The Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  The requirements were complex. The site had to be within range of fighter planes based in Britain, and within an overnight sailing distance for ships in the southern ports of England. It was necessary to embark from the southern ports because the western ports were needed to unload men and goods coming from the U.S., and the eastern ports were too vulnerable to German observation and attack. The embarkation ports would be clogged for weeks before the invasion and would be a choice target for the Germans, whose much touted secret weapon, the rocket bomb, was about to become operational. The beach had to be firm enough to hold tanks rumbling inland with the invading troops. A high surf would be risky and had to be avoided. The ground inland had to be suitable for the construction of airfield landing strips. What was known about German defenses needed to be considered. The Allies had to be able to build up their invading force faster than the Germans could reinforce their defenders.

  Calais seemed the obvious target. It was closest to Antwerp, Europe’s best port, and to Germany. From it Allied forces might drive straight east and cut off the German divisions in France, thereby avoiding the political risk of making France a battlefield. It was within easy range of British-based fighters and was the closest port to England. But these and other factors were as obvious to the Germans as to the Allies, and German defenses were therefore strongest in the Calais area. As far as the Allies were concerned, that fact eliminated Calais as a landing site. To a lesser degree the same advantages and disadvantages were present at all the sites between Calais and Le Havre. North of Calais the potential sites were too close to Germany, and thus could be too easily reinforced by the enemy. These coast sites were also too inundated, too soft and liable to flood, had too many sand dunes, and were already too well defended. South of Normandy, the Brittany Peninsula was at the extreme edge of fighter range and was in any case too exposed to the extremes of Atlantic Ocean storms.

  That left Normandy. The Cotentin Peninsula had at its tip a small but good port, Cherbourg, which was close to the British port of Portsmouth. The peninsula was fairly narrow, so that troops landing at its eastern base could push across it and seal it off, then capture the port. Near the Cotentin was the major communications network of Caen, from which highways and railroads led to Paris. The area inland from Caen was relatively flat and favorable to offensive maneuvers, which would allow the Allies to use their superiority in tanks and motor transport and to build airfields. The beaches were sufficiently firm, and the Cotentin extended far enough into the English Channel to protect the landing sites from the worst effects of Atlantic storms. Troops could be supplied over the beaches while Cherbourg was being captured and put into working order. There were good road nets behind the beaches. Finally, although Hitler personally believed that the attack would come at Normandy, the German defenses there were not as far advanced as they were to the north.

  So Normandy would be the spot. The final choice of the site for history’s greatest invasion was made by a process of elimination in which caution was the keynote.

  As had been the case in all of Eisenhower’s previous invasions, choosing the time of the assault was as complicated as choosing the place. It had to come at low tide, because the German defenses were built around steel obstacles that covered the area of the beach between the high- and low-water marks. The obstacles, often capped with Teller mines, would rip the belly out of any landing craft that passed over them. By landing at low tide, the Allies would have to cross an unprotected beach under German fire, but that was preferable to drowning in sinking landing craft. As the troops moved forward and the tide came in, Allied engineers could clear away the obstacles. The attack had to come at or near dawn, so that the invasion fleet could cross the Channel under cover of darkness and so that the troops would have a full day to get established on the beachhead. A full moon would make the operation too risky for the fleet, but there had to be some moon to facilitate a parachute drop, a maneuver needed to seize the exits from the beaches. The assault had to come late enough in the year to allow for final training of troops in the British Isles, but soon enough to give the Allies at least four months of good campaigning weather in France.

  The conditions were met only three times in the spring of 1944—during the first few days of May and the first and third weeks of June. For planning purposes, the CCS had set May 1 as D-Day.

