THE SOUTHEASTERN COAST OF France stretches over 640 kilo metres from the Spanish border to Italy. The landscape encompasses a seductively beautiful coastline, rugged hills, and two of Europe’s most important ports, at Toulon and Marseille. In the summer of 1944, Army Group G was charged with defending it. The group’s commander was Johannes Blaskowitz, a Prussian patriot with haunting eyes and a deep sense of German military honour. Blaskowitz had earned Hitler’s undying enmity by protesting the murders of Jews on the eastern front by Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen. He spent most of the war in military obscurity. He was the only Generaloberst not to be promoted to Feldmarschall in July 1940 (though Hitler had the nerve to invite him to the promotion ceremony for the others) and, indeed, was the only senior German general not to be promoted over the course of the war. Only Feldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt retrieved him from obscurity. Possibly seeking a counterweight to Rommel, Rundstedt appointed him commander of Armeegruppe G in May 1944.1 Two armies served under Blaskowitz: the First Army commanded by General der Infanterie Kurt von der Chevallerie, which defended southwestern France, and the Nineteenth Army under General der Infanterie Friedrich Wiese, which defended southeastern France. Wiese had under his command seven infantry divisions and one reserve division, which were controlled by three corps headquarters. These were concentrated along the coast.2 Wiese could also call on Generalleutnant Wend von Wietersheim’s Eleventh Panzer Division, positioned west of the Rhône but en route to Avignon. Wietersheim was a forty-four-year-old Silesian veteran of the eastern front.3
The most important defensive points on the coast were Toulon and Marseille. The port cities’ commanders had much in common. Both Johannes Baeßler (at Toulon) and Hans Schäfer (at Marseille) were born in 1892, both joined the Prussian Army at roughly the same time (1914 and 1912, respectively), and both served at the front during the First World War. And both men would play a defining role in the campaign. The 242nd and 244th Infantry Divisions they commanded were, with the Eleventh Panzer Division under Wietersheim, the strongest in southern France.
German coastal defences in southern France were extensive, though less impressive than those in the north of the country. Defence troops were concentrated near the water in strongholds, often several kilometres apart, occupied by an infantry group of, at most, platoon strength.4 The strongholds were furnished with heavy weapons, including artillery capable of firing 220 mm shells; the Germans often camouflaged them with trees and shrubbery. On average, there was one stronghold every 800 metres, and the area between them was covered by machine-gun fire. There were more landmines on the beaches than anywhere else on the European continent, although according to Blaskowitz’s postwar account, some of them were duds.5 Underwater mines and obstacles, inspired by Rommel in Normandy, were especially effective impediments.6 This thin crust of defence spread along roughly 650 kilometres of coastline, partly because the Germans remained uncertain to the end about the likely landing spot (and, indeed, viewed the area around Saint-Tropez as the least likely).7
The German troops lining up along the coast and in the port strongholds stared out across the Mediterranean. Across the sea in Naples was the headquarters of Lieutenant General Lucian Truscott’s VI Corps, part of Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch’s Seventh Army. Truscott was among the ablest American commanders. He was never a glory-seeker in the vein of Generals Mark Clark or George Patton, but his description of the perfect commander owes something to the latter: “Wars aren’t won by gentlemen. They are won by men who can be first-class sons of bitches…. It’s as simple as that. No son of a bitch, no commander.”8 Truscott also shared Patton’s passion for mobility, a trait that would serve well an army that was poised to chase the Germans across France. After a long and typically acrimonious debate between the Americans and de Gaulle, Truscott agreed that his initial assault on France’s southern coast would be backed up by General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny’s French II Corps, which would deal with any straggling resisters before moving on to Toulon and Marseille. Taking the two Allied corps together, 250,000 soldiers stood ready to attack 200,000 defending Germans.
On August 9, they moved. Great US transport ships and battleships sailed out of Naples, the Gulf of Taranto, Sardinia, and Algeria, and moved toward five beaches along the southern coast of France. The next day, XII Tactical Air Command, supported by the RAF and French Air Force, took out what was left of German air forces in the area, destroyed road and railway bridges and airfields, disrupted communications, and attacked the main coastal defence batteries.9 The bombing was the culmination of a plan that had been implemented since April: as in northern France, the Allies hit transportation targets throughout the south in the run-up to the invasion.10 Again as in northern France, they deliberately spread the bombing across the southern coast in order to confuse the Germans about the true landing point. The raids continued right up until D-Day, with special attention given to bridges crossing the Rhône.
