Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

  Fig. 11.1. General Charles de Gaulle at the liberation of Paris. August 26, 1944. (Imperial War Museums, Ministry of Information, Second World War Press Agency Print Collection)

  While de Gaulle was publicly asserting his preeminence as the leader of France, he privately asked Eisenhower to give him two US divisions for a show of force to guarantee his authority. As he was the self-appointed head of his Provisional Government of the Republic of France, he was still in a precarious position with the French people.

  Eisenhower was quite willing to give de Gaulle his show of force. He also wanted the people of France to clearly understand that de Gaulle had reached Paris by the grace of God and the strength of the Allied OVERLORD campaign.

  Eisenhower therefore had General Norman Cota's Twenty-Eighth Infantry Division moved up from Versailles and bivouacked at Bois de Boulogne in Paris. There the men cleaned their uniforms and equipment from the thirty-six days of dirt and grime in the battle line. They got two sets of orders: one for the parade and the second for their battle as they marched first for glory and then straight into combat.

  August 29 was a sunny day as the newly polished US Twenty-Eighth Division deployed into columns with loaded guns and full bandoliers. They swung down the Champs-Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe to the densely packed Place de la Concorde reviewed by Bradley, Gerow, de Gaulle, Koenig, and Leclerc.27

  Many people remembered how only four years earlier the conquering German Wehrmacht had marched along the same route to the tears and stunned disbelief of the Parisians. US veteran Raymond Sola at age one hundred reminisced on what he saw and felt as he marched on that August day: “I saw the joy and great adulation of the people of Paris as they watched us march past to restore their freedom.”28

  Fig. 11.2. The US Twenty-Eighth Infantry marches down the Champs-Élysées. (US Army)

  The division then continued through the city northward to Saint Denis. The Germans greeted their arrival with a short artillery barrage.

  Eisenhower's decision to liberate Paris, taken on his own authority, was one of his most important decisions as the SHAEF supreme commander. By giving de Gaulle the opportunity to occupy the Elysee Palace (France's presidential residence), he had installed a new government in France and prevented the real threat of a civil war. He also helped to save Paris from destruction and gave de Gaulle the means to resurrect France from the disastrous defeat of 1940 to again assume a great power status in the postwar reconstruction of Europe.29

  In liberating France since D-Day, the United States sustained over 125,000 casualties. The people of France also paid a heavy price. Almost one thousand members of the French resistance had died in the six-day Paris insurrection. Seventy thousand French civilians were killed by Allied actions (mainly bombing during the war). This number is greater than the total of British civilian deaths from the German bombing of England.30

  While Paris was being liberated, Operation ANVIL, the second Allied invasion of France, was launched on August 15 in the south of France. One of its goals was to land French troops to support de Gaulle's new government in Paris.

  “DRAGOONED” INTO ANVIL

  Since August 1943, American planners had called for an invasion of southern France in support of OVERLORD. Eisenhower wanted this operation so that the Allied armies could be supplied through the port of Marseilles as well as through Antwerp. He also wanted General Alexander Patch's American Seventh Army and General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny's First French Army deployed to take part in the future invasion of southern Germany.

  The British never stopped trying to stop ANVIL, or DRAGOON as Churchill renamed it, because the Americans had “dragooned” him into it. Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff opposed this invasion because it would take several divisions away from the Mediterranean theater, especially the Italian front. The British advocated an amphibious operation landing at Trieste that would advance through the Ljubljana Gap in the Balkans and take Budapest and Vienna. Churchill sought to prevent a postwar Soviet domination of Eastern Europe stretching down to the Adriatic.

  After being delayed several times because the sealift capacity was needed for OVERLORD, DRAGOON was finally launched on August 15. As an amphibious invasion it was second only to OVERLORD, comprising 300,000 troops, one thousand ships, and several thousand aircraft.31

  On this D-Day, a predawn nine-thousand-man airborne assault preceded the landings of sixty-six thousand soldiers. Resistance was light, resulting in fewer than four hundred casualties but over 2,300 German prisoners.32

  The Allied invasion along the Côte d’Azur from Nice and Marseilles was virtually unopposed. The major port of Marseilles was secured almost intact. This second invasion triggered a hurried Wehrmacht retreat from central and southwestern France. Even Hitler, for once, was forced to recognize that he had to evacuate this territory.

