The Liberation Trilogy Box Set

by Rick Atkinson

  George Patton had encamped in a villa: Codman, Drive, 202–3; Hirshson, General Patton: A Soldier’s Life, 553 (“impossible bric-a-brac”); John K. Rieth, “We Seek: Patton’s Forward Observers,” 2002, a.p., 101 (German rail guns); PP, 566; diary, Oct. 24, 1944, Hobart Gay papers, MHI, box 2, 539 (broke the windows).

  Patton swanned about Lorraine: D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War, 655, 691, 689; Hirshson, General Patton: A Soldier’s Life, 521 ($250,000 offer); diary, Oct. 28 and 29, 1944, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 3, folder 8; Blumenson, Patton: The Man Behind the Legend, 1885–1945, 241; PP, 557–58 (“May God rot his guts”).

  “How long, O Lord”: Codman, Drive, 202–3.

  “Send me a couple of bottles”: PP, 567, 570.

  Because of the West Wall’s eastward bow: Allen, Lucky Forward, 113 (removal of XV Corps); LC, 302–3; Wellard, The Man in a Helmet, 169 (scores of manure-stacked Lorraine villages).

  Patton claimed that Metz had not fallen: PP, 576 (Germans had taken it); Hirshson, General Patton: A Soldier’s Life, 544 (Vauban told Louis XIV); John P. Ludwikosky et al., “735th Tank Battalion in the Reduction of Metz,” May 1950, AS, Ft. K, NARA RG 337, 6–7 (forty-three forts); Rickard, Patton at Bay, 123 (modern works faced west); Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 427 (“blood the new divisions”); Bradley Commentaries, CBH, MHI, box 42 (“Leave it alone”); OH, ONB, Dec. 1974–Oct. 1975, Charles Hanson, MHI, VI, 47 (“too many casualties”); PP, 566 (“more daring”).

  Daring had thus far gained nought: Doubler, Closing with the Enemy, 130 (“most formidable”); Meyer A. Edwards, Jr., et al., “Armor in the Attack of a Fortified Position,” May 1950, AS, Ft. K, NARA RG 337, 88–91 (“100 old men and boys”); LC, 264–66 (walls seven feet thick); Wellard, The Man in a Helmet, 173–74 (“medieval fortress”); diary, Oct. 4, 1944, Hobart Gay papers, MHI, box 2, 522 (“could not allow an attack”).

  It failed anyway: Patton, The Pattons, 268 (“or not come back”); LC, 270–75 (first substantial reverse); Wellard, The Man in a Helmet, 174 (bad news out of the papers); Tapert, ed., Lines of Battle, 189–90 (“Those low bastards”).

  “Had a bad case of short breath”: PP, 568–69.

  “tired, aged appearance”: Wellard, The Man in a Helmet, 185; PP, 568–70 (pleaded for a postponement).

  He woke at three A.M. on Wednesday, November 8: PP, 571; LC, 317–19.

  Bradley phoned at 7:45: Codman, Drive, 213 (“almost sorry” and “relaxed and talkative”); PP, 571.

  Doolittle’s air fleets on Thursday: Robert W. Ackerman, “The Employment of Strategic Bombers in a Tactical Role,” 1954, AFHRA, study no. 88, 86–88; “The Effectiveness of Third Phase Tactical Air Operations in the European Theater,” AAF Evaluation Board, Aug. 1945, 4, 162–65; LC, 425.

  The infantry soldiered on, resupplied: AAR, 95th ID, Nov. 1944, AGF OR, CARL, N-6741; Raines, Eyes of Artillery, 227; AAR, 1st Bn, 358th Inf, Nov. 1944, http://www.worldhistorycompass.com/peragimus/358journal.html (scampered across the roof); Colby, War from the Ground Up, 308 (“This fort is ours”); Braim, The Will to Win, 108–11.

  Almost half a mile wide, the Moselle: Rickard, Patton at Bay, 177–79; Nickell, Red Devil, 91 (“The air seemed filled”).

  “Groans, suffering, and pain”: Knight, Would You Remember This?, 128–29.

