Montgomery claimed that Churchill was pleased with his work: ‘He said he had always known there was something wrong in the proposed plan, but that the Chiefs of Staff had agreed with it and that left him powerless. Now a battlefield commander had analysed it for him and had given him the information he needed he was grateful.’ Monty obviously appreciated that he was stirring things up and added:
I asked for my paper back, saying it was written entirely without inter-service discussion and I did not want to start my new job by troubles with the planners in London. But he kept it, promising to use it himself only as background information. I had the subsequent impression that background was liable to intrude into the foreground.
Montgomery did not like the proposed plan and insisted to Churchill that Overlord needed greater initial punch. He also argued that it would take ninety days for a force landed in the south of France to have any influence on the Normandy operation. The implication was that Anvil would be a waste of time and resources.
In truth, Eisenhower had already expressed misgivings about the size of the Overlord assault force, having seen the plans in late October. After the war Eisenhower stated that he and his Chief of Staff General Bedell Smith ‘decided, off the cuff, that a five-division attack was far more desirable’. In contrast, Monty claimed that Eisenhower told him in Algiers that ‘he had only a sketchy idea of the plan and that it did not look too good’. It is clear, though, that Monty did not deserve all the credit for the changes made to the plan.
Once in England, de Guingand was to find himself in accord with his boss – Overlord must be beefed up:
It had been arranged that Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff [Ike was in America], and I should discuss the existing plan together, and give Montgomery our views on his arrival from his visit to Churchill in Marrakech. The existing plan which we found was briefly as follows. An assault by three divisions and tanks between Grandcamp and Caen. Behind these two follow-up divisions, and behind them two more divisions which would be afloat in ships on ‘D’ day. Given exceptionally good weather conditions it was calculated that we should have nine divisions ashore by the end of the sixth day….
Bedell Smith’s and my reactions were, I suppose, similar to those of any other trained soldier. We wanted a greater weight of assault, a quicker build-up, a larger airlift, and we thought the area of assault too restricted.
Indeed, by January 1944 commitment to Anvil was beginning to look a bit shaky, because of its perceived lack of utility to Overlord. For the next seven months Eisenhower would have to endure unrelenting pressure from Churchill and Montgomery, who were both intent on stripping away resources from Anvil, diverting the operation elsewhere or cancelling it altogether. Eisenhower was soon to rue the day that the Western Allies had committed themselves to a diversionary attack in support of Overlord.
Monty sent Ike a cable on 10 January 1944 telling him that he wanted to expand Overlord to a five-division assault, stating that this could easily be done if Anvil were to be cancelled. Montgomery argued strongly that Overlord must be enlarged in scope and requested an immediate decision:
This can be done if Anvil is reduced to a threat and the assault craft thus released are made available for Overlord…. The really important point is to get a decision now, at once. Provided we can get what I recommend then I consider Overlord has every chance of a quick success … Time is very short. Will you hurl yourself into the content and get us what we want.
Montgomery had put Eisenhower on the spot. He was clearly saying that if Ike did not give Overlord total priority over Anvil, then this would greatly hamper any chance of the Normandy invasion achieving ‘a quick success’. To Eisenhower and the US Chiefs of Staff, Anvil was a logical diversionary operation to keep German forces away from northern France. Now here was Montgomery, an enormously experienced and astute battle commander, saying that such an operation would negatively impact on the operational success of Normandy.
Inevitably, the question of resources remained a vexed subject. To extend Overlord meant more landing craft. South-East Asia had already been stripped of its landing craft, to the detriment of operations against the Japanese, while in the Mediterranean there were just sufficient craft to lift the two divisions assigned to Anvil. Churchill noted:
Having recently returned from the Mediterranean, he [Eisenhower] knew all about Anvil, and now as Supreme Commander of Overlord he could best judge the needs of both. It was agreed to take the ships from one division from Anvil and to use them for Overlord. The ships for a second division could be found by postponing Overlord till the June moon period. The output of new landing craft in that month would fill the gap.
Marshall favours Anvil
Only too aware that the US Chief of Staff General Marshall favoured Anvil, Eisenhower rejected Montgomery’s suggestion:
We must remember that the Russians had been led to expect that the operation would take place…. We had to make recommendations to the Combined Chiefs of Staff not later than 1 February as to the future of Anvil … We must consider whether we could not manage a successful Overlord without damaging Anvil.
He added they must not lose sight of the advantages to Overlord which Anvil would bring, and stressed that it was an important diversion, adding, ‘Furthermore, there are certain strong considerations not purely military which have been brought to my attention here and must be weighed.’
Marshall’s well-founded concern was that the Germans would undoubtedly take desperate measures to crush Overlord; this they could achieve by pinning down the Allies in Italy and then creating a large reserve by drawing spare divisions from the Balkans, Italy and southern France for operations in western France against any beachhead.
In Italy the Allies launched their offensive in the south on 12 January 1944, with Juin’s French Expeditionary Corps assaulting Cassino and the British X Corps attempting to exploit previous gains on the Garigliano river. Both assaults failed to break through the German Gustav Line, although some limited progress was made. A week later the US II Corps attacked from the centre of General Mark Clark’s US 5th Army, attempting to cross the Rapido river, but after just two days the Americans were forced to call a halt. The assault on the Gustav Line, the lynch-pin of the Allied plan, had bogged down. The lack of success at Cassino indicated there would be no progress towards Rome during March.