  The technological innovations used in OVERLORD were bold and imaginative. There were, for example, more than a dozen devices developed by the British to put on the front of tanks to assist them in getting through mine fields. Since the Allies could not count on taking Cherbourg early, or on capturing it before the Germans destroyed it, and since there were not enough DUKWs to insure supply over the beaches, the British had developed artificial harbors and breakwaters. These monstrous gadgets would be towed across the Channel and sunk off the Normandy beaches. A pipeline under the ocean (PLUTO) would be laid from England to Normandy to supply the tanks and trucks with fuel, thereby saving on shipping. The only trouble with most of these devices was that they had never been used in combat before, so that despite the assurances of the inventors the soldiers could not be sure they would actually work. Still, the risk had to be taken.1

  By the time Eisenhower became Supreme Commander many of the problems inherent in the OVERLORD operation had been settled. But many were not, such as selection of the time of day of the assault, the decision as to the proper use of air power, the cover plans and countless other details. Since the previous spring Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E. Morgan, chief of staff to the Supreme Commander, Designate (COSSAC) and his staff had been working on OVERLORD. They had used as their starting point the plans Eisenhower had developed in the summer of 1942 for ROUNDUP, plans which, while not as detailed as Morgan’s own, had come to some of the same conclusions about the site and timing of the assault. Morgan’s role was to advise. Eisenhower’s was to command. The Supreme Commander had to approve of everything COSSAC had done, to build on Morgan’s base, while fully realizing that the responsibility for the major operation of the war was his, and his alone.

  From the beginning, the high tension and drama of OVERLORD were obscured by the irritating, involved debate over ANVIL. Eisenhower had to spend more time and effort on the projected invasion of the south of France than he could on that of Normandy. One reason was that there was early agreement on OVERLORD’s direct needs, so they did not have to be discussed once the basic decision to mount the operation had been made. But there was wide disagreement on subsidiary operations, both as to their requirements and their potential contribution to OVERLORD. Eisenhower wanted ANVIL, wanted it badly, and had strong support for this position from Marshall. In London, however, he stood almost alone—even Smith wanted to drop it for the present. The people with whom the Supreme Commander conversed daily all told him he was wrong, which increased the strain on him.

  Fortunately, on the more important issues such as the Normandy invasion, Eisenhower and his principal superiors and subordinates were in agreement. They all accepted Morgan’s ideas as to the place of the assault, they all were willing to depend on the untested artificial harbors and other gadgets the British had developed, and they all agreed that OVERLORD’s needs came first. If this account emphasizes disagreements, it is not because disagreement dominated the coalition command—it did not—but because the leading actors did not need to discuss the matters they agreed on. They did have to argue, sometimes violently, about their disagreements.

  From the time Eisenhower first began to work on OVERLORD his major concern was to widen the assault. COSSAC had prepared plans for a three-division landing near Caen in the Normandy area. Morgan had been forced to keep the size of the assault force low because of the limitations under which he worked, the most important of which were in the number of landing craft the CCS had allowed him for planning purposes. Eisenhower first saw the COSSAC plan in the fall of 1943, when one of Morgan’s staff officers brought a copy of it to Algiers. His immediate reaction was that the
assault frontage was too narrow and that the forces accordingly would not have enough punch. He thought that on every item, including airplanes, ships, landing craft, and assault divisions, COSSAC was being forced to skimp. After his experiences at Salerno, Eisenhower thought this was a bad, possibly disastrous, mistake.2

  Eisenhower spent the first two weeks in January 1944 in the United States. He had a short vacation with his wife, saw his mother, and went to West Point to visit with his son, but he also managed to get some work done. Smith had stayed in Algiers, wrapping up AFHQ and making an intensive study of the COSSAC plans. His reaction to them was the same as Eisenhower’s, and on January 5 he wired his superior (who was using Marshall’s desk in the Pentagon) to say that it was imperative to widen the assault.

  The first exchange between Eisenhower and Smith on OVERLORD set off a debate that would go on for months. Everyone involved agreed that more divisions were needed for D-Day, but to get them ashore SHAEF had to have more landing craft. There was a world-wide shortage of such vehicles, however, and production facilities were limited since landing craft had never been put at the top of the priority list. Thus, the major problem was where to obtain more of them.

