These past few days I've had the opportunity to visit the beaches of Normandy, where the famous D-Day landings took place on June 6, 1944. Although I've read almost everything written about this event, nothing compares to the experience of driving and walking from Sainte-Mère-Églisse and the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc to the Pegasus Bridge, north of Caen.Forty kilometres of beachfront and a total of eighty kilometres of coastline. The peaceful landscape invites to recall those days and imagine how the military movements unfolded in the following days, and to recreate the preparations for such a massive operation.
Now, from the Château de Colliers on the Loire, I'm organizing all the thoughts and notes I took on the ground to extract some lessons from the landings that can be applied to managing a corporation, a small business, politics, or our personal development. In my opinion, all human actions have six common components: motivation, goal setting, preparation, resource organization, execution, and adaptation to change. Following this line of reasoning, I have drawn some conclusions from the events that took place during those years.
1) Goal Setting. This is the first step, but also the most important. If we don't know what we are pursuing, we will surely fail. The goal must be ambitious but achievable if the appropriate steps are taken. If the goal doesn't require much effort, it doesn't have great value. The goal was to defeat Germany, and almost nothing, no matter how much conflict it might present to the Allies, could hinder achieving it. Staying firm in the objective is essential for success, and even during moments of hesitation, there were never any doubts about the continuation of the war.
2) Long-Term Action. The landing would not have been successful six months or a year earlier, as Stalin demanded to relieve pressure on the Eastern Front. Success required guaranteeing Allied superiority, as overwhelming as possible. The landings began to be planned in April 1943 by Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan. On July 15th, he presented his conclusions to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee; the decision was to land in Normandy. For a year, all actions were directed toward supporting this decision. A full year of daily bombing of western France, damaging its power grid, communications, bridges, and railways. On some occasions, tremendously destructive actions were necessary, causing thousands of French casualties, but the importance of the mission took precedence over other considerations. A year was spent building everything necessary and training the men for what they would encounter. The long-term effect of this action is evident both in the destruction of German capabilities and in the accumulation of assets by the Allies. In 1944, the Luftwaffe had 815 aircraft deployed in France, while the Allies had 11,000. By 1944, Germany had lost 3,000 pilots, and its fuel reserves were a third of what they had been the previous year. Allied pilots joined the front with an average of 350 flight hours, while the Germans had only 100. German factories were producing at an unprecedented rate, but there weren't enough personnel to operate so much aircraft. In other words, air superiority was completely Allied. As for naval superiority, essential for an amphibious landing, the Germans had 100 submarines, half the number they had the previous year, along with two cruisers and five destroyers. Facing them were a thousand surface combatants and submarines. From February to June, 200,000 tons of bombs, equivalent to fifteen Hiroshima atomic bombs, were dropped on France. Meanwhile, 1.5 million American soldiers, 4,126 ships and landing craft, 1,500 auxiliary and merchant vessels, 11,590 Allied aircraft, and a thousand tanks had been deployed in England. This was an unprecedented concentration of forces, which also had to be prepared with utmost secrecy. Displays of force should be reserved for the battlefield.
3) Planning. The decision to land in Normandy was the culmination of extensive analysis of tides, weather data, lunar phases, sand hardness, and enemy troop deployments. Lieutenant General Morgan describes this in "Overture to Overlord," published in 1950. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, it was decided that the landing would take place in Normandy on May 8, 1944. The obvious option was ruled out: the narrow Strait of Dover, which would have been a highway between England and the continent with a mere 34 kilometres of channel and a direct line to the heart of Germany half the distance of Normandy. But this was also the obvious choice for Germany, which concentrated all its still-significant forces there. Brittany was ruled out because air cover from the island was almost impossible due to the long distance, and the Cotentin Peninsula in Cherbourg, because the troops landed there would have been highly exposed to a German counterattack with no land escape route. The Netherlands was also ruled out because of its elevation below sea level, leaving them vulnerable to German-held dikes, and the Belgian coast was impassable due to its narrowness and strong currents. Normandy was the only option for landing a million men. A decisive decision is crucial for continued success.
