Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

  There was great jubilation over the fall of Cherbourg in the Allied camp. It capped the most dramatic advance since D-Day. But the advance to Cherbourg fell short of heightening the pace of the Allied advance or improving the invasion's vulnerable logistics and anchoring the bridgehead.

  The Allies were behind schedule. Taking the northern Cotentin Peninsula had taken too much time. An ammunition drought became so severe that Bradley had to tap his emergency ammo dump, and supplies had to be airlifted to the bridgehead. Between the weather and the bocage, Bradley had made little progress fulfilling Montgomery's order to drive farther south toward Coutances. When on June 27 General Everett Hughes, Eisenhower's “eyes and ears” during OVERLORD, reported that there were new movement delays of Bradley's First Army, the supreme commander had second thoughts about the current SHAEF command arrangements. Eisenhower told Hughes, “Sometimes I wish I had George Patton over there!”61

  On the day of Cherbourg's surrender (June 27) Ramsay released all the US battleships and cruisers back to Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of US naval operations. King had demanded the return of these ships on June 19, seven days before the Cherbourg bombardment, in order to expedite the upcoming invasion of southern France (ANVIL/DRAGOON, August 13).62

  On June 20 Ramsay officially ended Operation NEPTUNE. In the fleet of seven thousand ships, only 267 were lost. The Germans sank 108 vessels (mostly victims of mines), including twenty-five warships (only 1.5 percent). Severe weather caused the loss of 153, and six were sunk by marine hazards.63

  Fig. 7.7. German destruction of Cherbourg Port. June 1944. (Archives Normandie 1939–1945)

  In the judgment of naval historian Craig Symonds, “It was an astonishing chronicle of perseverance and productivity.” A “highly professional Bertram Ramsay” led a team of dedicated people who made NEPTUNE's success possible.64 On July 26, Ramsay wrote, “Because it all went so smoothly it may seem to some people that it was all easy and plain sailing. Nothing could be more wrong. It was excellent planning and execution.”65

  By July 5, the millionth Allied soldier landed in Normandy. An “apt and timely enough testimony to NEPTUNE's success,” wrote Correlli Barnett.66 Ramsay would continue to be in charge of the massive naval logistics for OVERLORD. But once Operation NEPTUNE ended, SHAEF ignored his warning that it was logistically vital to quickly capture a major port to support the Allied advance across Europe into Germany.

  EPSOM: THE BLITZ THAT “CRACKED”

  While Bradley was advancing toward Cherbourg, Eisenhower was fuming over Montgomery's delay in taking Caen. On June 22, the Soviets launched Operation BAGRATION on the Russian front. Over the next three weeks more than 350,000 German soldiers were killed or captured, and the Russians ended up at the gates of Warsaw.67

  This put added pressure on the Western allies to do their part. Montgomery, however, insisted first on “tidying up his administrative tail” (i.e., deploying an overwhelming abundance of soldiers and weapons before attacking).68 Finally on June 18, he sent a directive to Bradley and Dempsey stating that his “operations against Caen will be developed by means of a pincer movement from both flanks.”69 The Great Storm then struck in the English Channel, delaying his Operation EPSOM from June 23 to June 26.70

  Monty intended to use all three corps of his Second Army plus additional armored units: sixty thousand soldiers and over six hundred tanks. General Richard O’Connor's VIII Corps was to spearhead the attack to the west of Caen, supported by XXX Corps. They would establish a bridgehead south of the Odon River then advance to the Orne River. The key was to capture Hill 112 between the two rivers. (See Map 11.) I Corps attacking north of Caen would prepare to eliminate the German salient and clear the city.71

  In a message to Eisenhower on June 25, Monty assured him, “[The] blitz attack of 8 Corps goes in tomorrow at 7:30 hrs and once it starts I will continue the battle on the eastern flank till one of us cracks and it will NOT be us.”72 On June 29 the British Eleventh Armored took Hill 112. Meanwhile German panzer counterattacks were countered by the Fifteenth British Infantry Division that turned the German attack into a rout. O’Connor wanted to then drive the Eleventh Armored to seize a bridgehead over the Orne River beyond the Odon.

