Wilson reasoned that if Alexander were given a free hand, he could reach the Po valley before Anvil was ever launched. Inadvertently Marshall then helped Hitler, for he and his colleagues were so dead set against operations in the Balkans that he decided to force the issue in favour of an invasion of southern France. To that end, once back in Washington Marshall sought the intervention of President Roosevelt.
Likewise, once the Allies’ Normandy bridgehead was firmly established, de Gaulle’s immediate concern was to ensure that Anvil was implemented. Although no date had been agreed, he was determined to make sure he was consulted and that French troops would play a major role. He flew to Algiers on 18 June and was informed that a breakthrough had been achieved in Italy and that General Juin’s troops had distinguished themselves.
De Gaulle’s only distraction was General Alexander, whose success in Italy was prompting him to call for a drive through the Brenner Pass to the Danube. This was sound strategic thinking and was in line with Churchill’s vision; the only snag was that it would require Anvil’s resources. De Gaulle flew to Rome and was partly swayed by Pope Pius XII, who expressed concern over future communist dominance of eastern and central Europe.
Nonetheless, Anvil remained a matter of honour for the French, and to regard southern France as a strategic irrelevance could only be seen as a national slur. De Gaulle stipulated to Alexander that French forces in Italy must be ready to depart from 25 July. He then flew to America to see Roosevelt on 6 July. Many expected their meeting to be a gruelling affair: the two men had first met at Anfa and it had not gone well, and since then they had been engaged in a ceaseless political duel. Quite remarkably, de Gaulle – a two-star general with few troops and head of a provisional government with no country, no capital and no constitution – retained the upper hand.
Momentum for Overlord could not be sustained as the weather began to deteriorate and on 19 June a storm blew up that halted all shipping in the Channel for three days. It was so severe that the two artificial concrete Mulberry harbours had begun to disintegrate by 21 June, and the one off Omaha beach was written off and cannibalised to repair the British one at Arromanches. The build-up virtually ground to a halt, delaying 20,000 vehicles and 140,000 tons of stores, and a breathing space was thereby granted to the Germans.
By late June Eisenhower was beginning to fret as Montgomery’s offensive plans in Normandy were repeatedly postponed due to the weather; his worries were exacerbated by the fact that on 14 June Anvil had reared its ugly head again as the Combined Chiefs asked him to reconsider launching it. On the 22nd Lieutenant-General J.H. Gammell, Wilson’s Chief of Staff, came up from the Mediterranean to brief Eisenhower. Gammell found him in an agitated state, insisting that he wanted Anvil launched immediately regardless of the impact it would have on the Allied offensive in Italy and despite the fact that it would not provide instant dividends for Montgomery.
Eisenhower’s agitation may have been caused at least in part by the fact that on that date, 22 June 1944, Stalin had upheld his promise made at Tehran and launched Operation Bagration, which was designed to liberate Minsk and drive the German Army out of Byelorussia. The near-total annihilation of Army Group Centre in the space of just under two weeks cost Hitler 300,000 dead, 250,000 wounded and about 120,000 captured. Only about 20,000 troops from Army Group Centre escaped unscathed. In addition, Hitler’s forces lost 2,000 panzers and 57,000 other vehicles. Stalin’s losses were 60,000 killed, 110,000 wounded and about 8,000 missing, as well as 2,957 tanks, 2,447 artillery pieces and 822 aircraft destroyed.
For Hitler, Bagration was a vastly more serious blow than the catastrophe at Stalingrad or the assault in Normandy. The destruction of Army Group Centre was a bigger and swifter disaster than the loss of Army Group B’s 7th Army and 5th Panzer Army in mid-August 1944 at Falaise. Although overall total German losses in France were comparable to those in Byelorussia, the former occurred over a two and a half month period, not in a matter of weeks. Stalin’s D-Day was a formidable achievement.
