Bradley’s Cobra plan was risky because aviators were not skilled in pinpoint strikes, and the operation called for saturation bombing of a rectangle three miles wide and one mile deep south of the east-west St.-Lô–Périers road. An error would bring bombs down on American troops.
Bradley did not want the aircraft to fly over American lines, and proposed that the planes approach on a course parallel to the St.-Lô–Périers road. On July 19 Bradley flew back to England to discuss the operation with top air commanders. They opposed a parallel approach, saying aircraft would be exposed longer to enemy antiaircraft fire and the approach would require hitting a one-mile-wide target, whereas a perpendicular approach would present a three-mile-wide target. But by the time he left, Bradley thought he had got their agreement. To minimize the chances of American troops being hit, Bradley withdrew them 1,500 yards north of the road.
Heavy rains caused postponement of Cobra until July 24. Cloud cover forced cancellation this day as well, but not before 400 bombers reached France and let go their bombs. To Bradley’s horror, the bombers approached perpendicular to the American lines, not parallel. Many bombs fell on American positions, killing 25 and wounding 131. When Bradley complained, the air force brass claimed they had never agreed to a parallel approach. And they told Bradley they would not mount a second attack except in the same direction.
Bradley, having no choice, agreed, and the air assault went in on July 25: 1,500 heavy bombers, 380 medium bombers, and 550 fighter-bombers dropped 4,000 tons of bombs and napalm. Once more “shorts” caused American casualties, 111 dead, 490 wounded.
Collins threw 7th Corps’s three divisions into the blasted terrain that the bombers had created. The Americans expected the Germans to be dazed and unable to fight. Instead, they met heavy resistance. Eisenhower, who had observed the bombings, flew back to England dejected, determined never again to use heavy bombers to support ground forces.
Despite the bitter resistance of a few Germans, the bombing had done great damage. Fritz Bayerlein, commanding Panzer Lehr Division, which received the brunt of the attack, wrote: “Units holding the front were almost completely wiped out.” Tanks were overturned, artillery shattered, infantry positions flattened, and all roads destroyed. By midday the landscape resembled the moon. “There was no hope of getting out any of our weapons,” Bayerlein wrote. “The shock effect was indescribable. Several of the men went mad and rushed dementedly around in the open until they were cut down by splinters.”
Martin Blumenson wrote in his official history that one-third of the German combat effectives were killed or wounded, only a dozen tanks or tank destroyers remained in operation, and a parachute regiment attached to Panzer Lehr virtually vanished.
The difficulty of Collins’s advance after the bombing was due to spirited response of the Germans, a matter of habit, and to the caution and hesitation of the Americans, accustomed to the slow-moving battle of the hedgerows.
But German opposition melted away. By the end of July 26 American armor had penetrated ten miles, and the next day went farther. “This thing has busted wide open,” Leland Hobbs, commander of the 30th Infantry Division, exulted.
Collins enlarged the rupture, and kept moving south. On his right, Middleton’s 8th Corps broke through, and Middleton cut loose his armor. Once Middleton turned the corner at Avranches and headed into Brittany, George Patton’s 3rd Army was to be activated. Meanwhile Bradley asked Patton to supervise 8th Corps. A Patton trademark appeared almost at once: two armored divisions pushed forward through the infantry, emerged at the head, and dashed rapidly to Avranches, 35 miles away. Eisenhower’s judgment of Patton was being manifested: “an extraordinary and ruthless driving power at critical moments.” The Germans retreated or surrendered.
The bocage had been bypassed. The German left flank had collapsed. Montgomery announced the only German hope was a staged withdrawal to the Seine River, and to disrupt it the Allies should swing their right flank “round toward Paris.” This seemed to be turning into the kind of war that suited most Americans—wide open, hell-for-leather, with the horizon as the destination. George Patton, just the sort of general to lead such a campaign, was coming onto the scene. But Patton had to obey Omar Bradley, who was not at all a damn-the-torpedoes type. And no one was able to guess how Adolf Hitler would react.
On August 1, Patton’s 3rd Army was formally activated. Bradley moved up to command the 12th Army Group, and Courtney Hodges took over command of 1st Army. Altogether, the Americans had twenty-one divisions, five armored, sixteen infantry, nearly 400,000 men. Overwhelming power now faced the battered and outnumbered Germans.
