The Quarterly Journal of Military History

I

Spring 1994Volume 6, Number 3

Quarterly Journalitary History

MHQ:The

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A NOTE TO OUR READERS

A great latter-day invasion is about to take place in a couple of months, as thousands prepare to descend

Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. You could call it a geriatric mob scene in the making, \that would be missing the point. It's hard to associate men in their seventies (and the women they once I

behind) with the strained, eager young faces that will forever stare out of photographs. It's hard, too, to

sociate that lovely rustic Norman countryside, some of the richest and best-kept hectares on earth, with 1

nightmarish hedgerow labyrinth that they fought throughor with the fact that these men once took pin the most violent summer in history.

The summer of 1944 in Europe is the subject of this special issue of MHQ, and its casualty lists addnot just to the hundreds of thousands but to the millions. According to Gerhard L. Weinberg, in his mag

terial new history of World War II, A World at Arms (Cambridge University Press), anywhere from a milli

to one and a half million German troops were killed, wounded, or captured between June and the middle

September. Russian losses in the same period ran into the hundreds of thousands. The combined losses

the Western Allies in all the European theaters was well over 200,000. And we can never forget those v\

perished in the Nazi death camps. But then, that summer was a time of extraordinary violence everywh

in the world. The British were not just routing but annihilating the Japanese in Burma. The Americ

island-hopping campaign in the Pacific was gathering its invincible momentum. Only in China did

Japanese manage to sustain an offensive reminiscent of the threat that once was.

Though we hardly understood it then, the stage was being set for another epic ideological conflict.

Cold War. A few people like Field Marshal Erwin Rommel seemed to grasp that prospect, and he was ppared to do anything to ensure that the Western Allies reached Berlin before the Soviets. What would h.

happened if he had not sustained a near-mortal wound on July 17? Would he have been able to put togetlhis inchoate scheme to let the Allies through? Or would Hitler's men simply (as the Argentines put it) h,

"suicided" him a month or so earlier than they did?These are the sort of questions about that summer that we must confront, though few of them admit

definite answers. What chance did the Germans have of repelling the invasion in Normandy? Could we hclosed the Falaise gap, thus preventing the escape of thousands of Germansa hard core that we woi

confront again on their own turf? Was the other D-Day, the Riviera invasion, necessary? Did the gaining

the ports of Marseilles and Toulon counterbalance the fact that we let most of an army get away? Did Stc

deliberately call a halt in front of Warsaw, first encouraging a noncommunist uprising in the Polish cap

and then sitting by while the Nazis destroyed it? Marshall Brement argues in these pages that he didn't, 1

historians like Weinberg aren't so sure; only the archives of the former Soviet Union may hold the answer

Then there is the greatest question of all: Could the Western powers have ended the war early in

fall of 1944? The always contentious Caleb Carr is one writer who believes that an early victory was psible. He is squarely in the camp of the eminent military historian B.H. Liddell Hart, who maintained tat the end of the summer the Germans were in such a state of shock that a determined push into th

homeland by George S. Patton, Jr.'s Third Army might have done the trick. "The best chance of a qu

finish," Liddell Hart said, "was probably lost when the 'gas' was turned off from Ration's tanks in the Iweek of August, when they were a hundred miles nearer the Rhine, and its bridges, than the British." 1other military historians are as quick to argue that logistics made victory in 1944 impossible. We hadgas, but not the means of transporting it. Coalition warfare did not permit the freeing of one arm>

the logistical price of immobilizing the rest. And what if Patton had penetrated Germany? Wohe have risked another Anzio?

But these concerns probably won't matter to most of the men who will return to Normandy this Jun(John Keegan, in the introduction to the new edition of his Six Armies in Normandv (Viking/Penguin),

MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History / Spring 1994

Publisher

Byron Hollinshead

Editor

Robert Cowley

Managing EditorBarbara Benton

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Contributing Editors

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Williamson Murray, Geoffrey Norman,Robert L. O'Connell, Geoffrey Parker,

Rod Paschall, H. Darby Perry,Douglas Porch, Willard Sterne Randall,Stephen W. Sears, Ronald H. Spector,

Geoffrey C. WardAdvisory Board

Elihu Rose, ChairmanDavid S. Croyder, Thaddeus Holt,Samuel Hynes, Paul Kennedy.

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EUROPE IN THE SUMMER OF 1944: A SPECIAL ISSUE

/ OVERLORDby Williamson Murray The Allied invasion of France was one of the transcen-dent military events of our time, and it would alter the political landscape ofEurope for decades.

22 / THE AIRBORNE'S WATERY TRIUMPHby T. Michael Booth and Duncan Spencer Small actions can have big results, asJames Gavin and the 82nd Airborne proved in the confused series of actions thatcentered on the fight for the bridge at La Fiere.

34 / "SEND HIM BACK TO ALGIERSIN CHAINS IF NECESSARY."

by Don Cook Even as paratroops were dropping on Normandy, Winston Churchillflew into an unexpected tempest: the rage of Charles de Gaulle. What happenedthat night goes far to explain French behavior in the years that followed.

42 / PEPPERMINT AND ALSOSby Ferenc M. Szasz Eisenhower's secret fear was that the Germans had createda nuclear "poison" or an atomic weapon. Undercover detection units accom-panied the invasion.

48 / ROMMEUS LAST BATTLEby Sir David Eraser Normandy must be counted as one of his most bril-liant campaignsthough he knew all along that it was hopeless and talkedopenly of surrender. Nothing, he believed, was more important than keeping theSoviets out of Berlin.

58 / FAIA'SE- Tw^ ^cAP NOT SPRUNGby Carlo D'Este Could the greatest Allied victory in France that summer havebeen even greater? Perhaps. Or was it in reality a colossal blunder? The authorsays no, emphatically.

MHQ 1994 by American Historical Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

Published in association with the Society for Military History Volume 6, Number 3

"0/ THE OTHER D-DAVby Willard Sterne Randall Most people think of the Riviera invasion in August

if they think of it at allas a walkover in the sun. It wasn't, and the worst part wasthat we let most of a German army get away.

80 / WHY DIDNT THE SOVIETS TAKE WARSAW?by Marshall Brement Conspiracy theorists have long claimed that Stalin delib-erately permitted the Nazis to put down an anticommunist uprising in the Polishcapital. But the Soviets, at the end of their mightiest offensive of the war, hadliterally run out of gas.

90 / THE BLACK KNIGHTby Caleb Carr It seemed possible that the war could have ended that autumn

but for an Allied strategic miscalculation and a determined old man who ralliedthe beaten German army in the West.

98 / THE FORGOTTEN CAMPAIGNby Ken McCormick and Hamilton Darby Perry By the summer of 1944, the warin Italy, once so strategically promising, had degenerated into a costly and sterilestalemate. But it was one that a Canadian painter, Lawren P. Harris, evokedvividlyand unforgettably.

DERARTIUFNTC;

88 / TACTICAL EXERCISES: The Failure of Market-Gardenby Rod Paschall Built-in tactical limitations doomed the largest coordinatedparachute, glider, and tank assault of all time.

112 / FIGHTING WORDS: Terms from Military Historyby Christine Ammer World War II produced many words and expressions thathave permanently entered our languageincluding D-Day itself.

Cover: In this detail from Dwight

Shepler's Bombardment at FoxGreen Beach, it is the afternoon of

June 7, 1944D-Day plus one.

Though the Omaha beachhead hasbeen secured, and American troops

have reached the crest of the bluffs,

landing craft shuttling back and

forth must still run a gauntlet of

German artillery fire.

MHQ: The Quarterly Journal ofMilitary History(ISSN 1040-5992) is published four times a yearby American Historical Publications. Inc.; edito-rial and executive offices, 29 West 38th Street.New York, NY 10018. The MHQ mark is regis-tered in the United States Patent and Trade-mark Office.

Information about subscriptions and otherreaders' services can be found on pages 110-11of this issue.

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All articles published in MHQ are rigorouslyfact-checked. References for a particular article

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articles are abstracted and indexed in HistoricalAbstracts and America: History and Life.

MHQ

lOvERLORDIn an enormous battle of attrition, the Western Al-

lies fought the Germans to exhaustion and collapse,and altered the political landscape ofEurope.

by Williamson Murray

{

In

a radio speech to the French in Oc-

tober 1940, Winston Churchill prom-

ised: "Good night then: Sleep to gath-

er strength for the morning. For the

morning will come. Brightly will it

shine on the brave and the true, kindly

upon all who suffer for the cause, glori-

ous upon the tombs of heroes. Thus,

will shine the dawn." Dawn came on

June 6, 1944, four long years after the

Germans had expelled the British army

from the Continent.

In terms of its postwar implications,

the return to the ContinentOperation

Overlordrepresented the most im-

portant effort of the war that Anglo-

American military forces executed. The

Battle of the Atlantic was the most cru-

cial battle for the winning of the war

that the British and Americans waged.

