On 2 August 1944, Alan Brooke wrote to General Sir Henry Wilson, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, revealing his fears regarding the dominance of the United States in the direction of the war:
The Americans now feel that they possess the major forces at sea, on land and in the air, in addition to all the vast financial and industrial advantages which they had from the start. In addition they now look upon themselves no longer as the apprentices at war, but on the contrary as full blown professionals. As a result of all this they are determined to have an ever increasing share in the running of the war in all its aspects. I can assure you that we are watching these unpleasant new developments very carefully.1
The American moment had most certainly arrived. One of the frustrations for American commanders in North Africa and Italy had been that the US Army had only a few troops ‘in the shop window’.2 They knew that there was a Grand Army of the Republic training and equipping at home, but there were relatively few men on active service. With the successful Normandy invasion, the United States could finally put forth its strength on the continent of Europe and there could no longer be any doubt that they were the predominant ally. Of course, the US had actually become the senior partner in 1941 with the passing of the Lend-Lease Act, but most British decision-makers had managed to ignore such inconvenient truths.
While American commanders could now take pride in the full strength of the US Army on campaign, their British counterparts had to cope with the nagging doubts and jealousies of having run a race only to be pipped at the post’. The British Liberation Army of 1944 was, after all, the second largest British Army ever sent to the European continent, yet this great outpouring of strength at the end of an exhausting war now seemed doomed to a poor second place. The British had to watch uncomfortably as the political and military leverage they had enjoyed for much of the war evaporated in front of them. It was in this changing context that Montgomery, willingly supported by Brooke, fought a long and ultimately unsuccessful rearguard action to win back the command authority over the Allied armies that he had relinquished at the conclusion of the Normandy campaign.
This issue, which became one of the longest-running and most corrosive sources of tension between the British and American armies in the last campaign of the war, had actually begun before the end of the Normandy battles. As early as 7 July 1944, Montgomery had informed Brooke that there was great pressure’ from SHAEF to establish a US army group, but that he was ‘keeping right clear’ of all such discussions. In his inimitable way, however, Montgomery had pointed out that if Eisenhower wished to take control of the campaign, ‘he . . . must come over here and devote his whole and undivided attention to the battle. Any idea that he could run the land battle from England, or could do it in his spare time, would be playing with fire. Eisenhower himself has, I fancy, no delusions on this subject.’3 Montgomery’s basic argument was that running the land battle was a ‘whole-time job for one man’, and that man was him. Bedell Smith later suggested that Monty ‘always had it in the back of his mind’ that he would continue as the land force commander, and Freddie de Guingand mentioned that Montgomery refused to discuss the movement of US staff officers from 21st Army Group Headquarters during the Normandy battle, perhaps in the hope ‘that somehow it would never take place’.4
However, it had always been part of the COSSAC, and latterly the SHAEF, plan that as the American Army in France grew in strength, a US Army group would be formed. It had also long been part of the plan that once the Allies were fully established ashore, the Supreme Allied Commander would then take direct charge of the land battle. Eisenhower decided to form the US army group under Bradley but placed it under Montgomery’s command while the battle in Normandy continued, and reserved judgement on when he might take direct command of the army groups in France. Many of the Americans in Bradley’s headquarters began to chafe under the continued command of 21st Army Group, believing that now was the time to show what the American Army could do.
With the destruction of the German Seventh Army at Falaise, the Allied armies were able to drive eastwards, virtually unhindered by the Germans, whose only option was to retreat to escape destruction. It was in this period of euphoria, when anything seemed possible and the war seemed to have been won, that the Allied commanders had to consider their next moves as the front now pushed forward faster than anyone had expected. Under the COSSAC and SHAEF plans, it had been assumed that, after a gradual build-up, the Allied armies would move to confront the Germans along the line of the River Seine, where a climactic battle for France would be fought. The advance would then continue, stage by stage, until the border with Germany was reached. Instead, the Allies had fought an intense campaign in Normandy with seemingly little progress until the German Seventh Army was destroyed, and there now seemed to be nothing to stop an immediate drive into Germany. The fact was that the Allied armies and their commanders had run out of any pre-prepared script – the next moves would have to be improvised.
Montgomery characteristically informed Brooke of his future thinking before he revealed it to Eisenhower:
After crossing Seine 12 and 21 Army Groups should keep together as a solid mass of some 40 divisions which would be so strong that it need fear nothing. The force should move northwards. 21st Army Group should be on western flank and should clear the channel coast and the Pas de Calais and west Flanders and secure Antwerp. The American armies should move with right flank on Ardennes directed on Brussels Aachen and Cologne. The movement of American armies would cut the communications of enemy forces on channel coast and thus facilitate the task of British Army Group. The initial objects of movement would be to destroy German forces on coast and to establish a powerful air force in Belgium. A further object would be to get enemy out of V1 or V2 range of England. Bradley agrees entirely with above conception.5
Here was the genesis of what became known as Montgomery’s ‘narrow front’ concept. Both Allied army groups would advance together through the Low Countries and thence into Germany itself. As with most of Montgomery’s plans, this had the benefit of concentration of force but does not seem to have been based on secure knowledge of whether 40 divisions could be supplied in one sector of the front. However, even as the balance of strength swung decisively in favour of the Americans, Montgomery could not envisage his 21st Army Group as fulfilling anything other than the dominant, decisive role in the advance into Germany. Just as had been the case in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy, he saw the American forces as helping to ‘facilitate the task of British Army Group’. It would also appear that he still hoped that he would remain the land force commander, guiding both army groups in their advance. Montgomery’s thinking certainly took account of the damage being caused by Hitler’s Vergeltungswaffen or ‘vengeance weapons’. The Germans had begun bombarding London and the south of England with V-1 flying bombs on 13 June 1944, and these were soon joined by the V-2 rocket, which was first fired against England on 8 September 1944.* These attacks caused considerable destruction and loss of life, and made an advance through northern France and Belgium an important priority, as it would drive the Germans away from the launch sites.
