The first great American offensive in the western Pacific, however, brought a major change in Japanese tactics that did not bode well for the rest of the war. Recognizing that they could not match American firepower and tactical skill in the air, on the sea, and in conventional land warfare, the Japanese decided to fight on new terms. In island fighting they demonstrated their new tactics against the 1st Marine Division and 81st Infantry Division on Peleliu, a rocky island in the western Carolines, in September 1944. Exploiting an interlocking defense system of caves and concealed weapons bunkers, the Japanese turned what might have been another week-long battle into a bitter two-month campaign that ruined the 1st Marine Division. The Japanese defenders forced the Americans to kill and bury them with demolitions, flame-throwers, and close assaults. To eliminate about the same size force (6,000) they had faced at Tarawa, the Americans lost almost twice as many killed in action (1,800) as they had suffered at Tarawa. The battle was even more unpalatable, for Peleliu was part of the planned Mindanao operation, which had been canceled.
As a minor part of their counterattack at Leyte Gulf, the Japanese introduced the kamikaze corps, a fleet of new planes and novice pilots who did not need to master air-to-air tactics or return landings since their sole purpose was to crashdive into Navy vessels. As Admiral Nimitz admitted after the war, the kamikazes took the Navy by surprise, since designed suicide had not been a part of American air doctrine. It had not been in the Japanese repertoire until the summer of 1944, when the losses in experienced pilots doomed conventional Japanese air attacks. The Divine Wind Special Attack Corps made its auspicious debut on October 25, 1944, when fewer than twenty kamikazes sank one and damaged four escort carriers of the 7th Fleet. With no bombs to drop or torpedoes to launch, the kamikazes could penetrate the blanket of antiaircraft fire at any angle. As a floating bomb of aviation gasoline and ordnance, an American carrier needed only one kamikaze crash into its hangar deck to set off secondary explosions, which at the very least would halt flight operations. Escort vessels were somewhat less vulnerable but not immune. For the first time since the Solomons campaign, it looked as if the Navy faced prohibitive warship losses. The Japanese cave tactics ashore now had their counterpart at sea, giving the Japanese a faint hope that the war of attrition could be turned back to their advantage. Although the American public was only vaguely aware of the new tactics—obscured as they were by the great victories in the Marianas and Leyte—the war in the western Pacific had entered a new phase that increased the cost of a continued American advance.
From Normandy to the Rhine
The driving rain and whistling night winds were no more grim than the mood of the senior American and British commanders meeting in a manor house outside Portsmouth, England. The June 4, 1944, conference had one purpose: to decide if the weather would force another postponement of the cross-Channel invasion. At the cutting edge of months of preparation and years of planning, Dwight D. Eisenhower bore the responsibility for the decision. His ground commanders wanted to get on with the battle; the air and naval commanders were less enthusiastic. Eisenhower listened again to their advice, to familiar arguments about surprise, morale, and logistics. Promised a slight improvement in the weather—critical for air and naval gunfire operations—he made his decision without flair: “I’m quite positive we must give the order. I don’t like it, but there it is. I don’t see how we can possibly do anything else.” D-Day in Normandy would be June 6.
Under serious consideration for more than a year, OVERLORD attempted to exploit Allied air and naval superiority and to mislead the Germans about the place of the actual landing. Only a substantial degree of surprise could prevent what the Allies feared most, a mass armored counterattack on the landing force. Even with additional amphibious ships and landing craft, the Allies could not hope to match the six German Panzer divisions in northern France if these were quickly committed. Yet the opportunity for surprise was limited by the iron demands of logistics and air basing. To wage offensive war with an expeditionary force of millions of men and hundreds of thousands of vehicles, the Allies required fixed port facilities. For example, the Allies’ 250,000 vehicles burned more than 7,000 tons of gasoline in one operational day. American logistical planners, using wartime data, cut their estimates of the Army’s needs but still produced awesome estimates: An infantry division needed one ton of supplies per soldier per month, and an armored division’s needs were five times greater than an infantry division’s. The Allies also counted upon fighter-bombers to give them a big edge in maneuver warfare, and the optimal use of tactical air meant not only high logistical requirements but also forward bases in France.
The location of the invasion narrowed inexorably to Normandy, since a landing there would allow the Allies to capture the port of Cherbourg at the tip of the Cotentin peninsula. An attack to the north around Calais was a bit too obvious, and the Germans had already emphasized the defense of the Atlantic Wall north of the Seine by reinforcing their 15th Army and fortifying the beaches. The Brittany coast to the south offered five major port facilities that the Americans knew well, since they had used them in World War I, but an attack so far south would slow the liberation of France and allow the Germans too much time to reinforce their western armies. The Allies planned to use the Brittany ports but only after they were safely ashore in Normandy. The German obsession with the Pas de Calais, on the other hand, could be exploited by a complex deception plan utilizing the full range of Allied capabilities: air attacks, dummy military installations and shipping, misleading radio communications, false agent reports, and other intelligence ploys. If the Germans did not redeploy before D-Day, the Allied invasion forces would face just six German divisions in Normandy, only two of which were first rate.
