Thanks to probably the largest misdirection effort in world history - look up Juan Pujol Garcia and Operations Bodyguard and Fortitude - the Germans were led to believe that Normandy was just a misdirection and the real landing would take place near Calais or elsewhere. Plus the Eastern Front tied down most/the best of the German forces as many of them had to be redirected.


The weather and the currents fuked with the Allies, plus at Omaha the Germans were firing at them from a cliff, so they had major difficulties reaching/clearing the beach.

There was a huge misinformation campaign. Germans thought Patton would be invading from a different spot. They used fake, inflatable tanks to make it look like a huge troop buildup in the wrong spot. Also it helped that Britain had compromised and turned Germany's entire spy network so they could feed them false info.

The counterintelligence techniques were so good that some of them remained classified up until the 90's. The Germans really had no idea the allies were attacking Normandy until it happened.

Even after it happened, Rommel was off at a wedding or something. Only Hitler was allowed to direct troops. He was asleep when the invasion took place and his generals were too afraid to wake him up (srs), so no troops got moved. If the Germans had counterattacked they might have been able to push the allies back into the sea.

For the Germans the whole thing was a giant comedy of errors. Hitler was an incompetent commander and he was a micromanager.

If you want to see a hilarious movie in a similar vein watch "The Death of Stalin" on Netflix.