The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

by Rick Atkinson

  “We always hit something”: Raines, Eyes of Artillery, 220; Saunders, Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, vol. 3, 133 (“Many go barefoot”), 136–37 (telltale glint); Copp, ed., Montgomery’s Scientists, 189 (“Heavy firing into the sunken road”); McKee, Caen: Anvil of Victory, 350 (“I saw a truck crew”); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 271–73 (“surrounded by fire”).

  Two death struggles: Copp and Vogel, Maple Leaf Route: Falaise, 121 (“grey-clad men”); Freiherr von Lüttwitz, Oct. 1945, FMS, #A-904, MHI, 21–22 (“awful heap”); OH, Dixon M. Raymond, n.d., Craig W. H. Luther papers, HIA, box 1, 7–8 (“gun boiled away”); Reynolds, Steel Inferno, 264 (“like burrs”); Stacey, The Canadian Army, 1939–1945, 205–6.

  Three miles northeast, eighteen hundred men: Maczek, Od Podwody do Czolga, Wspomnienia Wojenne 1918–1945, 167; Mieczkowski, ed., The Soldiers of General Maczek in World War II, 50–52 (Poles caught the brunt); “The Battle of the Falaise Pocket,” AB, no. 8 (1975): 1+ (escaping Germans streamed past); Whitaker et al., Victory at Falaise, 277–87 (SS bodies roasted).

  “Merde pour la guerre”: Saunders, Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, vol. 3, 136–37; Hastings, OVERLORD, 305 (“more of an execution”); OH, Dixon M. Raymond, n.d., Craig W. H. Luther papers, HIA, box 1, 7–8 (“shot them down in droves”); Carpenter, No Woman’s World, 75 (urinated on the body).

  “one of those paintings of Waterloo”: “The Battle of the Falaise Pocket,” AB, no. 8 (1975): 1+; Collier, Fighting Words, 170 (“the end of Germany”); DOB, 168 (escaped seemingly sure destruction at Messina).

  “All German formations”: Blumenson, The Battle of the Generals, 241–42, 254–57.

  After liberating Orléans and Chartres: “Memoranda for Record,” Aug. 19, 1944, XII AG, NARA RG 407, ML #205; BP, 566–70, 574–75; AAR, “Bridging the Seine,” XV Corps, Nov. 1944, NARA RG 498, G-3 OR, box 10; Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, ETHINT 18, Oct. 1945, MHI, 1.

  “inextricable confusion”: Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, ETHINT 18, Oct. 1945, MHI, 6–7; AAFinWWII, 272 (sixty Seine crossing sites); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 285 (improvised ferries); BP, 557, 581 (25,000 vehicles); Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 433 (cider barrels), 424 (twelve of fifteen division commanders); Luck, Panzer Commander, 165 (empty fuel cans); Hastings, OVERLORD, 309 (dead cow); Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, 282 (95 percent of German troops); TSC, 215. Historian John Prados estimates that 115,000 got away (Normandy Crucible, 249, 262).

  Yet by any measure the defeat at Falaise: Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 214; diary, D. K. Reimers, “My War,” Aug. 24, 1944, MHI, 157 (“Life in the cages”); Beevor, D-Day, 460–61; BP, 535–36 (“When you receive these lines”); Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 454 (“western thriller”).

  Allied investigators counted: Ellis, Brute Force, 391. Various tallies have been offered. 21st Army Group reported finding 571 German guns, 358 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 4,700 trucks, cars, and armored tracks in the pocket. “The Operations of 21 Army Group,” 1946, CARL, N-133331, 15. Ludewig puts panzer losses at Falaise at more than 400, over half the total fleet. Ludewig, Rückzug, 99–100.

  No Seine ferry could carry a Tiger: Lefèvre, Panzers in Normandy Then and Now, photo (charred on the docks); Westermann, Flak, 260; Ellis, Brute Force, 391; VW, vol. 1, 448 (twenty-five hundred trucks and cars); Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 434 (“five to ten tanks each”); Ludewig, Rückzug, 164 (Fifth Panzer Army); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 283–84 (Army Group Center); Callahan quoted in Blumenson, The Battle of the Generals, 272 (“remarkable resurgence”).

