The Liberation Trilogy Box Set

by Rick Atkinson

  Devers capitulated: diary, JLD, Jan. 1, 1945, MHI (“no alternative”); Franklin L. Gurley, “The Relationship Between Jean de Lattre de Tassigny and Jacob L. Devers,” March 26, 1994, Sorbonne, NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 4; Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” JMH (July 1994): 481+.

  “You can kill a willing horse”: diary, JLD, Dec. 30, 1944, MHI.

  “make it a Stalingrad”: diary, JLD, Jan. 1, 1945, MHI.

  The final day of the year ticked by: war diary, Seventh Army, Dec. 31, 1944, MHI; Cochran, “Protecting the Ultimate Advantage,” Military History (June 1985): 45+; Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 483 (“Never was the world plagued”); diary, JLD, Dec. 31, 1944, MHI (“Patch called me”).

  The attack indeed fell that night: RR, 493–97, 499–500 (Seventh Army was overextended); Bonn, When the Odds Were Even, 181–83; Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 173, 241 (force Patton to withdraw).

  The Americans were also alert and entrenched: Cochran, “Protecting the Ultimate Advantage,” Military History (June 1985): 45+; Donald S. Bussey, “Ultra and the U.S. Seventh Army,” May 12, 1945, SRH-022, and “Reports by U.S. Army Ultra Representatives,” 6th Army Group, n.d., SRH-023, NARA RG 457, E 022 (Patch had little doubt).

  “German offensive began”: Wyant, Sandy Patch, 9–11 (“Murdered them”); Bonn, When the Odds Were Even, 197, 200, 203–4 (“Gained only insignificant ground”); RR, 504–5; Yeide and Stout, First to the Rhine, 275 (“Morgue Valley”).

  The most flamboyant German sally: TT, 608 (Hangover Raid); Miller, Masters of the Air, 374 (white gloves); VW, vol. 2 190. Richard G. Davis puts the tally of destroyed Allied planes at nearly two hundred, including three dozen American aircraft (Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 535).

  But German losses approached 300 planes: Germany VII, 693–94; Miller, Masters of the Air, 374 (“our last substance”). Miller puts Allied losses at more than 450 planes and German losses at over 400.

  Even as NORDWIND collapsed: RR, 505–9; “The Psychological Warfare Division,” 1945, CMH, 8-3.6 BA, 78–79 (Radio Stuttgart): Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5 (“caused a general panic”).

  Lowered tricolors and the sight of official sedans: Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5; memo, “Misleading Briefing Data,” Frank A. Allen, Jr., to JLD, Jan. 16, 1945, and memo, 6th Army Group, Jan. 21, 1945, NARA RG 331, E 240P, SHAEF public relations section, box 38 (“women pushing baby carriages”); Fussell, Doing Battle, 129 (inverted dinner plates).

  Charles de Gaulle, once again referring to himself: De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 834. De Gaulle’s message, written on January 1, took twenty-seven hours to reach De Lattre (OH, Philippe de Camas, asst G-3, French First Army, Oct.–Dec. 1948, Miguel Vigneras, Paris, NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5).

  “a bomb-like effect”: OH, Philippe de Camas, asst G-3, French First Army, Oct.–Dec. 1948, Miguel Vigneras, Paris, NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5; Salisbury-Jones, So Full a Glory, 171 (“Ça, non!”); Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5 (“problem of conscience”).

  De Gaulle saw no dilemma: De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 834–37; Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5 (snubbed Madame De Lattre); De Lattre de Tassigny, The History of the French First Army, 311 (“our last hope”).

  At nine P.M. on Tuesday, General Juin: Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5 (“extremely grave consequences” and “they are dependent on us”); corr, David G. Barr to JLD, Aug. 15, 1967, NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5 (pulled from his pocket).

