The purpose of this book, which has been divided into two volumes, is to study the practical application of military theory in the most testing of circumstances—fighting the German army in the summer of 1944. It is not, in other words, a straightforward military history, a descriptive account of operations. There are already more than enough narrative histories of the campaign and plenty of studies evoking the horror and pity of war. My purpose is to put forward broad arguments about the conduct of war at the operational level—the handling of armies and army groups by both the Western Allies and the Red Army in contemporaneous campaigns.
The genesis of this work lay in the battlefield tours and staff rides I used to conduct, or contribute to, for the British Army and NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps.1 These were not military tourism or evocations of past glories but serious didactic exercises aimed at improving the professional education of the participating officers. Not infrequently, at the conclusion of these exercises, senior officers would remark that I had offered interpretations and drawn lessons they had not previously encountered. They also found comparisons between Western and contemporaneous operations on the Russo-German front to be illuminating. Several suggested that I write up these accounts and lessons drawn from them for wider dissemination. This is the origin and primary purpose of my book: through the lens of military history, to broaden Western military officers’ perspectives on the conduct of conventional war, together with that of serious scholars of the subject. In fact, I conceive this study as, in essence, a written staff ride of great scope. I follow the same methodology: setting out the operational-strategic context, examining the situation at the start of each operation as perceived by the commanders tasked with its execution, outlining their plans, discussing developments at key points during the evolution of the operation and decisions made in consequence, and evaluating the results and assessing the generalship involved.2
This is therefore an analytical study of the choices, compromises, and judgments made by the senior commanders. It is, I hope and believe, exacting but not carping when venturing evaluations. The vast majority of the opinions that follow were informed by discussions that took place on staff rides. Most of them represent consensual views; a few are mine alone. Some of the latter, particularly those involving Generals Montgomery, Bradley, and Eisenhower, at first surprised, intrigued, or even shocked some British and American officers. That is one of the functions of the staff ride: to stimulate thought, discussion, and argument and to challenge received wisdom. This, in turn, encourages the replacement of stereotypical by original thinking when former students face their own, seemingly intractable problems in future wars.
While the primary audience for this investigation is military, I believe those concerned with shaping government policy can also profit from it. In an age when few policy makers have military experience, especially at senior levels, there is a pervasive superficiality of understanding about what armies can and cannot be expected to accomplish, especially at short notice, in unfamiliar operating environments, and against an imperfectly understood enemy. Similarly, many overestimate what can be provided by military intelligence and underestimate the difficulties, frustrations, and, consequently, the disappointing combat capabilities of coalitions and alliances. These and other problems in contemporary as well as past war fighting are illuminated in the pages that follow; they combine to make war an often unreliable and unpredictable instrument of policy that can lead to unforeseen and unwelcome outcomes. I would be delighted if these volumes, which emphasize the uncertainties of using military force as much as its utility, induced a degree of caution among those charged with deciding on its use.
I believe this is the first comparative analysis of synchronous campaigns in the west and the east during World War II to be published. That in itself enhances its educational value. My staff ride participants found the Soviets’ different approach to operational problems not only interesting but also, in some cases, potentially applicable to their own, albeit very different, armies. Examples include concepts such as the forward detachment and the meeting engagement and the approach required to succeed therein.3 In adopting my methodology, I made every effort to avoid the accusation of comparing apples and oranges. To this end, I carefully selected the operations studied, and I point out the differences as well as the similarities between the western and eastern fronts. My study is largely confined to the high summer of 1944, when both the Western Allies and the Soviets possessed the strategic initiative and disposed of forces capable of mounting strategic offensives against the same, weakening foe. Within that period, I concentrate principally on those operations characterized largely by maneuver, for it is in the conduct of operational maneuver that creative generalship is revealed; attritional methods, however unavoidable on occasion, are its antithesis.
