Word: counterattacks
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Since its first big counterattack before Moscow in 1941, the Shtab had plotted a dozen major and scores of minor offensives. From these a definite pattern had emerged. A drive's duration depended on weather, terrain, German defenses, human endurance, condition of roads, ability of the transport system to feed the offensive...
Hours too late, the German Command recovered: 18 dive-bombers came over to attack the invasion ships. But the beachhead was already secure, Allied patrols were halfway to Rome, tanks and Bren gun carriers were ashore, Allied airmen controlled the skies. If the Germans planned a strong counterattack, no hint of it had come in the first, crucial 48 hours. Instead, Berlin reported new Allied landings at Gaeta and Terracina, just behind the German defense lines...
...held back ten armored divisions, probably in the Minsk-Brest-Litovsk area; by now he has probably had to throw them against the Russian avalanche. In France, in addition to the 30-odd coastal-defense divisions, twelve divisions stand in the rear, supposedly between Amiens and Sedan, waiting to counterattack Allied forces landing in the west. These forces are formidable but they are not true reserves: they cannot be readily spared for duty elsewhere...
Hastily, the German Command threw tanks into a counterattack. The Russians were dislodged from a village they had already occupied, and driven back into the forest. But what they were meant to do, they had done; while the German attention was diverted, Russian infantrymen crossed the Dnieper, seized a bridgehead between the areas where the Red Army broke across the river in the last month. On to this foothold poured reinforcements of airborne and parachute troops...
Commanders in the field told Colonel Hamilton that training at home ought to stress night fighting. They said: "We mean to take possession at night. Then, let the enemy counterattack at daylight...