The Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  The trip to Omaha symbolized the success of OVERLORD. If that much brass could safely go ashore in France, the beachhead was clearly secure. More than ten divisions were now engaged on the Allied side, with more coming in every week. There were still problems, but the great invasion had worked. The artificial harbors, on which so much depended, were in place and functioning. The threat of FORTITUDE was still tying down the German Fifteenth Army at Pas de Calais.

  There had already been enough drama in Eisenhower’s decision on the morning of June 5 to launch OVERLORD to satisfy anyone, but more was to come. On the morning of June 19 a severe storm struck the French coast, ripping up one of the artificial harbors and bringing unloading to a complete standstill. The Allies in fact suffered more from the storm than they had from the German resistance on D-Day. Group Captain Stagg wrote Eisenhower a note, reminding him that if he had decided on June 5 to delay until June 19 he would have run into the worst weather in twenty years. Eisenhower scribbled at the bottom of the message, “Thanks, and thank the gods of war we went when we did!” and sent it back to Stagg.36

  Eisenhower’s gamble on the weather had paid off. What Churchill rightly called “the most difficult and complicated operation that has ever taken place” had put the Allies back on the Continent. The liberation of Europe was at hand.

  * Pogue, Supreme Command, p. 170, is the most authoritative account. There are many versions of what Eisenhower actually said; Pogue, in despair, decided to use none of them, concluding that he could not positively settle on one or another, such as “O.K., we’ll go,” or “Well, let’s go.” De Guingand has Eisenhower saying, dramatically, “This is a decision which I must take alone. After all, that is what I am here for. We will sail to-morrow.” I use “O.K., let’s go,” on the basis of an interview with Eisenhower on October 27, 1967. He was sure that was what he said.

  CHAPTER 7

  Stalemate

  On June 15 Butcher recorded, “last night Ike was concerned that Monty couldn’t attack” until Saturday, the seventeenth. “Ike was anxious that the Germans be kept off balance and that our drive never stop. But apparently Monty wants to tidy up his ‘administrative tail’ and get plenty of supplies on hand before he makes a general attack.… Ike also said,” Butcher added, “that yesterday we had made no gains, which he didn’t: like.”1

  Less than two weeks after the exultation over the success of D-Day, came the letdown. It was caused by a variety of factors, one of which was the relationship between the Supreme Commander and the commander of the Twenty-first Army Group. For the next seven months, many of Eisenhower’s worries would center, one way or another, on Montgomery.

  That the two men would have difficulty in dealing with one another was almost inevitable, given the contrasts between them. Eisenhower was gregarious, while Montgomery lived in isolation. Eisenhower mixed easily with his staff, discussing all decisions with his subordinates; Montgomery set himself up in a lonely camp, where he slept and ate in a wood-paneled trailer he had captured from Rommel.2 Montgomery wrote his directives by hand and handed them down from on high, while Eisenhower waited for general agreement among his staff and often had his G-3 officer dictate the final directive. Montgomery once told his chief of staff what he thought of this practice. “You can’t run a military operation with a committee of staff officers in command,” he explained. “It would be nonsense!”3

  Montgomery shunned the company of women after his wife’s death and did not smoke or drink. He had never mixed easily with “the boys” or been an athlete, as Eisenhower had. Eisenhower was modest, Montgomery was conceited. “I became completely dedicated to my profession,” Montgomery once said of himself, and claimed that he had developed the ability to concentrate so completely that it was a habit.4 He had indeed made an intensive study of how to command. What he had not studied, unfortunately, was how to get his ideas across without irritating his listener. He always seemed to be talking down to people, and his condescension became more marked the more intensely he felt about a subject. He had no idea in the world about how to persuade. Eisenhower, on the other hand, always seemed to be open-minded and eager to seek out compromise.5