The study has been divided into two volumes; the first and more detailed, as it is aimed primarily at a Western readership, deals with American, British, and Canadian operations in France and the Low Countries. Its title, From Victory to Stalemate, reflects the great, though flawed, achievement in Normandy that severely but not fatally damaged a German army group, and the Allies’ subsequent failure to convert operational into strategically decisive success. (One might argue that, whatever the inflated hopes or expectations at the time, the Allies could not have delivered a coup de grâce to the Nazi regime that summer. But I contend that, before culminating for logistic reasons, they could have inflicted more damage on the enemy and seized major bridgeheads over the Rhine to launch the final campaign from a favorable line of departure.) Volume 2 deals with the contemporaneous major Soviet offensives. Called From Defeat to Victory, it briefly recounts, as essential background, how the Red Army clawed back from the catastrophes of 1941–1942 and survived through 1943, the year of contested strategic initiative. It then concentrates on three successive strategic offensive operations from late June to September 1944 that effectively annihilated three different army groups. Each ended with the Soviets advantageously placed—for example, with bridgeheads over major rivers—to resume the offensive when the effects of operational exhaustion had been overcome. The penultimate chapter of volume 2 looks at the interaction of the western and eastern fronts, compares and contrasts the conduct of operations in the west and the east, and draws conclusions about the different ways the Allied and Soviet militaries approached the problems of campaigning against a formidable enemy. The short, concluding chapter offers some reflections about recent and contemporary American and British approaches to the difficulties of waging war.
My aim is analytical. For that reason, the summaries of operations are restricted in length, giving only enough information to provide a basis for argument and assessment. Accordingly, they are dry but, I hope, for the most part, mercifully short; some, however, are not as short as I would have liked, as there is often a great deal of devil in the detail. Just as chronicling events is a minor part of this work, so too is deconstruction of strategic decisions and, even more so, analysis of tactical methods and their results. Both aspects of military activity necessarily figure to an extent, but only insofar as they bear on my main area of concern—operational art and generalship, the conduct of operations at theatre, army group, and army levels. In order to pass judgment on the soundness or otherwise of commanders’ decisions and actions, it is necessary to establish criteria by which all are evaluated. Therefore, I establish a conceptual basis for discussion in chapter 1 of volume 1. The theory of the realms and concerns of strategy, operational art, and tactics and the interaction among them are outlined, along with commonly accepted principles of war and the attributes of senior commanders generally considered prerequisites for success. However, it is not always possible for armies to provide that which is theoretically desirable. Brief résumés of the education, training, and careers of the seven top Allied field commanders in the west in the summer of 1944 show how varied was their preparation for the challenges they faced in Normandy and beyond. Moreover, the armies they led were products of historically derived concepts and practices—all armies are prisoners of their own experience—not all of which proved well suited to the campaigns they would have to fight. These too are briefly described, for all judgments on generalship must take into account the capabilities and limitations of the instruments the generals commanded.
My purpose in the rest of volume 1 is to cast light on the practice of operational art by American, British, and Canadian generals in the European theatre of operations (ETO) in the critical summer campaign of 1944.4 This project runs into an immediate conceptual obstacle. Although operational art was a concept born in the Red Army of the 1920s and was (after vicissitudes) entrenched there by 1944, it was unfamiliar in Anglo-American thinking until about forty years later.5 It would be unreasonable to criticize generals for not doing what they had not been taught. They did, however, subscribe to the principles of war discussed in chapter 1. These principles had been set out in the British Field Service Regulations of 1935 and parts of Military Training Pamphlet No. 23 (Operations) of 1942 and the American Field Manual 100-5 of 1941 and 1944. They formed the basis of the doctrine that Allied generals had been taught and presumably were expected to implement in 1944. Indeed, this doctrine could more accurately be described as principles of operational art, being devoid of political content and concerned purely with the business of how to fight, including at a higher formation level. Admittedly, for the historical reasons outlined in chapter 1, these principles had been developed with far less rigor and detail than was the case in the Red Army (the evolution of the latter’s concepts is outlined in volume 2). The Allies had also had four years to observe—and, in the British case, had been at the receiving end of—the Wehrmacht’s methods on the offensive. These methods, like the Soviets’, were based on an understanding of the operational level of war. Finally, the British and, to a lesser extent, the Americans had their own experience of waging contemporary, mechanized warfare. However, as chapter 1 describes, the Allies faced an uphill task that was far greater than simply modernizing their military theory and moving past small-wars thinking or the linear, attritional methods of the First World War. They had to grow their small armies into large ones, with all the attendant difficulties of finding, educating, and training a vastly expanded officer corps, including at senior levels. As chapters 3 to 7 of volume 1 make clear, the learning curves of the Allied generals were varied. It took some time before most ceased to rely on superior combat power to grind the enemy down and began to exploit their superior potential for operational maneuver; one or two generals largely failed to make the transition.
