Operation Overlord Failure

The United States believed that it had the economy and manpower to take on Germany head on in an early cross-Channel attack that would have taken place in 1943 or earlier, but this probably would have had devastating results. Matloff describes how America’s overconfidence (mainly due to lack of casualties and destruction the country sustained in World War I) led them to this way of thinking in the Second World War. Since the fall of 1940, the chief of naval operations, Admiral Stark, was convinced that a major ground operation was the key to defeating Germany (685). This sounds like a center of gravity approach in which the center, here, would be the complete annihilation of the German army. Had the United States launched a strike this early, German forces that would have been in North Africa, such as German Field Marshal Rommel’s panzer division, would have bolstered the troops in France and likely repel Allied forces out of the region. This would have caused enormous amounts of casualties on the Allied side and could have changed the face of the war early at Germany’s peak strength. Italian forces could have

Even General Eisenhower himself had a bad feeling about conducting the operation. Nevertheless, the switch from a peripheral strategy to one of targeting the center of gravity was a correct move for the Allies. One, Allied forces were much more prepared to carry out a cross-Channel attack than they were in 1943 because they now had more ships and troops to assault through northern France. Two, the German army was greatly weakened in their failed efforts to save Rommel in North Africa. Three, the United States and Great Britain had successfully come to realization that the center of gravity was Germany itself. If they could storm Berlin, the German government and command network would