  “bolts, washers, [and] bushings”: Cowdrey, Fighting for Life, 262–63.

  “getting up where the dead were still warm”: PP, 573–74.

  On November 14, nearly a week: LC, 408–9, 417 (“Halb-soldaten”); Codman, Drive, 213–14 (“very jolly”).

  “If we win now”: PP, 575.

  Hitler had twice rebuffed Rundstedt’s suggestion: LC, 418–32.

  At 10:30 A.M. on November 19: Rickard, Patton at Bay, 193; LC, 447.

  Patton drove into Metz: Farago, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, 643; PP, 581 (“I will be hard to live with”), 577–78 (“When I am dealing with vipers”); Wellard, The Man in a Helmet, 181–82 (personally interrogated).

  An honor guard played: diary, Nov. 23, 1944, Hobart Gay papers, MHI, box 2, 580; Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe, 206 (“one of the epic river crossings”); Nickell, Red Devil, 111 (French soldiers).

  Little mention was made of the outlying forts: John P. Ludwikosky et al., “735th Tank Battalion in the Reduction of Metz,” May 1950, AS, Ft. K, NARA RG 337, 54–55 (French white phosphorus); LC, 448–49.

  “Patton’s bloodiest and least successful campaign”: D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War, 666–69; “Mobility, Unused: Study Based on the Lorraine Campaign,” Oct. 1952, OCMH WWII Europe Interviews, MHI, 5–7 (forfeited the single greatest advantage).

  “this nasty country where it rains”: PP, 588–89.

  “Chaplain, how much praying”: James H. O’Neill, “The True Story of the Patton Prayer,” n.d., chap. 25, PIR, MHI; PP, 591 (“certainly rained less”).

  To the Land of Doom

  Far above the killing fields: AAFinWWII, 280; Miller, Masters of the Air, 278 (“murder business”); Westermann, Flak, 1 (well over one million tons); DOB, 495–97.

  Terrible aircraft losses in the first three months: Jean H. Dubuque and Robert F. Gleckner, “The Development of the Heavy Bomber, 1918–1944,” 1951, AFHRA, historical study no. 6, 114–20 (eight hundred U.S. heavies shot down); Bernard Boyland, “Development of the Long-Range Escort Fighter,” 1955, AFHRA, historical study no. 136, 242–45, 147–61; Kennedy, “History from the Middle: The Case of the Second World War,” JMH (Jan. 2010): 35+; AAFinWWII, 287–88, 303 (another nine hundred bombers went down); Hastings, Armageddon, 301 (Luftwaffe now was in a death spiral), 310 (“Each time I close the canopy”); Muller, “Losing Air Superiority: A Case Study from the Second World War,” Air & Space Power Journal (winter 2003): 55+; Ehlers, Targeting the Reich, 319 (less than thirty flying hours).

  Of necessity, antiaircraft flak: Westermann, Flak, 278, 295 (1.2 million Germans); Friedrich, The Fire, 40 (any plane within two hundred meters); Davis, Bombing the European Axis Powers, 594 (sixteen thousand 88mm shells); Ferguson, All’s Fair, 162 (“evil, hypnotic fascination”); Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 439 (Heavier German guns).

  British bombers, flying mostly at night: Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 21 (“wall of light”); Friedrich, The Fire, 42 (“moving vertex”); “An Evaluation of German Capabilities in 1945,” USSAFE, Jan. 19, 1945, Frederick L. Anderson papers, HIA, box 80, folder 7 (electronic jammers); “Signal Service in ETOUSA,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #299, 24 (effective jamming meant that 25 percent).

  “Six miles from earth”: Randall Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” in Stallworthy, ed., The Oxford Book of War Poetry, 277.

  Air supremacy provided an invaluable advantage: Millett and Murray, Military Effectiveness, vol. 3, The Second World War, 64 (eighty thousand lives); Crane, Bombs, Cities & Civilians, 51 (battle casualty rates for every 1,000 bomber crewmen); Linderman, The World Within War, 39 (barely one in four); “Study of AGF Battle Casualties,” HQ, AGF G-3, Sept. 25, 1946, NARA RG 337, E 16A, admin div subject file, box 48, 4; Cowdrey, Fighting for Life, 233, 237. Some crews permitted to go home after fulfilling the lower quota were ordered back to Europe when the number increased (Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 439, 446).

