Historian James Holland's New View of D-Day

Historian James Holland's New View of D-Day | History Extra Podcast - History Extra

"‘Should it have been earlier, as for example, Stalin had been agitating for some time?’

‘Yeah, I just don't think the Allies were ready in 1943. I mean, you know, Sicily was a massive operation. And there were very good reasons for going into North Africa before that. You know, America was so new to war. I mean, you know, when we look at the huge sort of material wealth of the Americans by 1944 it's easy to forget that back in 1940, they literally had nothing.

You know, Roosevelt in June 1940, you know, after the fall of France was staring at a US armed forces that were languishing behind in the world ratings, they were kind of 19th largest army at the start of the Second World War, had a tiny Air Corps, not even Air Force. You know, Navy was sort of okay.

But you know, there wasn't a single manufacturer of explosives in the United States of America in 1939, they had to build up from nothing. And that meant that not just a question of building up all the material, it's also kind of training people and learning the lessons and North Africa enabled them to get onto the ground, get into multi service, try service operations, test it, see what was going on, without having a particularly stiff opposition to start off with, although it's different once they got into Tunisia.

So there were very, very good reasons for going into North Africa. And that helps knock the Axis forces out of the entire North Africa which then is a stepping stone to freeing up the whole of the Mediterranean and getting into the soft flank of Europe, all of which are perfectly good reasons.’...

‘You often hear this idea that the German defenders, were these elite soldiers far superior to the Allied troops, do you think that holds much truth?’

‘No. I think it’s absolute nonsense. If you have a sort of, you know, a straight line as your kind of sort of average, not bad division, I think American and British divisions sort of, you know, creepy beside that line. Whereas I think the German ones, it's much more exaggerated. The kind of, you know, the poor divisions are really poor, the better divisions are really good, but I mean, you know, probably the best division in the whole of the German Armed Forces is the Panzer Lehr... incredibly well equipped. It's incredibly well led. It’s full of really highly experienced officers and NCOs. And this is the kind of, you know, the shining beacon of what German militarism can be.

And yet when they come up against the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry and the Durham light infantry, when they arrive at the front in the sort of ninth 10th 11th of June, they get absolutely nowhere. You know, so the disparity is not that great. You know, if they were any good they would have been able to break through a kind of what is effectively a TA division and a regional regiment of the line, and yet they don't, they don't make any headway at all. So I think it's pretty massively exaggerated.

I just think we're all kind of a bit dazzled by tactical chutzpah. But you know, this idea that all German troops are brilliant is just nonsense. What the Germans have is discipline, because if you don't do what you're told you're going to get executed. And we don't have that of course in the Allied forces, but that doesn't mean to say they're well trained or they’re superior. And, you know, yes, it is true that, you know, officers in the first part of war, you know, what you had to do was earn your stripes, to become an NCO. And then eventually you'll be sent to Creek school, all that's gone by the kind of middle of 1942. You know, people are just been promoted in the field… they're brought up into a militaristic state, they do the Hitler Youth. They do, their kind of Labor Corps, and then they get put into the front. They're already imbued with a sense of discipline that is not there in in the conscript troops of the Western democracies.

But in actual fact, the vast majority of Allied troops are considerably better and longer trained than any of the Germans by 1944. I mean, there isn't a single soldier on D day who has been training for at least two years. And there's plenty of German troops where who've only been in the front line for a matter of weeks. The troops that are defending the crust, the actual Atlantic Wall are actually on the coast, are among the very worst. You know, they’re in static divisions, they’ve got no equipment, they're under resourced.

There's lots of Ost battalion troops, you know, basically pressed troops from the east who don't want to be there. You know, you're reaching the dregs of the very young or middle aged, who, because all the first flush of youth, young men have already been killed, you know on the Eastern Front and elsewhere in the war. This idea that they're on a kind of different pedestal to the Allies is just nonsense, is because they seem to be able to act swifter and with greater flexibility.

But that's because of the freedom of their material poverty. It is because they don't have very much so it's quite easy to organize them. When you're only organizing a handful of disparate troops you can click your fingers and they'll all be in line pretty quickly. You know, you haven't got to coordinate those operations with air power or naval power, but the Allies are very long tail heavy, they're fighting a big war, a big industrialized war. And that takes longer to organize. So it appears stodgy. But actual fact it's a much more effective way of fighting. And it is much more mindful of the lives of the young men of that of those particular nations"