IKE ARRIVED in Washington at 1:30 A.M. on Sunday, January 2. Mamie had learned only a few hours earlier that he was coming; she was still awake when her husband rushed to the Wardman Park Hotel to greet her. The Eisenhowers talked through the night, the words tumbling out—about the doings of old friends, taxes, the car, Ike’s assignment, John’s progress, and a dozen other subjects.
Mamie noticed changes in her husband. He was heavier, noticeably older, more self-assured than he had been eighteen months ago. She thought he was more serious, his voice a shade more decisive than it had been. She was worried about his excessive smoking, pleased by his infectious confidence in himself and in Overlord.
After breakfast, he announced that he was off to the War Department to see Marshall, and just that quick he was gone. Time was precious to him now, in a way that it had never been before. In the two weeks that followed, Mamie learned that it had become habitual for him to terminate a conversation or interview abruptly, not because he had grown rude, but simply because he was accustomed to it and expected everyone around him to understand that he had to get on to the next problem.
On January 6, the Eisenhowers got into Marshall’s private railroad car to go to White Sulphur Springs, where the Chief of Staff had arranged for them to stay at a small, private cottage, for two days of complete privacy. It was not an altogether restful and relaxing vacation, because twice Ike slipped and called Mamie “Kay,” which made Mamie furious. Ike blushed, explained that Kay really meant nothing to him; it was just that she was practically the only woman he had seen in a year and a half and her name just naturally popped out. Mamie found it a less than satisfactory explanation.1
Back in Washington, Eisenhower attended a series of conferences. He met with Marshall and General Henry Arnold, who commanded the Army Air Forces. Eisenhower was concerned about the organization and command structure of the air forces in Britain. The CCS had assigned the tactical air forces, the fighters, to Overlord. Their activities would be controlled by Marshal of the Royal Air Force Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who was directly responsible to Eisenhower (Tedder, although Eisenhower’s deputy supreme commander, was without portfolio). The bombers were not a part of the Overlord structure. General Arthur Harris headed the RAF Bomber Command, while General Carl Spaatz had the U.S. Eighth Air Force. Both Harris and Spaatz had their own strategy, Harris to bring about a German capitulation through terror bombing of German cities, Spaatz to force a German surrender through the selective destruction of certain key industries, especially oil production facilities. Neither man believed Overlord was necessary. Spaatz’ subordinates had been heard to say that they wanted only twenty or thirty clear operational days and they would finish the war on their own.
To Eisenhower, this was dangerous nonsense. He believed that Germany would have to be defeated on the ground before it would ever quit. Overlord was therefore the great operation of the war. In the initial stages, the Allies would be outnumbered on the ground ten to one in France; only air superiority made Overlord feasible. Eisenhower wanted to take the bombers away from the campaign inside Germany and use them for purposes that would be immediately helpful to Overlord. To that end, he had to have personal command of RAF Bomber Command and the Eighth Air Force. The issue remained unsettled.
On January 12, Eisenhower went to the White House for a private conference with Roosevelt. He found the President in bed, ill with the flu. They talked for two hours, mainly about French and German affairs. Eisenhower was upset at the attitude toward Free French leader Charles de Gaulle that he found in Washington. Just before leaving Algiers, Eisenhower had met with de Gaulle, in what Butcher described as a “love fest.” “I must have your help,” Eisenhower had told de Gaulle, “and I have come to ask you for it.” De Gaulle had replied, “Splendid! You are a man! For you know how to say, ‘I was wrong.’ ”2 What Eisenhower had in mind was the French Resistance. He counted on it for sabotage operations on D-Day, and for information on German dispositions and movements, and he knew that the Resistance would respond only to de Gaulle. Smith and de Gaulle had worked out an agreement whereby the Resistance would obey Eisenhower, in return for which Eisenhower promised that French forces would participate in the liberation of Paris and the Free French would take control of civil affairs in the liberated areas of France.
But in Washington, to his distress, Eisenhower discovered that no one wanted to deal with de Gaulle. Roosevelt insisted that the French people would not submit to the authority of the Free French and that any attempt to impose de Gaulle on France could lead to civil war. Eisenhower thought the President’s position unrealistic, and politely told the President so, but Roosevelt was adamant. The difficulties that ensued from the Allied attempt to ignore de Gaulle, Eisenhower later said, caused him some of the “most acutely annoying problems” he had to face before D-Day.3
Eisenhower then turned to the problem of the occupation of Germany. He told the President that the plan to divide Germany into three zones, one for the Americans, one for the British, and one for the Russians, was a mistake. Germany, he declared, should not be divided into zones; the military government ought to be conducted by a coalition of the Allied forces, under a single commander. This would make administration simpler and make it easier to control the Red Army’s behavior in the areas it occupied. Roosevelt, unconvinced, said he could deal with the Russians.
The following day, Eisenhower’s furlough ended. Mamie was unhappy at her husband’s single-minded concentration on Overlord, his obvious anxiety to get back to London, and the little time he had spent with her. Watching him pack for yet another lengthy separation, her heart nearly broke. “Don’t come back again till it’s over, Ike,” she said. “I can’t stand losing you again.”4
A week later, he wrote her: “I find myself very glad I came home—even though things did seem to be a bit upsetting! I guess it was just because we’d been separated so long, and before we could get really acquainted again, I was on my way.” Four days after that, he thanked Mamie for “the third letter I’d received since coming here and all of them have been wonderful—quite the nicest you’ve written since I left home in June ’42.” His conclusion was that, although everything had not gone as well as he had hoped, “My trip home has paid dividends!”5
• •
Back in London, Eisenhower set up his headquarters on familiar grounds, at 20 Grosvenor Square. “Right now we are busy getting settled and going through the business of ramming our feet in the stirrups,” he wrote a friend shortly after his arrival.6 The process was much easier than it had been in June 1942. The SHAEF staff came primarily from AFHQ; the commanders of the field forces, with the exception of Leigh-Mallory, had had combat experience in the Mediterranean; Eisenhower now had three amphibious operations behind him; taken together, Eisenhower’s team was battle-tested, committed to Allied unity, full of faith in Eisenhower, and eager to get to work. Compared to the team that had started on Torch, it was far superior; as Eisenhower put it, “Order had replaced disorder and certainty and confidence had replaced fear and doubt.”7
There was also a single-mindedness not present in Torch. As Eisenhower said, at SHAEF there was “a very deep conviction, in all circles, that we are approaching a tremendous crisis with stakes incalculable.” Everyone was “working like dogs,” he was pleased to note. As always, his emphasis was on the positive. “Our problems are seemingly intricate and difficult beyond belief,” he said, but he refused to allow anyone even to hint that they would not be overcome.
Privately, he was more worried than anyone else, but he never let his subordinates know it. “As the big day approaches,” he wrote in early April, “tension grows and everybody gets more and more on edge. This time, because of the stakes involved, the atmosphere is more electric than ever before.” Under the circumstances, “a sense of humor and a great faith . . . are essential to sanity.”8
Another great difference between the pre-Torch and the pre-Overlord periods was that in 1944 Eisenhower did not have to prove himself to the British. His relations with Churchill were such that he could disagree violently with the Prime Minister over issues without affecting their friendship or mutual respect in any way. Except for Brooke, he got on well with the British Chiefs of Staff. His relations with Montgomery were formal and correct, rather than warm; with Tedder, by way of contrast, he had struck up a close friendship. With Cunningham, Eisenhower had established a mutual admiration society.
Closer personal relations with the British were possible in 1944, in contrast to 1942, partly because this time the place, time, and date of the assault were all fixed, rather than subjects for dispute. The place would be Normandy, west of the mouth of the Orne River, the time would be shortly after dawn, the date May 1.
A complex set of factors had gone into these selections. The state of German defenses was the overriding consideration; they were strongest around the French ports and especially in the Pas de Calais, which otherwise would have been the obvious target as it was on the shortest line between England and Germany. Dawn was the time because it would allow the fleet to cross the Channel under the cover of darkness and give the troops a full day to establish a beachhead. May 1 was the date because of moon and tidal conditions; the AEF had to come ashore shortly after dead low tide to avoid the German underwater obstacles, and the bombers and paratroopers needed at least a half-moon the night before. The assault had to come late enough in the year to allow for final training of troops in the British Isles, but soon enough to give the Allies at least four months of good campaigning weather in France. These conditions were met only three times in the spring of 1944—during the first days of May and the first and third weeks of June.
The issue that was not settled, and thus the one that would cause Eisenhower a great deal of anguish, was the scope of the commitment in landing craft and air power to Overlord. To Eisenhower, convinced that Overlord was the great operation of the war, it was almost inconceivable that there should be any question about a total commitment. “Every obstacle must be overcome,” he declared in his initial report to the CCS, “every inconvenience suffered and every risk run to ensure that our blow is decisive. We cannot afford to fail.”9
That meant, above all else, that he had to have sufficient landing craft to mount a five-division assault, with enough additional craft for two follow-up divisions to go ashore on D-Day. “Nothing less will give us an adequate margin to ensure success,” he warned, and to get it he was willing to make sacrifices elsewhere. He had to have 271 landing craft beyond those already assigned to Overlord, and to have them he had decided, within a week of his arrival in London, to put D-Day back a month, from May 1 to early June, in order to have available an extra month’s production of landing craft (amounting to almost 100 vessels).10
The worldwide shortage of landing craft colored the entire situation and made all events related. At one point Churchill growled that “the destinies of two great empires . . . seem to be tied up in some Goddamned things called LSTs.”11
• •
Living in London caused constant interruptions, because Churchill, the American ambassador, and other VIPs felt free to call him at any hour, and the staff found the temptations of London night life too much to pass up. In February, Eisenhower moved his headquarters outside the city, to Bushey Park. Tents went up, camouflage covered them, and the SHAEF staff, grumbling, moved in.
For himself, Eisenhower selected living quarters in a small house on the edge of the park, called Telegraph Cottage. The Supreme Commander thus had the least pretentious home of any general officer in England, but Eisenhower was happy, for at Telegraph he could work, think, relax, play a hole or two of golf, and read Westerns without being interrupted. He could even enjoy an occasional moment alone with Kay.