Yet Montgomery’s plan also bore an ominous resemblance to the Dyle Plan of 1940, in which the most powerful French and British armies had advanced into Belgium to confront the Germans. While Montgomery intended this mass of 40 divisions to drive on into Germany, the Allies in 1944 did not possess even the advantages of the French army in 1940: there could be no equivalent to the French forces that had covered the Ardennes and the line of Maginot defences four years before. And whereas Montgomery considered that an advance of 40 divisions would be powerful enough to ‘fear nothing’, in the context of the Second World War such a force was small. Although the Western Allies had never deployed any force as large since 1940, 40 divisions on the Eastern Front would have represented little more than a pinprick. At the same time, Montgomery does not seem to have ever fully explored whether they could be properly positioned, supplied and usefully employed on the relatively narrow front he suggested. Most SHAEF estimates concluded that it was not feasible, but on the one occasion when the senior SHAEF supply officer visited Montgomery’s headquarters, he was thrown out and never went back.6
While Montgomery believed that Bradley agreed ‘entirely’ with his ideas, this could not have been further from the truth. Far from being satisfied with a secondary task in facilitating the advance of the British, Bradley had developed his own ideas for the future campaign. On the same day that Montgomery wrote to Brooke, Bradley met with Eisenhower to suggest an altogether different plan. He proposed driving directly east towards Metz and the German border, ‘rather than diverting too much strength up over the northern route to the Lowlands’.7 At a SHAEF conference on 19 August, both commanders aired their ideas to Eisenhower. The Supreme Allied Commander was now faced with two very different plans from his two army group commanders, neither of which was compatible with the other. Unfortunately, both Montgomery and Bradley somehow got the impression that Eisenhower favoured their plan at the expense of the other.
In fact, Eisenhower had his own conception for the advance into Germany, and on 24 August he gave notice to Montgomery and Bradley that he would soon take direct command of the theatre. He explained that he would soon issue a brief directive to both army groups. The Army Group of the North, which was effectively Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, would be given the task of ‘operating northeast’, driving through the Pas de Calais region and pushing on into Belgium with the intention of gaining ‘a secure base at Antwerp’ and the ultimate goal of advancing ‘eastward on the Ruhr’. He also envisaged the use of the Allied airborne army to accelerate the advance of Montgomery’s army group. This was the genesis of what became Operation Market Garden.
Meanwhile, Bradley’s army group was to ‘thrust forward on its left’, in order to support Montgomery. Bradley was ordered to ‘clean up’ the Brittany peninsula, where the Germans were still holding out in Brest, but then develop sufficient forces to ‘advance eastward from Paris toward Metz’. Eisenhower stressed the importance of speed in execution, since German resistance had collapsed, but he also added an important rider: ‘All of the supply people have assured us they can support the move, beginning this minute – let us assume that they know exactly what they are talking about and get about it vigorously and without delay.’8
As his directive revealed, Eisenhower had already conceived a broad campaign plan for the Allied armies in Western Europe. In fact, the planners at SHAEF had completed a study on the long term strategy for the campaign even before D-Day. While it was acknowledged that Berlin was the ultimate objective, the planners considered that an attack on the Ruhr, the industrial heartland of Germany, was considered ‘likely to give us every chance of bringing to battle and destroying the main German Armed Forces’.9 Thus, Eisenhower had long seen an attack on the Ruhr as the necessary precursor for the final, decisive battle. There were four main routes to the Ruhr, of which only two were considered suitable: the first was through the Metz gap, south of the Ardennes, while the most direct route was north of the Ardennes on the line of Maubeuge-Liége in Belgium. The SHAEF planners considered that ‘our main chance of success would appear to be in advancing astride the Ardennes with two mutually supporting forces, extending the enemy forces, and, by surprise and deception, achieving superiority of force in one or other of the gaps and defeating the enemy in detail’.10 Montgomery’s army group would drive forward through the Low Countries and into Germany from the north, while Bradley would advance across central France to pierce the Reich beyond Metz. Eisenhower’s thinking on the campaign envisaged an advance on a broad front, with one major thrust in the north, another in the centre, while the south would be covered by the 6th Army Group supplied from Marseilles. This plan, as Montgomery never ceased to point out, had the flaw of dispersion but had the advantage that supply could be drawn from the north and south coasts of France while also ensuring that the Germans could not focus their attention on one sector of the new, vast front, which ran from the sea to Switzerland, just as it had done during the Great War. It was also an integral part of this plan that the great ports of Antwerp and Marseilles would have to be opened as Allied supply bases to sustain the drive into Germany. The eventual intention was for the two thrusts to eventually meet in a great encirclement behind the Ruhr.
While Montgomery saw the argument over strategy as an entirely binary problem in which he was right and Eisenhower was wrong, the reality was never that simple. Both approaches contained advantages and problems in almost equal measure. Montgomery’s choice had the virtue of concentration and a single aim – crossing the Rhine and aiming for the Ruhr. Yet such a Schwerpunkt, or point of main effort’, would be easily identified by the Germans, enabling them to direct all their reserves to the threatened northern sector while the other Allied armies waited immobilised in France by lack of supply. Eisenhower’s plan ensured that the Germans could not concentrate on one sector of the front but risked stretching Allied resources to the point where they would not be strong enough to break through the German defences. Eisenhower was clear, however, on some important fundamentals that seem to have eluded Montgomery. The Supreme Commander understood that the Allies needed to maintain a continuous front to prevent German recovery, ensure the safety of the flanks of each Allied army and gain ground cheaply wherever possible. Perhaps most importantly of all, he was absolutely clear on the paramount need to capture the port of Antwerp and open it as a major entry point for Allied supply. Without Antwerp and Marseilles working at full capacity, there could be no sustained advance to carry the Allies to the Rhine and beyond.
