The Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  It all came down to Eisenhower. This position put enormous pressure on him, pressure that increased geometrically with each day that passed in May. “Ike looks worn and tired,” Butcher noted on May 12. “The strain is telling on him. He looks older now than at any time since I have been with him.” It would get worse as D-Day got closer and innumerable problems came up each day, many unsolved and some unsolvable. Still, Butcher knew that all would turn out all right, that Eisenhower could take it. “Fortunately he has the happy faculty of bouncing back after a night of good sleep,” Butcher recorded, “or a ride on a horse or some exercise.”1

  On May 6 Eisenhower told Marshall of some of his principal worries. “Our worst problems these days involve methods for removing underwater obstacles,” he began, “production of Mulberries and all the other special equipment pertaining to artificial harbors, accuracy in weather predictions and perfection of methods for getting a completely co-ordinate assault—including airborne.” There were major concerns, but Eisenhower confessed that in the midst of all these great problems “some of my most intense irritations are caused” by trivial matters, such as Patton’s latest indiscreet statement about the United States and the United Kingdom running the world. Despite the pressure, Eisenhower concluded, “most of us are staying in very good health” and a spirit of optimism prevailed.2

  As with most major seaborne assaults, OVERLORD’s overriding problem was that there were so many unknown factors. What would the weather be like on D-Day? If an Atlantic storm blew in, the air forces could not fly, the paratroopers could not drop, and the soldiers would at best be seasick and unable to fight. At worst, the landing craft would pile up on the beaches with the surf tossing them around like rubber balls. What was the state of the German defense? How effective was the Transportation Plan going to be? Could the Germans move reinforcements to the beachhead quickly? What about the artificial harbors, the mulberries and gooseberries? SHAEF had accepted the COSSAC plan of relying on them for supply until Cherbourg was captured and put in working order, but they were new implements of war and no one really knew whether or not they would work. Construction of them was behind schedule, and Admiral Cunningham told Eisenhower he was worried that he would not have enough tugs to tow the concrete barges from the places they were manufactured to the assembly points and thence across the Channel.3

  The immediate task—getting ashore with troops—was going to be difficult. The Germans were feverishly working at improving their defenses, laying mines in the Channel, building up pillboxes and gun emplacements inland, clearing the local population from the coast and setting up observation posts, and trying to upgrade the quality of the troops themselves. Most of these measures, however, SHAEF officers had coped with before. They could be met and overcome. The serious unknown factor was the steel obstacles the Germans were placing all along the Atlantic coast. Some of the obstacles were multi-pointed at the top and would tear out the bottom of any landing craft passing over them. Others were simple steel stakes, made from I-beams or rails and sunk into the sand by water jet. They were capped with Teller mines. The Germans had started placing the obstacles at the high-water mark and by May 1944 had covered the area halfway to the low-water mark. This development was one of the reasons SHAEF had decided to land shortly after low tide, accepting the risk of passing troops over an exposed beach. Engineers could clear the obstacles as the tide came in. A further advantage of landing at low tide was that landing craft could run ashore, disgorge the troops, and then be floated free by the rising tide.

  Eisenhower had to make an attempt to probe the mind of the enemy commander, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, a tight-cheeked old aristocratic professional officer who was something of a pessimist. Von Rundstedt had two army groups under him; the one Eisenhower would be attacking was under Rommel’s command. What these men thought, and what their relationship to Hitler was, would make an enormous difference in the way the Germans fought the campaign. In trying to find out what the Germans intended to do, Eisenhower relied on SHAEF and Twenty-first Army Group intelligence for information. From his G-2 people, for example, Eisenhower learned many things: that the Germans thought there was a possibility that the Allies would invade Norway; that they expected the main attack at Pas de Calais; that they had fifty-eight divisions in France (but that the divisions had been cut in size from 17,000 to 13,000); that they had no general reserve of troops and if they wished to strengthen themselves in France would have to do so at the expense of the fighting fronts in Russia or Italy; and that Rommel wanted to meet the attack head on and drive the invaders back into the sea.4 What G-2 could not supply Eisenhower with was detailed information on personality conflicts and strategic differences of opinion within the German high command. In these areas, he would have to rely on his intuition.

