CHAPTER FOUR
August: Incomplete Encirclements
OPERATIONS OF 12 ARMY GROUP: FROM COBRA TO THE FALAISE POCKET
The Mortain Counterattack and the Decision in Favor of the Short Encirclement
The German army in the west now faced defeat on a scale comparable to that being endured at the same time in Belorussia (covered in some detail in volume 2).1 While the Germans were still fighting a coherent battle north of the Sélune, giving ground only grudgingly, their left wing had apparently disintegrated so that, with the crossing of the Sélune, their southern (no longer western!) flank was effectively in the air. The Germans, it appeared, no longer possessed the balance required to conduct the deliberate withdrawal to the Seine that the Allies had anticipated. Nor did they have sufficient forces remaining in Brittany to undertake an effective defense. These favorable developments had been anticipated in one of SHAEF’s postinvasion contingency plans, code-named Lucky Strike, and its broad outline was now enthusiastically implemented. It would no longer be necessary to devote the whole of Third Army to the reduction of Brittany. Its main effort could be devoted to an advance toward the Paris-Orléans gap, exploiting the open flank in a deep turning movement. There seemed to be no significant enemy forces south of the Loire to threaten such a maneuver. If the Germans could be destroyed in Normandy, or at least bundled out in shortish order, the Seine ports of Le Havre and Rouen could be captured before they could be demolished.
Initially, as Patton’s VIII Corps was crossing the Sélune, Eisenhower and Bradley were still thinking in terms of a major commitment in Brittany. The latter was also concerned about securing its rear and the flank of VII Corps, which was tasked with widening the Avranches corridor. Thus, on 2 August Bradley ordered 79 Infantry Division to Fougères, in the belief that Patton was neglecting flank protection (actually, Patton had already tasked 5 Armored to move into the same area). Then, on 3 August, persuaded about the virtues of a bolder, more wide-ranging maneuver, Bradley ordered Patton to leave Brittany to “a minimum of forces.” He was to press forward and cross the river Mayenne with his XV Corps and, when XX Corps came up, extend southward. These deployments were but a prelude to a further advance to the east that began on 5 August in response to Montgomery’s M516 directive of the previous day. This set out the plan to crush the enemy against the Seine barrier, where all the bridges were down, and thus destroy him. A new army group boundary was drawn on a line Vire–south of Flers–Sées–Dreux–Mantes-Gassicourt on the Seine. North of it, 21 Army Group’s First Canadian Army and Second Army would wheel to the left (the former after reaching Falaise) to close on the river between Rouen and Mantes. On the right, 12 Army Group would also wheel eastward to the Seine, with Third Army executing a long envelopment round the German open flank and sweeping as far south as the Loire to block crossings over that river while the main effort headed in the general direction of Paris. An airborne corps would drop or airland in the Chartres area to block off any enemy attempt to retreat through the Paris-Orléans gap.
The plan was predicated on the Germans doing the sensible thing: cutting their losses and retreating as fast as possible out of Normandy. Instead of escaping from the trap before it could be set, however, they thrust deeper into it. On 2 August von Kluge received the Führer’s order for a counterattack to close the Avranches corridor. Hitler made clear his determination to supervise the execution from his HQ in far-off East Prussia, as he did not trust the many generals he presumed to be defeatist or potentially or actually treacherous (whose number included von Kluge). The Führer insisted that every armored formation in Normandy be concentrated for the blow. This stipulation was deeply unrealistic. Already, three panzer divisions were necessarily committed to preventing a British breakthrough on the Caumont sector. Denuding the Caen sector would assuredly lead to its collapse, so at least one had to be left there. Sixth August was the earliest possible date that the remaining four panzer divisions intended for the strike grouping, XLVII Panzer Corps, could be relieved by infantry divisions sent from Fifteenth Army and concentrated for the counterattack.2 By that date, the outlook for not only the counterattack but also the entire front looked decidedly bleak. By advancing to Mortain and taking the high ground immediately to the east, the Americans had widened the Avranches corridor to about 32 km (20 miles) and deprived the Germans of their desired LD. The attacking force had neither completed its concentration (indeed, its concentration area was under threat from the ground and the air) nor conducted adequate reconnaissance and battle preparation. Strong American forces had advanced as far as the Mayenne River and were plainly not going to stop there; they would soon be in the left-rear of the strike grouping, overrunning German supply bases in Le Mans and Alençon. Moreover, it was only a matter of time before 21 Army Group renewed its offensive on the Caen-Falaise axis to form an other wing of encirclement. From von Kluge downward, senior commanders wanted to withdraw, not attempt an advance to retake ground they probably could not gain and certainly could not hold. But the Führer was adamant. Indeed, his ambition had extended from merely restoring a short, defensible line on favorable ground, and at the same time cutting off Patton’s army, to the utterly delusional one of rolling up the Allied line.3
When the German attack started shortly after midnight on 6 August, it achieved tactical surprise against 30 Infantry Division and consequently a 9 km (5.5 mile) penetration, though on only two narrow sectors. It had stalled by noon in areas vulnerable to counterattack. The attack had been hastily put together and was thus ill coordinated; not all units arrived in good time, and an American unit retained the high ground at Mortain (though surrounded) from which it directed damaging and disruptive artillery concentrations onto the German columns. Then, with the lifting of the morning fog, swarms of fighter-bombers converged on the battlefield, from 2 Tactical Air Force as well as IX Tactical Air Command; they flew almost 500 close air support sorties against XLVII Panzer Corps that day. The Luftwaffe had promised a maximum effort in support—300 fighters—but the Allied offensive counter–air operations were so effective that not one reached the battlefield. Hitler, of course, blamed von Kluge for the failure (attacking too early, with insufficient force, and in unfavorably clear weather). He insisted the offensive be resumed on a slightly different axis, this time commanded by the presumed to be fervent Nazi general Eberbach, after Fifth Panzer Army had been denuded of yet two more panzer divisions to reinforce it. Von Kluge was fully aware of the futility of continuing this course of action, but he dared not disobey an unequivocal order from the Führer.
There was no chance of a renewed attack succeeding, given German casualties and the loss of surprise. In fact, the original attack could never have progressed as far as Avranches and held on to its gains.4 Facing the attack were 30 Infantry Division and most of 4 Infantry Division, with CCB/3 Armored in depth and CCB/2 Armored coming in from the north, all part of VII Corps. En route to join Third Army’s eastward thrust was XX Corps, with 2 French Armored Division just south of Avranches, 35 Infantry Division near St. Hilaire in the attack sector, and another division that would arrive at Avranches on 8 August; yet another was at Fougères. (Patton claimed credit for halting XX Corps as a precaution, accounting for its ideal position to resist the counterattack.5) Of this plethora of forces, only 35 Division actually needed to be diverted to join the battle. By 8 August, XV Corps had already advanced to Le Mans with three divisions, putting it 100 km (60 miles) in the left-rear of the German attack grouping. The follow-on force, XX Corps, was in the Laval area. Meanwhile, the First Canadian Army offensive, Operation Totalize, had made a promising start on the Caen-Falaise axis against a defense weakened by detachments to the Caumont and Mortain sectors.
Bradley was quick to grasp the opportunity presented by German foolishness in retaining their main grouping in a salient on their extreme west wing. On 8 August, convinced that the reinforced VII Corps could hold at Mortain, he proposed to Eisenhower and, with the Supreme Commander’s approval, Montgomery that the Allies modify the operational concept outlined in M516 and execute a short encirclement of Seventh and much of Fifth Panzer Armies. Twelfth Army Group would provide the southern jaw of a vise to crush the Germans. Third Army’s main effort would be shifted northward. XV Corps would turn through ninety degrees at Le Mans and advance north via Alençon to the army group boundary Carrouges-Sées (about 70 km [45 miles] north of Le Mans). First Army would eliminate the penetration in the Mortain area, relieving the unit encircled on the high ground; at the same time, it would sideslip to the right to attack on the Domfront-Flers axis. Providing the northern jaw, 21 Army Group’s First Canadian Army, whose attack started on 8 August, would push through Falaise southward to Argentan and thus close the last major west-east road out of the trap being set for the Germans. Second Army would continue on its assigned axis toward Flers. Montgomery so directed, with Eisenhower’s endorsement.
Montgomery conferred with Bradley and Dempsey (though neither Hodges nor Crerar were invited) to coordinate the details. Plainly, however, Montgomery had some doubts about the likelihood of destroying the bulk of the German force in a shallow encirclement and wished to hedge his bet. His M518 of 11 August restated the aim of closing the encirclement along the Falaise-Argentan-Alençon road but speculated about a German break-out eastward (Ultra reported this intention on 12 August) and the necessity of being “ready to put into execution the full plan given in M516 [for the long envelopment] should it appear likely that the enemy may escape us here.”6 He was pleasantly surprised by the rapidity with which XV Corps advanced north to and over the army group boundary but was disappointed at the Canadians’ failure to emulate its progress. Map 4.1 gives a broad overview of the development of the breakout between 1 and 13 August within the overall context of the theatre. Map 4.2 illustrates developments in Normandy up to 16 August in more detail, showing the creation of the Falaise pocket and the beginnings of American exploitation to the east.
The Southern Jaw of the Vise: American Operations to 20 August
In executing its role in the encirclement, First Army was to continue through the bocage and across wooded ridges and small rivers on its eastward march.7 The enemy made his usual good use of the ground. Third Army’s advance, however, took place over altogether more favorable terrain. It was generally south of bocage country, and when elements were turned north from Le Mans, through Alençon to Argentan, the hedgerows were to the west. The going was generally easy; there were minor rivers, ridges, and woods and one significant obstacle, the river Eure, before Paris and the Seine were reached. But even if the ground had been more defensible—indeed, even where it was—the Germans simply lacked the forces to utilize it.
Haislip’s XV Corps was allotted a key role in the encirclement. It was strengthened for its task to two armored and two infantry divisions by the addition of Major General Leclerc’s 2 French Armored Division, with its veterans of North Africa. The corps advanced in two columns led, Patton style, by the armored divisions. Open flanks were ignored save for armored cavalry patrols, and possible areas of resistance were bypassed. In its advance to and then past Alençon on 11 August, it encountered ineffective opposition from the screen established by the overextended LXXXI Corps.8 Interpreting Patton’s instructions creatively, Haislip ordered a further advance to Argentan, more than 10 km (6 miles) beyond the army group boundary. On 12 August the corps reached the undefended town and would have taken it, once lead elements of 5 Armored Division arrived, had Leclerc not ignored his orders and interposed one of his columns in the American line of march, thus preventing the timely refueling of the American spearhead. As a result, enough of 116 Panzer Division arrived in time to contest the town. Its spectacular advance had nevertheless put XV Corps 40 km (25 miles) due east of Flers and almost 60 km (40 miles) behind the enemy forces fighting in the Mortain-Domfront area and supposedly preparing a renewed thrust on Avranches. It had also overrun two major supply and administrative centres in Le Mans and Alençon, dramatically worsening the already precarious logistic situation of Seventh Army. And while XV Corps was cutting a swath through enemy territory to the north, XX Corps was building up behind. By 13 August, 35 Infantry Division, which had been pulled out of the battle around Mortain, and the newly arrived 80 Infantry and 7 Armored Divisions were in the Laval–Le Mans area, ready to advance to the left of Haislip’s force that day.9 Another infantry division had been sent south to take Nantes and Angers and guard the Loire flank.
While the American jaw of the vise was proceeding satisfactorily, 21 Army Group’s contribution was not. Second Army’s advance was slow and deliberate against a balanced and dogged defense in favorable terrain. More important by far, First Canadian Army’s attack had ground to a halt 10 km (6 miles) north of Falaise (and thus more than 30 km [18 miles] north of Argentan) on 10 August. It was not scheduled to resume until 14 August. The Americans were skeptical of the Canadians’ ability to take Falaise, let alone advance south of the town, in time to prevent a German escape from the pocket. Patton and Haislip were all for pressing on to take Falaise for themselves, and very early on 13 August Patton ordered XV Corps to continue cautiously northward. On hearing of this, Bradley overturned the decision and ordered a halt, an order with which Patton argued and only reluctantly complied. The Americans would wait at Argentan for their allies to link up with them. This started the unraveling of the short hook plan that Bradley himself had proposed. Patton then suggested a return to the eastward orientation of Third Army interrupted on 8 August. Bradley concurred. The army (except, of course, for VIII Corps, which was still embroiled in Brittany) left three divisions of XV Corps in defense in the Argentan area, lest the Germans attempt a breakout to the southeast and thereafter thrust eastward into the Dreux-Orléans area. The Dreux-Chartres-Orléans line was reached on 16 August, and Patton proposed a swing north to seal off German escape routes over the Seine.
West of the army boundary, which Bradley had drawn on a line from Mayenne to Carrouges, First Army continued frontal attacks to wear down and drive back the enemy in the salient. Then, on 16 August, V and XIX Corps found themselves facing the British, who had crossed their front as the German pocket shrank. Second Army too had been pressing southeast, and five American divisions had been progressively pinched out as the armies converged. As the army’s front shrank on the left with the contraction of the pocket, Bradley extended it on the right by changing the boundary to Alençon-Sées-Gacé. V Corps HQ was sent on 17 August to take command of the formations left in the Argentan area. Then, extending First Army’s responsibility to the Seine, XIX Corps was switched to the eastern flank with three divisions, a march of at least 150 km (90 miles) across the rear areas of VII and V Corps, which involved a great deal of good staff work and flexibility in the organization of transport. This move was completed by 19 August. The two remaining infantry divisions were moved west to join the siege of Brest, rather than east with their erstwhile corps; they replaced 4 Armored Division, ordered east from Brittany on 15 August, but Bradley would not sanction the redeployment of 6 Armored because, according to Patton, he feared a German attack from south of the Loire.10
VII Corps had been given the role of advancing on the Mayenne-Domfront-Flers axis, driving into the enemy flank, and closing the gap that had opened between the two US armies. First Infantry Division and most of 3 Armored Division were already in the Mayenne area, 30 km (18 miles) south of Domfront, when the decision for a shallow encirclement was made. However, despite the dearth of enemy on the designated axis, there was no advance beyond Domfront until the corps had been built up by the side slipping of 4 and 9 Infantry Divisions. The corps pushed forward on 13 August, meeting so little resistance that 1 Division advanced more than 30 km (18 miles) that day; at 2200 hours Collins was calling for more “territory to take” and claiming that he could take Falaise before the British even started to move.11 The time required to concentrate on the new axis meant that there was initially a 50 km (30 mile) gap separating VII Corps from XV Corps, but this had lessened to about 30 km (18 miles) by 13 August. By the next day, the interval was only 10 km (6 miles) and closing fast.
After the disappointing start to Operation Tractable, the successor to Totalize, which is discussed in the next section, Montgomery decided that the pincers should close not on the Falaise-Argentan road but farther east on the river Dives. The Americans would attack northeastward toward Trun (about 10 km [6 miles] northeast of Argentan) to link up with the renewed Canadian offensive now primarily directed thence. There were, however, only three divisions left in the Argentan area (including the recently transferred and green 80 Infantry Division), and they faced considerably stronger opposition than had existed three days before; moreover, they still had no corps HQ to command them. Patton was instructed to remedy the latter situation, and he dispatched his chief of staff with a small team to form a provisional HQ, pending the arrival of Bradley’s choice, Major General Gerow’s V Corps HQ (pinched out farther east). However, no sooner was the attack ready to mount than Bradley postponed it in reaction to an enemy spoiling attack. Bradley then redrew the boundary between First and Third Armies, moving it farther east; Hodges was now responsible for the Argentan sector. Moreover, Gerow was not prepared to implement someone else’s plan over ground he had not studied (indeed, when he arrived, he was ignorant of even the location of his own divisions); muddying the picture further, he was unsure which army was his superior HQ. Confusion and delay thus prevented the attack from getting under way before 18 August. In addition, Leclerc wholeheartedly refused to commit his 2 French Armored Division to fulfill its allotted role in the battle because he aspired to march on Paris and seize the city for his political master, de Gaulle. The V Corps advance failed at Argentan, but its right reached Chambois on the river Dives during the late afternoon of 19 August. There, elements of 90 Infantry Division met part of the Polish Armored Division of II Canadian Corps to close the Falaise pocket.
