Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  De Guingand was much encouraged by the conference. He wired Montgomery that his plan had been given “100 per cent support.” This was not entirely true. Eisenhower’s apparent change of heart was verbal only; he said Montgomery should have priority but he refused to implement the decision. Montgomery had wanted control of First Army; all he got was permission, limited largely to emergencies, to communicate directly with Hodges. And Patton, the source of so much of Montgomery’s discomfort, believed that since Eisenhower was too closely committed to Montgomery’s plan, it was up to him to make the greatest possible use of any loopholes in Eisenhower’s orders to spur on his own battle. In order to avoid having to stop his offensive, he declared, “it was evident that the Third Army should get deeply involved at once.…”51

  Patton had expected that the decision at Versailles would favor Montgomery’s plan, and thus had already seen to it that his troops would be deeply committed. “In order to attack,” he explained later, “we had first to pretend to reconnoiter, then reinforce the reconnaissance, and finally put on an attack—all depending on what gasoline and ammunition we could secure.” His ordnance officers “passed themselves off as members of the First Army” and secured gasoline from one of Hodges’ dumps.*

  Eisenhower probably knew what Patton was doing, and may have expected it. This fact was a source of enormous frustration for Montgomery. The Supreme Commander seemed to be constantly agreeing to Twenty-first Army Group plans, then reneging by allowing Patton and Bradley to go their own way. Thus Montgomery’s policies, not to mention the announced wishes of the Supreme Commander, were not fully implemented.

  While Patton was forcing Eisenhower to continue the flow of supplies to Third Army, Bradley was making adjustments in Twelfth Army Group designed to ease that burden. After taking over a section of Montgomery’s front, Bradley transferred his two southernmost divisions to Devers’ Sixth Army Group, which received its supplies through Marseilles. He also brought Lieutenant General William H. Simpson’s Ninth Army into the line in the Ardennes, between Hodges and Patton. This allowed Hodges to concentrate more of his effort in support of Montgomery.

  On the main front, meanwhile, the primary objective in Eisenhower’s over-all plan had failed. The British 1st Airborne had been unable to secure the Arnhem bridge and was subject to increasingly severe counterattacks from two SS Panzer divisions. British ground forces could not get through to Arnhem until September 22, by which time the element of the British airborne division at the Arnhem bridge had disintegrated. Meanwhile the Second Army was unable to get across the river to the remnants of the division, and on the twenty-fifth the paratroopers withdrew from their advanced positions. MARKET-GARDEN had failed.52

  Montgomery continued his attacks toward Arnhem in a futile effort to salvage the situation, giving priority to Second Army while the Canadians at Antwerp got what was left of men and supplies, which was very little. One difficulty was that Eisenhower continued to think both ends could be achieved and urged Montgomery to get as far east as possible; he never took a firm stand with Montgomery regarding Antwerp. The enemy, desperately afraid of being outflanked at Arnhem, reinforced themselves on Montgomery’s front. Eisenhower, recognizing that this development meant that Twenty-first Army Group needed help, told Bradley to take over an additional section of Montgomery’s line and declared on October 8 that the Allies “must retain as first mission the gaining of the line of the Rhine north of Bonn as quickly as humanly possible.”53

  The next day, October 9, British naval officers reported to Eisenhower that the Canadians would be unable to move until November 1 because of ammunition shortages. A furious Eisenhower wired Montgomery, “Unless we have Antwerp producing by the middle of November our entire operations will come to a standstill. I must emphasize that of all our operations on our entire front from Switzerland to the Channel, I consider Antwerp of first importance, and I believe that the operations designed to clear up the entrance require your personal attention.” He took all the sting out of the message, however, by adding, “You know best where the emphasis lies within your Army Group.…”54