  Eisenhower knew that traditional German tactics emphasized mobility, and Von Rundstedt was a traditional soldier. Rommel was not, and Eisenhower realized that Rommel, greatly impressed by American armor and mobility, would try to convince Von Rundstedt that he should meet the invaders on the beach, which meant a linear, static defense with the emphasis on holding ground and the primary dependence on concrete fortifications. After his experiences in the later stages of the Tunisian campaign, Rommel would probably view with skepticism any proposal that relied on moving large forces to the battlefield for a counterattack, since he would fear that Allied airplanes would strafe, bomb, and cut up the columns while they were on the road. But Rommel was the subordinate, Von Rundstedt the superior, and Von Rundstedt would probably want a defense in depth with large-scale counterattacks spearheaded by armored striking power. In contrast to Rommel’s probable program, this would mean keeping the bulk of the German strength back from the coast. Beyond the Rommel-Von Rundstedt disagreement there was Hitler. Throughout the war Eisenhower counted on Hitler’s “conqueror mentality,” with its empahsis on holding every piece of ground, to make his task easier. Eisenhower’s own guess was that the Germans would follow Rommel’s ideas and try to force a decisive battle on the beachhead.

  Eisenhower had experience in meeting either type of response. At Sicily the beach had been hard but the counterattack soft; at Salerno the troops had no trouble getting ashore but Von Kesselring’s counterattack had almost driven the Allies back into the sea. Eisenhower decided that in Normandy the Germans would put the emphasis on static defense; OVERLORD planners therefore concentrated on getting ashore and staying.

  One vexing problem was choosing the day to go ashore. Eisenhower had already moved the target date back from May 1 to June 1 in order to have the benefit of extra time for training and procuring landing craft; now he had to decide on the exact date. June 1 was Y-Day; that is, the assault would occur at the first favorable opportunity after June 1. Many factors went into Eisenhower’s selection of D-Day, but a low tide shortly after dawn was the major requirement. The troops had to hit the beach at low tide and the commanders wanted a full day in order to get established. The navies wanted to cross the Channel under cover of darkness but wanted daylight to facilitate their bombardment of the coast. The air force needed a full moon the night before D-Day to make parachute and glider operations possible. What Eisenhower needed, then, was a day on which low tide came just about at dawn, with a moon the night before. In June this combination of conditions came only in two periods, early in the month and at the middle of the month. On May 8 Eisenhower made his decision. D-Day would be Y-Day plus 3, that is, June 4, when the conditions of the moon and tide would be the most favorable. And although the conditions would not be quite so good the following two days, they would be satisfactory, so by picking June 4 Eisenhower gave himself leeway.5

  The plans for the air drops reflected Eisenhower’s concern with getting ashore. The U.S. 82d and 101st Airborne would drop on the Cotentin Peninsula, with the British 6th Airborne coming in east of Caen. The paratroopers’ task was to provide immediate tactical assistance to the landings through the seizure of bridges, road junctions, and the
like. They would keep German forces at the front occupied, not attempt to engage or disrupt the enemy’s strategic reserve.

  The concept ran counter to Marshall’s wishes. At the beginning of the war the Chief had had great hopes for the paratroopers as a new element in warfare, but his hopes had not been realized. Early in 1944 he told Eisenhower that this had been a disappointment to him and he thought SHAEF could do much more to exploit its command of the air with respect to the ground battle. Marshall thought there had been “a lack in conception,” caused by a piecemeal approach, with “each commander grabbing at a piece to assist his particular phase of the operation.” If he had been given command of OVERLORD, Marshall said, he would have insisted on a single, large paratroop operation, “even to the extent that should the British be in opposition I would carry it out exclusively with American troops.” Marshall suggested to Eisenhower that he make his drop south of Evreux, nearly seventy-five miles inland from Caen, in the greatest strength possible. There were four good airfields near Evreux which could be quickly taken, with a resulting build-up of the force.

