Why the Allies Won

by Richard Overy

  German defences did not turn out to be as formidable as had been feared. The beach obstacles were cleared in a matter of hours thanks to careful Allied preparation and reconnaissance. The element of surprise was sufficient to allow Allied forces to storm ashore before adequate German reinforcements could be rushed to the front, and the initial German intention to build a second defensive line 3 miles inland from the shore never materialised. The great expectations of the Atlantic Wall were never realised. None the less, Rommel did have 34 divisions under his command to face the five British and American divisions in Normandy. The Allies’ early success owed a great deal to the confused and hesitant response of their enemy as a result of the FUSAG deception, which continued to mesmerise the German high command long after the invasion.

  There were hints of imminent invasion relayed to Hitler on the evening of 5 June. Goebbels found him ‘unperturbed’. In poor health, Hitler was resting at the Berghof, high in the Bavarian Alps. At ten on the morning of 6 June the first reports of Allied action came in. Hitler was asleep and had to be roused by his valet. When he was finally told the news he was briefly exultant (‘right in the place where we expected them’) but he still regarded Normandy as a mere diversion from the main invasion across the Dover-Calais strait. So confused were the reports coming in from the west that Goebbels thought the invasion was taking place from Dieppe to Dunkirk, echoing Hitler’s conviction that Normandy was a ‘decoy’.71 Only late in the afternoon of the 6th was Rommel allowed to take forces from the reserve to oppose the landings, too late to prevent British and Canadian troops from digging in, and now in the face of relentless air attack. But there was no question of moving the forces of 15th army away from the Calais area to help the beleaguered forces in Normandy. As long as the German high command believed that FUSAG was still poised to strike it was strategic suicide to move everything into western France and risk an annihilating pincer attack. Evidence from radio intercepts and from double-agents regarded as particularly reliable all indicated an Allied strategy of double-barrelled invasion. Everything pointed to 15 June as the critical day for the new assault, and Dieppe as its nodal point. At Supreme Headquarters it was decided to hold on at all costs in Normandy, while every effort would be strained to throw FUSAG back into the sea when it came. Against even the wildest expectations the deception lived on; late in June the BBC relayed bogus messages alerting the Resistance movements of Belgium and north-eastern France. The fifteenth of July was now regarded as invasion day. So convinced was Hitler that his enemy would do what he would have done that not until 7 August, on the very eve of German defeat, did he finally accept that FUSAG was not coming, and order 15th army westward.72

  The failure to commit more forces early on was Rommel’s undoing. Even then the margin on D-Day was slimmer than Montgomery would have liked. A week later he told Field Marshal Brooke with unusual candour that his forces could well have been defeated, for all the Allies’ advantages, if Rommel had been able to mount strong assaults from midday against forces still in a confused state on the beaches.73 Fortunately for the Allies, Rommel’s reinforcements came piece-meal, tanks without their fuel, men without their lorries or horses. In the first four days German forces did all they could to establish a firm line 8–10 miles from the coast. From then on the battle entered a new phase. Montgomery had two immediate objectives: the capture of the port of Cherbourg at the end of the Cotentin peninsula, and the capture of Caen at the eastern end of the lodgement area. He knew that German forces would concentrate against the threat to Caen, because it was perceived to be the gateway to the Seine and Paris, and beyond. This would free American forces to exploit German weakness in western France and begin the long encirclement eastwards. But progress towards this stage was slow, well behind the schedule drawn up in the Overlord plan. In the western sector Allied forces could not bring their greater mobility and firepower to bear because of the nature of the terrain. They were fighting in the bocage, a farming country of narrow roads and high banks topped with thick hedgerows. This was ideal for defensive warfare. Though weakly held, the German line was difficult to penetrate. Progress was measured in yards. Morale was dented by fear of snipers, who were armed with everything from rifles to anti-tank guns. Tanks were ambushed and disabled before they could even find a target at which to aim. The German forces facing the Allies now were drawn mainly from the regular field army, and they fought with a greater determination and skill than the defenders of the Atlantic Wall. Around Caen, Rommel succeeded in concentrating four Panzer divisions by 13 June; though they were short of equipment, and constantly harassed from the air, they prevented a quick capture of the city. The front settled down to a slow battle of attrition.

