Adm. Sir Andrew Cunningham, the first sea lord, told Eisenhower it had been a great experience to serve under him in the Mediterranean. He had watched Eisenhower bring together the forces of two nations, made up of men with different upbringings, conflicting ideas on staff work, and basic, “apparently irreconcilable ideas,” and forge them into a team. “I do not believe,” Cunningham said, “that any other man than yourself could have done it.”¹⁶

The key word was “team.” Eisenhower’s emphasis on teamwork, his never-flagging insistence on working together, was the single most important reason for his selection.

ON DECEMBER 7, 1943, Eisenhower met Roosevelt in Tunis, where the president was stopping on his way back to Washington. Roosevelt was taken off his plane and put in Eisenhower’s car. As the automobile began to drive off, the president turned to the general and said, almost casually, “Well, Ike, you are going to command Overlord.”¹⁷ His title was Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force.

At Marshall’s insistence, Eisenhower returned to the States for a two-week furlough, followed by a series of briefings and meetings. He flew to Britain in mid-January, landing in Scotland and taking a train to London. On January 15, 1944, he took up his new command.

WHEN EISENHOWER HAD first visited London, in June 1942, there was a suite waiting for him at Claridge’s, then London’s best and most expensive hotel. But the liveried footmen were not to his taste, nor was the ornate lobby, and he found his suite, with its black-and-gold sitting room and pink bedroom, appalling. He moved to a less elegant hotel and had aides secure for him a quiet place in the country where he could relax. It was a small, modest, two-bedroom house in Kingston, Surrey, called Telegraph Cottage.

When Eisenhower returned to London in January 1944, he immediately complained that having Overlord headquarters in the city was distracting. Churchill, the American ambassador, and other VIPs felt free to call on him at any hour, and the staff found the temptations of London nightlife too much to pass up. Within two weeks he moved the headquarters to Bushy Park, outside the city. There the staff, with considerable grumbling, moved into tents. Aides found a nearby mansion in Kingston Hill for his residence; he found it much too grand. He asked about Telegraph Cottage and found that Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, his deputy supreme commander, was living there. He persuaded Tedder to switch residences. The supreme commander thus had the least pretentious home of any general officer in England.

When Rommel went to Paris at the beginning of January 1944 to meet with Rundstedt (who was living in considerable splendor in the Hotel George V), the city seemed to him like a Babel. He wanted to establish his headquarters somewhere else. His naval aide, Vice Adm. Friedrich Ruge, said he had just the place. On a trip back to Paris from the coast, Ruge had stopped in at the Chateau La Roche-Guyon, located on the Seine River in a village of 543 residents some sixty kilometers downstream from Paris. The chateau had been the seat of the dukes de La Rochefoucauld for centuries. Thomas Jefferson had been a guest there in the late eighteenth century, when he was American ambassador to France and a friend of the most famous of the dukes, the writer François.

Ruge was an avid reader of La Rochefoucauld’s maxims and had called on the duchess to pay his respects. Ruge told Rommel the location was perfect, out of Paris, within equal distance of the Seventh and Fifteenth armies’ headquarters, and the chateau was large enough to hold the staff. So the staff, with much grumbling, left Paris to set up headquarters in the sleepy village of La Roche-Guyon.

Eisenhower wanted a dog for a companion. Aides found him a Scottie puppy. He named it Telek, a shortened form of Telegraph Cottage. Rommel wanted a dog for a companion. Aides found him a dachshund puppy. The dogs slept in their respective masters’ bedrooms.

There were more meaningful comparisons. Each general jammed his feet into the stirrups, took hold of the reins, and galloped into action. Where there had been hesitation and drift, there was now conviction and movement. Their resolution was absolute. “I’m going to throw myself into this new job with everything I’ve got,” Rommel wrote his wife, “and I’m going to see it turns out a success.”¹⁸ Eisenhower said on arrival, “We are approaching a tremendous crisis with stakes incalculable.”¹⁹

The generals set a pace that left other men in their early fifties panting and exhausted. They were typically on the road by 6:00 A.M. each day, inspecting, driving, training, preparing their men. They ate on the run, field rations or a sandwich and a cup of coffee. They did not return to their quarters until well after dark. Eisenhower averaged four hours sleep per night, Rommel hardly more. One difference: Eisenhower smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, while Rommel never smoked.