  “This plan appeals to me,” Marshall declared, “because I feel that it is a true vertical envelopment and would create such a strategic threat to the Germans that it would call for a major revision of their defensive plans.” It would be a complete surprise, would directly threaten both the crossings of the Seine River and Paris, and would serve as a rallying point for the French underground. The only drawback Marshall could see was “that we have never done anything like this before, and frankly, that reaction makes me tired.” The Chief concluded by saying that he did not want to put undue pressure on Eisenhower but did want to make sure that he at least considered the possibility.6

  Eisenhower’s reply was long and defensive. He said that for more than a year one of his favorite subjects for contemplation was getting ahead of the enemy in some important method of operation, and the strategic use of paratroopers was an obvious possibility. Marshall’s suggestion, however, was impossible. First, Eisenhower had to have the airborne divisions to meet the first tactical crisis, the battle for the beachhead. Second, and even more important, a paratrooper force well inland would not be self-contained, would lack mobility, and would therefore be destroyed. The Germans had shown time and again that they did not fear a “strategic threat of envelopment.” Using the road nets of western Europe, they could concentrate immense firepower against an isolated garrison and defeat it in detail. Anzio was an example. Eisenhower said that “any military man … required to analyze” the situation in Italy right after the landing there “would have said that the only hope of the German was to begin the instant and rapid withdrawal of his troops.” Instead, the Germans attacked, and because the Anzio force did not have enough tanks and trucks to provide mobile striking power, the Allies barely held out. And they held out, Eisenhower emphasized, only because AFHQ commanded the sea and could provide support to the beachhead. An inland airborne force would be cut off from almost all supply, would not have tanks or trucks, and would thus be annihilated.

  Eisenhower, in short, was unwilling to take the risk Marshall advocated. He insisted that an independent force had to be strong enough to operate alone, and to be strong enough to do that it had to have balance. Airborne divisions did not have the tanks or vehicles required for that balance. Far from being a strategic threat to the Germans, paratroopers dropped near Evreux would just be paratroopers wasted. “I instinctively dislike ever to uphold the conservative as opposed to the bold,” Eisenhower concluded, but he refused to change his plans. Marshall did not raise the subject again.7

  Even with the limited-objective drops there were problems. Eisenhower had originally thought that there would be “very little difficulty because of our tremendous preponderance in fighters,” but the almost total coverage of the European continent by anti-aircraft meant that the paratroopers would have a “most sticky time of it.” One answer was gliders, which could approach silently, but there were many areas in which gliders could not operate at night. To add to Eisenhower’s worries, ten days before D-Day Bradley had to change the 82d Airborne’s drop zones, as his G-2 discovered that the Germans were reinforcing the area originally scheduled for the drop.8

  The assault plan for the lead divisions was Montgomery’s and Bradley’s responsibility. There would be five beachheads, with the British on the extreme left (Sword beach), then the Canadians (Juno), another British division (Gold), and on the right the Americans (Utah and Omaha beaches). Eisenhower had wanted to assault with new divisions, then pass his veterans over the beaches and let them force the breakthrough and overrun France. For the most part Bradley followed this policy (four of the first seven American divisions to enter the battle had never participated in combat before), but with the emphasis on getting ashore he did put a leavening of tested units into the first day’s battle. Two of the best divisions from the Mediterranean, the 9th Infantry (at Utah) and the 2d Armored (at Omaha) were in the immediate follow-up, and leading the assault at Omaha was the most battle-tested infantry division in the Army, the Big Red One. All the assault divisions had essentially the same task—to get ashore, move inland, link up with the paratroopers, and expand the beachhead.

  Eisenhower’s responsibility was to oversee and approve of the planning and to set the basic goals. In practice this often came down to working smoothly with the three commanders in chief. On May 22 Eisenhower complained that while it had been easier to establish teamwork on the SHAEF staff than it had been at AFHQ, he was having trouble with his commanders. They would not accept the principle of unity of command as easily as had Cunningham, Tedder, and Alexander. One reason, Eisenhower thought, was that in the Mediterranean “we were engaged in desperate battling and everybody could see the sense of and necessity for complete unification.” Another factor was that while the commanders in chief in the Mediterranean were men of “the broadest possible calibre,” two of the commanders in OVERLORD were “somewhat ritualistic in outlook and require a great deal more of inoculation.” Butcher asked Eisenhower if he meant Montgomery and Leigh-Mallory; Eisenhower said no, he was thinking of Leigh-Mallory and Admiral Bertram Ramsay, the naval commander in chief.9