  As the front solidified, Allied forces became hostage to the rate at which they could be supplied with fresh troops and equipment. Within days the two Mulberries were complete enough to be operational. By mid-June the Allies had moved nineteen divisions into the bridgehead – more than half a million men, and 77,000 vehicles. Then once again the weather let the Allies down. On 18 June the day was fine and warm. The following day the Channel was suddenly and unexpectedly hit by the worst gales of the century. A force eight wind and driving rain whipped the waters into waves 6 feet high; by the 20th nothing could sail across. The shrieking wind aad fierce seas played havoc with the small craft sheltering like so many sheep inside the pens provided by the almost-completed Mulberries. Small boats were tossed up and smashed against the shore and the walls of the harbour. After eighty hours of battering, the Mulberry off the American beaches at St Laurent began to disintegrate beyond repair. Only the 55 old merchantmen, sunk farther out to sea, afforded enough flimsy protection to prevent a complete disaster. When the storm abated on the 22nd, eight hundred small craft, including many of the essential task transporters, lay smashed and stranded on the beaches. For the German defenders the gale was like that Divine Wind, kamikaze, that broke up the invading Mongol fleet in the Sea of Japan seven centuries before. The supplies to the lodgement area dried up at a critical juncture of the battle. Up to the 19th of June an average of 22,000 tons of supplies had been brought in every day; over the next three days the total collapsed to a little more than 1,000 tons a day, The loss of ammunition was particularly acute. Without it neither the British nor American forces could launch the attacks they had planned. For four days the German defenders were free of air attack, and could move forward men and tanks unmolested. Not until the end of July were the Allies able to make good all the losses inflicted by the capricious elements.74

  The storm made slow progress sluggish. The only relief for the Allies came in the Cotentin peninsula, where weak German defences were swept aside isolating the whole peninsula from the German defensive line in the south. The American commander, General Bradley, had just enough ammunition left for his forces to attack the four retreating German divisions cut off around Cherbourg. The German defences crumbled. Within a week the American 7th corps reached the outskirts of the port; by the 22nd, as the storm subsided, the attack on Cherbourg began with a thunderous bombardment from sea and land. By the 25th American troops entered the outskirts. A day later the German commander surrendered. A few German soldiers who took to heart Hitler’s order to stand and die to the last man and the last bullet held out for another five days against overwhelming odds.75 But everywhere else along the line the Allies met stiffer resistance. Protected by cloud cover during the storm Rommel moved up four more armoured divisions. By 1 July, he was prepared to launch a strong counter-attack, with five Panzer divisions, against the British position north of Caen. The attack was repulsed by concentrated artillery fire in what proved to be the heaviest fighting since D-Day. Two days later the American 8th corps began to drive south to prepare for the breakout planned by Bradley and Montgomery which would take American troops across the German line, towards the Seine, but fierce fighting, poor weather, and the combination of swampy inlets and bocage bogged down the assault. Rommel now moved two Panzer divisions, 2nd
SS and Panzer Lehr, to obstruct the American threat to his western flank. It took American forces six days to move 5 miles. The launch of the breakout – Operation ‘Cobra’ – had to be postponed in the face of German resistance. By mid-July there was every appearance of stalemate.

  Eisenhower, who seemed ‘buoyant and inspired’ when he visited France on 12 June, returned at the beginning of July ‘smouldering’ at what he regarded as Montgomery’s excessive timidity. The mood of optimism at Supreme Headquarters engendered by the success of the initial lodgement was dissipated by the dispiriting slogging match played out in the orchards and marshes of Normandy. When Stalin began the great Soviet offensive on 20 June, timed deliberately to coincide with the Allied pressure in the west, the contrast between the early successes of the Red Army and the slow progress of the forces under Montgomery’s command was plain.76 It is not difficult to find the source of Eisenhower’s frustration. With the advantage of surprise, with overwhelming air supremacy, with the success of the deception plan, with regular and ready access to German signals, it was difficult to grasp why the limited German forces could not be pushed back swiftly and decisively. The fear at Supreme Headquarters was of a return to the trench stalemate of the First World War. Relations between Eisenhower and Montgomery deteriorated. At Eisenhower’s headquarters there was talk of sackings; his deputies urged him to confront Montgomery and demand action.77