  Eisenhower took a quick tour: corr, Thor M. Smith to family, Aug. 28, 1944, HIA, box 1 (“bloated dead”); Thompson, The Imperial War Museum Book of Victory in Europe, 139 (paybooks); “The Battle of the Falaise Pocket,” AB, no. 8 (1975): 1+ (bulldozed mass grave); Skibinski, Pierwsza Pancerna, 311 (“coal monuments”); Hastings, OVERLORD, 312 (evacuate gases); Saunders, Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, vol. 3, 136–37 (rear seat of a limousine); BP, 558 (“avenging angel”).

  Troops cleansing the pocket wore gas masks: Lyall, ed., The War in the Air, 428; Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 217 (“Everything is dead”); Moorehead, Eclipse, 158 (“waiting to die in the water”); Stacey, The Canadian Army, 1939–1945, 205–6 (eight thousand slaughtered horses); Lucas and Barker, The Killing Ground, 158–59 (Not until 1961).

  “Thank you for liberating us”: Copp, Cinderella Army, 27; Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890–1952, vol. 1, 331 (Many recalled November 1918); memo, BLM, Aug. 20, 1944, NARA RG 407, ML, box 24143 (“beginning of the end”).

  The Loveliest Story of Our Time

  Warm summer rain: Marshall, Battle at Best, 226 (“booming like bitterns”).

  Tricolor pennants flew: Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 306; Hills, Phantom Was There, 217–18 (white silhouette); Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 31; Yeide and Stout, First to the Rhine, 201.

  Scores of frisky “warcos”: Moorehead, Eclipse, 160; Lankford, ed., OSS Against the Reich, 168–69 (any procession into Paris), 160–62 (“Paris/Orléans”); Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 521; Reynolds, Hemingway: The Final Years, 105–6; Voss, Reporting the War, 185–90 (“le grand capitaine”); Capa, Slightly Out of Focus, 179 (“spitting short sentences”); Babcock, War Stories, 178 (“just in case”).

  Astride the road outside Limours: Beevor, D-Day, 387; Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 525 (“Like the Scarlet Pimpernel”); Clayton, Three Marshals of France, 39–42 (child’s toy printing set); MMB, 310; Porch, The Path to Victory, 583–84; OH, SLAM, 1973, George J. Stapleton, MHI, V, 19–24 (“Have no fear”); Marshall, Battle at Best, 226.

  “a weird assortment of private cars”: Whitehead, “Beachhead Don,” 211–12; Marshall, Battle at Best, 226 (Veterans of the Franco-Prussian War); Lankford, ed., OSS Against the Reich, 171 (“wreck one’s constitution”).

  By Thursday evening the spearhead remained five miles: BP, 611–14.

  “advancing on a one-tank front”: Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 308; Blumenson, “Politics and the Military in the Liberation of Paris,” Parameters (summer 1998): 4+ (“slam on in”); Zaloga, Liberation of Paris 1944, 67–68 (“Tenez bon”).

  Eisenhower had long planned: “Crossing of the Seine and Capture of Paris,” Aug. 17, 1944, SHAEF, planning staff, Post-Neptune, NARA RG 331, E 23 (“eight divisions”); Wieviorka, Normandy, 350–1; Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 291–92; Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 39 (convoys were hijacked); Riding, And the Show Went On, 308 (Jewish deportees).

  “Paris is worth 200,000 dead”: Zaloga, Liberation of Paris 1944, 34, 24; Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 296 (“holier-than-thouery”).

  The moment grew riper: Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 37 (foretelling catastrophe), 40 (opened their windows); “Paris,” AB, No. 14, 1976, 11+; Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, 149–50 (four hundred such redoubts), 133 (“things are going to get bad”), 219; Jacques Kim, ed., La Libération de Paris, 1944, no pagination, in HIA, Boris T. Pash papers, box 4, folder 4 (portraits of Hitler); Thornton, The Liberation of Paris, 165 (“pictures of Delacroix”); Aron, France Reborn, 262 (Hèrmes scarves); Riding, And the Show Went On, 309 (“For every Parisian”); Collier, The Freedom Road, 1944–45, 165 (Swedish ball-bearing factory manager).