Originally, Patton’s army had been intended to clear Brittany. But the Germans had stripped this region of most troops, and Bradley told Patton to send only Middleton’s 8th Corps to secure it. Middleton blazed through Brittany but failed to achieve the primary objectives—the major ports. The Germans withdrew into them. By the time the Americans had seized them, suffering huge losses, the need had long since passed.
Patton was by far the most inventive, venturesome, and action-oriented general on the Allied side. Shortly after he took command of 3rd Army, he recognized that a gigantic victory might be in the offing. The Americans were well south of Normandy, and the way was open for a massive strike east to the region or “gap” between Orléans and Paris, then to Paris, and from Paris down the right bank of the Seine to the sea, cutting off all German forces in Normandy.
But Patton had no authority to order such an offensive, and Montgomery, still in charge of land operations, believed the Germans would build a temporary new defensive line running generally south from Caen, through Mayenne, to Laval, possibly as far south as Angers, near the junction of the Loire and Mayenne rivers. He told Bradley to move up to this expected line on the south. On the north he ordered the Canadian 1st Army under Henry Crerar to strike south from Caen eighteen miles to Falaise on August 8, with the aim of cutting off the Germans,
Bradley directed Patton—who had only a two-division corps (the 15th) under Wade Haislip—to build a sixty-mile front along the Mayenne and take the towns of Mayenne, Laval, and Angers.
Patton instructed Haislip to seize Mayenne and Laval. And, since he still hoped to strike for the Orléans-Paris gap, told Haislip to be prepared to continue to Le Mans, a major town forty-five miles east of the Mayenne River. Haislip, whose policy was to “push all personnel to the limit of human endurance,” captured Mayenne and Laval on August 5–6, and Patton got Bradley’s permission to drive on to Le Mans.
Adolf Hitler saw the Cobra breakout to Avranches in an entirely different fashion than either Montgomery or the German generals on the spot. They, too, favored withdrawal from Normandy, and from France.
Hitler had been fixed on holding all positions since Stalingrad. But in Normandy there was the additional concern that—if the Germans withdrew—the motorized Allied armies could swiftly outrun the Germans’ horse-drawn transport. Also, where could the Germans retreat to? The Seine’s meandering course offered no sound defensive line. The best line was the German West Wall along the frontier. But it had been neglected since 1940 and would require six to ten weeks to repair. Hitler ordered work to start at once, reasoning that the Germans should remain in Normandy at least till the West Wall was defensible. Finally convinced the Allies would not invade the Pas de Calais, he ordered forces there to Normandy.
Also, Hitler saw the possibility of a riposte. The German western flank now rested just east of the town of Mortain, twenty miles from Avranches, in the wooded highlands of “Norman Switzerland.” On August 1, he ordered Kluge to strike from Mortain to recapture Avranches. This would anchor the German line on the Cotentin coast, and divide Patton’s 3rd Army south of Avranches from Hodges’s 1st Army north of it.
Kluge assembled four weak panzer divisions. Three were to roll through Mortain and the Americans defending it, and drive as far as possible. Once they lost their momentum, the fourth division was to go to the front and s
trike for Avranches.
Ultra intercepts of German messages informed Bradley of the intended attack shortly before it struck. He already had nearly five divisions in the area, and alerted them to the attack.
The blow hit Mortain in the early minutes of August 7. The U.S. 30th Division had occupied the town only hours before. Key to Mortain was Hill 317 just to the east. While German infantry struck at the hill, seventy panzers went around it, drove through the town, and headed west. By midday they had advanced six miles. But Allied aircraft forced the panzers into the woods. Fighting continued, but the Germans had no chance to break through the iron ring of defenses. Meanwhile the 700 Americans on Hill 317 stood their ground, helped by artillery concentrations and RAF Hurricanes and Typhoon fighter-bombers equipped with rockets.
Hitler charged Kluge with poor judgment, haste, and carelessness, and ordered the attack to continue with a larger force. Kluge was to transfer three panzer divisions from the British-Canadian front to thrust into the deep flank of the American advance (Patton’s move toward Le Mans).
