Bill Fawcett - 100 Mistakes That Changed History

Complicating the scenario for the Germans even more was the question of where the Allied landing would be. For a range of reasons, which included excellent deceptions in England to the opinion that the V1 and V2 rockets were so effective that they had to be the Allies’ first target, Hitler and many of his generals were sure the real landing would be at the Pas-de-Calais. It also sat across the narrowest part of the Channel. There was even a lot of chatter and messages from Nazi spies who had turned into double agents that the landing at Normandy was really a diversion and no more than a large raid. Every effort was made to reinforce the defenses based on this mistaken assumption.

Because of the complicated command structure, the rivalry between the German field marshals, and the expectations of Hitler, when 75,000 British, Canadian, French, and American troops landed on four beaches, only the three panzer divisions under Rommel reacted. And he was proven correct about one thing. Even the nearby panzers had problems moving short distances by day due to attacks by the Allied airplanes. And the four panzer divisions commanded by von Rundstedt? They sat and waited. Not just for Hitler to wake up in the morning and approve an order to move, but for Hitler to wake up and realize Normandy was the real landing. Then when the tanks of OKW reserve finally began to move toward the fighting, they soon found out just how much Rommel had been correct. Harassment by the Allied air forces slowed or simply prevented them from moving at all during daylight. More than half the German panzers took no part in the fighting during the first and most vulnerable days of the landing.

Hitler made the mistake of splitting the best weapon Germany had to meet the Allied invasion with: its armored units. By doing so, he ensured they could not all join in a truly decisive counterattack. Then because of Hitler’s mercurial nature and his holding on to the belief that the real Allied invasion was still going to be at Pas-de-Calais, there was a delay in committing more than half of his panzer divisions until it was too late. By the time they arrived, the landings were a success, and Germany’s defeat in France almost assured.

On D-Day in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the first wave that landed on Juno Beach suffered 50 percent casualties. On Utah Beach, things were just as bad. The assault went so badly on Omaha Beach that General Omar Bradley almost pulled the troops back off when they bogged down with massive casualties only a few yards onto the sand of the beach. At any one of these beaches, the addition of a panzer division to the initial defense might well have wiped out or driven off the landing. If each beach had one additional division, the entire invasion would have been in shambles. With only two beachheads left, the flanks of both would have been open to the very type of attack the panzers excelled at. In addition, if the fourth reserve panzer division had been in the area where the paratroopers landed, this would have meant their total destruction.

With intense naval bombardment and massive air support, the Allied armies might well have gained and expanded their five D-Day beachheads. If Eisenhower had been willing to endure the casualties, there would have been enough men waiting offshore to reinforce what beaches were held, even in the face of momentous losses. D-Day most likely still would have succeeded, but only at a terrible cost in lives. The loss might have been so great that the breakout and conquest of France might well have been delayed by weeks or longer. So by personality, purposely muddled command, and a decision made as a compromise, Hitler himself made the key mistakes that guaranteed the success of the Normandy D-Day landing.

You can talk about what battlefield mistakes Germany and Japan made that lost those nations World War II. Taking an overall strategic view, both nations were basically overwhelmed. The Japanese lost because they simply could not compete with the industrial strength of the United States. No matter how valiantly Japan fought, going it alone against a nation that was launching one fleet carrier and at least another jeep carrier each month, they were going to lose. The Germans not only shared being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of manufacturing that poured out of the United States, Britain, and Russia but also were swamped by the manpower of their opponents. If it weren’t for a fundamental mistake—a tragic flaw, more accurately—by both of the Axis powers, this would not have been the case.

The problem was the irrational and self-destructive racism that was so heartily embraced by both nations. Racism first cost Germany much at home. Hitler and the Nazis did not need to bash the Jews to get elected in 1933. The fear of the communists and economic collapse gave them that victory. But Hitler and his henchmen were so sold on their Aryan superiority that they overlooked what they denied Germany by banishing or killing off that nation’s Jews. The group that contributed a higher percentage of volunteer soldiers than any other in World War I was the German Jews. Their patriotism was widely recognized during that war. In science and manufacturing, they had always contributed far beyond their numbers. Many of the world’s top scientists were German Jews. Almost all eventually fled the country. Among those who fled to the United States was Albert Einstein. Out of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, if the same percentage had instead been left alone and served in the Wehrmacht in World War II, this would have added at least ten more divisions of highly educated soldiers. Ten more divisions might have taken Moscow.

Nothing portrays the cost of Aryan racism more than footage of Nazi units “liberating” towns in Ukraine. The Soviet Union had conquered Ukraine. It was never part of Russia culturally or politically, and it is adamantly not today. Ukraine had actually been part of Germany itself for much of 1918, having been sold out by the Bolsheviks as part of their peace agreement with the kaiser. When Germany collapsed, Ukraine became an independent nation with a population equal to that of Poland. Eventually, through betrayal, Ukraine was absorbed by the Soviet Union. Always too independent and resistant to communism, Ukraine was punished by Stalin in every way he could manage. In the years before the second war, 9 million Ukrainians were killed by Stalin either directly or by consciously created famines. So when the Germans arrived, they were treated like lost brothers and liberators. Wehrmacht officers helped open churches and were feasted and flirted by the local population. These millions of people were ready to work for and fight for Germany. Within weeks, the SS began implementing secret orders for occupied Slavic territories. The order included the elimination of all Jews, leaders, priests, teachers, and military officers. The stated eventual goal of the SS plan was to depopulate large parts of Ukraine and enslave the survivors. The then-empty Ukraine was to be settled by German overlords.

A supportive Ukrainian population could have provided up to a million additional soldiers to fight against Russia. This would have replaced all the losses taken at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 to 1943. But because of the Aryan myth and the sheer sadism of the SS, three months after the Germans were welcomed in Ukraine, its forests were full of guerrillas. Instead of tying up tens of thousands of soldiers with occupation duties, Ukraine should have provided hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting alongside the Germans. The story was the same for the Balts, the White Russians, the Tartar, the Mongolian, and even the German Balts. They were a ready source of support and recruits for the manpower-poor German army, but the Nazi leadership could not get past their extreme racism and wasted this great potential asset. The final result was that as the formerly hated Soviets recaptured Ukraine and its neighbors, the surviving men often volunteered to join the ranks of the Red Army. German racism turned a literal army of peoples that hated the communists into their willing recruits.