The success of the landings depended upon air superiority over the amphibious force and air interdiction to prevent German reinforcements. Three months before D-Day the Anglo-American air forces initiated the “Transportation Plan,” a massive attack upon the French railway system and the bridges across the Seine and other major rivers. As part of the deception plan two-thirds of the bomb tonnage fell on targets in the Pas de Calais area. The 9th Air Force executed the American portion of the plan, joined in the last two months before D-Day by the 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command. The interdiction campaign also profited by the sabotage and espionage activities of the French underground. In all, rail traffic in northern France and western Germany fell by 70 percent before the invasion. The air campaign also had a special urgency, since the Germans had introduced the first of their “V” rocket-bombs, which might disrupt the invasion and discourage the British.
The actual assault placed more than 100,000 Allied troops ashore in France by the end of D-Day. Three American infantry divisions and two airborne divisions fought their way into positions behind two beaches at the western half of the Allied landing area; on “Omaha” beach the Germans inflicted shocking casualties, but on “Utah” methodical naval gunfire, weak defenses, and the confusion created by the massive airborne assault allowed the Americans to anchor the right flank. The British attack seized the left flank with three divisions, three armored brigades, an air assault division, and various commando formations. Montgomery, however, did not take Caen, the city that controlled the road network south of the Seine and the gateway to open tank country, for the conservative British general feared a massive Panzer counterattack. It did not come, largely because Hitler thought the Normandy attack was only a diversion and would not allow his front-line commanders to commit the Panzer reserve or draw troops from the 15th German Army in the Pas de Calais.
American and German Divisions, Manpower and Equipment 1944
* * *
U.S. INFANTRY
U.S. ARMORED
U.S. AIRBORNE
GERMAN INFANTRY
GERMAN MECH. INFANTRY
GERMAN PANZER
Men
15,768
11,581
8,533
12,700<
br />
13,800
13,700
Infantry
8,800
4,700
6,700
5,500
7,000
5,200
Machine guns
950
940
376
656
1,101
1,231
Antitank rocket launchers
663
669
182
108
—
—
Mortars
145
94
140
163
76
72
Towed antitank guns
93
—
46
21
30
—
Self-propelled antitank guns
—
36
—
12
44
44
Artillery howitzers
70
54
36
78
54
54
Artillery guns
—
—
—
12
83
82
Armored cars
49
80
—
—
35
35
*Tanks
76
307
—
48
92
150
Trucks and light vehicles
1,560
1,496
408
615
2,637
2,685
Horse-drawn wagons
—
—
—
1,466
—
—
* * *
*A U.S. and German infantry division often had one tank battalion attached to it.
The Normandy campaign quickly changed into a bitter, two-month slugfest, with the tide turning to the Allies’ advantage. In the American sector the hedgerow country, characterized by narrow roads and textbook defensive terrain, slowed the advance to a bloody crawl to the south to link and expand the beachhead area. The only dramatic success was the seizure of Cherbourg, but even there the German defenders held long enough to destroy the port facilities. In the British sector, Montgomery’s 21st Army Group took Caen and destroyed the German piecemeal armored counterattacks, but the British won no striking victories that allowed an Allied breakout. Moreover, the Allies had difficulty building their logistical base, for a severe storm ruined their extemporized port facilities along the beaches, and the land battle did not secure enough ground for adequate air bases and depots. Nevertheless, by early July the Allies had a secure lodgment on the Continent, packed with more than a million men and protected by superior air forces.
Frustrated by Montgomery’s penchant for bold promises and weak accomplishment, Eisenhower looked to Omar Bradley’s 12th U.S. Army Group to open the enclave to the west and south with an overwhelming attack by the 1st U.S. Army, to be followed by an exploitation by George S. Patton’s 3d U.S. Army. In the last week of July, Bradley launched Operation COBRA, which used the full range of American armored and air capabilities, including saturation attacks by heavy bombers. Although the bombers had the unfortunate habit of dropping their loads on friend and foe alike, the one-corps attack slugged its way forward against weakening German resistance. With one flank on the ocean and the other in the Normandy hills, the American divisions penetrated the enemy positions, and within a week the 3d U.S. Army had plunged through the gap, sending one corps on to Brittany and another corps to the northeast to envelop the whole 7th German Army position around the Normandy enclave. Finally alert to the severity of the German position, Hitler ordered a major counteroffensive against the exposed American left flank in the Mortain area. But warned of the impending attack by ULTRA, the 1st U.S. Army and tactical air attacks ruined the Panzer assault. Although a fit of caution prevented the Allies from trapping the whole 7th German Army and Panzer Group West, the battle ended with the Allies free to exploit their victory for one ecstatic month. While the 21st British Army Group drove north across the Seine into the Pas de Calais, the 12th U.S. Army Group drove north and east on either side of Paris, which was liberated by the Resistance and French and American divisions on August 25.