  The conflict between the two men has often been presented as a fundamental contrast in strategy, Eisenhower’s hare to Montgomery’s tortoise. There is certainly something in the contrast, revealed long before D-Day, between the American doctrine of the general offensive and the British emphasis on economy of effort, with the careful husbanding and deployment of limited resources. This was a difference made explicit on the ground in Normandy. Eisenhower wanted to see vigorous action all along the front, and would have been happy with a breakout anywhere, as long as the Germans were chased out of France. Montgomery feared that such a strategy would produce diluted effort and high attrition. He was conscious of how shallow was the pool of manpower that sustained British and Canadian forces. With only 37 divisions assigned to the Overlord campaign, against a potential of over fifty German, it was essential to conserve manpower by getting the enemy to concentrate his efforts against one strongly defended sector, in order to reduce pressure along the whole front. This is what happened in the area around Caen. The failure to capture the city in the first few days was in a sense immaterial, though to Montgomery’s critics, then and now, it came to symbolise the apparent collapse of the Overlord plan. The enemy regarded the front at Caen as the most important Allied objective, from where they would attempt a breakout towards the Seine, and they concentrated the bulk of German forces in that sector. By the end of June there were only half a Panzer division and 140 tanks opposing the American sector; around Caen were seven and a half armoured divisions, and over seven hundred tanks. Even when Rommel switched two divisions in early July the balance of armoured vehicles remained the same. By 25 July there were two Panzer divisions and 190 tanks in front of the American forces preparing Cobra; but at Caen there were still six armoured divisions and 645 tanks.78 What held up the Allied advance was not a failure of Allied strategy, but the failure to predict how difficult the topography of the area would be for mobile warfare, or to anticipate Hitler’s order that all forces should fight for every inch of ground rather than execute the strategic withdrawals dictated by military good sense. The battle of attrition was dictated not by Montgomery but by the desperate German defenders.

  Eisenhower had little appreciation of quite how brittle the German position was. Had he realised, he might well have viewed Montgomery’s efforts more kindly. The failure to throw the invader back into the sea compelled Rommel to fight the kind of contest least congenial to German forces. Unable to build up a significant strategic reserve, he was forced to plug every gap that appeared in the line, using even the valuable armoured divisions, whose tactical advantages were squandered in actions more suited to infantry. Naval gunfire and remorseless aerial bombardment inflicted further heavy losses. The movement of reinforcements and supplies across France was rendered increasingly difficult by Allied air power and French Resistance. It took longer for the 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions transferred from the eastern front to travel from eastern France to Normandy than it did for them to move from the Soviet front to France. The chaotic transport conditions made it difficult to keep front-line troops supplied with fuel and ammunition. Divisions that arrived at the Normandy battle were thrown straight into the breach before they had had time to assemble or to collect their equipment. On 17 June Rommel and von Rundstedt met Hitler at his forward headquarters, ‘Wolfs Lair II’, at Margival near Soissons, whither he had flown at their request to discuss German strategy in the west. Von Rundstedt wanted a fighting withdrawal to hold a front along the Loire and Orne rivers, where a mobile reserve could be built up strong enough to resume the counter-offensive. Hitler was quite unmoved. He ordered the line to stand fast at all costs and flew back to Germany.79 But twelve days later the two generals were back in front of Hitler at Berchtesgaden, pleading for a fighting retreat across France in the hope that Germany could reach a political settlement with the west, or achieve an armistice like 1918. Again, Hitler was unmoved. He insisted once more on holding the line, where the enemy would be worn down by the struggle, and forced back into the sea ‘using every method of guerrilla warfare’.80 Yet the twenty divisions that might have turned the tide in such a battle were kept back to check the second strike expected at any moment on the Channel coast to the north.

