Australian Involvement In Overlord

In a recent thread it was mentioned that during the planning of Overlord it had been decided somewhere within Allied High Command that Australian forces would not be allowed to take part in the Normandy landings or any other part of the European campaign.

At that time I asked why this might be, and whether Australia had in fact ever offered Australian forces to Allied Command for the European campaign due to their involvement in the Pacific theatre. I never saw a response so I thought I'd try posting again.

I doubt that they were deliberately not allowed to take up in the landings. Their exclusion was simply because the Australian forces were preocuppied with another war half way round the world with the Japanese whom they regarded as the more important enemy.

Nevertheless, I'm guessing around 100 Australians participated in the Normandy invasion.

IIRC, some of the operators of the landing craft were Australians. An account by an Australian major states that there were about 8 to 10 Australian staff officers in General O'Connor's office.

And one officer, Henry Gullett was posted from the Pacific theatre to take part in the Normandy campaign.

See Henry Gullett, Not as a Duty Only, Melbourne Uni Press, 1976, page 131.

This question presents things out of chronological order. Australian history confirms that, after the loss of Singapore (with large Australian units) the Australian and British governments agreed Australian armed forces should be redeployed home from current campaigns (notably North Africa) that contributed nothing to the defence of Australia, now under threats that had not been foreseen. This was long before 'the planning of Overlord' began.

I beleive some Aussie troops remained in Europe but were commited to the Italian campaign. I know that New Zealand troops took part in the Italian campagin and suffered horribly at Cassino.

The 2 NZEF (New Zealand Expeditionary Force,) comprised mainly of the 2nd New Zealand Division, with some small attachments (I think) was initially deployed to Egypt, later went to Greece, and was evacuated to Crete when Greece fell. General Freyberg (sp?), the commanding general of 2nd division was the ranking officer on Crete, and as such commanded the garrison. After the Fall of Crete, the division was brought back to the Egypt area (They were in Egypt some of the time,and also in Lebanon or Palestine at one point) where they fought through the North african campaign. They then went on to the Invasion of Italy and continued thought the end of the war.

The New Zealand Government, in an agreement with the British military command, left 2 NZEF in Europe, and raised the 3rd Division for service in the Pacific Theater. The 3rd division served under MacArthur in the New Guinea campaigns. I have not made it through the rest of the histories yet to figure out where they went next.

I have found that all of the official and semi-official histories relating to the New Zealand contributions to the war are quite readable, much more so than some of the British ones.

Roman

All the large combat formations had been withdrawn, but if any smaller units remained behind I'd expect them to be in Italy.

The number of nationalities that fought in Italy is very large. Counting those that contributed a division or more, I can think of US, France, Britain, South Africa, New Zealand, Brazil, Poland and Italy off the top of my head on the Allied side. I'm not sure this is a complete list right now, and my apologies if I left out anybody's country.

Just a correction, Australians did participate in D-Day. Those who did directly were attached to various British units (mostly navy and landing craft operators), and often elisted with UK passports. Thus it's arguable as the exact numbers. When looking for sizable Australian units involved in D-Day this is restricted to RAAF participation (453 did Normandy beachhead defence, 455 anti-shipping on French coast, 456 Night air defence, 460, 463, 466, 467 were in Bomber Command, and 464 was part of the 2TAF) Other than that most Australian army units were fighting in Asia by D-day, and internally organised for jungle warfare. Even hypothectically if Japan surrendered before D-day, I suspect Australian divisions (as per most other Commonwealth ground forces) would have been withheld from Normandy, being just one more diversity for Allied commanders to cope with in co-ordinating an invasion. Thus I'd expect that this reported statement regarding exclusions from the ETO was implying a desire for 'unit interchanability' as was the then thinking (especially in the US Army Command). It doesn't imply they had less or more regard for utilising other nations forces, rather a need to have Government Issue soldiers (GIs) in replacable units of specified capabilities on the ground in Normandy. I'd estimate that British commanders such Montgomery however, would command without complaint Commonwealth forces in Europe just as he had done sucessfully in North Africa.