In India, despite Rangoon’s vulnerability to British seaborne attack, the Japanese were preoccupied with their overland offensive into India. This was directed against both Imphal and Kohima, the capture of which would have forestalled General Slim’s offensive into Burma. The Japanese supply lines, though, could not cope with such a major undertaking and the Japanese Army suffered a defeat from which it could never recover in that theatre of operations. By 22 June Slim had halted the four-month U-Go offensive, having killed, wounded or captured 53,500 Japanese troops from an original force of 85,000. Allied casualties were 16,700, about a quarter of them lost in the bitter fighting at Kohima. Nevertheless the Japanese were not broken and fell back to the Chindwin river, with the Allies conducting an indifferent pursuit.
‘Wreck one great campaign’
Back in Normandy, Montgomery was never the easiest of personalities to deal with, but the row over Anvil tested Eisenhower’s patience with him to breaking point. Major-General Simpson, Director of Military Operations at the War Office, noted Ike’s telegram of 26 June sent to the Combined Chiefs of Staff: ‘I attach such importance to the early launching of Anvil that I am prepared to do my utmost to ensure its success. Admiral Ramsey and General Montgomery share my conviction with regards to the importance of Anvil.’
That of course was completely untrue. Monty was furious and signalled Brooke on 1 July: ‘Want to make it quite clear that I have had no discussion with him about Anvil and do NOT know what his views are.’ He had not seen Eisenhower for two weeks, though he was due at Monty’s headquarters on 2 July and Monty wanted to know if he should discuss it. In the event it mattered little, as Brooke recorded in his diary that day: ‘COS met at 10.30am to discuss PM’s proposed wire to President [Roosevelt] deciding to accept their decision to do Anvil. At 11am we met the PM and told him of the minor amendments which were wanted. He was in a good mood and they all went through easily.’
In fact Brooke knew that Churchill had already given in to Eisenhower over the telephone that day and counselled Monty not to raise the matter, as it would do more harm than good. Ike finally prevailed over his subordinate:
Although in the planning days of early 1944 Montgomery had advocated the complete abandonment of the southern operation in order to secure more landing craft for Overlord, he now, in early August, agreed with me that the attack should go in as planned.
Churchill would not roll over so easily. In London Eisenhower soon detected Churchill’s resistance to an invasion of mainland France:
It quickly became obvious that the Prime Minister was not oversold on its value, at least in the early spring of 1944. He felt that it would be far better for the Western Allies to wait for more significant signs of a German collapse. Sometimes, in his contemplation of the possibilities before us, he spoke as if he were addressing a multitude. He would say, ‘When I think of the beaches of Normandy choked with the flower of American and British youth, and when, in my mind’s eye, I see the tides running red with their blood, I have my doubts … I have my doubts.’
Churchill had been working himself into the ground. General Brooke remarked of him on 7 May: ‘He said that he could always sleep well, eat well and especially drink well, but that he no longer jumped out of bed the way he used to, and felt as if he would be quite content to spend the whole day in bed. I have never yet heard him admit that he was beginning to fail.’
Even on the eve of Overlord, Churchill did everything in his power to stop the invasion going ahead. He foresaw the war becoming a horrible slog, which it did in Normandy, but he greatly underestimated the Red Army, which, completely rejuvenated after its ghastly defeats of 1941 and 1942, was now making major inroads into German-occupied territories, with its eye firmly set on eastern Europe.
On the very day before D-Day Churchill called for an assault on the French Atlantic coast from Bordeaux to St Nazaire, employing up to fourteen assault divisions, with six of them withdrawn from Italy. Despite his und
eniable skills as a grand strategist, Churchill clearly failed to appreciate – or perhaps simply ignored – the massive logistical effort required for modern warfare, as he felt that this second assault could be conducted within a few weeks of Overlord.