While vacillation and confusion delayed the completion of the short encirclement, Patton, given his head, demanded a bold, rapid advance eastward. There was no effective opposition on Third Army’s new main axis, and this goal was easily accomplished almost everywhere. Advances of 100 to 150 km (60 to 90 miles) and more were achieved in three days, rendering irrelevant the projected plan for an airborne assault in the Paris-Orléans gap. XV Corps took Dreux on 16 August (crossing the river Eure). The two divisions of XX Corps (Major General Walton H. Walker commanding) advanced in parallel and, after a bit of a fight, took Chartres on 18 August. By the end of the same day, XII Corps (from 19 August, commanded by Major General Manton S. Eddy), the last to come up (also with two divisions), was about to enter Orléans. There was very little in front of these three armored and three infantry divisions of Third Army. The recently arrived First Army HQ, with only LXXX Corps under command, had improvised battle groups from four divisions stretched across a 70 km (45 mile) front and could do little more than establish roadblocks across primary routes. The only real check was imposed by Bradley’s hesitancy owing to his concerns for Third Army’s flanks, especially if the Germans in the pocket attempted a break-out through the Paris-Orléans gap, along with growing difficulties with fuel supply. These circumstances, primarily the latter, led to another halt order on 15 August that remained in force for two days. On 18 August Bradley gave permission for XV Corps to advance to the Seine at Mantes-Gassicourt, though only reluctantly did he authorize the establishment of a bridgehead over the river; this was easily accomplished on 20 August. Then on 21 August he sanctioned the resumption of an eastward advance to seize additional bridgeheads south of Paris at Melun and Fontainebleau. Opposition was minimal.
OPERATIONS OF 21 ARMY GROUP: FROM BLUECOAT TO THE FALAISE POCKET
The Northern Jaw of the Vise: Anglo-Canadian Operations to 20 August
After Operation Bluecoat ground to a halt in the face of II SS Panzer Corps, 21 Army Group’s main effort continued to lie with Second Army.12 Dempsey retained nine divisions and four independent armored brigades to Crerar’s seven divisions (including a weak airborne division) and three brigades. However, against a stronger enemy and with surprise no longer a force multiplier, the heady early days of Bluecoat were not replicated. Operation Grouse, which started on 11 August, failed to reach the ambitious objectives of Flers and Tinchebray and resulted in heavy casualties, showing that the British were back to an attritional grind. The main effort was switched from right to left to exploit a 7 August crossing of the Orne at Grimbosq for a drive on Falaise. However, XII Corps was not reinforced for the task. The following week registered an advance averaging 10 km (6 miles) in total across the front.
The British advance was very deliberate, with little dash or élan being displayed at any level, even after the enemy started a deliberate withdrawal on 13 and 14 August and therefore lost the advantage of fighting from prepared positions. Thus, “orders [were issued] to the effect that any enemy withdrawal would be closely followed up.”13 There seemed to be no attempt to do more than follow up. According to its war diary, 6 Guards Tank Brigade spent 14–16 August with “nothing to report.” Revealingly, 29 Guards Armored Brigade’s diary entry for 14 August read: “Orders to units are that it is not the intention to push on as quickly as possible but to mop up every position as they are discovered. . . . [At 2300 hours the divisional] GOC phoned to say ‘form for tomorrow is soft pedal—maintain contact, follow up if enemy withdraws but units not to get involved.’” Eleventh Armored Division reverted to its old habit of stopping for rest and maintenance during the hours of darkness and missed a chance to destroy 10 SS Panzer Division as it pulled back over the river Orne at Putanges on 17–18 August.14 On 18 August 59 Infantry Division was withdrawn for disbandment to provide replacements for other formations. No wonder a captured German commander remarked during his interrogation: “The British did not follow up very vigorously from the west.”15 They preferred to rely largely on artillery and air strikes on increasingly congested traffic.
As the heavy fighting subsided, it was obviously considered desirable to rest and refurbish some formations that had taken significant casualties and, as the line of contact shrank as a consequence of the German retreat, other formations were pinched out. On 10 August 15 Infantry and 7 Armored Divisions were withdrawn into reserve. They were followed on 16 August by the Guards Armored, which spent the next three days doing mundane tasks, resting and sightseeing, attending an investiture parade, and listening to a speech by Montgomery. Only one of these formations, 7 Armored, was sent to reinforce First Canadian Army, and then only on 15 August.
Canadian Army Operations to 20 August
Initially, Canadian First Army’s parallel offensive on the Caen-Falaise axis, Operation Totalize, seemed more promising. Its primary objective, as set out in Montgomery’s M516, was “to gain such ground in the direction of Falaise as will cut off the enemy forces now facing Second Army and rendering their withdrawal eastwards difficult—if not impossible.” If that aim had been desirable on 4 August, it was becoming potentially decisive by 8 August (H-hour having been advanced by twenty-four hours).16 This would become the northern wing of the encirclement that, coupled with the southern wing comprising the American Alençon-Argentan thrust, would trap the Germans in what came to be called the Falaise pocket. Crerar’s First Canadian Army had only limited resources, however. His I British Corps, with only an infantry and an airborne division and a tank brigade, was committed to defending the bridgehead’s left flank. That left Lieutenant General G. G. Simonds’s II Canadian Corps as the sole executor. He mustered three somewhat tired infantry divisions (one British), two green armored divisions (one Polish), and two independent armored brigades (one British).
The Canadian corps faced the daunting prospect of attacking over the same ground that had witnessed the expensive tactical failures of Operations Goodwood and Spring. The terrain was bounded on the west by the river Laize, a tank obstacle; there was no comparable obstruction to the east until the Dives was encountered 20 km (12 miles) or so from the Laize. From the LD to just short of Falaise, the ground was gently rolling, with several ridge-lines and small hills that gave fine fields of fire over an almost prairie-like emptiness, except for the villages, hamlets, and small woods that dotted the landscape every 1 to 3 km (0.5 to 2 miles) or so. The only break in the country as it rolled south from the front line was about 15 km (9 miles) distant—the wooded valley of the Laison; the stream itself was believed to be an insignificant obstacle.
The Germans of I SS Panzer Corps, which faced the renewed effort on the Falaise axis, were markedly weaker than those that had so effectively defeated attempts to thrust southward in July. Four panzer divisions had been drawn off to stop Bluecoat and mount the Mortain counteroffensive, leaving only the small, inexperienced, newly arrived, and low-quality 89 Infantry Division and, in depth, 12 SS Panzer Division to hold the threatened sector. This meant that the Allies had a superiority of about 7:1 in men and armor and 5:1 in artillery (excluding mortars, where the ratio was about 2:1). The attack would be supported by two massive heavy bomber strikes.
Simonds, however, was not relying on mere numerical advantage (which, in any case, he believed was smaller than it actually was). He saw his trump cards as being surprise and airpower. Surprise could not be achieved with regard to either axis or timing, given the well-known German sensitivity about the sector and developments elsewhere, but it could be achieved with regard to method. Goodwood and Spring had been repulsed by skillful German use of carefully concealed mortars, machine guns, and long-range antitank weapons deployed in great depth, especially in fortified villages, to dominate the open ground that characterized the battlefield. Simonds proposed to overcome the first defensive position with an armored attack at night by massed tanks and infantry carried in armored half-tracks and SP guns converted into armored personnel carriers (APCs). A rolling artillery barrage and darkness would neutralize the defending mortars, machine guns, and antitank weapons, thus enabling the mechanized force to penetrate rapidly to the depth of the first defensive position. Meanwhile, heavy bombers would destroy the villages on the flanks of the main attack so that they could speedily be mopped up by infantry. Simonds expected the second position to be a harder nut to crack, for here he would encounter the better part of 12 SS and part of 1 SS Panzer Divisions, and the position was out of range of all but the medium and heavy artillery of the AGRAs. This, in his view, necessitated a second massive air strike to suppress the defenders so they could be overrun by the second echelon, comprising the two armored divisions, in what would amount to a second breakthrough battle.
The N158 Caen-Falaise road would be the centre line. In phase one, attacking in the first echelon on the left would be 51 Infantry Division and 33 Armored Brigade. To the west would be 2 Canadian Infantry Division and 2 Canadian Armored Brigade. In each division, one brigade would hold the LD and be ready for phase two tasks, and one would clear the villages bypassed by the main effort and those on the flanks. Massive strikes by 1,019 British heavy bombers would obliterate the four flanking villages with 3,462 tons of bombs, and they would thus fall easily to the infantry. The main effort would be mounted by the two armored brigades accompanied by the third, now-mechanized infantry brigade of each division. To achieve surprise, there would be no preliminary bombardment. The advance, starting at an H-hour of 2345 on 7 August, would be preceded by a 4 km (2.5 mile) wide and 6 km (4 mile) deep, fast-moving rolling barrage (lifting 180 m [200 yards] every two minutes). In all, 720 guns, each with an allocation of 350 to 650 rounds, would support the attack. The barrage would be hugged by six tightly packed tank and armored infantry columns driving forward to seize a series of village objectives 5 to 6 km (3 to 4 miles) from the front line. As the first echelon consolidated on its objectives, providing a firm base for phase two, the second would move up and artillery would displace forward. There would be a five-hour gap between the end of phase one and the second bombing.
Phase two would be preceded, from 1226 to 1355, by 678 American heavy bombers striking the assessed main locations of the panzer formations. Tactical air elements would carry out battlefield interdiction to the south (but only in the afternoon). Immediately following the air bombardment, the armored divisions, 4 Canadian to the west and 1 Polish to the east, would attack together, each unavoidably on little more than a 1,000 m (1,100 yards) frontage, as the tip of the night’s penetration had been necessarily narrow. Fourth Division would take a series of objectives on either side of the N158, ending up holding the high ground west of Potigny, 8 km (5 miles) north-northeast of Falaise. The Poles would do likewise to the east on a parallel axis, taking the high ground overlooking Falaise and 3 to 5 km (2 to 4 miles) northeast of the town—a very ambitious objective. To secure the flanks of the second echelon, the infantry brigades that secured the LD for phase one would come up and take the villages there.
Third Canadian Infantry Division would be in reserve, prepared to mop up positions bypassed in phase two. I British Corps on the left and XII Corps to the west would pin the enemy to their fronts, the latter pressing forward from the Grimbosq bridgehead toward Falaise as part of Second Army’s wider push on the town.17 The actual development of Operation Totalize and its successor, Tractable, is shown in map 4.3.
The deep penetration effort in phase one went well. Most of the careful provisions for night navigation worked—more or less—and by 0800 on 8 August, the two armored and two infantry brigades had penetrated a surprised and bewildered enemy and captured most of their objectives, with only light casualties. The only objectives that remained untaken were Caillouet’s quarries and the hamlet of Gaumesnil; both, through an error in staff work, were within the bomb line for phase two. Clearing the villages to the flanks and those bypassed proved four times as costly and took until early or midafter-noon. One-third of the heavy bombers had to abort their missions because of target obscuration, and most of the rest were somewhat off target, at least in 2 Canadian Division’s sector. Consequently, infantry without artillery or (initially) tank support did not enjoy the expected walkover. Moreover, bypassed and even overrun elements of 89 Infantry Division did not, as intelligence had opined, give up without a fight. The forward move of the second-echelon divisions was thus hampered by enemy stay-behind groups and by massive traffic congestion worsened by the attempted redeployment of first-echelon artillery. Nevertheless, they were ready on their phase two LD in time to follow on immediately after the end of the second bombing.
Only 75 percent of the American heavy bombers actually dropped their loads (some of them fell short onto Canadian and Polish units). The results were very mixed. Two targets on the flanks were squarely struck (one of them a German dummy concentration left to confuse Allied intelligence when BG Wünsche deployed to try to eliminate the Grimbosq bridgehead). Those near the centre line were only lightly affected, and in any case, German armor had preemptively moved out of the impact area. SS Senior Colonel Meyer, the young (thirty-five years old) but immensely experienced commander of 12 SS Panzer Division, did not conform to the Canadian plan. Realizing that 89 Division was under attack, he went to the key, now front-line, village of Cintheaux on the centre line; meanwhile, he ordered his immediately available armor (seventy-four tanks and SP antitank guns, including eight Tigers) to concentrate further south under SS Major Waldmüller. He made a quick appreciation of the situation and saw that the enemy had obviously broken through the forward division. Meyer saw what he estimated at up to two armored divisions to his front (the first echelon’s tanks, as it happened). Time had to be won for the forty-four tanks and accompanying infantry of BG Wünsche to disengage and return and for 85 Infantry Division, coming from Fifteenth Army, to arrive (it was two night marches away and could not be expected before 10 August). He ordered BG Waldmüller to mount a spoiling attack. While the enemy was delayed, BG Wünsche and some 88mm antiaircraft guns would establish a defense astride the N158 and in the key Quesnay woods to bar the road to Falaise. When 85 Division arrived, it could extend the line up the Laison valley. Then Meyer traveled nearly 3 km (2 miles) south to 89 Division’s HQ at Urville to confer with its commander and General Eberbach, the army commander, who had come forward to make his personal assessment of the situation. Eberbach confirmed Meyer’s plan and, at around 0800, returned to drum up reinforcements (including the return of BG Olboeter and 102 SS Heavy Tank Battalion from II SS Panzer Corps and others promised by von Kluge, even though Army Group B reserves had long since been exhausted).
When it went in around noon, the 12 SS counterattack accomplished little against the consolidated forces of the Anglo-Canadian first echelon and took significant casualties (though it escaped from the impact area of the second heavy bombing). It did not spoil the attack of the second echelon, which was still moving to its LD as the Germans were being repulsed. However, on transitioning to defense, BG Waldmüller was able to halt the attack of the Polish division, stopping it more or less on its LD with the loss of fifty-seven tanks. The air bombardment had not crushed the defense as promised, there was insufficient artillery support (the Canadian AGRA had taken severe punishment from short-bombing), and the Poles lacked maneuver room and tactical experience. Fourth Canadian Armored Division fared no better. Its advance did not even start until 1615 (almost three hours after H-hour), owing to confusion about whether it or 2 Canadian Infantry Division was responsible for taking objectives not achieved in phase one because they were within the bomb line. Its attack was cautious, and neither division nor corps commanders went forward to make personal assessments and provide leadership.18 The division advanced 2 km (more than 1 mile) before dark; then, following traditional practice (and despite Simonds’s exhortations) it, like the Poles, mostly harbored for the night. One battle group (Worthington Force) was sent forward to establish itself on the divisional objective, but errant navigation led it onto a ridge 6 km (4 miles) to the east.
During the evening and night, the Germans restored a coherent if perilously thin defensive line. The remains of 89 Infantry Division, now at about 50 percent, held the left flank. BG Wünsche was established in the Quesnay woods area, and BG Waldmüller was supposed to extend the line eastward along the ridge that formed the northern side of the Laison valley. Actually, Worthington Force had stumbled onto the centre of this position, and its elimination required precious time and resources. Fortunately for I SS Panzer Corps, the second echelon continued to disappoint Simonds and Crerar on 9 August. Somewhat disjointed efforts and mostly poor tankinfantry cooperation, combined with stubborn German resistance, prevented momentum from being achieved. The Poles did not advance until 1100, and 4 Canadian Armored Division’s attempt to bypass resistance and proceed straight to its objective resulted in failure, with heavy casualties, when Wünsche’s tanks belatedly convinced the Canadians that the Quesnay woods were vital ground. Then, that evening, BG Olboeter arrived in time to limit the one Canadian success of 9 August—the casualty-free capture, in a silent, nighttime infiltration attack by infantry, of the northern half of 4 Canadian Division’s objective. Tactical airpower had a very limited effect on the battle, thanks to 2 Tactical Air Force’s cumbersome system for air-land cooperation (so different from the intimate American armored column cover).
By 10 August, Crerar’s and Simonds’s ambitions had moderated to the point where the objective became to push through the Quesnay woods and reach the Laison with 3 Canadian Infantry Division, supported by the tanks of 2 Canadian Armored Brigade and all the available artillery; following success, the Poles would cross the Laison to the east. This attack failed too, thanks to poor tactical intelligence, inadequate preparation, and German determination. Operation Totalize was over.
If anything, the importance of progress by Crerar’s army increased once the short encirclement became the formally stated operational goal. Accordingly, Montgomery issued his M518 on 11 August: “We shall now concentrate our forces in order to encircle the main enemy forces so that we can destroy them in their present location. . . . First Canadian Army will capture Falaise. This is a first priority and it is vital that it should be done quickly. The army will then operate with strong armored and mobile forces to secure Argentan. A secure front must be held between Falaise and the sea.” To underscore the importance of a rapid advance on the Falaise-Argentan axis, Montgomery shifted Second Army’s main effort from its right flank to its left—the XII Corps thrust from the Grimbosq bridgehead over the Orne toward Falaise.
