have been compromised, it could not be remounted until 1945. Such a delay was unthinkable. There was simply no choice. Overlord would continue as scheduled. The show would go on.
The question also arises: if the Overlord plan had been compromised within two months or less of D-Day, would the allies have opted instead to invade along the Pas de Calais. The answer to this question must be an emphatic “no.” Not only was there insufficient time to have altered the myriad of air, sea and ground plans and training required to launch Overlord, but nothing could change the fact that this region of France was simply the wrong place for an invasion on such a massive scale. Even a postponement of D-Day for a month or more would have been unlikely: Given the unpredictability of the English Channel in late summer, autumn and winter, it is doubtful the allied high command would have risked delaying the invasion until July or August when the moon was full and the tides right for an invasion. Thus, even with favorable weather in high summer, it was vital that it remain so during the months following the invasion in order. With its enormous logistical appetite, any prolonged bad weather was considered a serious risk to the allied expeditionary force.
The Pas de Calais was the closest point to Britain, provided the most direct route of advance into Germany and afforded maximum air cover from airfields in southern England. Its drawback was that the Pas de Calais was such an obvious invasion site that the Germans had heavily reinforced its defenses and concentrated the bulk of their troops in France in this region. More importantly, there were few adequate ports to accommodate the enormous flow of troops and material required in the post-invasion buildup and the potential landing sites were too small to accommodate division-sized assault forces. Even if Normandy had been compromised, the Germans would have retained sufficient defenses in the Pas de Calais to discourage any notion of switching the invasion site. In short, the allies were committed to Normandy no matter what might have happened.
If the allied high command had learned that Normandy had been compromised, there would have been significant changes to the Overlord plan in order to permit the invasion to have taken place as scheduled. For example, the air forces would have abandoned all pretense of bombing western France (to avoid giving away the invasion site) and concentrated instead on preventing the Germans from reinforcing their Normandy defenses prior to D-Day. Some examples are: around-the-clock bombing, including saturation bombing of German defensive positions and routes of approach to the invasion sites. Naval fire plans would have been altered to provide for increased seaborne fire support of the ground forces and the French resistance would have been asked to undertake sabotage efforts along the invasion front. And, the invasion force itself might have been beefed up with additional assault troops, weapons and possibly even a fourth airborne division (the British 1st Airborne) to land on the great plain behind Caen and in the hills of the Odon River valley.
What if Hitler had permitted Rommel to relocate his panzers near the Normandy beaches?
In our scenario, for Erwin Rommel, the knowledge that the invasion was to take place in Normandy was like a stone lifted from his shoulders. For months he had argued in vain with Berlin that he should be given control of the strategic armored reserves in France. On Hitler's orders, OKW had denied Rommel the control of these precious reserves and instead had placed them under the command of his rival General Leo von Geyr von Schweppenburg.
For some months there had been a fundamental disagreement between Rommel and Rundstedt and Geyr over the employment of the panzer divisions when the invasion came. In November 1943 Rundstedt had created Panzer Group West as a large mobile reserve capable of reacting to an invasion in either the Fifteenth Army (Pas de Calais) or Seventh Army (Normandy) sectors. Rundstedt positioned them near Paris and envisioned employing the panzers in a large-scale counterattack against the allied landings, wherever they were launched.
Rommel firmly believed that the only hope the Germans had of defeating the invasion lay in an immediate counterattack against the beaches before the allies could establish a bridgehead. Geyr's philosophy was the exact reverse. He maintained that only by means of a powerful, centrally-controlled armored counterstroke could the invasion be disrupted. The three officers had repeatedly clashed until finally Rommel exercised his authority as a field marshal and appealed directly to Hitler for control of Panzer Group West. At first Hitler agreed with Rommel, but then reversed himself in March 1944 when von Runstedt protested. The result was a compromise in which three of Geyr's panzer divisions were transferred to Army Group B as mobile reserves, while the other four were retained in Panzer Group West as a central mobile reserve. However, they could not be committed without approval from OKW, which meant Hitler had to give his personal permission. The result was that both von Rundstedt and Rommel were without tactical control and the means of influencing the forthcoming battles at the critical moment.