At half past midnight on the morning of August 15, Operation Dragoon was formally launched. The airborne assault was led by Major General Robert T. Frederick’s First Special Service Force, a joint US-Canadian commando unit that Frederick had created. The first targets were the islands of Levant and Port Cros. Within six hours, the Special Force had neutralized opposition: the Germans on Levant surrendered, and although those on Port Cros withdrew into old forts that proved impervious to bombing, they were effectively quarantined and posed no further threat to the invasion. The Germans, however, showed that the Allies had no monopoly on diversionary tactics. One of the Allied force’s main targets, a seemingly great heavy battery on Levant, turned out to be a dummy.
The full airborne assault began at 3:30. Paratroopers were to seize bridges, block roads, and capture key towns.11 Frederick himself, clothed in a white scarf made from a parachute, two stars on each shoulder, and a .45 automatic on his hip, boarded the first plane.12 Approaching the coast, the pilot miscalculated the wind direction, and Frederick and his men jumped off target.
So did everyone else. All other airplanes followed the lead aircraft, and almost five thousand infantrymen, artillerymen, and engineers were scattered up to thirty miles off target.13 They were the lucky ones: some did not reach the shore at all. As each plane followed the one ahead of it in ordering a jump, the last parachutists came down in the Mediterranean. Struggling against the full weight of their pack, and often tangled in their parachutes, most who landed in the water drowned. Those landing on the mainland had varying fates. Some landed in trees, suffering gashes and broken limbs, and they became easy targets for (mercifully rare) enemy gunfire.
As the parachutists struggled to pull their units together, a second wave of airplanes was approaching the beaches. Below them, great columns of water shot hundreds of feet into the air as shells landed near the beaches.14 The aircraft were towing gliders containing jeeps, heavy mortars, and antitank weapons; each glider was usually manned by a pilot, co-pilot, and two men in the jeep. As the planes approached the beach, they released the gliders, which struggled to land their great weight safely. It often did not work. Some smashed into trees, ditches, and each other. Wood splintered, and jeeps—and soldiers—were sent flying.15 Technical Sergeant Ralph Wenthold, who landed with the first assault, watched a glider come down in an orchard.16 The trees tore its wings off, and it sailed headlong into a large tree. The fuselage shattered on impact, and the bodies flew in all directions. In other crashes, soldiers survived, impaled on stakes or with broken legs.17 Medics hurried between shattered gliders, setting broken legs and sewing gashes, sometimes without anaesthetic. For those who could not be saved, parachutes were used as shrouds.18
Crashing gliders naturally threatened men as much as they did other gliders: parachutists often had to make a desperate dash across open fields, dodging crashing and landing gliders. Still other gliders landed smoothly and safely, but this was often no salvation. Others crashed into those already on the ground, killing everyone.19 In one case, a soldier found himself joining would-be German POWs in a dash for their lives.20 Sergeant “Hedy” Lamar came down unhurt but right in front of two German soldiers. They helped him out of a harness and then surrendered. Then the gliders came in and all three ran, never seeing each other again.21
For all the carnage, however, a medic who survived the jump rightly concluded that the casualty rate was relatively low:22 there were 230 jump and glider casualties, or 2.5 percent of the nine thousand airborne troops involved in the operation.23
Those who survived the jump uninjured first tried to gather their units together and then looked for their firearms, which had been dropped in bundles ahead of the parachutists. After that, they began moving into the backcountry, blocking roads and moving on five vital crossroads towns from Fayence to Le Muy.24 The move was also designed to bring them to safety, for the full force of Allied firepower was about to come down on this small corner of France.
At 5:50, the air forces struck again. First heavy bombers, then fighter-bombers drenched the beaches with explosives. Fifty kilometres of beach shook under the force of the barrage. Wooden buildings exploded into splinters, and concrete ones became powder; German soldiers in pillboxes went mad as the force of these impacts made blood gush from their ears, eyes, and noses. Then came the naval barrage: four hundred naval guns launched sixteen thousand shells within just sixteen minutes. “How can anything live under such a bombardment?” Truscott asked the chief of the French navy.25
Not much did. Under the pitiless assault, “German” defenders—many were Russian and Armenian—pulled back, abandoning their motorized antitank guns.26 US forces were onshore with few casualties. For their part, French forces, to de Gaulle’s bitterness, landed on the beaches a day after the Americans, on August 16. Brigadier General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny’s II Army Corps prepared to liberate the great port cities of Toulon and Marseille.