In public, Kay was very much in evidence. She accompanied Eisenhower to meetings with Churchill, King George VI, and others. Although she was a British subject, Eisenhower was arranging to have her commissioned as a WAAC lieutenant. Decades later, in a book published after her death, Kay claimed that they had fallen in love, and that both had realized it when he returned from Washington. “His kisses absolutely unraveled me,” she wrote.
According to her account, it was a passionate but unconsummated romance, partly because—save for an odd moment or two at Telegraph Cottage—they were seldom alone together, mainly because, on the one evening they did try to make love, Eisenhower was flaccid. This may have been because, as one aide put it in a grand understatement, “Ike had a lot on his mind,” or because his stern sense of morality overrode his passion. Or it may be that the incident never happened, that it was merely an old woman’s fantasy. No one will ever know. What is important to note is that not even Kay ever claimed that they had a genuine love affair.12
Other generals did have affairs, as men at war have done since time out of mind, but no other general was so completely exposed to public scrutiny, or so busy, as Eisenhower. When Mamie wrote to him about the “tales . . . I’ve heard” about the “night clubs, gayety and loose morals” of the American officers in London, he quickly responded, “So far as I can see 99% of officers and men are too busy to have any time for anything else [but work] . . . the pictures painted by gossips are grossly exaggerated. So far as the group around me is concerned, I know that the principal concern is work—and that their habits are above reproach.”13
Overlord was a direct frontal assault against a prepared enemy position. The German line, or Atlantic Wall, was continuous, so there was no possibility of outflanking it. The Germans had a manpower advantage and the benefit of land lines of communication, so Eisenhower’s forces could not hope to overwhelm them. Eisenhower’s advantages were control of the air and of the sea, which meant that Allied bombers and ships could pound the enemy emplacements and trenches on a scale even larger than the World War I artillery barrages. In addition, he was on the offensive, which meant that he knew where and when the battle would be fought. Even better, he had no defensive lines to maintain, so he could concentrate all his resources on a relatively narrow front in Normandy, while the Germans had to spread their resources along the coast.
Harris’ and Spaatz’ bombers would play a key role. There was no dispute about this point; all agreed that on the eve of D-Day every bomber that could fly would participate in the attack on the Normandy coastal defenses. There was, however, intense debate over the role of the bombers in the two months preceding the invasion. Eisenhower persisted in his demand that the bombers come under SHAEF control, and that they then be used to implement the so-called Transportation Plan, designed to destroy the French railway system and thus hamper German mobility.
On March 6, Patton came to visit Eisenhower at Bushey Park. He was shown into Eisenhower’s office while Eisenhower was on the telephone with Tedder.
“Now, listen, Arthur,” Eisenhower was saying, “I am tired of dealing with a lot of prima donnas. By God, you tell that bunch that if they can’t get together and stop quarreling like children, I will tell the Prime Minister to get someone else to run this damn war. I’ll quit.” Patton took careful note of the tone of command in his voice; Eisenhower was obviously taking charge, and Patton could not help but be impressed.14
Marshall supported Eisenhower in the dispute; Churchill supported Harris and Spaatz. Eisenhower then told Churchill that if his bosses refused to make anything less than a full commitment to Overlord by holding back the bombers, he would “simply have to go home.”15
This extreme threat (as with Eisenhower’s relations with the press, what a contrast with the American Army leaders in Vietnam!) brought Churchill around. Tedder then prepared a list of more than seventy railroad targets in France and Belgium. The bombers went to work on the French railway system. By D-Day the Allies had dropped seventy-six thousand tons of bombs on rail centers, bridges, and open lines. The Seine River bridges west of Paris were virtually destroyed. Based on an index of 100 for January and February 1944, railway traffic dropped from 69 in mid-May to 38 by D-Day.
Eisenhower had dozens of major and hundreds of minor disagreements with Churchill and the CCS during the war, but the only occasion on which he threatened to resign was over the issue of command of the strategic air forces. He was certain at the time that he was right, and he never saw any reason to question that belief. In 1968, in one of his last interviews, he told this author that he felt the greatest single contribution he personally made to the success of Overlord was his insistence on the Transportation Plan.
• •
There were many aspects to Overlord in which Eisenhower’s role was more supervisory than direct, including such items as the artificial harbors, the specially designed tanks, assault techniques, the deception plan, the logistical problems involved in getting the men and equipment to the southern English ports, transporting them across the Channel, and supplying them in Normandy.
Overlord was the greatest amphibious assault in history, with the largest air and sea armadas ever assembled. It required, and got, painstakingly detailed planning, with thousands of men involved. SHAEF alone had a total strength of 16,312, of whom 2,829 were officers (1,600 Americans, 1,229 British). There were in addition the staffs of the U.S. and British armies, corps, and divisions, all devoting their entire energy to Overlord.
These vast bureaucracies did very well what they were created to do, but their limitations were obvious. They could suggest, plan, advise, investigate, but they could not act. Nor could any single member of the bureaucracies see the problem whole. Every individual involved had a specific given role to play and could concentrate on one set of problems; each staff officer was an expert struggling with his specialty. The officers could study and analyze a problem and make recommendations, but they could not decide and order.
Someone had to give the bureaucracies direction; someone had to be able to take all the information they gathered, make sense out of it, and impose order on it; someone had to make certain that each part meshed into the whole; someone had to decide; someone had to take the responsibility and act.
It all came down to Eisenhower. He was the funnel through which everything passed. Only his worries were infinite, only he carried the awesome burden of command. This position put enormous pressure on him, pressure that increased geometrically with each day that passed.
“Ike looks worn and tired,” Butcher noted on May 12. “The strain is telling on him. He looks older now than at any time since I have been with him.” It would get worse as D-Day got closer and innumerable problems came up each day, many unsolved and some unsolvable. Still, Butcher felt that all would turn out all right, that Eisenhower could take it. “Fortunately he has the happy faculty of bouncing back after a night of good sleep.” 16
Unfortunately, such nights were rare. Eisenhower’s tension and tiredness began to show in his face, especially when he was inspecting training exercises, watching the boys he would be sending against Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. The anxieties also showed in his letters to Mamie. Almost without exception, every letter he wrote her in the pre-Overlord period had a fantasy about his retirement plans when the war was over. The emphasis was on loafing in a warm climate.
Writing to Mamie was practically the only time he was free to think about issues that went beyond Overlord. He took the opportunity to express some of his deepest feelings. He loathed war and hated having to send boys to their death. “How I wish this cruel business of war could be completed quickly,” he told Mamie. He was the man who had to total up all the casualties, bad enough in the air war, with worse to come when Overlord began. Counting the human costs was “a terribly sad business.” It made him heartsick to think about “how many youngsters are gone forever,” and although he had developed “a veneer of callousness,” he could “never escape a recognition of the fact that back home the news brings anguish and suffering to families all over the country. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and friends must have a difficult time preserving any comforting philosophy and retaining any belief in the eternal rightness of things. War demands real toughness of fiber—not only in the soldiers that must endure, but in the homes that must sacrifice their best.”
“I think that all these trials and tribulations must come upon the world because of some great wickedness,” he said in another letter, “yet one would feel that man’s mere intelligence to say nothing of his spiritual perceptions would find some way of eliminating war. But man has been trying to do so for many hundreds of years, and his failure just adds more reason for pessimism when a man gets really low!”17
The contrast between Eisenhower and those generals who gloried in war could not have been greater. Small wonder that millions of Americans in the 1940s felt that if their loved one had to join the fight, Eisenhower was the general they wanted for his commander. Patton, MacArthur, Bradley, Marshall, and the others all had their special qualities, but only Eisenhower had such a keen sense of family, of the way in which each casualty meant a grieving family back home.
Eisenhower’s concern was of such depth and so genuine that it never left him. In 1964, when he was filming with Walter Cronkite a television special entitled “D-Day Plus 20,” Cronkite asked him what he thought about when he returned to Normandy. In reply, he spoke not of the tanks, the guns, the planes, the ships, the personalities of his commanders and their opponents, or the victory. Instead, he spoke of the families of the men buried in the American cemetery in Normandy. He said he could never come to this spot without thinking of how blessed he and Mamie were to have grandchildren, and how much it saddened him to think of all the couples in America who had never had that blessing, because their only son was buried in France.
• •
One reason, more rational than emotional, that Eisenhower was concerned about his troops was his realization that while he, SHAEF, the generals, and the admirals could plan, prepare the ground, provide covering support, ensure adequate supplies, deceive the Germans, and in countless other ways try to ensure victory, in the end success rested with the footslogger carrying a rifle over the beaches of Normandy. If he was willing to drive forward in the face of German fire, Overlord would succeed. If he cowered behind the beached landing craft, it would fail. The operation all came down to that.
For that reason, Eisenhower spent much of his pre D-Day time visiting troops in the field. He wanted to let as many men as possible see him. He made certain that every soldier who was to go ashore on D-Day had the opportunity to at least look at the man who was sending him into battle; he managed to talk to hundreds personally. In the four months from February 1 to June 1 he visited twenty-six divisions, twenty-four airfields, five ships of war, and countless depots, shops, hospitals, and other installations. He would have the men break ranks, gather around him while he made a short speech, then go around shaking hands.
He always managed to talk to the enlisted men as individuals. Other generals did so too, of course, but none had Eisenhower’s touch. Bradley, Patton, Montgomery, and the rest would ask a man about his military specialty, his training, his unit, his weapons.
Eisenhower’s first question invariably was “Where are you from?” He wanted to know about their families, what they did in civilian life back in the States, what their postwar plans were. He enjoyed discussing cattle ranching in Texas with them, or dairy farming in Wisconsin, or logging in Montana. To Eisenhower’s associates, the men were soldiers; to Eisenhower, they were citizens temporarily caught up in a war none of them wanted, but which they realized was necessary. His face would light up whenever he met a boy from Kansas; he kept hoping to find one from Abilene, but never did. The British and Canadians responded as enthusiastically to Eisenhower’s friendliness, informality, curiosity about them as individuals and sincerity as did the Americans.