When the British Chiefs of Staff prevailed upon him not to raise this idea with Roosevelt, he reverted to his desire for victory in Italy with the capture of Trieste, a push through the Alps and the misnamed Ljubljana Gap, and the seizure of Prague and Vienna. Again Churchill was wilfully dismissing or simply optimistically ignoring the realities of the situation on the ground in Italy. It had taken Allied forces nearly a year to get to Rome, and the weather and the terrain would continue to limit their advance. General Brooke tried to point this out to Churchill, but the Prime Minister would not be swayed:
We had a long evening of it listening to Winston’s strategic arguments … I pointed out that, even on Alex’s [General Alexander] optimistic reckoning, the advance beyond the Pisa-Rimini Line would not start till after September; namely we should embark on a campaign through the Alps in winter. It was hard to make him realise that, if we took the season of the year and the topography of the country in league against us, we should have three enemies instead of one. We were kept up till close to 1am and accomplished nothing.
It mattered little, as the Americans were having none of it. Eisenhower put it bluntly to Churchill on 23 June: ‘France is the decisive theatre. The decision was taken long ago by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. In my view, the resources of Great Britain and the US will not permit us to maintain two major theatres in the European war, each with decisive missions.’
In reality, Eisenhower really meant American resources, which he was not prepared to divert to support Churchill’s obsession with breaking through in Italy. There was to be no more dithering; Eisenhower was committed to a course of action and would not be distracted. On the 24th the American Joint Chiefs of Staff issued orders to the Chiefs of Staff and the British commander in the Mediterranean, General Wilson, to release forces for Anvil. Churchill made the British Chiefs of Staff reply that this was unacceptable, but the stony response from the Joint Chiefs was that the subject was no longer open to debate.
Churchill now stepped up his campaign to derail Anvil and cabled President Roosevelt, pleading: ‘Let’s not wreck one great campaign for the sake of another. Both can be won.’ But Roosevelt was adamant, and on 29 June he cabled back: ‘In view of the Soviet-British-American agreement, reached at Tehran, I cannot agree without Stalin’s approval to the use of force or equipment elsewhere.’ This, of course, was not strictly true, but it meant that Churchill was essentially whistling in the wind, though he refused to accept this to the last.
Roosevelt was a wily political player and at the end of June he pointed out to Churchill that he would never weather any setbacks in Normandy if it were known he had committed substantial forces to the Balkans which could have assisted in the fighting in France. Churchill was aghast and telegraphed back immediately, pointing out that at the Tehran conference:
You emphasised to me the possibilities of a move eastwards when Italy was conquered, and specifically mentioned Istria. No one involved in these discussions has ever thought of moving armies into the Balkans; but Istria and Trieste in Italy are strategic and political positions, which you saw yourself very clearly might exercise profound and widespread reactions, especially now after the Russian advances.
Possibly out of a sense of fair play, or in an effort to find a casting vote, Roosevelt suggested raising the matter with Stalin. The British Prime Minister saw this as a pointless exercise, knowing full well that the Soviet leader would prefer the British and American armies to be tied up in France, leaving eastern, central and southern Europe to the Red Army.
Always a man of action, Churchill was all for seeing Roosevelt in person to persuade him of the merits of the Adriatic operation. Instructions were issued on 30 June for Churchill’s personal flying boat and Lancaster bomber to be put on standby for a flight to Washington. He telegraphed Roosevelt on 1 July:
What can I do, Mr President, when your Chiefs of Staff insist on casting aside our Italian offensive campaign, with all its dazzling possibilities, relieving Hitler of all his anxieties in the Po basin (vide Boniface), and when we are to see the integral life of this campaign drained off into the Rhône valley in the belief that it will in several months carry effective help to Eisenhower so far away in the north?
Churchill could not help adding, ‘I am sure that if we could have met, as I so frequently proposed, we should have reached a happy agreement.’
On 2 July General Slim and Air Marshal Sir John Baldwin, Commander of the 3rd Tactical Air Force, met with Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander in South-East Asia, to discuss operations after the victory at Imphal. The paucity of landing craft in the area again reared its ugly head. Among the options was Plan Z, the capture of Rangoon by an amphibious assault. Slim was of the view that this was ‘strategically most attractive, but I doubted if we could get in time either the equipment or forces that would be required for an amphibious attack on a defended Rangoon. I thought our “Operation SOB” [Sea or Bust] would get us there at least as quickly.’ He was right, for the resources for an amphibious attack would not be in place until 1945.