General Sir Harold Alexander, the Allied commander in Italy, was in the process of strengthening his twenty-one divisions by another seven. Nevertheless the Germans had twenty-four divisions in Italy, nineteen of which were committed to the fighting in the south. Alexander had stated that just six to eight German divisions would be sufficient to delay his advance on the Pisa-Rimini Line. This meant that if the Germans conducted a series of fighting withdrawals to or beyond the Apennines, then they could free up ten to fifteen divisions for combat in France, not to mention those already stationed in southern France.
Marshall signalled Eisenhower on the 16th, spelling out his concerns:
The news from the Italian Front indicates that there is no probability of a decisive tactical change in the situation from that which existed at the time you met with the British Chiefs of Staff to represent the US Chiefs of Staff in the Overlord–Anvil matter….
We know from Magic [intelligence intercepts] that the Germans are fearful of a landing in the northern Adriatic or on the coast of southern France. However, if they once become aware of the fact that the facilities for such a landing are not available they could rearrange their forces to your great disadvantage….
We are about to open discussions with the British Chiefs of Staff concerning Anvil and they have requested [General] Wilson to let them have his estimate on the Mediterranean by 18 March….
Marshall then added a get-out-of-jail clause, saying he would support Ike’s decision (regardless of the fact that he and most of the US Chiefs of Staff were firmly in favour of Anvil and that Eisenhower was answerable to him and Roosevelt):
It is my intention, with which [General] Arnold [Commander USAAF] agrees, that we will support your desire regarding the Anvil decision, whatever it may be. So the foregoing statement of my views is not to be accepted by you as pressure from me to have matters arranged other than the way you would wish to see them set up.
Ultimately this woolly statement was of no help whatsoever in guiding Eisenhower as he wrestled with the tricky questions of the size, shape and location of Operation Anvil. If anything, the US Chiefs of Staff had done him a great disservice, because deep down he knew that Marshall was very pro-Anvil.
Shortly after his arrival in London, Eisenhower brought all the players together to debate the issue. He commenced his historic role as Allied Supreme Commander on 20 January 1944 at Norfolk House. The following day he attended his first meeting with Montgomery, his appointed Commander in Chief of Overlord’s assault forces. Monty was only too well aware that while Ike supported the strengthening of Overlord, he did not believe that Anvil should be abandoned. In light of the friction that had already passed between the two it was a momentous meeting. Monty argued fervently that a wider invasion front would confuse and hamper the commitment of German reserves against Overlord. Eisenhower in contrast was clearly of the view that Anvil should not be impoverished for the sake of strengthening Overlord. This set the stage for the inevitable showdown between the Supreme Commander and the British Prime Minister.
In Italy in the meantime the US VI Corps set sail from Naples on 21 January, its destination Anzio. Operation Shingle, the landings at Anzio, took place the following day. These were intended to help turn the German Gustav Line, but the hoped-for early thrust inland to cut off the German defences did not occur and the invasion forces were hemmed in by elements of the 26th and Hermann Goering Panzer Divisions, as well as the 3rd and 16th SS Panzergrenadier Divisions supported by about 220 panzers. In two weeks of fighting the Anglo-American forces suffered almost 7,000 casualties.
Lieutenant-General Mark Clark estimated it would take three weeks for his US 5th Army to link up with the Anzio beachhead. By that stage there would be 130,000 men in the bridgehead, 90,000 of them American. Due to the lack of progress Lieutenant-General Lucian Truscott replaced General Lucas as the commander at Anzio. Of course, as long as the forces at Anzio remained bottled up, they were tying up valuable shipping which was keeping them resupplied.
Four major offensives took place between January and May 1944 before the Gustav Line was eventually broken by a combined assault of the US 5th Army and the British 8th Army (involving British, US, French, Polish and Canadian Corps) concentrated along a 20-mile front between Monte Cassino and the western coast. The forces at Anzio did not break out of their bridgehead until late May. Even then the opportunity to cut off and destroy a large part of the German 10th Army was lost when the Anzio forces changed their direction of attack to move parallel with the coast to capture Rome.
Just a deception
On 23 January Eisenhower spelt out his thinking on the utility of Anvil in a signal to Marshall; he claimed he saw it more as an actual operation than a deception dependent on resources. He also showed that he endorsed Montgomery’s thinking over Overlord:
I regard Anvil as an important contribution to Overlord as I feel that an assault will contain more enemy forces in southern France than a threat. The forces of both the US and French are in any case available; and the actual landing of these forces will increase the cooperation from resistance elements in France.
Overlord and Anvil must be viewed as one whole. If sufficient forces could be made available the ideal would be a five-divisional Overlord and a three-divisional Anvil or, at worst, a two-divisional Anvil. If insufficient forces are available for this, however, I am driven to the conclusion that we should adopt a five-divisional Overlord and a one-divisional Anvil, the latter being maintained as a threat until enemy weakness justifies its active employment. This solution should be adopted only as a last resort and after all other means and alternatives have failed to provide the necessary strength by the end of May for a five-divisional Overlord and two-divisional Anvil.