Without control of the North Atlantic,

neither strategic bombing nor Overlord

would have been possible. But victory

in the Atlantic only established the pre-

conditions on which the continuance of

aid to the Soviet Union, the strategic

bombing of Germany, and the launch-

ing of Overlord could take place. Simi-

larly, the combined bomber offensiveachieved air supremacy over Europe

and battered the German economy se-

verely. But neither of these great efforts

gained the political goals for which the

United States and Britain waged World

War II: namely, the projection of mili-

tary and political power on the ground

into the heart of Europe, where that

power secured Anglo-American political

and economic interests for the next

forty-five years, until the collapse of the

Soviet Union.

In examining this great undertaking,

the historian must face a number of im-

portant questions: Could the Germans

have won? Could the Americans have re-

covered from a defeat on Omaha beach?What opportunities did the Allies miss

in the Normandy campaign? And finally,

with the advantage of forty years of his-

torical research, how does Allied leader-

ship stack up in its conduct of the Nor-

mandy battle?

Until the ill-fated raid on Dieppe in

August 1942, Allied planners thought in

terms of seizing a French port at the

outset to build up forces faster than the

Germans. But the defenders of Dieppe,

mostly third-rate infantry, used the

port's built-up areas to prevent the

Canadian raiders from even crossing the

beach wallexcept as prisoners. Conse-

quently, the planners had to alter their

conceptions: Invasion forces not only

would have to cross open beaches, but

then would have to rely during thebuildup phase on a supply system that

lacked a port. That second problem, how

to support a massive battle with a logisti-

cal system that ran over beaches, raised

a nightmare of technical and engineer-

ing problems never before addressed.

A Mustang fighter with British

roundels, plus D-Day stripes on its

wings and fuselage, flies low overlanding craft unloading troops andvehicles onto the invasion beaches.

MHQ

^

Dieppe raised a third problem: Ger-

man air power. The Luftwaffe, whichhad been holding its strength in the

Reich, quickly deployed its formidable

forces to forward operating locations in

France. Its fighters then shot down 106Allied aircraft, with the loss of only

twenty-one fighters and twenty-seven

bombers; German bombers did consid-

erable damage to the Allied fleet andeven sank a destroyer. It was clear that

Allied air forces would have to achieve

general air superiority over the whole

continent before a successful landing

could occur. Dieppe, however, did have

one unexpected benefit: The Germans

concluded that a major port would bethe focus of any landing, and this would

greatly aid the deception plans in 1944.

By 1943, Allied planners had selected

Normandy as the invasion target. Pas-de-Calais was closer to England and provid-

ed a more direct route to the Reich, but

those very advantages guaranteed that

the Germans would concentrate their

defensive buildup in that area. As late as

the end of the year, the concept for the

invasion called for landing only three in-

fantry divisions at the beaches, with a

drop of one airborne division. To the

supreme commander. General DwightD. Eisenhower, and the commander ofland forces, General Bernard Mont-gomery, that was the recipe for military

disaster: They demanded and got fromthe Combined Chiefs of Staff an increaseto five infantry divisions and three air-

borne. Air commanders objected to theairdrop, but even when Sir TraffordLeigh-Mallory, commanding the Alliedair forces, estimated the paratroops

would suffer 90 percent losses, Eisen-hower backed Montgomery in his re-quest for a massive airborne operation.

The buildup phase was a daunting ob-

stacle to planners. If the Germans suc-

cessfully utilized the road and rail net-

works of western France, they could re-

inforce their units in Normandy fasterthan the Allies. As a result, Eisenhower's

chief deputy, the renowned Air ChiefMarshal Sir Arthur Tedder, developed a

plan to use Allied air power, including

the "strategic" bombers, to destroy the

French transportation network before

the landings occurred.

To achieve that objective, Tedder and

Eisenhower had to fight a considerable

battle with the bomber barons. Sir Ar-thur Harris, chief of the British BomberCommand, agreed that his planes couldhit such targets as marshaling yards in

France, but he argued that they might

kill tens of thousands of Frenchmen inthe process. Churchill, desperately wor-

ried about the political implications of

such losses in the postwar world, came

close to forbidding the attacks. But Har-

ris was being completely disingenuous:

As he admitted after the war, he had no

compunction about blasting the"French who had run away in 1940."More to the point. Bomber Command'sestimates of so-called collateral damagewere based on the massive raids of 700

bombers it was launching against Ger-many rather than on the smaller raidsthat Tedder was proposing. BomberCommand then executed several small-scale test raids, which more than con-firmed Tedder's estimate that relatively

little collateral damage would occur.In the end, the Combined Chiefs of

Staff placed all the strategic-bombing

forces of both nations under Eisenhower

and Tedder's command. With Eisenhow-er's permission. Lieutenant General Carl

Spaatz ordered his American bombers to

attack German synthetic oil facilities in

May. Meanwhile, other Allied air power

focused on all of France's transportation

system, since the planners did not wish

to give away the invasion target. The in-

terdiction campaign ranged across thelength and breadth of France, and for

the most part it achieved its goals. The

combination of Bomber Command'sheavy night attacks against marshaling

yards, the Eighth Air Force's daylight

bombing of other rail targets, and tacti-cal strikes against locomotives andfreight cars, as well as bridges, caused a

collapse of the French rail system. By

late May, when Allied air forces began anintensive campaign to destroy thebridges over the Seine, rail traffic haddeclined to 55 percent of January's lev-

els. The wrecking of the Seine bridgesreduced that level to 30 percent by June

6, and by early July rail traffic had fallento 10 percent of what it had been at thebeginning of the year. The attacks in

western France were particularly effec-

tive; by mid-June, the trains that mighthave supplied the defenders in Nor-

mandy no longer operated. By shuttingdown the railroads, the air campaignforced the Germans to rely on the roads,

where Allied tactical air strikes prevent-

ed movement by day. Destruction ofbridges and attacks on roads made it ex-tremely difficult for panzer divisions to

reach the battlefield.

But American strategic bombing hadrendered an even more important con-

tribution to Overlord. The massive air

offensive by the Eighth and Fifteenth air

forces compelled the Luftwaffe to defend

the factories on which its continued sur-vival depended. Unlike the costly air of-

fensive of 1943, U.S. strategic bombersreceived cover from long-range fighters;

by March, P-51s were accompanyingbombers all the way to Berlin. In Febru-

ary, the Luftwaffe lost 18 percent of its

fighter pilots on active duty at the be-

ginning of the month; in March, 22 per-

cent; in April, 20 percent (but fighter

units in the Reich lost no less than 38

percent of their pilots); and in May, 25

percent. The Luftwaffe collapsed as an

effective defensive force even over the

Reich. On June 6, Allied air forces wouldfly no fewer than 14,000 missions to

support the invasion. On the otherhand, Luftflotte 3, in charge of the air

battle in France, could not get even 100

sorties over Normandy, of which 70were by single-engine fighters.

In the crucial matter of logistics, the

Allied air campaign had exacerbatedone of the great weaknesses of the Ger-

mans throughout the war. The Ger-mans paid minimal attention to theirlogistical arrangements, while the Allies

possessed a resilient and deep supply

system. And in the end, the battle forNormandy and France would turn onthe ability of the contending sides to re-

inforce and supply the frontline troops

locked in combat. Previous operations

had solved most of the problems of am-

phibious warfare by June 1944; the Al-

lies had a wealth of experience onwhich to draw from the Pacific and At-

lantic theatersincluding four majorlandings in the European theater of op-

erations (ETO)while the great Indus-

trial establishments of Britain andthe United States had provided some

unique solutions, including the cre-ation of two great artificial harbors.

On the ground, however, the Germansoldier remained the best in Europe. His

training, his officers, the coherent com-

bat doctrine of his units, and the brutal,

ruthless ideology that motivated himensured that he would be extraordinari-

ly effective in battle. Moreover, the

topography of Normandy, with itsbocage (hedgerow) country and itssmall villages and sturdy farmhouses, all

of which were wonderful strongpointsfor the defender, maximized the inher-ent strength of the German soldier and

his tactical system.

Through late 1943 the Germans used

France as a place to rebuild units that

fighting on the Eastern Front had shat-

tered. Moreover, German engineers hadonly begun preparatory work on the for-

tifications along the beaches. The Ger-

mans gambled that the Allies could not

take advantage of their weak position in

the West. It was a reasonable assess-

ment; intelligence from Britain indicat-

ed that an invasion buildup had not yet

begun. But by early 1944, the Germans

recognized that an invasion was comingsoon. Consequently, the buildup of the

Wehrmacht in the West received highestpriority: German forces in France un-derwent an impressive improvement.Hitler appointed Field Marshal ErwinRommel to command Army Group B,across the north of France, and thecoastal defenses that would most likely

receive the assault. Rommel broughtwith him a restless energy that galva-nized the preparations. By the time the

Allies invaded, the Desert Fox hoped tohave 12 million to 15 million minessown along the beaches of France, to

emplace tens of thousands of poles("Rommel's asparagus") in fields behindpotential landing areas to interfere with

glider landings, and to erect a hugenumber of obstacles in the water and onthe beaches to hinder landings.