  The personality differences between Eisenhower and Montgomery were significant factors in their often difficult relationship, but what mattered more was their fundamental disagreement over strategy and tactics. Eisenhower’s military theory, reflecting that of Marshall and the traditions of the United States Army, was straightforward and aggressive. Like Grant in the Virginia Wilderness in 1864, he favored constant attack, and he became disturbed if any substantial part of his force was not gaining ground. He was an advocate of the direct approach and put his faith in the sheer smashing power of great armies. This was one reason he concentrated on logistics, on the orderly and efficient administration that would insure the flow of goods from America’s factories to the battlefield. He was once accused of having a mass-production mentality, which was true but beside the point. He came from a mass-production society and, like any good general, wanted to use his nation’s strengths on the battlefield.

  To Montgomery, “it was always very clear … that Ike and I were poles apart when it came to the conduct of war.” Montgomery was the senior British officer on the Continent, responsible for his nation’s interests and responsive to her traditions. Except for the temporary aberration of 1914–17, the British Army had never acted as if it had unlimited resources, either human or material, and it had always tried to husband its strength. Montgomery believed in “unbalancing the enemy while keeping well-balanced myself.” He tried to make the Germans commit their reserves on a wide front, after which he would make a counterattack on a narrow front. With one concentrated blow, he would cut through the German lines (not push them back everywhere) and dash on to his objective.6

  The problem of executing a planned strategy in war involves command structure, communications, weather, enemy reaction, logistics, and scores of other unpredictable factors. In an alliance, another important concern is the strength of national commitment. When half the troops on the Continent were British, Montgomery was much more inclined to insist upon his own views than later, when the American forces heavily outnumbered the British. The problems involved in the different national outlooks effected not only Eisenhower and Montgomery but everyone in SHAEF and among the armies in the field. Getting senior officers from different countries to work together was as complex a problem as interpreting German intentions, and as Patton illustrated most dramatically, it was not simply a British-American problem. All the top commanders were strong personalities, successful men who were accustomed to having their own way. They expected people around them to pay deference to their views and adopt their programs enthusiastically.7 Montgomery’s great moments had come in the desert with Eighth Army, at a time when he was very much his own man. At the heart of the command problem, therefore, was the human factor. The relations between Eisenhower and his subordinate commanders, especially Montgomery, caused as much of an adjustment of strategy during the European campaign as did German action and reaction, weather, or logistical matters. The complications began at Normandy.

  SHAEF’s expectations about what would happen after D-Day had been set at the May 15 meeting at St. Paul’s School, when Montgomery talked about capturing Caen on the first day and then driving inland. This plan had pleased Tedder and Leigh-Mallory, who counted on being able to build forward airfields for fighter bombers on the plains southwest of Caen, and had dovetailed with the original COSSAC plan, which called for a breakout through Caen. By mid-June both of these expectations had been dashed. The Allied troops were ashore, but barely, and they seemed to be getting nowhere. Hitler and Rommel, astutely realizing that if the Allies broke out of the beachhead they would use their overwhelming air and transport superiority to overrun all of France, bent every effort to containing them. The result was that, far from taking Caen and the airfield sites on the first day, and then racing on to the Seine, Montgomery was still outside the
city weeks after D-Day.

  That Caen would not be taken easily was apparent to Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey, commanding the British Second Army, as early as June 9. He abandoned the idea of capturing the city by a quick thrust and began the development of a plan to envelop Caen. On the morning of June 11, however, he was warned by his G-2 that the Germans were preparing for a counterattack from Caen. Not realizing that the combination of the Transportation Plan and sabotage by the French Resistance had made it impossible for the Germans to concentrate their reserves, he expected it to come in great strength and braced his forces. Dempsey dropped his offensive plans and concentrated his armor to meet the Germans. “This bit of ground,” he told a corps commander, “is the heart of the British Empire. Don’t move your armour from there!”8 When the attack came it was not in great force and was easily beaten back.

