Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

  Since you first joined me in North Africa in early 1942 I have consistently depended, with perfect confidence, upon your counsel and advice…. In my opinion you are pre-eminent among the Commanders of major battle units in this war. Your leadership, forcefulness, professional capacity, selflessness, high sense of duty and sympathetic understanding of human beings, combine to stamp you as one of America's great leaders and soldiers.68

  Bradley's distinguished record of service continued after the war. He served as the head of the Veterans Administration from 1945 to 1947. In 1948 President Truman appointed him US Army chief of staff; in 1949 he became the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The following year Bradley was promoted to five-star general. He was the last person to attain this rank.69

  THE FINAL COMMAND

  OVERLORD remains a military operation of the first magnitude in the history of war. It stands as the largest combined operation ever conducted. It also featured dazzling organization, technical ingenuity, and instances of great courage and bravery. But it also included bitter rivalries and disputes among its commanders that significantly slowed the race to victory. The differing objectives of Britain and the United States during the war and afterward added to these tensions. Churchill, in fact, very reluctantly agreed to the D-Day invasion, as he feared failure and instead pressed for an invasion through the Balkans.

  While each of the Allied commanders had significant strengths, they also had deficiencies and weaknesses that hurt the overall effort. Montgomery undermined Allied operations at Falaise and elsewhere because he wanted to receive the credit for being the victorious commander. His egotism and lack of tact triggered resentment among his fellow commanders. Also in pursuing Britain's political goals, Brooke and Montgomery expended much time and effort criticizing Eisenhower's abilities and decisions rather than cooperating with him.

  Eisenhower allowed his role as arbitrator to overshadow his responsibilities as supreme commander. He failed to use his authority to rein in rebellious subordinates at decisive points during OVERLORD and the subsequent European campaign.

  Bradley waited too long to involve Patton in the Normandy breakout and erred in stopping Patton's drive to close the Falaise gap. Patton's grandstanding and his lapse of judgment in Sicily threatened his military career and caused him to be sidelined at a time when he was most needed.

  The divisions among the Allied commanders were significant on D-Day and throughout the remaining campaign. We believe that if the strategy of speed and mobility had been further employed before and after August 1944, the futile battles of Arnhem, the Hurtgen Forest, and the Bulge would probably never have occurred. Unresolved crises in command were among the factors that prolonged the war in Europe for another nine months and produced an estimated 500,000 additional casualties.70 The Allied leaders could and should have done better.

  However OVERLORD was necessary for the Allied victory in Europe. The Russian army and Allied bombing campaign could not have guaranteed Germany's defeat. OVERLORD attained its strategic objectives by vanquishing the majority of German troops in Western Europe, liberating these nations, and advancing almost to Berlin.

  When Eisenhower returned to Omaha Beach in 1964, after a time span of twenty years, he emotionally invoked the reasons for the Normandy campaign and paid a fitting tribute to those who fought there:

  These men came here—British and our allies, and Americans—to storm these beaches for one purpose only, not to gain anything for ourselves, not to fulfill any ambitions that America had for conquest, but just to preserve freedom…. Many thousands of men have died for such ideals as these…but these young boys…were cut off in their prime…. I devoutly hope that we will never again have to see such scenes as these. I think and hope, and pray, that humanity will have learned…we must find some way…to gain an eternal peace for this world.71

  INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING D-DAY IN HISTORY AND MEMORY

  1. Robert Blake and William Roger Louis, eds., Churchill: A Major New Assessment of His Life in Peace and War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), p. 294.

  2. Erwin Rommel, The Rommel Papers, ed. B.H. Liddell Hart (London: Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1953), pp. 522–23.

  3. John Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 326.

  4. Michael Dolski, Sam Edwards, and John Buckley, eds., D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2014), pp. 52–53.

  5. Al Reinert, “Lone Star,” Smithsonian, January–February 2016, p. 110.

  6. Martin Blumenson, The Battle of the Generals (New York: William Morrow, 1993), p. 43.

  7. Niall Barr, Eisenhower's Armies: The American-British Alliance during World War II (New York: Pegasus, 2015), p. 1.

  8. Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 28.

