Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

  Montgomery's change from a “breakout” plan to a “tie-down” better fit his preference for attrition warfare. Strangely this major change was never transmitted below the level of corps commanders nor beyond the personnel of the Second Army staff. Montgomery never even fully briefed all the senior staff of the Twenty-First Army Group. This revised GOODWOOD plan was supposedly sent to SHAEF on July 17. However it was never received!

  After the war Brigadier David Belchem, chief of operations at the Twenty-First Army Group, stated that Montgomery deliberately withheld the change to more limited objectives for GOODWOOD in order to keep SHAEF support, especially that of the air forces. “The reason for the secrecy was to avoid disclosure above all to Tedder…and Eisenhower that Goodwood was intended to pin down the enemy armor in the British sector. Goodwood was to have very limited objectives in terms of distance.”40

  GOODWOOD had been oversold to OVERLORD's senior commanders as an overwhelming surprise attack. Is it astonishing that after Monty's great breakout had failed, they felt misled, even lied to, and wanted Monty's head in a sack?

  The problem was Montgomery's peculiar command perspective. He always wanted to be seen as the victor. His final GOODWOOD orders gave him enough leeway so no matter what the final outcome he could claim that everything had proceeded according to his “plan.”41

  GOODWOOD'S BREAKOUT CHARADE

  Early on July 18 over seven hundred heavy artillery guns opened fire on the German lines joined by naval vessels in the bay of the Seine. Overhead the first wave of a giant air offensive of two thousand heavy and six hundred medium bombers of the RAF and USAAF began dropping about eight thousand tons of bombs. For four hours the Allied air fleet carpet-bombed German positions while British and Canadian troops watched the massive destruction with rising excitement.42

  In theory the enemy defenses were smashed. Tanks were flipped over. Machine-gun posts demolished. Infantry trenches and their occupants buried. Anti-tank guns smashed. Soldiers dazed and shaken surrendered to the first advancing tanks.

  Yet the carpet-bombing was far from totally effective. The greatest number of bombs and shells fell into empty woods and fields. In particular, the scattered batteries of German 88mm flank batteries escaped without direct hits. German Tiger tanks unexpectedly came into action. Extensive minefields remained intact in front of the British advance units.

  At 7:30 a.m. the lead armor of the Eleventh Armored Division began its advance through a few narrow lanes cleared of minefields. Soon huge traffic jams developed while the Guards and Seventh Armored Divisions waited for the Eleventh to clear and cross the bridges over the Orne. (See Map 15.)

  After the bombardment the Germans’ zonal defense in depth on the Caen-Falaise plain was still largely intact. Their several fortified lines were covered by interlocking firing positions. Panzer Group West's reserve units stood nearby to launch furious counterattacks. This was possibly the best German defense system that Rommel had devised during the entire Normandy campaign.

  The British armor now poured through a bombed gap two miles wide and three miles deep. But the infantry remained on its flanks or held up in minefield traffic jams. This meant that the armor rolled forward alone without mutual armor-infantry support, the most effective tactical formation.43

  Part of this failure was due to the acute infantry shortage plaguing the British army. As Dempsey noted, “I was prepared to lose a couple of hundred tanks. So long as I didn’t lose men.”44

  On the right wing the Eleventh, Seventh, and Guards Armored Divisions advanced. Facing them was the Twenty-First Panzer Division, other elements of the First SS Panzer Corps, and artillery and flank Luftwaffe units that had been evacuated from Caen. Here the Allied bombardment was not as devastating as at GOODWOOD's offensive center. (See Map 15.)

  Once the British forces advanced past Cagny, they planned to redeploy in a vast “V” armored wave to smash toward the Falaise plain. Part of the German defense included Battle Group Luck commanded by Major Hans von Luck. Scouting on the forward edge of the German defensive line, he was startled at the magnitude of this British armored advance.