According to his chief of staff, General Hans Speidel, Rommel considered a minimum of five panzer divisions necessary for the defense of the Normandy coast and later quoted his chief as saying:
“Elements which are not in contact with the enemy at the moment of invasion will never get into action, because of the enormous air superiority of the enemy. If we do not succeed in carrying out our combat mission of warding off the allies or of hurling them from the mainland in the first 48 hours, the invasion has succeeded and the war is lost for lack of strategic reserves and lack of Luftwaffe in the west.”1
Geyr never conceded the validity of Rommel's strategy and saw the Atlantic Wall as little more than an outpost position, arguing that since the time of Hannibal decisive battles had never been fought in such positions and certainly could not be fought with the effect of mass and shock action within range of a great enemy battle fleet offshore.
Given his paranoia over the possibility of a coup by his officers, we can never know what Hitler would have done if the Germans had positive knowledge of the allied landings in Normandy. However, it is reasonable to believe that he would have permitted Rommel to at long last win the argument over the employment of the panzer reserves. If Hitler had signed an order transferring Panzer Group West to Army Group B, Rommel would have immediately ordered Geyr to begin moving his units toward Normandy. In order to avoid tipping off allied photo reconnaissance aircraft the divisions would have been ordered to move under strict blackout conditions only at night. During the daylight hours they were to find concealment. It is likely that Rommel would have placed both Fifteenth and Seventh Armies on full alert and immediately ordered reinforcements from the Pas de Calais to Normandy. Although most of the divisions assigned to Fifteenth Army were static and devoid of mobility, two mobile infantry divisions, the 84th situated near Rouen and the 85th northwest of Amiens, certainly would have been redeployed to Normandy under the same conditions of secrecy as the movement of the panzer divisions.
Thus, if Hitler had given Rommel a free hand to have disposed these formations, what would he have done? In the case of the six panzer divisions2 displaced into the Normandy sector, Geyr would have likely established the HQ of Panzer Group West in a forest southeast of Caen, just as he did after the invasion in 1944. Rommel too would have installed an advanced field headquarters of Army Group B somewhere between Caen and Falaise. Rommel's priority would have been the defense of the most dangerous sectors in Normandy: the Caen-Falaise corridor and, in the west, the highways connecting the Carentan peninsula with Periers and St. Lô.
Here is one scenario that Rommel might have employed. The 12th SS Panzer Division was positioned north of Odon River to attack toward either Caen or Bayeux, while the 21st Panzer and Panzer Lehr Divisions were dispersed in wooded areas east and west of Caen. The two infantry divisions were sent to the west to prevent any breakout toward St. Lô and to counterattack any landings in the Carentan sector of western Normandy. When it arrived from southern France, the 2nd SS Panzer Division was to be placed in blocking positions along the key choke points – the highways leading from Carentan to St. Lô and Periers – to block any attempt at a breakout from the Cherbourg peninsula. The remaining two panzer divisions (the 2nd and 116th) were dispersed west of Villers-Bocage as Rommel's strategic reserve. When the shape of the invasion could be determined this force would be committed where and when necessary, but only under his personal order. By the early evening of 5 June these dispositions were completed. It only remained for the allied invasion to commence. Tensions ran high as every German soldier in Normandy was poised for the commencement of the battle that would decide the outcome of the war.
What if Rommel had been present in Normandy on 6 June 1944?
The single most important factor that might have changed the course of the invasion of Normandy was the presence on D-Day of the dynamic German ground forces commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
Like all soldiers, Rommel missed his family and had been looking forward to finding some way of taking a few day's leave in order to be with his beloved wife, Lucie, whose birthday was on 6 June. Commencing on 4 June the weather had turned rotten, with high winds and rain and the Channel became a cauldron of choppy waves and excessively high tides along the Normandy beaches. Although Rommel knew the invasion was imminent, it did not seem possible that a huge invasion armada could carry out amphibious landings until the weather improved. His meteorological officer reported that there would be no break before 7 June. Thus, as we now know from what happened during those crucial days of early June 1944 Rommel's absence from Normandy at the time of the allied landings was crucial.