Rommel recognized the overwhelm-ing air and logistical superiority that the

Allies would bring to the battle. Heaimed, therefore, to defeat the invaders

on the beaches before they could bring

their logistical capabilities to bear. He

recognized that if the Germans did not

defeat the invasion in the first days of

the fighting, they would lose the war. Onthe other hand, the supreme comman-

der in the West, Field Marshal Gerd von

Rundstedt, believed that the Germanarmy should fight a mobile battle inwhich its tactical and operationalstrengths would come into play. But nei-

ther Rommel nor Rundstedt possessedthe freedom needed to fight the battle.

Hitler and the OKW (the armed forceshigh command) controlled the place-ment of German reserves, and only theyhad the authority to release panzer divi-

sions and other reserves for counter-

attacks and reinforcements. This ar-rangement was one of the greatest weak-

nesses on the German side. As usualthere was no clear chain of command,and Hitler's directives, to say the least,

could be bizarre. His desire to control

everything deprived Rommel of the op-portunity to place the bulk of his army

in position to intervene immediately in

the battle. Without that capability, the

Germans stood less chance of preventing

the Allies from gaining a beachhead.

But Allied commanders had consider-able problems of their own. At the oper-

ational level, few understood how bestto utilize the mobility of their forces or,

among senior officers, how much theface of battle had changed in the last

few years. As Sir Alan Brooke (later Lord

Alanbrooke), chief of the Imperial Gen-

eral Staff and one of the most overrated

officers in the war, announced to Amer-

ican generals in April, the war of move-

ment was over and the fight in France

would not see the lightning advancesthat had characterized the Germancampaign in 1940. Not surprisingly inview of such attitudes in the high com-

mand, logistical planners prepared for aslow methodical advance to the Germanfrontier, a campaign that would haveclosely resembled that of autumn 1918.

In one sense, Brooke was right: The

Allied forces that came ashore possessed

considerable weaknesses. Even much oftheir equipment was inferior to that ofthe Wehrmacht. The most egregious ex-ample lay in Allied armor, which, as it

had been throughout the war, remained

undergunned and not so well protected.The Allies did possess great numericalsuperiority in tanks, which would even-tually tell in the battle of attrition. That

was small comfort to crews whose mainweapons could not pierce the frontal

armor of Panther and Tiger tanks atpoint-blank range.

But no defect was greater than the

tactical preparation of ground troops.The British and Canadian armies hadhad four years to prepare for the landing

in France. They had focused, however,

too much on the landing phase and notenough on preparations for the fightingthat would follow. Far too many ofBrooke's friends found continuing em-

ployment in senior positions after fail-

ing in command assignments. The Brit-ish corps commander whose troopscould not seal off Falaise in August was

General Sir Neal Ritchie, responsible for

the May 1942 debacle at El Gazala,where Rommel had come close to de-stroying the Eighth Army.

At lower levels, the British possessed

no common doctrine for the combined-

arms employment of its various branch-

es. As a result, British army training

rarely reached the same high level of

consistency and effectiveness that the

German system managed. Hard, tough,realistic training seems to have been en-

tirely a hit-or-miss affair. The after-action reports by German military units

engaged in fighting the British in Nor-

mandy suggest problems that reachedwell beyond explanations attributingsuch flaws to prewar funding or thearmy's social position in British society.

Even the basic building block, infantry

tactics, showed weaknesses: the Britishseemed to rely on little more than astraightforward rush and the hope that

the artillery had smashed the Germans

to bits. As one division commandernoted to Basil Liddell Hart after the war:

I have already told you how shocked I was at

the meagre results of training in the United

Kingdom when I met the 44 Div, 51 Div, 56

Div (not to speak of 50 Div which learnt

nothing, ever, even after years in the desert.

... If I told you what I had seen among those

divisions, you'd not believe it.) It was nothing

to leave the tanks to hold a position at night

MHQ

and retire the infantryfor a rest? too dan-

gerous?and let the [enemy] infantry infil-

trate back and take the position.

The Canadians had most of the weak-

nesses of their British comrades. In

World War I, they and the Australians

had held the justifiable reputation of

being the elite troops among Common-wealth forces. But extended exposure to

the British way of war seems to have

worn away the qualities of initiative and

flexibility that had characterized their

operations in the previous war. And ex-cept for the Dieppe disaster, those whowent ashore at Normandy had been de-nied the leavening experience of combat.

The Americans, coming into the warlast, had their own problems. The Ger-

mans had had six years, from 1933 to

1939, to prepare and then five years of

terrible combat to hone their skills. But

at the outbreak of war in 1939, the U.S.

Army had ranked seventeenth in sizeamong the armies of the world. Not sur-prisingly, many of the units that fought

in Normandy displayed a depressinggreenness and lack of tactical prepara-

tion, which resulted in the deaths oflarge numbers of young men. Moreover,the sudden expansion of air, naval, and

ground forces, combined with the rapid

mobilization of the American economyand the huge logistical infrastructure re-

quired to fight two separate warsone

in Europe, one in Asia

placed severe

pressures on the manpower pool avail-able to U.S. ground forces. After other

services and the army's administration

had grabbed their portion of recruits, the

infantry often got what was left.

But the Americans displayed a greater

capacity to adapt to combat than theirBritish counterparts. From first contact,

the Americans steadily improved. Such

improvement owed much to the ruth-lessness that American senior command-ers displayed in sacking officers who didnot measure up. When the battle finallywent mobile at the end of July, theAmericans displayed a capacity to exploit

that no British army possessed, with the

possible exception of General William

Slim's in Burma.

Allied conceptions for the campaign

were clear and straightforward. The ini-

tial landing force would seize the lodg-

ment that would allow the logisticalbuildup to take place. Five attacking di-

visions, each with its own beachhead

code-named, from west to east, Utah,

Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword^wouldseize the bridgehead. A massive para-troop drop by the U.S. 82nd and 101stairborne divisions west of Utah wouldprevent German counterattacks on thatbeach and take German defenses in the

rear. Similarly, on the eastern side of

Normandy, the British 6th Airborne Di-

vision would seize the bridges over the

Orne River and the Caen Canal, block-

ing any counterattack from that direc-

tion. The airborne divisions would play

the crucial role of protecting the inva-

sion beaches from enemy interference

in the first hours.

Montgomery, once he had sizableforces ashore, aimed to fight a mobilebattle in the open country east of Caen

with the bulk of his British armor.Meanwhile, the Americans would secure

the logistical base by seizing Cherbourg

and eventually Brest. As he had done in

Sicily, Montgomery assigned a subordi-

nate role to the Americans. But theBritish general, as arrogant as he was

unimaginative, would not get to fighthis battle; perhaps that was lucky, be-

cause his British troops were hardly

trained to fight in mobile conditions.

Throughout May, in glorious weather,

Allied forces concentrated in southern

England. The target date for Overlord

was June 5, but conditions failed to co-

operate: Atrocious weather arrived with

the new month of June. It appeared thata break in the storms would finally occur

late on the fifth, so that conditions

might be tolerable on the sixth. Eisen-hower took the risk and ordered the in-

vasion. This break was crucial because

there was only a relatively small windowin early June when the low tides arounddawn would allow the attackers to escapethe full impact of the beach obstaclesthat the Germans had implanted.

As dusk settled over the English air-

fields on June 5, paratroops from three

airborne divisions clambered aboardtheir aircraft. The first pathfinders weredown before midnight. Most of the

British paratroops in the east landed

within their drop zones. But to the west,

the Americans were less successful inachieving a tight concentration. To

avoid both the bad weather and flak,U.S. aircrews flew higher and faster than

normal, so that paratroops of the 82ndand 101st Airborne were blown all over

the Cotentin Peninsula and elsewhere in

Normandy. Fortunately, this workedsomewhat to the advantage of the in-vaders: The presence of American para-

troops everywhere completely muddiedthe picture for German commanders inthe first hours of D-Day.

The launching of the invasion during

a period of bad weather actually con-

tributed to its success. As usual, most of

German intelligence missed the indica-tors that suggested something big was in

the offing, while the German weatherservice added to the illusion of calm by

reporting that conditions would not besuitable for an invasion. Rommel jour-neyed home to visit his wife on herbirthday; meanwhile, the commander ofthe Seventh Army, charged with defend-

ing Normandy, ordered his corps and di-

vision commanders to participate in awar game at his headquarters in Rennes.

The result was that there was little direc-

tion or coherence to the German moves

throughout June 6.

