More importantly, just an hour’s drive to the south the armoured Combat Command B of the US 9th Armored Division supported by elements of the US 78th ‘Lightning’ Infantry Division reached Remagen at the same time. Dramatically they seized the Ludendorff railway bridge, the only remaining span over the Rhine, before the Germans could destroy it. The Americans had secured a bridgehead two weeks before Montgomery was ready to go. Ironically this bridge had originally been constructed during the First World War to move men and material to the Western Front. The bridge had two rail lines and a footpath, but one line had been boarded over to allow road traffic. The Americans wanted Simpson’s US 9th Army to cross at Urdingen, but Montgomery refused, perhaps smarting that he had lost the opportunity to breach the Rhine defences first. Ten days after its capture, the battered Ludendorff Bridge fell into the Rhine, killing twenty-eight American soldiers. Its loss mattered little as by the 21st the Americans had five pontoon bridges over the Rhine at Remagen. In contrast, its loss cost Field Marshal von Rundstedt his job as Commander-in-Chief West. He was replaced by Albert Kesselring, a very able general and hero of the Italian front, but there was little he could do.
Operation Undertone – the offensive to clear the Saar-Palatinate triangle south of the river Moselle, representing the third stage of the Allies’ advance on the Rhine – was launched on 12 and 15 March by Patton and Patch respectively. This triangle was a major German salient jutting out into the Allied line, and was held by Army Group G, now under SS-General Paul Hausser. He had lost control of the 19th Army after its evacuation from Colmar, but still retained General Hans Felber’s 7th Army and General Hermann Foertsch’s 1st Army.
Patch, reinforced by the 42nd and 63rd Infantry and 10th Armored Divisions, opened his attack with the 3rd and 45th Divisions, along with the 3rd Algerian Infantry. In a parallel assault known as Operation Earthquake the 3rd Division attacked near Rimling and within half an hour had passed into German territory.
The US VI Corps’ job was to clear northern Alsace and drive along the Rhine valley, and the 42nd, 103rd, 36th and 3rd Algerian Divisions, supported by the 14th Armoured Division, duly struck across the Rothbach and Moder rivers. Three days later the 42nd and 103rd Divisions crossed the German frontier. The 3rd Algerian Division, supported by the French 5th Armoured Division, was given the job of seizing Lauterbourg and the crossings over the Lauter.
Patton’s 3rd Army crossed the Moselle on 13 March, then on the night of the 22nd he further stole Montgomery’s thunder by throwing the US 5th ‘Red Diamond’ Infantry Division across the Rhine at Nierstein and Oppenheim south-west of Frankfurt. Hitler immediately declared this a greater threat than the bridgehead at Remagen, as this section of the Rhine was virtually unguarded. Hitler wanted to send a panzer brigade but all he had available were five disabled panzers at the tank depot at Sennelager. By the evening of the 24th Patton had seized 19,000 prisoners.
South of Koblenz Patton’s US VIII Corps pushed the US 89th ‘Rolling W’ and 87th ‘Golden Acorn’ Divisions across the Rhine at Boppard and St Goar at 0200 hours on the 26th. The powerful 89th Division was supported by the 748th Tank Battalion, the 811th Tank Destroyer Battalion, the 550th Anti-aircraft Battalion (AW) and Company A of the 91st Chemical Mortar Battalion. Altogether the division plus supporting and attached forces numbered well over 23,000 men. To oppose this steamroller, the Germans had a number of Luftwaffe anti-aircraft battalions fighting as infantry and Volkssturm home guard. They were armed with small arms, machine-guns, 20mm and 88mm anti-aircraft guns, some field artillery and a few panzers.
The US 354th and 353rd Infantry Regiments spearheaded the crossing, with the 355th in reserve. The 354th attacked with its 1st Battalion towards Wellmich and its 2nd towards St Goarshausen from St Goar. Over a company and a half of the 1st Battalion (Companies A and C) reached the east bank in the first wave with little resistance during the crossing, but they came under heavy fire from the hillside behind Wellmich once ashore. To make matters more difficult, the swift current and the machine-gun and 20mm fire prevented the assault boats from returning to the west. On its way over, the 2nd Battalion faced point-blank fire just above the water from machine-guns and 20mm anti-aircraft guns. Nonetheless, a pontoon bridge was completed between St Goar and St Goarshausen the following day and over 2,700 prisoners were eventually taken.
