Engineers of Victory

by Paul Kennedy

  THE D-DAY INVASIONS, JUNE 6, 1944

  Five enormous and simultaneous amphibious operations are orchestrated by a brilliant single command structure.

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  Given all the difficulties of any amphibious landing, the Allies hoped to reduce the strength of the immediate German counterattack by convincing their foes that the invasion would take place elsewhere, or at least by making things so confused that the defending armies would be uncertain and split up across a very long front. To the British especially, strategic deception of the formidable German divisions was of the highest importance. Unable and unwilling to fight another Battle of the Somme, the British counted upon a stratagem that rested heavily upon diversion, confusion, indirect attacks, the recruitment of partisans, the use of airpower, faked intelligence, and the search for cracks in their enemy’s formidable defenses. It was a logical position for a small island nation to adopt, and a policy that seemed confirmed—despite some failures—in their successful deception warfare techniques in North Africa, Sicily, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The American military, while much more inclined psychologically to go straight at the Wehrmacht, was willing to play along. Hence Fortitude North and Fortitude South.

  The plan called Fortitude North reflected a Churchill dream and a Hitler phobia—that the Allies would come upon Germany from the north, with an invasion of Norway, a push toward Denmark, and a linking with the Soviets. On the map, it actually looked rather appealing. Logistically, as the British chiefs kept pointing out to the prime minister, it would be very tough. To the Americans it probably looked as much of an “indirect approach” to Berlin as a landing in Greece. Still, it was left as a possibility, and commando raids and RAF bomber attacks on German lookout posts and air bases along the Norwegian coastline kept up the deception. It greatly helped to pin down lots of German garrison troops (twelve divisions in Norway, six in Denmark) that could have been better employed elsewhere, so it was also worth creating a phony invasion army in northeast Scotland for a while. As D-Day got closer, Allied intelligence could tell that the Wehrmacht high command was increasingly doubtful that any major attack (or any attack at all) would occur in Scandinavia, so the deception techniques for Fortitude South were correspondingly increased.

  The story of the complex Allied efforts to persuade Hitler and the Wehrmacht high command that the chief assault would come in Pas-de-Calais is entangled in myths, realities, and testy counterfactual arguments. What is undoubted is that Fortitude South was elaborate and cunning, and assumed many forms. The few German agents in Britain who were turned (the “double-cross” agents) fed suitable information back to Berlin. Bombing raids, resistance activity, beach reconnaissance teams, and BBC transmissions, along with another whole panoply of tricks, were deployed. American and British theatrical backroom staff, disguise artists, and set designers joined the war effort. Tens of thousands of inflatable full-sized tanks and trucks were openly arrayed across fields near Kentish ports, even while a stupendously effective and total blackout was imposed across the counties of Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, and farther west, where the real invasion armies lay. German aerial reconnaissance of the western ports and camps was effectively blocked. A not very happy General Patton, with a recognizable radio sign, was temporarily dispatched to take command of this mythic army. Allied intelligence would always want to know Rommel’s location, so it was sensible to assume that the Germans would desire to know where the hyperaggressive Patton had been stationed.

  But how great a contribution to the D-Day victory did these deception measures make, as compared with the many other factors discussed here? It was considerable. Overestimating the number of Allied divisions bivouacked in Kent, the Wehrmacht kept no fewer than nineteen of its own divisions in the Pas-de-Calais region (four behind Dunkirk alone); by contrast, there were only eighteen divisions between the Seine and the Loire. Days after the Normandy landings, von Rundstedt and many other experienced generals still thought that those invasion forces, though growing in size each day, were a feint—the fact that they had occurred west of Caen was actually proof to them that the big onslaught would be near Calais. While releasing some German units to move forward to the beaches, the army high command held many more back; messages from double agents that the landings were a decoy caused Hitler and von Rundstedt to cancel an earlier order and send two divisions back to Pas-de-Calais as late as June 10. Before, during, and after the real landings RAF Lancasters flew up and down the Channel between Dover and Calais, dropping continuous sheets of “window,” while a fleet of small ships steamed back and forth below; what could that portend?