Kluge, who saw the situation far more clearly than Hitler, knew his attack had bogged down, and the best move was to retreat. He also saw something that terrified him: the German front now extended as a deep salient into the Allied line. Montgomery’s two armies (British 2nd, Canadian 1st) and Hodges’s 1st Army were on the north, while Patton’s 3rd Army was sweeping toward Le Mans on the south. If it continued through the Orléans-Paris gap and beyond, it could encircle all German forces west of the Seine.
But Hitler’s orders were unequivocal, and Kluge directed the three panzer divisions to pull out of the British-Canadian sector and head for Mortain during the night of August 7. At 11 P.M., Kluge learned of an immense aerial bombardment along the road from Caen to Falaise— heralding a major attack by the Canadian army. One of the three panzer divisions had already left the Falaise sector, but Kluge canceled orders for the other two. The Germans could not afford to lose Falaise.
The Canadian attack, made with two armored brigades, followed by infantry in armored personnel carriers (APCs), advanced three miles during the darkness, and by dawn August 8 had passed through the German lines. But here the advance came to a halt, though the way to Falaise lay open.
To get the attack started again, General Guy Simonds, 2nd Canadian Corps commander, brought forward his two armored divisions, one Canadian, the other Polish, and ordered them to advance on a narrow front to Falaise. The two divisions were inexperienced and were distracted by Allied bombers that dropped bombs short, killing 65, wounding 250. Meanwhile the Germans recovered, rebuilt a defensive line, and barred the way. The effort pushed forward a few miles, but collapsed on August 10—though the Allies had 600 tanks against 60 German tanks and tank destroyers. George Kitching, commander of the Canadian division (the 4th), blamed the Poles, who, he said, scarcely moved.
Adolf Hitler, having lost confidence in Kluge, was directing the battles from his headquarters in East Prussia. On August 9 he ordered tanks and antitank guns from the Pas de Calais to Falaise. This, he figured, would take care of the Canadian threat. Next he turned to the effort to capture Avranches. He wanted another attack, this time by six panzer divisions, while two other divisions were to bolster them.
German commanders called Hitler’s order “pure utopia.” Kluge could muster only 120 tanks at Mortain, half those in a single American armored division.
Because of Hitler’s insistence, the German army remained fixed from Mortain on the west to the front facing the Canadians on the east. Conditions were ripe for a colossal encirclement and caldron battle. Haislip’s troops were about to seize Le Mans. They then would be only seventy-five miles from the Paris-Orléans gap. Patton tried to convince Bradley to let Haislip go all out for the gap, and carry out his plan to liberate Paris and drive down the right bank of the Seine, surrounding all Germans west of the river. If successful—and there were few Germans to stop it—Patton’s plan would end Germany’s capacity to resist in the west in a matter of days.
But Bradley did not have the vision of Patton. And he was unwilling to take chances. He saw a lesser opportunity, with lesser potential gains. At Le Mans, Haislip was to turn north toward Alençon and Sées, and link up with the Canadians coming down through Falaise and Argentan— thereby cutting off the Germans to the west. This move might not destroy all the Germans in Normandy but it could dispose of many.
Haislip captured Le Mans on August 8 and prepared to move north. He had received two new divisions, a green American infantry outfit (80th) that was to guard the town, and the French 2nd Armored Division, whose commander, Jacques Leclerc, was primarily interested in liberating Paris. But he snapped up Patton’s offer to take part in the drive toward Argentan alongside the U.S. 5th Armored Division under Lunsford Oliver.
These two armored divisions, followed by two infantry divisions (79th and 90th), advanced halfway to Alençon on August 10, meeting virtually no resistance. On Haislip’s left, however, there was a wide gap with no American forces—since Bradley did not want to move troops into it while the Germans still threatened around Mortain. This void offered an opportunity for a German counterattack into Haislip’s flank.
Early on August 11, Kluge determined to pull back from Mortain and strike this flank. He had inflicted 4,000 casualties on the Americans, but had lost many men of his own and a hundred tanks. Hitler approved, and Kluge drew his troops away from Mortain.
