The World at War (75 page)

MAJOR GENERAL COLLINS

My own Corps was up north and we were brought down on the north side of the Bulge which had begun to develop in the Ardennes, comparable to the Falaise pocket. I had good troops and Monty used to come down to my headquarters and would discuss the situation every other day with me and General Matthew Ridgway who commanded the Airborne Corps on my left. I dealt with Monty and we always hit it off well and apparently he thought well of me. But I kept arguing with him that they were never going to be able to break through. The two initial divisions that had been hit by the Germans were new divisions, their first time in action, they were hit by 13 German divisions, but by the time they reached my area we had sealed off the north flank with experienced troops and I told Monty nobody's going to break through these troops, these are top-flight and I was confident that we could hold and then counter-attack. Unfortunately Monty positioned my Corps, which was under his direct command, on the north side of the Bulge instead of near the base. I was way out almost to the Meuse and I argued with Monty and said, 'Monty, you're going to push 'em out of the bag just like you did at Falaise. I ought to be opposite St Vith.' His reply to that was, 'Well, Joe, you can't supply a Corps over a single road.' In exasperation I finally said to him, 'Well, maybe you can't, but we can.'

MAJOR GENERAL WESTPHAL

At that moment when after the failure of the Ardennes, there was no doubt more that we would lose the war totally. I had said to Hitler before the Ardennes offensive that we could only succeed this target if we were able to cross within two days the River Meuse near Liege. Otherwise it would be better to retreat, and Hitler had another opinion. The first time the weather was good for us because we had strong fog, then Rundstedt sent my proposals on the 23rd and 24th December again to Hitler, to go back to the West Wall. But Hitler refused again, and the consequence was that we lost most of the material and many thousand prisoners.

MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND

The Americans fought magnificently. It was an American battle, the British only played a very small part in the northern flank, and they held the shoulders of this great wedge pretty strongly in the northern and southern shoulders and that made it very difficult for the enemy to penetrate very much further. After two days the weather improved enormously and our massive air supremacy could be used, so we went for it hammer and tongs, particularly their railheads and their supply lines, and they began to run short of supplies and so many of their tanks and transports were grounded through lack of petrol.

GENERAL MANTEUFFEL

The Germans who had been deluded into believing in the possible victory now know that defeat could only be delayed. Hitler believed that if his panzer armies could split the rest of the alliance they would accept the stalemate on this front and allow him to switch his strength to the Eastern Front. This assumption was completely mistaken, and the result of the offensive primarily benefited the Russians.

MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND

The Germans cut the Twelfth Army Group in half and left the First United States Army to the north of the Bulge. Bradley rightly made the decision to hand over the American forces of Twelfth Army Group north of the Bulge to Montgomery's command just as a temporary measure, but it was very sound because Bradley didn't have access to, or communications to, his forces north of the Bulge. Montgomery then operated with tremendous efficiency and I admired him greatly during that period. I was with him a lot of the time and I saw the effect this little man had on the morale of the Americans. Calmly he assessed the situations and he helped the American Army to do the right thing when they were very tired and exhausted. But he played a very major part in preventing that offensive becoming a success. For some time Montgomery had been pressing for the appointment of the Land Force Commander. He had said that he was prepared to serve under Bradley and he probably knew quite well that wasn't a feasible situation. He genuinely felt he was the right chap to take on this job and I suppose he got a bit cock-a-hoop with his successes and the British press became very pro-Monty and pro the appointment of Monty the Land Force Commander.
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LIEUTENANT DENIS BEATSON-HIRD

51st Highland Division, Rhine crossing

We clambered into these
Buffaloes – they were tanks with the lids off, if I can put it that way – and the route was marked out with dim lamps and you could see these Buffaloes snaking rather like a big anaconda towards the river. There was a tremendous noise going on. Bombing was taking place at Wesel, which was a little further down the river, and the whole of the divisional and other artillery was firing like mad, which was Monty's usual preparation for a battle. The only time I think we really felt worried was when we went down actually into the river, which was a hell of an incline, and one wondered and hoped that the thing would surface and come out on an even keel when we got to the water.

