Could D-Day have been in 1943?

[ganulv]

On the Western front I have not seen any scholarly work that suggests an invasion of NW Europe in 1943 was possible, mostly because the logistics would tend to say it wasn't. If the Mediterranean & N Africa theatre offences (Operations Torch, Husky and Avalanche) had not taken place than materiel for an invasion on a reduced scale would have been available, but Torch & Husky are also where the Allies learnt to conduct joint ops & the US Army learnt to fight & blooded its senior command element. Without this experience D-Day is likely to have been a very different tale.

Did experiences in the South Pacific campaigns contribute to the planning for the Normandy invasion in any significant way?

[Steve Blair]

Did experiences in the South Pacific campaigns contribute to the planning for the Normandy invasion in any significant way?

Not that I'm aware of, honestly. Quite a bit of the landing bombardment doctrine had been worked out (or at least drafted) before the war.

[AmericanPride]

I'd have to go back and re-read the history, but it's been my understanding that part of the delay for Western intervention was political. Was British strategic culture at the time opposed to direct confrontation with a contintental power (I'm thinking of the Napoleonic experience as well)?

Also - I think something like 80% of German casualties were suffered on the Eastern Front. That's a major indicator of who bears the most responsibility for defeating Germany (assuming the Clausewitzian desire of destroying the enemy's capability to fight holds true as the central purpose of military action). Looking at German losses in Barbarossa in 1941 alone, and Soviet mass mobilization, I think Germany lost that winter. Germany was not fully mobilized until late in the war, and while it had the personnel to cover its 1941 losses, even after fully mobilization they never quite reached the replacement rate they had in the early years.

What opportunity did Germany have in 1942 to press for Soviet capitulation that it did not have in 1941? It was the series of defeats in 1942-1943 that finally made the German leadership recognize the trap they were now in.

[Ulenspiegel]

@JMA

If you checked the losses during Kurks, you would find, that with 10.000 KIA and 40.000 WIA the German losses were not high for east front, the next months without any special operations showed even higher losses per month. Kursk showed that Germany had lost the ability to launch a meaningful operation in summer, however, it does not break the backbone of the German forces.

The real change between Kursk in 1943 and the destrcution of the Herresgruppe Mitte one year later was, that the Red Army fought at Kursk "only" with a 3 times higher number of armoured formations (2700 German tanks vs. 8000 Soviet tanks) while this ratio increased to 10 times at the beginning of Bagration (600 German tanks vs. 6000 Soviet tanks).

The east front was characterized by the fact that most formations on both sides were slow infantry divisions with soldiers who did not see a car/truck in years. The side which could launch an successful offensive had the chance to capture huge numbers of enemies that had no possibility to retreat.

On the operational level 1942 the Germans had the initiative, 1943 was more or less a draw, 1944 a clear defeat for the Germans. But not even in 1942 there was a real chance to achieve strategically decisive results.

The high attrition rate for tanks and trucks and the unability to maintain a useful motorization ratio compared to the Red Army were the strategic problem of the German Wehrmacht after December 1941.

[Firn]

The ratios mentioned by Ulenspiegel were indeed to a very large degree due to overall German inferiority in ressources and the diversion of arguably most of the technology- and capitalintensive to the 'Western' and Homefront. Very simplified the SU payed the price to defeat Nazi Germany mostly in blood and the Western allies mostly in industrial output and technology.

As Red Rat pointed out there is little to suggest that a D-Day, certainly not on it's 1944 scale would have been possible in 1943.