The Men of World War II

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  • •

  It was more important for the Germans not to know that Calvados was the site than it was for them to think that the Pas-de-Calais (and Norway) was. “The success or failure of coming operations depends upon whether the enemy can obtain advance information of an accurate nature,” Eisenhower declared in a February 23, 1944, memorandum.10

  To ensure security, the Allies went to great lengths. In February, Eisenhower asked Churchill to ban all visitor traffic to the coastal areas in southern England, where the base for the attack was being built and where training exercises were under way, for fear that there might be an undiscovered spy among the visitors. Churchill said no—he could not go so far in upsetting people’s lives. General Morgan growled that Churchill’s response was “all politics” and warned, “If we fail, there won’t be any more politics.”11

  Still the British government would not act. But when Montgomery said he wanted visitors banned from his training areas, Eisenhower sent an eloquent plea to the War Cabinet. He warned that it “would go hard with our consciences if we were to feel, in later years, that by neglecting any security precaution we had compromised the success of these vital operations or needlessly squandered men’s lives.” Churchill gave in. Visitors were banned.12

  Eisenhower also persuaded a reluctant War Cabinet to impose a ban on privileged diplomatic communications from the United Kingdom. Eisenhower said he regarded the diplomatic pouches as “the gravest risk to the security of our operations and to the lives of our sailors, soldiers, and airmen.”13 When the government imposed the ban, on April 17 (it did not apply to the United States or the Soviet Union), foreign governments protested vigorously. This gave Hitler a useful clue to the timing of Overlord. He remarked in early May that “the English have taken measures that they can sustain for only six to eight weeks.”14

  With the British government cooperating so admirably, Eisenhower could not do less. In April, Maj. Gen. Henry Miller, chief supply officer of the U.S. Ninth Air Force and a West Point classmate of Eisenhower’s, went to a cocktail party at Claridge’s Hotel. He began talking freely, complaining about his difficulties in getting supplies but adding that his problems would end after D-Day, which he declared would be before June 15. When challenged on the date, he offered to take bets. Eisenhower learned of the indiscretion the next morning and acted immediately. He ordered Miller reduced to his permanent rank of colonel and sent him back to the States—the ultimate disgrace for a career soldier. Miller protested. Eisenhower insisted, and back he went. Miller retired shortly thereafter.15

  There was another flap in May when a U.S. Navy officer got drunk at a party and revealed details of impending operations, including areas, lift, strength, and dates. Eisenhower wrote Marshall, “I get so angry at the occurrence of such needless and additional hazards that I could cheerfully shoot the offender myself. This following so closely upon the Miller case is almost enough to give one the shakes.” That officer too was sent back to the States.16

  • •

  To check on how well Fortitude and security were working, SHAEF relied on Ultra intercepts. Each week the British Joint Intelligence Committee issued a summary of “German Appreciation of Allied Intentions in the West,” one- or two-page overviews of where, when, and in what strength the Germans expected the attack. Week after week, the summaries gave SHAEF exactly the news it hoped to receive: that the Germans were anticipating an attack on Norway, diversions in the south of France, Normandy, and the Bay of Biscay, and the main assault, with twenty or more divisions, against the Pas-de-Calais.

  The Germans poured more concrete to make more fortifications in the Pas-de-Calais than anywhere else. They stationed more troops there, backed up by the panzer divisions. They concentrated their mines in the Channel off the coast of the Pas-de-Calais. They grossly exaggerated the resources available to SHAEF. They were, in short, badly fooled.

