Questions About D-Day

This week is the eightieth anniversary of D-Day. It's time to take a closer look at the official version of D-Day, the Allied landing in northern France in 1944. I find that the standard story of D-Day is simply not believable.

The landings took place on the coast of Normandy on June 6. Such a massive amphibious landing was not expected to be easy, the Nazis were anticipating the landing but did not know exactly where it would come. The Allies had the advantage of overwhelming air superiority.

The traditional story is that the Allies went to great lengths to deceive the Nazis as to where the landings would come. A fake army was assembled in southern England opposite Calais to make the Nazis think that this is where the invasion would come, at the narrowest width of the English Channel. Radio traffic was arranged to make it look as if the center of Allied operations was opposite Calais. Known enemy agents were not arrested so that they could be fed disinformation that D-Day was to come at Calais.

But the landings were planned for Normandy, about 240 km or 150 miles southwest of Calais. The goal of the Allies was to give the soldiers who had landed at Normandy the maximum amount of time possible to bring in supplies and fortify their positions before the Nazis brought the full weight of their forces in a counterattack. The way to do this was to trick the Nazis into keeping the bulk of their forces around Calais, in anticipation that D-Day would come there.

Even after the landings at Normandy began, the Allies did what they could to deceive the Nazis into thinking that this attack was just a diversion, to get them to pull their forces away from Calais. The real landing was still to come at Calais. By the time the Nazis realized that the landings in Normandy was the real invasion, there would be no landings at Calais, the Allied soldiers had had the maximum amount of time to offload supplies and to fortify their position before the Nazis could counterattack.

The official story is that the invasion had not been planned for June 6, but for some weeks later when the weather became better. The reason that the Allies were so concerned about weather is that their advantage was overwhelming air superiority. But to make use of this advantage required good weather. Poor weather would thus favor the Nazis.

The decision was made to take advantage of a one-day period of good weather that was coming, in the midst of otherwise poor weather. That is why D-Day was on June 6.

With all due respect to the "Greatest Generation" that fought the war, this explanation is not remotely near believable.

Part of the official story is that the Nazi general in charge of opposing the D-Day landings, Erwin Rommel, was confident that the invasion would not be coming any time soon because "The Allies have always before attacked in good weather". The Nazis could relax. Many of the soldiers were on leave and top Nazi officers involved in the defense against D-Day were off at war games. Rommel himself was back home for his wife's birthday, which happened to be on June 6, and that is when the invasion came unexpectedly.

But let's consider Rommel's supposed observation that "the Allies had always before attacked in good weather". D-Day was to be the first large-scale combat in northern Europe since the tide of the war had turned and the Allies had been on the offensive. All of the combat between the two before that had been in north Africa and the Mediterranean, where sunny days are the rule rather than the exception.

It was clear that the Allies were waiting for summer weather to launch D-Day, so why would they let half the summer be gone by waiting for several more weeks. The autumn weather would be even worse for the side that was trying to use it's air superiority. Around June 6 actually was the ideal time to launch it.

The Nazis, of all people, had demonstrated that, in 1941, by feeling it necessary to invade Yugoslavia and Greece before invading the Soviet Union. They realized the importance of good weather, to make maximum use of their air superiority, but didn't get around to invading the Soviet Union until June 22. This did not leave them enough time to finish the Soviets before the severe winter set in, presuming that they could have done, that the Nazis were not prepared for, and which gave the Soviets a chance to recover.

The weather around the English Channel is simply unpredictable. The prevailing wind is from the west, stratus clouds come in off the ocean, and you get that light drizzly rain. Waiting for an extended period of nice weather while the summer is going by is just plain folly. The weather can quickly change from sunny to rainy and back to sunny again. Just launch the invasion when summer arrives, and deal with the weather as it comes. The reason that the Mediterranean is more sunny is that the prevailing wind is from the east.

Likewise, the story about the Allies waiting for the full moon and the tides to be right before launching the invasion just does not make sense. The side with air superiority, which in this case was the Allies, would be the ones to benefit from a full moon, so that pilots can see what is on the ground below them at night. An amphibious assault, which D-Day would be, is best done at high tide so that the soldiers will have less beach to cross while under enemy fire. But waiting for weeks until the moon is just right is letting the summer weather go by, knowing that the following autumn weather will generally be worse for the side with air superiority.

Also, the Nazis were well aware that Allied fliers would like a full moon, and that would be when they would most anticipate the attack to come. It would be better for the Allies to just launch D-Day before the full moon, to have more of an element of surprise. Besides the Allies who landed at D-Day would require just as much air support in the following days, when the Nazis would certainly counterattack, as they would during D-Day itself.

D-Day is actually a two-part story. The first part is the successful Allied landing. The second part is the so-called "Breakout". The Nazis brought all of the forces that they could spare to counter the Allied landings. For about six weeks after D-Day, there was a stalemate. The Nazi forces could not drive the invaders back into the sea, but they could stop them from advancing any further. Until the Allies managed to breakout of this stalemate, it was by no means certain that D-Day would be a success.