To the graduating class at Sandhurst, in the spring of 1944, Eisenhower delivered an impromptu, ad-lib address that ranks as one of his best. He spoke of the great issues involved, and made each individual aware that his own chances for a happy, decent life were directly tied up in the success of Overlord. He reminded them of the great traditions of Sandhurst. He told the newly commissioned officers that they must be like fathers to their men, even when the men were twice their age, that they must keep the enlisted men out of trouble, and stand up for them when they committed a transgression. Their companies, he said, returning to his favorite theme, must be like a big family, and they must be the head of the family, ensuring that the unit was cohesive, tough, well trained, well equipped, ready to go. The response of the Sandhurst graduates, according to Thor Smith, a public-relations officer at SHAEF, was “electric. They just loved him.”18
• •
The commander of the U.S. First Army, Bradley, had already been selected by Marshall, on the basis of Eisenhower’s enthusiastic recommendation. Eisenhower had selected Patton to lead the follow-up army, the Third. Until the Third Army was activated, Patton’s role was to command a fictitious army group at Dover as part of the deception plan. This kept him out of the active preparations and made him even more nervous and irritable than usual. To increase his visibility to the Germans, he attended numerous public functions. On April 25, at the opening of a club sponsored by British women for American servicemen, he spoke on Anglo-American unity. He told the audience it was an important subject, “since it is the evident destiny of the British and Americans to rule the world, [and] the better we know each other the better job we will do.” A reporter covering the event put the statement out over the wire services; it was widely circulated. A storm of criticism at Patton’s indiscretion broke, and Eisenhower had another problem to deal with. Marshall, much upset, wired Eisenhower. The Chief said he had just sent a list of “permanent makes,” that is, permanent Regular Army promotions, to the Senate, and Patton’s name was on the list. Marshall sadly noted, “This I fear has killed them all.” He asked Eisenhower to investigate and report.19
“Apparently he is unable to use reasonably good sense,” Eisenhower said of Patton. “I have grown so weary of the trouble he constantly causes you and the War Department to say nothing of myself, that I am seriously contemplating the most drastic action.” Marshall responded the same day. “You carry the burden of responsibility as to the success of Overlord.” If Eisenhower thought the operation could succeed without Patton and wanted to relieve him, “all well and good.” If Eisenhower felt that he had to have Patton, “then between us we can bear the burden . . . of keeping him.”20
Eisenhower sent a stinging letter to Patton. He said that he was not so upset at the press reaction as at “the implication that you simply will not guard your tongue. . . . I have warned you time and again against your impulsiveness in action and speech . . .” The incident forced Eisenhower to doubt Patton’s “all-around judgment, so essential in high military position.” He concluded by saying he had not decided on what action to take, but if in the meantime Patton did anything that in any way embarrassed the War Department or SHAEF, “I will relieve you instantly.”21
At 11 A.M. on May 1, Patton was ushered into Eisenhower’s office. An old hand at getting out of a fix, Patton let out all the stops. He was plunged into despair, said he felt like death, but he would fight if “they” would let him. He dramatically offered to resign his commission to save his dearest friend from embarrassment. Although wearing his helmet (he was the only officer who ever wore a helmet for an interview with Eisenhower at Bushey Park), he was the picture of remorse, looking like a small boy who had inadvertently committed a big sin and who was deeply ashamed of himself.
Eisenhower could not bring himself to send “Georgie” home. He said he had decided to keep him on. Tears streamed down Patton’s face. He assured Eisenhower of his gratitude and loyalty. As Eisenhower later described it, “in a gesture of almost little-boy contriteness, he put his head on my shoulder.” That caused his helmet to fall off and tumble across the floor. The whole scene struck Eisenhower as “ridiculous,” and he terminated the interview.22
Patton, now smiling and jaunty, returned to Dover, where he noted in his diary that he had pulled a fast one on Ike. He claimed his retention in command “is not the result of an accident,” but rather was “the work of God.”
Butcher was never as taken in by Patton as Eisenhower was. He noted that Patton “is a master of flattery and succeeds in turning any difference of views with Ike into a deferential acquiescence to the views of the Supreme Commander.” But if Butcher saw something that Eisenhower missed, there was a reverse side to the coin. Patton bragged that he was tolerated as an eccentric genius because he was considered indispensable, and he was right. The very qualities that made him a great actor also made him a great commander, and Eisenhower knew it. “You owe us some victories,” Eisenhower told Patton when the incident was closed. “Pay off and the world will deem me a wise man.”23
• •
On May 15, Eisenhower’s commanders met at the ancient St. Paul’s School, in West Kensington, for a final review. St. Paul’s was Montgomery’s 21st Army Group Headquarters (it had also been his boyhood school) and the show was primarily his. It was a distinguished, rather than a large, gathering. SHAEF sent out formal, engraved invitations. The King was there, the Prime Minister, and other notables. Eisenhower made a brief speech of welcome, then turned the stage over to Montgomery. He had a huge relief map of Normandy the width of a city street on the floor and—as Bradley recalled—“with rare skill, Monty traced his 21st Group plan of maneuver as he trampled about like a giant through Lilliputian France.”24
In deference to Eisenhower and Churchill, Montgomery even broke his long-standing rule and allowed smoking in his presence. He began by reminding the audience of the problem—the Germans had sixty divisions in France, ten of them armored, commanded by the redoubtable Rommel. Montgomery called his opponent “an energetic and determined commander; he had made a world of difference since he took over [in January]. He is best at the spoiling attack; his forte is disruption; he is too impulsive for the set-piece battle. He will do his level best . . . to prevent our tanks landing, by using his own tanks well forward.”
German morale was high. The enemy believed that, through a combination of the underwater obstacles, the fixed coastal defenses, and the extensive, well-manned trench system, the Allies could be stopped at the beaches. Then Rommel would call up his reinforcements, and his ability to do so, according to Allied intelligence, was impressive. Montgomery said Rommel might have nine divisions in the battle for Normandy by the second day, and thirteen by the third. By D-Day plus six, Rommel might counterattack with all ten panzer divisions. The SHAEF buildup, by contrast, would be exceedingly slow; the Germans thus expected to drive the Overlord forces back into the sea.
In spite of the gloomy predictions, when Montgomery turned to the Allied picture, he exuded optimism. As he talked and explained, he grew expansive. Storming the beaches was the least of his problems. He wanted to get well inland on D-Day itself and “crack about and force the battle to swing our way.” It was possible, he said, that he would get to Falaise, thirty-two miles inland, the first day. He intended to send armored columns quickly toward Caen, for “this will upset the enemy’s plans and tend to hold him off while we build up strength. We must gain space rapidly and peg claims well inland.” He said he intended to take Caen the first day, break through the German lines on that (left, or eastern) flank, then drive along the coast toward the Seine River.
After Montgomery spoke, the King made a brief address. Then Churchill “let go with a slow-starting but fast-ending stemwinder. He preached bravery, ingenuity and persistence as human qualities of greater value than equipment.” The King had to leave early; before he left, Eisenhower thanked him for his attendance and told him not to worry. There would be seven thousand planes overhead on D-Day, he said. The navies had “marshalled the greatest armada . . . the world had ever seen.” All the ground troops had to do was to land and capture some villas for the VIPs, “particularly one to accommodate the King who would be . . . welcome in France.”
Spaatz, Harris, Bradley, and the naval commander, Admiral Bertram Ramsay, then spoke on the role of the forces under their command in the great undertaking. Brooke, who was in a sour mood, was unimpressed. Spaatz bored him. In his diary, Brooke complained that “Harris told us how well he might have won the war if it had not been for the handicap imposed by the existence of the two other Services.” Brooke was especially worried about Eisenhower. “The main impression I gathered was that Eisenhower was no real director of thought, plans, energy or direction.” He feared that the Supreme Commander was “just a co-ordinator, a good mixer, a champion of inter-Allied co-operation.” He wondered if those abilities were sufficient for the task at hand and doubted it. As the meeting broke up (thus ending, the minutes noted, “the greatest assembly of military leadership the world had ever known”), Brooke was still shaking his head.25
But the meeting did help dispel Churchill’s long-standing doubts. At the beginning of 1944 the Prime Minister had still wondered about the wisdom of a cross-Channel attack, saying to Eisenhower on one occasion, “When I think of the beaches of Normandy choked with the flower of American and British youth . . . I have my doubts . . . I have my doubts.” Early in May, Eisenhower had lunched alone with Churchill. As they were parting, the Prime Minister grew emotional. With tears in his eyes he said, “I am in this thing with you to the end, and if it fails we will go down together.” But after the St. Paul’s briefing, Churchill told Eisenhower, “I am hardening toward this enterprise.”26
Eisenhower, for his part, had never doubted that it could be done, not since that day in January 1942 when he had scribbled in his diary, “We’ve got to go to Europe and fight.” Now his confidence was higher than ever. As he put it, “The smell of victory was in the air.”27
• •
He could not escape last-minute problems and worries. On May 29 Leigh-Mallory wrote him to say that he was disturbed over intelligence information acquired during the past week that indicated the Germans were reinforcing the area where the American paratroopers were going to drop. Leigh-Mallory said that it was probable that “at the most 30 percent of the glider loads will become effective for use against the enemy.” He concluded that the airborne operation was likely “to yield results so far short of what [you] expect and require that if the success of the seaborne assault . . . depends on the airborne, it will be seriously prejudiced.” He wanted the airborne assault canceled. Thinking the matter over, Leigh-Mallory then decided that his letter alone was not sufficient, and on May 30 he called on Eisenhower to present his case personally. He spoke of the “futile slaughter” of two fine divisions (the 82d and 101st Airborne), warning that losses might run as high as 70 percent.28
As Eisenhower later put it, “It would be difficult to conceive of a more soul-racking problem.” He knew that Bradley counted on the paratroopers. He went to his tent, alone, and thought about the alternatives. He decided that the greater risk was in cancellation, went to the telephone, and told Leigh-Mallory that the operation would go ahead as scheduled.