  Luck dashed into Cagny where he saw an 88mm Luftwaffe antiaircraft artillery battery. He ordered the battery's captain to redeploy and attack the British armor. The captain refused. “Major, my concern is enemy planes, fighting tanks is your job. I’m Luftwaffe.” Luck drew his pistol and replied, “Either you’re a dead man or you can earn yourself a medal.”45

  The captain moved his guns into an apple orchard to stop the British until German reserves could be moved into position. The first advancing tanks were hit at almost point-blank range. A reinforced line of seventy-eight 88s poured devastating rounds of fire on the British armored advance.46

  What was not destroyed by the 88s was subsequently wiped out by the Tiger tanks of the First SS Panzer Corps and its deeply echeloned defenses. The remainder of this day turned into the biggest tank battle of the OVERLORD campaign. Masses of British Sherman and Cromwell tanks were attacked by the outnumbered but superior German Tiger and Panther tanks. German panzer grenadiers equipped with Panzerfaust (an anti-tank weapon) and sticky bombs also confronted the British armored advance. The GOODWOOD tank wave began to lose its momentum. At nightfall the German First SS Panzer Division renewed the counterattack, inflicting terrible losses.47

  As O. H. Marstan, a wireless operator with the Grenadier Guards, recalled, “The whole area was ablaze, tanks on fire and abandoned, carriers, half-tracks, motor vehicles, all knocked out.”48

  During the night of July 18, Canadian forces captured most of the city of Caen. Though this was important, the principal objective of GOODWOOD was to drive a British armored wedge deep into the German defenses in order to break through to the Caen-Falaise plain and thus be in position for the follow-up breakout.49 This was not going to happen.

  By the afternoon of July 19 the Germans had reformed their entire front line. On July 20, amid several German counterattacks, Montgomery canceled GOODWOOD. His breakout charade was over.50

  Monty's greatest mistake was launching a massive armored frontal assault against Germany's strongest defensive positions. Montgomery could have sent his forces to push through around Caen. He thus might have avoided the over five thousand casualties and loss of over four hundred tanks incurred in this failed offensive. Dempsey and de Guingand both agreed that a greater GOODWOOD advance had been possible, including the capture of all the Orne bridges from Caen to Argentan. But Monty lost his nerve.51

  Instead the Germans had turned the battlefield into what historian Carlo D’Este called “a massive scrapyard of broken and burnt-out British armor.”52 Another observer described GOODWOOD as “the death ride of the armored divisions.”53

  Montgomery mistakenly shelved the bold GOODWOOD plan to keep his infantry losses low. Yet it was the infantry that suffered high casualties. The Allies had a vast pool of equipment to rapidly replace all the British tank losses.

  In the final analysis GOODWOOD was one of the most poorly planned and delivered Allied offenses of the war in Europe. It was Montgomery's greatest failure up to that time.54

  “A MONSTROUS BLOOD BATH”

  A large part of Goodwood's failure can be credited to Erwin Rommel. As previously mentioned, he prepared the German dispositions as a layered in-depth defense on the Falaise plain. Its success and Montgomery's caution scuttled the British breakthrough. Goodwood was to be Rommel's last victory.

  By mid-July Rommel knew that a major Allied offensive was coming soon. By then German intelligence suspected that divisions subordinated to Patton's First US Army Group for the supposed “real” invasion at Pas-de-Calais were reinforcing the OVERLORD bridgehead. They also reported to Rommel the effectiveness of the Allied attacks that resulted in “systematic and mathematically exact destruction of the defenders through artillery barrages and carpet bombing.”55 A German corps commander described these defensive battles around Caen and in the Cotentin Peninsula as nothing less than “a
monstrous blood-bath.”56

  Rommel already believed that the battle in Normandy and the war was already lost for Germany. Since D-Day, the Seventh Army had sustained casualties of over 94,000 soldiers and 2,300 officers, while receiving only 6,000 replacements. By July 25, the Germans were outnumbered 3.8 to 1. Four hundred eighty-one tanks and assault guns had been destroyed by July 31. A further 470 were in repair workshops. This comprised over 50 percent of the Wehrmacht's armored forces in Normandy. Rommel estimated that at this attrition rate the entire front would implode within thirty days.57

  Yet despite this extremely high casualty rate, the German soldiers fought on in Normandy with great skill, bravery, and unremitting tenacity. Their tactical ability and, for some, ideological fervor, played a role. But since the war historians have discovered that personal desperation and fear also explained some of their behavior in combat.