Across the Channel, Eisenhower's Met officer, Group Captain J. M. Stagg, had delivered such a pessimistic report on the weather situation that Eisenhower had no choice except to postpone for twenty-four hours the invasion scheduled for 5 June. Thousands of allied soldiers and sailors sweated out the delay in cramped conditions aboard the 7,875 ships that comprised the invasion force. At a meeting of the allied invasion commanders held at 10:45 P.M. the night of 4 June, Stagg offered a ray of hope when he predicted that there would be a slight break in the weather which, although marginal at best, would permit the landings to take place the morning of 6 June. With the concurrence of his invasion commanders, Eisenhower elected to proceed and his historic decision set into motion the greatest amphibious operation in the history of warfare.
Under our scenario, Rommel was tempted to request leave to make a quick visit to the family home in Herrlingen near Ulm. However, even though the weather was terrible he recognized that duty impelled him to remain in Normandy to await the inevitable allied landings. He believed, with considerable justification, that his presence was absolutely essential if the invasion force was to be defeated. Thus, despite the heavy seas and poor visibility in the Channel, Rommel ordered his Seventh and Fifteenth Armies on standby alert, one stage below the Code Red condition that would apply when the landings actually began.
Shortly after midnight on 5 June when the first reports emanated from Seventh Army of glider landings in both the Carentan and Caen sectors, Rommel would have immediately placed his entire army group on full battle alert. During the night the three panzer divisions in the Caen sector would probably have moved ever closer to the beaches: the 12th SS to positions north and west of Carpiquet airfield and the Panzer Lehr to the wooded areas north and northwest of Caen. The bulk of the 21st Panzer would have remained east of the Orne River. After dispersal from positions in the Bois de Bavent outside Dives-sur-Mer, infantry and panzers would have attacked the airborne troops that had landed along the east side of the Orne and the Caen Canal. Infantry elements of the Panzer Lehr and the 716th Divisions, supported by a tank battalion, would have attacked British parachute troops in the Benouville-Ouistreham sector.
Given the actual near-run battle fought by the British airborne and commando forces east of the Orne, it is reasonable to conclude that with such powerful reinforcements the Germans would have neutralized these forces and inflicted enormous (perhaps total) losses. Although a few stragglers might have managed to escape, the small, lightly armed allied force would have simply been no match for German firepower and quick reaction.
Would the allies have detected the presence of these panzer divisions in the Caen sector before the D-Day landings? Certainly, the French Resistance would have immediately noted their presence and attempted to alert the allies. However, more than a week before the landings the Resistance had sent a message to England that the guns thought to have been at the Pointe du Hoc had been dispersed inland in April and were thus no longer a threat to the landings on Omaha and Utah Beaches. That message did not arrive in time and the Ranger operation up the steep cliffs of the Pointe du Hoc were carried out. It is reasonable to conclude a similar notification of the presence of the panzers would have similarly failed to reach allied intelligence in time. Even if they had, the allies were irrevocably committed to the landings.
Assuming that the panzer divisions had managed to conceal their movements and presence, there is no assurance, even with intensive photo reconnaissance flights in the weeks leading up to D-Day, that allied intelligence would have detected the disposition of these divisions into the Caen sector – just as it failed to note that the 352nd Division had been defending the Omaha Beach sector since April 1944. Thus, it is quite possible the presence of these formations would have come as a nasty and likely fatal surprise to the allies.
During the actual invasion in the Caen sector the British 3rd Division ran into serious trouble along Sword Beach where the combination of excessively high tides and German counterattacks prevented the capture of Caen on D-Day. Add to a “what if” scenario the presence of Panzer Lehr and the 12th SS Panzer Divisions, and the results would have been nothing less than disastrous. The British 3rd Division and the 6th Airborne Division elements west of the Orne would have been roped off and, if not destroyed, contained in a narrow, thinly-held beachhead, perhaps a few thousand yards deep, between Sword Beach and the Orne. Casualties would have been very high. The Canadian 3rd Division and 2nd Armored Brigade might have been more successful in the Juno sector but would not have advanced as far as the Caen-Bayeux highway. Although prowling allied aircraft and naval gunfire would have kept the panzers pinned down in their concealed positions during daylight hours and thus prevented a counterattack on 6 June, the Germans would have launched serious attacks under the cover of darkness that night.