4) Unified Command, Decentralized Execution. A multinational force that had barely fought together required a single supreme command to unite naval, air, and ground forces, and this was Eisenhower. Execution on the ground required a director of operations with experience fighting the Germans, Montgomery, and commanders of homogeneous zones who would execute their operations on their assigned beaches, fostering healthy competition among them. When the bulk of the operations were land-based and most of the personnel were American, Eisenhower regained operational command on the ground. The team is the key to success, and the Command is only concerned with keeping the Board of Directors or the politicians calm, as was the case here.
5) Decisive Action. Morgan's initial plan was analysed by those who carried it out, and they decided it was an analyst's plan –prudent and cautious–. Landing 60,000 men would minimize the risk of failure, but it would also guarantee it. When proper planning has been done, long-term planning has been implemented, and obstacles have been mitigated, it's time to focus all force on the objective; this is the only guarantee of success, something Patton would demonstrate in Operation Cobra and in the Ardennes.
6) Adaptation. The plan only worked for the first 48 hours, enough to secure the beachheads; unforeseen events always arise, and we must be prepared for them, as indeed happened. Between June 19 and 22, the worst storm in forty years unleashed its furthest blows. Six-meter waves destroyed the artificial harbours, nearly 800 vessels were lost –more than on D-Day– and the flow of logistical support was reduced by 50%, giving Germany a huge respite. This allowed them to deploy their divisions in Normandy while the Allied presence was still small. The determination to proceed was decisive. Before June 19, 500,000 men were already deployed; this number would reach one million by D+30. The Allies had to rethink their objectives and prepare to endure several weeks of hardship until air superiority could take hold. Even so, in July 1944, Germany still had 1.2 million men, 2,000 tanks, and 2,500 aircraft on the Western Front, undoubtedly far inferior in quality to those of 1941, but sufficient to thwart the landings. Undoubtedly, if that force had been available in Normandy on June 10th, the advance would have slowed considerably, and autumn would have had a significant delaying effect, perhaps of a year. Then, with the delicate balance between Stalin and Churchill, the surrounding conditions would have changed dramatically. That two-week window was Hitler's only opportunity, but his hesitation, after being absolutely certain that the battle would be won at Calais, caused him to lose precious time. By August, two months later, the balance had definitively tipped.
7) Information management. This was the key to success; in fact, it always is. The Allies had far more information on the ground than the Germans did. Germany was slow to react because its intelligence was tainted by Allied deception and because it lacked a fifth column in England. Without all the noise and the circus staged with Patton's fake army in North London, the Germans would have reached the same conclusion as Morgan, and everything would have changed.
8) The adoption of unified command. On September 1, 1944, Eisenhower assumed command of all operations, as planned. However, he still had to appease the British and French, who did not accept his role. Almost all the errors that resulted in tens of thousands of casualties after June 6 were a consequence of excessive leniency regarding political issues–perhaps necessary–, but detrimental to the objective and costly. Montgomery began with great hesitation in Normandy, and when he was relieved of command, he decided to be too bold. These errors were decisive in failing to close the Falaise Pocket, in not securing the crucial port of Antwerp until late 1944, and in launching American, British, and Polish airborne forces in Operation Market Garden against two Panzer divisions, ignoring French intelligence reports. The board of directors or the governments allowed the clash of egos to maintain a necessary unity, which nevertheless caused enormous damage to the Allied forces.
9) Evaluation of the errors. The main lesson of the operation was underestimating the German capacity for resistance. Even in 1945, the Nazi regime maintained its power over the population intact, and its laws were enforced with great discipline. We can never believe that victory is achieved until the enemy has been completely defeated, and even the loose ends take months to resolve. Germany had plenty of determination, but lacked the resources, and this was the key to its defeat. There is no operation without errors, and other campaigns will always come, so boasting about success without self-criticism is to sow the seeds of a future defeat.
10) Motivation. Any undertaking we embark on without motivation will hardly be victorious. It's not enough to win a war, a campaign, a contract, or an exam; we must know why we want to win it. We must be clear about the ethical values that motivate us to achieve the goal. Profits, revenue, winning a war, or passing a judgeship exam are all tools at the service of our beliefs. It's true that many people without principles obtain profits without moral values, but in their absence, they will never have the satisfaction the Allies felt in liberating a Europe subjected to inhuman tyranny. Without this motivation, they would hardly have won or even fought at all.
