Success of D-Day

Reasons for the Success of D-Day can be broken down into multiple categories. The strategy of D-Day was a major part that led to the victory, but there were other factors that helped. There was an entire secret operation to try and deceive the Germans into thinking that the invasion would be somewhere else, and that it would be happening at a different time; this secret operation was called Operation Fortitude. Along with Operation Fortitude was another factor that led to the success of D-Day; this other factor was the actions of Hitler and the German High Command.
Background of D-Day
The invasion of Normandy during World War II was, and still is, the largest amphibious assault in history. It was when the Allies, consisting of the United States, Britain, Canada, and France, invaded northern France. France at the time was occupied by Nazi Germany. The invasion was meant to establish a foothold in Nazi-occupied Europe. There were a few reasons that a large-scale attack was needed from the allies. One reason for the large-scale attack was that “previous incursions into Nazi-occupied Europe, notably the disastrous raid on Dieppe in 1942, had convinced allied planners that multiple small-scale attacks were likely to be unsuccessful. It was clearly necessary to gain local superiority in order to hold on to a stretch of coastline”(“D-Day: Operation Overlord”). Another reason for the invasion was that the Russians needed the allies to be fighting on the western front of Germany so that Germany was fighting a two front war.
The Normandy invasion had many names, such as D-Day and Operation Overlord. Operation Overlord involved more than 150,000-armed men from the US, Britain, and Canada. There were also over 900 warships used, ranging from Pt boats to 26 battleships and heavy cruisers. The more amazing numbers were the 229 Land-Ship tanks and the 3,372 landing crafts. In southern England, 163 air bases supplied over 11,000 aircraft and 124,000 hospital beds for the predicted casualties and wounded soldiers. In order to soften the enemy defenses on the beaches of Normandy, allied planes dropped over 5,268 tons of bombs. In the end, the invasion was a success and allowed for the Allies to have a shoreline in Europe to land soldiers and supplies to fight the Germans and take back what had been lost.
Operation Fortitude
Operation Fortitude was an operation by the Allies in World War II to mislead and confuse the Germans. ‘Fortitude’ was the codename given to the decoy (or disinformation) mission mounted by the Allies to deceive the Germans about the date and the place of the landings. The operation had many different parts to it, such as the creation of a fake army, false information sent out, and a false invasion. Operation Fortitude was divided into two parts, North and South, and it was a main reason for the success of D-Day.

Between the two parts of Operation Fortitude, Fortitude North was less important than Fortitude South, but it was still vital to the operation as a whole. Fortitude North was designed to make the Germans believe that an Anglo-American invasion of Norway was planned, in cooperation with a Soviet offensive designed to knock Finland out of the Axis camp and effect a link-up. The main intent of Fortitude North was to fool the Germans into thinking a Norwegian invasion would take place prior to an invasion in France, so that the Germans would then shift badly needed divisions from the Normandy area to Norway or at least have them in transit. By most of the German Divisions not being in Normandy, they would not be able to take part in the D-Day battle. The result of Fortitude North in the end was not what Allied leaders wanted, but it did cause confusion with the German High Command and Hitler.

Although Fortitude North did not yield the results that were expected, Fortitude South made up for it. Fortitude South was even more critical. Knowing that the Allied build-up in southern England could not be kept hidden, the British and the Americans planned to deceive the Germans as to the true objective, Normandy. Instead, misdirection by several means would fool them into thinking Calais,France was the true objective. Normandy was to be seen as a feint to draw German forces out of their elaborate defenses at Calais, weakening them for the real Allied blow.” (Pike) The Allies wanted to make Normandy look like the diversion and Calais look like the real landing site. The Germans believed Normandy to be a diversion, and therefore did not send more troops to the area. Instead, they moved more troops and tank divisions to Calais, France. If the Germans had thought that Normandy was not a diversion, they would have most likely sent troop and tank divisions to Normandy instead of Calais.
For Fortitude South, “the first step was to ‘leak’ plans of the invasion of Calais. This was done through the British secret services, as they had turned or co-opted many of the spies the Germans relied upon for information about England. Leaks through neutral diplomats with Axis sympathies also helped give the Germans the impression that Calais was the focus of the Allied strategy in the West” (Barbier). This leaking of information was the most important part of Fortitude South. The Germans took the bait and believed the false messages coming out of England. The Engineering Science and Education Journal notes that for the Germans to really believe the information of a “fake” invasion, they needed evidence to confirm it. The allies, therefore, created a “fake” army in southeast England; this operation was a part of Fortitude South, but was called Operation Quicksilver. Quicksilver made full use of visual deception and misdirection, the deployment of dummy landing craft, aircraft, and paratroops, fake lighting schemes, radio deception, sonic devices, and ultimately a whole fictitious army group. With the fake army, the allies wanted to make the Germans believe that an invasion was to take place four weeks after the true Normandy invasion (Burns). Overall, Fortitude South was an essential part and was a main reason for the success of D-Day.
Hitler's Actions
The main objective of Operation Fortitude was to trick the Germans and for them to make decisions based on false information; these decisions by the Germans led to the success of D-Day. “Long after June 6th, Hitler remained convinced that the Normandy Landings were a diversionary tactic to induce him to move his troops away from Calais, so that a decisive attack could then be launched there” (“Operation "Fortitude”). Because Hitler thought that Normandy was a secondary attack, he kept his best units in Calais, were he thought the main invasion would occur. The Germans also believed, from false intelligence, “that the allies would need a sea port in order to establish themselves on the continent. Hitler did not realize that the Allied force would bring their own artificial docks with them, termed ‘mulberries'” (DeVault). Because the Germans thought that the allies needed a sea port, they were even more convinced that an invasion in Normandy was not going to happen or would not be the main invasion.

“When the invasion came at Normandy, German resistance was stiff, but there was no counter-attack by reserve panzer tank forces. These were being held in preparation for the ‘real’ invasion at Calais. The German High Command remained transfixed by the First U.S. Army Group and the image of Patton wading ashore with his troops at Calais ” (Laurenceau). Because the Germans thought the Normandy landing was a diversion, “they chose to keep in alert 150,000 men of the fifteenth army in the Pas-de-Calais and decided not to send combat troops in Normandy from this region. Operation Fortitude was a clear success, so much so that the Germans had engaged the fifteenth army only on August 1944” (Laurenceau). The allies did not encounter the reserves that were held back for two months after D-Day. Hitler was really the one that “would not give Rommel permission to release the reserve forces for an attack on the beachheads, preferring to hold those forces in reserve for the assault he believed would begin soon further up the coast” (DeVault). The overall reason that D-Day was a success was the fact that the Germans held back their reserve forces and did not respond to the Normandy invasion fast enough.

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