  But not completely. The mobility the AEF enjoyed thanks to command of the sea and air forced the Germans to regard almost any suitable beach as a possible invasion site. At a March 19 conference at Berchtesgaden, Hitler put the problem to his senior commanders: “Obviously an Anglo-American invasion in the west is going to come. Just how and where nobody knows, and it isn’t possible to speculate.” But speculate he did, as the German ability to penetrate Fortitude was nonexistent and their ability to penetrate the AEF’s security measures was limited. A few reconnaissance planes did get through; they did spot the buildup of shipping in the southern ports of Southampton and Portsmouth; but as Hitler pointed out, such intelligence was almost useless. “You can’t take shipping concentrations at face value for some kind of clue that their choice has fallen on any particular sector of our long western front from Norway down to the Bay of Biscay,” he said, because “such concentrations can always be moved or transferred at any time, under cover of bad visibility, and they will obviously be used to dupe us.”

  That did not stop him from guessing; indeed, he had to guess. “The most suitable landing areas, and hence those that are in most danger, are the two west coast peninsulas of Cherbourg and Brest: they offer very tempting possibilities. . . .”17 It was a bad guess.

  Adm. Theodor Krancke, commanding Navy Group West, guessed that the invasion would come between Boulogne and Cherbourg, either in the Cotentin or at the mouth of the Orne, the mouth of the Seine, or the mouth of the Somme, which was a little better—but as Boulogne to Cherbourg included most of the Kanalküste, hardly pinpoint accuracy.18

  Rommel’s guess was the Pas-de-Calais. He spent more of his time there than anywhere else on his long front, inspecting, prodding, building defenses. At the beginning of May he began to look slightly to the southwest, telling Lt. Gen. Gerhard von Schwerin, commanding the crack 116th Panzer Division of the Fifteenth Army, “We expect the invasion on either side of the Somme estuary.”19

  But all the evidence available to the Germans continued to indicate the Pas-de-Calais. The pattern of AEF air activity, for example, reinforced Fortitude. There were twice as many AEF reconnaissance flights over Fifteenth Army’s sector as there were over Seventh Army’s; there were almost ten times as many air raids on targets northeast of the Seine as in lower Normandy. So Rommel continued to look to the Pas-de-Calais. He was confident that if the AEF invaded there, he could defeat the assault.

  On April 27, German Schnellbootes (abbreviated S-Boote and called E-boats by the Allies for “enemy boat”) penetrated an Allied shipping concentration for a practice exercise—code name Tiger—and sank two LSTs. For the AEF the loss of more than 700 men was a major blow; for the Germans, the information that the Allies were practicing at Slapton Sands, on the south coast of England, was potentially useful. Hitler saw this at once. Although he had never been to England, or to the Cotentin or Calvados, he had the most amazing ability to store topographical information in his mind. In this instance, he noticed the similarity between Slapton Sands and the Cotentin beach (which was why the AEF was carrying out practice exercises at Slapton Sands) and began to insist strongly on the need to reinforce the defense in lower Normandy.20

  Within the severe limits in which the Wehrmacht in the West was required to operate, this was done. On May 29, the weekly AEF intelligence summary included a chilling sentence: “The recent trend of movement of German land forces towards the Cherbourg area tends to support the view that the Le Havre-Cherbourg area is regarded as a likely, and perhaps even the main, point of assault.”21 Had the Germans penetrated the secret of Overlord? Only the event would tell; meanwhile, the good news was that the main panzer forces remained northeast of the Seine, with Fifteenth Army.

  • •

  When? Morgan’s directive declared “as soon as possible.” March was out. Even if the AEF got a couple of good days to cross and land, the probability of a spring storm smashing against the Calvados coast during the establishment and buildup phase made March too risky. April 1, the target date suggested by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), was no good because of uncertain
and unpredictable Channel weather and because the spring thaw in Russia would make it impossible for the Red Army to launch a coordinated offensive. Morgan therefore picked May 1. When Eisenhower took command, he moved the target date back to June 1, in order to have the use of an extra month’s production of LSTs, LCVPs, and other landing craft.