  “Juin said things to me last night”: notes, Jan. 3, 1945, DDE office and W. B. Smith office, James M. Robb corr, DDE Lib, PP-pres, box 98; “Summary of Directions in Chronological Order Concerning Holding Strasbourg or Not Holding Strasbourg,” Jan. 3, 1945, JLD papers, MHI (“forget Strasbourg”); John W. Price, “The Strasbourg Incident,” 1967, OCMH, NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5, 26 (“ineradicable shame”); Seventh Army war diary, Jan. 3, 1945, MHI (“terrible reprisals”); Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5 (Evacuation plans); memo, “Misleading Briefing Data,” Frank A. Allen, Jr., to JLD, Jan. 16, 1945, and memo, 6th Army Group, Jan. 21, 1945, NARA RG 331, E 240P, SHAEF public relations section, box 38 (only two hundred rail cars).

  “Next to the weather”: Chandler, 2491.

  Smith phoned Devers to ask: “Summary of Directions in Chronological Order Concerning Holding Strasbourg or Not Holding Strasbourg,” Jan. 3, 1945, JLD papers, MHI.

  The crowded stage in this melodrama: John W. Price, “The Strasbourg Incident,” 1967, OCMH, NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5, 21–22; Danchev, 642 (Eisenhower whisked them); Chandler, 2396n (a copy of his letter).

  Eisenhower gestured to the map: De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 834–37 (“In Alsace, where the enemy”).

  “a state bordering on anarchy”: memo, DDE to GCM, Jan. 6, 1945, NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5.

  “All my life,” Churchill said: De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 837–39; Porch, The Path to Victory, 603 (asked for a total of fifty).

  By now the supreme commander’s face: Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5 (“If you carry out the withdrawal”); De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 837–39 (“I am having a lot of trouble”).

  “I think you’ve done the wise and proper”: Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, 384.

  “not always aware of the political consequences”: Kersaudy, Churchill and De Gaulle, 300; De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 838–39 (“Glory has its price”); Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5 (“Imagine, asking us to withdraw”); Porch, The Path to Victory, 610 (“equate politics with sentiment”).

  As the happy news of salvation: Gurley, “Policy Versus Strategy,” NARA RG 319, RR background files, FRC 5; msg, DDE to JLD, Jan. 7, 1945, and “Summary of Directions in Chronological Order Concerning Holding Strasbourg or Not Holding Strasbourg,” Jan. 3, 1945, JLD papers, MHI (“as strongly as possible”).

  NORDWIND would drag on: RR, 505–9, 513, 527, 564; VW, vol. 2, 249 (enemy troops ferried across the river); MEB, “Army Group G,” Dec. 1956, OCMH, NARA RG 319, R-91, box 14, 18; Giziowski, The Enigma of General Blaskowitz, 373 (Hitler denounced as “pessimistic”), 371 (“Whipped Cream Division”); Bonn, When the Odds Were Even, 219 (recruits from eastern Europe).

  “We must believe in the ultimate purposes”: Eisenhower, Letters to Mamie, 229.

  He had new worries, too: office diary, Jan. 5, 1945, Kay Summersby, DDE Lib, PP-pres, box 140 (developing a ray); Gardner, “The Death of Admiral Ramsay,” AB, no. 87 (1995): 44+; Woodward, Ramsay at War, 194; Chalmers, Full Cycle, 267.

  “E. leaves office early”: desk calendar, Jan. 7, 1945, Barbara Wyden papers, DDE Lib, box 1.

  The Agony Grapevine

  SHAEF on January 5 confirmed: office diary, Jan. 5, 1945, Kay Summersby, DDE Lib, PP-pres, box 140; Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 565 (“by instant agreement”); Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, 465.

  “We have nothing to apologize for”: diary, Jan. 1, 5 and 6, 1945, CBH, MHI, box 5. Even Stars and Stripes referred to GIs as “Monty’s troops” (Hamilton, Monty: Final Years of the Field-Marshal, 1944–1976, 302).

  “I shall show how the whole Allied team”: msg, BLM to WSC, Jan. 6, 1945, UK NA, CAB 120/867.