  During the entire First World War, only forty-eight German soldiers were executed for military infractions. However between 1939 and March 1943, over 1,500 combatants had been shot for desertion and so-called acts of “subverting the will of the people to fight.” By June 1944, over seven thousand soldiers had been put to death. As the Wehrmacht collapsed in France by the late summer of 1944, many of the German soldiers captured by the Allies were suffering from extreme battle fatigue.58

  Writing after the war, General Fritz Bayerlein, commander of the Panzer Lehr Division, voiced the opinion that by the summer of 1944 Rommel believed that it might become necessary to negotiate a reasonable peace even if it meant opposing Hitler. However, Rommel felt that any coup d’état would be a mistake if it took place before the Allied invasion. He thought that if he could repel the Allied invasion, the Western Allies might be willing to sign an armistice to fight side by side with a new Germany against the Russians.

  After the July 20 attempt on Hitler's life he told his son, “The attempt on Hitler was stupid. What we had to fear with this man was not his deeds, but the aura which surrounded him in the eyes of the German people.”59

  Rommel and Speidel, his chief of staff, came to realize that the collapse of the Normandy front was imminent. However on July 15 before taking any action, Rommel sent Hitler what was to be his last blunt assessment of the deteriorating situation. His purpose was to state his case clearly and prevent anyone in the future from accusing him of stabbing Hitler in the back to end the war:

  The situation on the Normandy front is growing worse every day and is now approaching a grave crisis…. Our casualties are so high that the fighting power of our divisions is rapidly diminishing. Replacements from home are few in number…. Material losses are also huge and have so far been replaced on a very small scale…. The newly arrived infantry divisions are raw…even the bravest army will be smashed piece by piece, losing men, arms and territory…. Supply conditions are so bad that only the barest essentials can be brought to the front…. In the foreseeable future the enemy will succeed in breaking through our thin front…and thrusting deep into France…. The troops everywhere fighting heroically, but the unequal struggle is approaching its end…. I feel myself in duty bound to speak plainly on this point.60

  At the time that Rommel sent this report, he was prepared to open negotiations with the Allies. He had won over Kluge as well as many other German officers and prominent civilians. However before he acted, fate intervened.61

  On July 17, the day before GOODWOOD began, Rommel had spent many hours inspecting the front. At 4:00 p.m. he left Sepp Dietrich's First SS Panzer Corps headquarters to drive back to his own La Roche-Guyon command post. Rommel's staff car was on a secondary road near the hamlet of St. Foy de Montgommery when he was ambushed by two Allied fighter-bombers (was Monty getting his revenge?). Captain Helmuth Lang, Rommel's aide, described the results of the attack:

  The enemy aircraft, flying at great speed, came up to within 500 yards of us and the first one opened fire…. Rommel was wounded in the face by broken glass and received a blow on the left temple and cheekbone which caused a triple fracture of the skull and made him lose consciousness immediately…. The driver lost control of the car…. Marshal Rommel…was thrown out, unconscious, when the car turned over and lay stretched out on the road.62

  Treated locally at first and later transferred to a Luftwaffe hospital, Rommel was given little chance of recovery. Three days later he was still close to death, when on July 20, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg tried to blow up the führer.63

  At 12:50 p.m. a huge explosion from a bomb planted by Stauffenberg destroyed the conference room at Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters in East Prussia. Though other officers died or were severely injured, the führer escaped with only superficial injuries. Operation Valkyrie was another of the many failed attempts to rid Germany of Hitler. It had been led by General Beck, Stauffenberg, Kluge, and others who decided to act before the Normandy front imploded and the Russians occupied Poland and East Prussia. They planned to use Rommel as a well-known figurehead and Kluge to negotiate an armistice with the Western Allies.

