1944 - RANKIN
Outline OVERLORD was finished and submitted to the British Chiefs of Staff for review before COSSAC got around to the third task: planning for occupation of the Continent in case of German collapse. RANKIN as the collapse operation was named, proved an exceptionally difficult concept to grasp and translate into a plan of action. In the first place it was not at all clear what collapse meant. SLEDGEHAMMER and ROUNDUP had both been made contingent on a kind of collapse and planners then attempted to define the concept. They came up with a rather vague notion of marked "deterioration of German morale," which seems not to have contemplated any failure of the Nazi government or any withdrawal of forces from the west. Rather it denoted a general weakening of the will to resist (as a result, of course, of a weakening of the means) - a nebulous idea at best. But nothing more specific was then needed. SLEDGEHAMMER and ROUNDUP both were planned by the British as operations involving the maximum available Allied forces as if to meet determined enemy opposition. Plans were then shelved pending some future intelligence estimate which might indicate an enemy situation sufficiently weak to give the attacks a reasonable chance of success.
OVERLORD, in contrast, was designed from the beginning as an operation with a specific target date, to go in against full enemy opposition. Such conditions as were laid down concerning maximum enemy resistance were conditions to be brought about by the Allies during the period of preparation. They were tactical rather than strategic conditions-that is, they affected only the limitation of the number of German troops that could be committed against the lodgment area; they did not include any general undermining of Germany's military or political potential. The possibility of such general deterioration, however, remained and, since OVERLORD was being prepared entirely without regard for it, it became necessary to make separate plans to take advantage of collapse when and if it occurred. General Morgan was instructed by the Combined Chiefs that his organization should provide for "the need to re-enter the Continent with all available forces at the shortest possible notice in the event of a sudden and unexpected collapse of German resistance. The aim would be to seize critical political and military centers in Germany in the shortest possible time."
The solution at last selected was to break up the concept of enemy collapse into three definite degrees of collapse and provide three corresponding courses of action for the Allies. The three conditions were case A, which supposed a substantial weakening of organized resistance in France and the Low Countries, case B, which assumed German withdrawal from the occupied countries, and case C, unconditional surrender and cessation of organized resistance in northwest Europe.
If the deterioration of German military power in the west was not accompanied by surrender or withdrawal, Allied action would depend on the relative strength of German and Anglo-American forces at any given date. Before January 1944, it was thought that no assault against organized resistance, however weakened, would be possible. In January and February a substantial weakening of the German forces might make possible a limited bridgehead operation. Since this date would find preparations for OVERLORD far advanced, the only feasible operation would be one that made use of these preparations. The RANKIN plan thus indicated a modification of OVERLORD to secure the Cotentin Peninsula if it became desirable to set the date forward to January or February. After 1 March a drastic reduction in German strength would permit a modified OVERLORD assault with substantially OVERLORD'S objectives.
Case A thus involved no special planning difficulty. The problem of following up a German withdrawal from France was more complicated. If such withdrawal was made, it would be done presumably with the idea of strengthening the German position. It could therefore be expected that the maximum obstacles would be put in the way of Allied occupation. If withdrawal was begun in the winter, Allied landing would have to wait for the evacuation of a major port, since beach maintenance in winter weather was impossible on the Channel coasts. The Germans seeking to establish a defensive position at the West Wall (the Siegfried Line) - the only position that would permit the necessary economy of troops-would start pulling out from the south and southwest. The first port to be vacated would be Bordeaux. But this was too far from where the Allies could be deployed against the Germans to be useful as a port of entry. The landing of substantial military forces could be begun only when Cherbourg was freed.
The conclusion was that German collapse as envisaged under cases A and B might permit the Allies to return to the Continent before May 1944 but that such collapse would not materially advance the time for decisive action. In short, the RANKIN A and B plans offered little military advantages and the grounds for considering them were chiefly that politically it might be necessary to press into the occupied countries as soon as the Nazi grip on them relaxed. As preparations for OVERLORD proceeded, the only RANKIN operation seriously considered was that under case C-total collapse accompanied by unconditional surrender. The plan here involved no purely military considerations, being a scheme for rapid occupation.
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