  On January 5 Smith proposed one obvious solution—cut down on operations elsewhere. Specifically, he wanted to cancel SHINGLE, the landing at Anzio, due to occur on January 21, and a simultaneous ANVIL. Smith thought SHINGLE should be dropped and forgotten (it had been Churchill’s idea from the first and no one at AFHQ ever liked it), while ANVIL should come after OVERLORD or be reduced to merely a threat. The landing craft that would thereby be available could be used for OVERLORD.3

  Eisenhower’s initial point, which he maintained to the end of the debate, was that ANVIL was necessary to the success of OVERLORD and he did not want it abandoned. He was quite willing to give up SHINGLE (Churchill and Wilson were not, and it was mounted as scheduled), but he hoped that by improvising and cutting every other possible corner he could come up with the craft necessary for both ANVIL and OVERLORD. “We must develop the maximum in expedient and substitute to increase lift,” he told Smith. “Only in event that OVERLORD cannot possibly be broadened without abandonment of ANVIL would I consider making such a recommendation to the Combined Chiefs.”4 The issue was clear. To Eisenhower, ANVIL was necessary to insure the success of OVERLORD, but to others it was not.

  Montgomery, for example, agreed with Smith. He was already in London, preparing for the invasion in his role as general ground commander, and on January 10 wired Eisenhower to say that ANVIL should be reduced to a threat. He had already convinced the BCOS of the necessity of this, but no final decision could be made until Eisenhower expressed his opinion. Montgomery stressed the importance of arriving at a decision immediately and asked Eisenhower to hurl himself “into the contest and get us what we want.”5 Eisenhower said he too wanted a five- instead of a three-division OVERLORD, but he also explained to Montgomery some of the reasons for his hesitation about dropping a simultaneous ANVIL. An invasion of the south of France offered the only opportunity to engage the bulk of the forces already in the Mediterranean in support of OVERLORD. It would threaten the Germans in France in a way that the forces in Italy could never do. ANVIL would open additional ports in France, ports which the SHAEF forces would desperately need. With the additional ports, more U.S. divisions could be brought into the battle; without them, the size of SHAEF’s forces would be limited by the capacity of the ports in northwestern France. There were also important political factors. Without ANVIL, the bulk of the French divisions could not participate in the liberation of France; Eisenhower thought it would be a mistake to deny to the French a significant role in the liberation of their nation. In addition, the Western Allies had promised Stalin at Teheran that they would mount ANVIL, and Stalin had been enthusiastic about the operation. To abandon it would appear underhanded.6

  In the middle of January Eisenhower flew to London and returned to his old headquarters at 20 Grosvenor Square. He went over the original COSSAC plans with Morgan and Montgomery and immediately agreed with them that OVERLORD had to have more divisions in the initial assault. The landings had to be broadened to ensure initial success, to secure beaches for the build-up, and to have enough strength to get to Cherbourg quickly to capture and control a port. Eisenhower still thought, however, that he could increase OVERLORD without dropping ANVIL, and he had a number of expedients in mind to accomplish this. He was willing, for example, to take armored landing craft away from ANVIL and assign them to OVERLORD, substituting unarmored craft already in England. The British had planned on a seventy per cent serviceability rate for landing craft; that is, seventy per cent of the craft they had at any given date would be operationally available. Eisenhower thought this figure too low and was willing to plan on an eighty-five per cent serviceability rate. Through this kind of expediency, he hoped to mount a five-division OVERLORD and a simultaneous two-division ANVIL.7

  “Every obstacle must be overcome,” Eisenhower declared in his initial report on OVERLORD planning to the CCS, “every inconvenience suffered and every risk run to ensure that our blow is decisive. We cannot afford to fail.” He emphasized that he was determined to have a five-division OVERLORD, since “nothing less will give us an adequate margin to ensure success.” To get it, he was willing to make sacrifices with the forces allotted to him, such as cutting down on the number of tanks and trucks carried in the assault, but he would need 271 additional landing craft assigned to OVERLORD from resources outside the European Theater, and for training purposes they would have to be in the U.K. six weeks before D-Day.

