A Precarious Venture
Suddenly there was nothing for Eisenhower to do except wait. Amid tremendous air and naval barrages, the landings began on June 6. Since the Allies had been able to break the German codes, their intelligence units had substantially better information on the enemy than either Rommel or Rundstedt had on the landings.71 The Allied information was not perfect. Neither Eisenhower nor Bradley knew, for instance, that the German 352nd Division had moved into the area behind Omaha Beach, where the US 1st Infantry Division was attempting to land. Encountering a difficult terrain and fierce German resistance, the American attack stalled on the beach. At Utah Beach, the US VII Corps moved quickly inland, as did units from the British Second Army and the Canadian forces that were pointed toward the French city of Caen.
By the end of the day, three of the landings were successful, and only Omaha Beach—where Eisenhower’s old friend General Gerow was in command—remained in doubt. The casualties were high both among the paratroopers and among the soldiers attempting to land at Omaha Beach. Landing craft were swamped. Communications collapsed. Tanks and artillery were lost to the surf and to mines buried in the sand. German machine gun and mortar fire from the high ridges above the beach kept the soldiers scattered and unable to form effective units. Confusion mounted, and wounded men drowned as the tide rose.
Most military officers become hardened to death. Generals Bradley, Montgomery, and Patton had a utilitarian, somewhat withdrawn perspective on casualties.72 Like epidemiologists, they counted casualties but seldom were concerned with an individual death. Eisenhower seems never to have developed the same type of hard external shell when confronted with the deaths of the men he had sent into combat. On D-Day, he had many deaths to ponder, and he would later give eloquent expression to his thoughts. For the moment, however, all he could do was wait, worry, and report from time to time to Marshall and the Combined Chiefs of Staff.73
Despite the losses at Omaha, the beach was finally secured, and the US soldiers began pushing inland.74 Air bombardment and naval fire had once again tipped the balance toward the invading army, and on June 7 Ike was able to survey the beachheads from the minelayer Apollo and discuss the advances with Bradley and Montgomery.75 The Supreme Commander could see the armor and artillery pouring ashore as the Allied forces started working their way through the hedgerows and German defenses that slowed their advance. With each move forward, field by field, their officers were braced for a German counterattack in force.76 Eisenhower and his commanders anticipated a major tank assault that would attempt to split their armies and drive the Allies back into the water. They knew that Germany had the potential to create a crushing Allied defeat. They could not help but imagine the Dunkirk II that the British had long feared.
What neither Ike nor Montgomery nor Bradley could really understand, however, were the conflicts and confusion that continued to disrupt the German high command. Before the invasion, General Rundstedt and General Rommel disagreed sharply over the basic strategy for resisting the landings they knew were coming. Rundstedt favored the war of mobility that had accounted for Germany’s greatest triumphs since 1939. Unable to predict exactly where the Allies would land, he would hold his powerful panzer divisions back from the beaches and then use their concentrated force to destroy the invaders. The most likely place for the landings, Rundstedt thought, was to the east of Normandy, near Calais, not far from Dunkirk. There the Channel was narrow, and successful landings would give the Allies an opportunity to outflank his forces in France. Convinced by his own reasoning, Rundstedt held his 15th Army near Calais to resist the invasion.
Rommel disagreed. He thought the best defense in this case would be at the waterfront. There, he reasoned, the Allies coming ashore would be at their weakest. They would not have the artillery and armored forces that could only gradually be landed and moved up from the beaches. They could be defeated piecemeal before they had an opportunity to build up their units and mount successful thrusts into the interior, where their superior numbers would ultimately dictate a German withdrawal. Rommel did his best to strengthen the beachfront defenses, even to the extent of using soldiers in construction activities. Some of his green troops could instead have benefited from further training.77 This was all the more important because the units in France were receiving many inexperienced replacements. German manpower was severely strained by 1944. Supplies as well as labor were frequently unavailable. Rommel thus struggled to improve his German version of the Maginot Line, but the coast was long and much of the planned work could not be completed before June 1944.78
Rundstedt’s strategy centered on a massive panzer counterattack of the sort that was a major and persistent concern of Eisenhower and his fellow officers. Ike had in mind all of the things that had gone wrong in North Africa, Sicily, and especially Salerno. All the landings in the Mediterranean had succeeded, but the resistance in Normandy was more formidable and the stakes were much higher. Delays in landing armor and artillery and in taking port facilities were worrisome as the Allies warily looked for the German onslaught. There were tactical counterattacks, but the full-bore counteroffensive never came.
