‘The events of D-Day in June 1944 were a masterpiece of the play of chance in battle at every level. The greatest single assault in all history was also the most thoroughly and carefully planned. Almost everything that was humanly possible to do, was done. The planners wanted to drive chance into its shadows and give it small scope for action, but chance emerged in the most dramatic way to hold the battle in balance. Chance gave its gifts equally to both sides. To the Allies it drew the Germans’ finest commander, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, to his home in Germany for his wife’s birthday, the very day of the invasion. He was to be absent when his presence was needed the most. To the Germans chance threw the cloak of invisibility over the movement of the high quality 352nd Infantry Division to the defenses of Omaha Beach days before the invasion. Chance had given the Germans a priceless opportunity to break the Allies strategic plan at Omaha Beach. The presence of the 352nd came within an eyelash of defeating the American landing. Had that happened, it would have ruined the entire strategy upon which the landings were based – the creation of a single large beachhead in which a critical mass of maneuver and logistics base could be established from which to break out and defeat the Germans in mobile warfare. But chance balanced her gifts. By putting the 352nd where it did, it placed victory within the German grasp. By keeping Rommel from the front, it deprived the Germans of the clarity and drive to close that grasp. The rest was left to the hard-fighting of the troops and the initiative of countless leaders.’ From: Peter G. Touras’s Disaster at D-Day, together with Dawn of D-Day and The Germany Army at D-Day will all be published in 2004 as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations, Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 127 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com