Why the Allies Won

by Richard Overy

  The decision to terminate Goodwood coincided with a further delay in the west. Bradley needed more supplies and ammunition before he could launch Cobra. All of this proved too much for Eisenhower. ‘Blue as indigo’ at the delays, he insisted on getting across to France on 20 July in weather so bad it had grounded all other aircraft that morning. When he met Montgomery and Bradley he upbraided them for their lack of vigour and drive. He wanted offensives up and down the line, and simply could not grasp Montgomery’s purpose. The following day he wrote again to his ground commander: ‘Time is vital’. He flew to watch the launch of Cobra which had been postponed to the 21st, but was disappointed again. Bad weather forced yet another delay. Relations between Supreme Headquarters and Montgomery could hardly be worse. ‘Ike and I were poles apart’, Montgomery wrote in his memoirs, ‘when it came to the conduct of war.’84 But Montgomery had no one but himself to blame. He exuded infallibility when a modest realism would have been more politically prudent. He isolated himself from Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters. The two men met only nine times throughout the campaign, and on these occasions Eisenhower found it difficult to create the opportunity to confront his ebullient subordinate.

  In the end Eisenhower did nothing to interfere with Montgomery’s handling of the situation but the myth took root that Montgomery had failed in Normandy and had to be rescued by go-getting Americans. The truth could not have been more different. The delays to the breakout were unavoidable. Bradley could not punch decisively without supplies; once he was provisioned, nothing could be done about the weather. British and Canadian forces fought against the bulk of German armoured divisions in France, against bitter resistance and with a declining rate of reinforcement. But when the breakout finally came, the long weeks of attrition around Caen bore out Montgomery’s aims. The victory in Normandy was secured in the grim, unglamorous erosion of German fighting power in June and July.

  * * *

  On the morning of 25 July the sun shone at last on Allied endeavour. Operation Cobra began at 9.40 in the morning. It was the fruit of much careful preparation. At Montgomery’s prompting Bradley abandoned the strategy of the broad offensive, which had proved slow and wasteful of American resources, in favour of a concentrated blow with aircraft and tanks to pierce and turn the weak German line. Tactical experience had demonstrated the great advantage of rolling forward behind air bombardments laid down in box formation on the enemy defences. The real problem was still movement through the bocage. For this the Americans turned to the ingenious invention of Sergeant Curtis C. Culin Junior. To the front of a Sherman tank were welded eight steel teeth, 2 feet above ground level. Moving at 10–15 miles an hour, the tank could drive into the hedgerow, cut the roots and plunge through with little loss of speed. The ‘Rhinoceros’, as it soon became known, transformed the mobility of American armoured formations. No longer tied to the roads, they could now make rapid progress across country. During the middle weeks of July Bradley’s forces were brought up to strength. He had fifteen divisions in the 1st army, reinforced by a reserve of four divisions which were to form the nucleus of a new American 3rd army under General Patton, whose FUSAG role had run its successful course. Against these forces the German 7th army could field only nine weakened divisions and 110 serviceable tanks. The stage was set for the final act.85

  11 Breakout and pursuit in France, July–August 1944

  When the collapse of German resistance came it was sudden and complete. On the morning of 25 July almost 1,500 heavy-bombers laid a carpet of bombs over the Panzer Lehr division which lay directly astride the corridor that Bradley was to drive through the German line. Resistance was bludgeoned out of the forward defences. Over the next three days the forces drove on with growing momentum. While German tanks and self-propelled guns had to stay on or close to the roads, where they fell prey to fighter-bombers, the American forces developed fast mobile columns of Rhinoceros tanks, bulldozers and engineer battalions to bypass obstacles and plunge across fields and orchards. The costly advance from one hedgerow to another was abandoned. Armour pressed on, leaving pockets of German resistance to be mopped up by infantry. Each advancing column was followed by a constant patrol of Thunderbolt fighters, directed by an air controller in the front tank formations to attack strongpoints which would be marked by smoke-shells fired by the tanks. So close to the front-line did Allied aircraft operate that deaths from ‘friendly fire’ could not be avoided. But the effects of bombing on the enemy were severe. Against heavy bombing, the trenches, the foxholes, and even the deeper bunkers were little defence. After 45 days of severe fighting the German soldiers in front of the American attack were already weakened and demoralised. Bombing was more than many of them could stand: some went crazy, others surrendered or deserted, or drifted to the rear.86 Under the American onslaught the last reserves of German fighting power rapidly dissolved.