  The deception continued. As late as July 3, Hitler’s OKW chief Jodl told the Japanese naval attaché in Berlin that “Army Group Patton” was soon to lead eighteen infantry divisions, six armored divisions, and five airborne divisions across the Channel; this was, Jodl opined, “obvious,” an astounding misinterpretation. When the high command at last recognized (for some generals, it took until mid-July) that nothing was going to happen in the Narrow Seas, it was impossible to swing those critical divisions southward, partly because many of them were static units but chiefly because of the paralyzing effect of Allied tactical bombing of roads, railways, and bridges.34

  But the history of intelligence is rarely straightforward. In June 1944, it certainly was not the case of the blind defender against the all-seeing invader. The Wehrmacht had detailed knowledge of Allied landing techniques, the role of specialist beach-clearing teams, the strong emphasis upon airborne forces, the relocation of RAF and USAAF squadrons, and the southward rumble of more and more divisions from the Clyde landing-wharfs toward the Channel. In addition, having carefully studied the pattern of their enemies’ naval bombardments and initial infantry landings in Mediterranean operations, Rommel and his staff made sure that most of their fortified bunkers and pillboxes were sited obliquely to the beaches. Thus obscured from Allied naval bombardment, they were still able to cover a large expanse of the shore as enemy troops staggered out of the water. Yet what the Germans did not know was the most important intelligence piece of all: where would the Allies land, and when? They had reports of landing craft assembling in the Essex ports, but also in the harbors of Devon; they detected new American divisions setting up camp behind Portsmouth, yet others arriving (next to the dummy units) close to Folkestone. Although the key Wehrmacht intelligence officers sometimes exaggerated the Allied numbers, it is not difficult to feel for them when they were being repeatedly pressed to answer the critical question—Pas-de-Calais or Normandy?—especially as it was known that Rommel and von Rundstedt held contrary views.

  Allied intelligence about their German opponents was a mirror image of German intelligence about the Allies. To be sure, London wanted to know every detail regarding the Wehrmacht’s defenses, location of units, special obstacles, numbers of tanks, and so on. Given their absolute superiority of aerial photography in fine weather (an advantage the Abwehr and Luftwaffe could only lament), the flood of information from the French Resistance, and the almost total control through Ultra decrypts of German military and naval messages, it was relatively easy to achieve knowledge of the Wehrmacht’s defenses, location of units, special obstacles, numbers of tanks, and so on; they could also usually track the relocation of major army units. Being able to read the Japanese diplomatic and naval/military messages from Berlin to Tokyo also provided a general confirmation of German thinking. Yet, as the invading armies were to learn when hostilities commenced, the Germans could also create dummy bunkers, switch mobile coastal batteries from one cliff to another, and make rapid movements of tanks and trucks at night. Moreover, no simple counting of the enemy’s strength could answer the really important question: how hard would the defenders fight, even against heavy odds?

  Allied intelligence had one further massive advantage: its capacity to intercept and swiftly decode radio traffic between German commanders in the field and their headquarters. Just as th
e teams at Bletchley Park had gained much from reading messages between Doenitz and his U-boat captains when the tide turned in the Atlantic campaign, so did the code breakers gain valuable information from the surge in Wehrmacht traffic once the landings had taken place: who was reporting to whom, what orders were given out, what information about the strength and whereabouts of the Allied forces was communicated back to Army Group West, what indications there were that the deception techniques had worked. Decrypting even a quarter of this valuable data made a vast difference. It was important, therefore, that the German army relied such a lot upon emergency radio communications.35

  Having French Resistance networks on the ground was an additional bonus for the Allied planners. Not only was the Resistance a source of important intelligence about local German forces, but also the widespread acts of sabotage compelled the diversion of hundreds of thousands of troops to secondary military activities such as guarding railway lines, searching houses, and the like. And because different Resistance cells were sent different special messages from London during the BBC’s radio broadcasts, the Allies could add to the deception by markedly increasing the wireless traffic to the Pas-de-Calais area. Finally, of course, when the landings actually occurred, these small French units—equipped and trained by the Special Operations Executive—mounted damaging attacks upon bridges, roads, and, above all, telegraph poles and wires, forcing the Germans to make more use of radio signals.36 There was, of course, no German equivalent in Britain to offer corresponding distractions.