With the Americans ashore and the French landing, the Germans—in Berlin and in southern France—considered how to respond.
LATE IN THE MORNING of August 15, Generaloberst Blaskowitz was on the phone at his headquarters in Rouffiac, not far from Toulouse. Communications, constantly ravaged by Allied bombers, were poor, but he had received word of the invasion and was trying to launch a counterstrike. In the midst of his planning, however, the line went dead.
In the field, responsibility fell to the Nineteenth Army under Wiese, according to one account an experienced commander and “ardent Nazi.”27 His immediate reaction was to order Generalleutnant Richard von Schwerin, commander of the 189th Infantry Division, to move to the invasion area.28 These troops arrived, however, in “bits and pieces,” so the airborne forces, and then elements of the American Forty-Fifth and Thirty-Sixth Divisions, were able to make short work of them.29 By August 16, Truscott’s forces had established a firm beachhead, and they held a corridor running from Toulon to Saint-Raphaël.30 General Neuling’s LXII Army Corps staff was surrounded, and within two days, they would be in captivity. With the bridgehead secure, the Americans were thinking of their next move north.
So were the Germans. Although he had failed to predict the location of the US landing, by the next day, Blaskowitz anticipated American movements almost perfectly. He wrote on the sixteenth: “The enemy will presumably thrust forward from the beachhead in a west-northwest direction in order to cut off first Toulon and later Marseille, and then advance in the general direction of the Rhône valley. The destruction, which has just taken place, of the Durance bridges at Pertuis and Mirabeau may also indicate that the enemy, after creating a useful bridgehead … will thrust via the area Digne toward the Central Rhône valley, particularly as this attack will soon bring him in full contact with the strong guerrilla forces [in] that area.”31
This is exactly what the enemy did, and the Germans were unable to stop it. But they were able to bring one more division into play: the Eleventh Panzer Division under Wietersheim, known as the “Ghost Division” because its rapid mobility enabled it to appear suddenly in battle.32 On August 13, guessing from the sharp increase in Allied bombing that an attack was imminent, Blaskowitz ordered the Eleventh Panzer Division to move from near Toulouse to Nimes-Arles on the eastern side of the Rhône near the river’s mouth and within striking distance of the southern beaches.33 The journey would take at least four to six days.34 Wietersheim was moving his men, and still well west of the Rhône, when the Americans hit the beaches at Saint-Tropez. After dodging Allied bombers for hundreds of kilometres down secondary roads, Wietersheim reached the east bank of the Rhône. All the bridges as far as sixty miles upstream were gone: Allied bombing had already taken them out.35 Mercilessly bombed and strafed by the Allied fighters that he had until that point avoided, Wietersheim was forced to ferry his men across the river “in driblets.”36 He would cross the Rhône only on August 23.37 By the time he did, exhausted and with little fuel, his tanks were no use on the beaches. Army Group G’s best division had missed the fight. As Blaskowitz predicted, the German army’s ability to move sufficient forces eastward across the Rhône would be decisive for the outcome.38 But movement was distinctly out of the question. American precision bombing of bridges in the run-up to the campaign had delivered Truscott’s men an early and decisive advantage. It was tactical bombing at its best.
