The Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  But ANVIL still had a long way to go before it reached the sunny shores of southern France. In August Churchill made one last effort to stop the operation, which he had by then renamed DRAGOON, on the grounds that he had been dragooned into it. The possibility, then feasible, of capturing the Brittany ports gave him his opportunity. On August 4 he held a staff conference and convinced the BCOS that DRAGOON should be shifted to Brest and other Brittany ports. Although no details had been worked out, the Prime Minister immediately telegraphed the President, “I beg you will consider the possibility of switching ‘Dragoon’ into the main and vital theatre where it can immediately play its part at close quarters.…” As Churchill saw it, the great advantage was not only that the DRAGOON forces could make their contribution in northwest France, but also that the drain on Alexander’s armies in Italy would be relatively small and Alexander still might reach Trieste before winter.38 The Prime Minister dispatched a telegram to Wilson asking him if he could bring the forces then assembling for DRAGOON north to a landing at Brest.

  In ringing phrases that mince no words, John Ehrman, the official British historian, shows the absurdity of the proposal. “Now, eleven days before the operation was due to begin, they [the British] were playing with the idea of transferring it to an entirely new area where conditions were still largely unknown, some 1,600 miles from its initial base, beyond the reach of air cover from the Mediterranean, and involving an unknown commitment for shipping. Hitherto, all assaults from the sea had been prepared in considerable detail. But no proper plan existed in this case, and no assessment had been made of its effect on current operations or on the subsequent campaign. The British were in fact proposing, for the sake of a hypothetically easier line of supply, to jettison a carefully planned operation on the eve of its execution, to alter the balance of the whole campaign in western Europe, and to abandon a strategy which they had worked out originally in concert with the Russians and had only recently accepted with every appearance of finality.”39

  Eisenhower learned of the British proposal late on the evening of August 4, after returning to Portsmouth from Normandy. The next morning he cabled Marshall, assuring the Chief, “I will not repeat not under any conditions agree at this moment to a cancellation of DRAGOON.” The Supreme Commander admitted that he was anxious to bring divisions in through Brittany ports but pointed out that no one knew when Brest and Lorient would be available. Given all the unknown factors in the situation, Eisenhower thought it only common sense that DRAGOON as originally planned be pushed “energetically and speedily.”40

  Churchill came to Portsmouth for lunch. After discussing the situation in Normandy, he turned to the point at issue. He grandiloquently declared that history would show that Eisenhower had missed a great opportunity if he did not shift DRAGOON from southern France to Brest and Lorient. Eisenhower tried to mumble that it was too late to make a change, which was just the sort of argument that made the Prime Minister most impatient. He believed that anything in war was possible if men just put their minds to it. Nothing was settled. After lunch General Smith and Admirals Cunningham, Ramsay, and William G. Tennant joined Churchill and Eisenhower in the war room at SHAEF Forward. The argument continued for six hours. Eisenhower said no to Churchill, continued to say no all afternoon, and “ended saying no in every form of the English language at his command.” Cunningham supported Churchill, while Tennant and Ramsay sided with Eisenhower (Tennant thought Eisenhower “sound at every step of the argument and thoroughly magnificent.”). To Eisenhower’s surprise, Smith agreed with Churchill. A message came in from Wilson; he said that to switch the plan at this late date would involve unloading and reloading the landing craft and he thought the whole idea of a change most unwise. This message had no effect on Churchill, nor did a message from the JCS registering their complete disapproval of Churchill’s proposal. By the end of the session, Eisenhower was limp, but DRAGOON was still on. After Churchill left, Eisenhower told Butcher that he expected the Prime Minister “would return to the subject in two or three days and simply regard the issue as unsettled.”41

  Eisenhower was right. On August 9, in a meeting at 10 Downing Street that Eisenhower later described as one of the most difficult sessions he had in the entire war, Churchill pressed his point. He intimated that the United States was taking the role of “a big strong and dominating partner” rather than attempting to understand the British position. The Americans, he complained, were indifferent to British interests in the Italian campaign.

