Bradley would never have the opportunity to lead a division in combat. Marshall had other plans for his protégé. Shortly after the 1942 Operation Torch landings in North Africa, Marshall assigned Bradley to Eisenhower to serve as a deputy and as an additional set of eyes for an inexperienced American Army.12 The initial performance of many of the units in that Army did not bode well. The American II Corps had suffered a devastating defeat at Kasserine Pass, in Tunisia, in February 1943. American forces had fought poorly. German units reported that captured British and French officers referred to the Americans as “our Italians,” an expression of disdain for their newly arrived allies.13 Bradley’s job was to find out what had happened and recommend ways to fix the situation.
Although a number of issues came to light, undoubtedly the most important proved to be the performance of Major General Lloyd Fredendall, the II Corps commanding general. Increasingly, as Bradley interviewed subordinate officers, a lack of faith in Fredendall’s leadership abilities became evident—to the point that Bradley recommended Fredendall’s relief.14 Eisenhower, after reading the report, agreed, removing Fredendall and placing Patton in command of II Corps. Rather than allow access to his command by another general officer not answerable to himself, Patton arranged to have Bradley assigned as his deputy corps commander.15
As the North African campaign progressed, Eisenhower saw fit to relieve Patton of II Corps to permit him time to create Seventh Army headquarters in anticipation of Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. Bradley was Patton’s natural successor to command II Corps. The difference between the two leadership styles was clearly marked. Gone was the pomp of Patton and in its place the no-nonsense midwestern manner of Bradley, but Bradley understood that one of the chief tasks facing him was resurrecting the corps’s reputation in the aftermath of the defeat at Kasserine Pass.16
The final push toward Tunis was initially intended to have British First and Eighth armies converge on Tunis with the U.S. II Corps in support. British First Army was to attack west to east in the north toward the city while British Eighth Army attacked south to north along Tunisia’s east coast. The proposal effectively pinched U.S. II Corps out of the final defeat of the Africa Corps. Bradley argued that for morale purposes, if nothing else, his soldiers needed to be in on the kill; he proposed that, instead of British First Army, his corps assume responsibility for the northernmost sector. British commanders, particularly General Sir Harold Alexander, believed it difficult if not impossible for the Americans to move an entire corps 160 miles through the rear area of British First Army. Bradley insisted it could be done and, when he was given approval, accomplished the mission, moving 110,000 Americans and their equipment northward to their new positions in a matter of days.
The attack of II Corps toward Tunis provides a good look at Bradley’s tendencies in command, many of which, for better or for worse, remained with him throughout the remainder of the war. He understood the need for brevity. The corps’s operations plan for the drive toward Bizerte, Tunisia, included a single page of instructions, along with a map.17 Bradley, as much as Patton, was the master of the unforgiving minute. Once the corps’s attack began, it moved forward relentlessly, slowed at times, but never stopped. Furthermore, he was willing to accept risk. The frontages he assigned to some divisions were well beyond their ability to control by fire, let alone occupy. At one point in the attack, Manton Eddy’s 9th Infantry Division frontage totaled twenty-eight miles. Bradley even permitted a nine-mile gap to exist between the 9th and Terry Allen’s 1st Infantry Division, relying on patrols to maintain contact along the division boundary.18 By the time the North African campaign had drawn to a close, II Corps was functioning on a par with its British Allies. The next hurdle facing the Allies would be the invasion of Sicily, their first venture onto the soil of Axis-controlled Europe.
The Allies had long debated where to go after completing their conquest of North Africa. During a series of meetings held in Casablanca, French Morocco, in January 1943, British and American planners worked out their differences. The Americans favored a direct approach to Europe, landing on the French northwest coast as soon as resources, particularly landing craft and men, would permit. They argued that this made the best use of limited resources, particularly shipping; promised to take the pressure off a badly pressed Red Army in the east; and most directly targeted the German center of gravity. The British favored a more indirect approach. The vulnerability of their supply lines through the Mediterranean, threatened as they were by Axis air and naval power operating from bases in Italy, suggested the next offensive should be against Sicily.19 They argued that the loss of Sicily might well result in the toppling of the Mussolini government. Once Italy was out of the war, German military units would have to be repositioned from France and the Low Countries to compensate for the loss of Italian forces, thereby creating a more favorable operational picture for the cross-Channel invasion. Furthermore, taking Sicily would make good use of Allied combat power operating in North Africa once the campaign there came to a conclusion. The invasion of Sicily (code-named Husky) became a compromise decision.