This study of the northwest European campaign of 1944 is limited to only a short period within it. I do not dwell on the seven weeks of essentially attritional struggle during which the Allies built up their combat power and decisively tilted the balance of forces in their favor. However, chapter 2 is largely devoted to a description of the state of armies on the opposing sides in the west on the eve of Operation Cobra, the American breakthrough toward the end of July. To understand the swift development of operations that followed the breakout, it is necessary to understand the correlation of forces that opened up the possibility of decisive operations and the strengths and weaknesses of the protagonists. This is explored in some detail, not only with regard to the quality and quantity of materiel and personnel but also, and every bit as important, in terms of logistic flexibility and sustainability, command and control, and intelligence gathering. The aim here is to counter the misperceptions and even myths that have distorted an understanding of the relative capabilities of the two sides and thus skewed interpretations of events.
My analysis of Allied operational art and command starts in chapter 3 with Cobra. This operation, aided by a British supporting attack, rapidly and seamlessly developed into a war of movement. Chapter 3 examines this breaking of the quasi-stalemate. Of course, the German defense had reached its culminating point, most importantly in the sphere of logistic sustainability, by the time Cobra struck and split the front wide open. This was, of course, the result not of an event but of a process whereby the defender grew weaker as attrition took its steady toll and air interdiction deprived the Germans of even minimum requirements of ammunition and fuel. Meanwhile, the Allies grew stronger as replacements and reinforcements poured into Normandy. It would be difficult to maintain, however, that the Allied breakthrough could not have been achieved prior to a tipping point in the last week of July. Certainly, both the American and the British armies needed to attain suitable lines of departure (in the former case, south of the Cotentin wetlands; in the latter, over the Orne and south of Caen) in order to develop an offensive with decisive aims. But could they not have accomplished this earlier, as the scales were tipping? I examine the evolution of the concepts and methods that more fully exploited American strengths and increased their operational effectiveness. The British, still largely wedded to linear, attritional methods, could not achieve comparable operational effect, although their supporting blow certainly contributed significantly to a marked deterioration of the German situation.
By early August, the means had been built up and the possibility created for operational maneuver to achieve decisive ends. Chapter 4 describes the exploitation of this opportunity. Thanks to their own initial success and potentially catastrophic German errors, the Allies were in a favorable position to achieve their stated aim of annihilating the enemy armies in Normandy and to do so, moreover, before their own looming logistic problems became intractable. This they failed to do completely because two successive encirclement operations were essentially improvised rather than planned and were then imperfectly conducted. Part of the problem lay at army level. Three of the four army commanders were, by education and experience, more tactically than operationally minded; they were happier when directing set-piece battles and relying on superior firepower than when conducting inherently less controllable operations that emphasized superior mobility to outmaneuver the enemy into a position where his destruction became certain. Alone among his peers, Lieutenant General Patton grasped both the parlous plight into which the German army had descended and the dividend that momentum, by retaining the initiative, would bring, while at the same time greatly reducing the apparent risk involved in his decisions. His boldness was not mirrored at the critical army group and theatre levels. There, caution combined with uncertain direction resulting from the essentially improvised nature of operations, exacerbated by intra-alliance rivalries and misunderstandings. The result was vacillation and compromise inimical to decisiveness in a rapidly changing, fluid situation. The Germans certainly suffered a major defeat, but within a month, the forces they had managed to extricate from disaster would play a significant role in restoring a precarious stability to the defense. Chapter 4 concludes with an analysis of Allied operational art and generalship that recognizes its achievements and deconstructs its weaknesses.
The crushing defeat inflicted on the Wehrmacht in August could (perhaps should) have been a prelude to decisive operations that would have ended the war in the west in 1944—an outcome senior German generals thought likely. Failing that, it should have placed the Allies in such an advantageous strategic position from which to resume a subsequent campaign that a coup de grâce could have been delivered earlier than the spring of 1945 and at less cost. Chapter 5 describes the Allied drive northeastward and eastward out of Normandy. The Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) preinvasion appreciation and, following from it, concept of operations are studied and contrasted with the unexpected situation facing the American and British army groups at the beginning of September. SHAEF plans were expeditiously adapted, and the Supreme Commander issued directives to his army groups for a general advance, with the aim of forcing the Rhine more or less simultaneously across the front. Immediately the commanders of those army groups, disliking his decisions, began to subvert his intent. I describe the development of British and American operations and the high-level compromises and fudges that were made to preserve the appearance of Allied unity as each pursued its own favored, and divergent, path to victory. In doing so, armies and army groups tended to follow a beggar-thy-neighbor approach to logistics, and both they and SHAEF shied away from making the hard choices and decisions necessary to avoid premature culmination. In late September the Allies’ offensives duly culminated, without having delivered a fatal blow or seized bridgeheads over, or even reaching, the Rhine. I conclude my study with the onset of autumn because by then, the front was quite evidently congealing. Once again, the Allies were reverting, like it or not, to an attritional struggle.