  The target date meant the AEF would go on the first suitable day after June 1. A number of requirements went into the selection of D-Day, the chief of which concerned tides and moon conditions. The admirals wanted to cross the Channel in daylight to avoid confusion, to control the thousands of craft involved, and to maximize the effectiveness of the fire support. The air force generals wanted daylight before the first waves went ashore in order to maximize the effectiveness of their bombing runs. Both had to give way to the army generals’ insistence on crossing at night, in order to preserve surprise up to the last minute, and landing right after first light, in order to have a full day to get established.

  Rommel anticipated that the attack would come at high tide, as that would give the first waves the shortest open beach to cross, but that only showed how little he knew about amphibious operations. From the beginning, the AEF was determined to land on a rising tide so that the landing craft could run right onto the beach, then float free on the rise.

  The AEF needed at least a half-moon the night of the crossing, enough to provide some illumination for the fleet and for the paratroopers, who would be dropping into France some five hours before H-Hour.

  A rising tide at first light following a night with a suitable moon occurred during two periods in June, the 5th, 6th and 7th and again on the 19th and 20th. Eisenhower picked June 5 for D-Day.

  The southeast coast of the Cotentin and the Calvados coast of lower Normandy would be the place. June 5 would be the date. H-Hour would be dawn.

  • •

  Rommel had no inkling that the AEF suffered from a shortage of landing craft. He thought just the opposite. Further, the Double Cross spies were feeding him false information. His guess as to the date, therefore, was badly off. In April, he thought it would come in the first or third week of May. On May 6, he wrote his wife, Lucie, “I’m looking forward with the utmost confidence to the battle—it may be on May 15, it may not be until the end of the month.”22 On May 15, he wrote Lucie, “Mid-May already. And still nothing doing. . . . I think it’s going to be a few more weeks yet.”23 On June 1, he consulted moon and tide tables and declared there were no good invasion tides (high tide at dawn, in his view) until after June 20. The next day he wrote Lucie, “There is still no sign that the invasion is imminent.”24

  Hitler was no better. He indulged himself in the hope that there never would be an invasion. On April 6 he declared, “I can’t help feeling that the whole thing’s a shameless charade.” More realistically, he went on to complain, “We’ve no real way of finding out what they’re really up to over there.”25

  • •

  “We cannot afford to fail,” Eisenhower had said. The AEF acted on that basis. There was no contingency planning. In a general ground offensive mounted in a specific area over a broad front, World War II attackers had some flexibility in their plans. If the initial assault did not force a breakthrough, follow-up units could be diverted to the flanks or held back to try again another day at another place. Overlord, however, was all or nothing. Hitler and Rommel were absolutely right in assuming that if the Wehrmacht could deny the AEF a foothold, the Allies would not be able to mount another offensive in 1944.

  The size of the gamble on Overlord concentrated the minds of the men at SHAEF wonderfully, but it also increased the work load and raised tension to nearly unbearable levels. “If I could give you an exact diary account of the past week,” Eisenhower wrote Mamie in late January, “you’d get some idea of what a flea on a hot griddle really does!” Toward the end of May, he wrote, “I seem to live on a network of high tension wires.”26

  * * *

  I. Distances are given in two ways, by meter and kilometer and by yards and miles, as is done in, respectively, France and Britain. For England, I use miles; for France, kilometers. But of course when the Allies in France talked about distances, they used yards and miles. This inevitably causes some confusion. To make comparison, a simple method is to remember that a meter is only slightly longer than a yard and may be thought of as equivalent; a kilometer is six-tenths of a mile, so just multiply by six-tenths to go from kilometers to miles (eighty kilometers are forty-eight miles; 100 kilometers are sixty miles, and so forth).

  5

  UTILIZING ASSETS

  IN WORLD WAR I, the side undertaking an offensive always had to worry about an enemy counteroffensive almost anywhere along the line from the Swiss border to the Channel coast. Adequate forces had to be maintained all along that line. The same was true of the Germans in Western Europe in World War II. SHAEF had an enormous advantage here. There was no possibility of a German offensive against the United Kingdom, so the AEF was free to concentrate all its resources on the point of attack.