In truth it is likely that Eisenhower’s decision was influenced by the Skyscraper plan, which proposed a cross-Channel attack in the spring of 1943 employing an assault force of 4 divisions, with a follow up of 6 divisions, supported by 4 airborne divisions. He may have also drawn on Operation Harlequin (part of the Cockade plan to prevent German divisions in the west being redeployed to the Eastern Front) that proposed a feint towards the Pas-de-Calais, but the lack of landing craft led to it being cancelled.
The British Chiefs of Staff, backing Montgomery, were also of the view that Overlord should be five divisions strong, whatever the cost to Anvil, and that the latter should be of one or two divisional strength. Rightly, the US Chiefs of Staff saw Eisenhower’s threat in lieu of an attack as a waste of time and insisted that it should be nothing short of two divisions. ‘On this telegram,’ Churchill later noted, ‘I minuted “Apparently the two-division lift for Anvil is given priority over Overlord. This is directly counter to the views of Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery”.’
Shortly afterwards the British Chiefs of Staff, in consultation with Churchill, sent the Americans a lengthy telegram, the gist of which was that Overlord was paramount. It was clear by this stage that Churchill was firmly, if not vehemently, against Anvil. He pointed out that:
They [the British Chiefs of Staff] questioned the wisdom of undertaking Anvil at all, in view of the way things were going in Italy, and pointed out that when Anvil first found favour at Tehran we expected that the Germans would withdraw to a line north of Rome. But now it was clear beyond all doubt that the Germans intended to resist our advance in Italy to the utmost. They also pointed out that the distance between the south of France and the beaches of Normandy was nearly 500 miles, and that a diversion could be created from Italy or some other point just as well as through the Rhône valley. Anvil in fact was too far away to help Overlord.
Whatever transpired, it was clear that Anvil could not be conducted in parallel with Overlord as originally envisaged. On 24 January Brooke recorded in his diary:
Had a long Chiefs of Staff meeting at which Eisenhower turned up to discuss his paper proposing increase of cross-Channel operations at expense of South France operations. I entirely agree with the proposal, but it is certainly not his idea and is one of Monty’s. Eisenhower has got absolutely no strategical outlook. He makes up, however, by the way he works for good cooperation between allies.
On 1 February 1944 the Combined Chiefs of Staff approved the proposals for a revised Overlord assault, to take place no later than 31 May, deploying five divisions and two airborne divisions. They promised extra landing craft but noted the US Chiefs’ insistence on a two-division assault in southern France soon after.
The revised plan for Overlord using five divisions had major implications for the amphibious forces required to lift and protect such a force. It was assessed by Eisenhower’s headquarters that they would need an additional 47 Landing Ship Tank, 7 Landing Ship Infantry, 144 Landing Craft Tank and 72 Landing Craft Infantry to transport the troops and their armour. To safeguard this greatly enlarged task force the escorts would have to be enhanced by 24 destroyers and 28 motor launches supported by 4 flotillas of minesweepers. A bigger invasion front also meant a larger bombardment group requiring an extra 2 battleships, 5 cruisers and 12 destroyers.
Such resources would have to be found elsewhere and these requirements were clearly a threat to other amphibious operations. Also they had to be in place six weeks before D-Day. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were quick to question how Eisenhower’s staff had come up with these figures and reminded him that 92 LCTs and 25 LCI(L) were currently out of service. They also questioned the British shipyards’ ability to churn out 96 LCTs a month. Eisenhower’s somewhat terse response was that almost all LSIs, LSTs, LCIs and LCTs were serviceable and these had been taken into account. He also demanded that a firm commitment be
given over the provision of the additional resources needed for Overlord.
The reception of the Anzio landings had shown how the Germans intended to behave; having deployed their reserves, it was clear they intended to keep as many Allied divisions tied down there as possible. ‘This campaign’, General ‘Pug’ Ismay, Churchill’s Military Secretary, wrote to his boss on 4 February, ‘will provide in full measure the diversion to Overlord which it had been intended to create by Anvil. Thus it looks as though Alexander will require a proportion of the French troops and American divisions allocated to Anvil.’
Certainly Operation Shingle was likely to provide important lessons for the opening of the Second Front, and understandably the Allied Chiefs of Staff kept a close watch on developing events. On 8 February Churchill asked Admiral Cunningham for the LST shipment rates for military vehicles over the last two weeks. He was not encouraged by an alarming disparity in the figures, remarking:
I had hoped that we were hurling a wild cat on to the shore, but all we had got was a stranded whale. The spectacle of 18,000 vehicles accumulated ashore by the fourteenth day for only 70,000 men, or less than four men to a vehicle, including drivers and attendants, though they did not move more than twelve to fourteen miles, was astonishing. We were apparently still stronger than the Germans in fighting power. The ease with which they moved their pieces about the board and the rapidity with which they adjusted the perilous gaps they had to make on their southern front was most impressive. It all seemed to give us adverse data for Overlord.
Operation Dragoon Page 6