  In two days American forces drove 15 miles south all along the line. The armoured divisions of 8th corps reached the town of Coutances, close to the Atlantic coast, sweeping aside the shattered remnants of half a dozen German infantry divisions. While the remaining German armoured formations fought a vigorous rearguard, the rest of the line began a disorderly retreat southwards. The American progress was relentless. The 4th Armored division raced down the coast to seize Avranches and the gateway to Brittany, driving 25 miles in 36 hours. Bradley was astonished at their progress. He had expected the usual steady steamroller, but now he had a racing-car. Aware of Montgomery’s directive that ‘there must be no pause’, he instructed his forces to keep going. On 1 August the 3rd army was activated and General Patton was unleashed. Patton’s reputation preceded him. Fiery, intemperate, vulgar, he had many vices; but he loved war. ‘Made a talk,’ he wrote in his diary in May, at FUSAG headquarters. ‘As in all my talks I stressed fighting and killing.’87 There was no better general on the American side to send in hot pursuit of the collapsing German armies. He took to the task with a remorseless zeal. Ignoring Bradley’s precise instructions he moved seven divisions in 72 hours down the narrow coastal road and seized the whole of Brittany, save Brest and Lorient; he then wheeled his armies eastwards and began to drive towards Paris with almost no German forces in his way.

  The German command was faced with a strategic nightmare. The day after the fall of Avranches von Kluge warned Hitler’s headquarters that the German left flank had collapsed, the front ‘ripped open’ by American armour. The choice was between holding at Caen and abandoning western France, or dividing German forces between two battles, and risking collapse in both. He was unable to retreat, at Hitler’s express instruction. He decided on a compromise. He sent armoured reinforcements to the west and counted on Rommel’s defensive field to hold fast. The result was predictable. Strong British and Canadian thrusts both sides of Caen immobilised the German forces and intercepted those driving towards the American front. The German effort was futile. Two months of attrition made it next to impossible to conduct the kind of mobile warfare that had taken German forces across all Europe in 1940 and 1941. There was no air support. German units fought with the frantic energy of a cornered animal, as they began to sense their imminent defeat. At last Hitler allowed forces to be released from the 15th army, but they arrived in small groups like the earlier reinforcements, unable to turn the tide of battle, and grimly aware of how hopeless the situation had become.88

  As the German 7th army struggled to keep the rising tide of Allied forces at bay along its entire northern flank, Patton’s divisions raced out of Brittany towards Le Mans and Chartres. Much of the area was already falling into the hands of armed Frenchmen. So fast was American movement that it took some time before von Kluge realised that his armies now faced the threat of complete encirclement. The natural thing to do was to withdraw quickly and in reasonably good order beyond the Seine. Though Hitler too late began to plan a new defensive line in eastern France, he was determined that von Kluge should stay where he had been ordered to stay. On 2 August he issued him
with instructions to retake the western coast at Avranches and cut off Patton’s forces. After von Kluge’s protest that this was quite beyond his forces, Hitler sent a detailed plan on 4 August ordering 7th army and 5th Panzer army to launch a concentrated armoured offensive towards Avranches with all the Panzer divisions he could spare. Disobedience was hardly an option. Only two weeks before, on 20 July, a group of high-ranking army conspirators had failed to assassinate Hitler at his headquarters. Many of von Kluge’s comrades were now in prison awaiting trial, and Hitler had sent a personal emissary to von Kluge’s headquarters on 2 August to keep close watch on what the Commander-in-Chief West was doing. Von Kluge knew that to fulfil Hitler’s order to counter-attack was military suicide; but to order retreat would mean a career brought to an abrupt and dishonourable conclusion. On 3 August von Kluge, against the strident protests of his tank commanders, began to arrange what Hitler wanted. By the 6th he had gathered five weakened divisions in an area 30 miles from the sea around the town of Mortain, in a position to sever the thin neck of land connecting Patton’s forces with the rest of the American front. Between them they could muster four hundred tanks, but there were no reserves.89

