Second Front: The Allied Invasion of France, 1942–43 (An Alternative History)

by Alexander M. Grace

  Roosevelt, accompanied by Secretary Stimson and Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, and Doolittle, had expected a stormy session with Churchill over the course of the war in the past eight weeks. In essence, the British, due to their reluctance to support the invasion of the continent, had been relegated to a very minor role, one which did not sit very well with the Prime Minister and his key generals. That Marshall’s strategy had worked out better than even he had expected would hardly ameliorate the situation when the British had been so vociferous in their opposition.

  There were now seven full Allied corps in the line, three American, two French, the Canadian I Corps, and the British V Corps, from right to left, occupying a bulging arc from Nice to just south of Lyon and around to Toulouse. These were backed by two airborne divisions as a strategic reserve, hundreds of artillery pieces and warplanes in the lodgment area, and there was no danger now of the Allies being thrown back into the sea. The lines had stabilized, and both sides were in a frantic race to build up their forces; but the Allies were confident of winning this one, since German forces were still being consumed on the Eastern Front at a prodigious rate, and for the Allies this was the only game in town. There had been reverses, certainly, and substantial casualties, but nothing like those that the raid on Dieppe suggested would have awaited the Allies in a frontal assault on the Channel coast.

  The primary purpose of the conference was to hash out a plan for the next step in the Allied offensive. Marshall favored pouring still more men and guns into the lodgment and forcing a breakthrough to the west of the Massif Central to sweep up the open country of central France to Paris, then “hang a right” and drive on to the heart of the Reich. Eisenhower was partial to the idea of a second amphibious invasion, this one along the western coast of France, to coincide with a push from the south that could trap as many as a dozen German divisions against the Spanish border and thus facilitate a later drive on Paris.

  But the Americans realized that the only uncommitted forces were primarily British, and the decision would have to rest with them, both for their resources and by way of atoning for having gone against Churchill’s wishes in launching HAYMAKER in the first place. Montgomery’s 8th Army was now sitting idle in North Africa with at least a dozen veteran divisions, and even more front-line divisions were in England itself, while the American had committed all of the major units they had had available and would not be expecting even one more organized division for weeks. The French were arming fast, but their smaller divisions had limited striking power, and this was also true of the Polish corps also sitting in England.

  It came as a pleasant surprise to the Americans when Churchill and his senior military officers, Admiral Andrew B. Cunningham, Allied naval commander in the Mediterranean, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur W. Tedder, commander of the Allied air forces in the Mediterranean, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, overall Allied commander for the Mediterranean Theater, and the newly-promoted Field Marshal Montgomery, all fairly gushed over the success of HAYMAKER to date. Although Eisenhower, who had experienced Montgomery’s imperious nature at firsthand as a mere brigadier general earlier in the war, later wrote that the victor of El Alamein was much more guarded in his praise than the others, constantly making little hints of how he might have done things differently, Churchill’s fulsome praise for the Allied achievement went far to ease the tension of the first meetings.

  The French, on the other hand, were a case unto themselves. Both Giraud and de Gaulle insisted on being present. In fact, de Gaulle had not been formally invited to attend, but had shown up just the same, and both contenders for the leadership of France set up their own little courts in isolated villas at opposite ends of the city. There was an endless round of “entertainments” offered by the different delegations, and de Gaulle and Giraud consistently scheduled their own receptions at the same time, refusing to amend their plans and judging the “loyalty” of their allies by the size and importance of the attendees at each.

  From past experience in dealing with the abrasive and demanding General de Gaulle, both the American and British leaders had a natural tendency to favor Giraud, and to bend their rules of conduct slightly in the hope that he would emerge as the ultimate leader of the French phoenix. And, for a time, Giraud did seem the most likely victor. He did not bear the stain of outright collaboration that the late Darlan had suffered, yet neither had he compromised his position with the other French military commanders through overly subservient behavior to the British since the 1940 armistice. However, Giraud was to throw away these advantages and to antagonize each of his supporters in tum.

  His demands for higher rank and greater authority rubbed other senior French commanders, like Juin and Koenig, the wrong way, in contrast to de Gaulle who, however unwillingly, had accepted what appeared to be a powerless figurehead position in the interests of promoting harmony within the French camp. His constant calls for more equipment and resources for rebuilding the French army, in terms that bordered on blackmail, irritated both the British and the Americans, and his less-than-subtle efforts at playing one ally off against the other fooled no one and only increased their suspicions. He particularly managed to anger General Patton by commenting, during a visit to the front during the fighting for Valence, that Patton’s command post was too far to the rear. Patton, who, more than most army commanders believed in leading from the front, turned on Giraud and bluntly pointed out that, in the First World War, Giraud had been a battalion commander and had been taken prisoner when his headquarters was overrun, and in 1940 he had been a corps commander and had again been taken prisoner after the German breakthrough at Sedan. Patton added that he believed he could do more for the war effort outside of a prisoner of war camp than in one and would place himself where he saw fit.