By late March Patch’s US 7th Army, in conjunction with Patton’s push from the north, had overrun the Saar-Palatinate triangle. The region was in chaos and the German 1st and 7th Armies had lost 100,000 men taken prisoner in the space of two weeks. They had gone from controlling twenty-three divisions to losing 75 per cent of their combat effectives in one stroke. In the meantime the US 7th Army’s zone west of the Rhine had been cleared of German resistance. They crossed at Worms on 26 March, allowing a break-out towards Darmstadt.
By early April the 19th Army was of little more than divisional strength, with about 10,500 combat effectives; it was still holding the Siegfried Line and the Black Forest, but was at risk of being outflanked. The German 1st Army was facing the US VI and XXI Corps with just 7,500 troops. The German 7th Army was in even more dire straits, with a combat strength of just 4,000; it, too, was forced back by the US 3rd Army and US 7th Army’s XV Corps.
With the end now in sight, the only real front line on the Western front ran from the Löwenstein Hills to Nuremberg. This was defended by a motley collection of 15,000 men supported by 100 panzers and self-propelled guns and twenty battalions of artillery. On 22 April the Americans and the French 1st Army reached the Danube, and this advance was followed by an attack on the city of Ulm.
By 1 May 1945 the German 1st Army under General Foertsch could muster fewer than 500 combat effectives, supported by about 7,000 SS troops. Likewise the 19th Army, commanded by General Erich Brandenberg, was just 3,000 men strong and had no divisions capable of effective defensive combat. The latter formally surrendered at 1500 hours on 5 May to the US VI Corps and the French 1st Army; on the same day Foertsch also surrendered his command to the US 3rd Infantry Division.
Between August 1944 and May 1945 Patch’s US 7th Army suffered 15,271 killed and 58,342 wounded. The Americans had advanced some 1,450 km since landing on the Riviera on 15 August 1944. During this period the French I Corps alone sustained losses of 18,306, including 3,518 dead. The French Army suffered another 43,670 casualties helping clear the German forces from Tunisia and in the Italian campaign.
By now, partly thanks to Roosevelt’s and Eisenhower’s efforts, de Gaulle’s French forces constituted the fourth largest Allied army after the Soviet Union, the USA and the United Kingdom, with 1.3 million men under arms. These forces included seven infantry and three armoured divisions fighting against Germany. From a standing start in 1943 this was a considerable achievement and was testimony to de Gaulle’s ambition that France should sit as an equal with the ‘Big Three’.
Chapter Twelve
Churchill and Monty were Right
‘As we had intended it to be,’ wrote de Gaulle after the war, ‘the Allied battle of France was also the battle of Frenchmen for France. The French were fighting “a united battle for a united country”.’ It was he who had ensured that de Lattre and Leclerc had been involved in the defining moments of the liberation of France. After all, it was they who had driven into Marseilles, Paris and Toulon to the frantic cheers of their fellow Frenchmen. De Gaulle had placed himself at the head of the liberation of France and would reap the benefits in post-war France. There was nothing Roosevelt or Churchill could do about it.
With a profound sense of occasion Winston Churchill announced the liberation of France to the House of Commons on 28 September 1944:
What a transformation now meets our eyes! Not only Paris, but practically the whole of France, has been liberated as if by enchantment … the foul enemy … has fled, losing perhaps 400,000 killed and wounded, and leaving in our hands nearly half a million prisoners. Besides this, there may be 200,000 cut off in the coastal fortr
esses or in Holland …
Churchill then went on to discuss the battles for Normandy, Arnhem and the Channel ports, before turning to the contribution made by Operation Dragoon:
While this great operation [Market Garden] has been taking its course, an American and French landing on the Riviera coast, actively assisted by a British airborne brigade, a British air force and the Royal Navy, has led with inconceivable rapidity to the capture of Toulon and Marseilles, to the freeing of the great strip of the Riviera coast, and to the successful advance of General Patch’s army up the Rhône valley. This army, after taking over 80,000 prisoners, joined hands with General Eisenhower, and has passed under his command.