Again, planning and execution of the next operation remained largely in Simonds’s hands. Orders for Operation Tractable were issued on 13 August, for implementation the next day. Bypassing Quesnay woods to the east, Tractable was essentially a rerun of Totalize. Tractable, however, would be executed in daylight, with smoke substituting for darkness in providing concealment. Heavy bombers would neutralize the enemy on the right flank, barring the Caen-Falaise road. The air strike would be followed by a pinning attack by the Poles. Medium and fighter-bombers would soften up the enemy defending the Laison valley. Then two divisions, each with two infantry brigades and one armored brigade (the infantry borne by APCs), would attack in a concentrated phalanx on a narrow frontage to break through the antitank screen, cross the Laison (believed to be no obstacle), and take the high ground on the other side. Third Division would then close on Falaise from the northeast, while 2 Canadian Infantry Division did so from the northwest. On Crerar’s orders, it had crossed the Laize on 11 August to cooperate with XII British Corps in its drive on Falaise; by 14 August, it was still more than 10 km (6 miles) from the town, though opposed only by part of the somewhat worn 271 Infantry Division holding about a 15 km (9 mile) frontage.
Operation Tractable, like its predecessor, saw short-bombing, bringing the total Canadian and Polish casualties from that cause to just over 800. And like Totalize, it started well and then lost its way. When the Laison proved to be fordable only in some places, confusion reigned and units intermixed as they departed from the parade ground formation mandated for the advance and sought ways forward. Momentum was lost, and the situation was not helped when 4 Canadian Armored Brigade’s commander was killed and the chain of command broke down. Confusion and lack of urgency and initiative helped an increasingly enfeebled defense fight a successful delaying action. Falaise was finally entered on 16 August and was not totally cleared until two days later.
Even as Tractable was getting under way, however, some confusion about First Canadian Army’s priorities was setting in. At the beginning of the month, Falaise was a Second Army objective, and the Canadians were supposed to cut the approaches to and exits from the town and then take it. Later, concerned that the Germans were withdrawing from the pocket, Montgomery expanded the Canadian mission to take Trun, a crossing of the Dives 16 km (10 miles) west of the town. In fact, although it was too late to change the Tractable plan, the latter became the new main effort after Falaise’s capture was certain. And Montgomery demanded that I Corps begin its drive toward the Seine on an axis Mezidon-Lisieux as soon as 7 Armored Division arrived from Second Army. At a 16 August meeting with Bradley and Dempsey (again excluding Crerar and Hodges), he suggested to Bradley that the Trun-Chambois area should be the revised junction of the Allied forces: the enemy who succeeded in retreating east of the N158 could still be trapped west of the Dives. In anticipation of meeting up with American forces, Crerar suggested on 16 August that the US and Canadian First Armies exchange liaison officers as part of an effort to prevent fratricidal clashes between Allied units. He received no reply until 18 August and was then informed that, apart from corps artillery, liaison could take place only at army group level. Despite this rebuff, he sent hourly situation reports to the Americans but received none in return.19
Simonds was already implementing the Canadian part of this new variant on the operational idea. On 15 August he had started 1 Polish Armored Division on the new axis, and by the next day it was across the Dives and about 12 km (7 miles) from Trun. To join them, he turned 4 Armored 90 degrees, although the advance could not begin before 17 August, and the Poles could not proceed any further until the Canadians came up. When 4 Armored eventually got started, its advance was badly bungled, and Trun was not taken until midday on 18 August, when 3 Canadian Division came up. The Poles pressed on but did not reach Chambois until the evening of 19 August, when they linked up with elements of US 90 Division. The trap was finally closed, but the gate was not reliably robust; the Canadian and Polish elements blocking the last escape route south of Trun were thinly spread. A breakout on 20 August, assisted by a II SS Panzer Corps counterattack from the east, was partially successful.
THE FALAISE POCKET AND THE DEEP ENCIRCLEMENT
The Falaise Pocket
All the senior German commanders were fully aware of the futility of renewing the offensive toward Avranches and of the mortal danger facing Seventh Army and Panzer Group Eberbach.20 They were equally aware of the pointlessness, even personal danger, of suggesting retreat to the Führer. Von Kluge found a way out. With the unanimous backing of his army commanders, he persuaded a reluctant Hitler that a preliminary operation would be necessary before resuming the attack to the west. XV Corps, marching into the rear of the attack grouping, would have to be dealt with first, and a critical supply route (and, by the same token, withdrawal route) would have to be reopened. Hitler agreed and, on 11 August, ordered a counterstroke on a southeastward Carrouges–Le Mans axis. So fast did Haislip’s force advance, however, that von Kluge was compelled to change the axis to an easterly direction and to divert forces to stop the American drive at Argentan. The move to the assembly area was chaotic and slow (Eberbach’s HQ took six hours to move a mere 30 km [18 miles]), as routes were congested and littered with the wrecks left by air attack, fuel was in short supply, and organization and communications were breaking down. Then an enemy column overran the assembly area even as the concentration was getting under way. The panzer group had to transition to defense to sustain the southern shoulder of a closing trap.
The Germans had very little offensive capability left. Their command and control and logistic systems were in dire straits, and 1 SS, 2 SS, 10 SS, and 2 Panzer Divisions could muster a total of only seventy-three combat-ready tanks by 11 August.21 Of course, the C-in-C of Army Group B had not wanted to mount a counterstroke at all; he merely needed an excuse to disengage from the Mortain area and withdraw to the east, sure in the knowledge that events would overtake the whole notion of further offensive action. The Canadian offensive toward Falaise and XV Corps’ advance north from Alençon had begun forming an encirclement that was frighteningly familiar to many veterans of the Russo-German front. It was time to get out while that was still possible. Nonessential administrative elements were unofficially dispatched eastward. Plans were readied, based on experience gained in the USSR: more capable formations would hold the flanks of the pocket to protect the retreat; a corps HQ would divest itself of troops and devote itself full time to traffic control; and II SS Panzer Corps, with two divisions (actually, only two small, tired battle groups with twenty to twenty-five tanks between them), would assemble at Vimoutiers, outside the pocket, to counterattack and reopen an exit when the Allied jaws snapped shut. But Hitler still clung to the illusion that the counteroffensive could be resumed. He did not authorize withdrawal until the late afternoon of 16 August.22 By then, it ought to have been too late. The pocket was 56 km (35 miles) deep (i.e., west of the Dives) and 20 km (12 miles) wide at the neck (the Canadians having taken Falaise on 16 August). No major east-west road was left to the Germans. The retreat, taking place under conditions of acute logistic shortages and chaos, would have to be over hilly terrain and two rivers, with Allied artillery and fighter-bombers able to reach every nook and cranny of the shrinking pocket. But the Allies gave the Germans the one thing they needed to get significant elements out of the trap: time.
The Allies were not unaware of the German plight. Ultra, tactical SIGINT (Army Y), and air reconnaissance, supplemented by other sources, followed the abortive plans to renew the Avranches counteroffensive, the changing groupings and movements, and the Germans’ increasingly precarious logistic situation. During the period 12–15 August, all intelligence sources suggested that the enemy, understanding the threat of a double envelopment, had contemplated a counterattack against XV Corps to check the southern pincers. It became increasingly evident, however, that tank, fuel, and ammunition shortages and general confusion had forced the abandonment of this plan in favor of a counterpenetration. It was also apparent that, although tactical withdrawals were being carried out, the bulk of German combat power remained west of the Falaise-Argentan road, with a defense building up on either side of Argentan to protect the south side of the salient.23 Then, on the evening of 16 August, Ultra reported von Kluge’s morning request for permission for a general withdrawal, followed by Army Group B’s order to start such a withdrawal to the Orne that night and to the Dives the next. Late that night, Montgomery told the CIGS there was good reason to believe there were still six panzer and SS divisions inside the pocket (an assessment with which First Army’s intelligence concurred). There was, in short, still ample incentive on 16 August to make vigorous efforts to close the pocket along the Dives.
On both the northern and southern wings of the encirclement, a combination of delays, inadequate forces at the decisive place, and poor tactical handling, not to mention effective German reactions, prevented the effective sealing of the pocket before 20 August. Even so, Seventh and Fifth Panzer Armies were shattered. Constant air attack and artillery fire inflicted enormous and growing casualties. A partial count of equipment losses amounted to more than 300 tanks and SP guns, 200 light AFVs, 2,500 SSVs, and 300 guns.24 Of the approximately 100,000 men left in the pocket at the beginning of the withdrawal on 14 August, approximately 10,000 were killed and more than 40,000 were missing or captured. However, up to 40,000 escaped, as Ultra reported on 22 August. To that number must be added those units that had been withdrawn before the encirclement got under way and those outside the intended pocket. Intelligence estimated that there were 250 tanks and SP guns and 75,000 troops still west of the Seine (actually, there were about 115,000 men). These forces had to be destroyed before they could cross the river. If they were merely driven eastward, Allied logistic constraints (evident as early as 16 August) would soon limit and then halt further efforts and give the enemy the opportunity to rebuild his strength, using the escaped elements as cadres.
The Deep Encirclement
Even as the pincers were closing on the Falaise pocket, the minds of the Supreme Commander and the army group commanders were turning to post-Overlord campaigning. There was, however, unfinished business: the considerable enemy force still attempting to escape the Normandy catastrophe. On 19 August Montgomery met Bradley, Hodges, Dempsey, and Crerar to plan their destruction. US combat power was building up on the south side of the salient, with XV Corps already at Dreux and XIX Corps completing its concentration 15 to 30 km (9 to 18 miles) west of the town. Third Army had its XX and XII Corps halted in the Chartres-Orléans area. There was thus no prospect of a German breakout to the southeast through the Paris-Orléans gap on the most direct route to the Reich. That left only one exit, subject to interdiction by the AEAF: northeastward over the Seine between Vernon and the estuary. Late on 17 August, Ultra reported a list of ferry sites in operation in that sector.
The solution agreed on was a thrust down the west bank of the Seine for a second encirclement. To accomplish the task, Bradley offered transport to shift two Second Army divisions round US First Army via Avranches to its right flank. However, the necessary forces were already there, with two divisions of XV Corps at Mantes and XIX Corps’ three divisions in the area west of Dreux. The inter–army group boundary was temporarily redrawn to run north from Verneuil to west of Rouen to allow the two US corps to sweep north toward Elbeuf and cut off the fleeing enemy for 21 Army Group, advancing eastward, to crush him on an American anvil.25 Meanwhile, Third Army would advance to the east and seize bridgeheads over the Seine south of Paris, in addition to the one to the north at Mantes. These Seine bridgeheads would render the river useless to the Germans as an obstacle and provide a springboard for a 12 Army Group advance on Germany. The conclusion of the Normandy campaign with the Allied drive to the Seine is shown in map 4.4.
On 21 August Third Army duly resumed its eastward push against light opposition. By 25 August, XX Corps had advanced 90 to 120 km (55 to 75 miles), seizing three bridgeheads over the Seine 40 to 70 km (25 to 45 miles) upriver from Paris. XII Corps’ lead division went even further to take Troyes, 170 km (105 miles) from Orléans, 145 km (90 miles) southeast of Paris, and only 250 km (155 miles) from the Rhine. For all his spectacular seizure of ground, however, Patton had not lost sight of the original aim of operations—destruction of the enemy. On 23 August, with his forces rapidly closing on the river, the general proposed that XX and XII Corps turn north from their bridgeheads, together with XV Corps (already across at Mantes), and head north toward Beauvais to trap those Germans who had escaped over the Seine. Bradley rejected the idea in favor of a continued thrust to the east, despite a looming crisis in fuel supplies as the increasing distances between depots and the front stretched available transport resources.
Although the German forces attempting to retreat over the Seine were still numerous, their state of organization, equipment, and command and control was very weak (save for LXXXVI Corps on the coastal sector), and they had no prepared positions to fall back on to facilitate an organized withdrawal. Seventh Army was unable to prepare even an approximate strength return, and Fifth Panzer Army, apart from two infantry divisions recently arrived on the Seine from Fifteenth Army, produced only a partial one for I and II SS Panzer Corps on 21 August. This showed that the five panzer divisions remaining west of the Seine could muster only five understrength infantry battalions, about sixty tanks and twenty-six guns. This was the core of the organized rear guard covering the withdrawal over the Seine. First Army defending Paris and all the land east to the Rhône-Saône corridor was similarly lacking in combat power: it possessed two poorly trained, ill-equipped infantry divisions; shattered elements of three formations that had survived Normandy; some security units; and, arriving too late to defend the Seine line, two SS panzer “divisions” that were actually understrength infantry regiments without armor. Nor was there any relief from constant air attack. The Luftwaffe dispatched an extra 800 fighters to cover the retreat, but their largely novice pilots were no match for the Allies and did not affect Allied air supremacy; in a short time, about half of them were shot down, destroyed on the ground, or overrun on their airfields.
Starting on 20 August, 5 Armored Division of XV Corps advanced between the Eure and the Seine, reaching Louviers on 25 August. The corps’ other division, 79 Infantry, was left to hold the Mantes bridgehead. Its neighbor to the west, XIX Corps, advanced with an armored division and an infantry division up and a third initially refused to the left. The Americans advanced on a front of 45 km (30 miles), going down to 25 km (15 miles), and to a depth of approximately 35 to 50 km (20 to 30 miles) in five days to come up to Elbeuf and Louviers. Ten British and Canadian divisions were involved at one stage or another in a frontal pursuit from the Dives, over the Touques and Risle, to the Seine, advancing up to 80 km (50 miles) in five to ten days. There was an inevitable entangling of US formations establishing the stop line and Anglo-Canadian ones advancing from the west; however, generally good staff work and inter-Allied cooperation prior to and after the meeting enabled the Americans to withdraw south of the army group boundary and their allies to complete the clearing of the west bank and establish bridgeheads over the river before the month was out.
Paris
While First Army’s XIX Corps and newly acquired XV Corps were having another stab at cutting off the German retreat, this time on the Seine, its VII Corps and V Corps, pinched out by the elimination of the pocket, were reorganizing.26 They would now advance on the army’s right. The boundary with Third Army was redrawn on a line from Chartres to Melun, removing Paris from Third Army’s zone of advance and placing it in Hodges’s (specifically, in V Corps’). As an objective in its own right, Paris had not loomed large in SHAEF thinking; however, as the most significant communications hub in all of France, its possession would be essential to any push to the east. Eisenhower had initially intended to bypass the city and capture it through encirclement, without the need for costly street fighting or the earlier-than-inevitable diversion of the 4,000 tons of supplies per day the logisticians believed the food- and fuel-starved city would need. Accordingly, the FFI, recognized by the Allies as the official face of French resistance under SHAEF control, ordered the resistance in Paris to maintain a low profile and avoid provoking the Germans. This purely military calculation took no account of French political realities. The enduring truth that he who holds Paris controls France meant that both Gaullists and leftists were eager to claim credit for the capital’s liberation, and no faction would be content to play a passive role. By 19 August, encouraged by the approach of American forces, the disintegration of the Pétain government, and the feebleness of the German reaction to widespread strikes and defiance of authority, the city was in a state of insurrection. Lacking both the fighting power to crush the uprising and the stomach to implement Hitler’s order to reduce the city to ruins, the military commandant agreed to a rather ill-defined truce with the insurrectionists. This was due to expire at noon on 23 August.
De Gaulle had been lobbying for the early liberation of Paris, to be led by 2 French Armored Division. Leclerc, a fervent Gaullist, had been pressing the same demand with his unheeding corps and army commanders, refusing to allow his division to become decisively engaged with the enemy in the Falaise encirclement battle, whatever the orders issued by Gerow or Hodges. By 22 August, influenced by French political pressure and by the growing belief that the Germans would not contest the city, which was now believed to be largely in FFI hands, Eisenhower had changed his position on Paris. Leclerc was sent to liberate the city, reinforced by 4 Infantry Division, when, yet again, the French general ignored his corps commander’s orders as to axis. On 25 August Paris was surrendered to the provisional government of France, thus realizing de Gaulle’s ambition to preempt a communist seizure of power and to present a fait accompli to a somewhat unfriendly US government.