  Montgomery assumed that Admiral Ramsay had given Eisenhower the report on ammunition shortages, and he fired back a cable the same day. “Request you will ask Ramsay from me by what authority he makes wild statements to you concerning my operations about which he can know nothing rpt nothing.” The Canadians, Montgomery said, were already attacking, and there “is no rpt no shortage of ammunition.…” He reminded Eisenhower that at the Versailles conference the Supreme Commander had made the attack against the Ruhr the “main effort.” Montgomery promised to open Antwerp as early as possible, and concluded, “The operations are receiving my personal attention.”55 Eisenhower replied that he had not gotten the information from Ramsay and was glad to hear that the report was false. He reminded Montgomery that “the possession of the approaches to Antwerp remains with us an objective of vital importance,” and added, “Let me assure you that nothing I may ever say or write with respect to future plans in our advance eastward is meant to indicate any lessening of the need for Antwerp.…”56

  Shortly thereafter Smith called Montgomery on the telephone and demanded to know when SHAEF could expect some action around Antwerp. Heated words followed. Finally Smith, “purple with rage,” turned to Morgan and thrust the telephone into his hand. “Here,” Smith said, “you tell your countryman what to do.” Morgan, sure that Montgomery would be CIGS after the war, thought to himself, “Well, that’s the end of my career.” He then told Montgomery that unless Antwerp was opened soon his supplies would be cut off.57

  Despite this exchange, Montgomery continued to emphasize Second Army’s attack. According to the most careful student of the campaign, Charles B. MacDonald, it was October 16 before Montgomery gave up on operations against the Ruhr and “blessed it [Antwerp] with unequivocal priority.” Nearly a month had been lost.58

  Taking the approaches to Antwerp was an extraordinarily difficult tactical problem, one that required a major use of resources and the full-time attention of the commander. To clear the Scheldt the Canadians had to drive across a narrow peninsula, the neck of the South Beveland, and then launch an amphibious operation against Walcheren Island. In September the Germans had been unprepared to defend their positions. But they had used the time available to them in a frantic effort to strengthen the line, and by October they had laid mines, built fortifications, and established a formidable barrier. General Gustav von Zangen, commanding the German Fifteenth Army, was determined to make the Canadians pay a high price for opening Antwerp, and he was successful. The fighting was bitter. Some 50,000 Germans held the South Beveland, while another 7000 defended Walcheren Island. The Canadians sustained nearly 13,000 casualties during the campaign, but by October 30 they had taken the South Beveland. British commandos led the assault against Walcheren Island; by November 8 it had fallen. Then the mines were cleared out of the Scheldt. Finally, on November 28, the first Allied convoy reached Antwerp’s docks.59

  By the time the Allies finally opened Antwerp bad weather had set in and the opportunity of ending the war in 1944 was gone. Capturing Antwerp early had represented SHAEF’s best chance to end the war early, a much better chance than a successful MARKET-GARDEN offered. As Brooke declared on October 5, “I feel that Monty’s strategy for once is at fault. Instead of carrying out the advance on Arnhem he ought to have made certain of Antwerp in the first place.” Brooke continued, “Ike nobly took all the blame on himself as he had approved Monty’s suggestion to operate on Arnhem.”60

  The rosy expectations of September were now gone. No one wasted time any longer in arguing whether the AEF should aim toward Berlin or Dresden in its drive through Germany. The enemy had a firm defensive line from which he could not be moved until SHAEF had the supplies it needed and the weather cleared in the spring.

  Who had failed? Montgomery blamed Eisenhower. In his view the Supreme Commander’s vacillation had caused the frustration. Eisenhower
always said he was giving priority to the north, but in practice, Montgomery felt, he let Patton get away with far too much. Eisenhower was a co-ordinator, not a commander, and his policy of “Have a go, Joe,” instead of bringing victory all across the line, had brought stalemate everywhere.61 Bradley and Patton, as well as many of the higher officers at SHAEF, thought on the other hand that Eisenhower had been much too easy with Montgomery. They accused Montgomery of refusing to obey direct orders and Eisenhower of refusing to make his orders strong enough. Eisenhower, in this view, was lax in issuing final orders and stopping further debate on Antwerp and the single thrust.62 But Eisenhower’s decision, and the factors he weighed in making it, were never as simple as the field generals liked to think.