As reports of major paratroop landingsbegan to come in, Rundstedt gave two

reserve panzer divisions near Paris

Panzer Lehr and the 12th SS Panzer Di-

vision, Hitler Jugendthe preparatory

order to move to Caen, two hours before

the seaborne landings began. But neither

division could begin its actual movement

until Hitler confirmed the order. Colonel

General Alfred Jodl, the OKW chief of op-erations, informed a disgruntled Rund-

stedt that the fiihrer was sleeping and

would make the decision later in themorning when the situation was clearer.Thus, the German defenders in Nor-mandy had to fight the battle of the firstday with whatever troops they had in the

immediate area, and that proved insuffi-

cient to counter the invasion.

For the most part, the British and

Canadians overcame the opposition on

their beaches with relative ease. British

paratroops formed a successful blocking

10

Omaha was the toughest beach, the only one of the five invasion beaches at which success was ever in doubt. Here, a landingcraft, infantry (LCI), surrounded by defensive obstacles and falling shells, lies stranded by the outgoing tide.

force over the Orne River and the Caen

Canal, and after several hours they were

reinforced by infantry. The largest prob-

lem that Commonwealth troops found inmoving south out of the beachhead wasnot German opposition but the confu-sion of the beachhead itself. One ap-palled officer watched a Scots battalion

under artillery fire march up the road inpeacetime formation.

Even if there had been less confusion

on the beaches, it is unlikely the British

and Canadians could have capturedCaen on the first day. as Montgomeryhad hoped, because the 21st Panzer Di-

vision had much of its forces deployedaround Caen. The lead battalion of theCanadian 3rd Infantry Division did have

a clear road into Caen, but its brigade

commander twice ordered it to remainwhere it was, since any such move was

not in the plans. Whether the Canadianscould have held Caen is another ques-

tion. That night the 12th SS Panzer Di-

vision arrived in the city, while the 21st

lay to the north.

Late in the day, the 21st attacked the

gap remaining between Sword and Juno.Running into the heavy guns of theSherman Firefly tankswhich under-line that the Sherman was not a badtank if equipped with a decent weapon

the Germans immediately lost thirteen

tanks. In the end, the 21st failed to

achieve anything and lost 70 tanks of the

124 they had begun with that day.

At Utah, the beach farthest west, the

Americans achieved an easy landing.The paratroop drops undoubtedlyhelped the tactical situation. Numerous

small actions by paratroops disturbed,

confused, and at times crushed Germanresistance. In one case. LieutenantRichard Winters of the 101st and twelve

paratroopers, later reinforced by a few

soldiers, took out a battery of four

105mm guns looking directly downonto Utah beach. The German artillery-men also had the protection of a platoon

of approximately fifty paratroopers; but

Winters and his men took out the ar-

tillerymen, the paratroopers, and the

guns. Such intervention by the Ameri-

can paratroops in innumerable other lo-

cations smoothed the going at Utah.

But American difficulties at Omahaimperiled the success of the entire inva-

sion. Of all the beaches, Omaha was themost exposed to Channel weather, and

the Americans paid a heavy price. Out of

thirty-two amphibious tanks that were

supposed to swim ashore to support theinfantry, only five reached the beaches;

the rest foundered, and most of their

crews drowned. The story was equally de-

pressing for the artillery; virtually no

howitzers in the first wave made itthrough the roiling surf. The infantry

had to fight their way ashore in the face

MHQ11

A group of universal carriers, the ubiquitous little British tracked transports known as Bren carriers, travels cross-country inthe dark. There were so few roads behind the invasion front that units had to move at whatever hour possible.

of heavy resistance by the whole 352nd

Infantry Division, instead of a weak in-

fantry brigade as intelligence had report-

ed. Not surprisingly, the initial landing

waves suffered heavy casualties, and the

Germans pinned the survivors down onthe beaches. To a German officer com-

manding fortifications overlookingOmaha in the first hours, it looked as ifthe defenses had stopped the attack. He

reported, after noting that the Americans

lay huddled on the shoreline, that many

vehicles were burning and German ar-tillery fire was inflicting heavy casualties.

Reports to American commanders in-dicated much the same situation; for ashort period. Lieutenant General OmarBradley considered putting subsequent

waves scheduled for Omaha into Utah.But gradually the situation improved.

American infantry moved inland; heavynaval gunfire took an increasing toll on

the 352nd; and after receiving optimistic

reports from that sector, German com-

manders channeled reinforcements todeal with the more serious situation in

front of the British. By the end of June

6, despite considerable confusion, the

Americans at Omaha had fought theirway far enough inland that reinforce-ments could flow into the beachhead.

But it had been a close-run thing.

What might have happened if theAmericans had not succeeded in makinga lodgment is a difficult question. Could

the Germans have won? The Allies would

have had a difficult time linking up the

American and British bridgeheads, andwith two isolated positions, the Germans

might have launched a more successfulseries of counterattacks. On the otherhand, the continuing confusion of Ger-

man commanders in the face of the on-slaught makes it doubtful whether evenso favorable a circumstance would havemattered in the end. As Rommel hadwarned, once the Allies were ashore, the

Wehrmacht's position grew more and

more desperate. It is possible that if the

Germans had stationed virtually all of

their reserves close to the coast as Rom-

mel had wished, they might have defeat-

ed the landing at Omaha and perhapsbottled up one of the British landings.

But it is worth noting that even Rommelfelt the main landing would come at Pas-

de-Calais, to the east; as a result, even he

would have pushed most additional re-

serves to the Fifteenth Army. But this

was Germany in 1944, and Hitler was not

about to remove his influence from the

conduct of operations. Under such cir-

cumstances, the Germans had no chance

to keep the invasion from succeeding.

As the sun set on June 6, the Allies had

gained a successful lodgment in western

Europe. By the end of the day, they had

gotten about 156,000 men ashore by air-

craft and ship75,215 across the beach-

es in British sectors, 57,500 in the Amer-

ican sectors, and 23,000 paratroopers

and gliderborne infantry. In all, eight di-

12

Tanks, made impotent by the bocage, had been confined to the narrow lanes or afew crossing points. An American sergeant cured this, improvising the Cullin

Hedgerow Device (inset) from scrapped German beach obstacles. The prongs weld-

ed to the front could bite into the embankment, creating a gap at almost any point.

visions were ashore. In the west, the

Americans had established a solid beach-

head for the VII Corps, into which vastnumbers of men and a mountain of sup-plies were pouring. Though the Britishand Canadians had not captured Caen, at

least they had established a solid lodg-

ment with their three beaches already

linked together. On the other side, theGermans were in general disarray, with

most of their high command con-vincedas they would remain for muchof June and Julythat a second andgreater invasion would come in Pas-de-

Calais. And that belief tied up a substan-tial portion of German forces in France,waiting for an invasion that never came.

At this point the Luftwaffe executed

its plan to deploy its battered fighter

squadrons to France to attack the in-

vaders. Through Ultra

intelligence

material derived from the decryption of

German military radio trafficthe Al-lies knew the German plans and eventhe locations of the forward operating

bases. Within thirty-six hours of the in-

vasion, the Luftwaffe had moved over200 fighters to France; an additional 100

followed over the next three days. But

the movement only swelled Allied victo-

ry claims; in the first week the Germans

lost 362 aircraft and the next week 232.

Allied fighter aircraft continued to enjoycomplete air superiority over northern

France; by day nothing moved by road.Not until midnight on June 6-7 did

the first troopers from the SS division

Hitler Jugend arrive in Caen, focusing

the battle on that city for the next

month and a half. Created from the eliteof the Hitler Youth, it represented as

ideologically fanatic a formation as the

Germans fielded in the war. The next

day Hitler Jugend's panzer brigade

under the baleful Kurt Meyer piled into

the Canadians. In ferocious fighting, the

Canadians came off second best against

the well-trained, juvenile murderers;but supported by naval gunfire and ar-

tillery already ashore, they held.

Several hundred Canadians surren-dered to the SS, but many failed to reach

prisoner-of-war cages. There is one testi-

monial in the Canadian archives to an

incident in which the teenagersmachine-gunned Canadian prisonersand then drove their tanks over the bod-

ies. There is extensive evidence that the

troops of Hitler Jugend followed a policy

of executing large numbers of prisoners.

About the best that can be said for jus-

tice is that most of the perpetrators were

MHQ13

Omaha Beach: A Scenario for DisasterOmaha beach was the hingeupon which the strategic de-

sign of the Normandy inva-sion would swing. A securebeachhead at Omaha wouldunite the British and Canadi-an lodgment to the east with

that of the Americans atUtah beach, a single lodg-

ment that would provide theoperational depth necessary

for freedom of movementand continued buildup offorces. But when the infantryhit the beach at Omaha, theynot only encountered un-expectedly strong resistance

but had to overcome it with-out most of their tanks andartillery, which had beenclaimed by the rough seas in

the landing.