As Wietersheim began his long journey to the Rhône, Hitler was receiving reports in Rastenburg. They could not have been worse. The Red Army was sweeping across Poland. Army Group Centre was destroyed. General Bernard L. Montgomery and General Omar Bradley were pressing home their advantage in northern France. Army Group B was encircled in the Falaise, and two divisions were lost in two days.39 Patton was dashing for the Seine. In southern France, the First and Nineteenth Armies were about to be smashed. Blaskowitz, against Hitler’s orders, prepared for a withdrawal; he ordered the first units north toward the Rhône. Should Hitler challenge him, he would be able to argue that he was concentrating forces for a counterattack.40
Blaskowitz did not need to. Hitler—who was more willing to allow tactical withdrawals than self-serving German generals’ postwar memoirs suggest—authorized an immediate withdrawal.41 Army Group G was to be pulled north in order to make contact with the southern flank of Army Group B.42 Hitler’s headquarters issued three related orders. First, late on August 16, he ordered Blaskowitz’s troops to retreat directly north, cutting right up the Rhône valley. Two days later, Hitler ordered them to re-establish the front some 160 kilometres southeast of Paris.43 This new position would, it was thought, allow them to link up with the Seventh Army pulling back from western France. In a pattern that would soon become familiar, Hitler added a scorched-earth order for the south of France: “The destruction of all objects so as to hinder the pursuit by the enemy is of the highest importance. No locomotive, no bridge, no power station, no repair shop [may] fall intact into the enemy’s hands.”44
Following Hitler’s withdrawal orders, the chase was on. Wiese ordered four divisions from the Nineteenth Army—the 198th Infantry, the 158th Reserve, the 11th Panzer, the 338th Infantry—to organize a headlong retreat up the Rhône valley. They were to reach Avignon by August 24. Blaskowitz then ordered Wietersheim, still on the wrong side of the Rhône, to cut across toward Aix, southeast of Avignon, and to protect the retreating Nineteenth Army’s rear and to prevent its encirclement.45 Finally, in keeping with Hitler’s order to transform harbour cities into fortresses, the 242nd and 244th Infantry Divisions were ordered to withdraw into Toulon and Marseille, respectively. Baeßler was ordered to establish a blocking position east of Toulon, preventing Allied troops from entering the city.46 Hitler ordered that both Toulon and Marseille be defended to the last bullet and to destroy the cities’ ports if they could not hold them.47
Wietersheim’s forces, having finally crawled up the east bank of the Rhone, met the Americans on August 24 at Montélimar, eighty kilometres north of Avignon. There, the Americans attacked forward units of the Eleventh Panzer Division. Truscott’s goal was to encircle three German divisions—the 198th and 338th Infantry Divisions, as well as the Eleventh Panzer Division—from the south and the east. With only two of its divisions left at Toulon and Marseille, the action would have all but destroyed the Nineteenth Army. The Germans, however, fought back fiercely. Blaskowitz ordered portions of the Eleventh Panzer Division to defend the rear mercilessly. “The utmost,” he wrote, “must be demanded of the rearguards.”48 Taking personal charge of the operation, Wietersheim pushed the two divisions, armed with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and mobile guns, straight north into US troops.49 The Americans responded with force. The operation lasted four hours, and the Eleventh Panzer Division suffered many casualties, but they managed to clear the road along the Rhône riverbank, seizing the approaches to La Coucourde (between Montélimar and Valence) from the east, with the heights north of it in German hands too.50 Blaskowitz immediately sent the 338th Division north through the gap.51
By August 26, Wietersheim’s men were approaching the Drôme River, which runs perpendicular to the Rhône. Then the retreat took a biblical turn. Despite the hot weather, the river’s waters had risen, making passage northward impossible.52 The Nineteenth Army appeared trapped against two rivers. All the bridges across the Rhône, its exit westward, had been destroyed.53 The Drôme River, its exit northward, had overrun its banks, and artillery fire had left any potential crossing points wrecked and burning. To the south and the east, only the 198th Infantry and the Eleventh Panzer Divisions, deep in battle with Truscott’s tanks, stood between the Americans and the retreating Germans. The 198th Infantry Division pushed south against the Americans, giving up the blocking line and establishing a new position along a six-kilometre front northeast of Montélimar.54 As it did, the Eleventh Panzer Division threw itself into the American Fourth Division, protecting the Germans’ east flank and keeping open the Nineteenth Army’s only hope of escape.55 Truscott responded by sending in the tanks, attacking northward.56
As the Eleventh Panzer Division first defended the eastern flank and the 198th Infantry Division held the south, German sapper troops went to work on the Drôme west of Loriel, creating an improvised bridge that allowed men and materiel to cross the river.57 As the 11th and the 198th held a perimeter south of the river, the Germans abandoned tanks, vehicles, and weapons and pulled themselves slowly over the Drôme. All the while, Truscott’s forces sprayed them with artillery fire.
