The Second World War

by Winston S. Churchill

  On my last day at Arromanches I visited Montgomery’s headquarters, a few miles inland. The Commander-in-Chief was in the best of spirits on the eve of his largest operation, which he explained to me in all detail. He took me into the ruins of Caen and across the river, and we also visited other parts of the British front. Then he placed at my disposal his captured Storch aeroplane, and the Air Commander himself piloted me all over the British positions. This aircraft could land at a pinch almost anywhere, and consequently one could fly at a few hundred feet from the ground, gaining a far better view and knowledge of the scene than by any other method. I also visited several of the air stations, and said a few words to gatherings of officers and men. Finally, I went to the field hospital, where, though it was a quiet day, a trickle of casualties was coming in. One poor man was to have a serious operation, and was actually on the table about to take the anaesthetic. I was slipping away when he said he wanted me. He smiled wanly and kissed my hand. I was deeply moved, and very glad to learn later on that the operation had been entirely successful.

  At this time the orders which had held the German Fifteenth Army behind the Seine were cancelled, and several fresh divisions were sent to reinforce the hard-pressed Seventh. Their transference, by rail or road, or across the Seine by the ferry system which had replaced the broken bridges, was greatly delayed and injured by our air forces. The long-withheld aid reached the field too late to turn the scale.

  The hour of the great American break-out under General Omar Bradley had come at last. On July 25 their VIIth Corps struck southwards from St. Lô, and the next day the VIIIth Corps, on their right, joined the battle. The bombardment by the United States Air Force had been devastating, and the infantry assault prospered. Then the armour leaped through and swept on to the key point of Coutances. The German escape route down that coast of Normandy was cut, and the whole German defence west of the Vire was in jeopardy and chaos. The roads were jammed with retreating troops, and the Allied bombers and fighter-bombers took a destructive toll of men and vehicles. The advance drove forward. Avranches was taken on July 31, and soon afterwards the sea corner, opening the way to the Brittany peninsula, was turned. The Canadians, under General Crerar, made a simultaneous attack from Caen down the Falaise road. This was effectively opposed by four Panzer divisions. Montgomery, who still commanded the whole battle line, thereupon transferred the weight of the British attack to the other front, and gave orders to the British Second Army, under General Dempsey, for a new thrust from Caumont to Vire. Preceded again by heavy air bombing, this started on July 30, and Vire was reached a few days later.

  On August 7 I went again to Montgomery’s headquarters by air, and after he had given me a vivid account with his maps an American colonel arrived to take me to General Bradley. The route had been carefully planned to show me the frightful devastation of the towns and villages through which the United States troops had fought their way. All the buildings were pulverised by air bombing. We reached Bradley’s headquarters about four o’clock. The General welcomed me cordially, but I could feel there was great tension, as the battle was at its height and every few minutes messages arrived. I therefore cut my visit short and motored back to my aeroplane, which awaited me. I was about to go on board when, to my surprise, Eisenhower arrived. He had flown from London to his advanced headquarters, and, hearing of my movements, intercepted me. He had not yet taken over the actual command of the army in the field from Montgomery; but he supervised everything with a vigilant eye, and no one knew better than he how to stand close to a tremendous event without impairing the authority he had delegated to others.

  The Third United States Army, under General Patton, had now been formed and was in action. He detached two armoured and three infantry divisions for the westward and southerly drive to clear the Brittany peninsula. The cut-off enemy at once retreated towards their fortified ports. The French Resistance Movement, which here numbered 30,000 men, played a notable part, and the peninsula was quickly overrun. By the end of the first week in August the Germans, amounting to 45,000 garrison troops and remnants of four divisions, had been pressed into defensive perimeters at St. Malo, Brest, Lorient, and St. Nazaire. Here they could be pemied and left to wither, thus saving the unnecessary losses which immediate assaults would have required.

  While Brittany was thus being cleared or cooped the rest of Patton’s Army drove eastward in the “long hook” which was to carry them to the gap between the Loire and Paris and down the Seine towards Rouen. The town of Laval was entered on August 6, and Le Mans on the 9th. Few Germans were found in all this wide region, and the main difficulty was supplying the advancing Americans over long and ever-lengthening distances. Except for a limited air-lift, everything had still to come from the beaches of the original landing and pass down the western side of Normandy through Avranches to reach the front. Avranches therefore became the bottle-neck, and offered a tempting opportunity for a German attack striking westward from the neighbourhood of Falaise. The idea caught Hitler’s fancy, and he gave orders for the maximum possible force to attack Mortain, burst its way through to Avranches, and thus cut Patton’s communications. The German commanders were unanimous in condemning the project. Realising that the battle for Normandy was already lost, they wished to use four divisions which had just arrived from the Fifteenth Army in the north to carry out an orderly retreat to the Seine. They thought that to throw any fresh troops westward was merely to “stick out their necks”, with the certain prospect of having them severed. Hitler insisted on having his way, and on August 7 five Panzer and two infantry divisions delivered a vehement attack on Mortain from the east.