Had Field Marshal ErwinRommel been able to prevailon Hitler to move just onemore panzer division behind

the coastal defenses in Nor-

mandyand he wanted itbehind Omahathe in-vaders could have faced adetermined counterattackby German tanks, and thevital hinge might have beenripped loose. As we know,Rommel was not able to

budge Hitler, but the chillingscenario that follows could

well have happened, and itpoints up what a near thing

Omaha was. It is adaptedfrom Peter G. Tsouras's new

book. Disaster at D-Day: The

Germans Defeat the AlHes,June 1944, to be published

by Greenhill Press andStackpole.

Rommel's powers of persua-sion, at last, have pried from

Hitler's grasp one more

panzer division, the 12th SS,

made up of teenage re-cruitsthe Hitler Jugend(Hitler Youth). He wasted no

time in transferring it toNormandy, and two of itsregiments arrived on June 5

as the great storm blew over

the Channel and drenchedthe Norman coast. The restof the division was scheduled

to arrive on June 6. By then

the invasion had begun.

Within a few hours of the

Allied landing at Omaha,ObersturmbannfiJhrer MaxWiinsche's battle group of

the 12th SS Panzer Division

had been ordered north to an

assembly three miles behind

the coast. His battle group

had been attacked severaltimes from the air and lost a

half-dozen vehicles. The at-tacks had slowed Wiinschedown. Each time the columnhad to scatter and then re-

assemble, but it arrived in-

tact at its assembly area by

noon, directly between Vier-

ville and CoUeville, the vil-

lages just behind the beach-

es. The sound of the gunsdrew Wiinsche's attention toCoUeville, to the east. Thecorps commander had ad-monished him to attack anymovement off the beach asquickly as possible. "Theywill be most vulnerablethen," he had said. Wiinsche

assembled his commandersto issue his orders, and herepeated the warning. Hewas joined by an artillerybattalion commander of the352nd Infantry Division,whose guns were furiouslyfiring on the beaches. Themajor was able to convey thelatest intelligence he had.

Most of the draws leadingfrom the beaches onto thebluff overlooking them hadfallen, he surmised, since he

had lost contact with the de-

fenders. The firing fromCoUeville meant the Ameri-cans were attacking off the

beach. The artillery com-mander was now just fir-ing blindly at the beaches,

hoping to hit something.He would gladly supportWiinsche's attack. The ar-tilleryman laid out his mapfor the SS officers. It was fa-

miliar to them; they hadplanned for an exercise with

the 352nd in this area onthis very day.

Wiinsche's orders quickly

put his column on the roadto attack CoUeville. Germanstragglers told them that theAmericans were swarming offthe beaches and had takenCoUeville. Already small par-

ties of American infantrymenwere being encountered.They were swept away as the

SS sped down the road, theircoming hidden by thehedgerows that lined thetwisting roads. Wiinschecalled in the fire support. The

town was suddenly wreathed

in explosions. The SS burstinto CoUeville, Panther tanks

in the lead followed by SPWs

killed or mutilated in the fighting that

followed. On the other side. Allied intel-ligence officers in some cases got

wounded SS troopers who fell into theirhands to talk by threatening that if they

did not they would receive transfusions

of Jewish blood.

But the German effort to batter theBritish and Canadians at the gates of

Caen allowed the Allies to consolidate

the beachheads. Hitler still hoped for a

counterattack that would push the Al-

lies into the sea. But Rommel foundhimself desperately trying to plug holes

in a bulging dike. As German reinforce-ments flowedor creptinto Nor-

mandy, they had to be immediately bro-

ken up and rushed to a number of dif-ferent sectors.

German signal breakdowns exacerbat-ed the situation. Ultra intercepts on

June 9 and 10 indicated the precise loca-

tion of the headquarters of PanzerGroup West. Obligingly the Germansplaced their tents and supporting vehi-

cles in an open field, where Allied fight-

er bombers wrecked the entire site andkilled seventeen officers, including the

chief of staff. This air attack effectively

removed Panzer Group West as an oper-ating headquarters and robbed the Ger-mans of their only command organiza-

tion in the West capable of handling

mobile divisions.

Increasing French resistance and sab-

otage added to German difficulties. The

SS panzer division Das Reich took nearly

two weeks to arrive in Normandy fromLimoges, a journey that should havetaken only two days. Air attacks and am-

bushes made the move a nightmare.Along the way, members of the divisioninstigated a number of atrocities thatconfirm that Hitler Jugend 's behavior

was symptomatic of the criminal nature

of the Waffen SS as a whole. The worst

occurred at Oradour-sur-Glane, where

SS troopers murdered 600 French civil-

MHQ14

(half-track armored person-nel carriers), and spread out

through the orchards on ei-

ther side of the town. TheAmericans had not had time

to organize a defense, and in

any case did not have the

heavy infantry weapons to

fight tanks; those had allbeen lost on the beach. Their

only hope was the few re-maining Sherman tanks thathad accompanied them offthe beach.

They had been surprised

first by the artillery, whichstruck down many of themas they moved through thetown. Those who reemergedfrom cover were cut down bythe tanks and by machineguns on the speeding SPWs.

Every time the Americansformed a nest of resistance,

the Panthers would fire intoit point-blank until it was si-

lenced. The handful of Sher-

mans tried to block the Pan-

thers, only to see their shot

bounce off the frontal armor.

The German high-velocity75mm guns had no suchproblems. Their shells sliced

right through the thin hulls

and turrets of the Shermans.

In less than fifteen minutes,

the battle group had coursed

through the town. The sur-viving enemy was fadingback toward the beach.

The enemy appeared to be

moving up from the Colle-ville draw. The battle groupreversed its path throughColleville and took the road

northwest that led to it.Again a high-speed approach

produced maximum shockamong the columns of in-fantry that they literally ran

over coming north out ofthe draw.

The staff of the American1st Divisionthe "Big RedOne"had moved into aburned-out German bunkerat the mouth of the draw andset up a sign that proclaimed

it "Danger Forward." MajorGeneral Clarence Huebner,the division commander, wasstanding outside when theSS attacked into Colleville. A

frantic call from a radio in

the town screamed, "Tanks,

tanks, all over the town!"

then silence. The antitankguns of the 18th Infantry,

which had landed in the sec-ond wave, were at the end of

the column that was movingup the draw toward Colle-ville. Huebner had to getthem forward as fast as pos-sible, but the draw and thehedgerow-bound road werepacked tight with infantryand a few tanks and jeeps.All hell broke loose up the

road. In a few minutes thesleek lines of a tank with a

black cross careened downthe draw, scattering the

Americans. The tank's ma-chine guns sprayed the area

crowded with targets. Hueb-

ner was getting an anti-

tank gun in place when twomore monsters came slither-

ing down the draw. One ofthem fired directly into"Danger Forward," killingmost of the division staff in-

side. More Panthers came

out of the draw to clank up

and down the beach, spray-ing machine-gun fire at thecrowds of fleeing men andshooting directly into land-

ing craft approaching thebeach at a range of only a few

hundred yards.

From the command shipsoffshore, observers saw the

gray-painted tanks fan out up

and down the beach. Menwere fleeing to the landing

craft only to die in them asthey exploded. The sickenedvoice of one of the observers

was relayed to General OmarBradley aboard the cruiser

USS Augusta. An officerbegan to sob as the voice de-

scribed the havoc ashore.Rear Admiral Alan Kirk, com-

manding the naval task force,spoke first: "I can get some of

them off the beach if we holdoff the enemy with navalgunfire, but we will lose a lot

of men from our own guns."

"No," Bradley said, "don't

kill any more of our boys. It's

almost all over now." And itwas. Everywhere men weresurrendering as the Germans

swarmed down onto thebeach. A few made their wayeast and west away from the

draw to link up with otherunits, but the bulk of the two

infantry regiments and allthe attached units had been

lost. The proudest infantrydivision in the U.S. Army hadbeen destroyed. It was almost

4:00 P.M. Not even ten hours

had passed since the Big Red

One had landed.

ians: They machine-gunned the men inopen fields and burned the women and

children to death in the village church.

Throughout the Normandy battles,outnumbered and outgunned Germaninfantry held out against their superior

opponents. But they were being gradual-

ly worn down in spite of the tactical care-lessness and lack of initiative of U.S. and

British troops. The British reported that

they found it disconcerting to come over

the tops of ridges to discover the Ger-

mans dug in on the reverse slope, "some-thing that we had never envisaged," asone lieutenant put itan extraordinary

admission, because the reverse-slope po-

sitions had been the basic principle of

German defensive doctrine since 1917.

The British were often their ownworst enemy. On June 12, their com-manders recognized that the Germanpositions west of Caen, between Villers-

Bocage and Caumont, were up in theair; they thereupon switched the axis of

the 7th Armored Division's advance tothe west to take advantage of the situa-

tion. They were right; the Germans had

little in the area, because the fighting

around Caen was soaking up most oftheir strength. The lead brigade of the7th Armored Division was soon throughthe German lines and reached Villers-

Bocage without hindrance. But theBritish advanced as if on a peacetime

maneuver: There were no reconnais-

sance units in front or on the flanks.