On the other side, the chase continued. Again trying to encircle the Germans, Truscott moved units toward Bourg-lès-Valence, fifty kilometres north of Montélimar and just north of Valence, and captured the town.58 Other units began threatening bridges over the Isère, the Germans’ only escape north. As they did, Allied bombers swept in overhead. Some pounded Tain-l’Hermitage, through which the Germans would have to pass, while others attacked the Rhône near its bend just north of Lyon. If the Americans could hold it and establish a firm position, the Germans would once again be encircled. Wietersheim gathered together the strongest armour group he could and threw it directly north at the Americans. It managed to capture the town. With the Eleventh Panzer Division guarding the right flank at Romans-sur-Isère, twenty kilometres northeast of Valence, and two panzer grenadier regiments holding off the Americans eight kilometres to the south of Valence, the LXXXV Corps moved north onto the Isère River and from there on toward Lyon.59 With fires from Allied bombings lighting the night, Wietersheim’s units rolled past Tain-l’Hermitage on the twenty-ninth.
The next great hurdles were the Rhône (which runs roughly east–west from Switzerland to Lyon) and Doubs Rivers. With fierce, sometimes house-to-house fighting, Wietersheim pushed his men north toward Beaune, and from there he hoped to turn right toward Besançon.60 Pivoting eastward at Beaune, the Eleventh Panzer Division then found, to its surprise, bridges that were under constant air attack but largely unscathed at Dôle, some fifty kilometres from Besançon.61 Over the next five days, the Americans chased the Germans on both sides of the Doubs toward Belfort.62 With sappers felling trees to block the Americans, Wietersheim and his men turned north at Montbéliard (where troops south of the Doubs crossed the one available bridge) and travelled twenty kilometres to Belfort.63
The chase continued, but it was largely over. Although written up as a failure, both sides could credibly claim victory. Blaskowitz had nominally evacuated Army Group G, but he had lost one town after another to Truscott’s troops, and the Americans had ravaged his forces. Army Group G suffered over 130,000 casualties on the chase through France, including 7,000 killed, 20,000 wounded, and 105,000 captured.64 Another 25,000 soldiers had been left behind at Toulon and Marseille. With the exception of Wietersheim’s Eleventh Panzer Division, all infantry divisions and combat groups were shadows of their former selves. The Americans, for their part, had suffered few casualties—about 4,500. Truscott had chased the Nineteenth Army 1500 kilometres across rough terrain, harassing it almost every step of the way. At four points, Truscott came very close to encircling and destroying Army Group G.65 His VI Corps nonetheless failed to deliver the decisive blow. On September 10, Seventh Army forward units met up with forward patrols from Patton’s Third Army, and four days later, Mediterranean command was folded into the West European chain of command.66 Patch remained in charge of the US Seventh Army, but General Jacob Devers took over the Sixth Army Group to which it was subject. With most of western and southern France cleared of the Germans, the fight was now for Alsace, Lorraine, the Low Countries, and the Reich itself.
*
AS THE AMERICANS AND Germans bitterly fought each other up the Rhône valley, two other battles of arguably greater consequence for the Allied war effort raged along the southern coast, for Hitler had ordered something more than a simple withdrawal. Instead, he left one division each in Toulon and Marseille.67 They had orders to transform these cities into fortresses. German troops were to defend Toulon and Marseille “to the last man” and, could they not be defended, to destroy their harbours.68 Such destruction had ample precedent: the Germans had destroyed Brest, Cherbourg, Nantes, and Saint-Malo in the north, and on August 15, forces of the Nineteenth Army demolished the ports of Cannes and Nice.69 When the order applying to Toulon arrived on Wiese’s desk, he passed it on to Generalleutnant Johannes Baeßler.70 The lives of tens of thousands of Allied and Axis soldiers, as well as the Allies’ ability to supply their troops in northern France, turned on the willingness of these cities’ commanders to obey.
Notes
1. Mitcham, Retreat to the Reich, 9. Blaskowitz was not appointed to a Heeresgruppe—translated in this book as “army group”—but, rather, an Armeegruppe, which constituted an “ad hoc headquarters” corresponding to a force between army (Armee) and army group (Heeresgruppe) size. The appointment of Blaskowitz to an army group command would have required his being named a field marshal, which Hitler would not countenance given Blaskowitz’s open opposition to eastern front atrocities.