A former British theatre commander wrote:
The more I have seen of war the more I realize how it all depends on administration and transportation (. . . logistics). It takes little skill or imagination to see where you would like your army to be and when; it takes much knowledge and hard work to know where you can place your forces and whether you can maintain them there. A real knowledge of supply and movement factors must be the basis of every leader’s plan; only then can he know how and when to take risks with those factors; and battles and wars are won only by taking risks.6
The most important reason for the Allies’ culmination short of a strategic result was that they allowed their desires to override their knowledge of supply and movement factors, which led to mounting logistic problems. The careful calculations on which supply had been based were invalidated by unexpectedly sudden and all but complete success in Normandy and by the command decision to continue operations without the projected operational pause to build up stocks and improve infrastructure. Against minimal opposition, the armies advanced swiftly into the German depth, but it was obvious from the start of the exploitation that, within a very short period, the number of formations that could be sustained in action would shrink rapidly—to less than half in the US case. The logisticians improvised gamely, but their efforts were vitiated by SHAEF’s failure to prioritize and to provide clear and consistent direction. These failings were compounded by a similar reluctance among senior commanders to accept that not all goals could be pursued simultaneously, and national and interarmy rivalries exacerbated the problem of overstretched supply lines. Chapter 6 demonstrates the inadequacy of operational level decision making in the campaign-determining sphere of logistics.
Chapters 5 and 6 outline the operational developments and parallel logistic deterioration of the late-summer campaign. Chapter 7 delves into the causes of its less than satisfactory outcome: the decisions of operational level commanders. At the beginning of September the Allies had almost everything going for them. The enemy was beaten and demoralized, forced into a purely reactive posture with force levels insufficient to react effectively. The Allies had total command of the air and vastly superior firepower and mobility on the ground. Their weakness lay in the sustainability of the force, and that was essentially calculable. As long as their commanders adopted objectives and operational plans that took adequate account of logistic constraints, they could be fairly certain of achieving their aims. For once, but only fleetingly, the enemy did not have a vote.
Various factors relating to command and control combined to rob the Allies of decisive results. One was the actual organization of command and the related issue of authority, particularly at theatre but also at army group levels. Another was a tendency to neglect the stated aim of the campaign—the destruction of the enemy—in favor of territorial gains, with disputes over where those gains would contribute most to victory. In pursuit of their divergent operational goals, the army group commanders acted in competition and did not hesitate to undermine or occasionally ignore their Supreme Commander’s intent. Both Montgomery and Bradley showed much less loyalty and obedience to their superior than they demanded from their own juniors. Of course, such disagreements were partly the result of personality clashes—as Patton remarked, “all very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated.”7 One of the more important responsibilities of senior commanders is the management and direction of capable but difficult subordinates, a challenge not always met by Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Bradley.
At least as important, however, were significant differences between the Americans and the British in operational doctrine and concepts. Mutual lack of understanding was aggravated by disagreements over the allocation of resources to tasks. These in turn were exacerbated by political considerations, both intra-alliance and domestic. Diverging aims prevented unity of effort, and the diffusion of effort in pursuit of multiple goals led to culmination short of everyone’s objectives. Had there been more foresight and more objectivity at critical command levels, had the implementation of operational art been more uniformly effective, and, above all, had Eisenhower insisted on a consistent course of action and enforced compliance by his subordinates, greater success could have been achieved. I suggest some alternative decisions that sounder and more original operational thinking might have prompted, with beneficial results. Inevitably, the most important of these would have been made at the top. However, I recognize that the Supreme Allied Commander faced command problems that were essentially intractable. Probably no one could have done better. He deserves much more praise for his accomplishments, which were critical to the alliance, than censure for his failures.
Volume 2, From Defeat to Victory, deals principally with the summer campaign of 1944 on the eastern front and has its own introduction. Suffice it to say that my approach there is somewhat different. The campaign in the east was much larger in scope and scale. Consequently, I adopted a broader-brushed approach in recounting the progress of each operation. The nature of my analysis changes to an extent, becoming more mathematical. This is due to the distinctive nature of much of the Soviet source material, which is, in important respects, dissimilar to the Anglo-American. The constant between the two volumes is a focus on operational art. In the last two chapters of volume 2, I draw conclusions about the conduct of war in the different theatres and offer some reflections on its relevance for the future.