The Extent of the Disaster Suffered by Seventh and Fifth Panzer Armies
Allied air interdiction efforts combined with the long envelopment proved to be less decisive than hoped. On 21 August AEAF’s main effort was shifted from interdicting the Seine to attacking retreating forces north of the river and preventing the establishment of a defensive line on the Somme; Leigh-Mallory equated the destruction of the permanent bridges with the sealing of the barrier. The ground forces advanced with more circumspection than vigor and failed to close the crossing sites, even though significant numbers were still on the left bank. Montgomery did not seem unduly perturbed by these developments or by the failure of the ground forces to seal all escape routes over the river in good time. He had already decided, as he wrote to the CIGS on 18 August, that “all German formations that cross the Seine will be incapable of combat during the months to come.”27 All the same, suspecting that significant numbers of the enemy had managed to cross the river, Montgomery ordered an inquiry into the magnitude of the escape. The conclusion confirmed his suspicion: between the Dives and the Seine, about 240 tanks and SP guns, 250 light armored vehicles, 4,450 other vehicles, and 230 guns had been destroyed or abandoned; about 80,000 men had been killed or captured. But the inquiry also established that in the last twelve days of August, approximately 240,000 men, 28,000 vehicles, and 195 tanks and SP guns had managed to cross the Seine. Clearly, air action had not made the river an impassable barrier (a fact made obvious even before the retreat by the number of divisions from Fifteenth Army that had reinforced Seventh and Fifth Panzer Armies in July and August). A partially destroyed railway bridge in Rouen, three pontoon bridges, about sixty ferry and boat crossing sites, and many more small, improvised crossings had enabled considerable numbers to avoid death or capture.28 The bulk of those that escaped the trap did so over 26–27 August—that is, after First Army’s sweep north closed off 60 km (40 miles) of river but stopped at Elbeuf.
British and American works on Normandy are meticulous when dealing with Allied casualties during the campaign. From D-Day until the end of August, these totaled 209,672 among the land forces (about 60 percent of them American). They tend to be more cavalier about German figures. The commonly quoted total is 450,000 casualties (about 240,000 killed and wounded and 210,000 prisoners), statistics that probably originated in unreliable wartime estimates. A study based on a careful examination of the documentary evidence suggests that German losses actually amounted to 288,695 (including 198,616 missing), although this figure is for the whole of Oberbefehlshaber (High Command) West and includes well over 65,000 lost in the south of France and the retreat from the south and southwest. Given that as many as 640,000 Germans fought in Normandy, it is clear that substantial numbers were going to be available to reconstitute formations—given time.29
Five severely mauled divisions had to be sent to Germany for rebuilding. The remnants of the other eleven infantry divisions provided only four improvised, underequipped divisional battle groups, and the eleven panzer and panzer grenadier divisions had only some five to ten tanks and one battery each.30 Both of the Normandy armies were, over the course of only four weeks, rendered combat-ineffective. Only the scratch First Army and the much-depleted Fifteenth Army remained to contest an Allied eastward march on Germany. It would take time to summon additional forces from other theatres (and none could be diverted from the eastern front, where even greater disasters had been engulfing the Wehrmacht). On the one hand, a window had been opened for a potentially decisive strategic exploitation. On the other hand, if it were not effectively utilized, the men who had escaped could form the core of rebuilt or fresh divisions. Most importantly, of the one army, seven corps, and twenty divisional HQs caught in the pocket, only one corps and three divisional HQs had been destroyed. The enemy had a substantial number of men almost immediately available in Germany—two shadow divisions (bodies of combat troops organized like divisions, but without logistic infrastructure), nine fortress battalions, and seventeen replacement battalions—but they were not an integrated force. There were also six parachute regiment equivalents, albeit without artillery or much antitank weaponry, in training in the Netherlands. The command and control elements that escaped from Normandy ensured that there would be experienced, efficient brains to direct the refitted formations and the new bodies that would be created, and some logistic and administrative structures to keep them going.
OPERATIONAL ART AND GENERALSHIP IN AUGUST
Army Level
The key decisions were made at the higher operational level, and army commanders operated with only limited freedom of action. Indeed, Bradley, and especially Montgomery, tended to exercise tight supervision and control, allowing little room for creativity. Dempsey, Crerar, and Hodges accepted this as right and proper. Patton, however, was inclined to interpret his orders as creatively as possible, exercise initiative, and exceed the goals set in his mission. It was fortunate for the Allies that the circumstances in which Patton’s army entered battle were so favorable to his aggressive, risk-taking style of command. That the German defense in Normandy unraveled so completely and, above all, so quickly was due largely to Patton’s energy and audacity, often in spite of the wishes of his more cautious superior.
Second British Army: Lieutenant General Dempsey. General Dempsey had spent the twelve weeks prior to Operation Bluecoat engaged in the thankless task of pinning the bulk of German combat power on the British sector of the front through an attritional struggle. Sandwiched between the newly activated First Canadian Army to the east and US First Army to the west, he had no maneuver room. He would have to create his own opportunities to carry out operational maneuver by breaking through the defense and then inserting exploitation forces through the gap. He failed to accomplish this up to and including Operation Goodwood, but he succeeded in Bluecoat. A rapid, skillful, covert regrouping of two-thirds of the attack grouping onto a quiet and weakly defended sector ensured surprise. Initially, this was fully exploited by O’Connor’s VIII Corps, which eschewed customary tactical caution at critical moments and thus achieved an early breakthrough. However, fear of overextension soon reasserted itself, and exploitation gave way to the consolidation of gains. Dempsey did not press O’Connor to take risks but concentrated instead on trying to coax a more energetic performance out of XXX Corps. The opportunity to turn Seventh Army’s withdrawal into a rout was lost.
From the fourth day of operations, Second Army slipped away from a maneuver-based approach aimed at dislocating the enemy, forcing him into an untenable position and back into attritional operations to grind him down. There were arguments in favor of this reversion to the familiar. The primary aim of the operation had been achieved; the Germans had been prevented from shifting II SS Panzer Corps to the west to stop the Cobra breakthrough. Methodical operations were believed to conserve the force, a major consideration for an army facing a manpower crisis (so acute that 59 Infantry Division was about to be broken up to provide replacements for other formations). And such operations were controllable and low risk, unlike an attempt at vigorous pursuit, which could lead to confusion, uncertainty, and exposure to damaging counterattacks that could weaken morale. It is, however, difficult to shake the suspicion that Dempsey’s Second Army was happy to get back into its comfort zone, despite the fact that the operational circumstances of early August had made bolder action both safer and more desirable. The Germans lacked the strength, the logistic support, and the ability to achieve even temporary and local air superiority to wrest the initiative back from the British while simultaneously attempting to stem the American breakthrough. The Allies knew this, thanks to their excellent operational-level intelligence.
Post-Bluecoat operations were not—indeed, could not be—characterized by the usual lengthy buildup to achieve strong concentrations on narrow sectors and by the expenditure of massive stocks of ammunition created over many days. Rather, following the expensive and therefore very short-lived Operation Grouse, there was pressure across the front by all three corps (until VIII Corps was pinched out by the shrinking of the pocket).31 However, by the middle of August, pressure had largely given way to merely following up the German withdrawal. Formations were, of course, grateful for the rest and the opportunity to refit. However, the British lack of aggressiveness meant that the German withdrawal was hardly discommoded. Enemy formations were not pinned to allow more time for the encirclement to be completed and to prevent enemy disengagement in the west to concentrate for a break-out to the east. Strong thrusts were not mounted into the German northern flank of the pocket to cut off and destroy individual retreating groupings. XII Corps, decreed the main effort after the failure of the Canadians’ Operation Totalize, was not strongly reinforced, and it advanced at a very deliberate pace (though, admittedly, the ground greatly favored the defense). The inevitable opportunities for the pursuer created by a chaotic retreat were not seized upon, such as when 11 Armored Division failed to prevent 10 SS Panzer’s crossing of the Orne during the night 17–18 August. The pursuit to the Seine following the elimination of the pocket was similarly unthreatening to an even weaker enemy; the Germans were pushed toward US First Army’s anvil but not hammered on it. In short, there was a persistent failure to capitalize on the enemy’s weaknesses and conduct the vigorous pursuit that turns battle success into campaign victory. However, Dempsey did look ahead to post-Normandy operations and ensured that they could start as soon as his commander desired. He planned to seize bridgeheads over the major obstacle (the Seine) through forced crossings from the line of march, thus avoiding the delay that would have attended a more deliberate approach.
Dempsey was plainly right to reject Bradley’s rather extraordinary offer to ferry two British divisions round US First Army to complete the wide encirclement on the Seine. The scheme (presumably designed to free all American forces for an immediate march eastward on Germany) would have been disruptive, logistically impractical, inadequate in strength, and, above all, too tardy in execution to catch many of the enemy. Altogether more sensible was the general agreement on a temporary boundary change to allow a XIX and XV Corps attack between the Eure and the Seine, across the line of the British advance. Second Army’s HQ worked well with US First Army to deconflict the two armies advancing on converging axes. (Of course, there would have been no problem to solve if the US thrust had been directed up the east bank of the Seine.) Dempsey’s incautious (and possibly misquoted) remarks about being delayed by American slowness in clearing his line of march were unfair and out of character; he was normally the soul of tact. Montgomery, demonstrating a sensitivity that was often lacking in his own dealings with the Americans, smoothed over the affair, and no lasting harm was done to Dempsey’s relations with his allies. It did, however, illustrate the level of dislike, even hostility and distrust, that was increasingly infecting Anglo-American relations, to the detriment of sound decision making.
In late August the much weakened, disorganized, and logistically starved enemy was in the most vulnerable state imaginable, but Second Army appeared happy to leave his destruction largely to the Allied air forces and other armies. This assertion presupposes, of course, that Second Army was capable of acting in any other way. It was well trained to conduct the set-piece battles on which doctrine placed so much emphasis, and it had acquired much practical experience in putting that training to good use. However, in its long working-up period in Britain prior to the invasion, it had not been prepared for maneuver warfare and pursuit—certainly not at the formation level. For the most part, commanders, staffs, and formations were used to relying on massive, sometimes unnecessary and logistically unsound use of firepower and very deliberate, overly cautious tactics. Unlike the Germans, they lacked sufficient relevant training and experience to conduct fluid battles, and neither HQs nor their commands displayed the agility demonstrated time and again by the Wehrmacht.32 Awareness of this disparity in capabilities reinforced the British inclination toward caution. This was unfortunate, for by mid-August, caution was no longer an appropriate response to developments. When the enemy is badly damaged, unbalanced, in logistic difficulties, under great psychological pressure, and forced into increasingly belated and therefore ineffectual improvisations, that is the time when ruthless exploitation of the initiative and risk taking pay the greatest dividends. It is the time when the main concern should be not what can the enemy do to us but what can we do to him. In August, Second Army seemed unable to rise to the occasion. It had not yet become the somewhat more versatile and agile force that would fight the post-Normandy campaigns.
It seems that Dempsey did not encourage, or display himself, the boldness and ruthlessness that characterize an effective pursuit—either that, or he was restrained from doing so by Montgomery. Powerful influences undoubtedly constrained him, including an instinctive reaction to the prospect of casualties and knowledge that the British component of the AEF was reaching the bottom of the manpower barrel. But the real reason was his very British desire for a tidy battlefield, along with the concomitant impulse to exercise tight control through detailed, prescriptive orders and close supervision of subordinates. This was the very antithesis of the mission command style that brought such great victories to other very mobile, armor-heavy armies enjoying unlimited air support.
First Canadian Army: Lieutenant General Crerar. Like Operation Bluecoat, Totalize achieved more than its predecessors in Normandy. II Canadian Corps drove a salient up to 15 km (9 miles) deep and 8 km (5 miles) wide into the German defense. In doing so, it reduced a fresh infantry division to 50 percent, inflicted significant losses on 12 SS Panzer Division, and greatly alarmed Army Group B. With his Caen hinge weakened to breaking point and the Americans advancing almost unopposed northward from Le Mans, von Kluge could see that his worst fear—encirclement of most of Seventh and Fifth Panzer Armies—was about to be realized. Nevertheless, the operation failed to achieve its aim of cutting the German withdrawal route through Falaise. This failure, coupled with the operational pause before the effort was resumed in Operation Tractable, would have far-reaching repercussions.
Despite some halfhearted claims to ownership by Crerar, it is clear that Operation Totalize was the brainchild of II Canadian Corps’ GOC Lieutenant General Simonds. He had reflected on the causes of the expensive failure, a fortnight before, of his Operation Spring. The Totalize plan contained novel features designed to negate those aspects of the German defense that had made previous attacks so costly and inconclusive: heavy night bombing in close proximity to ground troops; an attack by massed armor at night; and the use of APCs to get infantry rapidly into the enemy’s tactical depth, undisrupted and with only light casualties.33 These innovations ensured surprise and, in consequence, a speedy penetration of the defense. Phase one was completed at low cost and largely according to plan. However, the battle started to go wrong immediately thereafter. Momentum was lost and never regained.
One reason for this turn of events was the effective way the Germans reacted. Although untested and now shocked and disrupted, units of 89 Infantry Division fought on, despite being overrun or bypassed. Even more critical in the battle for time was the speed and tactical acumen with which German commanders at all levels reacted. Meyer and Eberbach both made early, on-the-spot appreciations and decisions, saving precious time in the decision-action cycle. Their characteristic, reflexive counterattack failed to recover ground and resulted in irreplaceable casualties, however. Simonds had anticipated this, and the first echelon was consolidated and ready. Conversely, the subsequent delaying action won the time needed to establish a defense in the Potigny area and, eventually, on the line of the Laison. The defensive action that followed the spoiling attack was also active and maneuver based. The tanks were not deployed with the infantry to stiffen the defense but concentrated in the Quesnay woods for countermoves, as Worthington Force found at the cost of its destruction. That the Germans would react so quickly and effectively was, of course, predictable, even in the case of a poor, green division like 89 Infantry. That had been the pattern throughout the campaign, most recently in their response to the initial penetration in Bluecoat. Even at this late date, intelligence and commanders often failed to understand the enemy.
Imaginative and innovative as it was, Simonds’s plan contained major flaws that gave the Germans a chance to recover from their surprise and reestablish a coherent defense. Many of these flaws were inherent in British operational and tactical methods and thinking. In other words, they were systemic. The first flaw involved the faulty use of airpower. There was a growing reliance on the massive use of heavy bombers to supplement artillery in the task of burying resistance under hundreds of tons of high explosives. In neither Goodwood nor Bluecoat had this been the hoped-for panacea. In Totalize, the effect was adverse. The preliminary night bombing was only partially successful, but dependence on it meant that initial infantry attacks on fortified villages were mounted in inadequate strength and without artillery and tank support; consequently, casualties were significant, and the flanks of the advance were not cleared on schedule, impacting the forward displacement of artillery for phase two. Critically, the second bombing was counterproductive. It had little effect on the defense, largely hitting empty ground and the dummy concentration at St. Sylvain, but it inflicted serious damage and disruption on the two AGRAs supporting the phase two attack. Most significantly, the afternoon air strikes were considered so essential to the breakthrough of the second position that a long tactical pause was deemed acceptable; as it turned out, it was six to eight hours before the Polish and Canadian armored divisions crossed their LDs. That was just enough time for the Germans to restore the integrity of the defense. An air plan involving the employment of Bomber Command and Eighth Air Force was necessarily inflexible, being set in stone well in advance of the operation and not subject to any change after H–5 or cancellation after H+8. Even if ground operations were proceeding well, they would still have to stop and wait for the air attacks to go in, and neither the air plan nor ground plan could be adjusted if the enemy did the unexpected. Both these things happened on 8 August.
During the planning stage of Totalize, Crerar had noted the lengthy interval between phases one and two. This violated the principle of maintaining momentum and the initiative. However, he did not press the issue, even after Ultra’s revelation that much or most of 1 SS Panzer Division had been redeployed.34 It was unfortunate that Crerar, the man with the authority to cancel the second bombing, lacked the courage of his convictions, was somewhat intimidated by the forceful and more experienced Simonds, or feared offending the senior airmen, to the possible detriment of future support from the heavy bombers. He had, after all, expended political capital to arrange it.
An obsession with the firepower delivered by strategic bombers obscured more successful and less controversial air techniques. Actually, airpower could have made a decisive contribution to Operation Totalize had reliance been placed on its tactical arm, properly used. Continuous air interdiction of the battlefield would have severely delayed the march of BGs Krause and Olboeter, the battle groups principally responsible for repulsing the Canadian attacks on 9–10 August. Close air support could have contributed mightily to deepening the penetration. With artillery unable to displace forward in time to give continuous support, fighter-bombers would have provided an alternative source of firepower. Their effectiveness against point targets, especially vulnerable ones like antitank guns and artillery, would have been greater than in previous battles, as the Germans would be neither well dug in nor camouflaged during an increasingly fluid battle. To ensure immediate responsiveness, some fighter ground-attack units could have been continuously in the air over the battlefield, using the cab-rank concept developed by AVM Broadhurst in late 1943. Any necessary surge effort could have been mounted at short notice from other squadrons held on cockpit alert and ready to fly on order.35
Had Simonds and Crerar reposed the confidence in the break-in plan that it actually merited, they would have dispensed with the crutch of the second heavy bombing. This would have left II Canadian Corps with the flexibility to exploit the initial success immediately (although broad preplanning of this exploitation would have been necessary to avoid delay and confusion).36 At the very least, elements of the first echelon could have pressed forward with the barest of pauses for reorganization. Better still, predesignated combined-arms battle groups of reinforced battalion strength, probably drawn from the second echelon, could have pushed south on either side of the N158 in advance of their formations’ main bodies to seize the high ground just west of Potigny and a crossing over the Laison immediately to the east. They would have enjoyed a high priority for air support. The aim would have been to preempt the enemy onto key points on the favorable defensive line in his depth and hold them until the second echelon could deploy and make its way forward to reinforce the leading units. Disruption of the German defense and a speedy advance to render nugatory his reactions would have reduced the time required and thus the element of risk.37 It is likely, too, that the armored divisions could have come forward more rapidly had there been greater urgency about the move; as it was, there was no need to be on the LD much before the H-hour determined by the air effort.