One of the few Germans in the area,

however, happened to be CaptainMichael Wittman, a great tank ace of the

Eastern Front, with five Tiger tanks.

Wittman and his tank crews blasted thehead of the column and then rolled upthe British formation. By the time the

fighting in Villers-Bocage was over, the

British had lost twenty-five tanks and

twenty-eight other armored vehicles.Wittman's action plugged the dike long

enough for the 2nd SS Panzer Division

MHQ15

Canadian troops charge through the surrealistically distorted ruins of a hangar at Carpiquet airfield, west of Caen, on July 4.

The restricted frontage of the invasion beachhead forced the Allies to wear down the Germans with repeated frontal attacks.

to arrive and reinforce him. In effect,

this action prevented the British from

rolling up the German position west of

Caen. For over a month Montgomery at-tacked, but British and Canadian battle-

field skills were not up to the task of

creating a breakthrough.

The Canadians did not finally secure

Caen until July 13. The Germans were

well prepared, and from beginning to

end British infantry and tanks failed to

cooperate. But one must give the British

their due; whatever their tactical and

operational weaknesses, they fought the

best formations in the German army inthe West to exhaustion. The fighting

around Caen served a larger purpose: It

pinned the German armor on the east-ern battlefield in Normandy and pre-vented them from concentrating theirforces for a powerful counterthrust.

Again and again Rundstedt and Rommelstabilized a collapsing line and prevent-

ed breakthroughs toward the east. But

the price they paid was an attrition of

their best units.

Ironically, the very failure to achieve

a breakthrough to more open groundeast of Caen worked to the Allied advan-tage. Battles of attrition played to Allied

strengthsfirepower and manpower

and wore away outnumbered German

frontline units. Any breakthrough in

June or July would have resulted in amobile battle in central Franceone in

which the Germans would have fallen

back on their supply dumps, extracted

their forces from western France in less

damaged fashion, and inflicted heaviercasualties on Allied forces.

The area into which the Allied forces

moved in early June was less open toGerman reinforcement and supply; atleast for the short run it was also of less

significance, because advances in the

bocage country led only to more of the

tall, thick hedgerows around each patch

of field. The Germans could form one

MHQ16

AARON BOHROD / U S ARMY CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY. WASHINGTON, D C

American soldiers tight their way into Coutances on July 28. After the breakthrough at St.-Lo on July 18, German troops

fought fierce rearguard actions against a relentless American advance, but they had no reserves to restore their lines.

defensive line after another, making the

bocage ideal defensive terrain. Not sur-

prisingly, commanders had concentrat-ed more on making the initial landings

a success than on thinking through the

implications of the terrain beyondwhich they would have to fight after the

invasion occurred.

By June 18, the Americans had cut the

base of the Cotentin Peninsula by reach-

ing the Atlantic Ocean at Barneville.

Major General J. Lawton ("LightningJoe") Collins, the VII Corps commander,

who had led a division at Guadalcanal,now drove north toward Cherbourg. The

Americans fought their way into the city

against third-rate troops; by June 27,

enemy resistance had endedbut the

Germans had wrecked the port facilities.

Despite massive efforts to repair the

damage, the Americans failed to open the

port fully until September; by then the

battlefield had moved far from Nor-mandy. In retrospect, however, the clear-

ing of the Cotentin Peninsula proved a

wise decision, because it placed the

American flank firmly on the Atlanticand meant operational freedom.

Worrisome for the American com-manders was the weak performance of

many units. That weakness forcedBradley to keep the airborne divisions in

the front lines longer than planned and

to rely on a small group of better-trained

infantry divisions, such as the 1st and

9th. But Eisenhower and Bradley em-

barked on a ruthless program to weedout incompetents at all levels. The Amer-

icans were also paying a price in the

bocage country for their emphasis on

mobility over weight of weaponry. In the

conditions of Normandy, mobility made

little differencethough that changed

once the breakout occurred. But, as

Rommel noted, the Americans generallylearned from experience, while all too

often the British did not.

On July 3, the VII Corps launched adrive on Saint-L6 that Bradley hoped

would carry all the way to Avranches.

Such a success would end the stalemate

that was rapidly increasing frustration

among commanders and politiciansalike. The American advance did no bet-

ter than British attacks, and in this case

against weaker forces. Nevertheless,

though suffering heavy casualties, the

Americans slowly pushed the Germans

back to Saint-L6, a wearing-downprocess that would eventually crackGerman defenses.

Meanwhile, by the end of the month,

the Americans had solved the hedgerow

MHQ17

problem: They designed a device with

steel teeth attached to the front of a

tank to cut through the roots. Code-

named Rhino, it allowed Americantanks to support infantry attacks direct-

ly. What made the device particularlynoteworthyand Americanwas thefact that noncommissioned officers de-veloped it, mostly using the steel obsta-

cles the Germans had scattered on the

beaches of Normandy. It is almost in-conceivable that NCOs in the Britisharmy would have invented such a de-vice, and even more doubtful that se-

nior officers would have embracedsomething invented by "other ranks."The hundreds of tanks equipped with

Rhino gave the Americans cross-country mobility, while German tanksremained road-bound.

By late July, the Germans confronted

a rapidly deteriorating situation. Their

logistical position, particularly on the

western side of the battlefield, was in

shambles. Moreover, they were running

out of reinforcements to rebuild the col-

lapsing line, and Allied strength in Nor-

mandy had now reached over a millionmen. To add to German woes, their highcommand collapsed in July. Rundstedt,who had snapped that Field Marshal Wil-helm Keitel should "make peace," wasreplaced by Field Marshal Hans Giinther

von Kluge, a general officer notable for

his malleability. Kluge arrived sure of

himself and the tactical skills of the Ger-

man army. Like most who had served inthe East, he underestimated Allied air

power. Kluge's first comment to Rom-mel was that he had better start obeying

orders; but before relations between the

two field marshals reached an explosive

level. Allied fighter bombers caughtRommel's staff car in the open on July17, severely wounding the Desert Fox.Kluge refused to appoint a replace-

ment for Rommel, but instead assumedcommand of Army Group B along withthe overall command of the West. By theend of the month, he had recognizedhow desperate the situation had become.The explosion of a bomb in the fiihrer'sheadquarters, on July 20, only added to

the burdens besetting the German high

command. Since Kluge had extensiveconnections with those who had

launched the assassination plothis

own former headquarters in the Soviet

Union was one of the most active centers

of resistancehe was now desperately

looking over his shoulder as the plot un-

raveled. His political problems were an

important influence on the decisions he

took as the front collapsed, and he would

soon commit suicide.

At the end of July, Bradley unleashed

the decisive offensive of the Normandybattle. Operation Cobra broke the dead-

lock. Crucial to American success wasthe contribution of British and Canadi-

an attacks in the east: Fourteen Germandivisions, including six of the Wehr-macht's best panzer divisions, faced the

Commonwealth soldiers. Only eleven di-visions confronted American attacks inthe westtwo of them panzers, andboth in dreadful shape. Instead of at-

tacking across a broad front, the VII

Corps launched its offensive on just a7,000-yard front. To prepare the way,

Bradley asked for a carpet bombardmentby strategic bombers. However, air com-

manders refused requests that theirbombers make runs parallel to the front.Instead, the airmen came in perpendic-

ular to U.S. lines; they believed that

there was little chance of a "creepback"friendly fire, as it wereafter

bombing began.Bad weather delayed the start. On

July 24, the bombers took off from basesin England, but by the time theyreached the target the weather wasagain unsuitable. However, a number ofaircraft bombed anyway, and the Ameri-can infantry suffered casualties, twenty-

five killed and 131 wounded. The results

the next day were even worse for U.S.

troops in the area. No fewer than 1,800

bombers from the Eighth Air Forcestruck the German positions, but eventhough the weather was nearly perfect,

the last bomber waves dumped a sub-stantial number of bombs on U.S. posi-tions. This time the Eighth Air Forcekilled 111 American soldiers, includingLieutenant General Lesley McNair, and

wounded 490 others.The air attack did not completely

break German resistance, but shakenAmerican attackers discovered that

enemy defenses now contained holesthrough which they could press for-ward. For the Germans, the fighting

that followed destroyed what was left of

many units. After receiving an orderfrom Kluge that his division, the Panzer

Lehr, must hold to the last. General

Fritz Bayerlein replied: "Out in front

everyone is holding out. Everyone. Mygrenadiers and my engineers, and mytank crewsthey're all holding their

ground. Not a single one is leaving his

post. They are lying silently in their fox-

holes for they are dead."

The Americans failed to achieve aclear breakthrough. They did, however,

eventually lever German defenders awayfrom the coast. Mobile at last, theyforced the Germans back, pushing themeast rather than south. The Germanflank was soon up in the air, and the

Americans pushed through to Avranches

on July 30, liberating it the next day.