  In only one month, far ahead of projected results, the American and French armies had virtually eliminated the entire German Nineteenth Army. They bagged over 100,000 prisoners and liberated two-thirds of southern France. The American Seventh Army and French First Army marched 475 miles north of the Riviera landing beaches to converge with the OVERLORD armies for the invasion of Germany. (See Map 23.)

  Of great importance was the seizure of two main objectives, the ports of Marseilles and Toulon, in less than half the time the planners had projected. In the last three months of 1944, about one-third of the supplies and troops needed by the Allies were put ashore at these ports. As we will examine in the next chapter, Montgomery failed to make the Port of Antwerp fully operable until January 1945. It was not until then that Marseilles was superseded as SHAEF's major port. Even with Antwerp, about 25 percent of the weapons and shells used to defeat Nazi Germany went through Marseilles.33

  Eisenhower always defended his decision to launch Operation DRAGOON both because of its important logistical contribution and its rapid success in securing southern France. After the war Eisenhower wrote, “There was no development of that period which added more decisively to our advantages or aided us more in accomplishing the final and complete defeat of German forces than did this attack coming up the Rhône Valley [from the Riviera].”34

  “VICTORY DISEASE”—A SHORT-LIVED MALADY

  With the fall of Paris and the Third Army's rapid advances to the Seine, Eisenhower, Bradley, and other commanders began thinking that the war in Europe might soon be over. This “victory disease” raised the morale at SHAEF to new heights after the earlier months of stalemate. “Militarily the war is over,” said Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff.35

  This “victory disease” would be a short-lived malady due to three major factors—logistics problems, three competing plans for launching an invasion into Germany, and command indecision. Logistics remained a key issue throughout this campaign.

  SHAEF's logistical services became known as “Communications Zone” or COM Z. It faced two overwhelming obstacles: a lack of adequate port facilities and the limited ability to transport supplies to the ever-advancing front lines.

  Until the seizure of Marseilles, all of the Allied army's supplies were being unloaded over the Normandy beaches. The supply problem only increased as the lines of communication rapidly advanced eastward. Also as Allied forces advanced, they were confronted with bridges and railroads destroyed by the Germans or by Allied bombing. The army engineers could not repair them quickly enough to keep up with the Third Army's lightning advance and the needs of the other Allied armies.

  Admiral Ramsay had repeatedly warned Eisenhower and his generals that the logistical needs of OVERLORD required the capture of useable port facilities. His warnings were ignored, reflecting the traditional army subordination of logistics to operational imperatives.

  THE FIRST PLAN: BRADLEY-PATTON'S SOUTHERN THRUST: THE UNFORGIVING MINUTE

  On August 18, Eisenhower approved Bradley's plan for a major Allied drive south of the Ardennes. (See Map 24.) Patton was given two extra divisions for a push to the Sieg
fried Line. The US Third and First armies were to advance through France to the Saar industrial area, cross the Rhine, take Frankfort, and advance northeast to the Ruhr.

  PATTON's memoirs contains his plans for this thrust:

  On the twentieth of August at Bradley's Headquarters, I saw a map study which completely confirmed the line of advance which Bradley and I had favored since the beginning, namely, to drive through with two corps abreast and the third one echeloned to the right rear on the general axis, Nancy—Château Salins—Saarguemines—Mainz or Worms, then northeast through Frankfurt…. I was convinced then…there were no Germans ahead of us except those we were actually fighting. In other words, they had no depth. It was on this day that I definitely decided not to waste capturing Metz, but to contain it with as few troops as possible and drive for the Rhine.36

  A serious supply problem had to be addressed before launching a Third Army drive to the German border. As the railroad lines were severely damaged, motor transport had to fill the gap.