Although Churchill had swallowed his pride and publicly admitted that Dragoon had been a success, he could not help but put in a rejoinder pointing out that it was D-Day that had ensured its success. He also omitted to mention that he had opposed the operation with a vengeance:
When I had the opportunity on 15 August of watching – alas, from afar – the landing at St Tropez, it would have seemed audacious to hope for such swift and important results. They have, however, under the spell of the victories in the north, already been gained in superabundance, and in less than half the time prescribed and expected in the plans which were prepared beforehand. So much for the fighting in France.
Churchill then paused for effect as the gathered British Members of Parliament listened intently to his measured oration before adding:
We have, I regret to say, lost upwards of 90,000 men, killed, wounded and missing, and the United States, including General Patch’s army, over 145,000. Such is the price in blood paid by the English-speaking democracies for the actual liberation of the soil of France.
We can only wonder if Churchill, looking around at the gathered faces, posed himself the question as to whether de Gaulle and France would be grateful for this sacrifice. Both Britain and France would soon have empires to reclaim, although the Americans had said all along that they would not and could not support this. Nevertheless, the reality was that American-supplied weapons would help France in her attempts to cling on in Indochina and Algeria.
Military historian Philip Warner was altogether dismissive of the achievements of Operation Dragoon, subscribing to Churchill’s strategic school of thought:
The aim of this operation was to clear southern France of Germans, which it did, thus providing ten more divisions for use against the Allied advance in the north. The south of France was of no tactical value to the Allies and the troops they used in its invasion would have been more usefully employed in Italy, from which most of them had been taken. Tactically it would have been far more sensible to leave those ten German divisions in the south of France waiting for an invasion which never came. This represented one of the many divergences in Allied opinion on strategy.
Warner’s argument certainly has some merit, especially in light of Hitler’s obsession with not giving up ground and his constant orders to his generals to stand fast. Inevitably, of course, those remaining divisions in the south of France would have been drawn northwards and back to the German border regardless. Churchill knew from Enigma decrypts of German top secret signals that they would not fight for the south of France with any great vigour, whereas in contrast they would defend the Italian passes leading into Austria at all costs. This fighting would also inevitably bring in German reinforcements from elsewhere.
Churchill was right
In Churchill’s own version of events he gave the impression that he had favoured Normandy, and was simply worried about timings and casualties there. After the disaster at Dieppe, one can perhaps forgive such fears. But contemporary documents paint a different picture: his intention was always to see through his Mediterranean strategy rather than commit to a direct assault on Nazi Germany. His desire to enter central Europe was supported in 1943 by military considerations rather than just political ones. Churchill’s hope had always been that an invasion of Germany would only be conducted in the wake of a military and political collapse.
In the event Churchill’s concerns about Overlord proved largely groundless; only at Omaha Beach were casualties excessively high. Further inland, though, events did not pan out as hoped. Despite the Allies’ overwhelming superiority the Germans hung on grimly and had to be ground down by costly frontal assaults. Ultimately, though, it was a contest that Hitler could not win.
However you look at it, in strategic terms Dragoon was a nugatory exercise. It was not conducted in parallel with Overlord owing to shortages of amphibious transport, thereby losing its diversionary impact. In addition, the success of Overlord meant Army Group G would have been forced to withdraw from southern France anyway to avoid being cut off, regardless of an invasion in the south. The timing of Dragoon meant it did not take any pressure off the Allies fighting in Normandy, since Blaskowitz’s better units, especially his panzer divisions, had already been drawn north by 15 August. By then Army Group B’s 5th Panzer Army and 7th Army in northern France were already trapped in the developing Falaise Pocket along with Blaskowitz’s armoured units redeployed from the south. Flight over the Seine became an imperative regardless of what was taking place in the Riviera.