Montgomery’s contemptuous disdain for Eisenhower’s abilities seems to have blinded him to the fact that Eisenhower did in fact have a secure grasp of the fundamentals required for success in Europe. Eisenhower took a broad view of the theatre as a whole and he was thinking big: about multiple lines of advance, about airpower and, most critically, about supply. Montgomery’s plan, by contrast, seemed trammelled by considerations that limited his chosen field of operations to the area of northern Europe – Belgium, Holland and Germany – that Britain’s armies had traditionally and invariably fought over since the late seventeenth century. Brooke also had serious reservations about Eisenhower’s plan, which he considered might add ‘another 3 to 6 months on to the war!’ The British CIGS disapproved of Eisenhower’s aim to ‘split his forces’ but also mused that ‘If the Germans were not as beat as they are, this would be a fatal move, as it is it may not do too much harm.’11
The arguments concerning the best strategy for the rest of the campaign soon became intertwined with the question of who should command the Allied armies. Eisenhower had already made it clear that he would assume overall command when the River Seine was reached: that time was now fast approaching and the date was set for 1 September 1944. However, in late August 1944, Wes Gallagher, an American journalist for Associated Press, found out about the coming changes to the command set-up and managed to slip a story through the censors that Bradley now commanded an army group and was thus no longer under Montgomery’s command. This story was reported in Britain as a demotion for Montgomery. Gallagher’s scoop had stolen Eisenhower’s thunder: the Supreme Commander’s announcement a few days later that he was taking overall command of the Allied armies on 1 September now lacked impact and caused disquiet amongst the British public. It also led to Eisenhower’s assumption of command becoming a divisive issue within the Anglo-American alliance. The public in both countries was now highly sensitive to any slight, real or perceived, that might be dealt to one of ‘their’ generals, and judging the British mood, Churchill told Brooke that he had decided to promote Montgomery to the rank of field marshal, as a gesture to ‘mark the approval of the British people for the British effort that had led to the defeat of the Germans in France through the medium of Montgomery’s leadership’.12
Eisenhower did not learn of Montgomery’s promotion until the morning of 1 September, which caused anger amongst many American officers, who considered it ‘poor taste’ to make the announcement at the same time as Eisenhower’s assumption of command.13 Churchill’s gesture, however, does not seem to have had the desired effect even with its target audience. It was noted by Home Intelligence reports that the majority of people were ‘Very pleased at [Montgomery’s] promotion’ but there were lingering doubts that it was ‘a sop for his recent demotion’, or ‘an Irishman’s rise’.14
However, although the political fallout of Eisenhower’s decision was deeply worrying for the cohesion of the Anglo-American alliance in its final campaign, the military consequences were much more serious. SHAEF had remained in England throughout the course of the Normandy battles, but in late August 1944, this vast organisation moved across the Channel. Eisenhower decided to open his headquarters at Grainville, a small resort town in western Normandy. This proved to be the very worst location for the Supreme Allied Headquarters at a time when the spearheads of the Allied armies were driving forward at a dramatic pace. Grainville was soon left far behind, and what was worse, communications between SHAEF and its army groups became very difficult. Although Eisenhower wished to avoid the ostentation of SHAEF occupying Versailles or Paris, by September 1944 these were the only logical choices. By choosing Grainville, Eisenhower had made himself land commander in name only during a crucial period of the campaign when events moved very swiftly indeed.15
As these command changes were being implemented and argued over, the Allied armies were advancing at a blistering pace. Brian Horrocks, the commander of the British 30 Corps, later related:
On 29th August we burst out of the bridgehead on the Seine and set off on our chase northwards. This was the type of warfare I thoroughly enjoyed. Who wouldn’t? I had upwards of 600 tanks under my command and we were advancing on a frontage of fifty miles . . . scything passages through the enemy rear areas, like a combine harvester going through a field of corn.16
With the German army in France routed, there seemed nothing to stop the Allied advance. On 1 September, with his armoured spearheads driving across France at speed, Patton begged Bradley, ‘Give me 400,000 gallons of gasoline and I’ll put you in Germany in two days.’ Bradley himself reckoned that by turning ‘everything toward Germany’, his army group could get at least six divisions to the Rhine very quickly.17 It was perhaps inevitable that, after the bitter campaign of Normandy, the Allied commanders would become infused with optimism: the end of the war seemed to be in sight.
Within days, Patton’s Third Army had reached the Moselle river, close to the border with Germany; it now seemed likely that he would be able to breach the defences along the German frontier, known as the Siegfried Line, and enter Germany immediately. In the north, Montgomery’s 21st Army Group ‘scythed’ forward with Horrocks’ 30 Corps in the lead. Brussels was liberated, to much rejoicing, on 3 September, by which time 30 Corps had covered 250 miles in just six days.18 Horrocks ordered his lead division, the 11th Armoured Division under Major General Pip Roberts, to go even further the next day and reach the docks at Antwerp. This was by far the largest port available to the Allied armies on the coast of France and Belgium, and its possession would enable a massive transfusion of supplies for the assault on Germany. Horrocks gave a rather sceptical Roberts the objective of securing the docks before the Germans had time to destroy them. The following day, Roberts’ men duly reached Antwerp and the elaborate port facilities fell into British hands entirely undamaged. The port of Antwerp was truly a mighty prize, with its 30 miles of wharves, 632 cranes, 186 acres of warehousing, and storage facilities for 100 million gallons of oil.19 This was a major achievement, but its capture marked the temporary end of the northern British drive. Horrocks was ordered to halt, and he later identified 4 September 1944 as the critical day when the Allied momentum was lost:
Had we been able to advance that day we could have smashed through this screen and advanced northwards with little or nothing to stop us. We might even have succeeded in bouncing a crossing over the Rhine. But we halted, and even by that same evening the situation was worsening.20
While Horrocks believed that his corps was on the verge of complete success in early September, so too did Patton in his southern drive towards Germany. Both men had tantalising objectives seemingly within their grasp, but the reality was disappointingly different. The simple fact was that after an astonishingly rapid advance, the Allies had outrun their ability to supply their armies. With so few ports available, the vast majority of supplies still had to arrive in France over the open beaches in Normandy – which were now at least 300 miles away from the front line. Neither rail transport nor pipelines could be relied upon because Allied bombing and German demolitions had wrecked them.21 The advance had been so rapid that there had been no opportunity to build up supply dumps, which meant that the available motor transport had to work even harder. Expedients like the Red Ball Express – a loop of one-way roads on which trucks drove hell-for-leather up to the front and back to the beaches – made a difference but could not alter the basic problem.22 By early September, three newly arrived US divisions had to be immobilised in Normandy in order to reserve the transport capacity for the front, and it still was not enough. The tantalising vision of a complete and rapid victory in the autumn of 1944 withered in the glare of harsh logistic reality. Unfortunately, the pause that was forced upon the Allies gave the battered German forces what they most needed – a breathing space in which to organise their defence of the Reich.
