'Schnellboote, Strategy and the Defence of Festung Europa 1943-44'

This article argues that in the historiography of D-Day there has been a failure to analyze and understand the inability of German coastal forces to contest the invasion more effectively. The outcome of the naval battles off the Normandy coast was not the inevitable result of Allied material superiority. In the context of the broad development of German naval strategy since 1870, in the spring of 1943 the Kriegsmarine reached a moment of strategic choice. It could either continue to try and fight an oceanic tonnage war, or to pursue a strategy of coastal defense of the German empire in the west. There was a failure to recognize the importance of the moment on the part of the German Naval High Command, although Hitler certainly sensed it. There was thus a failure to accept, articulate, and imaginatively manage the strategy of coastal defense that might have given the German Army behind the beaches more of a chance on 6 June and the days thereafter. Much of this failure can be laid at the door of Admiral Dönitz, although in part it was also structural in terms of German war industry, designs in service, and the capacity of German boat/shipyards to respond to the 1943 building program. The Kriegsmarine had to contest the initial landings in Normandy with an inadequate number of conventional vessels of high quality. However, the performance of German coastal forces against the Allied invasion flotilla was more significant than has been recognized by historians, serving as an indicator of the greater successes that might have been achieved if a strategy of littoral defense had been adopted.