In the event, when the second-echelon attack went in, it was against a first-class enemy that was beginning to recover his balance. The two armored divisions would have to fight their way forward. The Germans, however, were still vulnerable to well-conducted attacks mounted by a force that enjoyed considerable numerical superiority. Though this was especially true on the afternoon of 8 August, it remained so through the next day. It was therefore unfortunate that both second-echelon divisions were inexperienced and thus prone to the failings of green formations. The Poles had not grasped the importance of fighting in combined-arms battle groups, and Canadian interarm cooperation was weak. Neither formation was prepared for night fighting (with especially tragic consequences for Worthington Force). Both were guilty of poor battle procedure and committed tactical errors. Simonds and Crerar blamed the very disappointing results not only on inexperience but also on commanders’ lack of drive and incompetence; Simonds castigated commanders down to the unit level accordingly. Their failure, however, was due in large measure to faults in the plan. That 4 Armored Division left its LD almost three hours late owed much to the poor staff work that placed Gaumesnil inside the bomb line and allocated it as an objective (in phase one) to two different divisions; the egregious failings of Brigadier Booth, commanding 4 Armored Brigade (which did not result in his dismissal), were merely a complementary factor. Moreover, each armored division was allotted a narrow zone of advance (scarcely more than 1 km [half a mile] wide) and therefore lacked the maneuver room to bypass opposition as Simonds demanded. Yet II Canadian Corps could have expanded its actions considerably to the east. The weak German LXXXVI Corps, which held the right flank facing I British Corps, held a 20 km (12 mile) frontage from the sea to La Hogue.38 This was increased overnight by 7 km (4 miles) by 51 Highland Division’s advance. It would be extended that same distance again with the German night withdrawal on 8–9 August. Stretched, lacking mobility, and with almost no armor, LXXXVI Corps was poorly placed to elongate its defensive flank southward in sufficient strength to repulse an Allied effort to turn the right flank of the main defense.
Crerar’s failure to exploit the boundary between I SS and LXXXVI Corps is hard to explain and harder to excuse. From the end of phase one, 51 Division and 33 Armored Brigade played only minor roles. Reverting to I British Corps’ command on the afternoon of 9 August, they merely kept up with the Canadian advance and covered its flank. They, together with one of the armored divisions, could have been used under either corps to widen the operation’s spatial scope and overstretch the defense while the rest of I Corps pinned the enemy to their front. Such a task would have been consistent with preparing the way for a thrust toward Rouen, which Crerar believed would be the post-Totalize role of his army. This would not have overstretched Crerar’s forces, as he still would have had 2 and 3 Canadian Divisions and an armored division and brigade in hand for the direct attack on Falaise.
The outcome of the attacks on both 8 and 9 August was far below expectations. The lesson not learned was that a thrust narrowly confined to a few kilometers on either side of the N158 would become subject to diminishing returns. The plan for 10 August was based on a belated recognition of the central importance of the Quesnay woods to that axis. A predictable, frontal attack by 3 Canadian Division was repulsed. This failure was an expensive reminder that, without surprise, careful planning, and a well-constructed fire plan, an improvised attack was unlikely to succeed against a capable enemy that had been given time to prepare.
With that sharp reminder of the force’s limitations, it took two and a half days to generate the fresh set-piece attack that Simonds and Crerar deemed necessary, despite Montgomery’s demand for urgency. Neither general accepted that the Totalize plan had been flawed in any way, ascribing failure to the incompetence of their subordinates. Thus, Operation Tractable was largely a reprise of its predecessor. It once again relied on the use of heavy bombers (a reliance that was not fully justified by results and not without serious consequences); it saw the same use of tightly massed tanks and APC-borne infantry; it substituted obscuration through smoke for the cover of darkness; it was tightly controlled, leaving little room for initiative when the plan went wrong. And go wrong it did when the river Laison proved to be a tank obstacle in many places (a fact that better intelligence work would have revealed). The attack lost cohesion and, with subordinate commanders having no idea how to react when the unexpected happened, fizzled out in a mix of confusion and passive waiting for fresh orders.
Rather than persisting in frontal attacks against an increasingly coherent defense, it might have been better, even as late as 10–11 August, to seek a solution on either flank. A subsidiary attack was started on the west bank of the Laize on 11 August by 2 Canadian Division to complement the thrust southeastward from the Grimbosq bridgehead by XII British Corps—an effort that gained momentum with the departure of BG Wünsche on 8 August. The ground, however, was not favorable to a much larger deployment and a rapid increase in tempo. On the left, had Crerar willed it, there was a possibility that II Canadian Corps, in cooperation with I British Corps, could have broken through the now grossly overextended LXXXVI Corps and turned the flank of I SS Panzer Corps. Of course, at this stage of the offensive, having failed to exploit earlier opportunities, the Canadian army really could have used additional formations to regain momentum. Probably because he rated Crerar so lowly, Montgomery was not inclined to reinforce him as readily as he would the more trusted Dempsey. This lack of esteem led to his exclusion from critical C-in-C’s meetings to discuss the operational situation. For instance, this happened when Montgomery met with Bradley and Dempsey on 13 and 16 August and made decisions that directly affected First Canadian Army.
Operations Totalize and Tractable demonstrated the flaws and limitations in both Canadian operational thinking and tactical competence. Surprise was seen as a combat multiplier, but there was insufficient appreciation of the transience of its effects; every hour that passed without exploitation was pure gain for the enemy. At bottom, Simonds and Crerar thought there was no substitute for sheer volume of fire—the more the better.39 This led to overreliance on the effects of bombing, carefully prepared fire plans, and impractically rigid timetables. Tempo was a secondary consideration that was apparently considered to be of secondary value, even though the enemy had amply demonstrated time after time that momentum (and the paralyzing shock it induced) was the main weapon of armored forces. As Kurt Meyer scathingly remarked: “A tank attack which is divided into phases is like a cavalry charge with meal breaks.” He also pointed out: “You just cannot lead a tank battle from behind an office desk. The place for the responsible unit commander has to be with the foremost elements of his attacking spearhead so as to be able to take decisions according to the situation and to deliver annihilating hammer blows.”40 This was not the way of Canadian divisional commanders, who tended to be desk bound, planning off the map rather than going forward to see the ground for themselves, assess how their units were faring, and provide leadership. They took their lead from their seniors.
While Simonds spent considerable time with his division commanders, it was because he (rightly) reposed little trust in their tactical competence. His cold, critical presence inspired mainly fear. He commanded forcefully, rather than led. Crerar preferred to stay at his main HQ, generally 60 km (40 miles) from corps HQs, where he involved himself in the details of staff work and frequently had problems distinguishing among the essential, the important, and the trivial. He made forward visits, usually daily, but did not go below corps level. Both Crerar and his HQ lacked experience of actual battle, and in August it showed. His generalship was immature and flawed, being prone to half measures because of a mixture of fear of failure and overoptimism (as well as some dubious British doctrine). The planning of the operation was left largely to Simonds, the man Montgomery would have preferred as army commander. For the most part, Crerar found that he was reduced to being a conduit between Montgomery and Simonds, and he was sometimes bypassed even in that role. His contribution was largely exhortatory, although he did play an important part in obtaining heavy bomber support from the air forces. Both Crerar and Simonds were firmly wedded to British concepts of secure bases and flanks; massive fire plans (including air) to avoid unnecessary casualties; tight, centralized control; and balance—that is, the avoidance of risk as an important principle of combat. Neither displayed a feel for the way battle developed, insisting on sticking to the complex plan and blaming subordinates when that plan went wrong. Simonds, however, would eventually develop a “fingertip feel” for battle, which Crerar never did. Simonds’s judgment was both sounder and far more creative.
US First Army: Lieutenant General Hodges. Hodges’s first real test as army commander came five days after he assumed command. Ultra gave only a few hours’ notice of the beginning of the German counterattack at Mortain, insufficient for any tactical preparation. Bradley and Hodges had been concerned about the threat to Avranches yet, curiously, had missed warning signs in the first of several bouts of overconfidence.41 From 1 August onward, Ultra had recorded the Germans’ dismay at Seventh Army’s open flank. Yet Allied generals did not ask themselves why the Germans were taking the risk of fighting so hard west of the river Vire when timely retreat would be the more prudent option (as Montgomery had pointed out in his M516); indeed, as reinforcements arrived at long last from Fifteenth Army and more from the south of France, they were fed into the forward battle instead of preparing a fallback line to cover a withdrawal. Nor did the generals pick up the hints provided by intelligence in the first week of August. A series of SIGINT reports on 4–6 August about a growing armored concentration under XLVII Panzer Corps on the enemy’s left wing should have suggested that the Germans intended to restore the situation by counterattack, especially as fresh infantry divisions were relieving panzer units in the line. Air reconnaissance also detected elements of the counterattack grouping.
Fortunately, First Army was well placed to repulse the blow. The Avranches corridor had already been prudently expanded to a comfortable width, and the high ground around Mortain was firmly occupied. With more than six US divisions (including one French) in or near the battle area and massive air support, the weak, hastily organized, ill-reconnoitered German attack was doomed from the start. The unfussed, efficient reaction by First Army in harnessing maximum air and artillery support helped VII Corps ensure that the enemy made a minimum of progress. It was clear by early on 8 August that the attack had run out of steam, with Hodges reporting as much. Though the possibility of renewal could not be discounted, it was clear that without surprise and substantial reinforcements, which were simply not available, the German counteroffensive had culminated. Now badly unbalanced, damaged, and crippled logistically, and with command and control becoming increasingly precarious, the Germans were vulnerable to further Allied attacks.
At the higher operational level, the Allies were determined to exploit the Germans’ open southern flank by executing an encirclement of the attack grouping to close the pocket on the line of the Falaise-Argentan road. At his lower level, however, Hodges seemed slow to exploit the same vulnerability. Frontal pressure was exerted against the main strength of the German grouping all the way from Vire round to Mortain and Barenton, rather than conducting primarily pinning attacks and economy of force measures while pulling formations out of the line and sending them, as fast as possible, round the German left. In fact, V Corps and then XIX Corps were not redeployed until they were pinched out by the British advance across their front. Similarly, VII Corps attacked into the strongest part of LVII Panzer Corps until 12 August when, pinched out by XIX Corps’ advance, it started to sideslip 4 and then 9 Infantry Divisions to the southeast. Meanwhile, 1 Infantry and much of 3 Armored Divisions waited in the Mayenne area and were not committed to a thrust on the Domfront-Flers axis until a week later, on 13 August, by which time the Germans’ withdrawal had apparently started. Hodges presumably wished to wait until he could launch a powerful, concentrated, flank-secured VII Corps in a northerly direction. This gave the enemy the breathing space he badly needed to adjust his dispositions. It also rendered nugatory the mobility advantage enjoyed by the Americans (enhanced by mastery of the air, which inhibited enemy maneuver) and thus sacrificed the tempo of which the American forces were capable and which would have kept the enemy off balance. Moreover, it delayed closing the gap between First Army and XV Corps, attacking on the Alençon-Argentan axis. Instead of putting maximum effort into attacking where the enemy was absent, into his flank and rear to disrupt the defense, Hodges preferred head-on attacks into strength over ground favorable to the defense and improved by mining. The casualty rate from 6 to 11 August was over 1,000 per day, with a peak of 1,796.
Had relations between Hodges and his allies been more collaborative than competitive, he could have sought to take advantage of British Second Army’s early success in Operation Bluecoat. The Americans’ V and XIX Corps had been making heavy weather of their advance on Vire until the British advance compelled XLVII Panzer Corps to withdraw from Tessy-sur-Vire on 31 July; by 2 August, the critical town itself was defenseless against attack by VIII Corps from the north. Hodges could have welcomed a British seizure of this important road centre and thrust into the flank of the enemy opposing his army’s advance; then he could have used the opportunity to shift his focus to the right to further unbalance the Germans. Later on, he refused Crerar’s eminently sensible offer of an exchange of liaison officers and information as elements of First US and Canadian Armies closed on Trun-Chambois, raising the specter of fratricidal clashes. It was perhaps typical, and certainly small-minded, to take refuge in bureaucratic excuses to explain his noncooperation. Hodges was understandably angry at Leclerc’s persistent avoidance of his orders and importunate demands to be allowed to liberate Paris, but he seemed not to appreciate that, while under his command, the Frenchman presented a special case. As the senior military representative of an ally, he could not be disciplined or ordered around as if he were an American. When he had to do so, however, Hodges could work with his allies. The complicated work of coordinating with Second British Army and its XXX Corps to disentangle American and British forces after the former had taken Elbeuf and the latter had closed up to the army group boundary was accomplished efficiently and relatively smoothly.
By 16 August, Bradley had decided to hand over American responsibilities for closing the pocket to First Army. The subsequent mix-up between V Corps and the provisional corps at Argentan and the slow resumption of attacks northward were due to Bradley, not Hodges. The latter was presiding over the complex and impressive maneuver of XIX Corps from the army’s left to the extreme right wing and the start of its attack on the Elbeuf axis. However, the advance of both XIX and XV Corps to the west of the Seine was, at 7 to 8 km (4 to 5 miles) per day, not fast enough, given the weakness and disorganization of the enemy, and it was too slow to trap the remnants of the two pocketed German armies. Army HQ had considerable communications problems as a result of the great distances involved, but it is hard not to conclude that Hodges failed to press his subordinates (as Patton did) to eschew plodding, deliberate methods in favor of improvisation, vigor, and risk taking. This was certainly not because he did not go forward to assess the situation for himself. Early in the campaign, he frequently visited corps and division commanders (although such forays tailed off as time went on). His presence, however, was not inspirational; indeed, his incessant worrying about detail made such visits something to be endured rather than welcomed. His absence did not mean that his subordinates were left to execute their missions as they saw fit. Hodges had little trust in any of his commanders, save for Collins at VII Corps. He demanded minutiae in reporting that was more appropriate to an HQ one or two levels below army, and he issued detailed, prescriptive orders. He was another commander who could not live comfortably with the chaos of war.
Hodges has frequently been referred to as the US Army’s foremost tactician. Unfortunately, he did not rise above tactics to become a practitioner of operational art. First Army’s war diary has a revealing entry for 30 July: “General Hodges . . . felt since the beginning that too many of these battalions and regiments of ours have tried to flank and skirt and never meet the enemy straight on . . . believing it safer, sounder, and in the end quicker, to keep smashing ahead, without any tricky, uncertain business of possibly exposing yourself to being cut off.”42 He was most comfortable at infantry unit level, conducting attritional battle. Concepts such as surprise, Cobra-like concentration on narrow sectors and economy of force elsewhere, maneuver in which open flanks were an acceptable risk, and clever sequencing of battles were on the margins of his military thought, crowded out by an obsession with a methodical approach and minor tactical details. The idea that battle might best be avoided in favor of maneuver to place the enemy at a disadvantage did not seem to cross his mind. His judgment was suffused with caution, even when boldness would be appropriate, and he lacked the ability to think beyond the current battle. At best, Hodges was a competent plodder and a safe if uninspiring manager. Neither professional growth nor imagination and flair had qualified him to command an army by August 1944.
US Third Army: Lieutenant General Patton. The principal mission originally envisaged for Third Army had been the capture of the Brittany ports. Even though this had been reduced from an army to a corps task, Patton set about it in a typically bold but not foolhardy fashion, given the enemy’s weakness and Allied air supremacy. Dispensing with phase lines, intermediate objectives, and other appurtenances of linear battle, he instructed his armored division and corps commanders to bypass opposition and seize distant objectives without fretting about their flanks. Though striving to achieve his assigned operational goal, Patton, like Montgomery, had doubts about the operational idea from the outset. He questioned whether Brittany had become a distraction, given the opportunities opening up to the east. Like Montgomery, Patton favored a long hook round the open southern flank to trap the enemy at the Seine. This demonstrated a sound appreciation of the operational situation and an instinctive feel for the way it was developing. He was accordingly delighted when Bradley, on Montgomery’s prompting, limited the Brittany operation to a single corps and directed the main body of Third Army in the general direction of Paris.