He followed up the call with a letter, telling Leigh-Mallory that there “is nothing for it” but for the commanders to “work out to the last detail every single thing that may diminish the hazards.” Eisenhower also ordered him to see to it that the troops involved were not needlessly depressed. “Like all the rest of the soldiers, they must understand that they have a tough job to do but be fired with determination to get it done.”29
On June 2, Eisenhower drove from London to Southwick House, just north of Portsmouth, a lovely country estate with broad vistas, site of Admiral Ramsay’s headquarters, which Eisenhower now took over for SHAEF, making it his advance command post.
There, he wrote an Order of the Day: “Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory! Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”
At Southwick House, on June 3, Eisenhower also wrote a memorandum for his diary. It gave him a chance to occupy his time and allowed him to put his worries into perspective. At the top of his list was de Gaulle, and he dictated three paragraphs on the difficulties of dealing with the French. Next came weather. “The weather in this country is practically unpredictable,” he complained. If it turned bad, he knew he would be advised by at least some of his associates to call off the invasion. That might mean a delay of some weeks. “Probably no one that does not have to bear the specific and direct responsibility of making the final decision as to what to do,” he declared, “can understand the intensity of these burdens.” Only the Supreme Commander could sort out conflicting weather reports and decide on which one to act. Only he could make the kind of judgment involved if, for example, the weather were suitable for all other plans, but unsuitable for the airborne operation. In that case should he risk the airborne movement anyway, or defer the whole operation in hopes of getting better weather?
Outside Eisenhower’s tent the wind was coming up and the sky darkening. He would soon have to make the final decision. “My tentative thought,” he recorded before going to meet with the weathermen again, “is that the desirability for getting started on the next favorable tide is so great and the uncertainty of the weather is such that we could never anticipate really perfect weather coincident with proper tidal conditions, that we must go unless there is a real and very serious deterioration in the weather.”30
Then he found time to think of John. His son was about to graduate from West Point, a great day in John’s life, and for his father too. Ike wrote Mamie, who was going to the Academy for the ceremonies, “There’s nothing I would not have given to have been with you and John on June 6, but c’est la guerre!”31
• •
The AEF was set to go, living on the edge of fearful anticipation. “The mighty host,” in Eisenhower’s words, “was tense as a coiled spring,” ready for “the moment when its energy should be released and it would vault the English Channel.”32
SHAEF had prepared for everything except the weather. It now became an obsession. It was the one thing for which no one could plan, and the one thing that no one could control. In the end, the most completely planned military operation in history was dependent on the caprice of winds and waves. Tides and moon conditions were predictable, but storms were not. From the beginning, everyone had counted on at least acceptable weather for D-Day. There had been no contingency planning. Eisenhower’s inclination, as he noted in his diary, was to go, whatever the weather, but if he held to a rigid timetable and conditions became really bad, the invasion might fail. Wind-tossed landing craft could founder before reaching the shore, or the waves might throw the troops up on the beaches, seasick and unable to fight effectively. The Allies would not be able to use their air superiority to cover the beaches. If Overlord failed, it would take months to plan and mount another operation, too late for 1944.
The evening of June 3, Eisenhower met in the mess room at Southwick House with his commanders and RAF Group Captain J. M. Stagg, his chief weatherman. Stagg had bad news. A high-pressure system was moving out, and a low was coming in. The weather on June 5 would be overcast and stormy, with a cloud base of five hundred feet to zero and Force 5 winds. Worse, the situation was deteriorating so rapidly that forecasting more than twenty-four hours in advance was highly undependable. It was too early to make a final decision, but word had to go out to the American Navy carrying Bradley’s troops to Omaha and Utah beaches, since they had the farthest to travel. Eisenhower decided to let them start the voyage, subject to a possible last-minute cancellation. He would make the final decision at the regular weather conference the next morning.
At 4:30 A.M. on Sunday, June 4, Eisenhower met with his subordinates at Southwick House. Stagg said sea conditions would be slightly better than anticipated, but the overcast would not permit the use of the air forces. Montgomery said he wanted to go ahead anyway. Tedder and Leigh-Mallory wanted postponement. Ramsay said the Navy could do its part but remained neutral when asked whether or not the whole operation should go.
Eisenhower remarked that Overlord was being launched with ground forces that were not overwhelmingly powerful. The operation was feasible only because of Allied air superiority. If he could not have that advantage, the landings were too risky. He asked if anyone present disagreed, and when no one did he declared for a twenty-four-hour postponement. The word went out to the American fleet by prearranged signal. Displaying superb seamanship, the fleet drove through the incoming storm, regained its ports, refueled, and prepared to sail again the next day.
That evening, June 4, Eisenhower ate at Southwick House. After dinner he moved into the mess room. Montgomery, Tedder, Smith, Ramsay, Leigh-Mallory, Strong, and various high-ranking staff officers were already there. The wind and the rain rattled the window frames in the French doors in staccato sounds. The mess room was large, with a heavy table at one end and easy chairs at the other. Two sides of the room were lined with bookcases, most of which were empty and forlorn. A third side consisted of the French doors; the fourth wall was covered with a huge map of southern England and Normandy, filled with pins, arrows, and other symbols of Allied and German units. The officers lounged in easy chairs. Coffee was served and there was desultory conversation. Stagg came in about nine-thirty with the latest weather report. Eisenhower called his associates to order and they all sat up to listen intently.
Stagg reported a break. Kenneth Strong, the SHAEF G-2, recalled that at Stagg’s prediction, “a cheer went up. You never heard middle-aged men cheer like that!” The rain that was then pouring down, Stagg continued, would stop in two or three hours, to be followed by thirty-six hours of more or less clear weather. Winds would moderate. The bombers and fighters ought to be able to operate on Monday night, June 5–6, although they would be hampered by clouds.
Leigh-Mallory remarked that it seemed to be only a moderately good night for air power. Tedder, his pipe clenched between his teeth and forcibly blowing out smoke, agreed that the operations of heavy bombers were going to be “chancy.” Eisenhower countered by pointing out that the Allies could call on their large force of fighter-bombers.
The temptation to postpone again and meet the following morning for another conference was strong and growing, but Ramsay put a stop to that idea by pointing out that Admiral Alan G. Kirk, commanding the American task force, “must be told in the next half hour if Overlord is to take place on Tuesday [June 6]. If he is told it is on, and his forces sail and are then recalled, they will not be ready again for Wednesday morning. Therefore, a further postponement would be forty-eight hours.” A two-day delay would put everything back to June 8, and by that time the tidal conditions would not be right, so in fact postponement now meant postponement until June 19.
Whatever Eisenhower decided would be risky. He began pacing the room, head down, chin on his chest, hands clasped behind his back.
Suddenly he shot his chin out at Smith. “It’s a helluva gamble but it’s the best possible gamble,” Smith said. Eisenhower nodded, tucked his chin away, paced some more, then shot it out at Montgomery, huddled in his greatcoat, his face almost hidden.
“Do you see any reason for not going Tuesday?” Montgomery straightened up, looked Eisenhower in the eye, and replied, “I would say—Go!”
Eisenhower nodded, tucked away his chin, paced, looked abruptly at Tedder. Tedder again indicated he thought it chancy. Finally Eisenhower halted, looked around at his commanders, and said, “The question is just how long can you hang this operation on the end of a limb and let it hang there?”
If there was going to be an invasion before June 19, Eisenhower had to decide now. Smith was struck by the “loneliness and isolation of a commander at a time when such a momentous decision was to be taken by him, with full knowledge that failure or success rests on his individual decision.” Looking out at the wind-driven rain, it hardly seemed possible that the operation could go ahead. Eisenhower calmly weighed the alternatives, and at 9:45 P.M. said, “I am quite positive that the order must be given.”
Ramsay rushed out and gave the order to the fleets. More than five thousand ships began moving toward France. Eisenhower drove back to his trailer and slept fitfully. He awoke at 3:30 A.M. A wind of almost hurricane proportions was shaking his trailer. The rain seemed to be traveling in horizontal streaks. He dressed and gloomily drove through a mile of mud to Southwick House for the last meeting. It was still not too late to call off the operation.
In the now familiar mess room, steaming hot coffee helped shake the gray mood and unsteady feeling. Stagg said that the break he had been looking for was on its way and that the weather would be clearing within a matter of hours. The long-range prediction was not good, to be sure, but even as he talked the rain began to stop and the sky started to clear.
A short discussion followed, Eisenhower again pacing, shooting out his chin, asking opinions. Montgomery still wanted to go, as did Smith. Ramsay was concerned about proper spotting for naval gunfire but thought the risk worth taking. Tedder was ready. Leigh-Mallory still thought air conditions were below the acceptable minimum.
Everyone stated his opinion. Stagg withdrew to let the generals and admirals make the decision. No new weather reports would be available for hours. The ships were sailing into the Channel. If they were to be called back, it had to be done now. The Supreme Commander was the only man who could do it. Eisenhower thought for a moment, then said quietly but clearly, “O.K., let’s go.” And again, cheers rang through Southwick House.33
Then the commanders rushed from their chairs and dashed outside to get to their command posts. Within thirty seconds the mess room was empty, except for Eisenhower. The outflow of the others and his sudden isolation were symbolic. A minute earlier he had been the most powerful man in the world. Upon his word the fate of thousands of men depended, and the future of great nations. The moment he uttered the word, however, he was powerless. For the next two or three days there was almost nothing he could do that would in any way change anything. The invasion could not be stopped, not by him, not by anyone. A captain leading his company onto Omaha, or a platoon sergeant at Utah, would for the immediate future play a greater role than Eisenhower. He could now only sit and wait.