Despite the magnitude of their reinforcements, the Germans still could not have established a defense in depth in the time before the landings. Therefore, the greatest Anglo-Canadian success might have come on Gold Beach, where the veteran British 50th Division and the 8th Armored Brigade landed without heavy casualties. Nevertheless, their beachheads would have hardly been more than a mile deep before they encountered elements of the 12th SS Panzer and the 716th Infantry Division.
To the west, the US landings on Omaha Beach by the 1st Infantry Division and two regiments of the 29th Infantry Division ran into savage resistance from the 352nd Division which dominated the heights overlooking the seven-mile long beach. Losses were high as German troops poured fire on to the exposed troops. During the first six hours the invaders held only a few yards of beach, which remained under intense enemy fire. The situation on Omaha was so critical that Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley, the US ground force commander, seriously considered evacuating the beachhead and switching the follow-up units to the British sector or to Utah beach. Eventually, extraordinary leadership on the part of the American commanders carried the day as GIs stormed the heights and drove the German defenders from their fortified positions. Casualties on both sides were grave.
It was only on Utah Beach that the allies enjoyed a full measure of success. Despite the presence of the two newly-arrived infantry divisions in the Carentan sector, the 4th US Infantry Division successfully established a two-mile deep beachhead without serious loss. Here, the allies were able to take advantage of the marshy terrain which was unsuitable for mobile operations. Rommel was satisfied with a stand-off that would prevent allied forces from advancing to the south and southeast and posing a threat to encircle his defensive positions in the Caen-Bayeux sector.
Thus, despite losing strategic surprise the allies managed to establish three tenuous, but separate, beachheads across a sixty-mile front. The problem facing the allied commanders was how to link-up the three beachheads before the Germans could take advantage of their isolation and attack their vulnerable flanks. Rommel now had a clear picture of the extent of the invasion force and elected to concentrate his forthcoming armored counterattack against the US V Corps in the Omaha sector. If his panzers could crush Major General Leonard Gerow's two divisions south of Omaha, the remainder of the allied beachhead at Caen and near Carentan could be rolled up and the invasion defeated.
Both sides recognized that the forthcoming battle would determine the fate of the invasion. Rommel assembled a powerful armor-heavy task force consisting of the two reserve panzer divisions plus infantry elements of the 352nd and 716th Divisions. Their objective would have been the low hill mass that ran from south of Port-en-Bessin to Longueville in the east, where V Corps had established its beachhead line. During the first twenty-four hours the allies had rushed reinforcements ashore in a desperate effort to reinforce V Corps before Rommel's blow fell.
Would the end result have been any different under our “what if” scenario? Probably not. There would not have been time nor reason to invest the Omaha or Utah sectors with the newly arrived panzer and infantry divisions. The 352nd Division would have fought virtually the same battle on Omaha and although the 4th Division could have expected higher casualties on Utah Beach, both landings would ultimately have succeeded. The great distinction between what actually happened and our scenario would have been the battle by the allies to breakout of their narrow beachhead at Omaha before the panzer counterattack came. Here is what might have occurred.
The morning of 7 June Rommel put into practice what he had preached: a powerful counterattack against the invasion before the allies were given an opportunity to establish a firm bridgehead from which they could not be dislodged. The full fury of the German attack would have fallen upon V Corps by as many as four German divisions: the 2nd and 116th Panzer Divisions, elements of either the 84th or 85th Divisions, rushed from the Cotentin sector to the east, the 352nd Division and the artillery fire of every gun in Normandy that could be brought to bear. To the east, secondary attacks would have been launched by the 12th SS Panzer, 21st Panzer and Panzer Lehr, while in the west, the 2nd SS Panzer would have arrived from southern France and have hammered the combined infantry-parachute force of the 82nd and 101st Airborne and the 4th Infantry Division. In many places the allied defenses could not have contained the German onslaught and their lines would have been penetrated by the violent panzer onslaught. The German drive could only have been stopped by a steel curtain of around-the-clock naval gunfire and close air support during daylight hours. In the end, the allied naval forces would have spelled the difference.