Everywhere in Europe the Allies seemed close to victory. The German high command was in disarray. In late July a group of German generals and civilians attempted to kill Hitler and end the Nazi regime. Although unsuccessful, the attempted coup, coupled with the Allied victories in France and the Russian advances in the east, brought extensive confusion to the Nazi war effort. Two German field marshals committed suicide rather than face Hitler’s tender mercies, and Hitler sacked his supreme commander in France, Gerd von Rundstedt. In Italy the Allies had finally taken Rome (June 4) and moved north before the Germans could restore their position along another fortified belt. The new stalemate in Italy was no comfort to the Germans, for the Americans had at last overwhelmed Churchill’s reluctance and their own shipping shortages to mount ANVIL, the invasion of southern France. On August 15 a Franco-American invasion force, built around divisions redeployed from Italy, landed without serious resistance and drove north as part of a vast double envelopment of all the German forces west of the Rhine. The drive up the valley of the Rhone River brought the new 6th U.S. Army Group up to the flank of the 3d U.S. Army in early September, which meant that the Allies now had a continuous front from the German frontier to the English Channel.
The race across France slowed in September. At the root of the Allies’ problems was the voracious appetite of their highly mechanized and motorized armies. The American armies especially had outrun their supply lines. Patton, whose 3d U.S. Army had already reached Lorraine and the approaches to the Rhineland, argued that the rest of the Allied armies should surrender their gasoline and ammunition to his divisions. Montgomery was equally insistent that his army group receive highest priority in supplies, and he tried to reverse his reputation for conservatism with Operation MARKET-GARDEN, an airborne-armored thrust through Holland across the lower Rhine. Although MARKET-GARDEN brought the 21st British Army Group to the Rhine, the German counterattacks showed special ferocity and deprived the Allies of the bridge at Arnhem, which ended the operation. Eisenhower’s logisticians extemporized as best they could as the two Allied army groups in the north cried for supplies. Nonstop truck operations (the “Red Ball Express”) shuttled critical supplies forward, and transport aircraft performed similar services. Nevertheless, the Allied Expeditionary Forces could not maintain wide, continuous offensives without pipelines and railroads. The former took time to build, and the latter took time to repair. The Germans, on the other hand, profited from a shortened front and supply lines as well as the special ardor that comes from fighting for one’s own national territory. Along the vaunted West Wall, or Siegfried Line, the Allied advance stalled.
As German resistance stiffened along the approaches to the Rhine, Eisenhower’s command faced three major, interrelated problems. One was operational, one logistical, and one organizational, and all three influenced the character of the campaign. The operational difficulty occurred when Montgomery, promoted to field marshal and supported in Britain by even those who found him insufferable, urged Eisenhower to reinforce the 21st British Army Group with at least one American army and to give the British the Allied supply priority. Montgomery would then advance on a narrow front through Holland and the northern Rhineland to the north German plain in what he described as a “Schlieffen plan in reverse.” Montgomery’s plan had at least the advantage of strategic concentration, since he had pointed the 21st British Army Group at the heartland of the Third Reich. Patton’s proposed offensive into Bavaria boasted élan in the pursuit of secondary objectives. The logis
tical crisis of autumn 1944 would not allow a full offensive all along the Allied front, so Eisenhower had to choose some concentration.
Eisenhower also had reason to worry about his ability to fight the Germans on even terms, for he could see an end to the number of divisions he could deploy in Western Europe. His shortage stemmed from decisions a year old, which limited the Army ground forces to 90 divisions. Assuming that Allied aviation and the Russians would compensate for limited ground forces, the War Department had cut division activations and in the autumn of 1944 had only twenty-four divisions left to deploy worldwide. In September Eisenhower had thirty-four divisions, and he received only fifteen more before the war ended. (Six American divisions remained in Italy.) The British had no more deployable combat divisions at all.
The administrative and logistical demands of the Army’s overseas effort also limited the numbers of combat troops, a situation worsened by the Army’s inability to manage its own manpower system. One general characterized the manpower pipeline as “an invisible horde of people going here and there but seemingly never arriving.” In late 1944 the combat ground forces worldwide numbered 2.1 million, with another million men in supporting units, in an Army of about 8 million. Only about a quarter of the ground army’s total strength at any one time was assigned to units engaged with the enemy; the infantrymen in these units suffered 90 percent of the casualties. The War Department took drastic action in late 1944 to meet the immediate crisis, which was finding replacements for the existing divisions. It deactivated units of marginal utility (e.g., antiaircraft battalions), stripped service units of combat-fit replacements, and shipped marginally trained (fifteen to seventeen weeks) eighteen-year-olds and physically limited older men to Europe.
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