Ukraine’s Offensive Faces Same Challenges As The WWII Normandy Fight

Somewhere, in Ukraine, Leopard 2 heavy battle tanks are heading to the front lines

Seventy-nine years ago, U.S, British and Canadian forces landed in German-occupied France, taking the first risky step towards liberating Western Europe. Today, as newly-trained Ukrainian units concentrate at their jumping-off points, readying for their own type of Operation Overlord, a much-anticipated attack on fortified Russian positions, the lessons from the epic landings remain relevant today.

Though the Allied landings of early June 1944 are largely viewed through rose-tinted glasses, accepted as a major victory, the push from Normandy was a tough, two-month slog, full of disappointments and challenges. This fact is lost to far too many casual observers, who believe Allied struggle in Normandy was largely confined to the beach, and while well-equipped U.S., British and Canadian troops took some heavy losses, they only needed a few hours to push through German beachfront fortifications to start the march into Germany.

If only Operation Overlord was that simple.

The bloody two-months long stalemate that followed the excitement of the initial landings has been forgotten. As the Germans, duped by Allied deception efforts, slowly realized the Normandy invasion was the primary effort, and gradually feed more and more reserves into the battle, the allies fell behind schedule. Facing heavy resistance, Allied forces struggled—and repeatedly failed—to break out of the beach areas and move from Normandy.

The tough stalemate in the French hedgerow country was only broken in late July, as the U.S. began Operation Cobra. In those two months, as allied armies underperformed in meeting inflated expectations, the armies suffered prohibitive losses for minor gains. The progress fomented resentment with the Allied command and sparked political second-guessing that threatened to complicate the ultimately successful assault on Germany.

Ukraine, relying on a loose cadre of like-minded but distant, relatively uncommitted allies, is far more vulnerable to delay-driven political backbiting. Ideally, Russia's fixed defenses will collapse as quickly as Germany's beachside "Atlantic Wall" fortifications, but, even if Ukraine faces a tough, bloody and slow start to their upcoming offensive, Ukraine can point out that their forces are still learning, and that the lessons the World War II allies learned in their Normandy stalemate were discomfiting but well worth the cost.

The forge of those two tough months in Normandy helped set the stage for the Allies’ successful liberation of France and subsequent sweep into Germany.

The 2 month Normandy struggle paid off—German troops surrender during the Operation Cobra breakout.

Today, the Ukraine battlefield has an eerie similarity to the Allies’ situation in mid-1944. Ukraine is facing a mass of Russian fortifications, staffed largely by poorly equipped, low-quality troops, and bolstered, in some places, by a Russian government promise to shoot anyone who retreats.

Ukraine, like the Allies in Normandy, are also just leaning the mysteries of combined arms, struggling to tie infantry, tanks, artillery and everything else on the battlefield together in a coordinated attack.

For fresh Allied units in Normandy, shortcomings in prebattle training and battlefield coordination were fatal. Ukraine will face similar challenges as they transfer Western schoolhouse knowledge to the battlefield, while they simultaneously try to retain the improvisational flair and doctrinal flexibility that saved Kyiv in early 2022.

Ukraine's green troops will make mistakes. After the D-Day landings, underprepared and green divisions were challenged by the complex tactics required to move beyond the beach zone. In early July, a month after the D-Day landings, one unready U.S. unit suffered 2,100 casualties to advance some 1,600 yards. According to author Max Hastings, in the first six weeks of action, the American 90th Infantry Division had to replace a staggering 150% of its officers and 100% of the Division's enlisted compliment.

Allied leaders in Normandy struggled to understand how identical units performed differently. Unit quality always varies, and Ukraine will, once it discovers which of its newly formed assault units are high-quality, disproportionately rely on their best-performing units again and again, pushing them to the breaking point. Some low-quality units will simply collapse and, rather than feed precious Ukrainian replacements into a failed unit, Ukrainian leaders will need to be decisive in reforging troubled outfits.

In Normandy, allied combat experience varied greatly. The same is true today. Some Ukrainian units in the upcoming assault will have fought together for more than a year. Others are newly formed, unbloodied by combat. The upcoming offensive will be their first experience with real battle, and nobody really knows how they will perform.

This array of experience levels can lead to complex motivational challenges. While most observers realize that inexperienced troops must learn how to survive through their own experiences or by observing the misfortunes of others, few realize that green, unbloodied troops don't like to move under fire.

Likewise, more combat-tested units in Ukraine may face motivational challenges of their own. After facing serious losses over the length of their service, Ukraine's experienced troops may be a bit resentful of their less-experienced counterparts, and less willing to press home attacks.

This challenge was on full display Normandy. The "Desert Rats" of the British 7th Armored Division, after conducting heroics in the North African desert campaign and landing in Sicily, their "veterans felt strongly they had done their share of fighting" and had "become wary and cunning in the reduction of risk." The focus of battle-tested units can inexorably shift towards surviving the fight rather than winning it.

Ukrainian leaders, too, are keenly aware of Ukraine's population challenges. Soviet-era stressors thinned Ukraine's ready pool of fighting-aged personnel, and, in a strategic sense, every battlefield loss is just another datapoint in what will be a massive demographic challenge going forward.

These factors can all lead up to an overly cautious approach and an overall lack of aggressiveness on the battlefield. At the outset, caution shifts the burden to artillery. Letting artillery do the work puts additional stress on the West's already fragile ammunition supply chain. Caution can also draw battles out, allowing Russia a chance to recapture the initiative.

The challenge of motivating troops to take on a stubborn opponent on terrain that—at least at the outset—favors the defender, rests with Ukraine's battlefield leaders. Again, like the fighters that fought and won in Normandy, they must negotiate the complex gulf between driving their troops toward superior battlefield performance and conserving troops. It's no easy task, and Ukraine may do well to remind outside observers, as they recoil from the battle ahead, that the West faced very similar challenges in their desperate fight to roll back Axis aggression and win World War II.