  9. Ibid.; Stephan A. Hart, “A Very Lofty Perch,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2006), p. 8; Alan Axelrod, Patton's Drive (Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2009), p. 95.

  CHAPTER 1: SETTING THE STAGE: STRUGGLE OVER OPENING THE SECOND FRONT

  1. Quoted in Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1994), p. 32.

  2. Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1269.

  3. Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance, vol. 3, The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), pp. 605, 609.

  4. Lynne Olson, Citizens of London (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 149; Lewis E. Lehrman, Churchill, Roosevelt & Company (Guilford, CT: Stackpole Books, 2017), p. 279.

  5. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), pp. 892–902.

  6. Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring, vol. 5, The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), p. 582.

  7. Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), pp. 19–20; Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 31.

  8. Hastings, Overlord, p. 19; Lehrman, Churchill, Roosevelt & Company, p. 290.

  9. David Fraser, Alanbrooke (Feltham, UK: Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1982), pp. 424, 528.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Alan Brooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945, eds. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (London: Phoenix Press, 2001), p. 554.

  12. Hastings, Overlord, p. 20; Symonds, Neptune, pp. 13–15, 49.

  13. William Weidner, Eisenhower and Montgomery at the Falaise Gap (New York: Xlibris, 2010), p. 261; Charles E. Kirkpatrick, An Unknown Future and a Doubtful Present: Writing the Victory Plan of 1941 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1992), pp. 5–50, 121–139.

  14. Bertram Ramsay, The Year of D-Day, eds. Robert W. Love, Jr. and John Mayor (Hull, UK: University of Hull Press, 1994), pp. xxx–xxxi.

  15. Symonds, Neptune, pp. 54–55.

  16. Ibid.; Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1953), p. 241.

  17. Amanda Mason, “The Secret British Organization of the Second World War,” Imperial War Museums, http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-secret-organization-of-the-second-world-war (accessed May 22, 2017).

  18. Hastings, Overlord, p. 23.

  19. Ibid., p. 22–25; William F. Moore, “Overlord: The Unnecessary Invasion,” Air War College Research Report (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University, US Air Force, March 1986), https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/NoOverlord/index.html (accessed April 4, 2017).

  20. Symonds, Neptune, pp. 32, 33.

  21. Hastings, Overlord, p. 21.

  22. John Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 53.

  23. Symonds, Neptune, pp. 101–102; Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991)
, p. 622.

  24. Ramsay, Year of D-Day, p. xxxi.

  25. Quoted in Robert Murphy, Diplomat among Warriors (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), p. 163.

  26. Symonds, Neptune, pp. 98, 100; Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943, vol. 1, The Liberation Trilogy (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), pp. 283–89.

  27. Atkinson, Army at Dawn, pp. 283–84.

  28. Keegan, Normandy, pp. 51–52; B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1970), pp. 438–39; Hastings, Overlord, p. 21; Symonds, Neptune, pp. 101–102; Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, vol. 4, The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), pp. 669–95.

  29. Hastings, Overlord, p. 21; Keegan, Six Armies, p. 52.

  30. Atkinson, Army at Dawn, pp. 527–28.

  31. Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944, vol. 2, The Liberation Trilogy (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), pp. 75, 141–42, 168.

  32. Ronald C. Rosbottom, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light under German Occupation, 1940–1944 (New York: Back Bay Books, 2014), p. 296.

  33. Keegan, Normandy, p. 52; Atkinson, Battle, pp. 179–86, 207–29, 254–55, 297–306, 536–43.

  34. Quoted in Hastings, Overlord, p. 22.

  35. Keegan, Normandy, p. 54.

  36. Hastings, Overlord, p. 22.

  37. Brooke, War Diaries, pp. 482–488; Keegan, Normandy, pp. 54–55.

  38. Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 373.

