German Navy improvements

I voted for the RN fighting for Malta whatever. Understand that Malta was a vital part of the UK’s efforts to interrupt supplies to N Africa and so defend the Suez canal and thus the UK’s whole middle east position. I am presuming this was understood at the time - but that’s an assumption others may challenge.

@aequitas-et-veritas

I think you overestimate Germany’s ability to not get fooled.

Germany was fooled several times-just look at what the Soviets did:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj7mfyEm_3zAhVeJzQIHWXCB54QFnoECAUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRussian_military_deception&usg=AOvVaw3hgbVBMWuU26iUG3iTRmQK

If you’re saying D-Day and the deception in Operation Bagration (and all the other times on the Eastern Front) was all due to betrayal, it should be well known.

In response to your questions, there are several clear answers:

Most German submarines were destroyed by now, and the rest would have been near Pas De Calais, where Germany expected the Allies to land.

And there were German naval units in Normandy-several torpedo boats, or E-boats, which sunk a Norwegian destroyer, the only German naval victory on D-Day. There were also these German naval assets at Normandy: 3 torpedo boats, 29 fast attack craft, and 72 minesweepers. If there truly was sabotage these would have disappeared as well, and the secret traitor would not have been uncovered anyway by the Nazis if we don’t even know his identity today.

The stripping of Luftwaffe and anti aircraft assets were probably done to reinforce the forces in the Defence Of The Reich campaign, after the Big Week which drove German aircraft numbers down to irreplaceable levels:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Week

As for the ordering of targeting devices from Normandy, it’s the same reason why Rommel left for his wife: Inaccurate German weather reports.

As for the two agents or spies your were talking about, one of them was a double agent (like Germany’s entire spy network in Britain), and simply bad luck and quarrelling at higher levels in the German command prevented them from using potentially important information from the other agent.

I cannot find evidence about the problems with the Panzer Lehr Division that you talked about, but I do believe you on this information.

The Allies were much stronger than thought-analysis shows that even if Germany was able to get the full plan from a dead body after the Exercise Tiger disaster (which involved an attack by Germans ships against troops preparing for D-Day), and Germany transferred all of the Fifth Panzer Army to the beaches, and Rommel stayed, the Allies could not have been repelled-shore bombardment and air power would have broken up panzer forces enough to prevent a collapse. The war would have simply lasted longer, or the Soviet would have conquered more of Germany.

Honestly, I find it quite interesting that you came up or mentioned this theory, as it makes for good discussion. I hope we have some great discussions about the German side of D-Day!

Finally, as for the original question, the Fifthteenth Army was eventually used at Normandy, where it was devastated as well as at the Falaise Pocket. The main problem with Operation Market Garden were the Allies not taking seriously Dutch resistance intelligence the fact that German panzer divisions were refitting right where the Allies were going to land. I think if the Fifthteenth Army was at Normandy on the first day, it might have been much harder for the Allies, as they would not have stablished as secured beachheads.

Here is a story of a mine discovered on the beach in New Zealand from the WWI German Raider Wolf.

http://www.3news.co.nz/Old-mine-discovered-on-West-Coast-beach/tabid/209/articleID/85131/Default.aspx

Hitler should have just stopped the war after May 1941 and just fight UK and take her colonies and use his pact with Stalin to co-capture the Middle-East and finish off India. After 10 years of consolidation of capturing most of Europe and finishing off UK, invade the Soviet Union with the full enjoyment of all the jet fighters, super heavy tanks and greater war making capacity.

So i guess invading Soviet Union was the worst mistake and not using them as true allies until you didn’t need them anymore and causing a two front war.

Hitler should break any military treaty with Japan and try to 5th column USA with sympathizers to keep US neutrality.

BUMP This is cool if you have not seen it yet.

@balungaloaf:

without US aid assistance via lend lease, without the allied strategic bombing campaign tying up much of the luftwaffe and anti air defenses, and without the threat of invasion keeping millions of german soldiers in europe, the soviets would have been smashed before they could ever set up a counter attack.  if moscow was taken, the people would give up on their communist overlords and capitulate.

You alluded to the pressure the U.S. and Britain put on Germany; and I fully agree that pressure was immense. Even in 1940–before the U.S. was technically at war–its industrial production created profound implications for the balance of power in Europe. With massive numbers of American aircraft being produced and sent to Britain, Germany had to either a) find a way to keep pace, industrially, with the U.S. and Britain combined, or b) watch its cities and people be destroyed by waves of British and American bombers. The invasion of the Soviet Union was largely precipitated by the desire to allow Germany to attain the raw materials and industrial capacity to achieve outcome A.

However, keeping pace with the production capacity of the U.S. and Britain also required Germany to invest heavily in its own production facilities. That investment diverted effort from what would have been immediately useful production against the Soviet Union. During 1942, the Soviets out-produced the Germans 3:1 or even 4:1 in all major land categories of production, and even out-produced the Germans 2:1 in planes.

Prior to launching Operation Barbarossa, the German military staff had incorrectly believed that the Soviet Army consisted of 200 divisions. Divisions which had fought very poorly in the Soviets’ 1940 invasion of Finland. In the spring of 1941, the German Army consisted of 150 divisions; 100 of which were used for the invasion of the Soviet Union. But in the months after the invasion, the Soviets were quickly able to expand the size of their army to about 600 divisions. Given the imbalance of sheer numbers, it is very unlikely Germany could have prevailed in a war against the Soviet Union even despite its military’s advantage on a man-for-man basis.

@Frontovik:

@shermantank28:

Read Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad, by far the best work on the subject

that is unbelievebly true
i have Berlin and D-day too
those books are very good and well-detailled

Yes, I have read all of them…all good reads

The real prize was the fleet at Toulon under Admiral Jean de Laborde. Even with Darlan’s ceding of his fleet to the Allies, Toulon had 77 available french ships.  Darlan tried to barter with his old rival to throw his lot in with his, but laborde remained silent over the topic  In occupying Vichy France after the African landings, the Germans stopped short of Toulon  demanding the surrender of the fleet.  Soon the German’s grew tired of waiting for a reply and moved in to take the fleet by force.  Quoted as “one of the greatest acts of self immolation in military history”, Laborde scuttled his fleet and sabatoged it before it could get into German hands. In all 3 battleships, seven cruisers, and thirty-two destroyers were lost amongst the fleet.  Eisenhower had mixed feelings, he was dismayed that the fleet was gone, but relieved the prize was not in German hands.