  Unfortunately, information on this important victory did not reach General Dempsey, commander of the British Second Army. He remained in the dark, still believing a major German panzer thrust was still to come. At headquarters Dempsey and Montgomery jointly decided to play it safe and pulled back the Eleventh Armored Division off Hill 112 instead of reinforcing it and continuing O’Connor's advance. This was a tragic decision. Future battles to take Hill 112 were some of the most grisly ones of OVERLORD, degenerating into a number of murderous hand-to-hand fights recalling the trench warfare of 1914–1918.

  Montgomery halted EPSOM on July 1 even though a second German counterattack by the Second Panzer Corps also was defeated. This aborted attack was a costly one for British forces as the British VIII Corps suffered 4,020 casualties in the five-day engagement and infantry losses ran well in excess of 50 percent. Once again the successful advance by British troops who were nearing their objectives was negated by the commanding officers’ failure of nerve. Like the D-Day advance on Caen, and the Villers-Bocage ploy, EPSOM was a dismal failure.73

  STALEMATE

  Eisenhower's great frustration over Monty's direction of the Normandy land battles is easy to understand. With EPSOM he had told Eisenhower, “I am prepared to have a show down with the enemy on my eastern flank for as long as he likes.”74 But after only five days of battle it was Monty who was the one who “cracked,” not Rommel. As historian Antony Beevor observed, this was Montgomery's well-established command behavior in which he “had the unusual gift of persuasively combining very bold speech and very cautious action. His handling of the Normandy ground battle was an excellent example of his self-delusional leadership.”75

  Even Ramsay, one of the few principal Normandy commanders who got along with the temperamental Monty, began to suspect that the stalemate developing in the land battle was the result of Montgomery's generalship. Ramsay noted in his diary, “Our 2nd Army more or less held down and our ‘blitz attack’ listed for Wednesday now postponed…ostensibly owing delay in build up! But I have my doubts whether that is really the cause. Certainly this long pause on the 2nd Army front is most regrettable.”76

  Yet Montgomery kept assuring everyone before, during, and after EPSOM, “My general broad plan is maturing quite reasonably well.” (Letter to General Alan Brooke, June 27).77 “[I] am well satisfied with present situation.” (Message to Winston Churchill, June 29).78 “Our tactics must remain unchanged…. To retain the initiative…. To develop operations for the capture of Caen as opportunity offers—and the sooner the better.” (Directive to Bradley and Dempsey, June 30).79

  But what plan was Monty referring to? His first plan was to take Caen on D-Day and position the Allied armored divisions on the Falaise plain, with the American breakthrough on the right avoiding the bocage country. After moving southward into Brittany, the Americans and British would join up for an eastward advance toward Paris.

  Or was Monty now referring to his recently hatched plan B. He formally announced this new plan on June 30 to Bradley and Dempsey after his third attempt to capture Caen failed. “My broad policy, once we had secured a firm lodgment area has always been to draw the main enemy forces into the battle on our eastern flank [British/Canadian], and to fight them there, so that our affairs on the western flank [American] could proceed the easier.”80

  Montgomery's evasions became too much for Eisenhower and the other OVERLORD commanders. He simply refused to acknowledge the failure of his original D-Day strategy. Eisenhower began to see that the implications of this new holding strategy amounted to a siege of Caen. This was no breakout toward Paris. Bradley also told Eisenhower not to expect a quick breakout, as his divisions were tied down in the bocage.

  The first major failure of the OVERLORD operation start
ed here. Because Montgomery's British and Canadian forces did not quickly seize Caen on D-Day, the Germans were given time to concentrate their panzer divisions around the city. Before the invasion Monty had warned that this must be avoided at all costs. So now he tried to turn his defeat into a victory through an unimaginative and inadequate cover-up of the collapse of his original plan. Montgomery constantly repeated this artifice, hoping that his fellow commanders and posterity might come to believe it. He was wrong.

  By the end of June, the Allied invasion of Normandy had deteriorated into a stalemate. The British, Canadians, and Americans had established a solid invasion bridgehead, but Montgomery's failure to take Caen allowed the Germans to bring in reinforcements, thus making it harder for the Allies to seize this key city and launch the breakout to liberate France. Bradley's American army had consequently been forced into a confusing and costly battle of the hedgerows for which they were ill-equipped and ill-trained.81

  “MAKE PEACE—YOU FOOLS!”