  39. Keegan, Normandy, p. 55.

  40. John Kennedy, The Business of War (London: Hutchinson, 1957), pp. 301–305.

  41. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1963), p. 385.

  CHAPTER 2: FIRST SHOTS: CONTROVERSIES OVER D-DAY PLANNING

  1. Quoted in Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1994), p. 36 footnote.

  2. Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 105.

  3. Frederick Morgan, Overture to Overlord (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1950), p. 105.

  4. Duncan Anderson, “Remember This Is an Invasion,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2006), pp. 35–36; Morgan, Overture to Overlord, pp. 29–122; Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1994), pp. 32–34.

  5. Paul Kennedy, Engineers of Victory (New York: Random House, 2013), p. 233; Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), p. 547.

  6. Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), pp. 186–95; Kennedy, Engineers of Victory, pp. 229–35; Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 545–48; Larry Collins, The Secrets of D-Day (Beverly Hills, CA: Phoenix Books, 2006), pp. 8–9; John Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), pp. 120–25.

  7. Symonds, Neptune, p. 117.

  8. Anderson, “Invasion,” p. 37.

  9. Morgan, Overlord, pp. 123–50; Anderson, “Invasion,” pp. 37–38; Symonds, Neptune, p. 118; Bernard Ferguson, The Watery Maze (London: Collins, 1961), pp. 272–81; “The Secret Files of Churchill in Largs,” Largs and Mill Port News, February 23, 2010, http://www.largsandmillportnews.com/news/13747855.The_Secret_Files_of_Churchill_in_Largs/ (accessed April 5, 2017).

  10. Symonds, Neptune, p. 118.

  11. Collins, D-Day, p. 3.

  12. Quoted in Ibid., p. 4.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Quoted in Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 26.

  15. Quoted in John S.D. Eisenhower, Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), p. 437.

  16. Morgan, Overlord, p. 72.

  17. Ibid., p. 41.

  18. Hastings, Overlord, p. 27; Philip Warner, World War Two: The Untold Story (London: Cassell, 1988), p. 225.

  19. Quoted in Hastings, Overlord, p. 27.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Morgan, Overlord, pp. 146–48, 152–53; Churchill, Chasing the Ring, p. 582–85; Hastings, Overlord, p. 26–27; Eisenhower, Allies, p. 437–38.

  22. Symonds, Neptune, p. 108.

  23. Ibid., p. 119.

  24. Martin Blumenson, The Battle of the Generals (New York: William Morrow, 1993), p. 71; Morgan, Overlord, pp. 143, 148–50, 158–59.

  25. Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: The Organizer of Victory (New York: Viking Press, 1973), pp. 242–43; Symonds, Neptune, p. 119.

  26. D’Este, Normandy, p. 38.

  27. Samuel Eliot Morrison, The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (Boston, MA: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1963), p. 386; Anderson, “Invasion,” p. 35.

  CHAPTER 3: “WHO WILL COMMAND OVERLORD?”

  1. Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 29.

  2. Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring, vol. 5, The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), p. 365.

  3. Quoted in David Fraser, Alanbrooke (London: Collins, 1982), p. 21.

  4. Ibid., p. 6.

  5. Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1994), p. 44; Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 85; John S.D. Eisenhower, Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), photo caption opposite, p. 140; Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour, vol. 2, The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), p. 96; Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance, vol. 3, The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), p. 626; T.A. Heathcote, Dictionary of Field Marshals of the British Army (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military, 1999), pp. 56–59.

  6. Alan Brooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945, eds. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (London: Phoenix Press, 2001), pp. 441–42.

  7. Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 81–82; Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: The Organizer of Victory (New York: Viking Press, 1973), pp. 260–62.

  8. Pogue, Marshall, p. xi; Antony Beevor, The Second World War (New York: Little, Brown, 2012), p. 180.

  9. Eisenhower, Allies, photo caption opposite, p. 140.

  10. Quoted in Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 167.

  11. Jonathan W. Jordan, Brothers, Rivals, Victors (New York: Caliber, 2011), p. 222.

  12. Symonds, Neptune, p. 168; Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 301; D'Este, Normandy, p. 42.

  13. D'Este, Normandy, p. 42–43.

  14. Quoted in Pogue, Marshall, p. 321.

  15. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect 1890–1952, vol.1, Eisenhower (Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 152; Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 418.