Haislip was imbued with Patton’s way of warfare. His XV Corps advanced from the Fougères-Vitré area to Le Mans at 30 km (nearly 20 miles) per day, placing it in a favorable position to execute Bradley’s post-Mortain idea of a short hook. Patton (like Montgomery) had doubts about the northward swing from Le Mans, though. He believed the original long envelopment to the Seine would have a better chance of trapping significant German forces. Given the superior mobility and mastery of the air enjoyed by the Allies, he was probably right. However, he implemented Bradley’s instructions with his customary vigor. When ordered north, XV Corps moved more than 25 km (15 miles) per day to Argentan, 10 km (6 miles) beyond the army group boundary. This tempo in the advance scattered the few forces the Germans could muster to oppose it before they could organize into an effective delay force. It wrecked the remains of the logistic organization of Seventh Army and massively disrupted its command and control, placing the whole army in considerable peril. The very speed of the American advance brought security. The enemy was given no time to redeploy against it, even if sufficient forces had been available and had been able to move expeditiously (neither condition pertained, given the unrelenting pressure exerted by the other three armies and the omnipresent Allied fighter-bombers).43 However, Patton was mindful of the need for concentration, as XV Corps was being placed across the line of retreat of a major enemy grouping. Before the operational focus was unexpectedly changed, he had intended to send XX Corps (reinforced by 4 Armored Division from Brittany) north on Haislip’s left to partially fill the gap between First and Third Armies. But he would not risk losing the initiative by slowing the tempo of his operations to wait for Walker to come up. He ordered Haislip to continue this advance north from Argentan, believing, probably correctly, that XV Corps could take Falaise before the Canadians, stalled since 10 August, could do so. Patton was correspondingly irritated by Bradley’s vacillation when the stop order was issued. The principle of maintenance of the aim had been jettisoned because of, he wrongly believed, British jealousy or ignorance of the situation as well as Bradley’s fears.44
Thwarted at Argentan, Patton was nevertheless determined to maintain unrelenting offensive action to prevent German recovery and the reestablishment of a viable defense. He believed the best course of action was a reversion to the long envelopment, and he urged this course on Bradley. Receiving permission to head east again with part of XV Corps and all of XX and XII Corps (the latter now to include 4 Armored Division), he again stressed the preemptive value of speed. The rate of advance to Dreux, Chartres, and Orléans, establishing bridgeheads over the Eure, was at least 35 to 50 km (20 to 30 miles) per day (although it took two days to completely clear the latter two cities).45 Then Bradley, who was assailed by doubts, according to Patton, again applied the brakes. After a two-day halt, XV Corps was allowed to advance 40 km (25 miles) to Mantes-Gassicourt and (with Bradley’s reluctant consent) establish a bridgehead over the Seine; the task was accomplished in two days. Then on 21 August the brakes were taken off and XX and XII Corps advanced at 25 to 40 km (15 to 25 miles) per day to force the Seine at Melun and Troyes, taking the bridges intact. These were spectacular rates of advance, and Patton, always looking forward to the next operation, was determined to establish bridgeheads over any obstacle he reached, not merely stop on it. Any chance the Germans might have had of establishing a defense along the Seine was forestalled.
Bradley deprecated Third Army’s achievement. In his memoirs he wrote:
But while the world gaped over the speed of Patton’s spectacular advance to the Seine, it was Hodges’s almost anonymous First Army that sweated through the laborious in-fighting against the Falaise pocket. . . . Patton measured his successes in miles; Hodges in enemy dead. . . . If casualties offer an index to the rigors and ordeals of combat . . . First Army can claim to have borne the brunt of our advance. . . . First Army suffered 19,000 casualties . . . almost twice the number sustained by Third Army on the enemy’s open flank.46
In so writing, Bradley suggests a clear bias toward the traditional American approach of grinding the enemy down through frontal attacks in overwhelming force. This illustrates his imperfect grasp of the potential payoff from operational maneuver. It is true that the conditions for Patton’s success were set by the other three armies fixing the bulk of the enemy force, enabling his maneuver. It is also true that mere occupation of ground is seldom worthwhile as an end in itself. However, Third Army’s seizure of terrain contributed decisively to the physical destruction of the enemy, even when centres of resistance were bypassed, as was Third Army’s wont. Patton’s deep and rapid advance netted a claimed 73,000 prisoners by the end of August, almost twice the number taken by the Allies in the Falaise pocket. More important, it dealt a fatal blow to the logistic infrastructure of Seventh Army. It severely disrupted the command and control of the enemy’s major formations (e.g., by causing the precipitate flight of Seventh Army HQ from Le Mans and of Army Group B’s from near Mantes). It preempted the possibility of the Germans forming a succession of depth defense or even delay lines, up to and including the Seine. It demoralized their forces and commanders. And it created conditions for the physical destruction through encirclement of the entire Normandy grouping.
Patton displayed greater operational vision than his army group commander. He was quick to recognize the error of committing too strong a force to Brittany in pursuit of the outdated Overlord plan. Instead, he (like Montgomery) envisaged a long envelopment to destroy the enemy on the Seine. He believed in a concentrated effort and was frustrated by Bradley’s insistence on guarding against illusory threats at the expense of the main effort. He was less convinced than Bradley about the wisdom of going for a short hook in the changed circumstances of the German defeat at Mortain; if the Germans had reacted more quickly and initiated an earlier withdrawal, too many would have escaped. However, Patton threw himself boldly into the new maneuver. Whether the envelopment was short or long, the key to its success would be speed in execution to keep the enemy off balance, in a reactive posture, and always a step behind. He saw that speed, and the surprise it engendered, could be used as a weapon in maneuver warfare. When Bradley terminated XV Corps’ drive north but allowed much of XV, XX, and XII Corps to thrust eastward to the Dreux-Chartres-Orléans line, Patton renewed the suggestion of a wheel down the river to seal German exits from Normandy over the Seine. In doing so, Patton was keeping the operational aim firmly in mind: destruction of the enemy, rather than the mere conquest of territory. The same is true of his 23 August suggestion for yet another envelopment, this time on the Beauvais axis. It was not Patton’s fault that Bradley fumbled the opportunity to complete both the short envelopment and then the long one.47
Patton has often been criticized for his reckless conduct of offensive operations. This accusation, leveled by those who were still thinking in terms of the tempo achievable by infantrymen on foot, was unfounded in Normandy. Although he saw that speed in the advance would be the main protection for open flanks, he employed forces where necessary (the minimum possible). For instance, on 2 August he dispatched 5 Armored Division to protect the flanks of both VIII and VII Corps during the breakout into Brittany. When XV Corps was moving alone into the enemy flank on the Le Mans–Argentan thrust, he sought security by having the corps advance two-up, with two divisions trailing and thus ready to drive into the flank of any enemy attempting to exploit the first echelon’s flank. (This was his favorite operational formation.) He also had 80 Infantry Division deploy in a screening role between Mayenne and Le Mans, and before the halt order led to a change in operational focus, he had intended to commit XX Corps into the gap—offensively, of course. When his army’s main thrust was redirected toward the Seine after the short hook was stopped, the axes of his corps’ advance were within mutually supporting reach. However, Patton deprecated overinsurance, as he rightly interpreted Bradley’s demand for ground forces on the Loire flank and the overly long retention of 6 Armored Division in Brittany; sufficient security could be derived from demolished bridges covered by FFI elements and IX Tactical Air Command and Ultra’s early warning. In general, he thought that Bradley, like Hodges, was too cautious, too conservative, insufficiently appreciative of the fact that flanks could look after themselves if the enemy was unbalanced, and thus unable to exploit theoretical vulnerabilities.48
Patton was unique among Eisenhower’s principal subordinates in being prepared to accept, even welcome, the chaos of a fast-moving war. Others attempted to impose order and tidiness on the battlefield and were continuously concerned about operational security. Patton preferred to remind himself of his own maxim not to take counsel of his fears; he always pondered what he could do to the enemy, not what the enemy could do to him. This sangfroid stemmed from an unusually keen, instinctive understanding of and feel for the battlefield, as well as his grasp of the devastating potential of maneuver and speed in the advance. It also reflected his grasp of another demand of generalship at the operational level. He was concerned not with how to beat the enemy tactically—that was the task of his subordinates—but with where to beat him in order to gain positional and temporal advantage. Patton was not one to pore over the large-scale maps so beloved by his fellow army commanders.
Army Group and Theatre Level
The first of August brought two major changes to the Normandy campaign. Montgomery’s operational idea of fixing the enemy on the left and breaking through on the right finally came to fruition. Third Army was out of the Cotentin Peninsula and the bocage and was free to advance west, south, or east with no immediate, organized opposition to overcome. And with the activation of 12 Army Group, the Americans were no longer directly under Montgomery’s command. While he remained the temporary head of the land forces (a position Eisenhower intended to assume himself on 1 September), he was in practice only a primus inter pares. Bradley was now a fellow army group commander, with a larger and still growing force under him and a much closer relationship with the Supreme Commander. Bradley’s view of the relationship was clear:
I had not [earlier] asked to be freed from Montgomery’s British Group command. He had neither limited our authority nor had he given us directives that might have caused us to chafe. As long as Montgomery permitted this latitude in US operations, we were content to remain under his command until the tactical situation necessitated a change. . . . Until SHAEF was permanently established in France Eisenhower directed that Monty would act as his agent, exercising temporary operational control over the US Army Group. The Briton’s authority would be limited primarily to coordination and the settlement of boundaries between our Groups. Despite this delegation of powers to Monty, Eisenhower would captain the team. . . . After having granted me so free a hand as an army commander, there was no reason to believe that Monty would now curtail me at Army Group.49
The sudden collapse of the German western flank took the Allied commanders by surprise. How should they continue the campaign, now that the original plan had suddenly become obsolete? There was now no need for a plodding expansion of the Overlord lodgment area south to the Loire and east to the Seine, no need to open the ports in Brittany, and no need for an operational pause to allow a steady logistic and force buildup for the next stage, the march on Germany. The stated aim of theatre strategy remained the destruction of the German armed forces and an advance into the heart of Germany. How should this be achieved in the light of these changed operational circumstances (including the successful Allied attack on the enemy’s southern flank, which began on 15 August with landings on the French Riviera)? Where should the main effort now lie? Which offensive action should be supporting, and where should economy of force be practiced? How could surprise continue to be achieved and prolonged to keep the enemy wrong-footed? What security measures would be necessary during exploitation to ensure that the enemy could not recover the initiative? What steps would be needed to obtain close cooperation among armies, army groups, and air forces and ensure that their combined achievements were more than the sum of their individual parts? How could logistic sustainability be ensured for weeks and months to come, now that the operational pause originally envisaged to allow for a buildup would no longer take place? Senior operational commanders and staffs would have to address all these questions in August if the campaign were to come to a rapid, complete, and triumphal conclusion. The opportunity was there. How well did Montgomery, Bradley, and Eisenhower grasp it?
21 Army Group and Land Forces Command: General Montgomery. Montgomery was the first senior commander to appreciate that the suddenness and completeness of the breakthrough had changed the operational calculus of the campaign. Completion of the Overlord lodgment west to Brittany’s shores, south to the Loire, and east to the Seine could be done concurrently rather than consecutively because Brittany was now largely defenseless, having been denuded of troops to feed the battle for Normandy.50 The contingency foreseen in SHAEF’s Lucky Strike option had come to pass, and its concept could be adopted. On 1 August, after discussing the situation with Bradley and Dempsey, Montgomery directed the former to limit operations in the province to a single corps (he would have sent a smaller force, but SHAEF logisticians insisted that the ports would still be needed). Bradley was to make Third Army’s main effort a wheel toward Paris; this would be aided by an airborne operation in the Chartres area to cut the enemy’s line of retreat. The success of this long envelopment, an idea already mooted by 21 Army Group planners as early as 10 July, would clearly depend on fixing the bulk of the enemy forces and preventing them from establishing a viable fallback line of defense. Montgomery was already setting these conditions. US First Army was ordered to swing eastward, Second Army was already knocking away the hinge of one potential line on the Le Bény-Bocage–Mt. Pinçon ridge, and the Canadians would soon deal with another in their attack on Falaise, ordered on 3 August.
Montgomery formalized and elaborated his ideas in his M516 directive of 4 August, promulgated after discussion with Eisenhower and Bradley. Correctly, he wrote that the enemy front was “in such a state that it could be made to disintegrate completely.” If the Germans devoted sufficient forces to holding firmly on their right flank in the Caen sector, they would be unable to restore their left wing (now open for about 130 km [80 miles] from Mortain to the Loire). If they attempted to build up their left, they would find their right collapsed by the upcoming Canadian attack toward Falaise (to be mounted no later than 8 August); this attack would preclude an enemy delaying action on the substantial obstacle of the Orne and might trap significant elements. The only course open to the enemy, he opined, was to execute “an orderly, staged withdrawal to the River Seine.” Montgomery wanted to ensure that the withdrawal was neither orderly nor deliberate. If possible, he wanted to convert retreat into rout, giving the enemy no opportunity to carry out a scorched-earth policy in the vacated area and, especially, preventing the same type of destruction of the Seine ports that had left Cherbourg handling only 80 percent of its planned capacity as late as 4 August (thirty-five days after its surrender). Accordingly, minimal forces would be devoted to Brittany, as “the main business lies to the east.” The whole Allied force would press the Germans back to the Seine, with Patton’s army exploiting their open flank to conduct a long envelopment to expedite the process. The enemy would be crushed on the obstacle.
Montgomery’s appreciation was logical—but wrong. As happens so often in war, the enemy chose the one course of action that had not been considered—on this occasion, because of its likely disastrous consequences for the Germans. The Allies were fashioning a noose, and the enemy, obligingly, placed his head in it by mounting the Avranches counterattack. After discussing the matter with Eisenhower, Bradley proposed the short hook on 8 August as a variant on Montgomery’s operational idea. The latter willingly adopted it, at least provisionally, with the proviso that the long envelopment option be retained in case a speedy junction could not be achieved in the Falaise-Argentan area.
In the early days of August, Montgomery displayed sound operational judgment and, at the same time, flexibility in his approach. He kept the principal aim firmly in mind: destruction of the enemy’s main forces. Territorial gains, even those that were central to the Overlord plan, such as the Brittany ports, were secondary considerations; they would be achieved, sooner or later, with the enemy’s elimination. The implied gamble—that sufficient Channel port capacity could be taken quickly—was worthwhile, given that delay in taking the ports would be no worse than waiting for the Brittany alternatives, and at least the Channel ports were considerably nearer to Germany. Relentless offensive action was to be maintained, with an emphasis on hitting the enemy where he was most vulnerable, on his weak flank. This would retain the initiative, prolong the effects of surprise, and keep the enemy off balance. It was, however, debatable whether there was a sufficiently clear delineation of main and supporting efforts, both within the land forces as a whole and within 21 Army Group, and the consequent requirements for concentration. It is, of course, arguable that such distinctions carried less weight during pursuit, when attacking all along the front is more justified than when the enemy is balanced and in the possession of reserves. An economy of force approach was obviously intended for Brittany.
Unfortunately, Montgomery appeared to lose some focus and clarity of purpose as the month wore on. By unexpectedly switching 21 Army Group’s attack from the left to right flank at the end of July, he had achieved surprise and sufficient concentration to make gains on an axis and at a time that greatly helped the development of the Americans’ Cobra offensive. However, Second Army’s attack had definitely culminated by 11 August at the latest, despite its reinforcement by an infantry division and an armored brigade a week before. Moreover, with the adoption of the short encirclement, the main effort clearly should have shifted back to the east. If Canadian First Army’s attack to close the pocket at Argentan from the north were to succeed quickly, it needed weight. This point was emphasized when Operation Totalize ran out of steam by 10 August, when it was still more than 30 km (18 miles) short of the town. It would be renewed under the new designation Tractable on 14 August, a day after XV Corps reached Argentan (and six days after the German effort at Mortain failed). That day, too, Montgomery directed that in addition to taking Falaise, the offensive would be extended almost 20 km (12 miles) to the east to include Trun. The next day, offensive action would also be mounted by I Corps, which was to attack toward Lisieux, 40 km (25 miles) due east of Caen. Thus, First Canadian Army would be responsible for approximately 60 km (40 miles) of frontage and attacks on two divergent axes.