MAJOR GENERAL COLLINS

I went back up to Ardennes and the troops were reorganised, troops that had been brought down from Ninth Army north of Aachen to help us on the north side of the Bulge. They went back and the attack went on from that point, we broke through the Siegfried defences and across the Ruhr and were able to capture successively across the flat German plains. If the Bulge had not taken place, the German reserves which launched the attack were sitting on my right flank and we'd have one terrible time getting to the Rhine. It made it much easier when they were destroyed.

MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND

When one talks about crossing the Rhine, one must acknowledge the fact that Patton's army had already crossed, they had captured the bridgehead. One of those great questions one can ask oneself after the war is whether Bradley and the Supreme Commander could have done better to have reinforced the success of Patton's army and possibly reduce the resources that were made available to the Twenty-First Army Group. Possibly it might have produced a much quicker result. But as far as we were concerned the Rhine was a very wide river, which meant all these obstacles were difficult to cross in war. The whole operation depended upon successful airborne operation over the Rhine and that depended upon good weather in March. We had good weather and the airborne operation was a great success. The Germans were holding one or two small towns, very strongly, but it didn't take us long to expand over the Rhine and really get moving into Germany proper. As an Allied team we were delighted with the success of the Americans and I think the Americans were delighted with any success we had. I don't think there was any jealousy there, I think everyone wanted the ruddy war to finish and the sooner the better.

WYNFORD VAUGHAN-THOMAS

I was with a Scots unit, the Black Watch, and we were supposed to assault the Rhine direct and cross in Buffaloes, it was supposed to be an armoured vehicle that you could ride across the Rhine in a fair amount of safety. We again were able to put the elaborate BBC recording gear in and I had my engineer with me. We got into the Buffalo and there was my brother getting into another Buffalo. My brother became a landing expert with Mountbatten and his job was to go into every one of these landings and study the problems. He looked at me and I said, 'You shouldn't be here,' and he said, 'You shouldn't be here. Who's going to tell mother about this?' I had arranged with the piper to blow the brave lads into battle and this was going to be one of the most symbolic recordings of the war. The banks of the Rhine were about twenty feet high on either side, the Buffaloes had to crawl up and then race into battle. At two in the morning the signal was given and I'll never forget the sight of the Rhine, it was blood red, every farm was burning, the whole place was leaping up and down as if somebody underneath was throwing water up, and I suddenly realised that it was mortar shells, it was the machine-gun fire, and I thought something's gone wrong with the machinery, but apparently it was bullets banging around. There was my brother's Buffalo forging across the Rhine and he was surrounded with spouts and apparently mine was equally surrounded by spouts too. As we crossed the Rhine I said, 'Now the pipes take the lads into battle,' and the piper looked at me, said, 'My pipes they will not play.' They had a bullet through what the Germans called the doodle sack.

CHAPTER 30
YALTA AND POLAND

Although his significance in Britain has been overshadowed, by the spy ring known as the 'Cambridge Five', it would be difficult to overstate the importance of Alger Hiss to US politics during the Cold War. Hiss had been one of Roosevelt's key aides, tasked with creating structures for post-war international relations and in particular the United Nations. Although his guilt was not proved beyond doubt until previously secret cryptographic material was released in 1995, it had been clear, from the time of his conviction for perjury in 1950, that Hiss had been a spy for the Russians. His nemesis was the Republican congressman Richard Nixon, whose success in exposing Hiss took him to the Senate in 1950 and to the vice presidency in 1952. Hiss's innocence was an article of faith for a generation of liberal Americans with the curious reasoning that if they admitted his guilt – and that of other New Dealers like Harry Dexter White at the Treasury and Presidential Administrative Assistant Laughlin Curry – it would damage Roosevelt's political legacy. But it was the traitors who had done the damage, and the counter-attack opened the door to the excesses of the House Un-American Activities Committee and of Senator foe McCarthy.