  Two days later Eisenhower replied to this charge in a letter to Churchill. He said he was disturbed over their differences but insisted that they were not nationalistic. “I do not, for one moment, believe that there is any desire on the part of any responsible person in the American war machine to disregard British views,” Eisenhower said, “or cold-bloodedly to leave Britain holding an empty bag in any of our joint undertakings.” He said he always examined such problems from a strictly military point of view, “and I am sorry that you seem to feel we use our great actual or potential strength as a bludgeon in conference.” He reminded Churchill that he had sat in on many CCS conferences in which the British view had prevailed—which may have been exactly what Churchill had in mind. The British dominated the CCS when they were making the preponderant contribution to the war effort in Europe. Now that the Americans had the greater strength, all the decisions seemed to be dictated by what the JCS wanted. Nothing was being settled objectively, Churchill felt, and he did not like it now that the shoe was on the other foot.

  The entire August 9 interview was painful for Eisenhower, who found Churchill “stirred, upset and even despondent.” He wondered if Churchill’s motives were political, if his aim were to get Allied troops into the Balkans ahead of the Russians. If that were so, he told the Prime Minister, then Churchill should lay the facts and his own conclusions before the President. Eisenhower said he well understood that military campaigns could be affected by political considerations, and if the head of government should decide that getting into the Balkans was worth prolonging the war, then he would “instantly and loyally adjust plans accordingly.” But Eisenhower did insist that as long as Churchill argued the matter on military grounds alone he was wrong. “In this particular field I alone had to be the judge of my own responsibilities and decisions,” the Supreme Commander commented later. “I refused to consider the change so long as it was urged upon military considerations.”

  Churchill then waved the political argument aside. He said he had no political objectives in the Balkans. The correct military policy as he saw it was to avoid the sterile campaign in the south of France, open Brest, and push on in Italy. Eisenhower answered him point by point, putting his strongest emphasis on the need for more port capacity. Even with Brest, Eisenhower argued, the Allies would not have enough ports to maintain their armies for the final conquest of Germany. They could move forward to the German border, but at that point they would outrun their supplies, just as the British Eighth Army had done so often in its westward drives in the North African desert, or as had happened to Rommel when he reached El Alamein. Eisenhower had to have either Antwerp, the best port in Europe, or Marseilles, the best port in France. He had no ideas as to when he would get Antwerp, but with DRAGOON he could have Marseilles soon.

  Eisenhower also had a political argument on his side and, unlike the Prime Minister, he was willing to use it. He reminded Churchill that the American government had gone to great expense to equip and supply a number of French divisions, that De Gaulle was most anxious to have them fight in the struggle to liberate France, and that the only way they could be brought to the battlefield was through DRAGOON. Churchill was unimpressed. “So far as I can determine he attaches so much importance to the matter [of switching DRAGOON to Brittany],” Eisenhower told Marshall, “that failure in achieving this objective would represent a practical failure of his whole administration.” At one point Churchill told Eisenhower that if DRAGOON went on schedule into southern Fran
ce, “I might have to go to the King and lay down the mantle of my high office.”42

  But Churchill could not move Eisenhower, who took his orders from the CCS, not the heads of government, and the discussion finally ended. The next day Churchill left for a visit to Italy. While there, he took the opportunity of watching the assault he had hoped would never take place, and “adopted” it. When Eisenhower heard this, he told Marshall, and thought of “all the fighting and mental anguish I went through in order to preserve that operation, I don’t know whether to sit down and laugh or to cry.”43

  Throughout the debate major points had obviously been raised. They were not, however, the points publicists later emphasized. The issue did not involve a campaign in the Balkans versus a campaign in southern France. Churchill flatly insisted, time and again, that he did not propose to send Alexander into the area east of Trieste and that he did not have political motives. Despite these facts, the invasion of southern France stands at or near the top of all the innumerable lists of “Great Mistakes of the War.” The argument is too well known to bother to discuss it here (and is admirably summarized by Maurice Matloff elsewhere)44; suffice it to say that the critics have consistently missed the point. The argument at the time centered around military opportunities and necessity, and to judge it on its political implications for the Cold War is to engage in wishful, ahistorical thinking.