  Intelligence on the counter-attack at Mortain was plentiful on the Allied side. The time when it would be launched was revealed through Ultra decrypts. Bradley was able to place forces in strongly fortified areas in front of the German threat. A little after midnight on 7 August the Panzer forces began their attack. One division under cover of darkness and early morning mist covered 10 miles. But when the mist finally cleared at midday, the German armour was subjected to an air attack of exceptional intensity. The German forces made no progress and suffered heavy losses. On that afternoon Bradley began to counter-attack. By the end of the following day, the German Panzer divisions were back where they had started, and faced irresistible pressure on either flank.90 That same day the rest of the front began to cave in. Around Caen, the Canadian and British forces pinned down in the German defensive field took advantage of the withdrawal of the armoured divisions westwards. Under cover of darkness and an annihilating bombardment that disorganised the attackers almost, but not quite, as much as the defenders, Allied forces drove to within 7 miles of Falaise, far behind the rear of the German armies trying to sustain Hitler’s counter-offensive. That day Eisenhower, who had moved his headquarters to France for the first time, met with Montgomery and Bradley to discuss how to take advantage of the long weak salient now occupied by the remnants of three German armies. It was agreed that Patton should swing north to form the southern jaw of a giant pincer to cut off German forces before they could retreat. Patton obliged with a march of 35 miles in two days that brought him by 11 August to the town of Argentan, just 20 miles from the 1st Canadian army closing on Falaise from the north.

  It was now only a matter of time before the jaws closed tight. All along the shrunken German line von Kluge’s forces fought with desperate tenacity to keep the narrow escape route open. Von Kluge, fearful that he would take the blame for the collapse, became ‘more and more gloomy’. Without permission from Hitler he ordered 2nd Panzer division to withdraw. But frantic and insulting messages from Hitler’s headquarters forced him to keep the rest of his forces where they were, pressed back on all sides. There was no hope of relief. The Allies revived the Anvil attack on southern France (now codenamed ‘Dragoon’) as their grip in the north tightened. On 15 August Allied troops landed in southern France and against the lightest resistance, and with much willing French participation, pushed up to meet American armies driving towards Paris. Behind the trapped German armies there were only the remnants of 15th army and little else between them and the Reich. By now Hitler suspected that von Kluge was on the point of surrender. Rather than face another Stalingrad he ordered Field Marshal Walter Model, a hero of the long fighting retreat on the eastern front, to fly at once to the western pocket and perform miracles.91

  It took Model only a few hours to see that no miracle could save the western front. He gave the German commanders permission to withdraw through the jaws, now only 5 or 6 miles wide, and closing hourly. The costs were far greater than a surrender. The exhausted Germans who ran the gauntlet through the gap were subjected to a barrage from air and artillery. Much of the equipment was abandoned. All along the roads, made impassable by bomb craters, and blocked by wagons and lorries burnt out and blown apart, trudged small groups of soldiers, who sought any avenue out of the carnage. The withdrawal had some semblance of order on 18 August, as the last German tanks held off the furious attacks of Allied forces, but when the jaws closed the retreat became a rout. A cloud of dense smoke hung over the battered mouth of the salient. Without food or munitions, German stragglers tried to fight their way through. They were raked with fire and bombed incessantly. A great part of the army escaped, but it was no longer a fighting force. Of those who did not, 45,000 were taken prisoner, and ten thousand lay in tangled heaps, among the bloated horses and crumpled tanks, victims of a slaughter for which Hitler alone bore the blame.

