History of the Second World War (95 page)

* The break-out at Avranches was made by the U.S. 4th Armored Division under John S. Wood. I had spent two days with him shortly before the invasion and he had impressed me as being more conscious of the possibilities of a deep exploitation and the importance of speed than anyone else. Even Patton had then, in discussion with me, echoed the prevailing view at the top that the Allied forces must ‘go back to 1918 methods’ and could not repeat the kind of deep and swift armoured drives that the Germans, especially Guderian and Rommel, had carried out in 1940.

Telling me later what happened after the break-out, Wood said: ‘There was no conception of far-reaching directions for armour in the minds of our top people, nor of supplying such thrusts. I was still under the First Army, and it could not react fast enough. When it did react, its orders consisted of sending its two flank armoured divisions back, 180 degrees away from the main enemy, to engage in siege operations against Lorient and Brest. August 4 was that black day. I protested long, loud, and violently — and pushed my tank columns into Chateaubriant (without orders) and my armoured cavalry to the outskirts of Angers and along the Loire, ready to advance (east) on Chartres. I could have been there, in the enemy vitals, in two days. But no! We were forced to adhere to the original plan — with the only armour available, and ready to cut the enemy to pieces. It was one of the colossally stupid decisions of the war.’

The diversion to capture the Brittany ports brought no benefit. For the Germans in Brest held out until September 19 — forty-four days after Patton had prematurely announced its capture — while Lorient and St. Nazaire remained in the enemy’s hands until the end of the war.

Two weeks passed before the American forces pushed eastwards far enough to reach Argentan and come up level with the British left wing — which meanwhile was still held in check just beyond Caen. This caused fresh recriminations. For when Patton was told that he must not drive on north-ward to close the gap and bar the Germans’ escape route, for fear of a collision with the British, he exclaimed on the telephone: ‘Let me go on to Falaise and we’ll drive the British back into the sea for another Dunkirk.’

It is evident that the German forces would have had ample time to pull back to the Seine, and form a strong defensive barrier-line there, except for Hitler’s stubbornly stupid orders that there should be ‘no withdrawal’. It was his folly that restored the Allies’ lost opportunities and enabled them to liberate France that autumn.

The war could easily have been ended in September 1944. The bulk of the German forces in the West had been thrown into the Normandy battle, and kept there by Hitler’s ‘no withdrawal’ orders until they collapsed — and a large part were trapped. The fragments were incapable of further resistance for the time being, and their retreat — largely on foot — was soon outstripped by the British and American mechanised columns. When the Allies approached the German border at the beginning of September, after a sweeping drive from Normandy, there was no organised resistance to stop them driving on — into the heart of Germany.*

* I explored this question immediately after the war, questioning the German generals principally concerned. General Blumentritt, who was Chief of Staff in the West, summed up the situation in a sentence, ‘There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open.’
The Other Side of the Hill,
p. 428.

On September 3 one spearhead of the British Second Army, the Guards Armoured Division, swept into Brussels — after a seventy-five-mile drive through Belgium from its morning starting point in northern France. Next day the 11th Armoured Division, which had raced level with it, drove on to Antwerp and captured the vast docks undamaged before the surprised German base units there had a chance to carry out any demolitions.

That same day the spearheads of the American First Army captured Namur, on the Meuse.

Four days earlier, on August 31, the spearheads of Patton’s American Third Army had crossed the Meuse at Verdun, a hundred miles to the south. Next day, patrols had pushed on unopposed to the Moselle near Metz, thirty-five miles farther east. There they were barely thirty miles from the great industrial area of the Saar on the German frontier, and less than one hundred miles from the Rhine. But the main bodies could not immediately follow up this advance to the Moselle as they had run out of petrol, and did not move up to the river until September 5.

By that time the enemy had scraped up five weak divisions, very scantily equipped with anti-tank guns, to hold the Moselle against the six strong American divisions that were spearheading Patton’s thrust.