  In these desperate days to keep the advance moving, the so-called “Red Ball Express” was born out of a thirty-six-hour brainstorming session of American commanders. (“Red Ball” was a railroad express-shipping term.) On August 23, COM Z organized a special truck road route from the Normandy beaches to Chartres and Dreux. During its first eight days the Red Ball Express used nearly six thousand vehicles to deliver almost ninety thousand tons of supplies to depots nearer the front.37

  The Red Ball Express, however, was not a viable solution to fuel-supply problems. Each day the Third Army consumed about 400,000 gallons of fuel, but it was estimated that about the Red Ball trucks consumed nearly 300,000 gallons daily getting to the front. Only the capture of thirty-seven carloads of German gasoline and oil at Sens allowed the Third Army offensive to begin east of the Seine. Other captured supplies filled important voids. Over three hundred miles of captured German telephone wire replaced used Allied stocks. Twenty-five tons of medical equipment was captured at two different locations.38

  Airlifts also transported vital supplies. On August 25, 257 planes landed at Orleans with over five hundred tons of rations and other supplies. The next day another airlift brought eighty tons of medical supplies.39

  Between August 20 and August 22, Patton concluded from intelligence reports that it was possible to drive into Germany through the West Wall within ten days, as the Germans would not be able to place reinforcements fast enough to block the Third Army's advance.40

  On August 25, the Third Army set out to put PATTON's assessment to the test. That day the Fourth Armored Division captured the bridgehead across the Seine south of Paris at Troyes. (See Map 23.) For the next three days, Patton toured his advanced forces and found that German opposition continued to be sporadic and confused.

  On the next day, the XX Corps seized Romilly, while the XII Corps was moving toward Chalons. Then on August 28, the Eightieth Infantry Division attacked from Troyes and, by noon on August 29, took Chalons in a squeeze play. Wood's Fourth Armored Division charged about fifty miles from Troyes to the east bank of the Marne and importantly captured a German fuel depot of over 100,000 gallons of gasoline.

  Also on August 28 the Seventh Armored moved through Château-Thierry and captured several Marne River bridges. Reims was encircled by the Fifth Infantry Division and fell easily on August 30. By noon on August 31, the Seventh Infantry Division had driven seventy miles to Verdun where it rolled through the town and across the river. By September 1, the XX Corps and XII Corps had jumped across the Meuse in strength. Their advanced patrols were approaching the Moselle River closing on Metz and Nancy. (See Map 23.) The Rhine was just over ninety miles beyond the Moselle.

  The Third Army moved relentlessly onward. The German front was disintegrating. By August 29, Model realized that the Allies had absolute tactical superiority and had the ability to completely destroy German military forces in the west. Model had barely one hundred tanks available with only 570 aircraft to support them. The Allied superiority was twenty to one in tanks and twenty-five to one in aircraft.41 A proposed German defensive line on the Somme never materialized. An OB West diary termed the situation an “ignominious rout” and stated that soldiers without white flags surrendered by waving chickens.42 General Gunther Blumentritt, chief of staff of OB West, later gave this blunt summary of the German collapse on this front: “There were no German Forces behind the Rhine and at the end of August our front was wide open.”43

  As described in chapter 9, PATTON's Household Cavalry, his mobile intelligence force, was deployed to identify lightly held, even vacant sectors in the German lines through which his armored forces could quickly advance, thus penetrating the enemy's rear. This strategy was a modern adaptation of Napoleon Bonaparte's concept of the “indirect approach.” Patton used a mechanized variation of Napoleon's flank attack that penetrated to the enemy's rear, thereby upsetting the Germans’ defensive balance and triggering confusion and disorder. Patton used his armor like cavalry by splitting them up into small independent combat groups that led to the destruction of the enemy by placing the turning force across the Germans’ line of retreat.

