Success in Normandy –
Supply problem solution stuns Hitler and aides
Allies’ ‘secret weapon’ landed 14 divisions and supplies on beach in few weeks
By L. S. B. Shapiro, North American Newspaper Alliance
Somewhere in France –
The Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded because Hitler and the German General Staff honestly and sincerely believed it impossible. They had sound military reasons for believing it could never succeed.
The French coast along the narrow part of the channel, from Dunkerque to Dieppe, was too well fortified and too powerfully manned for an amphibious force to seize a lodgment area. So were the port areas of Le Havre, Cherbourg, Saint-Nazaire and Bordeaux.
There was only one other area pertinent to an invasion threat from Britain and this was the sandy strength of beach along the Seine Bay between the Orne River and the Carentan Peninsula. This was not so well fortified and rather indifferently manned, but – of course – a successful landing here was out of the question. This area contained no port even of minor importance.
‘Military fantasy’
Nothing more than a raid could be staged on this treacherous beach, the suggestion that many modern divisions with their immense impedimenta could be landed and supplied over this beach was a military fantasy. The venture would be suicidal.
Thus thought Hitler and his professional staff as represented by keen-minded Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt when they set about insulating Europe from Britain late in 1940.
Their thinking was valid – in 1940. In that year, any British staff officer seriously suggesting a full-scale invasion of the then-completely-unfortified Seine Bay beach would have been retired or committed to an asylum.
Large force landed
Yet in June 1944, the Allies landed a great assault force over the bare breaches of the Seine Bay. before the month’s end, 14 full divisions and their ancillary troops were landed and supplied – so completely that they were able to advance behind a weight of shells and tanks unprecedented in Western European warfare.
And all this was done without the use of a single port of substantial size. An overwhelming proportion of the millions of shells and food boxes and the thousands of tanks and guns were hauled over sandy beaches.
The solution of the supply problem – this was the sober and undramatic secret weapon of the second front, the great surprise by which the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington and London confounded Hitler and his generals.
Crux of problem solved
Supply – the most plebeian of all military duties – turned out to be the most pulsating factor in the great assault; more exciting than grease-painted Commandos, more essential than naval guns and crushing airpower.
Supply was the crux of the problem, the foundation stone on which was built the whole fabulous plan to storm at the heart of Hitler’s Fortress Europe.
Supply over beaches, the insoluble problem of 1940, had become entirely feasible in 1944. The Germans didn’t realize it. They persisted in their 1940 estimate of the problem and were caught victims of a stunning tactical surprise in 1944. This error cost Hitler his last lingering hope of victory or stalemate.
Three other factors
There were three other cardinal factors in the construction of our victory in Normandy. The first was the technical and numerical superiority of Allied weapons, many of them especially designed for carving a bridgehead out of an enemy-held coast.
The second was Gen. Montgomery’s brilliantly-conceived plan for the battle of the beaches and the prompt exploitation of D-Day success.
The third was the poor quality of the German coastal divisions which, combined with the sluggish reaction of Rommel’s command, provided us with unexpected opportunity for quick consolidation and subsequent advance.