  Perhaps because of his negative feelings toward two of his three commanders in chief, Eisenhower met with them much less frequently than he had with Cunningham, Tedder, and Alexander. This threw responsibility for co-ordination of effort onto Smith and the SHAEF staff. All commanders did come together for reviews, the most notable being the great gathering at St. Paul’s School on May 15 for the final run-through of the plans for OVERLORD. Formal invitations went out from SHAEF to the guests; among those who attended were the King, the Prime Minister, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, the BCOS, and other notables. Patton was there, resplendent in a new uniform and with his pistols on.10

  Eisenhower made a brief speech of welcome, then introduced his commanders in chief, each of whom outlined his plans in some detail. Spaatz, Harris, Bradley, and other senior officers also spoke. Brooke, who was in a sour mood, was unimpressed. Spaatz, for example, bored him. In his diary Brooke complained that “Bert Harris told us how well he might have won the war if it had not been for the handicap imposed by the existence of the two other Services.” The CIGS was especially worried about Eisenhower. “The main impression I gathered was that Eisenhower was no real director of thought, plans, energy or direction.” Brooke feared that the Supreme Commander was “just a co-ordinator, a good mixer, a champion of inter-Allied co-operation.” He wondered if those abilities were sufficient for the task at hand and doubted it.*

  Montgomery’s presence gave Brooke confidence. In his presentation Montgomery exuded optimism. There was a relief map of Normandy the width of a city street on the floor and—as Bradley recalled—“with rare skill, Monty traced his 21st Group plan of maneuver as he trampled about like a giant through Lilliputian France.”11 In deference to Eisenhower and Churchill, Montgomery even broke his long-standing rule and allowed smoking in his presence
. As he talked and explained, he grew expansive. Storming the beaches was the least of his problems. He wanted to get well inland on D-Day itself and “crack about and force the battle to swing our way.” It was possible, he said, that he would get to Falaise, thirty-two miles inland, the first day. He intended to send armored columns quickly toward Caen, for “this will upset the enemy’s plans and tend to hold him off while we build up strength. We must gain space rapidly and peg claims well inland.” He said he intended to take Caen the first day, break through the German lines on that (left or eastern) flank, then drive along the coast toward the Seine River.12 His exaggerated claims would later be the cause of much difficulty, since it proved impossible for his armies to move as far or as fast as he thought they could.

  After Montgomery spoke, the King made a brief address. Then Churchill “let go with a slow-starting but fast-ending stemwinder. He preached bravery, ingenuity and persistence as human qualities of greater value than equipment.” The King had to leave early; before he left, Eisenhower thanked him for his attendance and told him not to worry. There would be 11,000 planes overhead on D-Day, he said. The navies had “marshalled the greatest armada of transports, landing craft and warships the world had ever seen.” All the ground troops had to do was land and capture some villas for the VIPs, “particularly one to accommodate the King who would be as welcome in France as he had been in North Africa.”13 At two-fifteen the meeting broke up, thus ending, the minutes noted, “the greatest assembly of military leadership the world has ever known.”14

  The meeting helped swing Churchill around to thorough belief in OVERLORD. At the beginning of 1944 he had still wondered about the wisdom of the operation, saying to Eisenhower on one occasion, “When I think of the beaches of Normandy choked with the flower of American and British youth, and when, in my mind’s eye, I see the tides running red with their blood, I have my doubts … I have my doubts.”15 Early in May Eisenhower had lunched alone with the Prime Minister. When they were parting, the Prime Minister grew emotional. With tears in his eyes he said, “I am in this thing with you to the end, and if it fails we will go down together.”16 But after the St. Paul’s briefing Churchill told Eisenhower, “I am hardening toward this enterprise.” The Americans, meanwhile, were also growing in confidence; as Eisenhower put it, “the smell of victory was in the air.”17