  Fig. 11.3. Patton's Third Army advances across France. (US Army)

  In another era General Robert E. Lee had used another variation of this strategy on a much larger scale. He sent General Stonewall Jackson's corps on a long flanking maneuver at the battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. Stonewall struck General Hooker's Army of the Potomac in its flank and rear, causing confusion, retreat, and potentially the destruction of a major part of the Northern army. Jackson's accidental death in the midst of this battle helped to prevent a Union catastrophe but still resulted in a major Union military defeat.

  PATTON's tactics were used on a much smaller unit basis adapted to the absence of organized German resistance. It was a motorized advance by tanks, trucks, and jeeps that sped toward distant objectives. The Third Army's accelerated movement negated the Wehrmacht's skillful ability to organize and defend natural terrain barriers. Patton had perfected this type of opportunistic, elastic pursuit warfare that swept an overpowering Third Army to the border of Germany.44

  Patton believed that he could rupture the Siegfried Line before the Germans reinforced and reequipped it. On August 30 due to the Third Army's rapid advance to the Meuse, Patton wrote in his diary, “It is terrible to halt, even on the Meuse. We should cross the Rhine in the vicinity of Worms, and the faster we do it, the less lives and munitions it will take. No one realizes the terrible value of the ‘unforgiving minute’ except me. Some way I will get on yet.”45

  On that same day he had met with Bradley and Major General Harold Bull of Eisenhower's staff. Patton pointed out to them that Allied intelligence showed that the Germans facing Montgomery in the north still deployed considerable strength while in the south the “enemy is weak and disorganized.” He further stated he could break through a thinly manned West Wall in a few days with light losses. “But if we permit the Hun to man those massive emplacements, it’ll take weeks and thousands of casualties.”46 PATTON's evaluation proved correct.

  On August 31, PATTON's spearheads were barely thirty miles from the Saar industrial area and less than one hundred miles from the Rhine (see Map 22). At that moment the Germans had deployed only five undermanned divisions equipped with few anti-tank guns to hold the Moselle against six strong American spearhead divisions.

  But at this strategic moment in the Third Army's advance, Patton faced a formidable obstacle. Competing pressures for gasoline and the means to deliver it became a crucial battleground. The battle for Europe had become a battle over gasoline. Patton, though feeling he was on the cusp of a great victory, lamented to his wife, “Look at the map! If I could only steal some gas, I could win this war.”47 Patton told Bradley, “[J]ust give me 400,000 gallons of gasoline and I’ll put you inside Germany in two days.”48 Yet patton's pleas for the gasoline his forces needed fell on deaf ears. What were the factors behind the decision to deny patton's r
equest?

  THE SECOND PLAN: MONTGOMERY'S “FULL-BLOODED THRUST”

  While Patton's forces advanced through France, General Montgomery was conducting a multipronged campaign to keep his position as the commander of the ground forces and win acceptance for his competing plan for a northern thrust. On August 19 Eisenhower informed both Bradley and Montgomery that he would finally take over as ground commander on September 1. He ordered Montgomery to advance and take Antwerp and from there drive on the Ruhr. Bradley was to advance from Paris toward Metz.

  The change in ground command had always been planned but much delayed by Eisenhower. Montgomery, however, was furious over his “demotion.” He sent de Guingand to Ike, telling him the victory to date had been won by his personal command. The Allied forces needed to continue to operate under his single control. De Guingand delivered a missive from Montgomery that stated, “This is a WHOLE TIME job for one man…. To change the system of command now, after having won a great victory, would prolong the war.”49 Eisenhower politely listened to de Guingand but refused to budge.

  On August 17 Montgomery went to Bradley's headquarters to enlist his support for the northern thrust. His diary for that day states, “Bradley agreed entirely with my outline plan.”50

  Then on August 23, just before a scheduled meeting with Eisenhower, Monty again flew to Bradley's headquarters to make an eleventh-hour appeal for his northern thrust. Bradley relates what happened: “By that time, I had heard about Monty's outlandish demands for Ike to abdicate and I knew that Monty had been falsely stating that I agreed with his master plan. My reception was frosty…. I had not changed my mind. I had never agreed to the main features of Monty's plan.”51