  Perhaps less lethal, but hardly less stressful: Tripp, The Eighth Passenger, 4–5; Davis, Bombing the European Axis Powers, 583–88 (two of every five fliers did not live).

  The simplest missions could be fatal: memo, “Bomber Crash at Freckleton,” Office of the Chaplain, USSAFE, Aug. 29, 1944, Carl A. Spaatz papers, LOC MS Div, diary, box 18; Russell Brown and Nick Wotherspoon, “The Freckleton Disaster,” 2007, http://web.ukonline.col.uk/lait/site/B-24%2042-50291.htm*; “Freckleton Air Disaster of 1944,” BBC News, Aug. 7, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/lancashire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8189000/8189386.stm; “Plane Kills 35 Infants in School,” Daily Telegraph, Aug. 24, 1944, 3; “Crashing Bomber Wipes Out Nearly All a Village’s 4 to 6 Ch
ildren,” Daily Express, Aug. 24, 1944, 3.

  High though the war’s cost in men and machines: Arnold, Global Missions, 530 (cut by over 70 percent); corr, H. H. Arnold to C. A. Spaatz, Aug. 14, 1944, Carl A. Spaatz papers, LOC MS Div, personal diaries, box 15 (“incipient weaknesses”); AAFinWWII, 306 (rest-and-recuperation program); corr, 319th Bombardment Group, 438th Bombardment Squadron, n.d., NARA RG 492, MTOUSA, office of the surgeon, 1944, 290/54/33/2 (“he spills food at the table”); Brendan Gill, “Young Man Behind Plexiglass,” New Yorker, Aug. 12, 1944, in Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 474–84 (“God, you gotta”).

  In the airman’s world, those afflicted: Crane, Bombs, Cities & Civilians, 54 (“clanks”); Tripp, The Eighth Passenger, 70, 34, 197 (“dead men flying”); Stiles, Serenade to the Big Bird, 159 (“giving birth”); Andrus et al., eds., Advances in Military Medicine, vol. 2, 502–3; Jean H. Dubuque and Robert F. Gleckner, “The Development of the Heavy Bomber, 1918–1944,” 1951, AFHRA, historical study no. 6, 111–13; Fisher, Legacy of Heroes, 16 (tattooed them red).

  a B-17 pilot sat in the five-foot cube: Stiles, Serenade to the Big Bird, 133 (“oxygen mask” and “dead things”); Miller, Masters of the Air, 316 (“Land of Doom”); Crane, Bombs, Cities & Civilians, 54 (“I would not grieve”).

  How best to destroy the Land of Doom: “Target Priorities of the Eighth Air Force,” May 15, 1945, Carl A. Spaatz papers, LOC MS Div, box 326, folder VIII A.F., 20 (“progressive destruction”); Earle, “Selection of Strategic Bombing Targets,” lecture, Apr. 23, 1946, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 235, 4–12 (“instructive hints”).

  But Germany did have an Achilles heel: Overy, Why the Allies Won, 228–31 (whereas the Axis share was 3 percent); “German Petroleum Situation,” OSS, R&A no. 2340, July 13, 1944, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 919, 3 (Soviet oil fields and “rapid and drastic effects”); Rostow, Concept and Controversy, 45–47 (wood-burning engines); Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 3, part 2, 57–58 (British intelligence by late May); Hinsley, 580 (“Germany’s problem”).

  No one believed that more: Carver, ed., The War Lords, 568–69 (Taciturn and unpretentious); Middleton, “Boss of the Heavyweights,” Saturday Evening Post (May 20, 1944), 18+ (fishing and cribbage); James, A Time for Giants, 98–100 (aviation pioneer); MMB, 518; “The Man Who Paved the Way,” Time (June 12, 1944): 23+ (“finest poker table”); Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 552 (inside straight); Three Years, 629 (played with a kitten); Miller, Masters of the Air, 290 (mid-May attack by nine hundred bombers).