THERE WERE OTHER, significant differences. Although both men were full of resolve, the defender could not keep his doubts out of his mind, while the attacker refused to entertain any doubts. On January 17, Rommel wrote his wife, “I think we’re going to win the battle for the defense of the west for certain—provided we get enough time to set things up.”²⁰ For Eisenhower, there were no “provideds,” only challenges. On January 23, he told his superiors on the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), “Every obstacle must be overcome, every inconvenience suffered and every risk run to ensure that our blow is decisive. We cannot afford to fail.”²¹

ONE FACTOR IN Rommel’s pessimism was the confused command structure. For all their prattling about the “führer” principle of “ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (one people, one state, one leader), the Nazis ran the armed services as they ran the government, by the principle of divide and rule. Hitler deliberately mixed the lines of authority so that no one ever knew precisely who was in command of what. This characteristic of the führer’s was exacerbated by the natural and universal tendency of air, sea, and ground forces to indulge in interservice rivalry. So, in Rommel’s case, he did not have control over the Luftwaffe in France, nor of the navy, nor of the administrative governors in the occupied territories. He did not have administrative control of the Waffen-SS units in France, nor of the paratroop or antiaircraft units (they belonged to the Luftwaffe).

The fragmentation of command reached ridiculous proportions. For example, the naval coastal guns along the Channel would remain under naval control as the Allied fleets approached the coast. But the moment Allied troops began to land, command of the coastal batteries would revert to the Wehrmacht.

Bad enough for Rommel, it was never clear whether he or Rundstedt would control the battle. Worst of all, Hitler wanted to command himself. Hitler kept control of the panzer divisions in his hands. They could be committed to the battle only on his orders—and his headquarters was a thousand kilometers from the scene, and those were the divisions Rommel was depending on for a first-day counterattack. It was madness.

Eisenhower had no such problems. His command was clear-cut, absolute. Initially, he had not been given command of the Allied bomber forces (U.S. Eighth Air Force, British Bomber Command), but when he threatened to resign if not allowed to use the bombers as he saw fit, the CCS gave him what he wanted. Every soldier, every airman, every sailor, every unit in the United Kingdom in the spring of 1944 took orders from Eisenhower. Thus did the democracies put the lie to the Nazi claim that democracies are inherently inefficient, dictatorships inherently efficient.

THANKS TO THE clear-cut command authority, a single-minded clarity of purpose pervaded Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), in contrast to the situation at OB West and Army Group B. A factor in creating unity at SHAEF was Eisenhower’s relationship with his immediate subordinates, which contrasted sharply with Rommel’s command structure. Eisenhower had worked with most of his team in the Mediterranean and had played a role in the selection of most of the army, corps, and division commanders, while Rommel hardly knew the generals commanding his armies, corps, and divisions.

This is not to say that Eisenhower liked, or even wanted, all his subordinates. He did not like General Montgomery and feared that he would be too cautious in battle. But Eisenhower knew that Monty, Britain’s only hero thus far in the war, absolutely had to have a major role and so he was determined to work as effectively with Monty as possible—as he had done in the Mediterranean. He thought the tactical air commander, Air Vice Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, too cautious and pessimistic, but he determined to get the most out of him. He liked and admired his deputy, Air Marshal Tedder, enormously; so too the naval commander in chief, Adm. Bertram Ramsay. Eisenhower had worked closely and well with Tedder and Ramsay in the Mediterranean.

His principal American ground commander, Gen. Omar N. Bradley, was a West Point classmate, an old and close friend, a man whose judgments Eisenhower trusted implicitly. His chief of staff, Gen. Walter B. Smith, had been with him since mid-1942. Eisenhower characterized Smith as “the perfect chief of staff,” a crutch to a one-legged man. “I wish I had a dozen like him,” Eisenhower told a friend. “If I did, I would simply buy a fishing rod and write home every week about my wonderful accomplishments in winning the war.”²²

Rommel had never worked with his army commanders, Gen. Hans von Salmuth of the Fifteenth and Gen. Friedrich Dollmann of the Seventh. With Salmuth, he would have shouting arguments. Dollmann had little field experience, was in poor health, and did not much like Rommel. Neither Salmuth nor Dollman was an ardent Nazi. Gen. Baron Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg commanded the panzer group in the West. A veteran of the Eastern Front, Schweppenburg was horrified at Rommel’s proposal to use the tanks close up; in his view, that was to misuse the tanks as fixed artillery. Their controversy was never resolved, but it hardly mattered, as Rommel did not command the panzer group.

Rommel fired his first chief of staff. The successor was Gen. Hans Speidel, a Swabian from the Württemberg district who had fought with Rommel in World War I and had served with him in the twenties. Speidel was an active plotter against Hitler, more politically adroit and aware than his chief. Eventually he was able to persuade Rommel to support the conspiracy against Hitler, which was growing through the early months of 1944.

Here was a profound difference between Rommel and Eisenhower. Eisenhower believed with all his heart in the cause he was fighting for. To him, the invasion was a crusade designed to end the Nazi occupation of Europe and destroy the scourge of Nazism forever. He hated the Nazis and all they represented. Although a patriot, Rommel was no Nazi—even though at times he had been a toady to Hitler. To Rommel, the coming battle would be fought against an enemy he never hated and indeed respected. He approached that battle with professional competence rather than the zeal of a crusader.