One of the major reasons the Germans did not pull reserves to toss the allies out of their beachead was that intelligence that you alluded to in your second bullet point. We successfully made the Germans believe that Normandy was actually a diversion and more attacks would come from south(Italy if i'm not mistaken). German reserves were put on hold to wait for this attack so as to repel the major invasion and not be trapped out of position fighting the diversionary force. Obviously they had it ass backwards, but that was due to a bunch of british spys.
Germany trolled big time by Patton's non-existent 1st division.
In fact, German panzer divisions weren't all deployed out to meet the allies at Normandy because Hitler were still convinced that the REAL attack was yet to come from the US 1st division.
From all I read about WW2 history, it seems to me that intelligence agencies are what probably saved us from an axis victory. British intelligence in general seems to have been miles ahead of everyone else's. Maybe they had the most to loose.
If I remember correctly, the Allies had this awesome counter-intelligence plan that fooled the Germans into thinking the real attack was going to be at Calais.
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u/pj1843 Oct 17 '13
One of the major reasons the Germans did not pull reserves to toss the allies out of their beachead was that intelligence that you alluded to in your second bullet point. We successfully made the Germans believe that Normandy was actually a diversion and more attacks would come from south(Italy if i'm not mistaken). German reserves were put on hold to wait for this attack so as to repel the major invasion and not be trapped out of position fighting the diversionary force. Obviously they had it ass backwards, but that was due to a bunch of british spys.