For the navy to have saved the day was a precedent established the previous September at Salerno, where only the timely intervention of the fleet prevented a tragedy. During the bloody struggle for Salerno, allied naval guns laid down barrage after barrage to disrupt and breakup the determined German attacks. The same would have taken place in Normandy.
Virtually every battleship – of which there were seven – and as many as twenty-three cruisers would have fired in direct support of the beleaguered invasion force. The 5 and 14 inch guns of the battleships USS Texas and USS Arkansas could deliver such withering fire that, once targeted, they could literally annihilate a German formation. Nevertheless, in places the panzers could have driven clear to the beaches and destroyed everything in their path. Fortunately the terrain of Normandy would have impeded any attempt to roll up the various isolated beachheads. Eventually, thanks to the navy, the perilous allied beachhead would have held – but just barely.
Casualties on both sides would have been appalling. Allied losses of over 25,000, with at least 10,000 dead would not have been unreasonable. German losses would have been equally costly, principally from naval gunfire and allied artillery. Many of the artillery pieces would have fired at point blank range, with their tubes depressed to act as direct fire weapons.
The determined Rommel would have continued pressing his counterattacks regardless of his mounting losses. Restlessly prowling the front line to offer encouragement to his men and a boot to commanders who showed signs of faltering, Rommel would have reminded one and all that this was their only opportunity to crush the invasion and that unless they were successful, they would most likely die.
However long the battle may have lasted, it would indisputably have been the most savage and costly engagement of the war in the west. Both Eisenhower and his two ground commanders, General Sir Bernard Montgomery and Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley, would have thrown caution to the winds and hastened every possible reinforcement available into the fray. Naval gunfire would have continued around the clock. Aerial attacks by Air Vice Marshal “Mary” Coningham's 2nd Tactical Air Force and heavy bomber support from Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris's Bomber Command would have pounded German assembly areas in the Caen, Falaise and Villers-Bocage sectors. The RAF would have also been employed at night, while the B-17 bombers from the US Eighth Air Force struck during daylight. The German death toll would have continued to climb.
Given his insistence on controlling all German forces in Normandy, Rommel would have had little choice except to continue counterattacking as long as he retained the initiative and there was even the slightest chance of success. Moreover, as he had done in the past, Hitler would have ordered a fight to the death and refused to accept any plea from Rommel to withdraw his forces out of range of allied naval gunfire. In the end, Hitler's bullheadedness, as it did later that year during the ill-fated Ardennes counteroffensive, would have ensured German failure. Rommel's eventual recommendation to withdraw inland out of range of the allied naval guns would have been scornfully rejected by Hitler's decree that there be no withdrawal, no retreat, under penalty of death.
In all, the German counterattacks would likely have consumed no more than five days, but they would have been the most desperate five days of the entire war. Churchill would later have modified his “finest hour” quote to include the inspired defense of the Normandy beachhead and Eisenhower would have hailed the men of the allied Expeditionary Force as “the most magnificent soldiers I have ever commanded.”
At some point Seventh Army would have been obliged to withdraw behind the Rivers Odon and the Orne, but not without more fierce fighting in the defense of Caen, Villers-Bocage and the river crossings. In the end, the Germans would still have controlled the important Caen-Falaise plain and the road net leading to and from Caen. There would have been no change in Rommel's conviction that the days of the German army in Normandy were numbered. The feeble efforts of the Luftwaffe to oppose the RAF and USAAF only made matters worse. Most of the Luftwaffe were blown from the sky on DDay and D+1 and were thereafter little seen. They were greatly scorned by the ground troops who cursed them as cowards. Of the great aerial and naval bombardments Rommel has written:
“Even the movement of the most minor formations on the battlefield-artillery going into position, tanks forming up, etc., – is instantly attacked from the air with devastating effect. During the day fighting troops and headquarters alike are forced to seek cover in wooded and close country in order to escape the continual pounding from the air. Up to 640 [naval] guns have been used. The effect is so immense that no operation of any kind is possible in the area commanded by this rapid-fire artillery, either by infantry or tanks.”3
The German counterattacks clearly would have left the allies in no position to pursue aggressive offensive action until further massive reinforcements and follow up formations, and supplies and ammunition could be brought ashore. To make matters even more difficult, the allied build-up was literally crippled for three days by the great storm which pounded Normandy from 19 to 22 June. It was the worst gale in nearly forty years and caused severe losses to allied shipping in the fierce seas. Some 800 ships of all sizes were beached or lost. The Mulberry harbor being erected on Omaha beach was totally destroyed and never replaced; the British Mulberry at Arromanches was damaged but fortunately not lost. Resupply came to a dead stop.