  * General Eisenhower read a note to this effect in the manuscripts of the Eisenhower Papers in 1966 and commented in a handwritten note, “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. What we needed was a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations. What this action proved was that the idea of ‘one full blooded thrust’ to Berlin was silly.”

  * Two days later Eisenhower wrote Montgomery, “I regard it as a great pity that all of us cannot keep in closer touch with each other because I find, without exception, when all of us can get together and look the various features of our problems squarely in the face, the answers usually become obvious.” Eisenhower to Montgomery, September 24, 1944, EP, No. 1993.

  * Patton talked to Bradley on September 19, and Bradley warned him that “Monty wanted all the American troops to stop.… In order to avoid such an eventuality, it was evident that the Third Army should get deeply involved at once, so I asked Bradley not to call me until after dark on the nineteenth.” War as I Knew It (Boston, 1947), pp. 125, 133.

  CHAPTER 13

  Single Thrust vs. Broad Front in Retrospect

  A great opportunity had been lost, and Montgomery’s postwar conclusion was bitter: “What cannot be disputed is that when a certain strategy, right or wrong, was decided upon, it wasn’t directed. We did not advance to the Rhine on a broad front; we advanced to the Rhine on several fronts, which were un-coordinated.”1 Eisenhower had not taken a firm grip on the battle and he had vacillated. He felt that pleasing others and keeping them reasonably happy was the only way an alliance could be held together, but this necessity prevented him from stepping forward with clear orders, from forcing Bradley, Montgomery or Patton to do something they did not want to do. Even two and a half decades later it is impossible to read Eisenhower’s letters and telegrams to Montgomery without a feeling of frustration because of their vagueness. Any one taken by itself seems clear enough, but following a rejoinder by Montgomery the next message from Eisenhower changed the priority again. The simple question as to whether Eisenhower wanted Arnhem or Antwerp most cannot be answered.

  One difficulty in this situation was that Eisenhower and Montgomery tried to communicate with each other via the written word. Eisenhower had no trouble understanding Bradley, nor did Bradley experience any uncertainty in dealing with Eisenhower, in large part because they were together much of the time and could talk everything out. This in turn came about because they enjoyed each other’s company. But it is not at all certain that if Eisenhower and Montgomery had spent more time together they could have reconciled their differences, or at least understood each other. The basis for mutual respect and understanding, so prominent in the Eisenhower-Bradley relationship, was simply not present.

  Montgomery was a loner. He studied policies in solitude and proposed his own solutions. Often they were brilliant, reaching far beyond the self-imposed limits of the bureaucracy. But they were also often subject to well-founded objections, since by himself Montgomery was incapable of taking everything into account. Patton was like Montgomery in this regard, which was a factor in Eisenhower’s favoring Bradley over Patton.—Bradley was a good committeeman. This is not to say, however, that Eisenhower opposed the imaginative approach. He had insisted on having Patton with him in OVERLORD precisely because he recognized that the Third Army commander brought to the operation qualities lacking in himself, in Bradley, and in SHAEF generally. But he also insisted on limiting the scope of Patton’s influence and made sure Bradley kept a tight check on Patton. The difficulties in the Eisenhower-Montgomery relationship, in contrast to the Eisenhower-Patton relationship, were that Eisenhower did not have a Bradley to control Montgomery, and he did not count Montgomery as a personal friend, as he did Patton.

