Word: rommels
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...once word came, the Germans were fatefully slow to respond. Hitler jealously controlled the armored regiments, and his aides were reluctant to wake him up before 9:30. Had the Luftwaffe been there to rain fire on the beaches, had the weather turned worse rather than better, had Rommel stayed on the scene or had Hitler sent his tanks, it is entirely conceivable that the whole landing force could have died on those beaches or been forced to turn back. As it was, at one point Lieut. General Omar Bradley, hearing of the carnage of Omaha Beach, said he feared...
...that we are tangled in a debate over how much manpower is necessary to achieve victory, it bears remembering that D-day was a day of overwhelming force. German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his fellow officers had 500,000 men stretched across 800 miles; many were middle-aged or conscripts from Eastern Europe. They would ultimately face 1 million men by July--not just Yanks and Brits but Canadian, French, Polish and Dutch troops swarming across the Channel from southern England, which had turned into a vast base163 new airfields, 2 million tons of supplies, 1,500 tanks...
...reflexes, using his strengths against him. The Germans were nothing if not logical and disciplined. They knew an invasion was coming and calculated when and where; the Allies needed to throw off those calculations. Do you hit the easiest point, Pas de Calais, only 27 miles from Dover, where Rommel and his men sat waiting? Allied bombers kept shelling the Calais area as though softening it for an invasion, even building dummy landing craft in southeastern England, rubber tanks, fake warehouses and barracks. In Operation Fortitude, Lieut. General George Patton commanded a fake Army group, sending fake messages about...
...June 6, that made no sense either, especially once God smiled by making the weather bad enough to convince Rommel and the Germans that no invasion was coming but good enough, during a crucial 36-hour window, to make it possible after all. It was raining sideways the day before, Eisenhower recalled, as the commanders listened to weather reports. Assured that the Allies would have to pass up this optimal alignment of tides and moon because of the impenetrable storm, Rommel got to slip home to celebrate his wife's birthday. Wars are won and lost over decisions...
Then, overnight it seemed, the G.I.s disappeared. They had gone to D-day to begin the liberation of Europe. It was a campaign that put American soldiers side by side with British, not always with happy results. Many of the British were veterans of the battles against Rommel in the Western Desert. They considered themselves hardened campaigners and thought the G.I.s amateurs. The Americans expended vast quantities of ammunition to gain ground and expected air support in every attack. They were also much more generously equipped than the British, regarded luxuries as necessities and seemed to have money to burn...