  All three of the above positive dimensions stand to the credit of the Western invaders. By contrast, Ramsay’s planners could claim no credit for the first of the two “just-didn’t-happen” aspects: the weather itself. The high tides, the storms coming out of the Atlantic, yet also the bouts of unusually placid weather that had so affected the outcomes of the cross-Channel invasions by Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, Henry V, the Spanish Armada, and William of Orange had not changed their nature; transporting a large number of men and equipment across those unpredictable waters and landing successfully on the other side always contained risk.

  So it was in early June 1944. There had been some fine days in late May, but by June 3–4 a large depression was sweeping in from the Atlantic. The meteorologists forecast low clouds, which would take away the air advantage, and rough seas, which would cause chaos on the beaches. On the fifth, miraculously, the storm abated a bit, the rains stopped, and a deeply torn Eisenhower gave the order to go (before retiring to write his letter). That night the enormous armada set out for France. Fortunately but understandably, this awful weather had caused the Germans to conclude that an invasion was not possible during the next few days; Rommel drove back to Germany for his wife’s birthday (June 6), and von Rundstedt’s headquarters in Paris dismissed warnings about coded BBC messages to the French Resistance that night as “foolish.”37 The six divisions of Army Group B, directly behind the landing area, received no alert signals at all.

  Thus the ever-fickle weather gave Eisenhower’s forces an absolutely crucial window of opportunity: by June 9 the artificial Mulberry harbors (to be discussed shortly) were in place and receiving enormous numbers of fresh troops, tanks, and trucks. Yet ten days later (the morning of the nineteenth, following a lovely calm day on the eighteenth), the whole Channel region was suddenly hit by one of the worst storms of the twentieth century, bringing all traffic to a halt, paralyzing aerial patrols and attacks, throwing eight hundred smaller craft onto the beaches, and eventually ripping apart the gigantic American Mulberry harbor off St. Laurent. The setback to the Allied timetable was colossal, and the boost to Rommel’s chances of a counterattack considerable, until the gale moved on. Then the waters calmed, Allied aerial surveillance was restored, and the massive trans-Channel traffic resumed. But it had been a tense experience. Had that storm come on, say, June 10, the Royal Navy’s Operation Neptune would have been a washed-out disaster, the Allied forces looking like beached crabs.

  The weather was a natural force, not to be controlled by man. The other negative element in allowing Overlord to succeed was due purely to human decision—or in this case indecision by the defenders. The German failure to sweep the first Allied landing units off the beaches was due not just to the latter’s clever deception techniques or heavy tactical airpower, though both were important. It was also due to an unusual indecisiveness among the Wehrmacht high command as to how best to respond to the inevitable Allied opening of the second front. Some of Germany’s most experienced generals, including many who had faced Allied invasions before, were seriously divided, each camp offering genuine military reasons. There was an additional “spoil” factor here, namely, Hitler’s own capacity to disrupt rational military-operational actions, either through his prejudice against tactical retreats or, as the war unfolded, through his increasingly drug-affected daily routine. General Guenther Blumentritt’s bitter observation that Germany was going to lose the war “weil der Fuehrer schlaeft” (while the Fuehrer sleeps)—a reference to Hitler’s not being disturbed on June 6 to authorize the release of the critical panzer reserve—was not the full story.38 When and in what strength should the Wehrmacht unleash its riposte to the amphibious assault, wherever it took place along France’s lengthy, difficult Atlantic shoreline?