2. General der Infanterie Ferdinand Neuling’s LXII Army Corps controlled the area from the Italian border to Toulon. This corps included two infantry divisions. Generalmajor Otto Fretter-Pico’s 148th Infantry (Reserve) Division guarded a line running from the Italian border to Antheor Cove and including the small ports at Cannes and Nice. Generalleutnant Johannes Baeßler’s 242nd Division covered the area from Antheor Cove to Toulon, including the important harbour in the latter city. General der Infanterie Baptist Knieß’s LXXXV Army Corps covered the area between Toulon and Marseille. It also had two divisions: the 338th and the 244th. The 338th Division under (German) Generalleutnant René de l’Homme de Courbière had redeployed one regiment, and the rest were pulled back to Arles in anticipation of a transfer north. The southern coast was thus left to Generalleutnant Hans Schäfer’s 244th Division, tasked with defending both the coast and the great port at Marseille. Finally, General der Flieger Erich Petersen’s IV Luftwaffe Field Corps held the area between the Rhône delta and the Spanish border. This corps included the 198th and 716th Infantry Divisions, and the weak 189th Reserve Division. Jeffrey J. Clarke and Robert Ross Smith, Riviera to the Rhine (Washington, DC: Center for Military History, United States Army, 1993), 65–6.
3. “Order of the Battle Notes,” G-2 Periodic Report N. 274, March 1945, National Archives at College Park, MD (NACP), RG 407, 101-2.1.
4. Walter Botsch, “Nineteenth Army (June 43–15 Sep 44),” US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA (USAMHI), B 515, 11.
5. Ibid. (on the duds); Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 225 (on the landmines).
6. Botsch, “Nineteenth Army,” USAMHI, B 515, 14.
7. Ibid., 6–7; Johannes Blaskowitz, “German (OB West) Estimate of the Situation Prior to Allied Invasion of Southern France,” 1947, USAMHI, B 421, 3. There is some disagreement on this point. See Clarke and Smith, Riviera to the Rhine, 67.
8. H. Paul Jeffers, Command of Honor: General Lucian Truscott’s Path to Victory in World War II (New York: NAL Caliber, 2008), v.
9. “XII Air Force Service Command in Operation ‘Dragoon,’” May 15, 1945, USAMHI, D 790, 22.
10. The Invasion of the South of France: Operation “Dragoon”, 15th August, 1944 (London: HMSO, 1994), 11.
11. “Directive: Commanding Officer, 1st Special Service Force,” July 18, 1944, USAMHI, D 762.P7 0 37.
12. Operation Dragoon, “Popping the Cork,” 1984, USAMHI, William B. Breuer Papers (hereafter, Breuer Papers).
13. Details in this paragraph from Willard Sterne Randall, “The Other D-Day,” Quarterly Journal of Military History 6, no. 3 (spring 1994): 75.
14. Joseph D. Antrim diary, August 15, 1944, USAMHI, Breuer Papers, Operation Dragoon.
15. Sterne Randall, “The Other D-Day,” 75; letter from Major “Pappy” Hermann, Battalion S-3, USAMHI, Breuer Papers, Operation Dragoon.
16. Interview with T/Sgt, Ralph Wenthold, n.d., USAMHI, Breuer Papers, Operation Dragoon.
17. Interview with Captain Jud Chalkley, n.d., USAMHI, Breuer Papers, Operation Dragoon.
18. Interview with Staff Sergeant Jim Stevens, n.d., USAMHI, Breuer Papers, Operation Dragoon.
19. Interview with Sergeant Martin Kangas, n.d., USAMHI, Breuer Papers, Operation Dragoon.
20. Interview with Sergeant “Hedy” Lamar, n.d., USAMHI, Breuer Papers, Operation Dragoon.
21. Ibid.
22. USAMHI, Oscar Reeder Papers, 143.
23. Clarke and Smith, Riviera to the Rhine, 104.
24. Sterne Randall, “The Other D-Day,” 75.
25. Quoted in William B. Breuer, Operation Dragoon: The Allied Invasion of Southern France (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1987), 168.
26. South Europe, August 16, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3177, TOO 1800/16/8.
27. Jeffrey J. Clarke, “The Champagne Campaign,” The Quarterly Journal of Military History 20, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 39.
28. USAMHI, A 878, Major General [Generalleutnant] von Schwerin, Report, April 19, 1946.
29. Clarke, “Champagne Campaign,” 42.
30. Clarke and Smith, Riviera to the Rhine, 122.
31. South Europe, August 16, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3177, TOO 1800/16/8.
32. Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 226.