  Where could the additional vessels come from? As a start, Eisenhower was willing to put D-Day back a month, from May 1 to early June, in order to have available an extra month’s production of landing craft (amounting to almost a hundred vessels). He would be willing in addition, he said, to reduce the simultaneous ANVIL to a threat, but “only as a last resort and after all other means and alternatives have failed to provide the necessary strength” for OVERLORD.8

  Eisenhower’s insistence on ANVIL, in view of his own feelings about the need to build up OVERLORD, was surprisingly strong. It came about, possibly, because of his belief, based on personal experience, that without ANVIL the Allies would never get a decent return on their investment in Italy. The only way the Mediterranean forces could help OVERLORD was through southern France. Eisenhower also believed that the French Resistance would be an important factor in the success of OVERLORD. Montgomery did not have to worry about the Maquis, but the Supreme Commander did. If French divisions did not participate in the liberation, De Gaulle would sulk. If De Gaulle sulked, the Resistance would not co-operate.

  Beyond these diplomatic and important military considerations, Eisenhower’s attitude reflected a certain cast of mind, perhaps peculiar to the American soldier and close to that of the American businessman. He sometimes referred to himself as chairman of the board and, like the corporate head, he thought it necessary to justify expenditures to the stockholders, in this case the American people. The U.S. had raised, armed, and trained eighty-nine divisions. Without ports in the south of France, many of these divisions, possibly as many as twenty, could never be brought into action. Also, as Eisenhower told Marshall, “we have put into the French Army a very considerable investment.” Without ANVIL, the French could not be employed, and “all of our French investment will have been wasted.9

  None of Eisenhower’s arguments for ANVIL were original; they all came from Marshall. Eisenhower would sometimes stress different points than Marshall had emphasized, but there was no doubt that throughout the ANVIL debate he followed the Chief of Staff’s lead. Breaking away from the verbiage and incidental arguments, Marshall insisted on mounting ANVIL primarily because of his determination to prevent the British from extending operations in Italy and to the east. Marshall’s determination, a reflection of a complex set of factors outside the scope of this study, was so intense that he was willing to make ANVIL a
test case in the alliance. Eisenhower had not given much thought to the strategic parameters involved, for they were not a part of his responsibilities, but during his two weeks in the United States he had talked about ANVIL with Marshall and learned how deeply the Chief felt about the operation. Thus although ANVIL was not Eisenhower’s child, and although the military arguments in favor of it were weak, he fought for it to the bitter end. Marshall wanted ANVIL, and that was enough.

  Eisenhower spent the first two months of 1944 trying to mount a simultaneous OVERLORD and ANVIL. Since there was nothing he could do to speed up production of landing craft in time for D-Day, or get the U. S. Navy to give up the craft it had in the Pacific, he had to find the resources within the European-Mediterranean theater. Much of the effort would involve narrow, specialized technical work, which could only be accomplished by the staff. To the problem of building up an efficient staff, therefore, Eisenhower turned his attention.

  Shortly after arriving in London, Eisenhower wrote an old friend, “Right now we are busy getting settled and going through the business of ramming our feet in the stirrups.”10 He had his first meeting with the SHAEF staff on January 19. Part of the staff came from COSSAC, while Smith had stolen the bulk from AFHQ. For the benefit of newcomers, Eisenhower began by covering familiar ground—he emphasized the need for Allied unity, and said that all problems should be approached from an objective, as opposed to a nationalistic, point of view. He said his door was always open and he preferred to do business informally rather than formally. If he failed to understand a given phase of operations, especially technical aspects, he begged their indulgence; their job, as the experts, was to explain and make the subject understandable. If he advanced an idea which had already been considered and accepted or rejected, he wanted to be told, not humored. Eisenhower pointed out that no commander could know everything; this was the very reason he had a staff.