  “The real trouble with the Yanks”: Hamilton, Monty: Final Years of the Field-Marshal, 1944–1976, 411.

  When Brigadier Williams, the intelligence chief, asked why: OH, E. T. Williams, May 30–31, 1947, FCP, MHI; Hamilton, Monty: Final Years of the Field-Marshal, 1944–1976, 304 (“Please don’t”); OH, David Belchem, Feb. 20, 1947, FCP, MHI (smel
ling condescension); OH, Alan Moorehead, Jan. 21, 1947, FCP, MHI (“some bloody awful mistake”).

  In a double-badged maroon beret: OH, Alan Moorehead, Jan. 21, 1947, FCP, MHI (“dressed like a clown”); VW, vol. 2, 425–27 (“a brave fighting man”); Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 610–11 (No mention was made of Bradley); TT, 611 (British troops were “fighting hard”).

  “The first thing I did”: Davis, Soldier of Democracy, 530.

  “Let us have done with the destructive criticism”: VW, vol. 2, 425–27.

  “Oh, God, why didn’t you stop him?”: Hamilton, Monty: Final Years of the Field-Marshal, 1944–1976, 303; Colville, The Fringes of Power, 551 (“indecently exultant” and “exceedingly self-satisfied”); Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 565 (“what a good boy am I”); Richardson, Send for Freddie, 172 (“cock on a dunghill”); Bradley and Blair, A General’s Life, 382 (“Montgomery Foresaw Attack”); VW, vol. 2, 428 (“‘somewhat bewildered’”).

  “He sees fit to assume”: war diary, Ninth Army, Jan. 19, 1945, William H. Simpson papers, “Personal Calendar,” MHI, box 11; OH, Frederick E. Morgan, n.d., FCP, MHI (“active hatred”); “Excerpt from Diary, D/SAC,” Jan. 31, 1945, NARA RG 319, SC background papers, 2-3.7 CB 8 (“out of the question”).

  Bradley twice called Versailles: office diary, Jan. 9, 1945, Kay Summersby, DDE Lib, PP-pres, box 140. The “calculated risk” explanation first emerged from 12th Army Group on Dec. 21 and was widely cited long after the war (Royce L. Thompson, “American Intelligence on the German Counteroffensive,” vol. 1, Nov. 1949, CMH, 2-3.7 AE P-1).

  “attempt to discredit me”: Bradley Commentaries, CBH collection, MHI, box 41.

  “I cannot serve under Montgomery”: Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 487–88; diary, Jan. 8, 1945, CBH, MHI, box 5.

  “No single incident that I have encountered”: Chandler, 2481.

  Heading off, seeing off, and writing off: Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 200–203 (“must take care of itself”); Ardennes, 650–51 (twice as many tanks); Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 572 (“Desertions few”).

  Yet many enemy commanders had been killed: Ardennes, 615; MEB, “The German Withdrawal from the Ardennes,” May 1955, NARA RG 319, OCMH, R-series #59, 20 (combed the countryside for gasoline); Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 319 (traveled by bicycle); Roger S. Durham, “The Past Is Present: The World War II Service of George E. Durham,” 1996, a.p., 124 (“pants-crapper”).

  “Ten shells for their one”: White, Conquerors’ Road, 7, 14 (“Get along there”); PP, 615 (“unfortunate incidents”); TT, 226 (Skorzeny’s saboteurs); FUSA G-2, Operation GREIF, n.d., NARA RG 407, E 429, ML #994 (“musketry”); Heinz, “The Morning They Shot the Spies,” True (Dec. 1949): 28+ (“We had to stop them”); “W.C. Heinz, 93, Writing Craftsman, Dies,” NYT, Feb. 28, 2008.