33. Wend von Wietersheim, “Eleventh Panzer Division in Southern France (15 Aug–14 Sept 44),” 1953, USAMHI, A 880, 3.
34. Ibid., 4.
35. South Europe, August 16, 1944, HW 1/3176, untitled intercept contained in C410317, n.d., UKNA, HW 1/3177, TOO 1800/16/8.
36. South Europe, August 16, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3177, TOO 1800/16/8.
37. Wietersheim, “Eleventh Panzer Division,” USAMHI, A 880, 13.
38. South Europe, August 16, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3177, TOO 1800/16/8.
39. Verlauf, August 16, 1944, BArch RH 19 IX/18, fol. 1–2. See also Besprechungen, Erwägungen, Entschlüsse, August 15, 1944, BArch RH 19 IX/87, fol. 241.
40. Steven J. Zaloga, Operation Dragoon 1944: France’s Other D-Day (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2009), 51, 55.
41. On the question of Hitler’s military competence, see Weinberg, “Some Myths of World War II,” 704.
42. UKNA, HW 1/3177, TOOO 1730, August 17, 1944.
43. On a line running along the rivers Seine–Yonne–Canal de Bourgogne, which meet in Burgundy.
44. UKNA, 3177, TOO 1730, August 17, 1944.
45. Wietersheim, “Eleventh Panzer Division,” USAMHI, A 880, 9–10.
46. Zaloga, Operation Dragoon, 57.
47. South Europe, August 17, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3177, TOO 0930.
48. “Signed Blaskowitz,” August 23, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3189, TOO 1030.
49. Wietersheim, “Eleventh Panzer Division,” USAMHI, A 880, 17–18.
50. Ibid., 18.
51. UKNA, HW 1/3189, TOO 0030, August 26, 1944.
52. UKNA, HW 1/3193, CX/MSS/T291/63, August 28, 1944, and West Europe, August 28, 1944, TOO 2300.
53. South Europe, August 15, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3174, TOO 1800.
54. Between Bonlieu and Sauzet. UKNA, HW 1/3193, CX/MSS/T291/63, August 28, 1944.
55. UKNA, HW 1/3193, TOO 0800, August 28, 1944.
56. UKNA, HW 1/3193, CX/MSS/T291/63, August 28, 1944 (on the blocking position), and UKNA, HW 1/3193, TOO 0800, August 28, 1944 (on the tank thrust north).
57. Wietersheim, “Eleventh Panzer Division,” USAMHI, A 880, 18.
58. Ibid., 22. Wietersheim refers to Roman le Bourg, but there is no such town north of Valence; given his description of events and the chronology, Bourg-lès-Valence is likely the town, although Romans-sur-Isère is located about twenty kilometres to the northeast of Valence.
59. Von Gyldenfeldt, Army Group G, orders, August 30, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3195, TOO 1200.
60. Wietersheim, “Eleventh Panzer Division,” USAMHI, A 880, 24–8.
61. Ibid., 29.
62. Ibid., 34.
63. Ibid., 34–5.
64. Zaloga, Operation Dragoon, 88.
65. At La Coucourde, north of Montélimar; on the Drôme, and east of Lyon on the way to Belfort. Wietersheim, “Eleventh Panzer Division,” USAMHI, A 880, 37.
66. Zaloga, Operation Dragoon, 88.
67. Naval Headlines 1141, August 18, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3177.
68. UKNA, HW 1/3177, TOO 1730, August 17, 1944; Naval Headlines 1139, August 16, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3174. The smaller Mediterranean harbours at Port de Bouc, Port Saint-Louis, Port Vendres, and Sète were also to be destroyed. Naval Headlines 1144, August 21, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3181.
69. UKNA, HW 1/3173, CX/MSS/T277/76, August 15, 1944, and Naval Headlines 1139, August 16, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3174. The order to destroy Le Havre’s port followed on August 29, 1944, though Allied bombing did much of the work. West Europe, August 29, 1944, UKNA, HW 1/3193, TOO 1300, and UKNA, HW 1/3201, TOO 9730, August 29, 1944.
70. UKNA, HW 1/3177, TO 0930/17/8/44, August 18, 1944.