Crazy battle I came up with

What if, in 1939, before the war, Germany decides to withdraw all surface forces (like the destroyers, cruisers, and pocket battleships), to the Baltic Sea, where they will do nothing until the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are combat ready. Hitler then orders the German surface fleet (this battle happens before the Norwegian campaign, or doesn’t happen at all) to engage the British near the Jutland peninsula, hoping to win an even bigger surface victory than at the Battle Of Jutland in World War 1 (many far right Germans celebrated the Battle Of Jutland and the Battle Of Tannenberg as a victory to forget World War 1). Let’s say the German and Allied fleets fought to the death, and the German sailors were willing to sail into such a battle.

How detrimental would this have been for the German war effort? How would the war have changed?

The Battle of Britain….

@aequitas-et-veritas

I think you overestimate Germany’s ability to not get fooled.

Germany was fooled several times-just look at what the Soviets did:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj7mfyEm_3zAhVeJzQIHWXCB54QFnoECAUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRussian_military_deception&usg=AOvVaw3hgbVBMWuU26iUG3iTRmQK

If you’re saying D-Day and the deception in Operation Bagration (and all the other times on the Eastern Front) was all due to betrayal, it should be well known.

In response to your questions, there are several clear answers:

Most German submarines were destroyed by now, and the rest would have been near Pas De Calais, where Germany expected the Allies to land.

And there were German naval units in Normandy-several torpedo boats, or E-boats, which sunk a Norwegian destroyer, the only German naval victory on D-Day. There were also these German naval assets at Normandy: 3 torpedo boats, 29 fast attack craft, and 72 minesweepers. If there truly was sabotage these would have disappeared as well, and the secret traitor would not have been uncovered anyway by the Nazis if we don’t even know his identity today.

The stripping of Luftwaffe and anti aircraft assets were probably done to reinforce the forces in the Defence Of The Reich campaign, after the Big Week which drove German aircraft numbers down to irreplaceable levels:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Week

As for the ordering of targeting devices from Normandy, it’s the same reason why Rommel left for his wife: Inaccurate German weather reports.

As for the two agents or spies your were talking about, one of them was a double agent (like Germany’s entire spy network in Britain), and simply bad luck and quarrelling at higher levels in the German command prevented them from using potentially important information from the other agent.

I cannot find evidence about the problems with the Panzer Lehr Division that you talked about, but I do believe you on this information.

The Allies were much stronger than thought-analysis shows that even if Germany was able to get the full plan from a dead body after the Exercise Tiger disaster (which involved an attack by Germans ships against troops preparing for D-Day), and Germany transferred all of the Fifth Panzer Army to the beaches, and Rommel stayed, the Allies could not have been repelled-shore bombardment and air power would have broken up panzer forces enough to prevent a collapse. The war would have simply lasted longer, or the Soviet would have conquered more of Germany.

Honestly, I find it quite interesting that you came up or mentioned this theory, as it makes for good discussion. I hope we have some great discussions about the German side of D-Day!

Finally, as for the original question, the Fifthteenth Army was eventually used at Normandy, where it was devastated as well as at the Falaise Pocket. The main problem with Operation Market Garden were the Allies not taking seriously Dutch resistance intelligence the fact that German panzer divisions were refitting right where the Allies were going to land. I think if the Fifthteenth Army was at Normandy on the first day, it might have been much harder for the Allies, as they would not have stablished as secured beachheads.

if germany blew up the radar sites uk would not have been able to scramble their fighters to the exact spot needed to stop the german squadrons, thus germany would have been able to better bomb the airfields and airplane factories.

the only reason they started bombing cities willy-nilly, was one of their bombers accidently bombed a city, and uk responded by bombing a german city and that escalated the city bombing war on both sides.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        if germany stuck with its plan, even with uk radar functioning, they would have destroyed the airfileds and would have thus dominated the sky.  :evil:

@Battlingmaxo:

Try Stalingrad, by Anthony Beevor….one of the best works on the subject (Penguin Books)

excellent book, i read it in a few stops at barns and noble.  i loved doing that, just read books over time there.

Imperious Leader nailed the last comment.

Japan entered the War with the West with 51 Army Divisions; however 27 where already in use in China. Thirteen of the remaining divisions were facing the Red Army. Japan was willing to head to war with the Allies with ten to eleven availiable divisions!

Japan would quickly start recruiting from it’s 73 million population, but Japan kept the same habit of attacking the Allies with smaller forces.

The Winter War is an amazing tale of bravery on the Finns’ part.

I learned that lesson the hard way.  :-P