  As a soldier, Eisenhower had to set priorities and make his decisions accordingly. He objective was to defeat Germany. To do that, he had to bring powerful armies, well supplied, to the German border for a final campaign against the enemy homeland. To do that, he needed ports. The question, then, is: Did DRAGOON give the Allies the extra port capacity necessary to support the armies in the European campaign or, could SHAEF’s armies have done as well as they did without Marseilles?

  Churchill’s argument was that Brest and Lorient could have done as much for SHAEF as Marseilles. Since they were never used, no one will ever know whether he was right or not, but the figures on the contribution made by the ports in southern France are impressive. From September through December 1944 Marseilles and its allied southern French ports unloaded more tonnage than any of the other ports available to SHAEF. In the last three months of 1944 well over one third of the total supplies unloaded in Europe by the Allies came in through the south of France. Not until January 1945, when Antwerp was in full operation, was Marseilles superseded as SHAEF’s major port.45

  Even with the help of Marseilles, from September until Antwerp was operating in January 1945, the Allied armies in Europe suffered from supply shortages, caused by inadequate port capacity. It could be argued that SHAEF did not need such large ground forces, especially if there were another major campaign in the Balkans, but it should be recalled that in December 1944 SHAEF had no manpower reserves. The situation was bad enough as it was; it could have been hazardous in the extreme without Marseilles. Brest, as a substitute for Marseilles as Churchill proposed, could have helped, but it was not as big a port and since there were no thorough plans prepared there was no assurance that the operation Churchill proposed would have worked. DRAGOON, in Eisenhower’s thinking, was the best available option to meet the objectives. The trouble was that, although ANVIL gave the Allies the port of Marseilles, it did nothing to help open Antwerp.

  CHAPTER 9

  Breakout

  As July drew to a close Eisenhower and his associates at SHAEF were close to despair. Flying bombs continued to fall on London. GOODWOOD had failed. Bradley’s progress in the hedgerows was agonizingly slow. After seven weeks of fighting, the deepest Allied penetrations were some twenty-five to thirty miles inland, on a front of only eighty miles. This was hardly enough room to maneuver or to bring in the forces waiting in England and the United States for deployment. The Germans continued to fight savagely, taking advantage of every piece of cover and laying mines with extraordinary skill. The July 20 attempt by the German generals on Hitler’s life seemed to have had no effect at all on the battlefield.

  The situation, however, was much better than SHAEF recognized. Montgomery’s optimism was justified, for his policy had succeeded. The build-up, which Eisenhower had never wanted but which Montgomery insisted upon, was about to come to an end. The Germans had been set up for the final blow. Montgomery’s left jab at GOODWOOD had them off balance, and Bradley’s right hook would finish the campaign. Whether this came about as a result of accident or by design was, for the moment at least, unimportant.

  On July 18 Bradley’s First Army captured St. Lô. It had been a bitter, long, costly struggle. First Army suffered nearly 11,000 casualties in two weeks, but by taking St. Lô it opened an important road center to the south and east from the beachhead and provided maneuvering space for a drive to the south which Bradley was already planning. The Americans had a compact, powerful force with which to strike; although First Army had suffered 73,000 casualties, the losses had been replaced, and there were seventeen U.S. divisions in the field. By July 23 the Americans had landed a total of 770,000 troops in Normandy. The 101st and 82d Airborne had been withdrawn from the Continent for refitting; together with three divisions moving from the United Kingdom to the Continent and two more ready divisions in the United Kingdom, they constituted a large, immediately available reserve force. The British and Canadians had suffered some 49,000 casualties but, like the Americans, had replaced most of them and by July 23 had landed 591,000 troops in France. The supply situation was basically good. Landing craft continued to bring material in over the beaches, and on July 19 the first supplies were brought in through Cherbourg.

