Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  To give Montgomery enough strength to get to Lubeck first, Eisenhower assigned the U.S. airborne corps to Twenty-first Army Group and told his staff to give Montgomery all necessary logistical support. He sent a series of messages to Montgomery, urging him to press on, and a letter for the record to Brooke, recording all that he had done with respect to Lubeck.8 Churchill, unable to get Eisenhower to change his mind on Berlin, decided that Lubeck was the best he could get, both in relation to the role British forces would play and on political objectives. He told Eden, “Our arrival at Lubeck before our Russian friends from Stettin would save a lot of argument later on. There is no reason why the Russians should occupy Denmark, which is a country to be liberated and to have its sovereignty restored. Our position at Lubeck, if we get it, would be decisive in this matter.” As indeed it was. Churchill also agreed with Eisenhower’s decision to push on south of Stuttgart to capture the German atomic research facilities in the area.9

  There was one more controversy with the British. By April 25 (the day Germany was split in half by an American-Russian link-up at Torgau, northeast of Leipzig), Patton’s Third Army had reached the Czech border. There was open ground between his tanks and Prague. The BCOS felt there would be “remarkable political advantages derived from liberation of Prague and as much as possible of Czechoslovakia by U.S.-U.K. forces.” The British Chiefs thought Eisenhower should be directed “to take advantage of any improvement in his logistical situation or any weakening of enemy resistance to advance into Czechoslovakia provided such action does not hamper or delay final German defeat.” In passing this on to Eisenhower, Marshall declared: “Personally and aside from all logistic, tactical or strategical implications I would be loath to hazard American lives for purely political purposes.”

  Forrest Pogue has pointed out that Marshall’s statement, startling as it appears in retrospect, was in accord with current American policy.10 The aim throughout the war had been the quick defeat of Germany, and it remained the aim at the end. Marshall was trying to make a political-military division that was not there, for the decision to concentrate single-mindedly on defeating Germany was, at bottom, a political decision. There were other political factors that affected Marshall’s position, most importantly the need to redeploy and the necessity of getting the Soviets to help crush the Japanese enemy.

  Eisenhower understood Marshall’s meaning. In his reply the Supreme Commander said his first priority would be Lubeck and the Alpine redoubt. These operations were “straining our resources” and were all that could be currently undertaken. If additional forces became available he intended to attack the Germans wherever they were located, which meant that if they were still holding out in Czechoslovakia he would go there. The Red Army was in position to clean out Czechoslovakia and it appeared to Eisenhower that they could certainly reach Prague before Patton could. In conclusion, he assured Marshall that “I shall not attempt any move I deem militarily unwise merely to gain a political prize unless I receive specific orders from the Combined Chiefs of Staff.”11

  This then became the policy; it remained only to implement it. On April 30 Eisenhower told the Russians of his plans. He explained that he would launch an operation across the lower Elbe, south of Dresden, to establish a firm operational east flank. The exact position could be adjusted locally by the commanders on the spot. From the headwaters of the Mulde southward he intended to hold to a line approximately along the 1937 Czech border. To the south, he would advance to Linz, which would put the AEF in position to clear out any resistance in the Alpine redoubt. If at any time the situation required his forces to advance farther to the east, he would take such action as the situation allowed.

  The Red Army leaders quickly indicated their full agreement with Eisenhower’s proposals. “Please inform General Eisenhower,” they told the Allied military missions, “that the immediate plan of the Soviet Command contemplates both the occupation of Berlin, and also cleaning out of the German forces from the eastern shore of the Elbe River north and south of Berlin, and the Mulde River Valley [which included Prague], where according to information we have, the Germans are concentrating considerable forces.”12

