Emmanuel Gustin wrote:

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...

What then? The war in central Europe (ETO) could have gotten our full
resouces, D Day would have been a year earlier and the war would have
been
over a lot sooner, German troops in No. Africa and the MTO would have
simply
been isolated and would died on the vine. Why not?

It would have been playing into the German's hands. They had
a strong, experienced fighting force, but their industry was no
match for the growing power of the Allies; they were doomed
to lose a long war but might still be able to win a battle -- if it
came soon enough. The logical strategy for the Allied was to
use their position surrounding the axis forces and their numerical
strength to wound and wear down the beast; then to go in for the
kill. Throwing the inexperienced US Army on some West-European
beach, as Marshall would have wanted to do, would have given
the Germans their one single opportunity to actually win the war;
and they still had the strength to use it.

The American forces were still being built up when the plans
for 'Roundup', as the 1943 invasion was called, were being
discussed in the spring and summer of 1942. There wasn't
a single complete US division in Britain when Marshall and
Hopkins came to London with their invasion plan; the first
units of the 8th AF had not arrived yet. The U-boote were
still slaughtering the naval traffic right off the US coast and
German forces were still advancing in North Africa and
Russia. It was simply a bad time to propose an invasion for
the next year.

But preparations for the 1944 invasion were in fact started at
the end of 1942; the British General Morgan was appointed to
prepare the invasion plan, with the grand title of chief of staff
of the supreme commander (who of course had not been
appointed yet). Together with the joint chiefs of staff in
Washington, Morgan's team did their best -- which involved
planning the shipping of non-existent divisions in non-existent
ships to the enemy shore. Morgan's plan did not survive the
criticism of the commanders who had to execute it, and Overlord
was a much bigger operation, but the general can hardly be blamed
for that.

--
Emmanuel Gustin
Emmanuel.Gustin -rem@ve- skynet dot be
Flying Guns Page: http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/


Landing craft availability was always a problem. I don't
know if the US had the means to get enough into the ETO for
a 1943 attempt.

Joe


-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----