Rundstedt tried, but he had many more problems than Eisenhower did as the invasion unfolded. Deceived about Allied intentions, he left the Fifteenth Army waiting for General Patton to lead his forces across the Channel to the beaches near Calais. This was never part of the Allied strategy. Patton was actually waiting in Britain until he could bring his Third Army into the battle in Normandy. There were other divisions that Rundstedt might have added to his force, but they could be moved from Norway and the Eastern Front only on direct orders from Hitler, and on June 6, Hitler was not ready to give those orders. There were also reserve forces in France—the formidable 12th SS Panzer Division and the Panzer Lehr Division—and Rundstedt promptly sent them into battle. Or he thought he did.
The German high command (OKW) delayed carrying out Rundstedt’s order until they could receive Hitler’s confirmation. But the Führer was sleeping and OKW did not want to wake him up, so they lost a day getting started. Then the German divisions could not move in the daytime because of Allied air superiority, so another day was lost. At this critical turn in the battle for the beaches, that time was all-important. When the Germans finally did attack Montgomery’s forces, the Canadian and British armies had cleared the beaches and were able to resist an attack that was weaker than it could have been if Hitler and the OKW had mustered all of their available divisions against the landings. Later, Hitler realized that he had made a mistake and tried to bring a greater force into the campaign in the west. But the crucial hours had passed.
This was the third great blunder Hitler made. Paradoxically, all three mistakes worked to the benefit of Eisenhower, who truly hated the Führer in a personal and visceral manner. The first and most catastrophic error was the invasion of the Soviet Union, which tied up the bulk of Germany’s divisions on the Eastern Front. No Allied invasion could have succeeded if even half of the German divisions on the Eastern Front had been in France. The second fateful blunder was to ignore Rommel’s proposal and leave the German divisions in Tunisia, where they were surrounded and forced to surrender. The third was to divide authority in the west between Rommel and Rundstedt, leaving the latter’s armies too weak to defeat the Allies when they were most vulnerable, during their first few days clearing the beaches. When the invasion began, General Rundstedt was forced to fight with fewer than half of the divisions he needed to repel the Allies. Left with virtually no air support, his soldiers were riding bicycles into combat because Eisenhower’s bombers and the French resistance had destroyed so many of the rail connections and made daylight travel on the roads perilous.79
Grinding
Within a week, Bradley’s First Army and Montgomery’s combined British and Canadian divisions were solidly established in Normandy, but neither could break through the German defenses to the interior. Initially Monty’s 21st Army Group made the most progress, press
ing forward toward Bayeux, some miles west of their primary goal, the important transportation center of Caen. Then the German defense stiffened as Rundstedt’s reserve divisions came into action. When Montgomery delayed his next thrust toward Caen, Eisenhower became impatient, but there was actually very little Ike could do to get his armies pressing forward on either front.80
Frustrated in Normandy, Eisenhower also found himself sinking into a second disturbing encounter with French military leadership. This time the challenge came from the imposing Charles de Gaulle and his French Committee of National Liberation. They insisted on having an important voice in matters of strategy and tactics. While this was a sideshow for Ike, it was all that mattered to de Gaulle and his Committee. Quick to respond to every opportunity and to roar back at every real or imagined slight, de Gaulle soon began to master the situation in France.81 Eisenhower tried to maintain a reasonable measure of control. He was consistent and thorough, but de Gaulle was brilliant and imaginative. In effect, de Gaulle made himself the sole leader of the French nation and demanded that Eisenhower shape his plans according to the French general’s demands. Neither Eisenhower nor Churchill, Roosevelt, Marshall, or the rest of the Combined Chiefs of Staff were able to come up with a successful plan to contain the advances of the forceful French leader.