  On May 4, with Patton straining to go forward, Lubeck taken, and the Alpine redoubt no longer a threat, Eisenhower informed General Antonov of the Red Army that he now proposed to send the Third Army east to the Moldau and the outskirts of Prague. Antonov expressed strong dissent. To avoid “a possible confusion of forces,” he asked Eisenhower “not to move the Allied forces in Czechoslovakia east of the originally intended line,” which was generally Pilsen-Karlsbad. Antonov pointed out that the Soviet forces had stopped their advance north of Berlin well short of the Elbe, leaving Lubeck to Montgomery, and said he hoped Eisenhower would comply with Russian wishes in Czechoslovakia. Eisenhower thereupon assured Antonov that he would not move beyond Pilsen-Karlsbad, thus leaving Prague and most of Czechoslovakia to the Soviet forces. He held to his position even when the Czechs in Prague rose up against the Germans and, over captured radios, specifically asked the AEF for help.13 This was a bitter pill for Churchill.

  Churchill was a romantic who believed that the fate of great empires could be decided through the skill or luck of one man on one day, that sweeping historical movements or the development of a people or nation could be turned decisively by success or failure at one battle. Marlborough, the Prime Minister once told Montgomery, “sat on his horse and directed by word of mouth a battle on a five- or six-mile front, which ended in a day and settled the fortunes of great nations, sometimes for years or generations to come.”14 He felt this intuition about the taking of Berlin. If Eisenhower took the capital, he felt, it would put a crimp in Russian ambitions in central Europe. Thus also his anxiety about Prague. Aside from the prestige value involved, (and for Churchill this was of incalculable value), it was to him true that if the West took Prague, Czechoslovakia would be safe. But, at least after the event, it is hard to see what all the excitement was about. The Russians kept troops in Czechoslovakia, to be sure, but so did the United States. Both sides pulled out at the same time. It is true that Soviet troops were on the Czech border when the Communist coup delivered that unhappy land to the Communists, but so were American soldiers. That there were more Red Army than U. S. Army men in the area was a result of postwar policy, not anything that had been done or decided during the war. There is no hard, or even any circumstantial, evidence to support the view that if Eisenhower had liberated Prague Czechoslovakia would be free today. Churchill’s views to the contrary, single battles do not decide the fate of great nations. Nothing Eisenhower could have done at the late date of April 1945 could have made any significant difference.

  But there can be no doubt that there was a certain lack of precision in Eisenhower’s statements and actions. He wished to make all decisions on military grounds, and did not see anything to fear from the Russians—yet he sent Montgomery toward Lubeck, away from the remaining German armies, for an indisputably political objective. Even taking into account the need to give the British some satisfaction, Lubeck contrasted strangely with Prague. The policy was inconsistent, perhaps a result of the confusion at headquarters in the rush of events, perhaps caused by general exhaustion, perhaps a result of the failure of the CCS to provide clear objectives, which in turn may have been a consequence of Roosevelt’s illness and death. But the inconsistency may also have been a result of conflicting demands. The general American policy, at least while Roosevelt lived and in the early days of Truman’s presidency, was to try to retain Soviet friendship, while Churchill wanted to take a firm stand. Eisenhower could never satisfy both his masters.

  The end of the war brought with it one last dispute with the French. At the beginning of the third week in April Patch’s Seventh Army had enveloped Stuttgart. On April 23 General de Lattre’s First French Army took the city. The day before, however, Devers had redrawn the boundary lines, putting Stuttgart within Patch’s sector. Devers wanted to prevent U.S. and French units
from becoming entangled and to provide proper lines of communications for his armies—his new boundary, in other words, was drawn as a matter of military routine. De Gaulle, however, thought the United States had ulterior political motives. The French President believed that Devers was more interested in getting the French out of an important German city than in the logistics of Seventh Army’s supply lines. This came at a time when the French had no assigned zone of occupation in Germany and there was still some question as to whether they would get one at all.