  On June 11 Montgomery told Brooke, “My general policy is to pull the enemy on to Second Army so as to make it the easier for First Army to expand and extend the quicker.”9 The note was the beginning of what would become one of the great controversies of the war. In the specific circumstances, it meant that Montgomery was willing to subordinate Second Army activities in order to concentrate on helping First Army take Cherbourg (Eisenhower had been emphasizing to everyone the need to capture the port and make it operational). Priority went to Cherbourg, not Caen. Eisenhower agreed with that option, but he did not agree to the implications of Montgomery’s plan. The British general was preparing to settle into what amounted to a siege of Caen, hoping to draw off German strength and thus make it possible for Bradley to break out on the right. Eisenhower had expected the breakout on the left, on the shortest road to Paris, and regarded Montgomery’s program as a change in the basic plan, brought on by his unsuccessful attempt to get Caen.

  Whether or not Montgomery changed his plan after failing to capture Caen will never be known for certain. His opponents, both British and American, claim that he did, while he maintained after the war that he always intended to hold with his left and break out on the right. Individual reaction to Montgomery’s claims depended in large part on the reaction to Montgomery’s personality. Thus one British officer at SHAEF who did not like Montgomery maintained vehemently that Montgomery was “a big cheat” in his claims. For Montgomery to say that he was holding the Germans so Bradley could break out was “absolute rubbish” and “a complete fabrication” that only developed after he was stopped outside Caen.10

  Whatever Montgomery’s plans were, he never communicated them clearly to SHAEF, and the battle he fought was not the one Eisenhower expected. Throughout the second half of June and into early July Eisenhower tried to get Montgomery moving against Caen. There was, however, a certain passivity in Eisenhower’s own response to the situation. The Supreme Commander did not approve of Montgomery’s handling of the battle and wanted some decisive results, but he never gave clear and forceful orders to achieve the desired ends. He refused to act partly because it was neither his nor SHAEF’s battle, but Montgomery’s. The Twenty-first Army Group commander’s position was similar to that Alexander had held under Eisenhower in the Mediterranean, for as chief ground commander Montgomery had a large degree of independence. As Supreme Commander, Eisenhower could indicate broad policy to Montgomery, but it was difficult for him to take full control over the battle because he could not deal directly with Dempsey or Bradley. One of the strongest American military traditions was to grant a high degree of independence to tactical commanders, and Eisenhower was a firm supporter of that tradition. The difficulty was that Eisenhower at this time was not clear in his own mind about the point at which independence became license.

  Two weeks after the invasion Montgomery’s troops were still outside Caen, but he continued to build up his forces, make probing attacks, talk about keeping the Germans “off balance,” declare himself satisfied with the results, and all the while blithely ignore the growing uneasiness about the situation at SHAEF. The Germans in the Cotentin Peninsula, meanwhile, who were supposed to have been outflanked by the drive out of Caen, were not. The enemy had been expected to withdraw from the area. Instead of doing so, the Germans put their major effort into sealing off the beachhead, fighting stubbornly in some of the best natural defensive terrain in the world.

  Meanwhile, the Americans on Montgomery’s right were in a country of small fields separated by hedges, banks, and sunken roads, where the hedgerows—fences of earth, hedge, and trees—varied in height from six to twenty-seven feet. By Montgomery’s plan, the Americans had to cross over through this country to the west coast of the Cotentin, move on and take Cherbourg, get the port operating, turn around and break through the German lines, and finally make a wide turn, pivoting on Caen, to flow into the French interior. Under this plan British troops on the left flank would contain as many German divisions as possible. Montgomery’s plan was reasonable and workable, and in the end it succeeded brilliantly, but it was not what SHAEF expected or Eisenhower wanted.

