Because of Ike’s unstinting support for de Gaulle, liberated France was spared the civil war Washington feared. And although de Gaulle did not always march in step with Allied policy, he could be relied on to keep France united. That was no small blessing.
Eisenhower’s most serious problem, and the one that caused him the most anguish, was to ensure that the landings on the southern coast of France near Marseilles (DRAGOON) took place on schedule. Although the landings had been agreed to at Teheran, Churchill and the British chiefs of staff continued to oppose the operation. It was, said Eisenhower, “one of the longest-sustained arguments that I had with Prime Minister Churchill throughout the period of the war.”39 In Churchill’s view, the Riviera landing was “bleak and sterile,” and would have no effect on OVERLORD for many months.40 Instead, he proposed to reinforce the campaign in Italy, mount a landing on the Istria Peninsula in the Adriatic, capture Trieste, and move through the Ljubljana gap into Austria and Hungary.
Eisenhower objected strenuously. He told Marshall that the Combined Chiefs had “long ago decided to make Western Europe the base from which to conduct decisive operations against Germany,” and that “to contemplate wandering off overland via Trieste to Ljubljana is to engage in conjecture to an unwarranted degree. We must concentrate our forces to the greatest possible degree and put them into battle in the decisive theater.”41 When the Joint Chiefs supported Ike, Churchill carried his case to the president, and was again rebuffed. “I am impressed by Eisenhower’s statement that [DRAGOON] is of transcendent importance,” said FDR. “Since the agreement was made at Teheran to mount [DRAGOON], I cannot accept, without consultation with Stalin, any course of action which abandons this operation.” In his own hand, Roosevelt added a paragraph telling Churchill that “for purely political considerations over here I would never survive even a slight setback in OVERLORD if it were known that fairly large forces had been diverted to the Balkans.”42 (The 1944 presidential election was four months away.)
For the British chiefs of staff, Roosevelt’s final paragraph tipped the balance. If it was a matter of FDR’s reelection, they had no alternative. “Just back from a meeting with Winston,” Brooke recorded in his diary on June 30. “I thought at first we might have trouble with him, he looked like he wanted to fight the President. However, in the end we got him to agree to our outlook which is: ‘All right, if you insist on being damned fools, sooner than falling out with you, which would be fatal, we shall be damned fools with you, and we shall see that we perform the role of damned fools damned well.’ ”43
Pressed by his chiefs, Churchill yielded grudgingly. “I need scarcely say that we shall do our best to make a success of anything that is undertaken,” he cabled Roosevelt.44
“I honestly believe that God will be with us,” FDR replied. “I always think of my early geometry, ‘A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.’ ”45
Churchill had agreed to DRAGOON, but his resentment festered. And like a smoldering volcano, it erupted full force in early August. On August 4, less than two weeks before the landings were to take place, the prime minister cabled Roosevelt and suggested switching DRAGOON from the Riviera to the coast of Brittany. The next day he visited Ike at his field headquarters in France and cajoled and pleaded for six hours. According to Butcher, “Ike said no, continued saying no all afternoon, and ended by saying no in every form of the English language at his command. He was practically limp when the PM departed.”46
The following day Eisenhower cabled Marshall that he would “not repeat not under any conditions agree at this moment to a cancellation of DRAGOON.”47 FDR never wavered in his support. On August 8 he told Churchill that it was his considered opinion that DRAGOON “should be launched as planned at the earliest practicable date and I have full confidence that it will be successful and of great assistance to Eisenhower in driving the Huns from France.”48
“I pray God you may be right,” Churchill replied. “We shall, of course, do everything in our power to help you achieve success.”49
Presumably that should have ended the matter. But when Ike dined with Churchill at No. 10 Downing Street the following day, he was subjected to another harangue in which the prime minister pulled out all the stops, including the threat that he might have to go to the King and “lay down the mantle of my high office.”50 Churchill accused the Americans of bullying the British and refusing to listen to their strategic ideas. Eisenhower later called the meeting with Churchill one of the most difficult sessions he’d had in the entire war. “I have never seen him so obviously stirred, upset, and even despondent,” he cabled Marshall.51
Churchill departed for the Mediterranean the following day. After visiting British troops in Italy, he embraced the inevitable, donned a flak jacket, and watched the troops of Alexander Patch’s Seventh Army clamber ashore east of Toulon from the deck of the destroyer HMS Kimberly. “I watched this landing yesterday from afar,” the prime minister cabled Ike afterward. “All I have seen there makes me admire the perfect precision with which the landing was arranged and the intimate collaboration of British-American forces.”52
Eisenhower replied with equal generosity. “I am delighted that you have personally and legally adopted the DRAGOON. I am sure that he will grow fat and prosperous under your watchfulness.”53 To Marshall, Ike confessed that after “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.”54
On the other side of the hill, Rommel and von Rundstedt were at their wits’ end trying to defeat the invasion under the limitations Hitler imposed. Not only had the Führer refused to move Fifteenth Army south of the Seine, but he insisted on defending every inch of French soil.55 Both field marshals considered that absurd.