Meanwhile the British had arrived in Antwerp — which, also, was less than one hundred miles from the Rhine at the point of entry into the Ruhr, Germany’s greatest industrial area. If the Ruhr was captured Hitler could not maintain the war.

On this flank there was now an immensely wide gap — 100 miles wide — facing the British. No German forces were yet at hand to fill it. Rarely in any war has there been such an opportunity.

When the news of this emergency reached Hitler, in his far distant headquarters on the Eastern front, he put through a telephone call on the afternoon of September 4 to General Student, the chief of the parachute troops, who was in Berlin. Student was ordered to take charge of the open flank, from Antwerp to Maastricht, and form a line along the Albert Canal with such garrison troops as could be scraped up from Holland, while rushing there the scattered parachute troop units that were under training in various parts of Germany. These were alerted, mobilised, and entrained as quickly as possible. The newly formed units only received their arms after reaching the de-training stations, and were then immediately marched up to the battle-line. But all these parachute troops only amounted to about 18,000 men — hardly the equivalent of one Allied division.

This collection of oddments was named the ‘First Parachute Army’, a high-sounding title that covered a multitude of deficiencies. Policemen, sailors, convalescent sick and wounded, as well as boys of sixteen, were hauled in to help fill the thin ranks. Weapons were very short. Moreover the Albert Canal had not been prepared for defence on the northern bank; there were no fortifications, strong-points or trenches.

After the war, General Student said:

The sudden penetration of the British tank forces into Antwerp took the Fuhrer’s Headquarters utterly by surprise. At that moment we had no disposable reserves worth mentioning either on the Western Front or within our own country. I took over the command of the right wing of the western front on the Albert Canal on September 4. At that moment I had only recruit and convalescent units and one coast-defence division from Holland. They were reinforced by a panzer detachment — of merely twenty-five tanks and self-propelled guns.*

* Liddell Hart:
The Other Side of the Hill,
p. 429.

At that time, as the captured records reveal, the Germans had barely 100 tanks available for action on the whole Western Front, against more than 2,000 in the Allies’ spearheads. The Germans had only 570 serviceable aircraft to support them, whereas the British and American aircraft then operating in the West totalled over 14,000. Thus the Allies had an effective superiority of 20 to 1 in tanks and 25 to 1 in aircraft.

But just as complete victory appeared within easy reach, the Allies’ onrush petered out. During the next two weeks, up to September 17, they made very little further progress.

The British spearhead, after a pause to ‘refit, refuel, and rest’, resumed its advance on the 7th, and soon secured a crossing over the Albert Canal, east of Antwerp. But in the days that followed it only pushed eighteen miles farther — to the Meuse-Escaut Canal. That short stretch of swampy heath country was interspersed with small streams, and the German parachutists, fighting with desperate courage, put up a resistance out of all proportion to their slight numbers.

The First American Army came up level with the British, but pushed no deeper. The major part of it ran into the fortified belt and coalmining area around the city of Aachen — which lies in, and obstructs, this historically famous ‘gateway’ into Germany. There the Americans became entangled, and bogged down, while wider opportunities slipped away. For when they reached the German frontier the eighty-mile stretch between the Aachen area and the Metz area was covered by a mere eight enemy battalions, strung out across the hilly and wooded country of the Ardennes. The Germans had most effectively used this rough stretch for their surprise armoured thrust into France in 1940. By taking what appeared to be the easier paths into Germany the Allies met greater difficulties.

That was seen in the south as well as in the north. For Patton’s Third Army began to cross the Moselle as early as September 5, yet was little farther forward two weeks later — or, indeed, two months later. It became stuck in its attack on the fortified city of Metz and nearby points — where the Germans had at the outset concentrated more than anywhere else.

By mid-September the Germans had thickened up their defence all along the front, and above all on the most northerly sector, leading to the Ruhr — where the gap had been greatest. That was the more unfortunate since Montgomery was now mounting another big thrust there, to the Rhine at Arnhem, on September 17. In this he was planning to drop the recently formed First Allied Airborne Army to clear the path for the British Second Army.