The Combined Chiefs of Staff selected Eisenhower to be in overall command, and three British flag officers served as land, sea, and air component commanders, the most important of whom was Harold Alexander, Eisenhower’s land force commander in North Africa. Alexander would command Fifteenth Army Group, which would include two Allied armies. Patton’s Seventh Army included Major General Ernest J. Dawley’s VI Corps, which was to provide most of Patton’s ground forces. British Eighth Army under Bernard Montgomery would provide the British contingent. Patton, uneasy with the inexperience of Dawley’s corps headquarters, requested that Bradley’s II Corps headquarters be substituted for VI Corps to permit the latter additional time to train. Eisenhower yielded to Patton’s wishes, and Bradley’s corps assumed command of the primary U.S. ground force for the operation.
Operation Husky went through a number of iterations. Initial plans called for Eighth Army to land along the southeast coast of the island below Syracuse while Seventh Army landed along the northern coast near Palermo. The two armies would then drive on to Messina. This plan would allow an efficient use of Sicily’s ports for logistics and permit the immediate suppression of the island’s key airfields. Montgomery objected to this, arguing that the two armies needed to move together to support one another. Alexander came to agree and modified the plan. Seventh Army would land along the southern coast from Licata to the boundary of Eighth Army, and both armies would advance northward toward Messina. Airborne units from the 82nd would support the attack by cutting the east-west interior roads, thereby isolating Italian and German positions. Bradley rightly criticized the plan as providing little thought to follow-on operations after the landings.20 In its execution the operation would not be marked by excellence. Nor was it notable for the degree of harmony demonstrated between British and American commanders.
The landings themselves went well despite inclement weather. The Axis problem was too much shoreline to defend with too few troops. Allied deception plans added to the friction. Some 200,000–300,000 Axis troops occupied the island. Most were Italian; there were only slightly over 30,000 German combat troops as well as another 30,000 Luftwaffe airmen present to steel the defenses. Primary responsibility for Sicily’s coastal areas fell to six Italian coastal divisions, the least well trained, least motivated of the Italian army on the island. The limited numbers of antitank guns available to them, essentially amounting to one gun for every five miles of beach, made an effective defense problematic.21 Low morale and equipment shortages were compounded by Italian-German coalition problems. Although Axis forces were technically commanded by General Alfredo Guzzoni and under Italian Sixth Army, the two primary German units, the 15th Panzer Grenadier and the Hermann Göring Panzer divisions, operated to varying degrees independent of the Italian command.
The Axis plan to defend Sicily was to contest the landings as much as possible with co
astal defense forces and reinforce them with tanks and armored infantry before the Allies could amass sufficient power to break out from the beaches. Guzzoni believed that his only hope was to station his most mobile units (largely German) close to the most likely landing beaches. Believing these to be on the southeast side of the island, he proposed concentrating both German divisions there. Fortunately for the Allies, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring refused, sending 15th Panzer Grenadier Division to the west, where, as the landing progressed, it would be ineffective until it moved back to the east, where Guzzoni had initially wanted to place it. As a result, when the landings came, Guzzoni lacked both the firepower and the mobility to push the Allies back into the sea, although he certainly tried.
Eighth Army landed against only minimal opposition and was quickly on the road to Augusta. Only in the Seventh Army sector did the Italians and Germans put up a fight. Bradley’s II Corps had come ashore with Troy Middleton’s 45th Infantry Division on the right near Scoglitti. It was to move inland to Ragusa and link up with Eighth Army’s left flank. In the center, Terry Allen’s experienced 1st Infantry Division, reinforced with two Ranger battalions, was to seize Gela and then move north toward Niscemi. Lucian Truscott’s 3rd Infantry Division formed II Corp’s left flank but remained under Patton’s direct control. Patton retained most of 2nd Armored Division as well as the remainder of the 82nd Airborne Division and part of the 9th Infantry Division in reserve.