Churchill, now preoccupied with the fighting in Normandy, the menace of Hitler’s V-2 flying bombs and the Red Army’s sweeping advances, which had taken its troops into Poland, flew to Cherbourg on 20 July. He toured the Normandy battlefield and visited Montgomery. In the meantime, at the end of June General Wilson withdrew the bulk of the American units assigned to Anvil from the front lines in Italy, as well as the four French divisions, but all were exhausted and in need of rest and recuperation. Churchill was conscious that the Allied forces in Italy had already lost seven divisions (four American and three British), which were sent back to Britain for the cross-Channel assault, and the loss of a further seven for Anvil seemed the final straw. He feared that any further weakening of the Allied forces in Italy would render them unable to destroy the German armies there.
Half-way round the world the Americans launched an amphibious assault against Guam, the largest of the Marianas Islands, on 21 July. It took until 11 August to subdue the Japanese defenders; a month later they set about Peleliu. It would take a month of bitter fighting to secure this island. In total 50 per cent of all LST losses would occur in the Pacific, illustrating the intensity of the amphibious operations in that part of the world.
Driven to distraction
Throughout July Churchill bombarded Eisenhower with cables, driving the Allied Supreme Commander to distraction. In mid-July he drafted a petulant message to Roosevelt: ‘This obviously cannot continue, and, with the greatest of respect, I must request a further and formal discussion upon the matter … We are entitled to press for better and more equal treatment. We have as many troops and forces on the whole in Europe, including both theatres, as you have yet brought into action.’ He then went on to threaten to break up the Combined Chiefs of Staff structure and joint commands in the field. Luckily, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden persuaded him not to send it.
Eisenhower recalled: ‘This argument, beginning almost coincidentally with the break-through [in Normandy] in late July, lasted throughout the first ten days of August.’ Even as late as the week before the landings Churchill sought to bully Eisenhower into getting his own way.
By early August Brooke, unlike Churchill, was ready to call it a day and acquiesce over American demands for Operation Dragoon (the name had been officially changed from Anvil on the 1st). He knew that the unending squabbling over the diverting of resources from Italy to southern France would ultimately prove to be counter-productive, and was sensible enough to appreciate that the campaign in Italy was a means to an end and not an end in itself. It dissipated Hitler’s ability to strike back in northern France and in White Russia. The fact that the US Chiefs of Staff had opted to withhold naval power in favour of th
e Pacific, thereby stymieing attacks on Italy’s exposed coastline and then by thwarting Alexander’s victorious advance meant it would be unreasonable to view Italy as a decisive theatre of operations. He wrote to General Wilson on 2 August saying as much:
It was a great pity that we were defeated over Anvil in the end: Alex’s talk about his advance to Vienna killed all our arguments dead. It’s a pity because I do not see Alex advancing on Vienna this year unless he does it in the face of a crumbling Germany and in that case he has ample forces for the task and greater than he will be able to administer over snow-covered mountain passes. However, I do not feel that Anvil can do much harm at this stage of the war, and it may well prove of some use in introducing French forces to reinforce the Maquis.
Brooke would later regret this, but he knew that General Alexander’s performance had helped persuade Eisenhower and others that the advance in Italy should effectively be put on hold.
Churchill lunched with Eisenhower at his headquarters near Portsmouth on 5 August. With the Breton ports now within their grasp, Churchill argued that the capture of Marseilles was unnecessary, as the fresh divisions from America would now be able to come via Brittany.
This meant that those forces earmarked for Dragoon would be better employed in Italy and the Balkans. Eisenhower was not swayed, insisting that ‘the maintenance and administrative position would never be equal to the final conquest of Germany until we have secured Antwerp in the north and Marseilles or equivalent port facilities on our right’. He also pointed out that the distance from Brest to Metz was greater than that from Marseilles to Metz.
Operation Dragoon Page 9