  German commanders in France knew that Hitler was quite out of touch with reality. Hitler, for his part, saw an insidious defeatism in the suggestions of withdrawal. He sacked von Rundstedt and appointed Field Marshal von Kluge in his place. The new commander arrived confident of stabilising the situation; but in a matter of days he realised that the reports from the front had spoken the truth. Shortly after his arrival Montgomery launched the first of a number of major operations on the eastern wing of the lodgement which aimed at destroying what remained of German offensive power, and creating the conditions for an American breakout farther to the west. On 7 July began the battle for Caen. The assault started with an attack by 467 heavy-bombers which carpet-bombed the unfortunate town. When British troops reached the outskirts the following morning the streets were impassable, pitted with giant craters and blocked with piles of heavy stones from the shattered buildings. The German forces abandoned the main part of the city, but destroyed all the bridges across the river, making it impossible for Allied forces to pursue the enemy farther. South of Caen the German forces dug in. Rommel organised a defensive zone 10 miles deep to prevent an Allied breakthrough. There were five lines of defence: a light infantry cover to absorb the bombing and artillery barrage; a line of tanks positioned a short distance behind; a third area of small villages occupied by infantry dug in with anti-tank guns; a powerful gun line along the crest of the Bourguebus Ridge some 4 miles south of Caen, with 78 of the formidable 88-millimetre anti-aircraft guns that doubled as tank-busting artillery; and finally a defensive zone behind the ridge itself manned by infantry and backed by a tank reserve 5 miles to the rear. Rommel waited for what threatened to be the climax of the gruelling six weeks of attritional warfare.81

  Urged on by the tetchy Eisenhower, and anxious about the slow pace of American preparation for the breakout, Montgomery rose to Rommel’s bait. On 13 July he planned a fresh operation, ‘Goodwood’, to drive east of Caen and seize the defended areas to the south. His instructions issued to commanders two days later made it clear that rather than attempting a breakout himself his objectives were limited to tying down and destroying the bulk of German armour, and creating a firm hinge on which Bradley could swing when he pushed open the door in Brittany: ‘all the activities on the eastern flank are designed to help the forces in the west while ensuring a firm bastion is kept in the east.’82 Ultra in
telligence showed the weak state of the German divisions, and the problems of reinforcement, but did not make clear the extent of Rommel’s defensive field. Goodwood was scheduled for 18 July. The day before, Rommel made a final tour of his defensive preparations. On his way back from the headquarters of Panzer Group West his car was machine-gunned on the road by two British aircraft. There was no cover. His driver was killed outright and Rommel was hurled on to the carriageway. Severely injured, he took no further part in the struggle for Normandy. His duties were assumed by von Kluge.

  On 18 July Allied bombers prefaced Montgomery’s attack with the heaviest bombardment of the campaign. For three hours the German defences were pounded so thoroughly that when the British armour and infantry followed the bombers’ wake they encountered almost no opposition from the first line of dazed defenders. But the line of tanks and the anti-tank gun-nests behind held fast. Montgomery’s troops became locked in a fierce and prolonged struggle for the villages all along the slopes of Bourguebus Ridge. Heavy losses were sustained on both sides. For two days of bitter fighting Canadian and British forces blasted German defenders from all but one of the villages in the third line of defence, but above them on the crest of the Ridge the German gun line remained intact. Then, on the afternoon of 20 July, just as Montgomery’s forces were preparing to assault the Ridge, a prolonged downpour turned the battlefield into a sea of mud. Tanks could no longer be deployed and Montgomery brought Goodwood to an end. Though the Ridge eluded him, his other aims were largely met. The battle exhausted the German armoured divisions and prevented the transfer of armour to the west. To meet the Allied assault at Caen two Panzer divisions earlier moved to the American sector were recalled. The vital task of pinning German armour to the eastern end of the lodgement was achieved. Though Rommel’s defensive zone held fast, the hail of 12,000 tons of bombs, and the constant attacks by fighter-bombers, ate away at precious manpower and tanks. The day after the end of the battle von Kluge wrote a long letter to Hitler, enclosing a memorandum from Rommel, penned two days before his accident. Neither man pulled his punches. ‘The force is fighting heroically,’ wrote Rommel, ‘but the unequal combat is nearing its end.’ Von Kluge added his own voice: ‘I came here with the fixed determination of making effective your order to stand fast at any price … In spite of intense efforts, the moment has drawn near when this front, already so heavily strained, will break.’ Since D-Day German forces had lost 2,117 tanks and 113,000 men; in return only 10,078 men and seventeen tanks had been sent to replace them. Despite heavy Allied losses the balance of tanks lay heavily in their favour, 4,500 in late July against 850 German. Allied reinforcements since D-Day exceeded one and a half million men and 330,000 vehicles.83