The preponderance of 21 Army Group’s strength still lay with Second Army, even though it had only about half the frontage of First Canadian Army and its attacks, if effective, would drive the enemy out of the trap being set by the latter. In the middle of the month, Dempsey had six infantry and three armored divisions and four independent armored brigades; Crerar had four infantry, a small airborne, and two armored divisions and three brigades. Not until 15 August was one division sent from Dempsey’s Second to Crerar’s First Canadian, and that was the sum total of the shift of emphasis (even though two other divisions were out of the line, resting). Montgomery told Dempsey to move his main effort to his left flank, to support XII Corps’ drive on Falaise, but that was an inadequate response to the problem, given the nature of the terrain it had to cross and the limited number of routes and deployment room. First Canadian Army was plainly overtasked, and the limited help it received from its right was barely a palliative.
Montgomery must therefore take considerable responsibility for the failure to seal the Falaise pocket in good time and in adequate strength, whether in the Falaise-Argentan area or the Trun area. Crerar could have made good use of another corps HQ and four to five divisions or brigades to widen and accelerate his offensive southward. It is possible, of course, that Montgomery never really believed in the short hook idea or that he became disillusioned by the slow, halting nature of the Canadian advance and was therefore unwilling to invest heavily in it. It is noticeable that, when meeting with Bradley and Dempsey on 11 August, he did not suggest an alternative method of closing the pocket—shifting the army group boundary northward and calling for a reinforced US First Army effort in an attack north from Argentan. His M518 of that date certainly suggested doubts about the short encirclement and a renewed interest in the long envelopment, “should it appear likely that the enemy may escape us here.”
If he had really given up on the short hook, he should have put more combat power into the northern wing of the deep envelopment on a general Mezidon-Lisieux-Rouen axis to play his part in sealing German exits over the Seine. The very weak and increasingly overextended LXXXVI Corps would not have been able seriously to delay a force more than twice as strong as the I Corps drive. Moreover, he could have contemplated an airborne operation on the east bank of the Seine to interrupt Fifth Panzer Army’s resupply and escape routes and establish bridgeheads for a subsequent advance to the north. Montgomery failed to recognize that, even before the middle of August, Second Army had become an operational backwater, and decisive effect could be achieved only on 21 Army Group’s left. This failure to assess priorities correctly was a serious lapse in judgment.
It is, of course, appropriate for a land forces or army group commander to be less concerned with current operations than with the big picture and the development of optimal concepts for the next one or even two operations. Thus, from his 17 August conference with Bradley until the end of the month, Montgomery was increasingly preoccupied with shaping the post-Normandy campaign according to his preferred course of action. Already afflicted with “victory disease”—the belief that whatever the Germans salvaged from the wreck of Army Group B would be of no future significance—he regarded the ongoing battle as having a foregone conclusion that required no further input from him. In lobbying to get his way in the next round of the game, he took his eye off the ball in the current round. Given his subordinates’ dependence on his guidance—a reliance he had assiduously fostered—this proved unfortunate. His armies pursued territorial gains, not the destruction of the enemy, and they did so with habitual caution and only a moderate expenditure of effort (and therefore casualties). Similarly, he allowed the air forces to lose the correct focus for their activities; interdiction on the Seine was largely dropped in favor of deeper missions, allowing the Germans to carry out crossings in broad daylight. The long envelopment fell short of annihilating the enemy.
Most of the desirable attributes of command are evident in Montgomery’s handling of the climax of the Normandy campaign. However, his character prevented him from being a good coalition commander or, in many ways, even a good subordinate. He had a natural talent for getting people’s backs up, especially the Americans’. He did make an effort to deal with his US ally with more sensitivity and less arrogance than a year or even a month or two earlier (i.e., before his prestige, and with it his security of tenure, had been shaken by the Goodwood failure). This, for instance, was apparently the cause of his sudden and arbitrary change of the inter–army group boundary on 1 August, preventing VIII British Corps from taking the important and defenseless town of Vire.51 Later he handled Bradley with admirable tact, consulting him before issuing directives, and he exhibited patience and discretion in view of Bradley’s vacillations. Montgomery was also reasonably patient with and supportive of Crerar, although the latter had no doubt that his army group commander wanted to replace him, ideally with Simonds. Certainly Montgomery had small faith in Crerar’s abilities and reposed much greater trust in Dempsey. Alas, it was impossible to erase the negative perceptions built up since the campaign in Tunisia eighteen months before. Most Americans, including his Supreme Commander and especially his fellow army group commander, had developed a strong distaste for Montgomery’s arrogance, his refusal to admit error, and his style of discussion, which always sounded didactic at best and insufferably patronizing at worst. Characteristically, he did not understand the antipathy generated by his manner and dogmatism until post-Normandy operations were well under way. This failure would have unfortunate repercussions.
It is possible that his distrust of Crerar dissuaded Montgomery from reinforcing First Canadian Army to the level required by its necessarily enhanced role beginning on 8 August. If that is the case, then he allowed prejudice to distort his understanding of the operational situation (including the unfortunate truth that a less experienced or less able subordinate often needs more resources to accomplish a mission than a more gifted colleague would require). Certainly, his insight, professional judgment, and flexibility were deficient in the critical last three weeks of August.
Montgomery was frequently criticized by Americans for his excessive caution. Though he was generally risk averse (and not without reason), this criticism was not wholly justified. It is perhaps easy to note the deliberate, often plodding tactical methods favored by the British and extrapolate an equal lack of operational imagination and risk taking (as there had been in North Africa and Italy). However, Montgomery’s early modification of the Overlord plan was audacious, especially logistically, as well as decisive and perceptive. So, to an extent, was the concept of the long envelopment, and he always approved of Patton’s bold, sweeping advances, whereas Bradley expressed concern and suggested the desirability of pauses. In September Montgomery would display a daring that the uncharitable could describe as rash, but other than that, he rarely departed from the tried, tested, and conventional. It can be argued, of course, that, given the Allies’ overwhelming strength, there was no need for risk taking—but that would overlook the fact that greater operational daring might have brought an earlier victory at less cost and with a more advantageous postwar political situation.
12 Army Group: Lieutenant General Bradley. Bradley’s elevation to command of the newly activated army group could not have come at a more promising or challenging time. The development of Operation Cobra had created the longed-for breakout, ending weeks of semistalemate, and Third Army was about to enter the fray to exploit. Bradley was not as quick as Montgomery to conclude that Brittany was now a less critical objective and, in fact, one that was unlikely to pay a worthwhile dividend if the Cherbourg experience was any guide. By 3 August, though, the ease with which 79 Division had executed its flank-defensive deployment to Fougères had convinced him that XV Corps could push southeast to the Mayenne River. He was soon receptive to the idea of only a minimal deployment into Brittany and a Third Army drive on the Seine, as propounded in Montgomery’s M516.
There is little doubt that Patton could have closed on the Seine in plenty of time to seal the river against retreating German forces. After all, XV Corps could have advanced from Le Mans to reach Mantes-Gassicourt in a mere six days or less, had it not been diverted north and thereafter received two stop orders. From Mantes it could have turned north up the east bank, perhaps to link up with an airborne corps drop on its lower stretch (north of Louviers or Elbeuf). The rest of Third Army, reinforced at the expense of First Army, would form the inner southern wing of encirclement and strike into the flank of the retreating Germans. Any attempted breakout would be unlikely to succeed in the face of superior American mobility, armored strength, and airpower, not to mention British and First Army pressure to fix the defenders. While First Army would lose a corps to Third Army in this scenario, it could have assumed control of VIII Corps operations in Brittany as a replacement.
The concept of the short hook, born of the Germans’ colossal error of judgment when they attacked at Mortain, also had some merit. It was a “shallower and surer move,” as Bradley described it, and it would not strain the logistic system as much as the long one would. It was undoubtedly less radical than the envelopment at the Seine and perhaps more likely to fail. If the enemy perceived his peril in good time and reacted expeditiously (which was likely), he might well succeed in pulling most of his forces the 60 km (40 miles) back over the Orne before XV Corps could advance the 80 km (50 miles) from Le Mans to Argentan—assuming I SS Panzer Corps could prevent a reasonably brisk Canadian advance of 50 km (30 miles) from Caen to Argentan. This plan also ignored the fact that the continuing attacks by First and Second Armies would, if successful, drive the enemy out of the pocket before it was fully formed. In the event, however, the Germans, thanks to Hitler, were very slow to respond to the threatened encirclement; this failure was offset by the poor progress of the Canadians, who took nine days to advance just under 30 km (18 miles). Many Americans unfairly blamed Montgomery’s perennial caution, but Patton was convinced, correctly, that XV Corps could have pressed on to Falaise to close the pocket if it had not been denied permission to do so by Bradley. The latter produced various unconvincing rationalizations for his 13 August stop order: the sacrosanct nature of the army group boundary (which had already been crossed and was clearly negotiable); reluctance to take Falaise for fearing of offending British sensibilities (risible); the fear of a fratricidal meeting between Americans and their allies (avoidable with good staff cooperation, Phantom patrols, and special liaison officers and, in practice, a nonproblem at Chambois and later on the Seine); and, contradictorily, the idea that too many German formations had already escaped (not what most intelligence was reporting at the time). The true reason was his preference “for a solid shoulder at Argentan to the possibility of a broken neck at Falaise. . . . Nineteen German divisions [sic] were now stampeding to escape the trap,” and Haislip’s corps would not have been able to hold them.52 XV Corps would transition to the defense, relinquishing the role of hammer for one of anvil while waiting for the Canadians to turn up. If the encirclement failed, it would not be Bradley’s fault.
The fact that XV Corps was somewhat out on a limb actually was Bradley’s fault. His short hook scheme of maneuver was not part of a holistic army group plan. It merely involved a change of axis for some of Third Army. He should have ordered First Army to ease up on its frontal attacks to create a new attack grouping, based on 1 Infantry and 3 Armored Divisions, which were already in the Mayenne area; this grouping then should have attacked as Four early as possible on the la Ferté axis to close the gap with Haislip, strengthen his flank, and broaden the threat to the enemy’s. This was not done in a timely fashion, and Bradley would not yet countenance the release of 4 and 6 Armored from Brittany or the early return of 35 Division to Patton. Worse, he dispatched the two pinched-out infantry divisions of V Corps to besiege Brest, more than 300 km (185 miles) to the west, despite previously acknowledging the greatly reduced relevance of Brittany operations and the need to concentrate on destroying the enemy in Normandy.
Actually, by 13 August, VII Corps was belatedly advancing from Mayenne and meeting so little resistance that its progress was rapid; by the next day, it would close the gap to a mere 10 km (6 miles). This ought to have caused Bradley to rethink the stop order. So too should have the available intelligence, most of which indicated that the enemy had not begun a major withdrawal. The Germans had been contemplating a counterattack to the southeast, but their command and control was patchy, their logistic situation was dire, their every daylight move was subject to air attack, and their armored strength was reduced to fewer than eighty tanks and SP guns, all of which Bradley knew. With well over 500 tanks and tank destroyers, superior artillery, and abundant air support, not to mention elements of XX Corps behind it and VII Corps coming up fast on its left, was XV Corps really in mortal danger of being “trampled . . . in the onrush”?
In vetoing a further offensive American role in the short hook, Bradley was, as Patton would have put it, “taking counsel of his fears.” Whether or not the judgment was correct, it was surely wrong of Bradley not to discuss one of the most critical decisions of the Normandy campaign and its implications and alternative courses of action with his land forces commander when he met with Montgomery and Dempsey just after noon on 13 August. Instead, prompted by a frustrated Patton, he plumped the next day for a reversion to the march on the Seine by half of XV Corps and all of XX and XII Corps. Their six divisions set off at ninety degrees to the northerly axis agreed on with Montgomery, and by 16 August, Patton had four divisions in the Dreux-Chartres area and another two approaching Orléans. Bradley was presumably embarrassed when, on 15 August, Montgomery proposed a new junction for the Canadians and Americans at Trun, as well as continuing with the long hook. By this time, only three divisions were left in the Argentan area. In implementing his part of this renewed attack, Bradley so confused the arrangements for command and control that it went in only on 18 August—five days after a stronger blow could have been delivered against a weaker enemy, and two days after the Germans had been allowed to begin a full-scale retreat (untroubled, since 17 August, by Allied air attack, now that the pocket was too small to allow the drawing of bomb lines).
Bradley seemingly alternated between boldness and doubt, between force-oriented and terrain goals. His vacillation resulted in a dispersal of effort, with no clear operational focus. At the decisive place in mid-August—the Argentan area—there were only three divisions out of his immediately available eighteen, and only one of these managed to advance far enough to link up with the Canadians. Bradley’s hasty, poorly thought-out improvisations had dissipated his forces and thus condemned his own proposal—the short hook—to at least partial failure as enemy forces belatedly flooded through the open neck of the pocket.53
The long envelopment had not been invalidated by the short alternative, however. Had Bradley been single-mindedly focused on the primary aim of destroying the German forces, he could have proposed a thrust up both sides of the Seine to Rouen or beyond (as Patton wanted), possibly augmented by an airborne corps assault on key crossing sites. XV and XX Corps could have executed such a maneuver, with XIX Corps from First Army following and refused to the left (the same switch from one flank to another it would perform slightly later). Meanwhile, XII Corps could have established additional Seine crossings in the Paris area, reinforced in time by VII Corps, thus setting the conditions for a subsequent march on Germany. The Germans could not muster any serious force to stop such a powerful Third Army attack into their rear. Such a decision would have had the additional merit of putting the main effort under the command of the most thrusting, maneuver-minded of the Allied commanders (though it would have necessitated some reshuffling of command responsibilities). With Seventh and Fifth Panzer Armies annihilated west of the Seine, there would be nothing of significance (save for sacrificial port-fortress garrisons) to prevent the Allies from picking up territorial gains in any direction. There is little doubt that Montgomery would have endorsed such a plan with enthusiasm (especially if it would have committed large American forces in the direction he favored for post-Normandy operations). Patton’s Beauvais maneuver would have done this, which was presumably the reason behind Bradley’s refusal to countenance it.
Thus, through belated doubts about his short hook proposal, Bradley need not have awarded the Germans an opportunity to rescue something from the wreck of Seventh and Fifth Panzer Armies. His conduct of operations became no more decisive, however, in following the new course of action. He imposed a second, two-day operational pause on Third Army when nothing of significance lay in front of it. He sanctioned the establishment of a XV Corps divisional bridgehead over the Seine at Mantes-Gassicourt only reluctantly, and he made no use of it to develop the offensive northwestward to destroy the Germans’ crossing means and their reception centres on the right bank. He devoted only four divisions to the attack up the left bank. The rest of First Army and Third Army (less the now reinforced VIII Corps in Brittany) were switched from the task of encircling and destroying the enemy to that of forcing and then advancing from the Seine above Paris and taking the city. Bradley preferred seizing ground to decisive operational maneuver. He had lost sight of the stated aim of Operation Overlord: destruction of the German forces. He was happy to own up to this, even in retrospect. In his memoirs he wrote of the thrust up the left bank: “Had we not turned that pincer to Dempsey’s aid, we could have swept far east of Paris for more spectacular gains in terrain. But once again we were willing to forego ground in an effort to kill Germans.”54 Presumably afflicted by victory disease, believing that the enemy in Normandy was finished, his focus had already shifted to post-Overlord operations, and his sights were set on an advance to Germany by the shortest route. This would explain why he peremptorily rejected Patton’s 23 August proposal for a Third Army thrust northward to try yet again to pocket the fleeing Germans, this time in the area from Beauvais to the Channel (another proposal he did not see fit to discuss with his land forces commander).
Yet even the eastward thrust was pursued only in fits and starts. This was partly the result of Bradley’s ever-present concern about possible enemy countermoves and partly because of the logistic pinch that was beginning to be felt at the front. A transport shortage produced fuel supply constraints, which had already contributed to the pause imposed on Patton’s eastward pursuit. As it happened, on this occasion the Germans derived little benefit from this gift of time, as they had utterly inadequate forces with which to restore the front. However, Bradley was flouting a principle when he checked a successful advance to maintain the efforts of another formation that was largely involved in an attritional grind. Logistic problems would rapidly become worse until, within a week or two, they would temporarily close down much of 12 Army Group’s offensive effort.55 The sure and certain knowledge that this was going to happen should have been a powerful argument in favor of completely destroying the enemy forces in Normandy before pursuing distant objectives.
Bradley did not adjust quickly to his step-up from army to army group. Somewhat pedestrian competence at the lower level was insufficient at the higher. He lacked imagination and breadth of operational vision, responding instead to the ideas of others (mostly Montgomery and Patton). This was probably one reason for his failure to pursue a single aim consistently. He was a naturally cautious commander possessed of limited insightfulness and foresight, and he lacked the ability to put himself in the enemy’s shoes. Consequently, he persistently overestimated German capabilities, especially their ability to inflict damaging counterblows. Threats, such as the putative Fifth Panzer Army attack southeast to escape the pocket or the attack from south of the Loire against either Third Army’s flank or into Brittany, were allowed to delay or prevent action. They were invariably greatly exaggerated or even illusory. These traits contributed to his reluctance to commit wholeheartedly to a single concept of operations and to his frequent vacillations. He would embark on a course of action and then be assailed with doubts, checking or halting moves recently put in train or changing direction. The result was a lack of decisiveness in American operations.