  Ultimately, it would be de Gaulle’s winning over the French people themselves that would give him control of the levers of the French government, including the military, and it was Giraud who would gradually be marginalized. Giraud would retain his position as commander of the armed forces but would lack any significant control over the troops, while de Gaulle would make all of the key decisions and steadily mold the new French government in accordance with his idée de la France.

  As it turned out, other than gaining formal or informal “recognition” from Churchill and Roosevelt for their respective factions, neither Giraud nor de Gaulle had much of an agenda for the Casablanca Conference. Their only priority, and one on which they agreed thoroughly, was to speed the rearming and modernization of the French Army and Air Force. As a secondary issue, they both pressed for the allocation to the French, once their forces had come up to strength, of the central sector of the front. It was the French view that the most direct route to Paris would lie through the Rhone Valley to Lyon and thence north to Paris. It was of the utmost importance to French prestige that French units actually liberate the capital, and Lyon as well, if possible.

  In one of the separate sessions that Churchill and Roosevelt held with their staffs, without the participation of the French, Marshall explained that, while the route via Lyon was the shortest as the crow flies, it was also the most easily defended, wedged in between the Alps and the Massif Central, both of which were virtually impassable to mechanized forces. Consequently, a drive up the center would likely cost high casualties, and both the British and Americans were more than willing to let the French pay that particular butcher’s bill if that was to their liking.

  The Americans soon learned that British enthusiasm for the Allied victories thus far was due, at least in part, to a desire to set the stage for the pitch of their own pet project, one which was particularly dear to Montgomery’s heart. Rather than join in the campaign in France as a junior partner, Montgomery’s plan called for a separate amphibious invasion, this time of the Italian Peninsula. Churchill revealed that talks had been proceeding for some weeks between representatives of the British government and tho
se of King Victor Emanuel in Madrid over a possible separate peace. At a stroke, such an agreement would eliminate over one million men from the Axis ranks, besides Italy’s still considerable fleet and air force, and require Germany to pour tens of thousands more men into Italy if they were even to hope to hang onto the territory.

  What this agreement required was, not unlike that with Vichy France the previous year, a commitment from the Allies to intervene in substantial force to protect the Italians from the vengeance of their former comrades-in-arms. Montgomery’s presentation was well rehearsed, with the dapper field marshal stalking back and forth in front of his listeners, slapping at a large map of Italy with a pointer like a jockey hitting the flanks of a racehorse. With the allocation of most of the amphibious shipping capacity then on hand in Europe, Montgomery said that, within three weeks, he could launch his invasion with the XIII and XXX Corps of his 8th Army from North Africa, with two armored and four infantry divisions, supported by two airborne divisions, one British and one American, and with most of the air power coming from RAF elements already in Egypt, which would be shifted to Corsica until bases on the mainland could be seized. He said that no resistance from the Italians was expected, and that most regular army units might actually switch sides and fight against the Germans as they tried to confront the invasion.

  Roosevelt raised the question about Italian reliability. He noted that everyone present had considered the move into Vichy territory a calculated risk, even though French hatred of the Germans was well known. The Italians, on the other hand, had been fighting alongside the Germans for over three years and had actually initiated invasions of their own, on Ethiopia, Greece, France, and Egypt. If there had been a chance for a trap at Marseille, wasn’t there even more of one along the Italian Riviera?

  Montgomery smiled patiently and admitted that those opposed to the French incursion had been mistaken, notably excepting himself from that number. But the situation in Italy would be different. While he did not expect organized resistance from the Italians, neither did he count on their active cooperation, at least at first. This would be a full-fledged amphibious operation, over the beaches, with naval gunfire support, air cover, the works. Leaflets would be dropped two hours before the start of the bombardment warning Italian soldiers and civilians to vacate the area, but there would be no sailing directly into Italian ports. If the Italians were as good as their word, the operation would be marvelously easy; if not, they would be swept out of the way.

  This reply seemed to satisfy everyone, but then Marshall brought up the question of where, precisely, Montgomery had in mind to attack.

  There was an inviting stretch of beach just north of Civitavecchia, Montgomery indicated on his map. It was barely fifty miles from Rome, along the coast, and what made the location particularly attractive was a ridge running parallel to the shore, about a dozen miles inland. The first wave would rush from the beach to the ridge and occupy it, providing a natural shield for the beachhead, while marshes along the coast to the north would limit any German attack from that direction to a narrow causeway, easily defended. With an airborne drop around Rome itself, to the south, Italy would certainly be knocked out of the war immediately, and the Allies would be free to build up their forces, first to push across the ridge through Italy’s central valley to the Apennines, and then to drive north and south at will. With the collapse of the Italian Army, the Germans would undoubtedly be so disoriented that they would be unable to mount an effective defense for some time, probably not south of the Po, and any units cut off in southern Italy or Sicily would simply fall like ripe fruit.