  The blow fell on a single U.S. division, but it held firm and three others came to its aid. After five days of severe fighting and concentrated bombing from the air the enemy were thrown back in confusion, and, as their generals had predicted, the whole salient from Falaise to Mortain was at the mercy of converging attacks from three sides. The Allied forces swept on to the crowded Germans within the long and narrow pocket, and with the artillery inflicted fearful slaughter. The Germans held stubbornly on to the jaws of the gap at Falaise and Argentan, and, giving priority to their armour, tried to extricate all that they could. But on August 17 command and control broke down and the scene became a shambles. The jaws closed on August 20, and although by then a considerable part of the enemy had been able to scramble eastwards no fewer than eight German divisions were annihilated. What had been the Falaise pocket was their grave. Von Kluge reported to Hitler: “The enemy air superiority is terrific and smothers almost all our movements. Every movement of the enemy however is prepared and protected by his air forces. Losses in men and material are extraordinary. The morale of the troops has suffered very heavily under constant murderous enemy fire.”

  The Third United States Army, besides clearing the Brittany peninsula and contributing with their “short hook” to the culminating victory at Falaise, thrust three corps eastwards and north-eastwards from Le Mans. On August 17 they reached Orleans, Chartres, and Dreux. Thence they drove north-westwards to meet the British advancing on Rouen. Our Second Army had experienced some delay. They had to reorganise after the Falaise battle, and the enemy found means to improvise rearguard positions. However, the pursuit was pressed hotly, and all the Germans south of the Seine were soon seeking desperately to retreat across it, under destructive air attacks. None of the bridges destroyed by previous air bombardments had been repaired, but there were a few pontoon bridges and a fairly adequate ferry service. Very few vehicles could be saved. South of Rouen immense quantities of transport were abandoned. Such troops as escaped were in no condition to resist on the farther bank of the river.

  Eisenhower, now in supreme command, was determined to avoid a battle for Paris. Stalingrad and Warsaw had proved the horrors of frontal assaults and patriotic risings, and he resolved to encircle the capital and force the garrison to surrender or flee. By August 20 the time for action had come. Patton had crossed the Sei
ne near Mantes, and his right flank had reached Fontainebleau. The French Underground had revolted. The police were on strike. The Prefecture was in Patriot hands. An officer of the Resistance reached Patton’s headquarters with vital reports, and on the Wednesday morning these were delivered to Eisenhower at Le Mans.

  Attached to Patton was the French 2nd Armoured Division, under General Leclerc, which had landed in Normandy on August 1, and played an honourable part in the advance. De Gaulle arrived the same day, and was assured by the Allied Supreme Commander that when the time came—and as had been long agreed—Leclerc’s troops would be the first in Paris. That evening news of street-fighting in the capital decided Eisenhower to act, and Leclerc was told to march. The operation orders, dated August 23, began with the words “Mission (1) s’emparer de Paris …”

  On August 24 the main thrust, led by Colonel Billotte, son of the commander of the First French Army Group, who was killed in May 1940, moved up from Orleans. That night a vanguard of tanks reached the Porte d’Orléans, and entered the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Early next morning Billotte’s armoured columns held both banks of the Seine opposite the Cité. By the afternoon the headquarters of the German commander, General von Cholitz, in the Hôtel Meurice, were surrounded. Von Cholitz was taken before Leclerc. This was the end of the road from Dunkirk to Lake Chad and home again. In a low voice Leclerc spoke his thoughts aloud: “Maintenant, ca y est”, and then in German he introduced himself to the vanquished. After a brief and brusque discussion the capitulation of the garrison was signed, and one by one their remaining strong-points were occupied by the Resistance and the regular troops.

  The city was given over to a rapturous demonstration. German prisoners were spat at, collaborators dragged through the streets, and the liberating troops feted. On this scene of long-delayed triumph there arrived General de Gaulle. At the Hôtel de Ville, in company with the main figures of the Resistance and Generals Leclerc and Juin, he appeared for the first time as the leader of Free France before the jubilant population. There was a spontaneous burst of wild enthusiasm. In the afternoon of August 26, de Gaulle made his formal entry on foot down the Champs Élys ées to the Place de la Concorde, and then in a file of cars to Notre Dame. There was some firing from inside and outside the cathedral by hidden collaborators. The crowd scattered, but after a short moment of panic the solemn dedication of the liberation of Paris proceeded to its end.

  By August 30 our troops were crossing the Seine at many points. Enemy losses had been tremendous: 400,000 men, half of them prisoners, 1,300 tanks, 20,000 vehicles, 1,500 field-guns. The German Seventh Army, and all divisions that had been sent to reinforce it, were torn to shreds. The Allied break-out from the beach-head had been delayed by bad weather and Hitler’s mistaken resolve. But once that battle was over everything went with a run, and the Seine was reached six days ahead of the planned time. There has been criticism of slowness on the British front in Normandy, and the splendid American advances of the later stages seemed to indicate greater success on their part than on ours. It is therefore necessary to emphasise that the whole plan of campaign was to pivot on the British front and draw the enemy’s reserves in that direction in order to help the American turning movement. By determination and hard fighting this was achieved. “Without the great sacrifices made by the Anglo-Canadian armies in the brutal, slugging battles for Caen and Falaise,” wrote General Eisenhower in his official report, “the spectacular advances made elsewhere by the Allied forces could never have come about.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  ITALY AND THE RIVIERA LANDING

  LIBERATING Normandy was a supreme event in the European campaign of 1944, but it was only one of several concentric strokes upon Nazi Germany. In the east the Russians were flooding into Poland and the Balkans, and in the south Alexander’s armies in Italy were pressing towards the river Po. Decisions had now to be taken about our next move in the Mediterranean, and it must be recorded with regret that these occasioned the first important divergence on high strategy between ourselves and our American friends.

