Brilliant tactics and strategies that led to D-Day success

On the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Plymouth columnist TOM MACKENZIE reflects on how an incredible deception worked on Hitler by the Allies played a crucial role in the success of this historic event

- TOM MACKENZI

THE most complicated and multifaceted project in human history was not the moon landing, but a seaborne invasion that took place 80 years ago. Today, June 6th, we commemorate the single most significant event of World War Two. Had D-Day not taken place, or even worse, been a failure, Russia’s advance on the eastern front would have been brought to an abrupt halt.

For D-Day, there was only a narrow window of opportunity – what with tide and weather – that had it not made it when it did, Hitler would have known that his ‘Atlantic Wall’ could not have been assaulted until the following year.

In that event, he would have felt free to withdraw massive forces from the western theatre and direct them to reinforce the eastern front. Had D-Day been activated and failed – a la the Dieppe Raid – he could have withdrawn even more forces and begun the process of throwing Stalin’s Red Army back, very possibly to its starting line, which would have left Hitler in control of almost all of European Russia. At that point, and contrary to what he had promised the Allies, he would almost certainly have sought a separate peace, so pulverised, depleted, and shorn of infrastructure was Russia.