  For the first time German forces fled before the enemy. Because Hitier had insisted on fighting the decisive battle far forward in Normandy, there was almost nothing left of German forces in France once that battle was lost. The flight that followed little resembled the fighting withdrawal in the east, or the slow, hard-fought retreat across France in 1918. The remnants of the defeated army rushed for the Seine and beyond. Here they faced the prospect of yet another encirclement, for General Patton had got there before them. While 7th army was fighting its way out of the Falaise pocket, the vanguard of Patton’s forces reached the Seine at Mantes-Gassicourt, north-west of Paris. The following day the 12th corps of Patton’s 3rd army pushed south of the city, and drove the weak German defence across the river. By 25 August the American forces were 140 miles beyond Paris, and only 60 miles from the German border. Model made frantic efforts to create a stable front-line, but his exhausted troops, mostly on foot or in horsecarts, were overtaken by the Allies. They straggled to the lower reaches of the Seine as American and British forces moved in for the kill. Some escaped in small craft, or on cider barrels lashed together; yet others swam across. On the far bank Model could scrape together only the equivalent of four divisions, with 120 tanks, against an Allied force of more than forty divisions. There was little else between them and the German border. The retreat continued. ‘We are gaining ground rapidly,’ wrote a German soldier to his family in Germany, ‘but in the wrong direction.’92

  On 25 August Paris was liberated, after a half-hearted defence by the German garrison was swept aside by the Americans, the Free French forces and a popular uprising inside the city. The following day General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French forces, entered the capital in triumph. At the Arc de Triomphe he stopped to rekindle the eternal flame on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. At the head of his forces he walked down the Champs Elysées to hysterical cheering. When he arrived at the square in front of Notre Dame there was a burst of gunfire. De Gaulle ignored it and strode on into the cathedral, but behind him in the parade the tanks of the 2nd French armoured division opened fire on the surrounding rooftops. Inside, de Gaulle stood quietly, until he was shot at again by an unknown gunman within the cathedral itself. This time he was hustled away by anxious aides. That evening as Parisians dined out on liberation, the German air force offered one last riposte to Allied victory. At 11.15 waves of German bombers inflicted on Paris its heaviest raid of the war. They destroyed five hundred houses and a huge wine warehouse, the Halle aux Vins, whose contents burnt with such a fierce glow that the whole of central Paris was illuminated.93

  It took only a week to clear German forces from the rest of France. By 4 September British troops entered the Belgian port of Antwerp. During the defeat in Normandy and the long rout eastwards German forces lost some sixty divisions; 265,000 men were killed or wounded, 350,000 taken prisoner. Almost all the equipment of Germany’s western army was abandoned or destroyed. So rapidly did A
llied armies exploit their victory that their supply lines became stretched taut and Eisenhower insisted on a period of consolidation before the final push into the Reich. The pause gave German forces just sufficient time to regroup for the last defence of the fatherland. A series of spoiling actions, culminating in the Ardennes offensive in December, in which Hitler repeated the mistaken strategy of throwing his last reserves of tanks and aircraft forward against hopeless odds, slowed up the advance of Allied armies. But after the defeat in the west, the final defeat of Hitler’s Germany was only a matter of time. Pounded relentlessly from the air, threatened by a heavily armed host from west and east, German forces fought to the bitter end. On 30 April, in his bunker in Berlin, Hitler killed himself. When Albert Speer heard the news the following day he wept uncontrollably; ‘Only now was the spell broken,’ he wrote in his memoirs, ‘the magic extinguished.’94 To the end Hitler blamed everyone except himself for German defeat – Jews, Bolsheviks, even the German people, who died in millions for a man so obsessively self-centred that he wanted them to ‘struggle to the death’, ‘to hold out to the last drop of blood’ to prove his racial fantasies.95