At this point, exploitation could take

place. With activation of the Third Armyand the arrival of General George S. Pat-

ton, Jr., the Americans rolled into high

gear. But the Third Army's actions dis-

played the weaknesses as well as the

strengths of the U.S. Army. The firstunits to move through Avranches head-

ed west and not east, where the greatest

opportunity for exploitation lay. Patton's

instincts were to move rapidly forward,

but since the plans called for him to gowest into Brittany toward Brest, heobeyed his orders. Only when the Alliedhigh command recognized that it hadmade a mistake did Patton turn the re-mainder of the Third Army to the east.

What makes the move so inexplicablewas the fact that whatever the logistical

needs for more port capacity, the Ger-

mans had indicated by the destruction

of Cherbourg that the Breton portswould not be a help. Brest would hold

out until mid-September. Nevertheless,

in slavish devotion to the plans and over

the protests of one of the better Ameri-

can division commanders. Major Gener-al John Wood, the initial move went en-

tirely in the wrong direction.

Luckily for the Allies, Hitler made aserious situation desperate. Instead of

authorizing a withdrawal to save as

much of his manpower and equipment

MHQ18

The final products ofwar: Modem weapons meant that combat soldiersinfantry and tankerswere more likely to be killedthan ever before, although these had become a minor fraction of the armies, especially those of the Western Allies.

as possible, the fiihrer ordered Kluge to

concentrate his armor, recapture

Avranches, and cut off Patton's rampag-

ing forces. As a result, he stuck Germanforces deeper into the sack. Ultra alerted

Bradley, and with the Americans ready

and waiting, the German counterattack,

at Mortain, had no chance. At this point

Patton's forces began their drive into

central France, and a gigantic encir-

clement formed around German forces

in Normandy.Nevertheless, the Allies failed to reap

full benefit from the German collapse.Patton's encircling spearheads stopped

at Argentan to wait for the slower Brit-

ish and Canadian forces moving south-ward. Patton jokingly suggested toBradley that the Third Army could con-

tinue north and push the British into the

ocean for a second Dunkirk. But one

senses that neither Bradley nor Patton

nor their troops had much desire toclose the Falaise gap: They knew that if

they actually encircled the Germans,

they would confront a battle even cost-

lier to both sides. Nor did they under-

stand how crucial such an action couldprove to achieving victory in 1944. With-

out an American focus on Falaise, Brit-

ish and Canadian efforts from the north

faced a tough road. Unfortunately, the

efforts from the north were less than ef-

fective. The resulting failure of Ameri-

can, British, and Canadian forces allowed

substantial numbers of the toughestGerman troops to make their escapefrom Falaise. Upon their return to the

Reich, they found sufficient weapons and

equipment from Albert Speer's econom-

ic efforts to prolong the war into 1945.

In the largest sense, the Normandycampaign achieved its goals. The armies

of the Western powers returned to the

European continent. In an enormous

battle of attrition, they fought the Ger-

mans to exhaustion and inevitable col-

lapse. The Allied armies did not fight the

battle according to the wishes of their

commanderthe historical evidencemakes clear that Montgomery aimed to

achieve a breakout from Caen in which

his Commonwealth troops would fight amobile battle to destroy the Germans,

while the Americans mopped up rearareas and provided logistical support.

Ironically, the opposite took place: It

was the Americans who fought the mo-bile battle and the British who moppedup. In the end, the battle that took place

emphasized the strengths and superiori-

ty of the Allies.

It is tragic that the Allies were not

able to translate their success into the

defeat of Nazi Germany in 1944. Their

failure was partially the result of weak-

nesses in command. And yet that com-mand failure was inevitable. The veryqualities that made it possible for Eisen-hower to persuade and cajole a collec-

tion of raging egos into the team that

made the invasion possible could notprovide the driving, ruthless push that

might have tumbled Germany in August

MHQ19

OPERATION OVERLORDJUNE 6, 1944

(D-Day)

Planned Airborne Dropping and Landing Zones

UTAH Assault Beaches

^^^4 First Allied Assault Waves

Q3 Allied-Held Areas at 2400 Hrs. on D-Day^ ^ Allied Objectives at 2400 Hrs. on D-Day

RCT Regimental Combat Team

CT) German Concentrations near Alliesat 2400 Hrs. on D-Day

^^ German Front Lines near Allied Troops

4 Major German Gun Batteries(III)

Flooded Areas

Miles

Littry-la-Mine

The most famous invasion day in history began quietly, as a

small advance force ofAllied pathfinders parachuted to both

ends of the five targeted Normandy beaches to try to mark in-land airdrop and glider-landing zones. Thendespite beingscattered by high windsone British and two American air-borne divisions landed and seized key bridges, roads, andtowns. Several miles offshore, the mightiest armada ever as-sembleddozens of convoys comprising thousands ofships,

preceded by all-important minesweepersbegan to drop off

smaller landing craft. Behind crucial teams of demolition ex-perts, the first regiments of tense, seasick soldiers headedthrough heavily mined waters for the obstacle-riddled assaultbeaches. At the westernmost one, Utah, the U.S. 4th Division

made a relatively easy landing, though currents carried themen south of their targets. Facing little resistance in an area

the Germans had deliberately Hooded, the Americans headedboth inland, on five causeways, and northwest along the

coast to link up with airborne forces. In contrast, the other

American beach, Omaha, saw fierce resistance by the tough

German 352nd Division; despite continuous Allied navalbombardment and air attacks, they pinned down the firstfour waves of the U.S. 1st Divisionthe "Big Red One." Withmuch individual heroismincluding a daring climb to thetop of the cliff at Pointe du Hoc, to the west, by Rangersunder heavy firethe Americans slowly gained a mile of

beachhead by day's end. At the three beaches to the east

Gold, Juno, and SwordBritish and Canadian forces had aneasier time; however, the first waves sustained many casual-ties, especially on Juno, and British troops on Gold also raninto part of the 352nd, at Le Hamel. (The other beaches weredefended, poorly, by coerced Russians and Poles.) The onlyGerman counterattack, by tanks of the 21st Panzer Division,failed quickly. As D-Day ended, the British moved inland

with unfulfilled hopetoward the key city of Caen.

MHQ20

21st ARMY C3HUUK(Montgomery)

BRITISH SECOND AHMY(Dempsey)

BRITISH XXX CORPS'(Bucknall)

IBrit. 50th Inf. Div.|iBrit. 8th Armd. Bde.'

BRITISH I CORPS(Crocker)

r

SAY OF SEINECan. 3rd Inf. DivCan. 2nd Armd. Bde,

A.

iv]dej

"^

Brit. 3rd Inf. Div,Brit. 27th Armd. Bde

^ |56thBde.| |151stBde.| ^ /_>\^

and September. Moreover, one candoubt whether any such commandingpersonaUty could have made the dis-parate coalition work in harness in the

fashion that Eisenhower's combination

of personal tact and toughness did. A

supreme Allied commander with thepersonality of a King, a MacArthur, or a

Brooke could well have fractured the

coalition structure on which victory inwar and peace depended. The campaign

did mark many of the commanders whodirected the Allied side. Eisenhower and

Tedder look particularly good. And thecampaign, at least until the breakout,

did play to Montgomery's strengths;

Normandy was one of his finer mo-ments. Bradley also showed the stolid,

steady performance that made him asoldier's soldier. The first team had

passed its test.

For those who walk in the silentcemeteries of Normandy, the cost ofthat victory can seem excessive. That es-

pecially seems true when one looks atthe ages of those who died and considersthe deficiencies of the armies of the

democracies on the field of battle. The

price of prewar neglect was paid for in

the blood of youth and lies in thoselong, silent rows of crosses and stars of

David. Yet one must remember that the

Anglo-Americans confronted enormous

problems in dealing with the pernicious

tyrannies that had arisen in the world

during the 1930s. In the end they won,

and they created the basis for a stable

peace that led to the re-creation of Eu-

rope. The Normandy campaign broughtthe armed power and political ideals of

the democracies back onto the Conti-

nent. That was a triumph of enormous

political significance. It was not pretty,

but it served the purpose.

Williamson Murray is anMHQ contribut-ing editor and a professor of European

military history at Ohio State University.

MHQ21

The airborne's

watery triumphSmall actions can have big results, as James Gavin and the82nd Airborne proved in the confused series ofactions thatcentered on the fight for the bridge at La Fiere.

by T.Micliael Booth and Duncan Spencer

BillWalton watched Brigadier

General James Maurice Gavingripping the doorframe of theC-47 as it flew low over Nor-mandy, buffeting through the

cold air. Behind Gavin, Walton stoodamidst a "stick" of eighteen paratroop-

ers, straining under the weight ofweapons, hooked by a thin static line toa jump cable. For the hundredth time,Walton, a civilian journalist, who hadbegged to get on the plane, cursed this

stupid idea. Now he could clearly seehis own death in a dozen different ver-

sions. The noise was a drug, over-whelming. Numbed by the roar of la-boring engines, air sucking andscreeching past the metal plane, Wal-

ton kept his eyes on the figure in the

doorway and tried not to think.