  The German situation, meanwhile, looked increasingly bad. Allied air superiority made it almost impossible for the enemy to move reinforcements and supplies to the battlefield. The FORTITUDE deception plan added to the enemy’s problems, for throughout June and two thirds of July the German high command assumed that a second landing would be made north of the Seine and therefore held the Fifteenth Army in the Pas de Calais area. The initiative belonged to the Allies, and the Germans, attempting a holding action everywhere, were consequently strong nowhere. They had committed their reserves piecemeal and could not move any large force to the front for a major counterattack. German replacements had not come forward, so although their total casualties were no greater than those of the Allies (116,863 by July 23), all German divisions were under strength. On July 25 the Germans had at most thirteen weak divisions to oppose seventeen full-strength American divisions, with seven infantry and five or six Panzer divisions against the seventeen British and Canadian divisions.

  Even more than the Allies, the Germans suffered from divided counsel. Hitler insisted that every unit stand and fight, which at the tactical level kept troops in untenable positions. Von Rundstedt wanted to abandon the present lines and establish a defense line running roughly from Caen to Caumont, which would allow him to shorten his line and give his Panzers some rest, but Hitler forbade it and soon replaced Von Rundstedt with Generalfeldmarschall Guenther von Kluge. Rommel had been wounded on July 17 when an Allied fighter strafed the staff car in which he was riding; he was then implicated in the plot against Hitler and eventually committed suicide to avoid the shame of a trial. Von Kluge assumed Rommel’s duties in addition to his other responsibilities. Hitler, however, did not trust Von Kluge, the man he himself had chosen, and insisted on giving him only the minimum amount of information absolutely essential for carrying on the battle. Hitler feared that if Von Kluge, or any of the field generals, knew about more than their own local situation, they would give the information to the Allies.1

  The German defense was a shell. Hitler had gambled on pinning down the Allies, believing correctly that if they once broke out they would use their overwhelming air and transport superiority to launch a war of maneuver that would crush the Germans in France. In a sense the situation of 1940 had been reversed, with the Germans playing the role of the immobile French at the Maginot Line and the British and Americans ready to begin a blitzkrieg
of their own. But the Allied blitzkrieg could not come until someone broke through the shell, as Eisenhower and his subordinates very well knew.

  Eisenhower felt that his greatest single advantage over the Germans was the Allied air superiority, and he wanted to make sure that it was fully used in the breakout attempt. He had been harping on the theme of air-ground co-operation since the North African campaign, and he continued to do so in Normandy. The airmen were unhappy because of what they considered excessive demands on their planes by the ground generals, while the soldiers at the front complained both because the airmen were not doing enough and because when they did fly close support missions the bombs sometimes fell short, killing Allied soldiers on the battle line. The airmen countercharged that the soldiers did not set up clear bomb lines. Eisenhower deplored the growing antagonism, admitted that there had been errors on both sides, and said the mistakes should not “sour us or any of the Services.” Rather, they should serve as incentives to promote greater efficiency. “I am particularly anxious,” he told Smith, “that any such occurrences do not discourage ground forces from calling upon the air for maximum assistance, or the air from being ready to render such maximum assistance.”2

  Bradley, a ground general, was still willing to work with the air forces, and he had a plan. He proposed to penetrate the enemy defenses west of St. Lô with VII Corps, pushing armored and motorized troops deep into the German rear toward Coutances. Essentially the plan was Bradley’s alone.3 Montgomery had approved of it but played no role in its preparation, while Eisenhower, who was flying frequently to Normandy to confer with his field commanders, did little more than nod his head in approval of it. Eisenhower did make a contribution to the plan by phasing forward additional units to build up Bradley’s strength, by speeding up deliveries of ammunition and equipment, and most of all, by co-ordinating the Allied air effort.