Eisenhower was improving at killing time. He visited South Parade Pier in Portsmouth to see some British soldiers climb aboard their landing craft, then returned to his trailer. He played a game of checkers on a cracker box with Butcher, who was winning, two kings to one, when Eisenhower jumped one of his kings and got a draw. At lunch they exchanged political yarns. After eating, Eisenhower went into a tent with representatives of the press and announced that the invasion was on. Smith called with more news about de Gaulle. After hanging up, Eisenhower looked out the tent flap, saw a quick flash of sunshine, and grinned.
When the reporters left, Eisenhower sat at his portable table and scrawled a press release on a pad of paper, to be used if necessary. “Our landings . . . have failed . . . and I have withdrawn the troops,” he began. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”34
Putting the note in his wallet, Eisenhower went to dinner. Then at 6 P.M. he and a group of aides drove to Newbury, where the 101st Airborne was loading up for the flight to Normandy. The 101st was one of the units Leigh-Mallory feared would suffer 70 percent casualties. Eisenhower wandered around among the men, whose blackened faces gave them a grotesque look, stepping over packs, guns, and other equipment.
A group recognized him and gathered around. He chatted with them easily. He told them not to worry, that they had the best equipment and leaders. A sergeant said, “Hell, we ain’t worried, General. It’s the Krauts that ought to be worrying now.” When he met a trooper from Dodge City, Eisenhower gave him a thumbs up and said, “Go get ’em, Kansas!” And a private piped up, “Look out, Hitler, here we come.” A Texan promised Eisenhower a job after the war on his cattle ranch. Eisenhower stayed until all the big C-47s were off the runway.35
As the last plane roared into the sky Eisenhower turned to Kay, who was his driver that night, with a visible sagging in his shoulders. She saw tears in his eyes. He began to walk slowly toward his car. “Well,” he said quietly, “it’s on.” It took nearly two hours to get back to camp on the narrow British country roads. Eisenhower arrived at his trailer at 1:15 A.M., June 6. He sat around and chatted with Butcher for a while, then finally went to bed.36
Shortly before 7 A.M. Ramsay called to tell him everything was going according to plan. Then Butcher came over to his trailer with good news fom Leigh-Mallory—the air drop had been a success and casualties were light. Butcher found the Supreme Commander sitting up in bed, smoking a cigarette and reading a Western novel.
Through the morning, news from the beachhead was spotty and sometimes contradictory. Eisenhower sent a brief message to Marshall, informing him that everything seemed to be going well and adding that the British and American troops he had seen the previous day were enthusiastic, tough, and fit. “The light of battle was in their eyes.”37
At noon, a messenger brought a note from Leigh-Mallory; he said that it was sometimes difficult to admit that one was wrong, but he had never had a greater pleasure in doing so than on this occasion. He congratulated Eisenhower on the wisdom of his command decision in sending the airborne troops in and apologized for having added to the Supreme Commander’s worries.
For the remainder of the day Eisenhower paced, his mood alternating between joy and worry as he received news of the situation on the British and Canadian beaches, where the opposition was remarkably light; from Utah, where the Americans were well established; and from Omaha, where the troops were pinned down by surprisingly heavy German fire. After eating, Eisenhower retired to get a good night’s sleep.
At a cost of only 2,500 casualties, mainly at Omaha, his men had gained a striking victory. More than 23,000 airborne troops had dropped into Normandy the night of June 5–6 and 57,500 Americans and 75,215 British and Canadian troops had come ashore during the day. More than 156,000 Allied soldiers had breached Hitler’s much-vaunted Atlantic Wall.
The figures give an indication of the scope of Overlord. It was as if a city the size of Madison, Wisconsin, or Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or most of the state capitals in the United States, had been picked up—vehicles, buildings, people, everything—and moved sixty to one hundred miles in one night, against determined opposition. Nothing like it had ever been seen before, or would again.
• •
The next few days were spent in consolidating gains. Nowhere along the front had initial objectives been fully achieved on D-Day or even D plus one and two, but the Allies held the initiative by putting the pressure on the Germans everywhere. By the end of the first week of the invasion Eisenhower’s forces had consolidated a bridgehead eight to twelve miles deep and sixty miles wide. Eisenhower kept busy, holding press conferences, answering messages of congratulations, dealing with de Gaulle, talking to Churchill, gathering incoming information, and urging all his subordinates to redouble their efforts. He removed a division commander who had failed the test of combat.
On June 10, Marshall, Arnold, and King arrived in London, ostensibly for a meeting of the CCS, in reality because they wanted to see the great invasion for themselves. On June 12 Eisenhower, Marshall, King, Arnold, and members of their staffs crossed the Channel in a destroyer and went ashore on Juno Beach. They lunched on C rations and discussed recent operations with some of the corps and division commanders. Marshall praised Eisenhower, although characteristically not to his face. “Eisenhower and his staff are cool and confident,” the Chief reported to Roosevelt, “carrying out an affair of incredible magnitude and complication with superlative efficiency.”38
The trip to Juno symbolized the success of Overlord. If that much brass could safely go ashore in France, the beachhead was clearly secure. More than ten divisions were now engaged on the Allied side, with more coming in every day. There were still problems, but the great invasion had worked.
Eisenhower’s gamble on the weather had paid off. What Churchill rightly called “the most difficult and complicated operation that has ever taken place” had put the Allies back on the Continent.
• •
Ike, typically, was as excited by family news as by the great event. On June 9, he had sent a teletype to Mamie and John, at West Point, saying that “Due to previous plans it was impossible for me to be with you and John [for the graduation exercises] . . . but I thought of you and hope you and he had a nice time . . .” Then Marshall told him that he had made special arrangements for Second Lieutenant Eisenhower to spend his two-week graduation leave with his father. Ike beamed. “How I look forward to seeing Johnny. It will be odd to see him as an officer of the Army! I’ll burst with pride!” On June 13, expecting his son to arrive in a couple of hours, he told Mamie, “I’m really as excited as a bride.”39
When John arrived, late in the afternoon of June 13, he walked into his father’s office, threw his arms around him, and kissed him on the cheek. “Ike was just one big grin,” Kay reported.40 She drove them to Telegraph Cottage, where they talked through most of the night. John had not seen his father since 1942, and he was both surprised and a bit amazed at the number of people who surrounded Ike and devoted their energies to translating his wishes into reality. Drivers, cooks, aides, houseboys—John had not sufficiently appreciated his father’s importance until he saw them scurrying around whenever Ike indicated that he wanted this or that done. In the days that followed, John was further impressed by his father’s easy familiarity with some of the most famous and powerful men in the world, and by the way in which the press reported on his every move.
Ike enjoyed impressing his son, but he did not like the notoriety. He wrote a friend, “When this war is over I am going to find the deepest hole there is in the United States, crawl in and pull it in after me.”41 John had brought with him a letter from Mamie that dealt with publicity—a Hollywood firm had offered Eisenhower a large financial inducement for the right to do a film biography. Mamie wrote that she felt he ought to accept the money.
Ike replied, “I can understand your feelings . . . but my own convictions as to the quality of a man that will make money out of a public position of trust are very strong! I couldn’t touch it—and would never allow such a thing to occur. We don’t need it anyway—it’s fun to be poor!”42
During the two weeks that followed, John was constantly at his father’s side. Ike assured Mamie that “I love to be with him,” that “he and I have talked, every night, well past midnight,” and—on the eve of John’s departure—“I hate to see him go!” But he also admitted that “it is difficult to tell when he is pleased.”43
In truth, there was a certain awkwardness in their relationship. Ike’s position and the never-ending demands on his concentration added to the normal difficulties inherent in a father-son relationship when the son has emerged into manhood. John was a bit stiff and shy to begin with, and very much the recent West Point graduate, shouting out his “Yes, sir!” and “No, sir!” responses, bracing to full attention and snapping out his salutes.
When Second Lieutenant Eisenhower offered textbook advice on military problems to Supreme Commander Eisenhower, the general would snort and exclaim, “Oh, for God’s sake!” Concerned about military protocol, one day John asked his father, “If we should meet an officer who ranks above me but below you, how do we handle this? Should I salute first . . .?” Annoyed, Ike snapped, “John, there isn’t an officer in this theater who doesn’t rank above you and below me.”
John got to know Kay and, as did almost everyone else, had liked her immediately. He noted her popularity and how relaxed his father was in her presence. In the evenings, he and Butcher took on Kay and Ike in a few rubbers of bridge. Ike was highly critical—almost embarrassingly so—of John’s play.
John wanted to see the battle zone. On June 15 his father took him along on a flight to the British sector. Together with Tedder, they drove to Bayeux, headquarters of the British Second Army and home of William the Conqueror, the only other man—save Eisenhower and Caesar—to have successfully commanded a cross-Channel attack.
Driving around the beachhead area, John was startled to see vehicles moving bumper to bumper, in complete violation of textbook doctrine. “You’d never get away with this if you didn’t have air supremacy,” he told his father. Ike snorted, “If I didn’t have air supremacy, I wouldn’t be here.”44
• •
The Normandy battle was not going well. The Americans, on the right, or western, flank, found themselves fighting in a country of small fields separated by hedges, banks, and sunken roads. Tanks could not operate, while the infantry had to advance from hedgerow to hedgerow, a painfully slow and expensive process against the skillful and determined German resistance. On the left, Montgomery had promised to take Caen on the first day, but had not done so even by the end of June. Less than two weeks after the exultation over the success of D-Day came the letdown, and with it a severe strain on Anglo-American relations in general, and the relations between Eisenhower and Montgomery specifically.