The weather was so fierce that any intention by Rommel to launch another counter-offensive would have been thwarted by the savage weather. Although the allies were able to eventually replace their losses, Rommel's attacks would have insured that it would be well into July before they could have launched an offensive to break out of their narrow bridgehead. Until then, Caen and high ground south of the city would have remained firmly under German control.
Thus, until mid-August the two sides would have fought a battle of attrition on the eastern flank that varied little from what actually occurred in 1944. The enormous size of the battlefield meant that the Germans could not defend in depth against the inevitable allied offensive to break free of the Normandy bridgehead. In late July Bradley launched an offensive to break the German left flank in the Cotentin peninsula. St. Lô fell to the U.S. First Army on 19 July and when Operation Cobra succeeded in crushing the German left flank, Patton's recently landed U.S. Third Army was unleashed. By 1 August, Third Army had broken the final bottleneck at Avranches and both armies had swept into the open country beyond. For the Germans who had lost their inspirational commander in mid-July when his staff car was strafed by an RAF Spitfire, the genie was out of the bottle and the Normandy campaign was irrevocably out of their control.
Although Rommel had been able to wrest control of the German armored reserve from his rivals inside the army in time to carry out his strategy of attacking the invasion force while it was still vulnerable, his powerful tank-infantry forces were simply unable to overcome the devastating allied naval gunfire and air support. His critics, the most vocal of which remained Geyr, would have argued the German counteroffensive had been doomed from the start and that Rommel ought to have retained his armor well inland out of harm's way before initiating a counteroffensive. The question of who was right has never been resolved and to this day is the subject of spirited discussion and debate.
In many ways things were touch-and-go with respect to the landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944. It was entirely possible that they could have been repulsed at the water's edge. According to his own testimony, Eisenhower would have felt obliged to dispatch his hastily-scribbled memo assuming full responsibility for the debacle. To some extent, events would then have been shaped by the nature of the battle itself. A defeat, with the allied forces essentially intact and potentially able to try again, would have had different consequences from a debacle on the order of Dieppe. Morally, however, D-Day was an operation that could only be mounted once – especially from a British perspective. Not merely had the last of the island empire's material resources been committed to the operation. Psychologically as well, a war-weary, debilitated population was playing its last cards.
Paradoxically, however, defeat in Normandy might have strengthened Britain's position in allied strategic councils. From Churchill downwards, doubts of the feasibility of a cross-Channel invasion had characterized British approaches to the operation. With U.S. emergence as the coalition's dominant partner, British hopes of eventually playing Greece to America's Rome had muted dissent. Certainly the issue would have once more come fully into the open as the corpses of failure washed ashore on Britain's south coast.
A possible operational consequence would have involved refocusing on the Mediterranean – rerouting new U.S. divisions to Italy instead of Britain, perhaps even opening a new front in the Balkans. ANVIL-DRAGOON, so long the bane of Churchill's life, might have seemed attractive from an alternate perspective, as a sop to those he considered the embarrassed amateurs of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Even Norway conceivably could kindle new interest as a focal point for a flexible amphibious strategy, as opposed to the now-discredited American SLEDGEHAMMER.
This would not, of course, mean complete abandonment of a cross-Channel operation – only its postponement until Nazi Germany should be further, decisively weakened. That task in turn would fall, objectively, to the Red Army. On 21 June 1944, the third anniversary of Barbarossa, the Soviet high command unleashed Operation Bagration against Germany's Army Group Center. The German front did not collapse; it disappeared. By 3 July the Russians had advanced over 200 miles from their start lines. Not until autumn did the Soviet offensive stop at the borders of East Prussia and the gates of Warsaw. It was during these very months of desperation, however, that Hitler formed from the Reich's last resources the strategic reserves that, historically, were used in the Battle of the Bulge. Given the absence of a second front in Western Europe, these resources, or the bulk of them, would have been available for a counterstrike against the Russians in the same time frame: December 1944.