Just as Montgomery’s personality limited his effectiveness as a commander, so too did Bradley’s. His allowed his dislike of Montgomery—a natural reaction to the latter’s attitude and manner, compounded by grievances nursed since Sicily—to warp his judgment somewhat. He was disinclined to work constructively with the land forces commander, preferring to undermine him with the Supreme Commander behind his back. His distaste for and distrust of Patton, combined with his cautious streak, also led him to favor his old friend Hodges. Both prejudices were periodically detrimental to operations. By keeping Montgomery in the dark and cooperating and coordinating only intermittently with 21 Army Group, Bradley diminished the effectiveness of both encirclements and ruled out a third (Patton’s Beauvais maneuver). Although Third Army was conducting potentially more decisive operations—at least until the two attempts to close successive traps on the Germans were handed to Hodges through boundary changes and troop transfers—Patton was left with fewer divisions (if those devoted to the Brittany distraction are discounted). Patton’s army was checked by looming supply difficulties, while First Army was allowed to expend ammunition in indecisive, attritional battles. And Patton was indisputably the more dynamic army commander, better suited to encirclement maneuvers than the pedestrian Hodges.
The Northwest European Theatre: General Eisenhower. Once the plans for the Normandy campaign had been agreed to by Eisenhower and his command team and approved by the CCS, the Supreme Commander found himself a frustrated observer rather than a player in the first couple of months of battle. He had agreed to the appointment of the vastly experienced Montgomery as interim commander of land forces and to his concept of operations. He rightly resisted the temptation to attempt remote control from the wrong side of the English Channel. This did not stop him from fretting about slow progress in what appeared to be a succession of indecisive operations, especially in the British sector, where the repeated failures in the Caen area limited the Allies’ flexibility and grasp of the initiative. Of course, his worries were inevitably more acute and wide ranging than those of any other officer in the theatre, for he had larger concerns weighing on him—concerns of which most others were only dimly aware. Eisenhower knew that, despite the Allies’ declared policy of defeating Germany first, any appearance of stalemate in France might lead to an even greater diversion of American resources to the supposedly secondary Pacific theatre. He was also aware that distant logistic problems could affect his operations, from a looming shortage of replacements to a shortfall in some artillery ammunition natures due to the War Department’s underestimate of needs. And at the forefront of President Roosevelt’s mind, and therefore the mind of Eisenhower’s boss, General Marshall, was the November presidential election and the need to ensure that public opinion was squarely behind their approach to waging war. Eisenhower was badgered by increasingly vociferous complaints about Montgomery’s leadership from most US generals, from his own SHAEF staff (including his chief of staff, Bedell Smith, and British officers from his deputy downward), from Washington, and from the American press. Increasingly they blamed him for his failure to grip his subordinate.
Eisenhower was also in dispute with his British ally over a major strategic issue. The often vituperative argument dragged on for seven months and involved not merely Eisenhower, Marshall, Montgomery, and Brooke but the prime minister and the president as well. Though committed to Overlord, the British also wished to maintain a strong (British-dominated) Italian campaign. The Americans saw this as lacking much strategic relevance once Italy had been driven from the war and heavy bombers had access to Italian bases from which they could pound the Reich; they suspected a British plot to drag them into a Balkan campaign. The Americans wanted to concentrate on the battle for France, complementing the main effort in Normandy with Operation Anvil, an assault on the Riviera coast followed by a thrust up the Rhône valley. They adduced strong arguments: a commitment had been made to Stalin at the Tehran conference; such an offensive would divert substantial German forces by threatening their rear; the liberation of France would be the most logical and politically acceptable use of the substantial French forces being equipped and trained by the United States (while simultaneously exploiting the resistance movement, which was particularly strong in the south); and the possession of Mediterranean ports (especially Marseilles) would greatly ease the logistic situation and speed up the arrival of American reinforcements by avoiding entry bottlenecks.
Launching Anvil at the same time as Overlord plainly had many advantages, but a shortage of assault shipping precluded simultaneity. When this became clear, Eisenhower, left with the decision, prevaricated as long as he could before coming down firmly in favor of Anvil, even at a later date. By 2 July, stasis in Normandy made a fresh landing, even one scheduled for as late as 15 August, attractive as a means of breaking the looming stalemate. With the post-Cobra breakout under way, however, Anvil (now renamed Dragoon) seemed redundant to the British, and Prime Minister Churchill made a last, desperate effort to have it canceled in favor of a smaller, improvised assault in Brittany. Eisenhower, bolstered by Marshall and Roosevelt, remained immovable on the issue. It was a fundamental tenet of American doctrine that the maximum possible force be brought to bear on the enemy’s main forces to smash them by sheer overwhelming weight, and the Riviera campaign was part of that process. It proceeded as planned and was a great, and inexpensive, success. In retrospect, it clearly did not contribute significantly to victory in Normandy. However, it was not obvious at the time that this would be so, and the logistic conduit of the Rhône corridor and the arrival of strong Allied forces in Alsace had a favorable effect on the campaign in the west. (The fact that its gains were not fully exploited was Eisenhower’s fault.) Whether anything substantial could have been accomplished in Italy had forces not been diverted from there is open to debate: Brooke, a vehement opponent of Anvil/Dragoon, doubted it.56
By late July, climaxing with the perceived failure of Operation Good-wood, Eisenhower was under much pressure to assume personal command of the land battle. His worry about the semistalemate that had seemingly settled in was compounded by Montgomery’s refusal to recognize (or perhaps admit) that all was not proceeding according to his master plan. It is also possible that, despite his earlier endorsement of the operational concept propounded by his land forces commander, Eisenhower had lost sight of its logic and believed that failure was becoming endemic. He certainly complained to Churchill and Brooke and urged Montgomery to make greater efforts, despite the cost in casualties. But Eisenhower realized there was no room in the bridgehead for his vast, cumbersome SHAEF HQ; in addition, alliance politics made it almost impossible to sack Montgomery, and in any case, it would have been highly undesirable to alter the command structure at a critical time in the campaign. Probably just as important as these calculations was Eisenhower’s habitual reluctance to make decisions before events compelled him to do so. On this occasion, operational developments relieved him of the need to make a decision and endure the consequent confrontation—something he always strove to avoid. The Cobra breakthrough rapidly led to breakout and brought an early victory in Normandy within the Allies’ grasp.
Toward the end of July, Eisenhower was still stressing the importance of the Breton ports. “We must get the Brittany Peninsula,” he wrote to Montgomery. “From an administrative point of view that is essential. We must not only have the Brittany Peninsula, we must have it quickly. So we must hit with everything.”57 Nevertheless, he enthusiastically endorsed first Montgomery’s decision to downgrade Brittany’s priority in the Overlord plan, then his long envelopment concept, and then Bradley’s short hook response to the opportunity offered by the Germans’ Mortain counterattack. On 7 August he moved to an improvised SHAEF forward HQ in Normandy to keep in closer touch with operations as they developed. However, he had never commanded so much as a battalion in combat and had no feel for battle. He was thus ill equipped to judge the advisability of Bradley’s stop order of 13 August. He backed it, retrospectively endorsing Bradley’s hollow arguments to excuse it.58 He raised no objection to the later operational pause either, nor to Bradley’s dispersal of effort in search of territorial gains at the expense of encirclement. This was despite warnings from his logistic experts that pursuit beyond the Seine in any significant strength would be impossible because of a severe shortage of motor transport. The obvious conclusion was that the enemy had to be annihilated in Normandy, not just damaged and pushed back. Just as he made no attempt to ensure that Bradley’s operations dovetailed with Montgomery’s, at no stage did he try to refocus the actions of the latter. Instead of closely complementing each other, the operations of the two army groups drifted apart.
Eisenhower had both the clear authority and the responsibility to ensure that cooperation and coordination between the Allies remained close and that their efforts were focused on the declared aim. Because he failed to grip his subordinates, the destruction of enemy forces was only partially accomplished. In effect, Eisenhower remained a spectator throughout August—the Supreme Commander who did not command.
It is possible that Eisenhower’s failure to exercise his powers was attributable to his lack of practical understanding—understandable, given his training and limited experience—of the demands of the operational level of war. This lacuna was certainly there in the opinion of the CIGS, who confided to his diary on 27 July: “There is no doubt that Ike is all out to do all he can to maintain the best of relations between British and Americans, but it is equally clear that he knows nothing about strategy [read higher operations] and is quite unsuited to the position of Supreme Commander as far as any of the strategy of the war is concerned.” Brooke may have been right, but he was also biased by the fact that Eisenhower did not simply accept British guidance uncritically; he was probably unconscious of the irony when he bemoaned the way “national spectacles pervert the perspective of the strategic landscape.” It is likely, too, that Eisenhower’s lack of combat experience made him diffident, or at least cautious, when arguing with those who had a great deal of experience in battle, such as Montgomery. It is quite noticeable how much more confident and assertive Eisenhower became as time wore on and his experience grew. During the Germans’ December 1944 offensive through the Ardennes, he was much more sure-footed, more self-confident, and more decisive than Bradley.
Professional shortcomings aside, Eisenhower’s character and command style (the former determining the latter to a considerable extent) contributed to a lack of decisiveness in Normandy. He wanted to be popular; he preferred to persuade interlocutors to reach compromises and consensus, rather than compel obedience. This approach, combined with his seemingly inexhaustible patience, equable temperament, and goodwill, was the only way to manage the alliance. The Supreme Commander needed to be a diplomat as well as a soldier. The British and American governments, military commanders, and popular press were touchy, convinced of their own infallibility, and suspicious of others. Eisenhower had to act as chairman of the board, a symbol of unity who shaped policy by persuasion, rather than an autocrat who ruled by decree.59 He had to practice a high degree of decentralization to obtain cooperation and to avoid wasting time dealing with destructive squabbles between nationalities and services. He was often accused of agreeing with whomever he had last spoken. This appearance of bending with the wind was often necessary until he could work someone around to his point of view or at least to a compromise. Command of a coalition force is at least as much a political matter as a military one, and politics has been aptly defined (by Otto von Bismarck) as the art of the possible. Eisenhower also had a politician’s tendency to postpone decisions until further delay became dangerous; events often rendered unpopular decisions unnecessary or at least made them appear inevitable. When required, however, he was capable of decisiveness with regard to such diverse issues as command of the strategic air forces, the date of the invasion, and Anvil/Dragoon.
Eisenhower earnestly strove to maintain unity of purpose in his coalition command while pursuing what he believed to be the best course of action or, rather, the best compromise available. Yet he was inevitably influenced by his military upbringing and by his personal likes and prejudices. These had molded his military brain into certain well-defined channels, and despite his honesty and integrity and his efforts to accommodate others’ points of view, he was inclined to heed some people’s opinions more than others; he was only human. Eisenhower was imbued with the Leavenworth teaching that victory in major war stemmed from continuous offensive action across the front until, by dint of superior resources, US forces so wore down the enemy that he cracked and could then be destroyed in pursuit. So it had been in the Civil War and the First World War, and so it would be in 1944. His views were naturally shared by his closest subordinate commander, his old friend Omar Bradley. Eisenhower spent long hours discussing the campaign and making plans with Bradley during his seventeen often lengthy visits to Bradley’s HQ during the Normandy campaign. In contrast, he saw Montgomery, his principal subordinate, only nine times, and then for the briefest periods possible. Eisenhower disliked the man, was uneasy in his presence, and shied away from confrontation; for the most part, they communicated by letter and telegram. And while Eisenhower was critical of Montgomery’s perceived failures around Caen, his excessive caution, and his sensitivity to casualties, he was indulgent of Bradley’s errors in the west, including the delay in taking Cherbourg, the failure to foresee and then deal with the problem of the bocage and achieve the tempo envisaged in preinvasion planning, and his vacillations in mid-August.
Eisenhower’s approach to command thus had a great deal to recommend it, as long as the strategic and operational situation developed gradually and his principal subordinates were in broad agreement about the concept of operations. It was ill suited to achieving decisive effect in fast-developing situations such as those that pertained in August and September, when those commanders were at loggerheads over the direction the campaign should take. It also required his army group and army commanders to be men of goodwill, prepared not only to compromise but also to live up to the commitments they made, to suppress their egos and prejudices and act in the spirit of his directives, and to cooperate constructively to further the common aim. In the late summer of 1944, this could not be said of Montgomery, Bradley, Patton, or J. C. H. Lee (the chief American logistician).
CONCLUSIONS
The stated aim of Allied operations was the destruction of the enemy’s army. Although very heavy damage was inflicted, that aim was not achieved. It could have been. This would have enabled Anglo-American forces to march into Germany by any or, if they chose, every axis with minimal opposition; they could have closed up to the Rhine along its entire length, taking key economic objectives, in particular the Ruhr, and perhaps threatening Berlin. The stretching of the logistic system would have been a matter of only minor importance if there were no prospect of hard fighting. The Allies could have afforded to advance without bringing their full combat power to bear until at least those immediate objectives had been secured. But if the Germans were able to scrape together enough formations from the strategic depth to provide a screen behind which the remnants from the Normandy catastrophe could be reconstituted, a Teutonic version of the “Miracle of the Marne” (or of Dunkirk) would be possible. Then the Allies would find that their looming supply crisis, despite ample warning by the logisticians, would force an early culmination of their offensive. The enforced operational pause would give the enemy yet more time to field freshly raised and rebuilt forces and prolong the war. The Germans had lost whole armies before—for instance, at Stalingrad and in Tunisia—and had traded space for time to rebuild them. It was about to happen again.
Montgomery was overly optimistic (and had forgotten his painfully acquired knowledge of the Wehrmacht’s resilience) when he assured Brooke in mid-August that German formations that crossed the Seine would be incapable of combat during the months to come. Indeed, more than a dozen divisions that had escaped the Normandy envelopments, albeit much the worse for wear, contributed to the checking of the Allied advance in September. Two of them, 9 and 10 SS Panzer Divisions of II SS Panzer Corps, would, a mere four weeks after evading destruction at Falaise, ensure the defeat of Operation Market Garden, Montgomery’s attempt at a knockout blow. Army Group B had suffered a disaster in Normandy, but it was not the utter catastrophe it could and probably should have been. In the end, the losses in personnel and equipment were serious but not decisive. The Army of the West retained its cohesion and ability to regenerate. The HQs that escaped the partial encirclements in August provided the command and staff expertise necessary to rebuild formations, and fourteen of the surviving divisions (eight of them panzer) were reconstituted and provided most of the combat power for the Germans’ Ardennes offensive in December.
After the war, General Eberbach mused: “I still don’t know why the Allies did not crush us at the Seine.”60 There were several reasons for this failure, but one was fundamental: unity of command was lacking in Normandy. Eisenhower was the titular supremo, but he preferred to fudge issues, delay decisions, seek consensus, and believe (or hope) it had been found; he did not exercise a firm grip. Whether he could have done so effectively if he had been so inclined is another question, but given the waywardness of his subordinates, especially Montgomery, this was a recipe for the indecisiveness that vitiated the campaign. Each operational-level commander lost sight of the declared theatre aim—the destruction of enemy forces—at least sometime during the month of August. Furthermore, national rivalries, occasional mutual incomprehension, and simple personal dislikes limited inter-Allied cooperation. Consequently, there was sufficient dispersal of effort to allow the Germans to avoid complete disaster.
Another important Allied weakness was the lack of awareness in the senior echelons—inevitable, in view of the lack of theoretical foundations or training—of either the possibilities or the demands of the operational level of war. Only insights born of a study of military history, experience, or both provided guidance for the more perceptive generals. Bradley, Hodges, Dempsey, and Crerar never really grasped that army, let alone army group, operations were not simply a matter of tactical solutions writ large. The problem (not that one was recognized) was compounded by the unexpectedness of the breakout. Only the most general planning had been done, and it had not foreseen the very advantageous circumstances in which the breakout took place. The campaign became one of hasty improvisations, and these were not always based on a holistic appreciation of the situation and its possibilities. As a result, battles were not always purposefully sequenced or synchronized, and some were fought unnecessarily. The desirability of maneuver in place of attack was frequently ignored, and the dividends to be gained from deep battle and deep operations were generally passed up in favor of a risk-averse, security-first approach to the exploitation of success. The effects of decisions and actions thus added up to less than the sum of their parts.