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77 Overlords Later...


Guest Lobo

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Guest Lobo

The Day of Days marks its 77th anniversary today.  

By this time in the day in Normandy---Utah is largely secure.  Omaha is still a clustercuss given the errant beach landings.  The Canadians are 2-3+ miles inland at Juno.  The Brits have taken Gold, but Sword proves to be a much more difficult challenge with German Panzer Divisions raising hell.  Glider and airborne reinforcements will resume in earnest shortly.  The Longest Day is far from over and the night will prove an unknown challenge.  Rommel is leaving his wife's birthday celebrations.  The Luftwaffe won't largely be called into the battle until the next day thinking this to be a diversion from the main invasion.  Thousands of Allied troops/sailors/airmen are already dead, with more to meet that fate overnight. 

By this time though, defensive positions are being taken in coastal towns, wounded are being evacuated, and the true purpose of the mission is beginning to show signs of fruition---to establish an armored highway on the beach by which to advance the largest supply chain of equipment and men that the world will ever know.  And it will take two months just to secure and build the infrastructure by which to accomplish that.  Several dozen Allied countries will move the equivalent of multiple corps, thousands of armored vehicles, and establish airfields...all which must be significant enough in scope and supply to sustain a continent-sized theater for another 11 months of deadly battle with Germany fighting like a wild animal backed in a corner, with nothing to lose. 

All of this was made possible because some teenagers from Canada, Great Britain, and the United States agreed to jump out of planes in the middle of the night over Nazi-occupied France.  And some of their friends agreed to run out of a landing craft on a beachhead straight into hell.  

With all due respect to the birth of Jesus, the first printing from the Guttenberg Press, and the 2006 Rose Bowl.  This was the biggest event in human history.  God bless all of them.

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6 hours ago, Parliament said:

How would the war have gone if Overlord had failed?

IDK... depends upon how the Krauts liked getting nuked.

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8 hours ago, Parliament said:

How would the war have gone if Overlord had failed?

Germans would have still had serious problems with oil supplies and manufacturing, and the Allied air warfare efforts would have still been ramping up, while Russia prepared to run a train on them.   We would have had complete air superiority in fairly short order, which means nukes being dropped on European soil.  Russians would have driven much farther west than they did.  

Edited by atomheartbevo
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14 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Germans would have still had serious problems with oil supplies and manufacturing, and the Allied air warfare efforts would have still been ramping up, while Russia prepared to run a train on them.   We would have had complete air superiority in fairly short order, which means nukes being dropped on European soil.  Russians would have driven much farther west than they did.  

Somehow, I rather doubt that it would have come to nukes.  I'm not sure we would have tolerated the collateral damage to western European roundeyes the way we did with little yellow men and women.  In addition to the implied racism, I don't believe we feared or could have generated the fear of complete fanaticism by Germans that we could for Japanese in the event of invasion of the homeland.

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5 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Somehow, I rather doubt that it would have come to nukes.  I'm not sure we would have tolerated the collateral damage to western European roundeyes the way we did with little yellow men and women.  In addition to the implied racism, I don't believe we feared or could have generated the fear of complete fanaticism by Germans that we could for Japanese in the event of invasion of the homeland.

I'm thinking more in terms of keeping the Soviets from overrunning all of continental Europe.   Think about what Europe would have looked like if the Soviets had liberated Paris and some of the other areas that we had.

Most German commanders were not as committed to themselves, all of their troops and the surrounding civilians dying for Hitler (otherwise we don't get the massive surrenders from the Germans we had at various points), versus the situation in Japan where the Emperor was basically a living god.  If the Allies couldn't easily get boots on the ground from the English Channel, it would have been mighty tempting to drop a nuke to force the hands of the German commanders and put the Soviets on alert to go no farther.

But even if D-Day fails, it wouldn't have taken to long for the Allies to have enough air and naval superiority to dominate an area around a port, do an airborne drop on said port, and then breakout there.

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Guest Lobo

Not excusing civilian casualties, but look Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Leeward cities.  With the sea/bays and less densely populated isles on their other jet stream sides.  Fallout could have been much, much worse.  Tell me where in the holy hell on Continental Europe, you can just drop two atomic bombs and not fuck everything for 500 miles to the East?  Berlin, Munich, Northern Italy, Prague, Warsaw, Amsterdam?  Where you do drop the weapons and not annihilate a third of Europe, and move right quick into a war with the Soviet Union since half their fucking army would be in the fallout zone?  

I don't know who I'm talking to, as usual.  

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6 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Not excusing civilian casualties, but look Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Leeward cities.  With the sea/bays and less densely populated isles on their other jet stream sides.  Fallout could have been much, much worse.  Tell me where in the holy hell on Continental Europe, you can just drop two atomic bombs and not fuck everything for 500 miles to the East?  Berlin, Munich, Northern Italy, Prague, Warsaw, Amsterdam?  Where you do drop the weapons and not annihilate a third of Europe, and move right quick into a war with the Soviet Union since half their fucking army would be in the fallout zone?  

I don't know who I'm talking to, as usual.  

No, it's a problem (and they could have used smaller yields), but I remember reading somewhere that the Western Allies were freaked out by the prospect of the Soviets making it to the English Channel/France.  In hindsight, given how they treated Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, etc.) and literally weaponized Eastern Europe against the US/UK/France/Canada/etc., it was a very well-founded fear.

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Guest Lobo

Yep, once the Battle of the Bulge was completed, and Vistula all but won for the Soviets...most of what follows in the next 3+ months is us and them dicking around for central/eastern European supremacy shortly after the war.  

"Why do they get to take Berlin?" 

"Because they lost 25 million men." 

"25 million men lost?  Then why are we so worried about fighting them next?"

"Because they're gonna have Berlin." 

"FUCK!" 
 

Edited by Lobo
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Eisenhower drafted a contingency letter for distribution if the invasions failed. 

eisenhower-failure-message.gif

https://www.military.com/history/what-if-d-day-failed-message-from-general-eisenhower.html

Eisenhower had alternative plans already in motion, including Operation Dragoon (which ended up becoming another successful landing in Europe). 

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/operation-dragoon-anglo-american-alliance

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