Below, the land looked flat as card-

board, but Walton knew there werethousands of German soldiers downthere, ready to kill him. There would beno support or protection. The clumsytransports had flown through the coast-

line defenses, flak rocking the planes.

Preflight briefings had shown the tallpoles, "Rommel's asparagus," that the

Germans had set up to smash landinggliders. The beaches were bristling with

guns and metal obstacles. But theplanes droned on, dropping lower. The

final stage of the European war, the in-

vasion of occupied France and the de-

struction of Germany's waning militarymachine, would begin at the doorwhere Gavin stood.

Walton was glad to be close to Gavin.

Before taking off he had hoped for a big

story for Time magazine on the manrapidly becoming a legend, but thehopes had dissolved and been replaced

by fear. This was Walton's first jump. Hevowed then and there never to do such athing again if only God would sparehim this time, if only the parachuteworked! Walton felt himself pushed for-

ward toward the wind-tortured door-frame of the rocking aircraft. At least, he

thought, the Germans would not expectthem. Then came the buffeting blowsand the sound of metal spattering. Flakpinged and pattered, random jagged bitsof metal meant to cut, wreck, and kill.There would be no surprise.

That night, all over Normandy, para-troopers jumped in a broad band be-yond the beaches, bent on many differ-ent errands of war. By the end of thenext day, more than 1,000 men of the

82nd Airborne would be dead, wound-ed, or missing. Many would fall intomarshes and sink, or hit trees, wherethey would dangle to be murderedlater. Some of the missing would bedisabled, many with broken bones, andquickly taken prisoner.

Most of the men of the 82nd knewthey were jumping into something verybig, into history, like Crecy or Waterloo

or Cannae. But for days they wouldfight alone, almost out of touch with

the seaborne invaders, not knowing theoutcome of the invasion.

The Normandy drop was Gavin's door-way to fame in battle. It captured the at-

tention of the entire world and madehim seem larger than life. Looking forheroes, Americans found them in Gavinand his paratroopers. The unforgettable

images of the Normandy beach by Lifemagazine photographer Robert Capagave Americans the picture of their boys

storming ashore past wreckage, pasteven the corpses of their friends, but ir-

resistible. Gavin's black-faced troopers

fulfilled another fantasy: the elite, tough

warriors who fought by stealth and sur-prise, who put their lives at risk behindenemy lines. Gavin was their beau ideal.

Thirty-seven years of age on the

night of the Normandy drop, Gavin

MHQ22

looked about ten years younger.Throughout his life, until arthritis from

a jump injury and, later, Parkinson'sdisease slowed and finally stopped him,

youth was his trademark. But not only

youth, a particular brand of it. Lean to

an extreme, his strength was of the

sinew-and-muscle kind, the strength of

endurance. He lived a Spartan regimen,

uninterrupted since early childhood, of

heavy manual work, long-distancemarches, simplicity of diet, and a beliefin the virtue of physical toughness.

At the height of his powers the night

he hurled himself out of the transport

at the German enemy, Gavin had beenpreparing for this moment for twentyyears. He had spent most of his wakingmoments thinking about his work andways to improve it. He had read almostcontinuously about the great soldiers of

history, and he had written out favoriteaphorisms from their recorded state-ments for his own reference. Now thehoped-for opportunity had come.

Suddenly the green light came on,the signal to jump, and Gavin, soon tobe the youngest major general sinceGeorge Armstrong Custer, left Walton

with a last flashing imagethe windplastering dark cloth against the para-

trooper's wiry arms, his form outlined

by the naked light, both hands tensed

on the alloy doorway. Gavin flung him-self forward and disappeared into theprop blast. Like a suicidal caterpillar,

the rest of the stick, automatons now,

pushed forward, a sharp metallic soundmarking each man's exit. "Don't push,"Walton heard himself saying, "I'll goquick." Then he, too, reached the doorand jumped into the black-and-whitephoto below. Twisted and tossed by the

turbulence of the prop blast, his mindwent numb, and then with a wonderfullurch it all stopped. Silently, the can-

opy blossomed above his head, and he

was swaying, masterfully, above theearth. The ground approached fast;then Walton heard gunfire and saw

At 0100 hours on the morning ofJune6, the first Allied invaders arrive in gFrance: Over 13,000 paratroopers, car- gried by 850 C-47 transports, begin to 2leap into the night sky. Most ofthem

will miss their planned landing zones.^

zS

tracers streaming across the ground, |and his fear returned. i

o

Jim Gavin landed hard, in an apple "

orchard about two miles from where he Iwas supposed to be, though he didn't Pknow that until an hour later. At first,

z

he had no idea exactly where he was.Checking that all his parts worked afterhis collision with the ground, he got out

of his harness. About him the treebranches hung low, and among the fall-en blossoms cows grazed in the moon-

light. Gavin's aide. Captain Hugo V.Olson, had landed nearby. The two men

"rolled up" their stick, then moved outtoward heavy firing in the distance.

It was a calm, damp, mysteriousspring night that Gavin would always

MHQ23

The gliderbome reinforcements, two regiments plus all the divisions' antitank guns and vehicles, took off at dawn. Glideroperations were too dangerous to execute in the dark, even under the urgent D-Day conditions.

remember. The Cotentin Peninsula inNormandy is difficult enough to moveabout at best; at night and with thedanger of ambush, it was treacherous.The land lay in a checkerboard of an-cestral fields surrounded by steepfences and walls, some overgrown,some neglectedthe characteristic

hedgerows of rural Normandy. Thesewalls were fortresses: piled with dirt

and brush, often heaped in stoutmounds up to twenty feet high, andcovered with trees and tangled under-

growth. The Germans had already for-

tified the hedgerows with rifle andmachine-gun pits, and Gavin had foundseveral, unmanned, scattered about theedge of the orchard. He knew that ner-vous German troops, alerted by anti-aircraft fire and the racket of the low-

flying transports, were a hazard. Lost

paratroopers crackling through the un-

derbrush invited vicious close contact,

but Gavin had to risk it. He needed to

find the rest of the 508th Regiment.

Right off the orchard was a small,

worn, treelined road. Gavin and his lit-

tle group walked along both sides of it,

moving in crouched position with M-lsat the ready. Then, about 400 yardsdown, they encountered a waterymarsh where they could see equipment

bundles floating. Gavin wanted thebundles retrieved because they con-

tained critical gearmachine guns,bazookas, and radios. While some of the

men went after them, a red light began

flashing across the marsh, then a blue

one. The red was an assembly markerfor the 507th Regiment, the blue forthe 508th. Gavin sent Olson out to con-

tact those groups. Meanwhile, moreparatroopers joined their party, now upto about ninety men.

Olson soon returned with news. He

had found a railroad embankment onthe far side, which told Gavin wherethey were. Checking his map, he couldsee they had overflown their zone andwere just west of the Merderet River,

about two miles north of La Fierebridge, one of the 82nd's objectives.The Germans had flooded the Mer-deret, creating the marsh, which hadbeen hidden from aerial reconnais-sance because the high grass disguised

it as solid ground. What should havebeen a small river was now a thousand-

yard-wide lake. The men of the 508th

had landed on both sides and in the

middle of the lake. Those on the other

side had told Olson that they weremoving out to La Fiere. It was thenearest objective they knew of.

Gavin's paratroopers had little suc-

cess retrieving the equipment bundles.

The water was too deep and the bundles

too heavy. They were collecting more

men every minute, but most of themwere of the 507th and green to combat.

Furthermore, their commanders hadtold them to black out all rank insignia,so no one knew who the officers andNCOs were. The men were confused,unsure of themselves, andexhausted

MHQ24

by the shock of the jumpsome werefalling asleep. As German fire built,they took cover in the hedgerows,where it was almost impossible to orga-

nize them. Gavin was frustrated. With

dawn approaching, he still had no ideawhat had happened to the rest of hiscommand, and he had accomplishedvirtually nothing. He roused his disori-

ented men and moved out across themarsh and then south to La Fiere.

It was as well Gavin could not see

the whole picture of the early hours of

invasion. The drop had been part suc-

cess, part disaster. Paratroopers of the

82nd and 101st airborne divisions had

landed in Normandy all right, but theywere widely dispersed. Individuals and

small groups wandered isolated, or fell

into skirmishes with the Germans inthose early hours; for two or three

days, few met their objectives as stan-dard military units.

A small force of pathfinders, whose

job it was to help guide the mass oftroops following close behind them,had taken off from England abou*' 10:00

P.M. on the night of June 5. Their spe-

cially trained pilots took a circular

route to the drop, first to avoid the pos-

sibility of "friendly fire" from the fleet

below, then to approach their targets

from an unexpected side, the south-

west. Along the way, things went seri-

ously wrong. The planes encounteredlittle antiaircraft fire, but as soon as

they reached the Cotentin, they found

themselves in thick turbul