  A final German lunge at Bastogne: Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 607–8; Cirillo, “Ardennes-Alsace,” 45 (increased from three to nine); “Allied Air Power and the Ardennes Offensive,” n.d., director of intelligence, USSAFE, NARA RG 498, ETOUSA HD, UD 584, box 1 (Dreadful weather); Ardennes, 628–29 (blowtorches and pinch bars); Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 216, 314 (barely a mile a day); LO, 26–33 (five thousand casualties), 39–42 (must halt at the West Wall).

  At 11:40 A.M. on Tuesday, January 16: LO, 42–43; Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 561; author visit, Houffalize, June 4, 2009, signage; “Allied Air Power and the Ardennes Offensive,” n.d., director of intelligence, USSAFE, NARA RG 498, ETOUSA HD, UD 584, box 1 (One thousand tons); PP, 632 (“I have never seen anything like it”). Of the nearly two hundred civilians killed in Houffalize, almost all died “at the hands of their liberators” (Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, 87).

  “Little town of Houffalize”: D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War, 696–97.

  A day later, Eisenhower returned First Army: Sylvan, 262; Benjamin A. Dickson, “G-2 Journal: Algiers to the Elbe,” MHI, 203 (Hôtel Britannique); Hogan, A Command Post at War, 239 (“tilting drunkenly”); war diary, Ninth Army, Jan. 30, 1945, William H. Simpson papers, “Personal Calendar,” MHI, box 11; Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 502 (“Whore’s Camp”).

  Village by village, croft by croft: Fussell, Wartime, 122 (“Kraut disinfected”); “The Defense of St. Vith, Belgium,” n.d., AS, Ft., K, NARA RG 407, E 427, Miscl AG records, #2280, 42 (“The battle noises”); LO, 51.

  Hitler had already decamped: Raiber, “The Führerhauptquartiere,” AB, no. 19 (1977): 1+; Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis, 747 (“I know the war is lost”); Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 290–92 (five bridges thrown over the Our); Chandler, 2439 (“probably manage to withdraw”). A U.S. Army history estimated that “perhaps one-third” of German armor committed to the Bulge escaped (Cirillo, “Ardennes-Alsace,” 52).

  The Red Army had massed more than 180 divisions: GS, vol. 4, 80; Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 499; LO, 51; MEB, “The German Withdrawal from the Ardennes,” May 1955, NARA RG 319, OCMH, R-series #59, 1–2, 20; Josef “Sepp” Dietrich, Aug. 8–9, 1945, ETHINT 15, MHI, 22; Percy E. Schramm, “The Course of Events in the German Offensive in the Ardennes,” n.d., FMS, #A-858, MHI, 18–21 (“suction pump”).

  In the west the war receded: Lewis, The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II, 444 (Thunderbolt cannons); Moorehead, Eclipse, 228 (“Are you sure?”).

  The dead “lay thick”: Gellhorn, The Face of War, 194; Bagnulo, ed., Nothing But Praise, 48 (precluded burials); Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, 27 (blankets), 359. The National Museum of Military History in Diekirch put total civilian dead and wounded in Belgium and Luxembourg at 3,800 (Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, 385n).

  At the American cemetery in Henri-Chapelle: Joseph T. Layne and Glenn D. Barquest, “Margraten: U.S. Ninth Army Military Cemetery,” 1994, NWWIIM, 7–13; Joseph James Shomon, Crosses in the Wind, 91–98, 109; “Third U.S. Army After Action Report,” chapter 21, CMH (morgue tent for photographs).

  Among the dead gathered by Graves Registration teams: Bauserman, The Malmédy Massacre, 100–101.

  An Army tally long after the war: The figures included losses from 6th Army Group. TSC, 402. Corr, D. G. Gilbert, chief, Army historical services division, to JT, Jan. 28, 1959, JT, LOC MS Div, box 38. About three-quarters of U.S. casualties were suffered by 12th Army Group; a 1952 monograph put the figure at 71,000 through January 19, 1945 (Royce L. Thompson, “Ardennes Campaign Statistics,” Apr. 28, 1952, CMH, 2-3.7 AE P-15).

  Thousands more suffered from trench foot, frostbite: Morelock, Generals of the Ardennes, 20.