One result of this polarisation of opinion was a rancorous controversy about the Yalta Conference in February 1945, attended by Hiss, when Poland was allegedly 'sold out' to the Soviet Union. Although Hiss only had a cameo role in
The World at War
episode entitled
The Bomb,
towards the end of the series, his interview was one of the longest and, in view of what we now know about him, is an important historical document. There are a few points of subtle mendacity, but more intriguing is his skill in emphasising that the agreements reached at Yalta were the best the Western Allies could
hope for. Indeed they were – by 1945 the Red Army's presence had decided the fate of Eastern Europe. But it leaves open the question whether Roosevelt could have obtained a better deal for the Poles and others, if in 1943–44 he had been less keen on an accommodation with Stalin. Perhaps it does not matter now: it did, very much, in the early 1970s.

DR NOBLE FRANKLAND

"Wartime RAF navigator, post-war Director of the Imperial War Museum
Britain went to war to defend the Polish frontiers and the
war ended with Poland losing its freedom, its independence, and a lot of people their lives. This is the most tragic irony of the war. The reason isn't far to search – in order to stop Hitler the power needed was so enormous that it had to embrace everybody free of the Nazi creed, including in particular the Soviet Union. And it seems to me there is little doubt that Hitler would have won the Second World War unless the Soviet Union had been part of the Grand Alliance. That being so, the fate of Poland was sealed from that time on. The British and the Americans did their best to secure the Polish position but their efforts were of absolutely no avail.

ANTHONY EDEN

British Foreign Minister, Yalta participant

Roosevelt thought he could do more with Stalin than anybody else and in that I think he was probably mistaken, but it was difficult to get started on the things we wanted to discuss with Stalin. I was very anxious in our Moscow conference to start with the Polish business and [Cordell] Hull wanted to do the same thing. But Hull hadn't the power, he couldn't. I thought it was very strange of a Secretary of State, I didn't see why he couldn't do it, but anyhow we never really got started on Poland as I think we should have done then. Winston was there at the time and told me Roosevelt had said the Secretary wouldn't talk about it because it was political dynamite at home, and this multiplied the difficulties or delays, which I think was the misfortune of it.
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AMBASSADOR W AVERELL HARRIMAN

President Roosevelt's Special Envoy to Europe, Yalta participant

Shortly after Tehran in early 1944, I talked about
Poland more than any other single subject with Stalin because it was the issue which was symbolic of other things and in the winter he was very tough about it. I still wanted to agree with Roosevelt's objective of trying to come to an understanding. I became somewhat more concerned in the autumn of 1944 and then in the winter I pointed out that Europe would be in a very weakened condition; there'd be hunger and poverty unless we did more, our food would not be enough, we had to do something to get the wheels of industry going again, raw materials and so forth. I felt that Stalin had every intention of using Communist parties in Europe, I think he would have achieved it if it hadn't been for Truman's initiative and the remarkable cooperation that occurred, as a result of the Marshall Plan, among Britain and the Europeans.

ANTHONY EDEN

The Russians became more and more difficult over the Poles, more determined to get their way. And the tragic business of Warsaw, the failure to help the Poles fighting in Warsaw against the Germans, was the worst phase of the whole business and we were all really bitter about that. And we tried to do all we could, we even flew aircraft from Italy to try and fly in supplies to the unfortunate Poles, but the Russians would have none of it. They just wouldn't do it and one can say that cynically they allowed the Poles to be butchered rather than risk their people, or try to interfere with the process. It's a terrible story. That was where we met our worst difficulties. Churchill and I went to Moscow specially to try and make some progress with the Poles; we didn't get very far. And Warsaw really settled geographically the Polish question because after that the Russians had control and they were going to settle the
frontiers the way they wanted; all we could do was to try here and there to get something better for the Poles. And then remained the question of the Polish internal government and that, I'm afraid, we were equally unsuccessful really about, in spite of all we tried to do. When we were in San Francisco, Molotov had sharp arguments with [US Secretary of State] Stettinius and I when the Russians arrested a number of Poles on what we thought the flimsiest of pretexts, merely because they wouldn't cooperate with their nominee. And what in fact happened was that the Russians imposed their nominees upon Poland by force. All that was a sad disappointment until the end of the war, but I cannot to this day see what more either we or the Americans could have done about the circumstances.