  16. Quoted in Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 131.

  17. Jordan, Brothers, pp. 7–32; Dwight Jon Zimmerman, “Eliminating the ‘Dead Wood,’” Defense Media Network, September 1, 2015, http://www.denfensemedianetwork.com/stories/gen-george-c-marshall-eliminates-dead-wood/ (accessed May 29, 2017).

  18. Quoted in Jordan, Brothers, p. 42.

  19. Ibid., p. 276.

  20. Jordan, Brothers, pp. 277–78; Symonds, Neptune, pp. 171–74.

  21. Lewis E. Lehrman, Churchill, Roosevelt & Company (Guilford, CT: Stackpole Books, 2017), p. 2.

  22. Martin Blumenson, The Battle of the Generals (New York: William Morrow, 1993), p. 27; Jordan, Brothers, p. 276.

  23. Quoted in Fraser, Alanbrooke, p. 421.

  24. Brooke, War Diaries, p. 351.

  25. Hastings, Overlord, pp. 28–29.

  26. Quoted in Jordan, Brothers, p. 53.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Quoted in Alun Chalfont, Montgomery of Alamein (New York: Atheneum, 1976), p. 26.

  29. Ibid., p. 51.

  30. Chalfont, Montgomery, pp. 36, 39, 41, 51, 54; Blumenson, Generals, p. 28.

  31. Quoted
in Chalfont, Montgomery, p. 99.

  32. Ibid., pp. 102–103.

  33. Nigel Hamilton, Monty: The Making of a General (New York: McGraw Hill, 1981), p. 275.

  34. Quoted in Peter Caddick-Adams, Monty and Rommel (New York: Overlook, 2011), p. 194.

  35. Chalfont, Montgomery, pp. 109–10; Brooke, War Diaries, p. xviii.

  36. Chalfont, Montgomery, p. 110–12.

  37. Brooke, War Diaries, p. 19.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Caddick-Adams, Monty, pp. 222–41; Chalfont, Montgomery, pp. 113–14.

  40. Caddick-Adams, Monty, pp. 222–41.

  41. Quoted in Ibid., p. 285.

  42. John Harvey, ed., The War Diaries of Oliver Harvey (London: Collins, 1978), p. 148.

  43. Brooke, War Diaries, p. 496.

  44. Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier's Story (New York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 207.

  45. Ibid.

  46. D'Este, Normandy, p. 51 footnote. Eisenhower is quoted here by General Sir Miles Dempsey in a 1947 interview with historian Forrest Pogue.

  47. Brooke, War Diaries, p. 417.

  48. Ibid., p. 452.

  49. Russell F. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), p. 37.

  50. Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 420, 426, 438–39.

  51. Chalfont, Montgomery, p. 220.

  52. Quoted in Ibid.

  53. Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 424; Nigel Hamilton, Montgomery: D-Day Commander (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2007), p. 38.

  54. Quoted in Blumenson, Generals, 30.

  55. Barrett Tillman, D-Day Encyclopedia (New York: Regnery History, 2014), pp. 190–91.

  56. Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), pp. 1060–61.

  57. Symonds, Neptune, p. 173; Michael F. Finnegan, “General Eisenhower's Battle for Control of the Strategic Bombers in Support of Operation OVERLORD: A Case Study in Unity of Command” (Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College 1999), pp. 6–8.

  58. Quoted in Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light, vol. 3, The Liberation Trilogy (New York: Henry Holt, 2013), p. 28–29.

  59. Quoted in Hastings, Overlord, p. 44.

  60. Arthur W. Tedder, With Prejudice: The War Memoir of Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Lord Tedder (London: Cassell, 1966), pp. 210–45.