Axis forces responded with more courage than coordination to the landings of Bradley’s corps. At Gela, 1st Infantry Division defeated two determined Italian counterattacks. Farther inland, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, with the help of naval gunfire support, turned back columns of Italian and German armor. Only in the 45th Infantry Division’s area, where the Hermann Göring Division attacked with Tiger I tanks, did Axis forces have any success, and this was soon reversed. At the end of the first day’s fighting, II Corps held fifty miles of beach to a depth of two to four miles.
The second day, Guzzoni again hit the Americans, attempting to cut their beachhead in two. He committed the better part of the Hermann Göring Division and the Italian Livorno Division, backed by close air support, against II Corps. Bradley found that the congestion on the landing beaches made it difficult to move armor forward to blunt the attack. As a result, anyone who could fire a weapon found himself pressed into service as infantry. Naval gunfire support and artillery weighed in, effectively stopping the enemy a mere 2,000 yards from the landing beaches near Gela.
Over the next few days Bradley’s divisions shifted to the offensive, driving inland. All seemed to be going well until German reinforcements in the form of 1st Parachute Division entered the line opposite Eighth Army. Montgomery’s advance ground to a halt. Rather than press on, he elected to ask Alexander for a boundary change that would place Route 124, Patton’s primary axis of advance toward the island’s northern coast, under Eighth Army control, effectively cutting the Americans off from any approach to Messina. Alexander assumed Messina would be a prize left for Montgomery and granted the request.22 Patton and Bradley took the change of boundary as a slap in the face, believing that British generals, most notably Montgomery, were committed to allowing American forces to do the bleeding while British armies took the laurels. Bradley had to stop and disengage 45th Infantry, pull it back nearly to the landing beaches, and then move it to the left of 1st Infantry.
Patton’s response was to create a provisional corps out of his reserve and dispatch it, under the guise of a reconnaissance, toward Palermo, Sicily’s capital. Bradley’s corps would continue to press northward toward the coast. Patton saw the opportunity to swing Bradley’s corps eastward toward Messina after it reached the northern coast, particularly if German resistance in front of Eighth Army stiffened. For Patton, taking Messina ahead of Montgomery became a fixation. Relations between Patton and Bradley had been professional to this point but not particularly friendly. Though Bradley respected his superior’s drive and skill, Patton’s showboating style bothered the midwesterner. In Patton’s rush to get II Corps to Messina, he admonished Bradley, “I want you to get to Messina just as fast as you can. I do not want you to waste time on these maneuvers, even if you’ve got to spend men to do it. I want to beat Monty to Messina!”23 Bradley found the haste would gain little and cost much, particularly in blood.24
Thanks largely to the tenacity of the American soldier, Patton got his wish. The 45th Division reached the northern coastal road, turned east, and pressed on toward Messina. German and Italian units had created a series of defensive lines designed to delay the Seventh and Eighth armies long enough to make an evacuation of Sicily possible. The terrain in Sicily’s northeast corner favored the defense. To bypass Axis positions, Bradley, at Patton’s direction, staged a series of amphibious landings that helped speed II Corps soldiers to Messina ahead of the lead elements of British Eighth Army. Sicily rested in Allied hands; Italian dissidents deposed Benito Mussolini, and Allied lines of supply through the Mediterranean were secure. The victory was not all it could have been, however.
