All in all there was a lot to be feared, both actual and imagined. The stakes were very high and all too real. The responsibilities of the role of the planners weighed heavily on their shoulders; theirs was a troubled duty, haunted by the prospect of getting it wrong. If D-Day were not to succeed, it would result in a lengthening of the war, with the stark reality of more lives lost, a continuance of Nazi tyranny in western Europe, and the continued potentially devastating effects of Hitler’s V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets – or ‘buzz-bombs’ and ‘doodlebugs’ as the British public called them. There was also his secret weapons programme; the jet-powered fighter prototype, the Messerschmitt Me 262 and the V-3, a multi-barrelled gun capable of firing 300 lb shells across the channel at the rate of one every six seconds, the so-called ‘London gun’.
The turning point of the war (after the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940) was the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942–February 1943) with the Soviet victory over the Germans demonstrating that the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, the ‘super race’, were not indestructible after all. Now the advancing Red Army was threatening the frontiers of Germany, and perhaps beyond, further westwards. Finally, there was the unthinkable prospect of the headway being made by German scientists in developing the atomic bomb. The answer to stopping this was the Allies opening the second front via the D-Day invasion of the northern coast of France, and it had to be successful.
***
Among those prominent in preparing the plan was Commander Rickard Charlie Donovan, Royal Navy, from Ballymore, Ferns, County Wexford. He was part of the Plans Division of those co-ordinating the services at Combined Operations, set up for the strategic and tactical planning for the reinvasion of Europe. In 1942, the chief of combined operations was Lord Louis Mountbatten (blown up by the Provisional IRA in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, in August 1979). It was a distinct and individual branch of the military that was to become a ‘fourth armed service’ in itself. Donovan was an exceptional staff officer in every way, and in December 1943 was promoted to Deputy Director of Combined Operations and in 1944 Senior Deputy Director. He was one of those on the ‘BIGOT’ list responsible for working out the detailed planning necessary for Operation Overlord.
Rickard Donovan was a former First World War submarine commander on one of a number of small, dangerous, cramped and unhealthy submarines (L7) attacking Turkish vessels in the Dardanelles. Leaving the Royal Navy after the war, he rejoined the service during the Second World War and became one of those immersed in designing D-Day. He was retained after the war to write the history of the Combined Operations (available in the Public Records Office, Kew Gardens and London). Decidedly Irish, he was awarded the CBE by the United Kingdom on 14 June 1945 and later the Legion of Merit by the USA. He died in 1952 at the relatively young age of fifty-four, having suffered from high blood pressure, ulcers and tuberculosis (TB). He never received any recognition or honour in Ireland for his contribution, at which he was always disappointed.
Identifying problems and planning to overcome them saw those in Combined Operations drawing the strings of purism and pragmatism together. Combining new technologies and innovations to tackle the beach obstacles was just one such area of interest, one that was to bring Rickard Donovan in contact with at least two fellow Irishmen. One was Michael Morris (later Lord Killanin), a BIGOT-cleared staff officer in General Hobart’s unique 79th Armoured Division, a unit that developed ingenious innovations on specially converted armoured vehicles (a tank chassis, but complete with gun turret) customised to overcome the beach obstacles. Another was General Percy Hobart, who was in fact Irish – his father was from Dublin and his mother from County Tyrone. His widowed sister, Betty, married Monty (General Bernard Law Montgomery, himself) so they were actually brothers-in-law. Michael Morris had been born in London in 1914; his father was from Spiddal, County Galway, and was killed in action on 1 September 1914 as officer commanding with the Irish Guards at Villers-Cotterêts in France. Morris was originally commissioned into a Territorial Army Unit, the Queen’s Westminsters, in 1938 and he subsequently became part of the 30th Armoured Brigade as a major, Being part of the 79th Armoured Division, he was their brigade major present at Normandy on D-Day. For this wartime work he was awarded an MBE. Made Lord Killanin from the age of thirteen upon the death of his uncle, Michael Morris married (Mary) Sheila Cathcart Dunlop from Oughterard, County Galway, who was herself awarded an MBE for her work contributing towards breaking the famous German ‘Enigma’ code. Lord Killanin was later to become President of the International Olympic Committee 1972–80, the director of a number of Irish companies, and together with John Ford produced a number of notable movies. He died at his home in Dublin in 1999 and was buried following a bilingual mass in the family vault in Galway.
The initiation, design and development of D-Day had a necessary geopolitical strategic context to it and it was nested, nurtured and advanced incrementally and internationally between the USA, Britain and Russia, that is between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin respectively, over a number of years. An early, close and long-time influential friend and advisor to Winston Churchill, particularly on his becoming Prime Minister and in his prosecution of the war against Hitler, was Irishman Brendan Bracken. Born in Templemore, County Tipperary, he was the second son of Joseph Bracken, a builder and monumental mason, member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and one of seven founders of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA, Cumann Lúthchleas Gael). Brendan Bracken chose to play down his Irish background, and over time – through the overlapping of his successful newspaper publishing career and politics – he was to become part of the British establishment and a close friend and confidant of Winston Churchill, He was Churchill’s parliamentary secretary (1940) and Minister for Information (1941–5) and was subsequently elevated to the peerage as Viscount Bracken of Christchurch in 1952. Bracken played a key role behind the scenes in easing Anglo-American co-operation after the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack on 7 December 1941, when the USA had to be persuaded to concentrate initially on defeating the Nazis in Europe.
In January 1942, at the Anglo-American Conference in Washington (codenamed ‘Arcadia’), Churchill and his senior military staff suggested that should the USA pursue the Pacific campaign first against Japan, it might leave Germany alone to perhaps defeat Russia and then Britain, this resulting in both Japan and Germany forming an alliance to confront America all on its own. A year later, the Casablanca Conference (January 1943) saw Churchill and Roosevelt formally agree the ‘Germany First’ policy for a combined Anglo-American war effort in northwest Europe. As a result, a combined military planning cell was established in London to oversee detailed proposals for the invasion plan. Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan (British), with the title of Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC), was appointed with an initial staff of fifty officers from Britain, the USA and Canada to form the basis for Operation Overlord and deliberations began in March 1943. This staff was to grow to over 300 officers and 600 other ranks as they worked throughout the spring, summer and autumn of 1943.
***
‘There it is … it won’t work. I know it won’t work, but you’ll bloody well have to make it work’ (General Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff to Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan (COSSAC)). Strength was to ‘guarantee’ success, but getting this strength to shore demanded ships and there were not enough of them available. Getting ashore and staying ashore, forcing the invasion and making it stick, became the work of COSSAC. Looking at the ‘where to invade’ options, selecting one, then analysing the associated problems and providing the answers kept them busy throughout 1943. This parallel military strategic planning effort developed from the Political Strategic Progress and was to further escalate after the Tehran ‘Big Three’ meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at the end of 1943.
Once convinced, the Americans were anxious to invade France, and as soon as possible. The British wanted to first ‘tighten the ring around Germany’ with other theatres of involvement in Italy, the Balkans and in the Mediterranean, to limit the German ability to wage war (by bombing the industrial heartland) and also to rid themselves of the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat menace, before going ashore. The British effort to bring this appreciation to the Americans was aided considerably by General Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff from Colebrooke, County Fermanagh, the son of Sir Victor Brooke