  De Gaulle therefore told De Lattre that establishing boundaries was a political and not a military matter, and that therefore the French forces were not answerable to Eisenhower or Devers but only to their own government. As a result, when Patch moved forces into Stuttgart on April 24 to relieve the French units in the city, De Lattre was polite but firm—the French would not leave. Patch could use the city for communications purposes, but the French would hold it. Devers again issued orders to De Lattre to get out; De Gaulle responded with orders of his own to the French general: “I require you to maintain a French garrison at Stuttgart and to institute immediately a military government.” De Gaulle told De Lattre to tell Patch that his orders were to hold “the territory conquered by our troops until the French zone of occupation has been fixed between the interested Governments.…” Patch passed this on to Devers, who appealed to Eisenhower, saying his authority was being flouted.15

  This was the most direct challenge to his position that Eisenhower had yet had to face. For all the British criticism of his strategy, they had never refused to carry out an order. De Lattre did. Eisenhower, knowing that it would do no good to continue the argument with De Lattre, dictated an official protest to De Gaulle.

  Eisenhower began by saying he had learned with “regret” of De Gaulle’s orders to De Lattre. The question of a French Zone of Occupation, Eisenhower pointed out, “is a matter entirely outside the scope of my responsibility, which is limited to the military defeat of our common enemy, Germany.” Under the circumstances, Eisenhower said, “I must of course accept the situation, as I myself am unwilling to take any action which would reduce the effectiveness of the military effort against Germany, either by withholding supplies from the First French Army or by any other measures which would affect their fighting strength.” Nor, he added, would he ever be a party to starting any struggle or quarrel between the French government and the troops under his command, “which could result only in weakening bonds of national friendship as well as the exemplary spirit of cooperation that has characterized the actions of French and American forces in the battle line.”

  Eisenhower told De Gaulle that he believed the issuance of orders to De Lattre based on political considerations “violates the understanding with the United States Government under which French divisions, armed and equipped by the United States, were to be placed under the Combined Chiefs of Staff whose orders I am carrying out in this Theater of Operations.” Eisenhower had had complete faith in De Gaulle’s willingness to abide by the spirit of the agreement when he placed French troops under SHAEF’s control. As it was, “I can do nothing else than fully to inform the Combined Chiefs of Staff of this development, and to point out that I can no longer count with certainty upon the operational use of any French forces they may contemplate equipping in the future.”

  De Gaulle, in reply, admitted that the difficulty was not of Eisenhower’s doing, but rather was due to the lack of agreement and liaison between France and the Allied governments “on that which relates to the war policy in general and in particular to the occupation of German territory.” Since the French had no representative on the CCS, there was no way for De Gaulle to put French interests before the Chiefs. Regretfully, therefore, he had to push French views separately. This situation had forced De Gaulle, to his “very great regret,” to step in “either with respect to plans or their execution.” He added that Eisenhower surely was aware that in placing French forces under SHAEF “I have always reserved the right of the French Government eventually to take the necessary steps in order that French Forces should be employed in accordance with the national interest of France which is the only interest that they should serve.” He reminded Eisenhower that the United States had not fulfilled its commitments to rearm the French and ended by expressing his appreciation for the efforts Eisenhower personally had made. He hoped that good will would continue between American and French forces in the field.16

  Eisenhower may have had some sympathy for De Gaulle, both because the French were contributing two corps to the offensive but had no voice on the CCS, and because of De Gaulle’s efforts to re-establish the French position in Europe, first of all through obtaining an occupation zone in Germany. In any case there was nothing Eisenhower could do about De Gaulle’s orders to De Lattre, and with the war so near its end he decided the time had come for the politicians to handle De Gaulle. The Supreme Commander thanked the French President for the courtesy of his full explanation, said he understood De Gaulle’s position, and concluded, “while I regret that you find it necessary to inject political considerations into a campaign in which my functions are purely military, I am gratified to know that you understand my situation and attitude.”17 Soon after De Gaulle got the occupation zone he wanted, plus a seat on the Allied Control Council.