The main emphasis in chapter 4 of volume 2 is to compare and contrast the campaigns in the two theatres. It begins, however, by considering the interaction between them. Of course, the very fact that Germany had to fight a war on two fronts (arbitrarily to lump the Allied European and Mediterranean theatres together) doomed it to defeat. That doom probably could have been accomplished earlier had the Allies and Soviets cooperated more closely to achieve synergistic effect. In fact, they were as much mistrustful rivals, especially on the Soviet side, as they were partners, and practical teamwork was largely absent. Unfortunately for the Western Allies, their relationship too became increasingly antipathetic, not regarding ends but increasingly with respect to means. Strategic and operational decisions became a source of discord, prevarication, and compromise that weakened the alliance’s effectiveness. Unconstrained by allies, the Soviets’ decision making was simpler and more effective.
The other issues examined in the chapter relate to the conduct of operations. While the Allies achieved strategic surprise as to the Normandy location and subsequent main effort of the invasion, the Red Army made a greater effort, to greater critical effect, to practice operational-level deception and thus achieve surprise. It could also be argued that the Allies, with complete command of the air and, above all, Ultra, enjoyed better operational intelligence but exploited it less forcefully. This was partly the result of an approach to operational art that essentially saw it as merely tactics writ large—grand tactics, in British parlance. Western armies, especially the Anglo-Canadian, were inclined to focus on tactical problems to take ground of tactical significance, while minimizing casualty levels and maintaining tight control of the battle to avoid confusion. Such preoccupations tended to make commanders think small; they executed rigidly timetabled, deliberate, and consequently slow attacks to achieve limited objectives. Soviet operational ideas tended to be on a larger scale and were thought through to the desired end state. For the Soviets, destruction of the enemy was generally the main object, with the seizure of ground an important by-product. The Red Army prized tempo as a key component of success. It was seen as a force multiplier, forcing the enemy onto the back foot and keeping him there while destroying the cohesion of his formations and his ability to control them. Deliberation and caution were the antithesis of rapidity. To achieve momentum, the Soviets were prepared to accept heavy initial casualties, risk, and a degree of chaos as its price.
These differences in approach explain the contrasting development of operations in the west and east. Both the Allies and the Soviets evolved quite similar methods to penetrate the Germans’ prepared positional defenses. The big difference was in exploiting a breakthrough. The Allies tended to create only small reserves for the conduct of exploitation and, moreover, to proceed with caution into the enemy’s rear area; only Patton showed any real enthusiasm and flair for deep and rapid thrusts into the operational depth. They also tended, especially at theatre and army group levels, to lack consistent focus. Main efforts were seldom specified and even less often maintained, and forces were accordingly too dissipated to achieve decisive effect. The Red Army, by contrast, usually started operations with strong, armor-heavy “mobile groups” held ready to conduct operational maneuver in the enemy depth. Having contributed to the annihilation of a significant enemy grouping, these mobile groups then concentrated on key axes to forestall enemy efforts to restore the front. There was, however, one factor common to both eastern and western theatres. In both, mounting logistic problems more than German resistance often brought operations to a close.
The last chapter of volume 2 leaves the realm of the past to consider what lessons for the future can be found in these campaigns. Plainly, they do not present recipes for the conduct of future operations. Military and other technologies, and both political and social climates, have wrought a revolution in military affairs that is far greater than that of the 1930s and 1940s. Any useful lesson must focus on how to think, not what to think. The chapter examines, and questions, some common assumptions about intelligence, surprise and deception, and the utility of alliances (especially NATO) that have grown in recent decades. The historical record suggests a pause for thought on these issues, as well as in the area of doctrine. None of the armies fighting Germany in the summer of 1944 was engaged in the sort of war they had anticipated and prepared for. The Red Army came closest to having a sound doctrinal basis on which to build appropriate concepts and force structures. By 1944, it was beating Germany at its own game. The United States and Britain had to adjust from a small-war orientation to cope with a theatre-level conflict against the most sophisticated land power in the world. That adjustment took time and, arguably, was not fully successful even during the course of 1944. How well will American and British military thinkers and leaders adapt to an increasingly unstable twenty-first-century world in the throes of fundamental technological and ideological change? Even more importantly, will their political masters understand the challenges and give them appropriate direction, armed forces, and tasks? If they fail, their countries face traumatic times.