A heated argument soon developed between the proponents of the two competing thrusts, with Bradley and Patton arguing that their advance into Germany should be given top priority for the lion’s share of the dwindling total of resources, while Montgomery contended that his plan to ‘bounce’ the Rhine offered the best opportunity to maintain the momentum of the Allied advance. Just at the point when Eisenhower needed to give clear direction, the patchy communications between the Supreme Commander in Grainville and his generals’ forward headquarters failed, adding to the rising tempers on all sides. On 4 September, Montgomery wrote to Eisenhower with his revised version of how to win the war:
1. I consider we have now reached a stage where one really powerful and full-blooded thrust toward Berlin is likely to get there and thus end the German war.
2. We have not enough maintenance resources for two full-blooded thrusts.
3. The selected thrust must have all the maintenance resources it needs without any qualifications and any other operations must do the best it can with what is left over.
4. There are only two possible thrusts one via the Ruhr and the other via Metz and the Saar.
5. In my opinion the thrust likely to give the best and quickest results is the northern one via the Ruhr.
6. Time is vital and the decision regarding the selected thrust must be made at once.
7. If we attempt a compromise solution and split our maintenance resources so that neither thrust is full-blooded we will prolong the war.
8. I consider the problem viewed as above as very simple and clear-cut.23
One of Montgomery’s real talents as a commander was his ability to simplify complex issues into clear statements of intent. However, while this skill had served him well while an army commander, he was now dealing with much wider issues, where such simplicity was not always so helpful. Inherent in his statement was also the same challenge and threat he had used to engineer acceptance to his plans throughout the war. Ultimately, Montgomery was challenging Eisenhower to either adopt his plan or face accusations that he had prolonged the war, while also implicitly arguing that only he could serve as the overall commander for such a thrust.
Nonetheless, there was merit in Montgomery’s ‘Schlieffen Plan in reverse’. If the available transport and supplies had been ruthlessly stripped from all other forces, and concentrated behind 21st Army Group and Hodges’ First US Army, it is just conceivable that a drive by 18 fully supplied divisions might have been able to reach the Ruhr. However, 12 out of the 43 available Allied divisions would have been immobilised, and any ‘full-blooded’ thrust on the Ruhr would have been reliant on supply dumps and communications stretching back for hundreds of miles to the Normandy beaches. There were also dangers: the difficult question was not, perhaps, whether the force could reach the Ruhr, but what would happen when it did. Operating at the very limit of the supply chain, and without the possibility of support from the rest of the Allied force, such a thrust would almost certainly have opened itself to a dangerous German counter-attack.
Not surprisingly, Eisenhower refused to take such a gamble. Not only did he consider Montgomery’s plan too risky, but it did not accord with his overall conception of the campaign. Montgomery’s attempt to regain command of the ground forces – or at least of those in combat – was also politically impossible for Eisenhower. He had already tried to explain this situation to Montgomery when, during a conversation on 23 August, he had argued that American public opinion would object to a situation where Bradley’s 12 Army Group had only one army in it while 21st Army Group also commanded Hodges’ First US Army. Montgomery queried why ‘public opinion should make him want to take military decisions which are definitely unsound’. Eisenhower’s response was that Montgomery ‘must understand that it was an election year in America; he could take no action which was calculated to sway public opinion against the President and possibly lose him the election’. He also emphasised that, given the preponderance of American strength in theatre, ‘there could be no question of the American Army Group being under the operational direction of a British general’.24 Montgomery could not accept that such political matters might influence the command organisation of the Allied armies, but in fact Eisenhower had softened the blow somewhat: the reality was that Montgomery as overall commander was simply no longer acceptable to Bradley or Patton – or to American public opinion. Eisenhower had attempted to let Montgomery down gently but the British field marshal had been unable to read between the lines.
Faced with insistent demands from both Bradley and Montgomery, Eisenhower compromised. He decided to support Montgomery’s plan to ‘bounce’ the Rhine, while still providing 12th US Army Group with sufficient supplies to mount a limited offensive towards Metz. Bradley and Patton were livid that Eisenhower refused to support their thrust fully, while Montgomery complained that the Americans were absorbing resources that his army group needed. The fact that Eisenhower compromised is often seen as evidence of his failure to command, but actually demonstrated that he was executing his function as Supreme Commander under very difficult circumstances. He knew that he needed to ensure that the Allied armies kept up momentum, maintained the cohesion of the alliance and defeated the German army all at the same time. Both Montgomery and Bradley’s plans, whatever their possible risks or merits, were almost calculated to destroy Allied cohesion, which was the one factor Eisenhower saw as essential to victory.
By 10 September, Eisenhower had approved Montgomery’s Operation Market Garden, a bold and risky venture that nonetheless offered real opportunities. Montgomery later explained:
The basic idea for the drive northwards towards Arnhem was to use one airborne division as a sort of carpet which was unrolled like a stair-carpet along a narrow axis. The para troops were dropped mainly at the canal and dyke crossings.
Up the stair-carpet went the 30 Corps thrust, two lines abreast on one road – just barging through by sheer weight and impetus.