  The design for final victory in Europe had been outlined in prolonged discussion at the Teheran Conference in November 1943. Its decisions still governed our plans, and it would be well to recall them. First and foremost we had promised to carry out “Overlord”. Here was the dominating task, and no one disputed that here lay our prime duty. But we still wielded powerful forces in the Mediterranean, and the question had remained, what should they do? We had resolved that they should capture Rome, whose near-by airfields were needed for bombing Southern Germany, advance up the peninsula as far as the Pisa-Rimini line, and there hold as many enemy divisions as possible. This however was not all. A third operation was also agreed upon, namely, an amphibious landing in the south of France, and it was on this project that controversy was about to descend. It was originally conceived as a feint or threat to keep German troops on the Riviera and stop them joining the battles in Normandy, but the Americans had pressed for a real attack by ten divisions, and Stalin had supported them. I accepted the change, largely to prevent undue diversions to Burma, although I contemplated other ways of exploiting success in Italy, and the plan had been given the code-name “Anvil”.

  But there were several reservations. Many of the forces would have to come from Italy, and they had first to accomplish the arduous and important task of seizing Rome and the airfields. Until this was done little could be spared or taken from Alexander. Rome must fall before “Anvil” could start. And it must also start about the same time as “Overlord”. The troops would have a long way to go before they could reach Eisenhower’s armies in Normandy, and unless they landed in good time they would be too late to help and the battle of the beaches would be over. All turned on the capture of Rome. At Teheran we had confidently expected to reach it early in the spring, but this had proved impossible. The descent at Anzio to accelerate its capture had drawn eight or ten German divisions away from the vital theatre, or more than was expected to be attracted to the Riviera by “Anvil”. This in effect superseded it by achieving its object. Nevertheless the Riviera project went forward as if nothing had happened.

  Apart from “Anvil” hanging somewhat vaguely in the future, some of the finest divisions of the armies in Italy had rightly been assigned to the main operation of “Overlord” and had sailed for England before the end of 1943. Alexander had thus been weakened and Kesselring had been strengthened. The Germans had sent reinforcements to Italy, had parried the Anzio swoop, and had stopped us entering Rome until just before D Day. The hard fighting had of course engulfed important enemy reserves which might otherwise have gone to France, and it certainly helped “Overlord” in its critical early stages, but none the less our advance in the Mediterranean had been gravely upset. Landing-craft were another obstacle. Many of them had been sent to “Overlord”. “Anvil” could not be mounted until they came back, and this in its turn depended on events in Normandy. These facts had been long foreseen, and as far back as March 21 General Maitland Wilson, the Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean, reported that “Anvil” could not be launched before the end of July. Later he put it at mid-August, and declared that the best way to help “Overlord” was to abandon any attack on the Riviera and concentrate on Italy. Both he and Alexander thought their best contribution to the common end would be to press forward with all their resources into the Po valley. Thereafter, with the help of an amphibious operation against the Istrian peninsula, at the head of the Adriatic, which is dominated by and runs south from Trieste, there would be attractive prospects of advancing through the Ljubljana Gap into Austria and Hungary and striking at the heart of Germany from another direction.

  When Rome fell on June 4 the problem had to be reviewed. Should we go on with “Anvil” or should we make a new plan?

  General Eisenhower naturally wanted to strengthen his attack in North-West Europe by all available means. Strategic possibilities in Northern Italy did not attract him, but he cons
ented to return the landing-craft as soon as possible if this would lead to a speedy “Anvil”. The American Chiefs of Staff agreed with Eisenhower, holding rigidly to the maxim of concentration at the decisive point, which in their eyes meant only North-West Europe. They were supported by the President, who was mindful of the agreements made with Stalin many months before at Teheran. Yet all was changed by the delay in Italy.

  Mr. Roosevelt admitted that an advance through the Ljubljana Gap might contain German troops, but it would not draw any of their divisions from France. He therefore urged that “Anvil” should be undertaken, at the expense of course of our armies in Italy, since “in my view the resources of Great Britain and the United States will not permit us to maintain two major theatres in the European war, each with decisive missions.” The British Chiefs of Staff took the opposite view. Rather than land on the Riviera they preferred to send troops from Italy by sea direct to Eisenhower. With much prescience they remarked: “We think that the mounting of ‘Anvil’ on a scale likely to achieve success would hamstring General Alexander’s remaining forces to such an extent that any further activity would be limited to something very modest.”