  More than 23,000 were taken prisoner: OH, William R. Desobry, 1978, Ted S. Chesney, SOOHP, MHI (“so foul we used to bathe”).

  organized the “Agony Grapevine”: Frank, “The Glorious Collapse of the 106th,” Saturday Evening Post (Nov. 9, 1946).

  Of more than sixty thousand wounded and injured: Cowdrey, Fighting for Life, 263 (“ledge of a skyscraper”); Fussell, Doing Battle, 146 (“Battle of Atlanta”); Carroll, ed., War Letters, 267–68 (“I looked down”).

  German losses would be difficult to count: AAAD, 484; Sylvan, 262; Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 316 (120,000 enemy losses); Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 492 (more than a quarter-million); Percy E. Schramm, “The Course of Events in the German Offensive in the Ardennes,” FMS, #A-851, MHI, 20; Germany VII, 694 (official German history). Other German historians put total casualties at approximately 68,000, plus the 23,000 in Alsace (Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 316; Cirillo, “Ardennes-Alsace,” 53).

  Model’s success: Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 322 (289 divisions); OH, Hasso von Manteuffel, Oct. 12, 1966, John S. D. Eisenhower, CBM, MHI, box 6, 7 (“He bent the bow”); Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions, 356 (virtually no fuel); MEB, “Effects of the Ardennes Offensive: Germany’s Remaining War Potential,” May 1955, OCMH, Foreign Studies Branch, NARA RG 338, R-series, #61, 28 (“rabbit hunt”); Zaloga, Armored Thunderbolt, 258 (seven hundred armored vehicles); Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 537 (freight shipment
s were banned); LO, 8 (four million German soldiers). A 1950 study put total German military losses through January 31, 1945, at 8.3 million (MEB, “Overall View of Germany’s Economic, Political, and Military Situation at the Beginning of 1945,” May 1950, CMH, 2-3.7 EC, 12).

  “When you catch a carp”: transcript, GSP press conference, Jan. 1, 1945, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 12, folder 18.

  “a corporal’s war”: Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 464.

  Few U.S. generals had enhanced their reputations: Millett and Murray, Military Effectiveness, vol. 3, The Second World War, 80; Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 193, 291, 320 (Patton proved the most distinguished); ONB, 1945 efficiency report on GSP, DDE Lib, PP pres, box 91.

  Churchill sought to repair: TSC, 389; Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 488; Colville, The Fringes of Power, 583 (“no greater exhibition of power”); TSC, 395 (“What a great honor”); diary, Jan. 24, 1945, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 3, folder 9 (“Why isn’t Ike a man?”).

  “had in no sense achieved anything decisive”: “Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff of the Army,” Oct. 1945, NARA RG 498, ETOUSA HD, UD 584, box 2; Franz Kurowski in Barnett, ed., Hitler’s Generals, 432 (“godsend for the Red Army”); Ehlers, Targeting the Reich, 292, 311–14 (lack of gasoline); Erickson, The Road to Berlin, 447–48, 460–62; Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945, 525–26; Gerhard L. Weinberg, “D-Day: Analysis of Costs and Benefits,” in Wilson, ed., D-Day 1944, 336 (within fifty miles of Berlin).

  With the German tide receding: Rickard, Advance and Destroy, 314 (timetable had been disrupted).

  his basic scheme for ending the war remained unaltered: Chandler, 2450–54; Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 547. One SHAEF study, dated December 23, put the number of divisions that could be supported in the north at just twenty-five until rail bridges were built, a figure Montgomery himself considered plausible (ALH, 155–56; TSC, 410).

  At present the Western Allies mustered 3.7 million: LO, 5–7; LSA, vol. 2, 288; MEB, “Effects of the Ardennes Offensive: Germany’s Remaining War Potential,” May 1955, OCMH, Foreign Studies Branch, NARA RG 338, R-series, #61, 46 (729-mile front); TSC, 392–93 (“plenty of fat meat”).