Dragoon clearly had no discernable impact on the fighting in Normandy. In mid-August 1944, even as part of Field Marshal Walter Model’s Army Group B was being overwhelmed in the Falaise Pocket, far to the south Patton’s US 3rd Army was driving all out for the Seine to create a much bigger trap. His forces were on the line Orleans–Chartres–Dreux facing little or no opposition the day after Dragoon commenced. He pressed on, hoping to swing north and trap the Germans against the river. This hope was thwarted in part by the Allies themselves and in part by the Germans’ quick thinking.
It seemed as if Hitler’s forces in Normandy were on the verge of a second and much bigger disaster than Falaise. Unfortunately for the Allies, determined German resistance held up the US XV Corps as Model’s retreating troops fought desperate rearguard actions along the Seine. After the Falaise Pocket had been overrun, Model conducted a highly successful rearguard operation at Rouen at the end of August to save the survivors of his exhausted and scattered command. In no small part thanks to the rearguard action at Rouen there was no second Falaise Pocket; frustratingly for the Allies, the bulk of Army Group B west of the Seine – some 240,000 troops, 30,000 vehicles and 135 panzers – escaped over the river.
The surviving staffs of the 5th Panzer Army and the LVIII Panzer Corps were pulled out of the line and responsibility for the front was assumed by 7th Army once more. After Falaise, German armoured vehicle losses were modest considering the rapidity of the Allies’ advance: only 60 panzers and 250 other armoured vehicles were left on the west bank of the Seine, and only about another 10,000 troops were captured. Most of the survivors of the 5th Panzer Army, the XLVII and LVIII Panzer Corps and the I SS and II SS Panzer Corps were withdrawn to Germany behind the relative safety of the long-neglected Siegfried Line. There was nothing Dragoon could have done to influence these events.
Despite Operation Dragoon, the rest of Army Group G also withdrew in good order, blocking the strategic Belfort Gap until almost the end of the year. The failure of Dragoon to trap Blaskowitz’s forces in the south of France meant that Army Group G was able not only to hold the Belfort Gap but also to obstruct the Allies’ efforts to secure Metz and Nancy. If Dragoon had not taken place, the German forces in southern France would still have been able to withdraw largely unmolested. The requirement to smash these divisions would inevitably have fallen on the Allied air forces, and as they had not managed to achieve this feat in Normandy it is unlikely they would have been any more successful in the south.
Having escaped Dragoon, Blaskowitz’s forces contributed to what the Germans dubbed ‘the miracle in the west’, playing a key role in stabilising the German front line before the West-wall, despite the failure of Hitler’s Lorraine counter-offensive. In just short of thirty days Blaskowitz had withdrawn Army Group G with
some 240,000 men up to 800 km, and two-thirds of his combat troops had escaped. They in turn were able to counter-attack the pursuing enemy and establish a continuous defensive line.
After Operation Market Garden had failed in September, Eisenhower opted for a broad-front strategy, leading to costly fighting along the entire length of the Franco-German border, involving those forces who had pushed up from the south. The Allies never did achieve a decisive breakthrough in Italy, proving in Churchill’s mind that he had been right all along. Then, following the defeat of the Germans’ surprise Ardennes offensive, Eisenhower was unnecessarily distracted by the Colmar Pocket.
‘Great strategic mistake’
Eisenhower’s ultimately decisive support for the seizure of a port in southern France was based on the notion that a broad-front campaign would be fought from the North Sea to Switzerland. He was also swayed by the bloody stalemate that prevailed in Normandy during late June and through July. He did not altogether appreciate Montgomery’s belief that a single thrust in Normandy would break through the German defences after they had become unbalanced. Anzio clearly weighed heavily on his mind, but by the time Dragoon was implemented it was an academic exercise.
As far as Stalin was concerned, Overlord was of great strategic value but Dragoon was simply of political significance. After the sweeping success of Operation Bagration and the follow-up operations in June–August 1944 that cut great swathes through central and southern Europe, the Western Allies’ invasion of southern France was irrelevant to his ambitions. By early September the Red Army was rolling into the Balkans. Only an invasion in the Adriatic might have spoiled Stalin’s plans, but with the Allies bottled up in Italy he was given a free hand.
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