Ike’s problems were compounded by the “Great Storm” that hit the English Channel on June 19. “The whole eastern coast of the Channel is tied up,” Eisenhower said, “in the worst weather we have had yet.”82 It delayed Montgomery’s attack again, wrecked the ingenious artificial port the Allies had created, and made it impossible for several days to get Bradley the supplies he needed. The campaign’s logistical problems were imposing harsh limits on the invasion. The US Army had divisions waiting in the United States to join Eisenhower’s forces in Normandy, but they could not get into action until a good working port was available in France. Ike hoped that Cherbourg would solve this problem, but the Germans effectively destroyed the port before surrendering to Bradley’s army on June 26. It would be months before Cherbourg would be fully operational.
At this decisive turn in the campaign, Eisenhower looked to Montgomery for a breakthrough. The British commander of ground forces launched a full-scale air and ground attack aimed at capturing Caen and pushing into a countryside more suited to a war of mobility. On June 25, Montgomery was confident: “I will continue battle on eastern flank till one of us cracks and it will not be us.”83 Determination, optimism, and careful planning were not enough, however, to achieve victory on that eastern flank. By this time Germany was able to muster enough panzer and infantry divisions to stall Montgomery’s attack. The resulting stalemate was reminiscent of Sicily, and Montgomery’s performance began to attract intense criticism. Ike’s deputy, Tedder, and other air commanders began to call for a change of leadership in the ground campaign. Relations between the leaders of the air and ground forces had always been tenuous, but now they became hostile.
While Ike was never comfortable with Montgomery, he worked once again to preserve a sense of unity.84 He was well aware that Britain’s manpower shortage was cutting deeply into its ability to provide replacements for men lost in combat.85 It was reasonable to assume that this had something to do with Monty’s failure to press ahead with great force. But Eisenhower realized that an attempt to replace Britain’s leading war hero would weaken the alliance. He refused to abandon his conciliatory approach to the Allied campaign. Certainly he was prepared to be decisive if he thought the Allied cause was being weakened by blunders in leadership or policy.86 But in this case, Ike simply switched his strategy and tactics to favor emphasis on a breakthrough by Bradley.87 In effect, he gave Montgomery the assignment of holding down German divisions and defending Bradley’s flank. This, of course, was the exact opposite of the positions the two commanders had been in during the Sicily campaign. At that time, both Bradley and Patton had been outraged over assignments they thought were insignificant. Now, however, Montgomery could not complain about a situation he had created.88
To add some firepower and aggressive leadership to the campaign, Eisenhower brought Patton and his new Third Army into action in Bradley’s newly formed Army Group. By that time, the Allies had almost a million men in Normandy. Ike needed them to push forward quickly, get out of the seemingly endless hedgerows, and make full use in open country of his advantages in armor and airpower. Patton—despite all of his obvious flaws—was the general for that job. There was a big risk in trying to get Patton and Bradley to work together. Bradley had once served under Patton, and reversing those relationships could generate tensions even when two officers liked each other. In this case, Bradley had developed an intense hatred of Patton and his showmanship. Still, Eisenhower correctly calculated that Bradley would bite his tongue and play it by the book. The two generals would never be friends, but Ike thought they could work together.