  “If the enemy tries to hold Paris”: Chandler, 2088–89.

  “Gestapo small fry”: Thornton, The Liberation of Paris, 127, 121 (Ash from burning documents); Joseph R. Darnall, “Hospitalization in European Theater of Operations,” n.d., MHUC, Group 1, box 24, 25 (clogged the plumbing); Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, 72–73 (“back for Christmas”); Blumenson, Liberation, 13 (“la ville sans regard”); Beevor, D-Day, 485 (toilet brushes).

  With his main thrust delayed by skirmishers: “Paris,” AB, No. 14, 1976, 11+ (“Les Américains!”; BP, 615; Maule, Out of the Sand, 214 (“Rejoice!”).

  From a balcony of the Hôtel Meurice: M
WB, 89–90; Neiburg, The Blood of Free Men, 85. Choltitz had been linked to the murder of Jews in the Crimea. Roberts, The Storm of War, 495–96.

  “field of ruins”: BP, 598.

  “It has been my fate”: Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, 24, 158 (“Our task is hard”); Ludewig, Rückzug, 138 (Saxon), 143 (eight centuries).

  With only twenty thousand men: Germany VII, 615; Ludewig, Rückzug, 144–47; Blumenson, “Politics and the Military in the Liberation of Paris,” Parameters (summer 1998): 4+ (“Ever since our enemies”); BP, 609 (told superiors of placing explosives); Aron, France Reborn, 279–80 (“prudent and intelligent attitude”), 284–85; Maule, Out of the Sand, 214 (“the Allies are here”). Choltitz’s role in saving Paris would be vigorously debated for more than sixty years after the war. http://www.ina.fr/recherche/recherche/search/la+liberation+de+paris*

  Leclerc managed to slide his entire division: “Paris,” AB, No. 14, 1976, 11+; BP, 615 (12th Infantry reached Notre Dame); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 309; Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 45 (women curled their hair); Aron, France Reborn, 286 (colors flew from the Eiffel Tower); Thornton, The Liberation of Paris, 173 (Animals set loose), 187 (scent of mothballs).

  “The rip tide of courage”: Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 251, 260 (Yiddish); Marshall, Battle at Best, 246–47 (“not less than five thousand bullets”); Moorehead, Eclipse, 168–69 (from the rumble seats); chronology, Aug. 25, 1944, 1556 hours, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 53, folder 1 (“massacred or made prisoners”); “Paris,” AB, no. 14, 1976, 11+ (surrendered to a Signal Corps photographer); Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, 313, 325 (weapons in the cloakroom); Aron, France Reborn, 286–87 (lunch at the usual hour).

  “Germany’s lost the war”: Collier, The Freedom Road, 1944–45, 170; Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, 312 (packed a valise), 307 (“our last combat”); Beevor, D-Day, 508 (“silent from the effort”); Aron, France Reborn, 287–89 (“particularly not today”).

  Just down the street, fighting swept: Tillier et al., Paris, 131; Choltitz, Soldat Unter Soldaten, 268–69 (“Sprechen deutsch?”).

  A furious mob punched and spat: Beevor, D-Day, 510; Aron, France Reborn, 291–92 (“Oh, no”). Choltitz would be court-martialed in absentia after his capture. Ludewig, Rückzug, 148–49.

  Teams of French and German officers: Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, 338–39; Germany VII, 615; Riding, And the Show Went On, 313 (Louvre).

  “German spoken” signs: “Inside Paris,” Newsweek, Aug. 28, 1944, 25+; Pogue, Pogue’s War, 199 (“Supplier of the Boche”); Marshall, Battle at Best, 212 (“Leave her alone”); Edsel, The Monuments Men, 121 (“Arrests and Purges”); Aron, France Reborn, 423 (“a psychosis”); Riding, And the Show Went On, 318 (indignité nationale). Biographer Jonathan Fenby notes that the Aron figure was disputed, and that an Interior Ministry study found that the Resistance carried out 9,673 summary executions during the war. In Paris, 126,000 people were arrested for collaboration. The General, 659-60, 722.

