Expert: Michel Cahier - 4/2/2009

Question
QUESTION: Considering the huge loss of life in Italy, the experience gained by the United States in North Africa, and The United States arguing to go into France ASAP- wouldn't it have been a better plan to go into Normandy before the Italian campaign? I mean to not do so just because Britain didn't want to is not an answer considering the extent of loss of life. In your opinion.

ANSWER: Hello Matt

The campaign in Italy had several  goals :  1- to keep U.S. troops active in the European theater during 1943  2- to knock the Germans out of the war, or provide at least a major propaganda blow 3- to enable Allied naval forces, principally the Royal Navy, to completely dominate the Mediterranean Sea,  improving communications with Egypt, the Far East, the Middle East, and India. 4- to force the Germans to transfer troops from the Eastern Front to defend Italy and the entire southern coast of France, thus aiding the Soviets.

The Americans were not very favorable to the campaign but the Brits who had always an eye on the Middle East and India and on the control of the Mediterranean seas pushed  FDR into the campaign. As you said, the human cost was terrible but eventually the campaign took the Italians out of the war, allowed a landing in Provence and forced the German into a position of retreat and global defense.

Eventually I think there is another factor but  historians never really paid attention to it : it is very  likely that the Allies were a bit afraid of the  power and determination of the Germans to fight to the last man and they  thought that starting the invasion of Europe from Italy would be easier than from Normandy. It was an error as the Germans fought like demons and killed more Allied soldiers than we killed  Germans. Furthermore, the landing in North Africa in 1942 had one main goal : to prepare the invasion of Italy and it would have been silly to invade Algeria and Morocco and do not try from there to capitalize on the success of the invasion.
Best regards,
Michel



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I read Hitler was sleeping at the time of the Normandy invasion and they lost time organizing how they were going to use their panzer units. This was major good fortune for the allies. And, the beginning of the end of Hitler?

Answer
Yes Hitler was asleep because he never woke up before noon and nobody dared to wake him up in his HQ. Hitler used to go to bed very late and was very sick at the end of the war and totally full of drugs. I advise you to read the chapters on my site which are devoted to  his health and  you will see why the man had to sleep late. He was a wreck in 1944.
Furthermore Hitler never believed one second that the landing  would take place in Normandy and totally swallowed the Allies  propaganda about a landing in the region of Dieppe (North of France). His Generals were much more skeptical but when the landing did occur they were terrified not only to wake  him up at 6am but to show him that he had been wrong all along and that he was not the  great strategist  he thought he was since the invasion of France in 1940. It is only around noon when he actually got up that he was told the truth. Of course it  was a bit late to send the best Panzer divisions to Normandy and even then Hitler continued to believe that the Normandy landing was a coy and a trap to bring the  divisions out of the Dieppe region and that the real landing would take place later. Hitler was delusional since the beginning of the war, he has been delusional all his life and it is a tragedy that so  few people did not see it earlier. Still today you can find legions of delusional people who think that he was the great State man of all times....