  Given the difference in personality, national background, and position, it was inevitable that Eisenhower and Montgomery would disagree, and that they would find it difficult to agree on what they were disagreeing about. Eisenhower’s vagueness contributed to this result, as did Montgomery’s tendency to seize on a phrase Eisenhower had used and regard it as settled policy. When it turned out that Eisenhower had not meant it the way Montgomery thought, Montgomery grew furious. He accused Eisenhower of changing his mind and agreed with Brooke that the Supreme Commander was always shifting, “inclining first one way, then the other,” according to the views of the last man with whom he had talked. Brooke thought Eisenhower was a man without backbone who acted as “an arbiter balancing the requirements of competing allies and subordinates rather than a master of the field making a decisive choice.…”2

  But although it was true that in September and October Eisenhower never took a tight grip on the battle or gave clear, forceful orders, he had not allowed Bradley to change his mind. Eisenhower never came close to putting all his chips in Montgomery’s hands and allowing the Twenty-first Army Group commander to gamble everything on the one shot. But he did give Montgomery priority in supply, since the objectives in the north were more important than those in front of Bradley, and he did give Montgomery verbal support whenever possible in an effort to keep the British general happy. Eisenhower’s habit of seizing upon any agreement he had with Montgomery and emphasizing it while trying to ignore the more frequent and more serious disagreements may have led Montgomery and Brooke astray in their analysis of Eisenhower’s thinking.

  On the question of a broad front, Eisenhower had always made it clear that he intended to adhere to the original pre-OVERLORD plan and advance on both sides of the Ardennes. As he pointed out in an office memorandum of September 5, the broad-front approach “takes advantage of all existing lines of communication in the advance towards Germany and brings the southern force [Bradley’s] on to the Rhine at Coblentz, practically on the flank” of Montgomery’s forces. He said he could see no reason to change this conception, for “the defeat of the German armies is complete, and the only thing now needed to realize the whole conception is speed.”

  But if Eisenhower did not waver, a more important question remains. Was his insistence on a broad front wise? Was he right or was Montgomery? Since the AEF did not deliver the final blow in the fall of 1944, it is clear that Eisenhower’s way did not work. The situation that Eisenhower had been afraid of but had been willing to ignore came about—his armies got overextended and became immobilized because of a lack of supplies. There was no point in reaching the German border unless the armies could exploit that position when they got there, Eisenhower had told Marshall, but that is exactly what happened. When the AEF reached the West Wall it was immobilized. But to say that Eisenhower’s policy was unsuccessful does not say that Montgomery’s would have succeeded. Since the single thrust strategy was not tried, it is impossible to judge.

  Eisenhower’s reasons for rejecting the single thrust were manifold. On military grounds, he doubted that Montgomery could deliver it, since SHAEF still had only the inadequate Channel ports available and they were insufficient to supply a thrust beyond the Rhine, even if Eisenhower followed Montgomery’s advice and immobilized everyone outside of Twenty-first Army Group. Further, despite Montgomery’s spectacular advance beyond the Seine, Eisenhower had doubts about his abilities. The failure of GOODWOOD still lingered in his mind. Had Bra
dley and Patton been on the left, Eisenhower might have given greater consideration to the single-thrust concept, but handling Montgomery was another matter. Eisenhower’s thinking was reinforced because of the people around him, the officers he saw every day and to whom he looked for information and advice; none had confidence in Montgomery.

  Even Montgomery’s chief of staff disliked the single thrust concept. De Guingand saw Eisenhower on a number of occasions in late August and early September, and he made it clear he did not think the plan would work. As a competent staff officer, he had thought about some of the problems that would arise if it were used and he thought they were numerous. When (and if) Twenty-first Army Group reached the Rhine, for example, the bridges would almost surely be blown. To bring forward the necessary bridging material would have been a large and lengthy task and would have meant going short on other needed supplies. Also, there was no guarantee that the Germans would surrender once Montgomery was over the Rhine, and they would have been fighting there close to their supply bases with their homes at stake. De Guingand did not know that the Germans would fight to the bitter end, but he suspected they would, and we now know that it took 160 Russian divisions, seven armies from the west, plus eight additional months of devastating air attack, to force the Germans to capitulate. After the war De Guingand said he found it hard to believe that Montgomery could have brought about the same result with Twenty-first Army Group alone, even if reinforced by First Army, especially since it would have been fighting during a period of increasingly bad weather, which would have meant fewer supporting air sorties and less air lift support. “My conclusion is, therefore,” De Guingand wrote, “that Eisenhower was right.”3