On June 17 Hitler paid a whirlwind visit to France to buttress his commanders’ resolve. He met with von Rundstedt and Rommel near Soissons at a heavily bunkered command post that had been constructed in 1940 for his use during the planned invasion of Britain (SEA LION). The Führer appeared uninterested in what the field marshals had to report and ranted about the V-1 superweapons, which he assured them would bring Britain to its knees. When von Rundstedt suggested the weapons be directed against the embarkation ports in England or against the Allied bridgehead, Hitler declared that the bombardment of London was more important and would make the English “eager for peace.”56 Both von Rundstedt and Rommel stressed the need for air support. When von Rundstedt asked for the infantry divisions in Fifteenth Army so that Rommel’s panzer divisions could be relieved from their defensive posture, Hitler refused, just as he dismissed the field marshals’ request to pull back beyond the range of Allied naval gunfire. Cherbourg, he insisted, was to be defended at all costs, and Rommel was instructed to retake Bayeux with whatever forces were available.
The meeting lasted four hours. At the end, von Rundstedt and Rommel restated their view that the situation was dire and asked Hitler whether he had considered a political solution.i “Don’t concern yourself about the future course of the war,” the Führer replied. “Look to your own invasion front.”57 Shortly after the meeting concluded, an errant V-1 destined for London malfunctioned and landed in the compound near Hitler’s bunker, at which point the Führer hightailed it back to Berchtesgaden. Of the two field marshals, Rommel was more susceptible to Hitler’s hypnotic appeal. “I am looking forward to the future with less anxiety than I did a week ago,” he wrote his wife the day afterward. “The Führer was very cordial and in good humor. He realizes the gravity of the situation.”58 Von Rundstedt, by contrast, saw the handwriting on the wall. The meeting did little to convince him that the war could be won.59
On June 22, 1944, the third anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Russia (BARBAROSSA), Stalin fulfilled the pledge he made at Teheran and launched the Red Army in what would prove to be the greatest Allied offensive of the war. From Leningrad to the Crimea, along a front of eight hundred miles, Russian fo
rces moved against the overextended German line. The principal assault (code-named BAGRATION, for the great Czarist general killed at Borodino in 1812) was directed at Army Group Center, some 700,000 troops who held the midsection of the German front. Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who coordinated the attack, committed 166 Red Army divisions—2.4 million troops, 5,300 aircraft, and 5,200 tanks—twice that of any previous offensive, to overrunning the German position. Army Group Center was no match for the oncoming Russians. By July 5, the front had collapsed. Hitler lost 28 divisions and 350,000 men, almost double the number at Stalingrad. Finland sued for peace, Romania surrendered, the Baltic states were overrun, and the Red Army was on the Vistula, a hair’s breadth from the German frontier.
The collapse of Army Group Center in the summer of 1944 marked the beginning of the end of the war on the eastern front. Eisenhower makes no mention of the great Russian offensive in Crusade in Europe, but the scope and extent of the Russian victory in less than two weeks dwarfs the narrow front on which the Western Allies were advancing. At the very least it denied Hitler the opportunity to reinforce his armies in France with veteran formations from the eastern front. Crusade in Europe was published in 1948 at the height of the Cold War, and Ike evidently thought it best to ignore Russia’s contribution to victory in the west.