  In the whole of France and the Low Countries, the Wehrmacht possessed fifty-eight divisions by the summer of 1944, a significant rise from a year earlier. But the majority of those were static divisions, dug into places that they could (and would) defend very well, but lacking the trucks or even horses to be moved swiftly to another position. The key elements, therefore, were the dozen or so panzer or panzer-grenadier divisions, each with the battle experience to destroy any equivalent unit on the Allied side. Rommel, appointed by Hitler in January 1944 to defend this front, came to advocate a forward deployment. Throwing his immense energies into the further massive fortification of the Atlantic Wall, he wanted, as a corollary of that, his German armor to crush the invaders just as they were moving out of their beachheads. To him, the first three days would be vital: he felt it was too risky to rely upon a later, calibrated response from a distance, since Allied airpower might stop all such blows in their tracks. Army against army, he was sure, the Germans would win; army against army plus massive airpower, they would lose.

  Much of the rest of the high command disagreed with Rommel’s strong “outer crust” approach (including some, ironically, who had thought him too bold and reckless in his earlier campaigns, and now judged him too cautious). They—including not just von Rundstedt but also tank commanders such as Guderian and Geyr von Schweppenburg—were more confident in the Wehrmacht’s tradition of launching massive and devastating counterattacks after an enemy’s operation began to slow; one supposes that Anzio was an encouragement here. They also didn’t like the idea of the panzer divisions being scattered along the coastline and so likely to be subjected to 15-inch warship shells and a very large number of 500-pound bombs from Marauders, Lancasters, and B-17s. Better to wait, they thought; let the invaders come in, and then drive them back to the wire-tangled beaches. Both arguments were about the threat from Allied firepower: would it be worse to take hits along the immediate shoreline from battleships or from an inland aerial offensive?

  Hitler’s compromise between his generals was the worst of all worlds: some mobile divisions to be allocated individually to the coastline, four to be held well back (and only released by direct order of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht—essentially, himself), and four sent to the south of France. Weak everywhere, strong nowhere—just the opposite of what his hero Frederick the Great had always recommended. Had von Schweppenburg’s four reserve armored divisions been positioned around St. Lô on June 6, right to the south of the Normandy beaches, they might well have pushed the American invaders and possibly also the British and Canadians farther to the east, back into the sea, under cloud-filled skies.

  The Anglo-American-Canadian invaders were, clearly, very
lucky. But they were also very smart. They were well orchestrated, they had command of the air and the sea, and they used deception and intelligence to a fine degree. In addition, they had both the weather and enemy indecisiveness on their side. But they also needed to be operationally competent, much more so than they had been in previous amphibious landings. And here, in the story of the assaults upon the Normandy shoreline, lay the second part of the challenge: getting up to 1 million men and 100,000 vehicles on and off the landing zones and then heading to Berlin.

  Answering the million-men-landing question explains the Allied planners’ choice of Normandy. Since Brittany was too far to the west and the Belgian/Dutch estuaries were too treacherous—and too close to a counterattack from Germany—the choice narrowed down to either the Pas-de-Calais region or Normandy, both of which could be given strong aerial coverage from English bases. While the German staffs were genuinely torn regarding each option, to the Allies a Normandy landing made more sense for several reasons: it was almost equidistant from all the large southern English and Welsh invasion ports, whereas a major landing near Calais would really pile up the successive waves of landing craft. Normandy gave space for Montgomery’s insistence on landing at five beaches, not the original three; it gave the Allied navies more room for maneuver than in the Narrows; and it offered a promising chance to send an army westward from Normandy into the Cotentin Peninsula, take Cherbourg, and create a major link from France back to the millions of men and masses of munitions that could sail directly from America. All that was needed was to seize a part of western Europe and then move east into Germany. But that was much easier said than done.