At the top of the stair-carpet two large drawing room carpets were put down, each of one airborne division – one at Nijmegen and Grave, and one at Arnhem.25
While the airborne forces laid down these ‘carpets’, the British 30 Corps would drive 80 miles into Holland, crossing the Maas and Waal rivers at the points secured by the airborne forces before reaching the last crossing at Arnhem over the Lower Rhine. The hope was that an early crossing of the Rhine would outflank this major river barrier and enable a rapid drive into the Ruhr.26
Certainly the plan seemed to re-orientate the Allied drive in Montgomery’s favour, but it also appeared to Eisenhower to be the ‘boldest and best move the Allies could make at the moment’.27 The First Allied Airborne Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Lewis Brereton, represented Eisenhower’s strategic reserve. There had been numerous plans for its use during the pursuit from Normandy, but all the operations had been stillborn due to the speed of the advance. Operation Market Garden appeared to offer an opportunity to employ it to maintain Allied momentum under favourable conditions. The First Allied Airborne Army also represented a truly integrated Allied force, comprising of two British and three American airborne divisions, an attached Polish parachute brigade, along with an American troop carrier command and two British troop carrier groups. This was a powerful reserve, which ‘had in effect become coins burning holes in SHAEF’s pocket’; not only did the airborne forces desperately want to demonstrate what they could do, but Eisenhower wanted to use them to achieve a strategic success. This accorded not only with his own thinking but with that of Generals Marshall and Arnold, who had consistently encouraged him to use airborne forces deep in the German rear.28
Operation Market Garden soon became a reality. It was launched on 17 September 1944 amidst growing hopes that this might be the battle to knock Germany out of the war. Initially the airborne drops went according to plan, and 30 Corps was able to drive up the narrow corridor, linking up with the 101st Airborne Division at Eindhoven and pushing on for Nijmegen. In that Dutch city, one of the most remarkable examples of tactical cooperation between British and American troops led to a signal success. The 82nd Airborne Division had managed to secure the high ground south of the River Waal but had been unable to capture the town of Nijmegen itself, which included the major bridge over the wide Waal river. Major General James Gavin, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, ‘decided that the best and quickest method would be to rush the bridge with tanks’ once 30 Corps arrived. Unfortunately, the advance into Nijmegen by a mixed group of British tanks, a company of British infantry and a battalion of American paratroops to seize the road and railway bridges met with heavy resistance. On the evening of 19 September, Gavin came up with an original, if risky plan: while the advance through Nijmegen continued, one parachute regiment would cross the Waal in British assault boats to outflank the defence. The crossing would be given maximum support, including Typhoon fighter-bombers, an artillery bombardment and smokescreen and an armoured regiment, the 2nd Armoured Irish Guards, to fire across the river.29
This dangerous task was given to the 504th Regimental Combat Team, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Reuben Tucker. None of the men had seen – let alone practised in – the British assault boats, and yet the crossing depended on them. The trucks carrying the flimsy boats struggled through the enormous traffic jams up the single route, christened ‘Hell’s Highway’, that led to the front. This led to postponement after postponement for Tucker’s assault. Eventually the boats arrived, but they still had to be manhandled nearly a thousand yards to the riverbank. With 14 men in each plywood boat, they were ‘rather overloaded’.30 The crossing began at 1500 hours, but ‘soon after the journey had started it was seen that the smoke screen had passed its best and gaps were forming’. Tucker asked Lieutenant Colonel Vandeleur of the Irish Guards, who was standing with him watching the attack from the top of a factory, to get his tanks to thicken the smokescreen. Even so, when the boats were halfway across the 400-yard-wide river, they ‘came under murderous fire, 20 mm, machine gun and rifle fire from the opposite bank’.31 Only half the boats made it across, but once the Americans reached the bank, they charged forward to deal with the German posts, taking very few prisoners. By the end of the action, the two supporting squadrons of the Irish Guards had fired off all their ammunition; without their support, the paratroops would have suffered even higher casualties.
As more troops were ferried across, Tucker’s men advanced towards the railway bridge and then the road bridge. After hard house-to-house fighting, the Grenadier Guards and 505th Parachute Infantry managed to deal with the last German resistance on the approaches to the road bridge. As dusk fell, four Sherman tanks of the Grenadier Guards were able to motor across the bridge and link up with the American paratroops. Remarkably, all the German attempts to blow the bridge with planted 500 lb charges had failed.32 The Allies were now only 11 miles from Arnhem, where the British 1st Parachute Division was struggling to hold its positions against determined German counter-attacks.
The crossing of the Waal at Nijmegen was remarkable in that a rapidly organised and improvised cooperation between British and American units had resulted in a ‘great feat of arms which will surely rank very high in the annals of our history’. The British report considered that ‘there has never been a finer example of unison and good team work’ than ‘the perfect liaison, co-ordination and understanding between ourselves and the Americans which was the keynote to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge’.33 The fact that British and American soldiers could cooperate so seamlessly demonstrated just how far the two armies had come since the early days of Tunisia.
Yet the day did not end with such a warm glow of self-satisfaction. Tucker had expected that once the bridge was captured, the British would immediately continue on their way towards Arnhem, where 1st British Parachute Division desperately needed their help. Instead, the tanks stopped. Tucker was incredulous that, after the sacrifice made by his men, the British had been ordered to wait for infantry support rather than continue the pursuit,34 and even considered continuing the advance with his own depleted, exhausted regiment. When he saw Gavin 12 hours later, he was still incandescent, shouting, ‘What in the Hell are they doing? We have been in this position for over twelve hours, and all they seem to be doing is brewing tea. Why in Hell don’t they get on to Arnhem?’35 This famous outburst seems to sum up the differences between the two armies, yet Tucker’s fury was the result of both a cultural and a military misunderstanding.
The drinking of tea by British soldiers in the Second World War was legendary, but it was also essential. British tank crews had first perfected a rapid means of brewing up in the desert campaign. The radio operator and hull machine-gunner had an additional role in a British tank: it was also his job to leap out and make the tea whenever there was an opportunity. Some petrol was poured into a tin filled with sand. The sand was then stirred and lit, and the resulting fire would boil a dixie can of water in under three minutes.36 Mugs of hot, sweet army tea would then be gratefully drained by the crew. The sign ‘WHEN IN DOUBT BREW-UP’ was a common one in the British Army’s sector. It was also an example of the British Tommy’s mordant humour – when a tank was hit and caught fire, it had also ‘brewed up’. The British soldier’s love of a mug of tea was not a sign of rigidity or tradition but a vital means of giving often tired men a boost and ensuring tank crews were hydrated during long days of fighting. The crewmen that Tucker saw brewing up had, after all, been in action for an entire day.