  Hitler's vengeance afterward knew no limits. Valkyrie's failure resulted in another bloodbath with over seven thousand so-called conspirators rounded up by the Gestapo. More than 4,900 of them were executed.64

  One of the conspirators, Colonel von Hofacker, broke down under hideous torture in the Gestapo dungeon at the Prinz Albrechtstrasse in Berlin. He blurted out that Rommel told him, “Tell the people in Berlin they can count on me.” This forced confession triggered Hitler's decision that Rommel must die.65

  By that time Rommel had made a miraculous recovery. An ordinary fifty-two-year-old male would have succumbed to Rommel's many grievous wounds. However his years of physical exercise and rugged constitution helped him to recover enough to be moved to a sophisticated hospital in Germany and on August 8 to his home at Herrlingen near Ulm.

  As Keitel later explained to interrogators at the Nuremberg trials, Hitler realized “that it would be a terrible scandal in Germany if this well-known Field Marshal, the most popular general we had, were to be arrested and haled before the People's Court.”66 Rommel's son Manfred added that if people found out that “even Field Marshal Rommel regarded the war as lost and was advising a separate peace [it] would have been tantamount to a declaration of military bankruptcy.”67

  On October 14, SS troops surrounded Rommel's home and two generals arrived to deliver Hitler's ultimatum to either take poison or stand trial. If he selected the first option, Rommel would be given a major state funeral with full military honors and his family would be left untouched. The Desert Fox died that day. Official sources stated that he succumbed to a cerebral embolism due to skull fractures from the July 17 accident.

  On October 18 Field Marshal von Rundstedt looked broken and bewildered as he delivered the funeral oration: “His heart belonged to the Fuhrer.”68 The words could not have been more ironic. “Perhaps the most despicable part of the whole story,” wrote Manfred Rommel, “was the expressions of sympathy from members of the German Government.”69

  Kluge was already reeling from the loss of Rommel and the repercussions of the failed Stauffenberg plot. After taking over Rommel's Seventh army group as well as retaining overall theater command, Kluge wrote to Hitler that the fighting potential of his meager forces had been drained to the point of desperation. Kluge wondered if Hitler understood “the tremendous consumption of forces on big battle days.”70 The Twelfth SS Panzer Division now only fielded fifteen operational tanks. The Sixteenth Luftwaffe Field Division had ceased to exist as a combat unit.

  Rommel had not been allowed to construct any new defensive lines before GOODWOOD. In mid-July the panzer divisions had the strength to undertake a fighting withdrawal to newly prepared front lines. Now at the end of the month, the vital question for Kluge was how long they could hold out. He told Hitler, “The moment is fast approaching when this overtaxed front line is bound to break up.”71

  The German field commanders in Normandy knew they could not absorb further punishm
ent of this magnitude. By the last week of July, while Kluge was at the point of desperation, he called his position an “ungeheures Kladderadatsch—an awful mess.”72

  WHY MONTY SURVIVED

  After Goodwood, a mounting cry now arose on both sides of the Atlantic—“Sack Montgomery!” For once Monty privately became visibly worried, though he publically still maintained the fiction that all was proceeding according to his “plan.”

  Let us consider his record in Normandy:

  First, on D-Day Montgomery had planned to take Caen and perhaps even get his tanks to Falaise. He missed by a good three miles to even enter Caen's outskirts.

  Second, he planned a double envelopment through Villers-Bocage that was driven back in defeat.

  Third, EPSOM was a planned “right hook” to sweep around Caen that was brought to a standstill by the German armored reserve.

  Fourth, CHARNWOOD, his head-on assault plan to bomb Caen into rubble, came to an abrupt halt at the river dividing the city, leaving the dominating heights south of the city and the open Falaise plain still in German hands.

  Fifth, GOODWOOD was billed as Monty's ultimate breakthrough plan. Before it started, he secretly scaled back this objective, as a result achieving little at a great cost in men and material. He did, however, make what proved to be outrageous claims and misleading statements to Eisenhower, Churchill, other commanders, and the British press on his intentions and the battle's progress.