Meanwhile Haislip reached the outskirts of Alençon on August 11 and designated Argentan, twenty-three miles north by road, as the next objective. Argentan was eight miles inside the British-Canadian sector, but that seemed no problem.
Early on August 12 Leclerc’s armored division captured Alençon, while Oliver’s 5th U.S. Armored Division pushed ahead to Sées, twelve miles along the road to Argentan. Ahead Argentan was defended only by a German bakery company, which was digging in at the southern edge of town.
Oliver’s American tanks could have rushed down the Alençon-Argentan highway and seized the town quickly, except that Leclerc, in defiance of orders, usurped the road for some of his own troops. When the Americans finally got to Argentan, it no longer was guarded by bakers but by three panzer divisions and at least seventy tanks, moved over by Kluge from Mortain.
Kluge’s intended strike against Haislip’s flank never came off because the Germans lost stocks of gasoline and other supplies near Alençon, but the panzers’ possession of Argentan left open an important east-west highway. If the Germans lost Falaise and Argentan, only a narrow thirteen-mile gap without good roads would remain.
Haislip informed Patton on the evening of August 12 that he intended to strike at Argentan the next morning. But he pointed out that the farther he advanced the more extended he became, with few troops guarding his flank. If he captured Argentan, he was certain to stir up a fierce German response. Should he go on or not?
Patton opted for audacity. In a letter to his wife, Patton quoted Napoleon: “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace.” The game was worth the candle. After taking Argentan, Patton told Haislip, proceed to Falaise, make contact with the Canadians, and close the pocket.
But when Patton informed Bradley, he told Patton: “Nothing doing. You are not to go beyond Argentan.”
Bradley’s reasons were in part that Haislip’s corps was strung out on a forty-mile line, and that Lawton Collins’s 7th Corps, which he had ordered to shore up Haislip’s left, could not arrive for a couple days.
But Bradley’s principal aim was to avoid offending his Allies.
“Falaise was a long-sought British objective,” he wrote, “and, for them, a matter of immense prestige. If Patton’s patrols grabbed Falaise, it would be an arrogant slap in the face at a time when we clearly needed to build confidence in the Canadian army.”
Montgomery instructed his chief of staff, Francis de Guingand, to “tell Bradley they [Haislip’s corps] ought to go back.” De Guingand wrote after the war that if Montgomery had invited the A
mericans to cross the army group boundary, they would have closed the Germans in a trap. But Bradley and Eisenhower didn’t ask, either.
As Haislip reached the edge of Argentan, Germans reinforced the shoulders there and at Falaise, and nonessential elements began escaping through the gap. The field divisions were still in the pocket.
Montgomery ordered the Canadians to push on and take Falaise on August 14. But the effort got nowhere. To assist, he directed Dempsey’s British 2nd Army to attack at the same time from the northwest—a move Bradley and Eisenhower likened to squeezing a tube of toothpaste from the bottom with no cap on. The effect could only press the Germans out of the pocket, not hem them inside where they could be destroyed.
Meanwhile, Bradley planned a new turning movement to block the Germans who had already escaped. He ordered an advance by 3rd Army to the northeast—Haislip’s 15th Corps (cut to two divisions) to Dreux, fifty miles west of Paris; Walton Walker’s 20th Corps to Chartres, fifty miles southwest of Paris; and Gilbert R. Cook’s 12th Corps to Orléans, seventy miles south of Paris. The idea was to wheel around the supposedly retreating Germans. The operation got under way on August 14.
Bradley’s shifting of Patton’s entire army away from the pocket weakened the Argentan shoulder and made it easier for the Germans to keep the gap open. Bradley recognized his error on August 15, and he rushed to Patton’s headquarters to call off the wheeling movement. But it was too late. Patton’s three corps were almost at their destinations. Even so, on Bradley’s orders, Patton stopped at the three cities.
The next day, August 16, German panzers hit 90th Infantry Division, now guarding the Argentan shoulder, a severe blow, but the division— which had performed poorly so far—held. On the same day the Canadian army finally captured Falaise, despite heavy aerial bombardment by Allied planes that inflicted 500 casualties on the Canadians and Poles.
How Hitler Could Have Won World War II Page 29