But first they had to get untangled from the hedgerows. Artillery did not do the job. The Germans were too deeply dug into their positions. Bombing failed, as did frontal tank attacks, à la Kursk. Ike visited the front and sent a gloomy report to an impatient General Marshall: “The going,” Ike said, “is extremely tough, with three main causes responsible. The first of these, as always, is the fighting quality of the German soldier. The second is the nature of the country. Our whole attack has to fight its way out of very narrow bottlenecks flanked by marshes and against an enemy who has a double hedgerow and an intervening ditch almost every fifty yards as ready-made strong points. The third cause is the weather. Our air has been unable to operate at maximum efficiency and on top of this the rain and mud were so bad during my visit that I was reminded of Tunisian wintertime.”89 Hoping to change the situation, Ike established tactical headquarters in Normandy.
Bradley was even more impatient than Eisenhower with his First Army’s progress. He became impatient as well with his officers when they were unable to break the stalemate. They could not fall short in combat for any reason, and rain, mud and hedgerows were inadequate excuses. The turnover rate became high as Bradley and his army struggled to fight through German forces that proved just as effective defending the hedgerows of Normandy as they were in the mountains of Italy.90 Eisenhower’s D-Day warning—“Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely”—proved all too true, and the First Army’s losses mounted steadily.91 Like Montgomery, Bradley was forced to delay his major offensive.
Instead of reflecting on a successful invasion and the decision he had made to launch the landings, Eisenhower was left fretting in July 1944 over a campaign that seemed locked in neutral.92 His friend George Allen told him he was “the most popular idol of the world,” but Eisenhower was not concerned about adulation.93 He was worried because his forces had yet to break the back of Rundstedt’s army. Eisenhower had not lost faith in Bradley and Patton. He had a clear and well-grounded concept of what General Montgomery’s forces were likely to achieve in the weeks to follow. But what he did not have was assurance that his Normandy campaign would mark a critical turning point on the Western Front, the sort of decisive victory the Soviets had already won in the east.
Stalemated and frustrated, Eisenhower recognized that “now as never before opportunity is staring us in the face.”94 He hoped for “great results.”95 But as late as August 2, he and General Marshall were extremely nervous about the failure to achieve a breakout. Eisenhower reported, “We are attacking viciously in an effort to accomplish our purpose before the enemy can be successful in establishing new and strong lines.” Still, Ike said, the battle was “raging” and he could not predict the outcome.96
Eight
Generals Eisenhower, Omar N. Bradley, and George S. Patton meet at Bastogne in 1944.
Tested Again
As late as August 2, 1944, it was still unclear whether Eisenhower, his commanders, and his ground and air forces were going to defeat the German divisions in France. Would attrition give way to a war of m
aneuver that would enable the Allies to sweep past Paris and drive the remaining German divisions back to the Rhine? On the surface, Eisenhower was optimistic—even about Monty’s torturously slow progress toward the strategic rail center of Caen. But he was nervous enough to “forget” to keep Marshall and the Combined Chiefs of Staff well informed about the campaign. “My excuse,” he wrote, “is that in my anxiety to push events the matter had merely slipped my mind.”
Leaving aside the highly improbable possibility that General Marshall slipped Eisenhower’s mind, we can nevertheless feel certain that Ike was experiencing anxiety. His report was stuffed with the vigor and movement the campaign lacked: They would “roll up the enemy forces.” His ground commanders were in complete agreement about their strategy and tactics. They would “pin down and destroy” German units. They would “exploit rapidly to the southward into good tank country.” They would “drive rapidly,” “thrust forward,” and “destroy the bulk of the German mobile forces.”1 The future tense abounded. The Supreme Commander’s anxiety about his army’s progress through the hedgerows had clearly overcome his penchant for precision in the written word.
All of those words could not change the reality that his offense was bogged down. “Over a stretch of such days,” one infantryman said, “you became so dulled by fatigue that the names of the killed and wounded they checked off each night, the names of men who had been your best friends, might have come out of a telephone book for all you knew. All the old values were gone, and if there was a world beyond this tangle of hedgerows … where one barrage could lay out half a company like a giant’s club, you never expected to live to see it.”2
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