Yet there was also a serious military aspect to the misunderstanding. In the plan for Operation Market Garden, 30 Corps had been expected to drive down one road for over 100 miles, on ‘almost a one tank front’, while crossing seven major water obstacles. This task was described as ‘threading a piece of cotton through the eyes of seven needles in a row’.37 Far from having a fresh reserve ready to exploit the success that had been achieved, the troops of the Guards Armoured Division that crossed the Waal represented the fingertip of 30 Corps, which had stretched as far as was possible. The three armoured groups of the Guards Armoured Division were either engaged in fighting to clear Nijmegen or support the 82nd Airborne on the Groesbeek heights, or were in real need of rest, reorganisation and resupply. Behind them, the rest of 30 Corps stretched in a 23,000-vehicle tailback covering 60 miles. Although tantalisingly close, they could go no further that night.38
Ultimately, the delays imposed on 30 Corps as they struggled up one route towards Arnhem doomed Operation Market Garden. After a legendary five-day battle, Lieutenant Colonel John Frost’s 2nd Parachute Battalion, the one unit of the British 1st Airborne Division that had managed to reach Arnhem Bridge, was forced to surrender. On the night of 25 September, the remnants of the British 1st Airborne Division crossed the Rhine. Out of 10,600 men who had gone into action, 1,485 had been killed and 6,414 captured. Market Garden had, by a narrow margin, failed, leaving Montgomery’s 21st Army Group holding an awkward 60-mile salient that led nowhere. The ferocious fighting along Hell’s Highway and at Nijmegen and Arnhem also demonstrated the unwelcome fact that the German army was far from beaten and had staged a remarkable recovery: the end of the war no longer seemed so close. Market Garden had been a risky venture but perhaps one that needed to be taken. However, with its failure, the Allies could no longer ignore their logistic predicament. Having attempted to subordinate logistic reality to the tempting strategic and operational opportunities available, there was now no alternative but to plan future operations around the necessity of securing lines of communication, opening up port capacity and building supply dumps close to the front.39
The operation also marked the last chance for a British-inspired victory that might have ended the war. In fact, the British had missed a much more important, even vital, opportunity over their capture of Antwerp. Although the port had been taken intact, its facilities were useless until the 40 miles of the Scheldt estuary were cleared of mines and its banks of German defenders. Unfortunately, by halting after the capture of Antwerp, the British had allowed the Germans to stiffen their defences. Horrocks later wrote:
It never entered my head that the Scheldt would be mined, and that we should not be able to use Antwerp port until the channel had been swept and the Germans cleared from the coastline on either side . . . If I had ordered Roberts, not to liberate Antwerp, but to by-pass the town on the east, cross the Albert canal and advance only fifteen miles towards Woensdrecht, we should have blocked the Beveland isthmus and cut the main German escape route.40
Perhaps Horrocks might be forgiven the error, but the importance of such an issue should certainly have occurred to Montgomery. The fact was that in early September 1944, the British supply situation was under control. The British had access to more roads and their supply columns had a shorter distance to travel, which meant that they did not need Antwerp opened immediately. However, the American forces operating further south, with longer lines of communication, most certainly did.41
After the failure of Market Garden, Eisenhower held a conference on 5 October 1944 that not only provided a post-mortem on the operation but in which he reiterated his strategy for the campaign. Brooke, who was present as an observer, noted that Ike’s strategy continued to focus on the clearance of the Scheldt estuary, followed by an advance to the Rhine, the capture of the Ruhr and a subsequent advance on Berlin. After a full and frank discussion in which Admiral Ramsay criticised Monty freely, Brooke was moved to write, ‘I feel that Monty’s strategy for once is at fault, instead of carrying out the advance on Arnhem he ought to have made certain of Antwerp in the first place . . . Ike nobly took all blame on himself as he had approved Monty’s suggestion to operate on Arnhem.’42 The Allied leaders had realised that there was no alternative to a long, methodical and bitter fight during the winter of 1944: the war would not now end in a rapid blaze of glory.
If the Allies had not immediately recognised the importance of the Scheldt estuary, or of Antwerp, the Germans most certainly had. London had been the first target for the German Vergeltungswaffen, but in October 1944, Antwerp became the priority. Montgomery gave the unglamorous yet essential task of clearing the Scheldt estuary to the Canadian First Army. They had to fight a fiercely contested and waterlogged battle to clear the Breskens pocket and take the island of Walcheren, before the Scheldt was properly free of German resistance. Antwerp was finally opened for Allied shipping on 8 November.43 The Germans realised that if they could render the port unusable through heavy bombardment, or mining the Scheldt channel, they could place a heavy brake on Allied progress. The protection of Antwerp, being firmly in the 21st Army Group sector, was a British responsibility, but it was soon realised by Brigadier P. G. Calvert-Jones, the commander of GHQ AA Troops in 21st Army Group, that American assistance would be required. Not only was the Royal Navy concerned about the threat from magnetic mines in the Scheldt channel, but V-1s and V-2S might also be used against the city. Given the vital importance of protecting both Antwerp and the Scheldt, an elaborate defence involving three anti-aircraft brigades, two British and one American, was undertaken. On 19 October, Calvert-Jones was alerted by Brigadier Belchem, the Brigadier General Staff (Ops) of 21st Army Group, that flying bomb attacks could be expected within the next 24 hours. Belchem ended the interview by saying drily, ‘Your job, old boy, I am busy.’44
The first flying bombs fell on Brussels on 21 October, and four days later on Antwerp. Initially the scale of attack was relatively low, which gave time to organise and prepare the Allied defence, but this proved a much greater challenge than the defence of London, since the German missiles could approach from a very wide arc and there was no possibility of early warning. Furthermore, due to the dense civilian population, there were significant restrictions on the areas in which shooting could take place. This meant there was no possibility of deploying an effective defence around the whole of the threatened perimeter. In these circumstances, it was clear that more anti-aircraft guns were needed, as well as American equipment in the form of SCR-584 radar sets and No. 10 predictors, which had proved so successful against flying bombs in England. Given the importance of Antwerp, SHAEF agreed to dispatch three US anti-aircraft battalions to thicken up the defence. When a second US brigade arrived, control of the defences was turned over to the American Brigadier General G. Armstrong, who took command on 11 November 1944.
These defences proved their worth. Although the Luftwaffe attempted to drop aerial mines into the Scheldt channel almost every night, all their attempts met with failure. The vengeance weapons were another matter, and Antwerp became the most heavily bombed city in Europe during the winter of 1944. There was no practical defence against the supersonic V-2, and Antwerp soon gained the moniker of ‘the City of Sudden Death’. However, the combined efforts of the British and American anti-aircraft batteries achieved great success against the V-1. Of the 4,900 V-1s launched at Antwerp, 2,400 might have hit the docks but 2,356 were destroyed by the defences, and only 200 reached their intended target. In mid-December 1944, the Combined Chiefs of Staff agreed to the use of the top-secret VT proximity fuse by the artillery batteries defending Antwerp. The VT fuse was essentially a miniaturised radar that could be fitted into the nose cap of an artillery shell, enabling it to explode in close proximity to a fast-moving aerial target. It was invented in Britain, but the United States placed vast scientific and engineering resources behind the project to bring it to fruition. With its introduction at Antwerp, 90 per cent of V-1s were brought down.