That availability was likely to have been reduced by an intensified Anglo-American air campaign against German oil and transportation resources. A German victory on D-Day would have done nothing to reduce the overwhelming air supremacy of the western allies. Indeed the absence of a land front would have freed the tactical air forces for operational missions. Even with the limited range of many fighters and medium bombers, the Germans would have found large-scale troop movement difficult – but not impossible. Air power alone could not have stopped an “Eastern Bulge.” The Red Army was another factor entirely. Given the high level of tactical operational skills achieved by Soviet forces, and given the extreme discrepancy in numbers between the combatants, a counter-attack eastward could have done nothing more than buy time – perhaps six months, no more.
The next crucial question in this scenario would have involved the westward advance of the Soviet steamroller. Given the absence of an allied presence in northern France or a token foothold along the coast, the Yalta Conference would certainly have taken a different tone. Most of the trumps would have been in Stalin's hands, and the Soviet dictator was a man who knew how to utilize high cards. A likely outcome would have involved a Soviet “zone” of occupation in Germany extending to the Rhine river, with the British, French, and Americans playing token roles in governing a Germany they had done so little to defeat. Roosevelt and Churchill would have had little choice in the matter. Given FDR's real-time hopes for noblesse oblige on Stalin's part, the American president might even have welcomed the settlement. In any case the USSR's victory would have been on a scale unthinkable in 1941.
One further possibility remains in this scenario: U.S. employment of the atomic bomb against Germany. Should the Reich have hung on into the late summer of 1945, Munich or Cologne rather than Hiroshima might well have been the first nuclear target. Contrary to some popular legends, there is no evidence that American military and political leaders were in any way reluctant to use the bomb on a European target for racial or cultural reasons. Militarily, had Germany proved able to hold up the Red Army and increase Soviet casualties by a last-ditch resistance – hypothetically continuing even after the fall of Berlin – destroying what remained of a major city in the west or south might have been reasonably expected to produce surrender even of a rump Reich dominated by Nazi die-hards. Diplomatically, the bomb's use would have offered a final form of compensation for a failed second front. It would have also served as a not-so-subtle warning to the USSR that occupation of Germany by no means guaranteed hegemony over Europe. The “atomic diplomacy” and “nuclear blackmail” that remain the constructions of historians would likely have been all too real given the absence of British and American ground forces at the final German capitulation.
This in turn leads to a final speculation. The anti-Soviet consolidation of western Europe under NATO was in large part facilitated by negative reactions to Russian behavior in the east. Becoming part of a Soviet imperium offered few attractions compared to Camel cigarettes, nylon stockings, and the Marshal Plan. But the radioactive rubble of a German city or two would have offered a powerful argument for the Communist parties of France and Italy, for British Labourites, and indeed for anyone of ordinary common sense and goodwill, that U.S. concern for Europe's welfare did not exclude willingness to incinerate in a particularly horrible fashion some tens of thousands of Europeans for political reasons. After 1945, Japanese propaganda in large part succeeded in making Hiroshima the defining event of the Pacific War. What might a far more powerful and sophisticated information/disinformation system have achieved with a European nuclear target? Perhaps Gorbachev's rhetorical vision of “Europe from the Ural Mountains to the Bay of Biscay” might have become a geopolitical reality a quarter-century earlier.
1 Quoted in postwar interrogation of Lieutenant General Hans Speidel, German Report Series, Foreign Military Studies, Mss. # B-720, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA.
2 These divisions were: Panzer Lehr, 2nd, 12th SS, 21st, and 116th Panzer. The 2nd SS “Das Reich” was en route from southern France and expected to reach Normandy by the morning of June 5.
3 Quoted in B.H. Liddell Hart (ed.), The Rommel Papers (New York: 1954), 476-77.