  The last weeks of the war were full ones for the Supreme Commander. Much of his time, and even more of that of his staff, went into the effort to reach an agreement with the Germans in Holland that would allow the Allies to feed the starving population there. There was also redeployment to worry about. On April 25 Marshall told Eisenhower that he had offered Hodges and his First Army headquarters to MacArthur, “who has accepted … gladly.” MacArthur did not plan to have an army group command for the final invasion of the Japanese home islands, Marshall added, but he would accept Bradley as an army commander. The Chief of Staff wondered if Bradley would like to go to the Pacific in that role.

  Eisenhower blistered. He was ready to send Hodges immediately, but under no circumstances would he agree to what amounted to a demotion for Bradley. “While MacArthur’s failure to form an army group command is of course his own business,” Eisenhower said, “I personally recommend urgently against Bradley going to the Pacific as an army commander.…” Bradley had been commanding more than 1,000,000 men in Europe, fighting against the “most highly prepared and skillful army that existed.” To give him merely an army command would diminish Bradley’s stature, which was unfair and unwise. Bradley’s “brains, selflessness, and outstanding ability as a battleline commander are unexcelled anywhere in the world today.” He would be needed in the postwar Army, and to be effective there he had to preserve his reputation. In addition, Eisenhower would need him to help solve the great problems of occupation. Anyway, there were nearly a dozen other generals in ETO who were competent enough to lead an army into Japan.

  “After dictating the above,” Eisenhower concluded, “I called Bradley in person to determine his own feelings in the matter. His only answer was: ‘I will serve anywhere in any position that General Marshall assigns me.’ ” Still, Eisenhower thought it would be a mistake. So did Marshall, and Bradley remained in Europe.18

  As his armies rolled forward Eisenhower inspected some of the concentration camps they uncovered. “The things I saw beggar description,” he told Marshall. “The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick.” In one room he saw naked men piled to the ceiling, dead by starvation. “I made the visit deliberately,” Eisenhower said, “in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’ ” He saw to it that British M.P.s and American congressmen visited the camps to see for themselves, and sent photographs of the camps to Churchill.19 The experience deepened his already great hatred for the Nazis and led him to take a stern attitude when the time came for
them to surrender.

  Two major obstacles stood in the way of a quick, sharp end to the war. First, most Germans believed that the 1918 armistice had come at a time when their armies were still winning and they were determined to avoid another unnecessary capitulation. All German leaders, not just the Nazis, wanted to avoid a postwar charge of having stabbed the armed forces in the back. Nazi ideology, with its doctrine that defeat was impossible, reinforced this tendency, and as long as Hitler lived it was unlikely that the Germans would quit. The unconditional surrender policy, with its implication that the German government would not survive, also played a role, since any government that signed an unconditional surrender document was simultaneously signing its own death warrant. Second, the Germans hoped for—indeed expected—a falling out between East and West. If they could hold firm until it occurred, they would survive as a nation, possibly even joining the West in an anti-Communist crusade.

  The first obstacle was removed, or at least partly overcome, when the Russian Army took Berlin and when Hitler, on April 30, committed suicide. The second now loomed larger, however, as the new German government and the remaining military leaders felt that with Hitler gone the West would be more inclined to see Germany as a bulwark against Communism in Europe. Specifically, the way Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s successor, tried to speed up the East-West split and salvage something for Germany was through piecemeal surrender to the Western Allies only. This process had begun even before Hitler’s death; on April 26 Marshall informed Eisenhower that Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler had sent an agent to Sweden to try to arrange for a surrender of German forces in the West. President Truman had replied that the only terms acceptable were unconditional surrender of all German armies to the U.S.S.R., the U.K., and the U.S. Stalin, informed of these developments, had said Truman’s attitude was “absolutely correct.” Churchill told Eisenhower that “the offer looked like a last desperate attempt to create a schism between ourselves and the Russians,” and the Supreme Commander himself was in complete agreement with Truman’s policy. “In every move we make these days,” Eisenhower assured Marshall, “we are trying to be meticulously careful in this regard.”20