While the civilian casualties in Antwerp and its surroundings were grievous, with 3,700 civilian deaths and 6,000 injured over the 154 days of attack, the German bombardment did not prevent the Allies from using the port. Allied military casualties were 32 killed and 298 wounded, while 30 million tons of supplies were unloaded during the period.45 The successful defence of Antwerp owed much to the seamless cooperation between the British and American anti-aircraft units, but also to the unseen yet vital scientific and technical collaboration between the two allies.
After the high hopes of the summer, the autumn of 1944 proved to be one long disappointment as Allied soldiers were pushed into unrewarding assaults against determined German resistance in foul weather. Patton’s Third Army, which had raced across France, was baulked by the German defence around the great fortress city of Metz. Advancing on a broad front, and suffering from supply shortages and the awful weather, Patton’s units were held by a thin German defence. The siege of Metz lasted for over three months and cost 50,000 American casualties. By December 1944, Patton’s army had advanced just 46 miles.46 The campaign was later described as ‘dogged, grim and dirty, lacking glamour’, which was representative of the fighting all across the long Western Front in the autumn of 1944.47
Meanwhile, the First US Army fought their way into Germany. The battle for the ancient city of Aachen, once the seat of Charlemagne’s empire, lasted for nearly the whole of October and ended with the virtual destruction of the city. In November, another offensive was launched towards Cologne by the newly activated Ninth US Army under the command of General William Simpson. The Ninth US Army never gained the high public profile of the other American armies; it often worked in close touch with the British Second Army due to its deployment on the northern end of the American line. As one member of SHAEF observed, ‘Simpson worked well with them [the British], but he had to do the giving.’48 Simpson’s generosity towards the British began early: while training his force in the United States, his army had been known as the Eighth US Army, but in deference to the British Eighth Army, this was changed when the formation reached Europe.49 However, such minor issues did not concern Bill Simpson. An austere Texan who was not made in the same flamboyant mould as Patton, he was judged to be a ‘crack commander’ and his staff ‘the most professional . . . on the continent’ by members of SHAEF.50
Simpson’s ‘giving’ continued during his offensive, when he asked General Horrocks, the commander of the British 30 Corps, if he would support his left flank by capturing the German town of Geilenkirchen. This placed Horrocks in a difficult position, since 21st Army Group was neither willing nor able to spare any additional troops for the attack. At a meeting with Simpson and Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander asked Horrocks whether he could take the town: ‘I replied that the spirit was willing, but the flesh, in the shape of one extra division, was weak. Eisenhower then turned to Simpson and said “Give him one of ours.”’ Thus the 84th US Division was placed under 30 Corps command for the attack. The division was also assisted by British mine-clearing tanks and Crocodile flamethrower tanks, which made their tasks considerably easier.51 After the capture of the town on 16 November, the fighting became static in the waterlogged country between the Meuse and the Roer and the division returned to Simpson’s command. If American troops had been placed under British command in 1917 or 1942, it would have been seen as a highly important political matter, but in late 1944, the incident passed off almost without comment.
Further south, the First US Army was engaged in one of the most costly and futile battles of the war. Fighting in what became known to the American soldiers as ‘Huertgen Forest’, a mass of trees 20 miles long and 10 miles wide, lasted from 14 September for ‘three miserable, interminable months’.52 Five American infantry divisions and one armoured combat command were sucked into the battle, which cost 33,000 American casualties. Ernest Hemingway called it ‘Passchendaele with tree bursts’, and tragically, it was just as futile as that grim Great War battle. The problem was that, without control of the Roer dams, neither the Ninth nor the First US Armies could cross the River Roer, since any attempt would result in the Germans opening the dams. This would flood the river and cut off any assaulting force. Ultimately, the dams were not finally seized until the end of February 1945. Once again, the American units advanced on a broad front, which meant there was not sufficient strength to punch through and reach their objective quickly.53 Instead, unit after unit was sucked into ‘a misconceived and basically fruitless battle that could have, and should have, been avoided’.54 The continued American attacks in the rain, mud and later snow of a European autumn and winter followed Pershing’s dictum of exerting continuous pressure regardless of the circumstances. Yet these offensives opened up the American generals of the Second World War to the bitter criticisms of the First: of mounting futile attacks that had little if any chance of success, leading to the waste of their soldiers’ young lives for no purpose.
There is no question that by the end of October 1944, Eisenhower’s broad front strategy had run into the sand. There were many reasons for this, including poor weather and lack of supplies, but there were also deeper, structural factors at work. When Wedemeyer had drafted the 1941 Victory Program, he had envisaged a US army of 200 divisions – a veritable steamroller that would crush the Germans by virtue of its very weight. By 1944, such grandiose ambitions had been reduced to a total force of some 90 divisions. With units still training in the States, and others committed to the war in the Pacific, Eisenhower and his generals realised that the ‘90-division gamble’ that had been played by Washington left him with fewer than 60 divisions in Europe. This was simply not enough to pursue Eisenhower’s broad front strategy and provide a sufficient reserve. At the same time, the US Army began to suffer shortages, not simply because of the demands of the Pacific theatre, or the fact that Antwerp took time to be opened, but also because American industry, in the expectation of an early European victory, was already turning over to civilian production. Artillery ammunition in particular became a scarce commodity in the winter of 1944, and some American units had to be supported by more plentifully supplied British artillery batteries. In fighting the culminating campaign against Germany, the United States army seemed to have reached the end of its reserves of manpower and supplies prematurely.
