If you've not read it, there is a great book called "D-day through German eyes". It's a transcript of interviews that were done in the 50's with Germans that were on the beach. I think they did one person per beach.

To a man they said they knew the war was as good as lost by the end of the day. The general sentiment was that there was no way to defeat an army that was so well equipped and in such abundance. What most people don't realize was that all during the war a large portion of the German army was still "horse drawn". They didn't have vehicles for everything like we did.

To your point, one of the Germans fell back to a strong hold in a manor. They started getting hammered by rocket fire from P-47's. The German thought, this will let up in a minute. They got hit by sortie after sortie for 4 solid hours. He knew at the point it was over for Germany.

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Posted by deltaland

Member since Mar 2011

92690 posts

Posted on 6/6/19 at 2:07 pm to eitek1

quote:
To a man they said they knew the war was as good as lost by the end of the day. The general sentiment was that there was no way to defeat an army that was so well equipped and in such abundance. What most people don't realize was that all during the war a large portion of the German army was still "horse drawn". They didn't have vehicles for everything like we did.

The Germans had panzers and U boats but otherwise were very far behind technologically. Usually the panzers had to stop and wait 2 days for those on horseback and on foot to catch up when invading a country.

Germany lacked the necessary ports, raw materials, and oil to ramp up a war machine from the onset. Their entire plan hinges on Blitzkrieg warfare which meant taking over weak nations quickly and decisively and using their resources to keep their war machine going and hopefully become technologically superior before Russia, Britain, and the US had time to overwhelm them.

Had Japan not attacked the US when they did, Germany likely would have succeeded because they had Britain on the ropes and would then have focused all manpower on the USSR. But alas they brought us into it, and the US had a huge population with every resource known to man and infrastructure not afftected by the war. Within months we had a war machine superior to Germany in every way and the rest was history

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Posted by udtiger

Over your left shoulder

Member since Nov 2006

102233 posts

Posted on 6/6/19 at 3:59 pm to eitek1

quote:
To your point, one of the Germans fell back to a strong hold in a manor. They started getting hammered by rocket fire from P-47's. The German thought, this will let up in a minute. They got hit by sortie after sortie for 4 solid hours. He knew at the point it was over for Germany.

Reminds me of this WWII joke:

A "green" sentry asks his CO how can he identify approaching troops in the dark or under low visibility conditions.

His CO answered:

You can identify an unknown force by firing one shot and judging the response. If the unknowns respond with precise, regimented rifle fire, they are British. If they respond with heavy machine gun fire, they are German. But if nothing happens for a few minutes, then your whole position gets leveled by artillery, they are American.

If they surrender, they're French.

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