Friday, March 28, 2008
weather
I thought the lecture this week showed an interesting point that is often overlooked and that is the weather. The weather in Operation Overlord played an important role in the Allies securing the beaches on D-Day. One has to wonder how Rommel would have reacted if he was present to direct the battle from the beginning and if his troops where prepared could the Allies have succeeded? In addition, I thought the lecture shows that the Allies planned on the strategic level, which was different from the Germans. Their long term planning helped them win on D-Day because they thought of every possible problem and at least had some sort of solution before hand (i.e. Mulberry harbor) unlike their German counterparts in the invasion of Russia.
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2 comments:
Very true. It is often interesting how often the weather plays a crucial role in military operations, and history in general. And as for your other point, I think had Rommel been able to position his troops and the mobile reserve where he wanted, the D-Day invasion may very well have stalled before it could reach any ports for resupply. Then the weather and attrition would do the rest to force a withdrawal of the beachheads. I believe it was Eisenhower who noted that no matter how many millions of men were to follow, it was up to the first waves to get a place for those to land.
What was most interesting about the weather was that Eisenhower postponed according to the weather. In many historical cases it is lack of taking the weather into consideration that causes problems for people. He did in fact take the weather into consideration which many leaders and planners have forgotten to do in the past.
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