American reluctance to go any farther in the Mediterranean than Sicily, as well as concerns over the intentions of the Italian navy, meant that no plans had been made to blockade the Strait of Messina, which separates Sicily from the Italian mainland. The Allies did try to interdict the evacuation using airpower, but Axis antiaircraft fire rendered the effort ineffectual.25 As a result, 40,000 German soldiers and airmen, along with 10,000 vehicles, escaped the island. So too did 70,000 Italian soldiers before Allied forces could close the strait. Bradley saw it as one of the largest Allied failures of the war; indeed, he was right, as the three and a half German divisions that escaped would be reconstituted to fight another day.26
Nonetheless, the campaign provided an unexpected opening for Bradley. His rise to army commander may have been helped by Patton’s maltreatment of a number of his soldiers, most notably Private Charles H. Kuhl. Reports of Patton’s slapping of Kuhl made their way into the American press, where the publicity temporarily overshadowed Patton’s accomplishments on the battlefield.27 Bradley, on the other hand, continued to have friends in high places, most notably Marshall and Eisenhower.28 Ike directed him to pack his bags, take those of his II Corps staff whom he wished, and find his way to England. There he would command the First Army, the American ground contingent for Operation Overlord, the Normandy landings. In addition, Bradley was to form an Army group headquarters in anticipation of an Allied buildup, breakout, and pursuit from the Normandy beachhead.29
First Army headquarters became operational in October 1943. The slapping incident aside, Marshall believed that, although Patton had demonstrated a flair for rapid movement in open terrain, it was Bradley whose prowess in handling units in constricted terrain over a contested battlefield was more appropriate to the anticipated problems of a landing in France.30 Eisenhower seconded Marshall’s view.31 Allied planners foresaw the road to the Rhine as just such a battlefield. British shortages in manpower, particularly infantry, implied that operations in France would increasingly rely on American soldiers to carry the attack.32
British planners had laid the groundwork for a cross-Channel assault as early as 1941, but the earliest plans (Operation Roundup) envisioned a much smaller action that would be accompanied by a series of peripheral operations focused on wearing the Germans down. The assumption inherent in the original plan was that the German military would be engaged in a retrograde operation to the borders of Germany and would therefore probably offer only token resistance to the landings. Marshall not only questioned that assumption, but also saw this indirect approach as a waste of time and resources, perhaps considering the degree to which the American public would accept a long war.33 The Soviets backed Marshall’s view, hoping that a serious Anglo-American threat in France would provide the Red Army some respite.
Allied planning for a cross-Channel attack considered a number of different possibilities before electing to land
in Normandy. At the heart of the planning rested a new assumption, namely that the Germans would be able to provide significant resistance to the landings. The final plan envisioned Bradley’s First Army, consisting of VII and V Corps, landing on the westernmost beaches, closest to Cherbourg, whose early capture was essential if additional manpower and supplies were to be brought quickly to the lodgment. XIX Corps would be in reserve. British Second Army, consisting of British XXX and I Corps, would land to the east, along the approaches to Caen. The interarmy boundary would be near Bayeux. The beaches assigned to each army reflected the staging areas the Allies would use in Great Britain. American units had generally arrived in Britain in its southwestern ports and were bivouacked close to what would be their embarkation ports for the invasion. British and Canadian divisions were located farther north and east.34
Bradley played a leading role in putting together the overall plan for the American landings. The operational questions inherent in such an ambitious undertaking yielded no easy answers. One of the most important questions dealt with how much Allied air cover could be expected over the beaches and whether it would be sufficient to hold the Germans at bay during the critical early hours of the landings. Allied armies ashore could expect as many as fifty-eight German divisions to be concentrated against them if airmen failed to provide adequate air cover or if airborne divisions failed to cut the beach approaches.35 How many divisions could go ashore on D-Day? With the disastrous landings at Dieppe in 1942 in mind, Montgomery, who would be overall land force commander, had pressed for more extensive landings than earlier plans had entailed, but that would require landing craft in numbers not yet available in the theater. Near-herculean efforts and the postponement of Operation Anvil (later renamed Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France) produced the landing craft.36 All or part of six divisions of American, British, and Canadian infantry would storm ashore in the first wave while three airborne divisions landed inland to secure the approaches to the landings. How many German divisions were available for defense of the beaches themselves, and how much capacity, particularly in the form of armored units, could the Germans employ to attack the beachheads? An Allied air campaign would cut the railroad bridges and staging areas from which the Germans could move reinforcements. How many tons of supplies would units need, given beach and port capabilities?37 The invasion would be a race in which the Allies had to secure the beachhead and then build up significant forces to prevent being thrown into the sea by a German counterattack. The construction of two artificial harbors (code-named Mulberry) would give the logisticians some ability to push supplies to the beaches, and the taking of Cherbourg would, if it could be taken relatively intact, open a major port to Allied shipping.
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