The Airborne Assaults

This chapter focuses on the air assault. It begins with a review of the strategy and then details the actions of the three Allied elements (US 85th and 101st Divisions and the British 6th Division) and the responses of the Germans to these initial attacks. It will become clear that much of the plan went awry early on the morning of D-Day for the Allies as paratroopers and gliders landed in the wrong place and generated an array of Critical Problems for all concerned. Nevertheless the scattering of troops, while it inhibited the execution of Allied assaults on specific targets, also confused the German defenders. Most of the goals of the air assault were achieved on the day but a critical element in their achievement was the catastrophic failure of the German command system. Historically the German army had moved a long way from its authoritarian and hierarchical Prussian origins and developed a system of Auftragstaktik — mission control — that replaced Befehlstaktik — an uncompromising order. This inversion had been in response to Prussian defeats at the hands of Napoleon and the subsequent displacement of ‘direct orders’ by ‘mission goals’ had proved the basis for the success of the Blitzkriegs in Europe. However, Hitler’s increasing interventions in military decisions, especially from late 1941, undermined the value of Auftragstaktik and overlaid it with a new form of Befehlstaktik. This, as we shall see, effectively compromised the efforts of the German field commanders to respond to the first developments on D-Day and provided the Allies with enough time to establish a foothold on the French coast which proved to be the bridgehead to Berlin.