  No sooner had OVERLORD forces come ashore: “Target Priorities of the Eighth Air Force,” May 15, 1945, Carl A. Spaatz papers, LOC MS Div, box 326, folder VIII A.F., 22; Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 3, part 2, 58.

  That estimate was too rosy: TSC, 308; AAFinWWII (only three were at full production).

  Not everyone subscribed to the oil strategy: VW, vol. 2, 150–51 (But Bomber Command resisted the edict); Germany VII, 367 (Lübeck and Rostock); Germany IX, 385 (firestorm that incinerated Hamburg); Friedrich, The Fire, 9 (“fire-raising”), 16–17 (eighty million incendiary sticks), 167 (“the atmosphere of another planet”).

  Air Chief Marshal Arthur T. Harris, the Bomber Command chief: Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, 229–32 (“between 40 percent and 50 percent”); Davies, No Simple Victory, 69 (“like pulling teeth”); Germany IX, 387 (lime pits).

  “no grounds for supposing”: Hinsley, 582–83.

  “internal collapse certainly will not be brought about”: Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 3, part 2, 304.

  Harris believed otherwise: Tripp, The Eighth Passenger, 18; Hastings, Armageddon, 304–5 (“a certain coarseness”); Grayling, Among the Dead Cities, 192 (“tiger with no mercy”); Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, 218; Hastings, Bomber Command, 278–79 (ulcers), 282–83 (“I’m sick of these raids”); Probert, Bomber Harris, 154–58 (black Bentley).

  “He had a tendency to confuse advice”: Webster and Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, vol. 3, part 5, 80.

  Harris believed that bombers: Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, 249 (“If the Germans were asked”); Davis, Bombing the European Axis Powers, 566 (more than half of Bomber Command’s payloads); Hastings, Bomber Command, 282–84 (The Hole), 386–87 (“If I knew you”); Webster and Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, vol. 3, 44 (“in order to destroy anything”), 82 (“virtually destroyed”); Probert, Bomber Harris, 309 (“city programme”).

  Harris’s resolve to crack the enemy’s will: Probert, Bomber Harris, 336 (“proved to be totally unsound”); Miller, Masters of the Air, 473 (“bombing seriously depressed”); Germany IX, 458 (two thousand Allied aircraft); Randall Jarrell, “Losses,” http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/losses/.

  While British Bomber Command believed in leveling: Earle, “Selection of Strategic Bombing Targets,” lecture, Apr. 23, 1946, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 235, 18; Hugh Odishaw, “Radar Bombing in the Eighth Air Force,” 1946, Carl A. Spaatz papers, LOC MS Div, box 80, 88, 93, 94–97 (as few as one out of ten bombs); Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 504 (one sortie of seven); Crane, Bombs, Cities & Civilians, 63–67 (“not a literal sense”); Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, 243–45, 258 (frequent diversions), 280 (Such attacks on transportation targets); Schaffer, “American Military Ethics in World War II: The Bombing of German Civilians,” Journal of American History (Sept. 1980): 318+ (“The way to stop the killing”); Davis, Bombing the European Axis Powers, 574 (20 percent of its payloads).

  The Americans were no less intent: Miller, Masters of the Air, 455; Kleber and Birdsell, The Chemical Warfare Service, 622 (M-76 Block Burner), 614 (“as much death and destruction”).

  Air Chief Marshal Harris never believed: Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, 252 (“I am not only not a convert”); Davis, Bombing the European Axis Powers, 569 (oil targets in August and September), 570 (flew more than twice as many missions as Eighth Air Force); Ehlers, Targeting the Reich, 287–88 (British attacked to greater effect); AAFinWWII, 795 (faulty fuzes).

  The inclement fall weather gave Germany: Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 3, part 2, 58; AAFinWWII, 283–87, 641 (350,000 workers); Westermann, Flak, 263–64; Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, 433 (most heavily defended).

  But the die had been cast: Ehlers, Targeting the Reich, 266, 279 (1,200 gallons of gasoline and oxen); Willmott, The Great Crusade, 418–19 (had dropped to a quarter of the May level); Westermann, Flak, 270; Weigley, The American Way of War, 356–57; Miller, Masters of the Air, 312–14 (synthetic rubber).