  The British attack on June 26 forced Rundstedt and Rommel to redeploy the newly arrived SS panzer corps from an attack formation into the defense of the Caen perimeter. Gunfire from Royal Navy ships off the Normandy coast was able to inflict significant damage on German forces from over eighteen miles away. The shell craters were twenty feet across and ten feet deep. Rommel and Geyr von Schweppenburg were shaken by the loss of men and equipment that they could not replace. By June 25, the Wehrmacht had lost 47,070 men, including six generals.82 Rommel saw his tanks reduced to stiffening the weakened German infantry divisions struggling to hold the line. Although the SS panzer corps finally mounted a counterattack in the Bayeux sector on June 29, it did not achieve any major breakthrough.

  This murderous battle of attrition was not confined to the panzer divisions. General Dietrich von Choltitz, new commander of the LXXXIV Corps, complained that his units were losing up to a battalion and a half of troops per day from artillery fire and air attacks. The German commanders in Normandy were united in demanding that something had to change before their steadily weakening line collapsed.

  At the height of the Epsom battle on June 29, the hopes of Rundstedt and Rommel were raised when Hitler summoned them both for a second meeting at Berchtesgaden. Before their arrival the two field marshals reached this full agreement on how to save the situation: Withdrawal from Caen. Have the infantry hold the line on the Orne River. Allow the rest and refit of the panzer divisions. Then launch a powerful counterattack on the Americans’ flank in the Cherbourg Peninsula. (See Map 12).

  Hitler made them wait for six hours before receiving them at 6:00 p.m. The field marshals gave their views that the army was being destroyed and needed to be redeployed. Hitler was furious and refused. Rundstedt told Liddell Hart, “There was no plan any longer. We were merely trying, without hope, to comply with Hitler's order that the line Caen—Avranches must be held at all costs.”83

  Upon their return from Berchtesgaden, they learned of the failed panzer corps strike at Bayeux. On July 1 Rundstedt, with Blumentritt, his chief of staff, listening in, called Keitel, the OKW chief of staff, and told him that the position “was impossible.” The German troops could “not withstand the Allied attacks, much less push them into the sea.”84

  Keitel asked, “What should we do?”

  “Make peace you fools,” the field marshal snapped.

  WHO WAS IN CONTROL?

  As the month of June ended the Allies were waging a series of confused battles that were largely contrary to their originally stated plans or those of the Germans. We might legitimately ask the question, “Who was in control?”

  For the Allies—the ground commander Montgomery had become basically incapable of either leading or wanting to lead the called for offensive breakout. Bradley was literally bogged down in the hedgerows. In England, Eisenhower, the supreme commander, remained oddly detached in this crisis. He did not want to interfere. The direction of Overlord began to drift.

  For the Germans—Hitler had absolute control over the Wehrmacht's deteriorating Normandy fortunes. Both Rundstedt and Rommel had become mere pawns on the führer's warped battlefield chessboard.

  “Neither Ike nor Brad has the right stuff. Ike is bound hand and foot by the British and does not know it. Poor fool. We actually have no Supreme Commander.”

  —General George S. Patton, 19441

  HITLER'S AX FALLS

  On July 2 Hitler, furious over Field Marshal von Rundstedt's frank criticism, relieved him of his command. Field Marshal Günther von Kluge was ordered to replace him. Hitler wanted to sack Field Marshal Rommel but relented because it would lower morale at the front and in Germany as well as leave a disastrous impression abroad.

  Kluge was with Hitler on July 1 when Keitel appeared and gave him Rundstedt's message about ending the war. Hitler made a snap decision to place Kluge in command of the West. Called “clever Hans” (his family name means “clever” in German), Kluge was an energetic, quick-witted, aggressive soldier, who was not popular with his colleagues. He had distinguished himself as commander of the Fourth Army during the 1940 conquest of France. He was considered ruthless and cold. Kluge hated Hitler, but he was bound to him by honors and favors Hitler had bestowed on him. Kluge, like Rundstedt, had been given 250,000 reichsmarks as a present by his grateful führer.2

  Kluge was with Hitler at Berchtesgaden after Kluge's six-month recovery from injuries in an air crash on the Russian front. Hitler had been considering him as the new commander of the German Central Army Group that was then melting away from the massive Russian summer offensive.