  The silence from the American delegation that followed this explanation indicated to all that they were not sold. Eisenhower joined in and commented that, in preparation for HAYMAKER, he had made at least a cursory study of most of the viable landing sites in the western Mediterranean. While virtually the entire French coast and that of North Africa was suitable for amphibious landings, and while there were numerous spots on Sardinia and Sicily, western Italy only had usable beaches at Salerno and Anzio bracketing Naples and the stretch just north and south of Rome itself. It seemed likely that this might have occurred to the Germans who might have deployed troops to cover these locations. He pointed out that, if the Germans managed to get to that coastal ridge first, instead of being a shield for the beachhead, it would be like a cork in a bottle, and the invaders would be trapped on the shore.

  Montgomery countered that the Germans were likely to be fully occupied fighting off the Italians, apart from being taken by surprise by the invasion, and would hardly be in a position to devote enough troops to the ridge to stop an assault by six veteran divisions, with at least two more corps on tap from the British troops available m England. He was about to go into more detail, when Marshall called a brief recess.

  In private, Marshall explained to Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and the other American commanders that, although he thought Montgomery was glossing over serious flaws in his plan, the Americans had no grounds to object after pushing through their own project the previous year. Perhaps Montgomery was right about the Italians, in which case the odds did seem to be stacked against the Germans, who were already reeling from defeats on every front. Moreover, since this was to be almost exclusively a British operation, even more than HAYMAKER had been American, it was only proper to defer to British judgment on the issue. Lastly, he noted that, if they dropped their objections to the plan, they would have a stronger hand for gleaning more troops for southern France as a quid pro quo. As a politician, Roosevelt could understand this reasoning, and, when the meeting reconvened that evening, Montgomery had no need to deploy the stacks of reference material he had amassed to support his case.

  With this easy victory behind them, Churchill and Brooke readily agreed to Marshall’s suggestion that the Polish Corps be immediately allocated to the French Front, to be followed by at least one British Corps within two months, as well as the newly arriving American 101st Airborne Division (which would be dropped from Montgomery’s plan for Italy) and all new American units as they came into the field. The combined force would be designated as 1st Army Group, with Patton to assume command. The Italian invasion would consist of the bulk of the 8th Army, later reinforced by the 1st Army from England and the 2nd New Zealand Division, plus the British 1st and 6th Airborne Divisions, which would be responsible for the coup de main at Rome.

  2200 HOURS, 8 FEBRUARY 1943

  NEAR LYON, FRANCE

  The Allies were wallowing. Rommel had seen this sort of thing before. They had had one outstanding strategic concept and had carried it through to a successful completion, but they had been taken aback by their own good fortune and were now at a loss as to what to do next. They had probably counted themselves so lucky that the raw American divisions had not cracked, one after the other, during his offensive at the end of December that they were reluctant to throw the dice again. For more than one month the Allies had done little other than shift units around and, of course, continue to build up their forces. There had been probes all along the line, but nothing serious other than the steady advance by the British and Canadians in the west which had resulted in the loss of Toulouse the previous week, but then they had appeared content to occupy the line of the Tarn and Garonne Rivers and go no farther.

  This had been a godsend for Rommel. Every day for him was golden. His old Afrika Korps units had been refitted and formed into a strategic reserve, the nucleus of a force for which Rommel had great plans. The survivors of his original armored thrust, the 3rd Panzer Grenadier and 26th Panzer and the Hermann Göring Divisions had been pulled back and were also receiving reinforcements to make up their losses. He had strung a line of infantry divisions, of which he now had nearly twenty at various levels of strength, in a line across the valley of the Rhone, through the Massif Central and along the Tarn/Garonne River line down to the Spanish border. Behind this screen, which the Allies had chosen not to test seriously, teams of combat engineers and
even conscripted French, Belgian, and German civilian contractors were working feverishly to construct a line of concrete emplacements, well-camouflaged strongpoints with interlocking fields of fire, built in some depth, along the main avenues of approach. He was even stripping the Channel defenses and the old Siegfried Line along the former Franco-German border of artillery and machine guns to equip the new positions. These preparations took time, and the Allies had graciously given him that gift.

  His vision was to make maximum use of the difficult terrain along the north face of the Allied lodgment area to tum every passable road and pass into a death trap where the attackers would have to pay in blood for every inch of progress. In the open land to the southwest, he would use river lines where he could to enhance the defense, but his goal here would be to slow the enemy advance, keep it off the most rapid avenues, and bog them down on a front where he could eventually stop them completely.

  Rommel realized that he had a window of opportunity coming, probably in the next month, that would not be repeated. The surrounded German Sixth Army at Stalingrad had finally surrendered the week before, costing over a quarter of a million men, not counting tens of thousands more in the Hungarian, Romanian, and Italian Armies that had also been shattered in the Soviet offensive. The good news for Rommel was that, now that the Caucasus had been evacuated, the German line in Russia had been shortened considerably, and the Russians had clearly spent themselves and would take weeks, if not months, to haul forward their supplies and fresh units across the devastated landscape to prepare for a new push.