That the two men would have difficulty in dealing with each other was almost inevitable, given the contrasts between them. Eisenhower was gregarious, while Montgomery lived in isolation. Eisenhower mixed easily with his staff and discussed all decisions with his subordinates; Montgomery set himself up in a lonely camp, where he slept and ate in a wood-paneled trailer he had captured from Rommel in the desert. Montgomery wrote his directives by hand and handed them down from on high, while Eisenhower waited for general agreement among his staff and usually had his operations officer write the final directive. Montgomery had shunned the company of women after his wife’s death and did not smoke or drink. Eisenhower was modest, Montgomery conceited. “I became completely dedicated to my profession,” Montgomery once said of himself.45
He had indeed made an intensive study of how to command. What he had not studied was how to get his ideas across. He always seemed to be talking down to people, and his condescension became more marked the more intensely he felt about a subject. Montgomery’s arrogance offended even British officers, while most Americans found him insufferable. What one American called “his sharp beagle-like nose, the small grey eyes that dart about quickly like rabbits in a Thurber cartoon,” his self-satisfaction, all irritated.46
The personality differences were significant factors in the always strained Eisenhower-Montgomery relationship, but what mattered more was fundamental disagreement over strategy and tactics, and their different structural positions. Eisenhower’s military theory was straightforward and aggressive. Like Grant in the Virginia Wilderness in 1864, he favored constant attack, all along the line. He was an advocate of the direct approach and put his faith in the sheer smashing power of great armies. He was once accused of having a mass-production mentality, which was true but beside the point. He came from a mass-production society, and like any good general he wanted to use his nation’s strengths on the battlefield.
To Montgomery, “it was always very clear . . . that Ike and I were poles apart when it came to the conduct of the war.” Montgomery believed in “unbalancing the enemy while keeping well-balanced myself.” He wanted to attack on a narrow front, cut through the German lines, and dash on to his objective.47
Further, Eisenhower was responsible to the CCS, and beyond that body to the two governments. Montgomery was in theory responsible to Eisenhower, but in reality he looked to Brooke, not Eisenhower, for guidance. Montgomery was the senior British officer on the Continent, and as such saw himself as responsible for his nation’s interests. The British had neither the manpower nor the material resources to overwhelm the Germans, and they had learned, from 1914 to 1918, that it was near suicidal for them to attempt to do so. The British strength was brains, not brawn. Montgomery proposed to defeat the Germans in France by outthinking and outmaneuvering them; Eisenhower wanted to outfight them.
• •
The initial difficulty centered around the taking of Caen. Montgomery had promised it, did not have it, would not attack it. By mid-June, he was claiming that he had never intended to break out of the beachhead at Caen, on the direct road to Paris; rather, his strategy was to hold on the left while Bradley broke out on the right. His critics charge that he changed his plan because of his failure at Caen; Montgomery himself insisted that he had all along planned to pin the German panzers down in front of Caen while Bradley outflanked them. There is a fierce, continuing, and unresolvable controversy among military experts on this point.
On July 1, Eisenhower went to Normandy to see what he could do to galvanize his commanders. He told Bradley he was bringing “nothing but a bedroll, one aide and an orderly” and wanted “nothing but a trench with a piece of canvas over it.”48 He stayed five days, visiting with troops, inspecting the battlefield, talking with Bradley and the American corps and division commanders. None of them liked having Eisenhower around, because their various headquarters were all subject to sporadic German artillery fire. Eisenhower’s old friend Wade Haislip, commanding the XV Corps, told him flatly to get out. “Don’t think I’m worrying about your possible demise,” he added. “I just don’t want it said that I allowed the Supreme Commander to get killed in my corps area. Now if you want to get killed, go into some other area.”49
At one point Eisenhower commandeered a jeep and, accompanied by his British aide, James Gault, and an orderly, with no other escort, personally drove around the countryside, and even managed to wander behind the German lines. No startling events occurred, and he did not know he had been in danger until he reached 90th Division headquarters and was told where he had been. The GIs were delighted to see Eisenhower driving the jeep and shouted and whistled as he drove past.
On July 4, Eisenhower went to a fighter airfield; while there, he learned that a mission was about to be flown. Eisenhower said he wanted to go along in order to see the hedgerow country from the air. Bradley, who was with him, demurred, but Eisenhower insisted. His last words, as he climbed into a Mustang, were “All right, Brad, I am not going to fly to Berlin.”50
When he got back to Bushey Park, disappointed at the lack of progress in the hedgerows, despairing of ever breaking out in that awful country, Tedder and Smith both told him that it was all Montgomery’s fault. They insisted that Eisenhower had to force him to act. Tedder complained that Montgomery was unjustly blaming the air forces for his own failure and said that “the Army did not seem prepared to fight its own battles.”51
Eisenhower wrote a letter to Montgomery, but it was too weak—more a statement of desired objectives than a firm order—to impel action. On July 12, Patton commented in his diary, “Ike is bound hand and foot by the British and does not know it. Poor fool. We actually have no Supreme Commander—no one who can take hold and say that this shall be done and that shall not be done.”52 There was a general uneasy feeling around SHAEF that Eisenhower would never take hold of Montgomery. Gossips at SHAEF were speculating on “who would succeed Monty if sacked.” This simple solution was, to Eisenhower, out of the question, because of Montgomery’s popularity with the British troops, Brooke, and the British public. Further, Eisenhower had no right to remove the senior British commander. The Supreme Commander seems to have been the only man at SHAEF to recognize these obvious truths, and they provide the answer to the nagging question, Why did Eisenhower put up with Montgomery? He had no choice. He had to cooperate with the difficult and exasperating British general, for Montgomery’s place in the command structure was secure.
The real threat to Montgomery’s position was Tedder’s recommendation that Eisenhower move his headquarters to Normandy and take personal control of the land battle. Montgomery knew that he needed to buy time, not so much to protect his position as to keep Eisenhower in England so that he could run the land battle.
On July 18 Montgomery finally launched an attack, code name Goodwood. In its initial stages, assisted by the tremendous air bombardment, it went well. But after Montgomery lost 401 tanks and suffered 2,600 casualties, he called it off. The British Second Army had taken Caen, gained a few square miles, and inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans, but there had been nothing like a breakthrough. Montgomery announced that he was satisfied with the results.
Eisenhower was angry. He thundered that it had taken more than seven thousand tons of bombs to gain seven miles and that the Allies could hardly hope to go through France paying a price of a thousand tons of bombs per mile. Tedder blamed Montgomery for “the Army’s failure,” and SHAEF officers wondered aloud whether Montgomery should be made a peer and sent to the House of Lords or given the governorship of Malta.53
This was all wild and irresponsible talk. After the war, Eisenhower said he felt the powers of a supreme commander should be greater, that he should have the right to dismiss any subordinate, whatever his nationality. But even had Eisenhower had that power in 1944, he would not have exercised it. Sensitive to the morale factor and keenly aware of Montgomery’s great popularity, he would not consider asking for Montgomery’s removal.
At Smith’s and Tedder’s urging, Eisenhower sent a letter to Montgomery. “Time is vital,” he said, and he urged Montgomery to resume the attack. Many American officers thought that Montgomery hesitated because of the critical British manpower situation. The United Kingdom could no longer make good the losses in the Second Army, so it could not afford the cost in casualties of an all-out attack. Eisenhower argued that an attack now would save lives in the long run.54
Everyone was depressed, irritable. After seven weeks of fighting, the deepest Allied penetrations were some twenty-five to thirty miles inland, on a front of only eighty miles, hardly enough room to maneuver or to bring in the American forces waiting in England for deployment. The Americans were still struggling in the hedgerow country, measuring their advance in yards rather than miles. Goodwood had failed and Montgomery refused to mount another attack. The newspapers were full of the ugly word “stalemate.”
There were two bright spots. Ultra radio intercepts revealed that the Germans were stretched to the limit, and Bradley was working on a plan, code name Cobra, to break out on the right. As Eisenhower noted in his letter to Montgomery, “Now we are pinning our hopes on Bradley.”
By July 23, the Americans had landed a total of 770,000 troops in Normandy. First Army had suffered 73,000 casualties. The British and Canadians had landed 591,000 troops and suffered 49,000 casualties. There was a large, immediately available reserve of American divisions in England waiting to enter the battle. The Germans in Normandy, meanwhile, had twenty-six divisions in place, six of them armored, to face the AEF’s thirty-four divisions. As the Allies were on the offensive, their superiority on the ground was only marginal; in addition, the German Fifteenth Army was still intact in the Pas de Calais, which meant that the German ability to reinforce was greater than that of the Allies.
Eisenhower’s great advantage continued to be control of the air. Bradley planned to use it in Operation Cobra to break through the German lines; once he was through, Eisenhower intended to rush divisions over from England, activate Patton’s Third Army, and send it racing for Brittany to open the ports there.
The problem with air power was weather; it was a weapon that could be used only under suitable conditions. Cobra was scheduled to begin on July 21. That day Eisenhower flew over to Normandy to witness the beginning. The sky was overcast and his B-25 was the only plane in the air. By the time he arrived it was raining hard. Bradley told him the attack had been called off and dressed him down for flying in such weather. Eisenhower tossed away his soggy cigarette, smiled, and said his only pleasure in being Supreme Commander was that nobody could ground him.
“When I die,” he added, looking at the steady rain, “they ought to hold my body for a rainy day and then bury me out in the middle of a storm. This damned weather is going to be the death of me yet.”55
The next day, as the rains continued, he flew back to London; on the twenty-fourth, still waiting for a clear day, he wired Bradley, urging him to an all-out effort when the weather permitted. “A break through at this juncture will minimize the total cost,” he said, and added that he wanted First Army to “pursue every advantage with an ardor verging on recklessness.” If it broke through, “the results will be incalculable.”56
Bradley hardly needed urging, but Montgomery did. Eisenhower wanted Second Army to attack when Cobra began—indeed had promised Bradley he would see to it—so after sending his message to Bradley, Eisenhower flew to Montgomery’s headquarters. What he wanted, as Smith noted, was “an all-out co-ordinated attack by the entire Allied line, which would at last put our forces in decisive motion. He was up and down the line like a football coach, exhorting everyone to aggressive action.”57
All this was highly irritating to Montgomery and Brooke. “It is quite clear that Ike considers that [General Miles] Dempsey [commanding Second Army] should be doing more than he does,” Brooke wrote to Montgomery. “It is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war.” The British officers agreed that Eisenhower had no notion of balance. If everybody was to attack, Montgomery argued, nobody would have the strength to make a decisive breakthrough or to exploit it. Eisenhower “evidently . . . has some conception of attacking on the whole front,” Brooke complained, “which must be an American doctrine.”58
Tedder too was unhappy with Eisenhower, but as usual he disagreed with Montgomery and Brooke. Cobra got started on the morning of July 25; that day, Tedder called Eisenhower on the telephone, demanding to know why Montgomery was not doing more and what Eisenhower was doing about it. Eisenhower said he had talked with Churchill and that they were satisfied that this time Montgomery’s attack would be in earnest. Tedder “rather uh-huhed, being not at all satisfied, and implying the PM must have sold Ike a bill of goods.” Eisenhower told Butcher of the conversation and said he thought he could work things out satisfactorily, for “there’s nothing so wrong a good victory won’t cure.”59
He was right. On the second day of Cobra, U.S. First Army broke through. Eisenhower activated Patton’s Third Army. General Courtney Hodges took command of First Army as Bradley moved up to command of 12th Army Group, consisting of First and Third Armies.