  Fig. 8.1. Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2004-0524-500/photo: o.Ang)

  Kluge arrived at La Roche-Guyon, Rommel's headquarters, on July 5. He immediately began arguing with Rommel deriding his overly pessimistic assessment of conditions in Normandy. Rommel flared up and told Kluge to take a personal tour of the Normandy front and talk to the field commanders before making any accusations.

  Over the following days Kluge did just that, something he had often done throughout the war. The response from all the officers in the Seventh Army, Fifth Panzer Army, and the First and Second SS Corps was unanimous—the situation was dire.

  Kluge completely changed his prior views and even apologized to Rommel. Kluge now backed the written strategic assessment that Rommel had sent to Hitler at the end of June. Within a few days Kluge's earlier cheerful and confident attitude regarding the Normandy front had become very somber and realistic. Hitler was not amused by this dramatic change in Kluge's perspective.3

  ALLIED STALEMATE CONTINUES

  A month into the invasion the Allied bridgehead remained only a beachhead. The concentration of troops and vehicles grew to such an extent that the combat zone looked more like a crowded parking lot at a major sports event than a modern battlefield. The bridgehead was too small for maneuver. It was so thin that ground personnel standing at the Isigny airstrip (see Map 13) could watch a flight of P-51 aircraft take off, bomb the enemy, return to land, and never lose sight of the Allied planes.

  At D+30 the Nazi swastika still flew over Caen, which made Montgomery look foolish. Bradley's First Army was wedged into a devilish terrain between hedgerow and swamp. Forward movement was painstaking for both infantry and armor.4

  Allied casualties began to resemble trench warfare losses from World War I. Young Allied soldiers had to be stacked up like cordwood in long rows awaiting burial. Normandy became one of the most murderous operations of the war with more of the casualties happening after D-Day. The British had limited manpower to replace these casualties.

  The Allied offensive had broken down. David I. Hall says it was “[l]acking an effective tactical doctrine and short of new ideas.”5 Fearful of German panzer counterattacks, the Allies at first landed too much armor, leading to inappropriate ratios of armor to infantry units. In the hedgerows Allied tanks without enough infantry support became easy targets for the Germans. Most of the British, American, and Cana
dian soldiers in Normandy had very little knowledge or experience with infiltration tactics that many in the German infantry had learned at the Russian front. The Wehrmacht was still a formidable foe whose combat quality turned out to be far higher than the Allies had first predicted.

  Bradley and Montgomery mounted limited offensive operations in early July. Little ground was gained, and casualties were high. OVERLORD's ground operations were deadlocked.

  BRADLEY'S OFFENSIVE FIZZLE

  In early July, Bradley's First Army had reorganized from the Cherbourg operation in preparation for the great breakout offensive toward Coutances. (See Map 13.) When Bradley held a press conference on July 3, reporters pressed him for the date of the new offensive to take St. Lo. This was the biggest city in that part of the Cotentin Peninsula that controlled the roads for the intended breakout to Coutances. “This is off the record,” Bradley told them before giving an answer. “I’d guess six days.” It would take about twice as long to advance those seven miles.6

  On July 4 at high noon, a 1,600-piece American artillery barrage opened the offensive, blanketing the whole front with a tremendous explosion. Yet from its green light onward the great offensive breakout fell apart, as Jonathan Jordan says, “like a wet biscuit.”7 Heavy rains often scrubbed ground-air support. The Americans struggled through rivers of mud made by the Germans flooding operations into the thick hedgerows of the bocage country.

  In the center, Lieutenant General Charles “Cowboy Pete” Corlett's XIX Corps attacked across severe hedgerow terrain straight toward St. Lo. Major General Troy Middleton's VIII Corps and Major General Joseph “Lightning Joe” Collins's VII Corps struck on the right in an all-out drive down the peninsula's west coast toward Avranches. On the left, Major General Leonard Gerow's V Corps protected Montgomery's flank near Caumont. (See Map 13.)