  At ten P.M., the first of an eventual eighteen hundred: AAR, “T Force and T Branch,” n.d., 12th AG, NARA RG 331, E 180, SHAEF, box 44; “T Force—The CIC in Paris,” Military Intelligence Service, No. 25, Jan. 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #494L, 66+; AAR, T Force, n.d., 6th AG, G-2, Boris T. Pash papers, HIA, box 4, file 6; Gellhorn, The Face of War, 180–82 (“Revenge me”); Moorehead, Eclipse, 178 (“a knock on my door”).

  “a great city where everybody is happy”: Liebling, Mollie & Other War Pieces, 235; Prinsburg (Minn.) Record News, Sept. 1944, 2 (“never in my life been kissed”); George E. McIntyre, “As Mac Saw It,” n.d., MHI; Collier, Fighting Words, 172 (“Had we ever been away?”); Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 292 (treasures from the Jeu de Paume); Thornton, The Liberation of Paris, 154 (Bank of France cellars).

  “You’ve got just thirty seconds”: OH, SLAM, 1973, George J. Stapleton, MHI, V, 19–28; Collier, Fighting Words, 173 (“seventy-three dry martinis”); Carpenter, No Woman’s World, 113 (raspberries in liquer); Marshall, Battle at Best, 212 (“It’s the law”); Blumenson, Liberation, 156 (“the day the war should have ended”).

  “Paris seems to have”: Nichols, ed., Ernie’s War, 354; Pyle, Brave Men, 314 (“the loveliest, brightest story”).

  De Gaulle entered the city: De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 648 (“Nothing was missing”); Aron, France Reborn, 293 (whence he had fled); Foote, SOE in France, 416 (blotting paper); Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, x (He uttered hardly a word); D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 517; VW, vol. 1, 488, 493; Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, 349 (Coleman lanterns). Jonathan Fenby writes that de Gaulle made a perfunctory reference to “our dear and admirable Allies.” The General, 679–80. Michael Neiberg calls it “the best speech of his life.” The Blood of Free Men, 237.

  “City is scarcely damaged”: memo, N. H. Vissering, SHAEF G-4, Aug. 30, 1944, NARA RG 331, SHAEF SGS, Geog Corr, box 108; “The Coal Situation on the Continent,” n.d., “G-4 History,” NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #553A-C; Harold S. Frum, “The Soldier Must Write,” 1984, GCM Lib (charcoal burners); “Paris Is Free!,” Time (Sept. 4, 1944): 34+ (cafés in Montparnasse); Wieviorka, Normandy, 354 (two thousand Resistance fighters and twenty-five hundred civilians); Zaloga, Liberation of Paris, 1944, 83–90 (twelve hundred casualties in the eastern suburbs); Lankford, ed., OSS Against the Reich, 175–77 (“After a noisy hour”); Chandler, 2108 (“We should not blame the French”). Some question whether Hitler personally asked, “Is Paris burning?” Neiberg, The Blood of Free Men, 214.

  At three P.M. on Saturday, August 26, De Gaulle appeared: Aron, France Reborn, 297–300 (“confides his safety”); Foote, SOE in France, 416 (“nunnery”).

  A million people or more lined the boulevard: Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 53; Thornton, The Liberation of Paris, 204–5 (shots rang out); Moorehead, Eclipse, 170–73 (“like a field of wheat”); Lankford, ed., OSS Against the Reich, 175–77 (“firing wildly with machine guns”); corr, P. B. Rogers to family, Sept. 23, 1944, Pleas B. Rogers papers, MHI (fired “to beat hell”).

  “The huge congregation, who had all been standing”: Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 56; Voss, Reporting the War, 90–91 (FFI fighters fired at the organ pipes); Blumenson, Liberation, 166 (“extraordinary example of courage”); Maule, Out of the Sand, 226 (“Have you no pride?”).