  Before 1918, when the first bombing squadrons came into being and began initial (although still very small) operations, there was no physical way a World War I attacking force could reach behind enemy lines to disrupt the movement of the enemy’s men and supplies to the battle area. It could do so only through feints and deceptions. SHAEF made full use of feints and deceptions, but in addition the AEF had three means to prevent, or at least disrupt, the movement of German reserves and reinforcements to the lodgment area, isolating lower Normandy and turning it into a sort of strategic island. The three ways involved the airborne divisions, the French Resistance, and the strategic air force. Because they were new and untried, there was great controversy over how to utilize them effectively. But in the end, agreement was reached and the job was done.

  • •

  The initial COSSAC plan had called for using the British 6th Airborne Division in and around Caen to take the city and the airfield at Carpiquet. That was a bold plan, too bold for Montgomery, who insisted on using the division in what was essentially a defensive role, dropping it into the area between the Dives and Orne rivers to isolate Sword Beach.I Bradley, meanwhile, decided to use the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions behind German lines in the Cotentin, to prevent the Germans from launching local counterattacks against Utah Beach and to seize the exits from that beach so that the 4th Infantry Division could move inland.

  When General Marshall saw these plans, he was upset. At the beginning of the war, Marshall had held great hopes for the paratroops as a new element in warfare, but his hopes had not been realized. In September 1943, for example, a plan to drop the 82nd Airborne on airfields around Rome had been abandoned at the last minute as too risky and instead the division had been used for tactical support of the Salerno beachhead.

  Early in 1944 Marshall told Eisenhower that the failure to use paratroops in a strategic role had been a severe disappointment to him. He thought the AEF could do much more to exploit its command of the air and the elite airborne divisions that had been built at such cost. Marshall felt there had been “a lack of conception” caused by a piecemeal approach, with “each commander grabbing at a piece to assist his particular phase of the operation.” If he had been given command of Overlord, Marshall said, he would have insisted on a single, large airborne operation, “even to the extent that should the British be in opposition I would carry it out exclusively with American troops.”

  Marshall suggested to Eisenhower that the AEF use the airborne south of Evreux, some 100-plus kilometers inland from Caen. There were four good airfields near Evreux that could be quickly captured so the lightly armed airborne troops could be reinforced.

  “This plan appeals to me,” Marshall declared, “because I feel that it is a true vertical envelopment and would create such a strategic threat to the Germans that it would call for a major revision of their defensive plans.” It would be a complete surprise, would directly threaten both the crossings of the S
eine River and Paris, and would serve as a rallying point for the French Resistance. The only drawback Marshall could see was “that we have never done anything like this before, and frankly, that reaction makes me tired.”1

  Eisenhower hated to disagree with Marshall and almost never did so. Thus his reply was long and defensive. He said that for more than a year one of his favorite subjects for contemplation was getting ahead of the enemy in some important method of operation, and the strategic use of airborne troops was an obvious possibility. Nevertheless, on this one Marshall was wrong.

  First, Eisenhower told his boss, he had to have the airborne on the flank at Sword and behind German lines at Utah in order to get ashore. Second, and more important, an airborne force well inland would not be self-contained, would lack mobility, and would therefore be destroyed. The Germans had shown time and again in the war that they did not fear a “strategic threat of envelopment.” Using the road nets of Western Europe, they could concentrate immense firepower against an isolated garrison and defeat it in detail. Anzio was an example. An inland airborne force, cut off from all supply except what could be brought in by air, without tanks or trucks, immobile and inadequately armed, would be annihilated.

  Eisenhower told Marshall that, far from being a strategic threat to the Germans, airborne troops at Evreux would just be wasted. “I instinctively dislike ever to uphold the conservative as opposed to the bold,” Eisenhower concluded, but he insisted on using the 6th, 82nd, and 101st Airborne divisions as Montgomery and Bradley wanted to use them—to keep German reinforcements away from the invasion beaches.2