  In addition, disappointment over the change in plan was all the greater because progress by the Americans on the right was discouragingly slow. This was mainly due to the terrain, the absence of good intelligence information on the hedgerow country of Normandy, and the resulting lack of proper equipment and weapons. No one had bothered to study the hedgerow country in any depth for the simple reason that no one expected to fight a major battle there.* Not until June 18 did Bradley’s men reach the Gulf of St. Malo on the west coast of the Cotentin, and only after that could they turn north and drive all out for Cherbourg. Montgomery, meanwhile, launched spoiling attacks. His Second Army struck the Germans on June 13, but Montgomery called off the offensive when the resistance mounted. His failure to take Caen was balanced by his success in drawing off German strength, which came about both because the Germans feared above all else a breakout at Caen and because the city was indispensable to them for lateral communications.

  Second Army faced seven armored and two infantry divisions, while Bradley faced only seven infantry divisions. The disparity in figures, which Montgomery later stressed heavily, was not as impressive as at first glance, since tanks could not be used effectively in the hedgerow country anyway. The shortest road to Paris was through Caen; the area around Caen was well suited to offensive operations; the hedgerows of Normandy were ideal for defensive deployment. No matter what Montgomery did, the Germans would have placed their strongest forces in the Caen area.

  Even within the context of Montgomery’s over-all plan, the passive role of holding the Germans around Caen represented an inadequate plan. With possession of the city, the Germans could move supplies and reinforcements to the troops facing Bradley. On June 18, therefore, Montgomery gave Bradley the immediate task of seizing Cherbourg and his Second Army the immediate task of capturing Caen. Eisenhower, who tended to find agreement where none existed, was pleased by these developments. He was convinced that Montgomery was at last going to launch an all-out attack. “I can well understand that you have needed to accumulate reasonable amounts of artillery ammunition,” he told Montgomery, “but I am in high hopes that once the attack starts it will have a momentum that will carry it a long ways.” Eisenhower said that Montgomery had every reason to be proud of his troops, and added, “I thoroughly believe you are going to crack the enemy a good one.”11

  The next day, June 19, the aforementioned severe storm struck the Normandy coast, halting unloading operations and severely damaging the two artificial harbors. The storm also delayed Montgomery’s attack. Still, Eisenhower kept his hopes high. On June 24 he visited Bradley at his headquarters just as the American VII Corps opened the direct assault on Cherbourg. Eisenhower was satisfied that he would control the port in a few days. When he returned to England, Eisenhower learned that Montgomery’s attack would begin the next morning. “All the luck in the world to you and Dempsey,” he wired the Twenty-first Army Group commander. “Do not hesitate to make the maximum demands for any air assistance that can possibly be us
eful to you.” Eisenhower promised to “blast the enemy with everything we have.”12 Obviously the Supreme Commander expected great success, and Montgomery did not dissuade him. In reply Montgomery said that the attack had started, initial objectives had been captured, and “blitz attack of VIII Corps goes in tomorrow at 0730 hours and once it starts I will continue battle on eastern flank till one of us cracks and it will not be us.”13

  But the brave words were not matched by deeds. The British advance was slow and cautious, especially where it met resistance, and after creating a salient five miles deep (but less than two miles wide), Montgomery called off the offensive. The reason for this was that the Germans were concentrating for a counterattack and all the enemy armor in Normandy faced the Second Army. As the official British historian notes, “General Montgomery’s desire to fight the German armour on the British front had so far succeeded but it would only be justified if the armour were held and there was no setback. For the time being that was the most important consideration.”14

  Montgomery’s real achievement was in preventing the Germans from regrouping their forces for a major counterattack. He had denied them the initiative. On June 12 Hitler had recalled an SS Panzer corps from the eastern front and dispatched it to the west. Five days later Von Rundstedt and Rommel conferred with Hitler. They agreed to launch a decisive counterattack toward Bayeux with a strengthened Panzer Group West, under Rommel’s control. While tactical plans were being readied and troops and supplies assembled, however, Montgomery’s attack caused the Germans to use their reinforcements piecemeal. Thus, the Germans never mounted the decisive counterattack.15