On June 29, after the fall of Cherbourg, Hitler summoned von Rundstedt and Rommel to Berchtesgaden. The Führer instructed his commanders to confine the Allies to their beachhead, wage a war of attrition, and ultimately force them to withdraw. Von Rundstedt replied that although the German lines were holding, all their reserves had been committed, and an Allied breakthrough was imminent. When it came, it could not be contained. Rommel recommended withdrawing to the Seine and forming a defensive line to the Swiss frontier.60 Hitler rejected the idea peremptorily. Reichsmarschal Hermann Göring, Admiral Karl Dönitz, and Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle of the Luftwaffe joined the meeting, at which point Hitler commenced a monologue touting the new wonder weapons that would bring victory. Hitler’s tirade left Rommel and von Rundstedt depressed. It was clear to both that the Führer had lost touch with reality. Again they raised the matter of peace terms, and again Hitler dismissed the idea. When the meeting concluded, both von Rundstedt and Rommel assumed they would be relieved.61
On June 30, 1944, back at Saint-Germain, von Rundstedt received orders from OKW in Berlin instructing him to counterattack the British position at Caen. At the same time, Rommel called and recommended a withdrawal at Caen, lest his troops be encircled. Von Rundstedt agreed, told Rommel to prepare to withdraw, and informed Berlin what he had done. That triggered an immediate reply from OKW ordering him to tell Rommel to hold fast. There could be no withdrawal.62
For von Rundstedt that was the last straw. He immediately telephoned Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, who was with Hitler at Berchtesgaden.
“What shall we do?” asked Keitel.
“Make peace, you idiots,” von Rundstedt replied. “What else can you do? If you doubt what we are doing, get up here and take over this shambles yourself.”63
When Keitel reported the conversation to Hitler, the Führer chose to take von Rundstedt at his word. He wrote a personal letter by hand relieving him of command because of his health, awarded von Rundstedt Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross, and appointed Field Marshal Günther von Kluge to replace him. Within a week, von Kluge had come to the same conclusion as Rommel and von Rundstedt. The situation was untenable.
At SHAEF, the precariousness of the German position was not apparent. Von Rundstedt’s troops, although outgunned, outmanned, and short of virtually every military necessity, fought with skill and tenacity, while Rommel took advantage of every American and British miscue. By the third week in July, fourteen German divisions, including six panzer divisions, faced the British and Canadians at Caen. Eleven divisions, but only two panzer divisions, confronted Bradley’s First Army. The boundaries of the Allied beachhead, some seventy miles long, but no more than ten miles deep at its shallowest point, had changed little during the past month. And with the German lines holding firm, an air of pessimism enveloped Allied headquarters. According to Butcher, Ike was “blue as indigo over Monty’s slowdown.”64
Unlike Montgomery and Bradley, who were on the scene and confident of the strategy they were pursuing, Eisenhower was sitting in Britain looking at lines on a map that were not moving. In some respects it was the mirror image of what Hitler saw at Berchtesgaden, and it suggested stalemate. The situation was analogous to the first week in November 1918. Then as now the Germans were deep inside France and their lines were holding firm. But Hindenburg and Ludendorff knew it was only a matter of time until the Allies broke through, and that when they did they could not be contained. And so out of the blue, as it were, Hindenburg and Ludendorff requested the government to ask for an armistice. In July 1944, Rommel, von Rundstedt, and von Kluge realized they were caught in a similar situation, and Monty and Bradley suspected as much.
But Ike wanted movement. Bedell Smith said, “Ike was up and down the line like a football coach, exhorting everyone to aggressive action.”65 Butcher said, “Ike is like a blind dog in a meathouse—he can smell it, but he can’t find it.”66 The problem was exacerbated by a growing impatience in Washington, where Marshall and Stimson were also looking at lines on a map. American press coverage, to which Eisenhower was painfully sensitive, also chimed in, suggesting the Allies had dropped the ball.