  “The first wild shots”: Aron, France Reborn, 300.

  So ended the great struggle: Keegan, Six Armies in Europe, 317; Fritz Bayerlein, ETHINT 67, Aug. 15, 1945, MHI, 7.

  German casualties in the west: memo, DDE to CCS, Aug 30, 1944, NARA RG 331, E 1, SHAEF SGS, 381; D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 517; Zetterling, Normandy 1944, 82; Ellis, Brute Force, 355–56; Zaloga, Armored Thunderbolt, 169; memo, DDE to CCS, Aug 30, 1944, NARA RG 331, E 1, SHAEF SGS, 381 (“very badly cut up”); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 316 (early warning network); “The Process of Collapse of the German Armies,” Aug. 29, 1944, OSS, research and analysis, no. 2458, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 922 (monthly casualties of a quarter million); “Age-Distribution of Dead in the German Ground Forces,” Apr. 3, 1945, OSS, research and analysis, no. 1087.6, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 888.

  Americans killed, wounded, missing, or captured: The figures include air crews. D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 517.

  In half a million sorties flown: VW, vol. 1, 488.

  The 82nd Airborne had given battle: Gavin, On to Berlin, 12.

  Normandy paid a fell price: Blumenson, Liberation, 73 (of 3,400 Norman villages and towns); Vigneras, Rearming the French, 306 (24,000 FFI fighters); Wieviorka, Normandy, 131; Neiberg, The Blood of Free Men, 13; Kedward, France and the French, 298; http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Paris/Monuments-Paris/Eiffel.shtml.

  Most prominent among the German dead: Ruge, Rommel in Normandy, 246; Marshall, A Ramble Through My War, 232 (merely lifting the eyelid);
Margry, “The Death of Rommel,” AB, no. 80 (1993): 38+ (“Just one thought”).

  The killers would come to Herrlingen: Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers, 501–5; Margry, “The Death of Rommel,” AB, no. 80 (1993): 38+ (“another of the old ones”); Douglas-Home, Rommel, 210 (“His heart belonged”).

  “If I ever was brave”: Miller, The Story of Ernie Pyle, 345.

  “a flat, black depression”: Pyle, Brave Men, 319; Miller, The Story of Ernie Pyle, 364 (“I have had all I can take”); CBH, Sept. 2, 1944, box 4 (“worn out, thin”).

  For many rank-and-file troops: corr, T. M. Smith to family, Aug. 8, 1944 (“spreading like a disease”), and Aug. 15, 1944 (“just a damn fool”), HIA, Thor M. Smith papers, box 1; Pogue, George C. Marshall of Victory, 430 (holiday gifts); corr, P. B. Rogers, Aug. 17, 1944, Pleas B. Rogers papers, MHI (“space for a long time”).

  “fundamental inability to make sound strategic judgments”: Megargee, Inside Hitler’s High Command, 232–36; Overy, Why the Allies Won, 227 (tactical edge); “The Effectiveness of Third Phase Tactical Air Operations,” AAF Evaluation Board, Aug. 1945, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 15 (thirty-one airfields); Murray and Millett, A War to Be Won, 416–17; Thompson, The Imperial War Museum Book of Victory in Europe, 135 (“much more amusing”).

  “a vivid moral structure”: Fussell, The Boys’ Crusade, ix.

  Soviet troops in Poland: Some historians put the toll at Majdanek at three hundred thousand or more. Weinberg, A World at Arms, 708.

  “I have just seen the most terrible place”: Robert H. Abzug, “The Liberation of the Concentration Camps,” in Liberation 1945, 35–36; “Murder, Inc.,” Time (Sept. 11, 1944): 36 (“Children’s shoes”); William J. vanden Heuvel, “Comments on Michael Beschloss’ The Conquerors,” SHAFR Newsletter, March 2003, 27+ (“systematic murder”).

  “The saviors come not home”: Harold S. Frum, “The Soldier Must Write,” 1984, GCM Lib; Whitehead, “Beachhead Don,” 365 (“like a lamb”).