One other point to make is that yes, by D-Day, most of the Australian Army was in the SWPA, but this was not agreed to by Churchill, nor it with his best wishes. This first became evident when he attempted to withhold 6th Div AIF (returning from Nth Africa in 1942) for use in Burma despite the contrary wishes of the Australian Government to get them home to fight the Japanese in New Guinea. Given Churchill had ultimate control of the shipping that was moving these units an unhappy compromise was negotiated, where further divisions (7th & 9th) had delayed departure or where withheld for garrison duties until relieved. This left Australia, in January 1942 with less proportional defence than Britain had after Dunkirk to defend an invasion! This situation came about because Australia had forwarded most of it's volunteers and materials to Britain's defence. This encouraged some expectations of reciprocal assistance from Britain, arguably that never really materialised (till much later). Actually when asked for help in early 1942 Churchill responded with low priority lip service, and continued to delay Australians from retuning home to defend their own soil, even US Gen. MacArthur had to help push the request to return the 9th Div AIF. It was lucky that US felt otherwise and seriously assisted, while also resisting Churchill's desires to completely retire all American forces to the ETO.

Lastly, the threat of Japanese invasion had been forseen, at least by some in Australia. The extent of intelligence available continues to be argued, but despite this many placed false faith was placed on Singapore's cadre defences. Even at the time this matter was debatable so only those who specifically volunteered (AIF) went overseas, while a cadre of regulars were withheld in the AMF to later hold the line until reinforced.

Hope this enlightens, (with few accidental mistakes).

Cheers

The question was about 'Australian forces.' Australian people enlisted in or attached to British units do not coonstitute 'Australian forces.'

(Passports are thus not just irrelevant: Australian national passports may not have existed during WW2. Canada did not issue national passports until after WW2. Canadians traveling to Europe before then (other than as uniformed members of the armed forces) carried British passports.)

Discrepancy: Churchill did not like Australia's withdrawal of its army units, but there was in the end nothing he could do about it: that was the way the Commonwealth was organized (and Churchill did not like that either.) But he was in no position to 'disagree.'

And Canada: 1st Canadian Division in Sicily and on the Sangro River, Canadian I Corps later in the Liri Valley and Rimini-Ravenna; transferred to 21st AG in early 1945.

And India: 4th, 8th and 10th Indian Divisions on the Sangro, in the Liri Valley, and elsewhere.

And Morocco and Algeria: 2nd Moroccan and 3rd Algerian Divisions in the Cassino sector.

Also the Jewish Brigade from Palestine.

Yes, over 90,000 Canadians served in Italy and over 5,000 died there. Perhaps the most famous battle was Ortona in Christmas 1943. In fact, the CBC aired a special a few years ago in which the Canadian vets met with the German vets in Ortona. An interesting touch was that the documentary was presented by David Halton whose father Matthew Halton had covered the battle on radio. However, the Canadians also participated in the breakout from Cassino. One story is that they were ordered to halt just before reaching Rome so that the Americans could take it. General Clark IIRC supposedly threatened to fire on anybody who tried to take Rome before his troops could. Cracking the Gothic Line in 1944 is considered to be one of the greatest feats of the Canadian army during WWII and Bert Hoffmeister is considered to be one of the best Canadian generals, perhaps the greatest. Hoffmeister died within the last couple of years.

I Corps was transferred to NW Europe in Feb. 1945 and participated in the Holland campaign as part of the 1st Canadian Army.

Perhaps the most comprehensive book from a Canadian perspective is _The D-Day Dodgers_ by Dancocks.

I am not certain that the wording 'not be allowed' to take part is quite correct. However, it seems to be true that the Australian political leadership had reservations over the manner in which that nation's troops had been deployed while under the control of Great Britain during certain parts of the conflict, especially in regard to the opening stages of the war in the Pacific, which saw large formations of relatively scarce trained and equipped Aussie troops go into captivity almost as soon as they were landed in reinforcement of Singapore/Malaya.

Consequently, it may have been wise for the Allied European commands not to insist on Australian participation in operations in nw Europe, or even to extend an invitation for such. Also to be considered was that, given the limitations of the day of Australian manpower, the Australian civilian leadership might reasonably have desired to reserve decision on the deployment of large formations of that nation's forces to themselves.

Thanks for the post.

IMHO, it would have been reasonable for the Australian political leadership to concentrate their soldiers' attentions to the Pacific Ocean area in preference to Europe.