For Eisenhower, the culprit was Montgomery, and he took his complaint to Churchill. Lunching with the prime minister on July 26, Ike asked Churchill “to persuade Monty to get off his bicycle and start moving.”67 While Churchill was fond of Ike and sympathized with his impatience, he trusted Montgomery’s strategy and supported it fully. To mollify Eisenhower, and perhaps smooth Ike’s relations with Montgomery, Churchill arranged a dinner the following evening with Eisenhower, Smith, and Alan Brooke, the British chief of staff. “It did a lot of good,” Brooke wrote afterward. “There is no doubt that Ike is all out to do all he can to maintain the best relations between British and Americans, but it is equally clear that he knows nothing about strategy.”68 To Montgomery, Brooke wrote,
It is quite clear that Ike considers that Dempsey [British Second Army] should be doing more than he does; it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of the war! I drew his attention to what your basic strategy had been, i.e. to hold with your left and draw the Germans onto the flank while you pushed with your right.… Evidently he has some conception of attacking on the whole front, which must be an American doctrine judging by Mark Clark with Fifth Army in Italy!69 j
On July 26, Montgomery’s concept came to fruition as Bradley launched J. Lawton Collins’s VII Corps against the German line at Saint-Lô. The attack was preceded by a carpet bombing of unprecedented proportion as 2,500 Allied aircraft plastered the attack area with 4,000 tons of explosives.k Collins attacked on a narrow 7,000-yard front with three veteran divisions abreast, and three more, including the Big Red One and the 2nd and 3rd Armored, following behind. In two days, VII Corps advanced thirty miles against crumbling opposition. Patton’s Third Army, which had assembled behind Collins’s troops, was activated on August 1 and tore through the gap in the German line. VII Corps was attached to Patton, and what had been a breakthrough became a breakout. “The whole Western Front has been ripped open,” von Kluge informed Berlin. “The left flank has collapsed.”70
Patton raced into Brittany virtually unchecked. VII Corps captured the vital town of Mortain, on which Third Army then pivoted and swung east into the plain of southern Normandy, driving on Le Mans and Alençon and the German supply depots behind the battlefield.
“Once a gap appears in the enemy front,” Montgomery instructed Bradley, “we must pass into it and through it and beyond it into the enemy rear areas. Everyone must go all out. The broad strategy of the Allied armies is to swing the right flank towards Paris and to force the enemy back to the Seine.”71 In the next three days, P
atton advanced one hundred miles, cutting deep into the rear of von Kluge’s forces, which now faced encirclement as the Canadian First Army came on from the north.
On August 7, Eisenhower moved his advance command post from Portsmouth across the Channel to the Norman village of Tournières, about twelve miles southwest of Bayeux. Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group headquarters was activated, and General Courtney Hodges replaced Bradley at the head of First Army. There were now four Allied armies in France: the First and Third U.S. armies (Hodges and Patton) under Bradley’s operational control; and the Second British (Dempsey) and First Canadian (Crerar) reporting to Twenty-first Army Group. But Montgomery, not Ike, retained overall command of the ground war.
The site of Eisenhower’s headquarters (SHELLBURST) was a bucolic apple orchard surrounded by hedgerows—a rustic, pastoral retreat where, according to Summersby, “we had our first good nights of sleep in weeks, free of the [German] buzz bombs.”72 A few days after Ike moved in, local farmers presented him with a cow so that he might have fresh milk. “The first morning we had it,” said his mess sergeant Marty Snyder, “Moaney, Hunt, and I gathered around the cow and tried to solve how to get milk out of it. Each of us tried, pulling, squeezing, massaging, but we couldn’t get a drop.”
“What’s going on here?” asked Ike.
“We can’t get this thing to work,” Snyder said.
“Let me sit down,” Eisenhower replied. “I’ll show you how to do this.”
Snyder got up from the stool and Ike sat down. Then, in steady strokes, he began to milk the cow. In a few minutes the bucket was full.
“You city slickers have a lot to learn,” said Ike.73
Eisenhower in War and Peace Page 42