On August 1, Patton was unleashed and began his race through Brittany. The nightmare of a static front was over. “This is great news,” Eisenhower exulted. Just before lunch on August 2, Butcher met Eisenhower in the hall at Bushey Park. The Supreme Commander was all smiles. “If the intercepts are right,” he said, “we are to hell and gone in Brittany and slicing ’em up in Normandy.”60
On August 7, Eisenhower set up an advance command post in Normandy, a tented headquarters in an apple orchard near Granville, which was less than twenty-five miles from Mortain and almost directly in the path of an expected German counterattack. He met with Bradley, and they immediately agreed to hold Mortain with minimal forces while rushing every available division south. They bolstered the flanks of the salient with American artillery and called in the fighter-bombers. Eisenhower told Bradley that “if the Germans should temporarily break through from Mortain to Avranches and thus cut off the southward thrust, we would give the advance forces two thousand tons of supply per day by air.” The following morning, Eisenhower told Marshall, “The enemy’s . . . counter attacks . . . make it appear that we have a good chance to encircle and destroy a lot of his forces.”61
The gamble at Mortain paid off; in a classic defensive action, the 30th Division held, while the artillery and air forces virtually destroyed the German tanks. On August 9, the Germans broke off the counterattack. The Canadians and Patton were posing a threat to encircle them. The Allied offensive was in full swing, all forces meshing, aiming for the destruction of the German Seventh and Fifth Panzer Armies, which were in a huge salient, with the tip at Mortain and the base on the Falaise-Argentan line. “Ike keeps continually after both Montgomery and Bradley,” Butcher noted, “to destroy the enemy now rather than to be content with mere gains of territory.”62
The Canadian attack, however, went slowly. Patton, facing slimmer resistance, made a steady advance. By August 10, the Germans were nearly trapped; Patton’s units had cut off all but one of the supply roads for the German armies. On August 12, Patton’s lead corps reached Argentan. The Canadians were still short of Falaise.
Patton, impatient, wanted to cross the army boundary line and close the gap. He called Bradley on the telephone and pleaded, “Let me go on to Falaise and we’ll drive the British back into the sea for another Dunkirk.” Bradley refused. He did not believe Patton was strong enough to hold the gap once the Germans started the rush to escape. Besides, he thought the Canadians could complete the encirclement.63
By August 14 the Allies were on the verge of closing the trap. Eisenhower, Butcher reported, was “sunny, if not almost jubilant.” He called for an all-out effort. On the fourteenth, he issued a rare Order of the Day (he sent out only ten in the course of the war), exhorting the Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen. “The opportunity may be grasped only through the utmost in zeal, determination and speedy action,” Eisenhower declared. If everyone did his job, “we can make this week a momentous one in the history of this war—a brilliant and fruitful week for us, a fateful one for the ambitions of the Nazi tyrants.”64 The Order of the Day was broadcast over BBC and the Allied radio network, and distributed to the troops in mimeographed form.
• •
There was the greatest excitement at SHAEF, and indeed through the Allied world. Churchill, Roosevelt, Marshall, and Brooke all felt it. In New York, the stock market tumbled in anticipation of peace. Newspaper correspondents who had been overly pessimistic during the Normandy stalemate now asked Eisenhower, at an August 15 press conference, how many weeks it would take to end the war. In the days that followed, he would hear that question again and again. People thought of November 1918, when the German Army cracked, and expected a repetition in August or September of 1944. The thought persisted, indeed grew stronger and plagued Eisenhower until October.
The expectation of a German collapse was based on a misreading of the lesson of November 1918, an inaccurate assessment of the situation in August 1944, and a failure to understand the German character. In 1918 the Germans had been pushed behind their last defensive line, while in 1944 they still had the West Wall to fall back to. In 1918 the Germans had fallen behind in the technological race (it was the Allies who had the tanks), while in 1944 the Nazis could legitimately ask the Wehrmacht to hold on just a little longer, because Germany’s secret weapons might well win the war for them; many of those weapons, such as the V-1s and V-2s, jet aircraft, and diesel submarines, were already realities. In 1918, it was the dim-witted, indecisive Kaiser and the shattered Ludendorff who had agreed to an armistice; Eisenhower knew that Hitler was made of sterner stuff.
Most of all, Eisenhower knew that the Germans would not quit until they were incapable of resistance. He knew it, in part, because of his own German heritage. He expected the Germans to fight until it was impossible for them to continue. He knew that they could retreat to the West Wall, and in the process fall back on their supply base, while the AEF supply lines grew longer. He also realized that because of the Transportation Plan, because his ground commanders had called on the heavy bombers so often in Normandy, and because of the bombing effort against the V-1 and V-2 sites, Germany itself was still relatively untouched. He knew that the Germans were producing more tanks, artillery, and other weapons in 1944 than in any previous year; he knew that the AEF was, therefore, in for a tremendous fight.
The theme appears again and again in his letters to his wife. On August 11, he told her, “Don’t be misled by the papers. Every victory . . . is sweet—but the end of the war will come only with complete destruction of the Hun forces.” In September, when expectations of a German collapse were even higher, he said, “I wonder how the people at home can be so complacent about finishing off the job we have here. There is still a lot of suffering to go through. God, I hate the Germans!”65
So, when reporters asked him on August 15 how many weeks to the end, he was furious. Butcher recorded, “Ike vehemently castigated those who think they can measure the end of the war ‘in a matter of weeks.’ He went on to say ‘such people are crazy.’ ” Eisenhower reminded the press that Hitler knew he would hang when the war ended so he had nothing to lose in continuing it. In 1918, the Kaiser had had reason to hope for a soft peace on the basis of Wilson’s Fourteen Points; in 1944, Hitler had only Roosevelt’s unconditional surrender demand to contemplate.
Eisenhower told the reporters that he expected that Hitler would end up hanging himself, but before he did he would “fight to the bitter end,” and most of his troops would fight with him.66 It was a leap into the mind of the enemy, the highest form of the military art, and he was exactly right.
Just how right Eisenhower was, the Germans demonstrated in the Falaise pocket. They rejected the easy way out—surrender—and fought to hold open their escape route. Despite Eisenhower’s plea in his Order of the Day, it was the Germans, not the Allies, who made the supreme effort at Falaise. The rigidity with which the field commanders held to the boundary lines at Argentan and Falaise helped the Germans, to be sure, but the main factors were German fighting ability and determination. The gap was not closed until August 19; some forty thousand Wehrmacht troops escaped.
Eisenhower was disappointed but not downcast. “Due to the extraordinary defensive measures taken by the enemy,” he explained to Marshall, “it is possible that our total bag of prisoners will not be so great as I first anticipated.”67 Falaise left a taste of bitterness and led to recrimination between the British and the Americans as to whose fault it was that any Germans escaped, much less forty thousand.
Still, the disappointment should not obscure the fact that Falaise was a victory. Some fifty thousand Germans were captured, another ten thousand were killed. Those who escaped left their equipment behind. Later in August, Eisenhower toured the battlefield with Kay, Jimmy Gault, and press representatives. Gault wrote, “We were certainly not disappointed in the results, because the scene was one of masses of destroyed tanks, guns, transports and equipment of all sorts lying around, including many dead Germans and horses. The smell was tremendous.”68
Eisenhower said that the scene “could be described only by Dante. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.”69 Falaise, in fact, ended the Battle of France. The Germans, those who were left, were retreating pell-mell toward the border. They could not defend the line of the Seine, nor any other in France; their only safety lay in the West Wall. But, as Eisenhower knew, although everyone around him seemed at one time or another to forget, victory in France did not mean the end of the war, and as he told Mamie in early August, “In war there is no substitute for victory.”70
• •
Following Falaise, the AEF overran France. Montgomery’s 21st Army Group drove along the coast toward Belgium, while the First and Third Armies headed east, toward Paris and beyond to the German border. On August 23, the SHAEF G-2 summary declared, “The August battles have done it and the enemy in the West has had it. Two and a half months of bitter fighting have brought the end of the war in Europe within sight, almost within reach.” Patton said that he could cross the German border in ten days, then drive on almost at will to Berlin. And Montgomery told Eisenhower, “I consider we have now reached a stage where one really full-blooded thrust toward Berlin is likely to get there and thus end the German war.”71
It was inevitable that the high command should feel so optimistic. The last two weeks of August and first week of September 1944 were among the most dramatic of the war, with great successes following one another in rapid succession. In France, First Army liberated Paris and 21st Army Group swept forward, covering in hours distances that had taken months and cost tens of thousands of lives to cross in World War I. In the last week of August alone, 21st Army Group covered two hundred miles. Rumania surrendered to the Soviets, then declared war on Germany. Finland signed a truce with the Russians. Bulgaria tried to surrender. The Germans pulled out of Greece. The Allies landed in the south of France and drove to Lyons and beyond, and 6th Army Group joined the AEF.
American troops continued to come from England to France, enough for the creation of yet another army, the Ninth, under Lieutenant General William Simpson. It was assigned to 12th Army Group. British and American paratroopers in England were organized into the First Allied Airborne Army and constituted a highly mobile reserve, ready to strike wherever Eisenhower directed. Alexander was attacking in Italy. The Russians’ summer offensive carried the Red Army to Yugoslavia, destroying twelve German divisions and inflicting 700,000 casualties. The end of the war did indeed seem at hand.