It was in this depressing atmosphere of a campaign gone awry that bad news arrived from Washington. After a long struggle with aplastic anaemia, Sir John Dill died on 5 November 1944. Brooke was truly grieved by Dill’s passing; he commented in his diary that ‘His loss is quite irreparable and he is irreplaceable in Washington. Without him I do not know how we should have got through the last 3 years.’ He later added a more fulsome tribute to his predecessor: ‘In my mind we owe more to Dill than to any other general for our final victory in the war. If it had not been for the vital part he played in Washington we should never have been able to achieve the degree of agreement in our inter-Allied strategy. The war might have taken a very different course.’55 In Washington, Marshall too was genuinely grief-stricken at the loss of his close personal friend. He insisted that Dill be accorded the honour of burial in Arlington National Military Cemetery, and acted as one of the pallbearers at his funeral. Churchill never publicly – or privately – acknowledged Dill’s critical importance and contribution to the development and success of the Anglo-American alliance. It was Marshall who ensured that after the war a fine equestrian statue was raised at Arlington to remember a prophet of the Anglo-American partnership who had not been accorded due honour in his own country.56
Yet while Brooke felt Dill’s loss deeply, he could not quite emulate his predecessor’s even-handedness and generosity of spirit, and in November 1944 came to side with Montgomery in mounting a serious challenge to Eisenhower’s authority. Montgomery had continued to criticise Allied strategy and question Eisenhower’s competency after the failure of Market Garden. In early November, he had returned to Britain for a short break and had briefed Brooke on the situation as he saw it. Brooke commented that Montgomery had become fixated on the command arrangements:
He has got this on the brain as it affects his own personal position, and he cannot put up with not being the sole controller of land operations. I agree that the set up is bad but it is not one which can be easily altered, as the Americans have now the preponderating force in France, and naturally consider they should have a major say in the running of the war. Perhaps after they see the results of dispersing their strength all along the front it may become easier to convince them that some drastic change is desirable.57
At this point Brooke seemed able to take a reasonably detached view of proceedings in Europe. However, over the course of the month, continued missives from Montgomery persuaded him to become actively involved in these issues. Montgomery argued that Eisenhower should either take full control or appoint a land force commander. He felt that ‘If we go drifting along as at present we are merely playing into the enemy hands, and the war will go on indefinitely.’ Yet when he asked Brooke whether he should take the initiative again in the matter, Brooke’s response was immediate and adamant: he advised Montgomery to remain silent.58 This advice was not because Brooke intended to remain passive and simply watch the campaign unfold. He explained to Montgomery that ‘the Command organisation and strategy had to prove themselves defective by operational results before they could be satisfactorily attacked’59. He believed that there would soon be ‘ample proof of the inefficiency of the present set up’, which would enable him to go on the attack by forcing the Combined Chiefs of Staff to ‘reconsider the present Command Organization and present strategy on the Western Front’.60
Brooke then discussed the subject with Churchill, arguing that ‘American strategy’ and ‘American organization’ were both faulty. He considered that the American approach of ‘always attacking all along the front, irrespective of strength available, was sheer madness’, and that the only solution to the command conundrum was to make Bradley commander of land forces, with one group of armies north of the Ardennes under Montgomery, and another group of armies to the south under Patton. Brooke’s gambit was now clear: he hoped to insert a deputy beneath Eisenhower, thus taking real control out of his hands.61 This time, given American strength, the deputy would have to be American, but the effect was the same: he intended that Eisenhower should be deprived of any real operational command. Brooke was now involved in what might well be termed a conspiracy to reassert British control and direction of the war against a commander in whom the American Chiefs of Staff had expressed their full confidence.
Although Montgomery had agreed not to broach the subject with Eisenhower again, when the Supreme Commander came to visit him on 29 November, he could not resist labouring the same points. Eisenhower was angered by Montgomery’s accusation of strategic failure, and when the two of them met with Bradley and Tedder at Maastricht on 7 December, Montgomery found that he was ‘alone against the other three’ and that Eisenhower had ‘reversed all his views which he previously agreed upon’. Montgomery believed that Eisenhower had been ‘“got at” by the American generals’.62 What he never seemed to understand was that his own forceful articulation of opinions did not mean that Eisenhower necessarily agreed with him. Montgomery’s unwillingness to participate in collective discussions at SHAEF with the principal commanders and their staffs meant that his perspective on Eisenhower’s views was narrow and skewed. He had lost the ability to see the wider picture – which included understanding the opinions of his fellow commanders in Europe.
But Brooke had by now gone to the British Chiefs of Staff and called Eisenhower to account for the failures in the Allied campaign. Eisenhower was invited to London to brief the cabinet on 12 December 1944, and the meeting did not go well. Brooke provided savage criticism of Eisenhower’s plans, arguing that they involved a ‘dangerous dispersal of forces’ and that neither of the two main thrusts towards Ruhr and Frankfurt would be powerful enough to succeed, and renewed his attempt to insert a land force deputy beneath the Supreme Commander. On 18 December, the British Chiefs of Staff agreed a paper proposing that the issue of command on the Western Front be discussed by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Brooke had by now become fixated on the same issues as his lieutenant, Montgomery.
These disagreements over command and strategy appeared to be final proof that the Allied campaign had reached its nadir. The winter of 1944 seemed to offer no prospect other than a slow, grinding advance by the Allied armies into Germany at the cost of far too many lives. Hitler, however, had quite different ideas. Since September, he had been building up reserve forces in strict secrecy opposite the Ardennes region of Belgium. This was to be Germany’s last throw of the dice: an all-out offensive over the same ground that had witnessed the Wehrmacht’s extraordinary victory in 1940, with a similar aim – the shattering of the Anglo-American alliance. The spearheads of the German Fifth and Sixth Panzer Armies and the Seventh Army were to drive for the Meuse, cross the river and head for Antwerp, the key Allied supply base. Most of the German generals had severe reservations about the offensive, and von Rundstedt commented that if the German spearheads even reached the Meuse, it would be a miracle. But Hitler had heard such talk in 1940 as well, and he was adamant that the offensive, taking advantage of poor weather to negate the Allies’ crushing air superiority, and with its preparations undertaken in strict secrecy, would not only catch the Allies by surprise but would shake the Anglo-American alliance to its very foundations. As the soldiers of three German armies prepared for battle in the early hours of 16 December 1944, it seemed that Hitler’s prediction might be proved right: that the blow would ‘bring down this artificial coalition with a mighty thunderclap’.63
* Montgomery had been briefed on the imminent operational use of the V-2.