But after the Allies began to really advance into occupied France, the situation changed dramatically. The Nazis had already been fighting two full-scale wars at once, on the Eastern Front and in Italy, and were in retreat in both, now they had a third frontal war.

The next thing that happened, on July 20, was the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. A plan by many of his own officers to kill him with a bomb had already been in the works, but the attempt was not made until it seemed that, more than ever, the war was lost. That way, whoever took over after the assassination would likely have the support of the majority of the German population. If Hitler had been assassinated but the war still seemed winnable, he might have just been replaced by another of the top Nazis.

But the assassination attempt on Hitler did not succeed.

As it turned out, Rommel had been in on the plot to assassinate Hitler. He had been in hospital after being wounded when his staff car had been shot at by a plane. (Brits, Americans and, Canadians each claim that it was one of their planes that got Rommel and the truth has never been satisfactorily resolved).

The trouble was that Rommel was widely popular in Germany and it would certainly be damaging to morale to have him involved in this plot. Rommel was quietly arrested and, after being assured that his family would not in any way be punished, was given the opportunity to commit suicide. It was announced that he had died as a result from the wounds suffered in his staff car, and only after the war did the truth become known.

But let's consider the Nazi strategy at countering D-Day. If they did successfully repel the invasion, what would happen then? By this time, the Soviet advance from the east against the Nazis was unstoppable. If western Europe could not be liberated by the Allies, how long would it before it was conquered by the Soviets?

Since Rommel wanted to kill Hitler, but the attempt was not made until it became clear that the post-D-Day breakout was successful and the war looked less winnable than ever, that means that Rommel actually had quite a bit to gain by the Allies' success. In fact, maybe never before in history has a general had so much to potentially gain by the success of the enemies that he was opposing.

Rommel was in on the plot to assassinate Hitler, but was not a central figure in it. The plotters planned to make peace with the Allies and had it planned who of their number would be the leader of postwar Germany.

Rommel was actually well-respected by the Allies. As a general, he had an almost uncanny ability to predict what his enemies were likely to do next. The war in eastern north Africa, with Rommel and his Italian allies on one side, and the British and Commonwealth forces on the other side, had been a relatively "civilized" war, if any war can be so-described. They killed each other, of course, but the war, in complete contrast with the Eastern Front, was not unnecessarily barbaric. Rommel was considered by his Allied enemies as not really a Nazi, but simply a loyal soldier following orders.

Could it be that, if the assassination attempt on Hitler had succeeded, Rommel, with the support of the western Allies, would have stepped in as the leader of postwar Germany, making peace with the western Allies and joining with them in the Cold War with the Soviets, that many on both sides felt would likely begin as soon as this war ended which, it turns out, it did?

But first it was necessary to bring about the climate in Germany where the war was no longer winnable, and an alternative to the Nazis would be welcomed. For that, D-Day would have to succeed and Rommel, more than anyone else, was in a position to make that happen.

Could that be why, when D-Day came, many of Rommel's soldiers were on leave, many of his officers were away attending war games, and Rommel himself was back home for his wife's birthday? It was explained as "The Allies have always before attacked in good weather". So that the Allies had the maximum amount of time to offload supplies and to fortify their positions before the Nazis could get their forces together and counterattack.

Could that be why Rommel kept the bulk of his forces around Calais, even after the Allied landings began in Normandy? How could the fabled "Desert Fox" be so outwitted by the Allies? Could it be that he knew the landings were not going to come at Calais but felt that the best thing for his country was not to repel the Allied landings, but to be rid of Hitler and bring peace to his people, with him as their likely postwar leader?

I am not sure if he knew the landings would be at Normandy, the Allies may or may not have been willing to put that much trust in him. But I think it likely that there was communication between Rommel and the Allies, at some level, and he did what he could to let the landings succeed.

Making a deal with an enemy general is not as out of the ordinary as we might think. General Friedrich Von Paulus, the commander of the Nazis' Sixth Army who eventually surrendered at Stalingrad, actually later became a Communist himself. Then there was the mysterious flight, earlier in the war, of Rudolf Hess, the third-ranking Nazi, to Scotland. To this day, no one has been able to offer a satisfactory explanation for this flight. Then, of course, was the story of Ataturk, which we saw in the section of "Investigations", "The Real Story Of Gallipoli".

With the war over and Rommel dead, the few top Allied leaders who knew about whatever communication might have gone on between the two would have no reason to publicize it. Eisenhower would end up successfully campaigning to be U.S. president. Churchill would be voted out as prime minister almost as soon as the war had ended, but would make a successful comeback to another term as prime minister in the 1950s.

Both of these Allied heroes supposedly had thoroughly outwitted the fabled "Desert Fox", General Rommel, and that is why D-Day was a success. But what actually happened is that these two, together with Rommel, had outwitted Hitler. The planned replacement of Hitler with Rommel as the leader of a peaceful postwar Germany never came to be because the assassination attempt on Hitler did not succeed and Rommel was arrested by the Gestapo.