  No industrial disparity: Zetterling, Normandy 1944, 47; Weigley, The American Way of War, 356–57 (decline to 12 percent). Air commanders at the end of the war put German motor and aviation production at 2 percent of the earlier peak. “Joint Statement on Strategic Bombing by Air Ministry and U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe,” Apr. 30, 1945, UK NA, AIR 2/5737, 4.

  “They are sowing the wind”: Daglish, Operation Goodwood, 96; Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 3–4 (131 German cities and towns); Germany IX, 475–76 (400,000 dead).

  For those on the ground, the ordeal: Hastings, Armageddon, 328; Germany IX, 390 (“People alongside us”); Friedrich, The Fire, 363 (phosphorescent paint).

  Three thousand municipal air raid shelters: Foedrowitz, “Air Raid Shelters in Hannover,” AB, no. 124 (2004): 2+; Germany IX, 391 (“filth and disorder”); Whiting, The Home Front: Germany, 144–45 (opening their mouths); Friedrich, The Fire, 356 (“Children with scarlet fever”).

  “In Cologne life is no longer possible”: Friedrich, The Fire, 258, 45.

  The iron and steel center of Duisburg: Webster and Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, vol. 3, Victory, part 5, 66; Friedrich, The Fire, 201 (“The night had done its work”), 176–77, 294–95 (carbon monoxide); G
ermany IX, 461 (Heilbronn), 462 (“a hideous sight”); Whiting, The Home Front: Germany, 140 (“Politeness Week”).

  Even from the Dutch coast: Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 22–23; Friedrich, The Fire, 382 (210 Reichmarks); Steinhoff et al., Voices from the Third Reich, 488 (“blue faces”); Wilhelm von Grolmann, “The Collapse of the German Reich as Seen from Leipzig,” n.d., FMS, #B-478, MHI, 14–15 (fortified with alcohol); corr, “Annemarie,” Dec. 29, 1944, Norman D. King papers, HIA, box 1 (“Do you still remember”). Friedrich Schiller’s “The Song of the Bell” was published in 1798.

  On and on it went, high explosives: Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 22–29 (Deranged mothers); Friedrich, The Fire, 213 (“The heat was so great”), 447 (“a man dragging a sack”); Hastings, Bomber Command, 361–78.

  “The destruction will go on”: Lubrich, ed., Travels in the Third Reich, 1933–1945, 299.

  “Providence Decrees and We Must Obey”

  After advancing nearly four hundred miles: Yeide and Stout, First to the Rhine, 227; RR, 335 (Nine weak enemy divisions); “A History of the Headquarters Sixth Army Group,” vol. 1, NARA RG 331, E 242A, box 157, from James Scott Wheeler (nearly half a million men); William K. Wyant, “Seventh Army History,” n.d., NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 4 (“first crossing of the Vosges”).

  Few could feel optimistic: RR, 240–42, 245, 291–93 (“mental and physical lethargy”); Steidl, Lost Battalions, 121–22 (“Mountains, woods, and rain”).

  The season had been marked by straggling: RR, 291–93 (“inept”); Taggart, ed., History of the Third Infantry Division, 257; Pete T. Heffner, Jr., “Lessons Learned in the Vosges Mountains Campaign,” Dec. 12, 1944, NARA RG 407, ETO G-3 OR, box 3 (bear traps); Aron, France Reborn, 445 (first snow); The Seventh United States Army in France and Germany, vol. 1, 323 (emergency shipments); “The Invasion of Southern France, Operation DRAGOON,” ETOUSA, G-4, 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #314 (Six hundred thousand men); Gilland, “Logistical Support for the Combat Zone,” lecture, 1948, Engineer Officers Advance Course, NARA RG 319, LSA background file, 2-3.7 CB 6 (various miscalculations); Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs, 752 (20 percent of the cargo); “Supply and Maintenance on the European Continent,” NARA RG 407, E 427, USFET General Board study no. 130, 97-USF5-0.30, 50–54 (shortages of food, ammunition, and fuel).