This thrust was checked by the enemy before it reached its goal, and a large part of the British 1st Airborne Division, which had been dropped at Arnhem, was there cut off and compelled to surrender after an attempt to hold out until it was relieved which has become legendary for its gallantry. The next month was spent by the American First Army in grinding down the defences of Aachen, while Montgomery brought up the First Canadian Army to clear out the two ‘pockets’ of Germans — on the coast cast of Bruges and in Walcheren island — which commanded the passage up the Schelde estuary to Antwerp, and had thus blocked the use of the port at the time of the Arnhem operation. Clearing these pockets proved a painfully slow process, which was not completed until early in November.

Meanwhile the German build-up along the front covering the Rhine was progressing faster than that of the Allies, despite Germany’s inferiority in material resources. In mid-November a general offensive was launched by all six Allied armies on the Western Front. It brought disappointingly small gains, at heavy cost. Only in the extreme south, in Alsace, did the Allies reach the Rhine, and that was of little importance. In the north they were still left nearly thirty miles distant from the stretch of the river covering the vital area of the Ruhr. It was not gained until the spring of 1945.

The price that the Allied armies paid for the missed opportunity in early September was very heavy. Out of three-quarters of a million casualties which they suffered in liberating Western Europe, half a million were after their September check. The cost to the world was much worse — millions of men and women died by military action and in the concentration camps of the Germans with the extension of the war. Moreover, in the longer term, in September the Russian tide had not yet penetrated into Central Europe.

What were the causes of a missed opportunity so catastrophic in its consequences? The British have blamed the Americans, and the Americans have blamed the British. In the middle of August an argument had begun between them as to the course which the Allied armies should pursue after crossing the Seine.

With the swelling stream of reinforcements the Allied forces in Normandy had been divided on August 1 into two army groups, each of two armies. The 21st Army Group, under Montgomery, retained only the British and Canadians, while the Americans formed the 12th Army Group, under Omar Bradley. But Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander, arranged that Montgomery should continue in operational control and ‘tactical co-ordination’ of both army groups until Eisenhower moved his own headquarters over to the Continent and took over direct control — which he did on September 1. The interim arrangement, hazily defined and delicate, was prompted by Eisenhower’s spirit of conciliation and consideration for Montgomery’s feelings, as well as his appreciation of the latter’s greater experience. But the well-meaning compromise resulted in friction, as so often happens.

On August 17 Montgomery had suggested to Bradley that ‘after crossing the Seine, 12th and 21st Army Groups should keep together as a solid mass of forty divisions, which would be so strong that it need fear nothing. These forces should advance
northwards’
to Antwerp and Aachen ‘
with their right flank on the Ardennes
’.*

*
My italics — B.H.L.H.

The wording of this proposal tends to show that Montgomery had not yet realised the extent of the enemy’s collapse, or the difficulty of keeping up supplies to such a ‘solid mass’ — unless it went forward at a slow pace.

Meantime Bradley had been discussing with Patton the idea of an
eastward
thrust past the Saar to the Rhine south of Frankfurt. Bradley wanted this to be the main thrust, using both the American armies along this line. This meant reducing the northward thrust to a secondary role, and naturally did not appeal to Montgomery. Moreover, it would not lead directly to the Ruhr.

Eisenhower was now in the uncomfortable position of being the rope in a tug of war between his chief executives. On August 22 he considered the differing proposals and next day had a discussion with Montgomery, who urged the importance of concentrating ‘on one thrust’, and devoting the bulk of the supplies to it. That would mean halting Patton’s eastward thrust, just as it was going at top speed. Eisenhower tried to point out the political difficulties. ‘The American public would never stand for it.’ The British had not yet reached the Lower Seine, whereas Patton’s eastward thrust was already over 100 miles beyond them, and less than 200 miles from the Rhine.