But not to Eisenhower, who was more realistic than Marshall and the others. One of his major functions was the allocation of supplies to the field armies, which made him acutely aware that every step Montgomery’s forces took to the northeast, and that Patton’s army took toward the east, carried them farther away from the Normandy ports, adding to an already serious supply problem. On August 20 Eisenhower told reporters that his forces had advanced so rapidly and supply lines were so strained that “further movement in large parts of the front even against very weak opposition is almost impossible.”72
The supply situation, which soon turned critical, raised the questions of priority and the nature of the advance into Germany. There are two natural invasion routes—north of the Ardennes, through Belgium and Holland into northern Germany, and south of the Ardennes, straight east from Paris past Verdun and Metz to cross the Rhine at Mainz.
On August 19, Eisenhower told Montgomery and Bradley that it was his intention to take personal control of the land battle as soon as SHAEF could set up in France a forward command post with adequate communication facilities. He also outlined a plan of campaign that would send 21st Army Group northeast, toward Antwerp and the Ruhr, with 12th Army Group heading straight east from Paris toward Metz.
Now it was Montgomery’s turn for anger. On August 22 he sent his chief of staff, Freddie de Guingand, to see Eisenhower and protest against both decisions. Montgomery argued that the quickest way to end the war was to hold Patton in Paris, give control of U.S. First Army and all incoming supplies to 21st Army Group, and send it to Antwerp and beyond to the Ruhr.
This force had to operate as a single unit under single control, which was “a WHOLE TIME job for one man.” Montgomery warned that “to change the system of command now, after having won a great victory, would be to prolong the war.” De Guingand pressed these points in a two-hour meeting with Eisenhower, but Eisenhower refused to change his mind. Montgomery then invited Eisenhower to come to his tactical headquarters at Condé for lunch the next day, August 23, to discuss future operations.73
Eisenhower drove to Condé for the meeting. Smith was with him, but when they arrived Montgomery abruptly announced that he wanted to see Eisenhower alone and thus Smith would have to stay outside. Eisenhower meekly accepted Montgomery’s really quite insulting demand that Smith be locked out, even though de Guingand was with Montgomery.
Once inside the trailer, Montgomery tried his best to be tactful, but his idea of tact was to deliver a patronizing lecture on elementary strategy that a Sandhurst or West Point cadet would have found insulting. Standing before the map, his feet spread, hands behind his back, head up, eyes darting about, Montgomery outlined the situation, said the immediate need was for a firm plan, discussed logistics, told Eisenhower what the plans should be (a single thrust to the Ruhr by 21st Army Group, with First Army in support), declared that if Eisenhower’s plan were followed the result would be failure, and told Eisenhower that he “should not descend into the land battle and become a ground C-in-C.” He said that the Supreme Commander “must sit on a very lofty perch in order to be able to take a detached view of the whole intricate problem” and that someone must run the land battle for him. Eisenhower replied that he would not change his mind and intended to take control on September 1.
Unable to move Eisenhower on the question of command, Montgomery shifted to the real issue, the nature of the advance into Germany. He wanted Patton stopped where he was; he wanted the Airborne Army and First Army assigned to him; he wanted all available supplies; he wanted a directive that would send him through the Pas de Calais, on to Antwerp and Brussels, and beyond to the Ruhr.
Eisenhower, after an hour’s argument, made some concessions, of which the most important were to give Montgomery control of the Airborne Army and the “authority to effect the necessary operational coordination” between the right flank of 21st Army Group and Bradley’s left (i.e., First Army). In addition, 21st Army Group would have “priority” in supplies. Still, Eisenhower insisted, to Montgomery’s dissatisfaction, “on building up . . . the necessary strength to advance eastward from Paris toward Metz.” After the meeting, Montgomery reported to Brooke that “it has been a very exhausting day,” but overall he was pleased, as he felt he had won the main points, “operational control” over the Airborne and the First Armies, plus priority in supplies.74
Eisenhower’s attempt to appease Montgomery made both Bradley and Patton furious. The two American generals met; Patton recorded in his diary that Bradley “feels that Ike won’t go against Monty . . . Bradley was madder than I have ever seen him and wondered aloud ‘what the Supreme Commander amounted to.’ ” Patton felt that the southern advance offered much better tank terrain than the water-logged country to the north, but noted in disgust that Montgomery “has some way of talking Ike into his own way of thinking.” He suggested to Bradley that they threaten to resign. “I feel that in such a showdown we would win, as Ike would not dare to relieve us.”75
Bradley would not go so far, but he did spend two days with Eisenhower, arguing against giving First Army to Montgomery. Tedder agreed with Bradley, as did Eisenhower’s operations officer (G-3), Major General Harold Bull, and his G-2, General Strong. Eisenhower yielded to their pressure. When he issued his directive, on August 29, he did not give operational control of First Army to Montgomery; instead, Montgomery was only “authorized to effect”—through Bradley—“any necessary coordination between his own forces” and First Army.76 That decision, and its sequel, strengthened Montgomery’s and Brooke’s—and Bradley’s and Patton’s—conviction that Eisenhower always agreed with the last man he talked to.
• •
It was a most serious charge, but a bit off the mark. Montgomery tended to hear what he wanted to hear, read what he wanted to read; Eisenhower tended to seek out words or phrases that would appease. There was, consequently, a consistent misunderstanding between the two men. Nevertheless, Eisenhower never yielded on the two main points, command and single thrust, not in August and September 1944, nor again when they were raised in January and March 1945. He took—and kept—control of the land battle, just as he said he would. And he never wavered, from the moment he first saw the SHAEF plans for a two-front advance into Germany to the last month of the war, on the question of the so-called “broad front.”
He did waver, sometimes badly, on some important issues, primarily the relative importance of Arnhem and Antwerp, and the meaning of the word “priority.” But he never told Montgomery anything that a reasonable man could have construed as a promise that Patton would be stopped in Paris and 21st Army Group be sent on to Berlin. Nor did he ever encourage Patton to believe that he would be sent to Berlin alone. He always insisted on invading Germany from both north and south of the Ardennes.
His reasons were manifold. His analysis of German morale and geography played a large role. Even after the Allies got through the West Wall, there was still a major barrier between them and the German heartland, the Rhine River. A single thrust, especially beyond the Rhine, would be subject to counterattacks on the flanks. Eisenhower believed that the counterattacks might be powerful enough to sever the supply lines and then destroy the leading armies. Currently, with the Allies’ limited port capacity, the Allies could not bring forward adequate supplies to sustain an army beyond the Rhine. Every mile that the advancing troops moved away from the Normandy ports added to the problems. For example, forward airfields had to be constructed to provide fighter support for the troops. But to construct them it was necessary to move engineers and building materials forward, at the expense of weapons and gasoline. One senior engineer involved pointed out that if Patton had gone across the Rhine in September, he would have done so without any logistical or air support at all. “A good task force of Panzerfaust, manned by Hitler Youth, could have finished them off before they reached Kassel.”77
As for 21st Army Group, de Guingand pointed out that when (and if) it reached the Rhine, bridging material would have to be brought forward, at the expense of other supplies. Like Eisenhower, de Guingand doubted that there would be a collapse of German morale; he expected the enemy to fight to the bitter end.
As, of course, the Germans did; it took the combined efforts of 160 Russian divisions and the entire AEF and Alexander’s Italian offensive and eight additional months of devastating air attack to force a German capitulation. After the war, de Guingand remarked, a bit dryly, that he had to doubt that Montgomery could have brought about the same result with 21st Army Group alone. “My conclusion, is, therefore,” de Guingand wrote, “that Eisenhower was right.”78
The personality and political factors in Eisenhower’s decision are obvious. Patton pulling one way, Montgomery the other; each man insistent; each certain of his own military genius; each accustomed to having his own way. Behind them, there were the adulating publics, who had made Patton and Montgomery into symbols of their nation’s military prowess. In Eisenhower’s view, to give one or the other the glory would have serious repercussions, not just the howls of agony from the press and public of the nation left behind, but in the very fabric of the Alliance itself. Eisenhower feared it could not survive the resulting uproar. It was too big a chance to take, especially on such a risky operation. Eisenhower never considered taking it.
Montgomery and Patton showed no appreciation of the pressures on Eisenhower when they argued so persistently for their plans, but then Eisenhower’s worries were not their responsibility. Montgomery wanted a quick end to the war, he wanted the British to bring it about, and he wanted to lead the charge into Berlin personally. Patton would have given anything to beat him to it. Had Eisenhower been in their positions, he almost surely would have felt as they did, and he wanted his subordinates to be aggressive and to believe in themselves and their troops.
Eisenhower’s great weakness in this situation was not that he wavered on the broad-front question, but rather his eagerness to be well liked, coupled with his desire to keep everyone happy. Because of these characteristics, he would not end a meeting until at least verbal agreement had been found. Thus he appeared to be always shifting, “inclining first one way, then the other,” according to the views and wishes of the last man with whom he had talked. Eisenhower, as Brooke put it, seemed to be “an arbiter balancing the requirements of competing allies and subordinates rather than a master of the field making a decisive choice.”79 Everyone who talked to him left the meeting feeling that Eisenhower had agreed with him, only to find out later that he had not. Thus Montgomery, Bradley, and Patton filled their diaries and letters and conversations with denunciations of Eisenhower (Bradley less so than the others).
The real price that had to be paid for Eisenhower’s desire to be well liked was not, however, animosity toward him from Montgomery and Patton. It was, rather, on the battlefield. In his attempts to appease Montgomery and Patton, Eisenhower gave them great tactical leeway, to the point of allowing them to choose their own objectives. The result was one of the great mistakes of the war, the failure to take and open Antwerp promptly, which represented the only real chance the Allies had to end the war in 1944. The man both immediately and ultimately responsible for that failure was Eisenhower.