70. Quoted in Wilmot, Struggle for Europe 394–95.
71. Montgomery to Bradley, August 4, 1944, ibid. 400.
72. Summersby, Eisenhower Was My Boss 171.
73. Merle Miller, Ike the Soldier 671.
74. DDE to GCM, August 11, 1944, 4 War Years 2066–67.
75. Quoted in D’Este, Eisenhower 568. Each of the four company commanders of the 2nd Battalion, 120th Infantry, 30th Division, which bore the brunt of the German attack, were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for valor.
76. DDE, Crusade in Europe 279. Ike’s sentiment reflects General Ulysses Grant’s comment at Shiloh after surveying the scene at the Hornet’s Nest. According to Grant, the ground was “so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across, in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground.” 1 Personal Memoirs 356.
77. Quoted in Martin Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit 558 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1961).
78. Bradley and Blair, General’s Life 304.
79. Blumenson, 2 Patton Papers 517.
80. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service 659–60. It is more likely that Stimson, knowing Georgetown, said “roaches,” and Bundy euphemized it to “bedbugs.”
81. Blumenson, 2 Patton Papers 521.
82. DDE to CCS, August 15, 1944, 4 War Years 2069–70.
83. FACS 58, OPD TS Message File, ibid., note 2. Also see Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? 90–91 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965).
84. The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon 544 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965).
85. De Gaulle, 2 War Memoirs 332–33. De Gaulle believed Eisenhower’s hands were tied by some “summit-level intrigue” under way at the White House. General Juin, who had been dealing with the general staff at SHAEF, came to the same conclusion.
De Gaulle’s suspicions were not unfounded. According to Robert Murphy, FDR in the summer of 1944 was still “perfectly prepared to accept any viable alternative to de Gaulle—providing one could be found.” Quoted in Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? 23.
86. Hitler’s order is quoted in full in Dietrich von Choltitz, Soldat unter Soldaten 255–59 (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1960). For an extract, see Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit 598.
87. Cited in Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit 598.
88. Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? 31. When Choltitz mounted the final attack on the fortress at Sevastopol on July 27, 1942, his regiment contained 4,800 men. When the battle ended, 347 were left, and Choltitz had been seriously wounded in the right arm.
89. Ibid. 222.
90. Dietrich von Choltitz to Uberta von Choltitz, August 21, 1944, Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? 154.
91. De Gaulle to DDE, August 21, 1944, in Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890–1944 564, Patrick O. Brian, trans. (New York: Norton, 1990).
92. DDE to CCS, August 22, 1944, 4 War Years 2087–89.
93. Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? 194.
94. Courtney Hodges, Commanding the First U.S. Army, to which the French 2nd Armored had been attached, withdrew several artillery battalions from the division before the march. “I don’t want them to get the idea they can beat up Paris with a howitzer every time a machine gun gets in their way.” Quoted in ibid.
95. The casualties in Paris during the fighting of August 24–25, 1944, were not inconsequential. The 2nd Armored lost 28 officers and 600 enlisted men. German casualties amounted to 3,200, plus 14,800 taken prisoner. Among the prisoners was my future father-in-law, Johannes Zinsel, a forty-one-year-old private soldier who had been drafted the year before and was one of the defenders of the Palais du Luxembourg—the last German stronghold to surrender. That evening he wrote his family, courtesy of the Red Cross: “I have been taken prisoner. So far I am all right.” Mr. Zinsel was a teacher at the Hindenburg Gymnasium in Berlin and was fluent in English and French; he became the prison camp interpreter and was given an early release from captivity in November 1945.
96. De Gaulle, 2 War Memoirs 350.
97. DDE, Crusade in Europe 297.
98. Quoted in D’Este, Eisenhower 576.
99. David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War 425.
100. De Gaulle, 2 War Memoirs 358.
101. DDE, Crusade in Europe 298. “Because this ceremonial march coincided exactly with the local battle plan it became possibly the only instance in history of troops marching in parade through the capital of a great country to participate in a pitched battle the next day.”
102. The only discordant note in the liberation of Paris was sounded by Major General Gee Gerow, commanding V Corps. Because of the demarcation line between the First and Third armies (Hodges and Patton), Leclerc’s division was temporarily taken from Patton and assigned to First Army’s V Corps. Gerow, whom Patton considered “the poorest corps commander in France,” proceeded to display a political ignorance exceeded only by his military obtuseness at Omaha. For whatever reason, Gerow assumed that he, not Leclerc, was to liberate Paris. He established himself as military governor, was miffed that von Choltitz surrendered to Leclerc, and then on August 26 explicitly ordered Leclerc and his division not to participate in the victory parade down the Champs-Élysées.
“You are operating under my direct command and will not accept orders from any other source,” Gerow wrote Leclerc. “I understand you have been directed by General de Gaulle to parade your troops this afternoon at 1400 hours. You will disregard those orders and continue on the present mission assigned you of clearing up all resistance in Paris and environs within your zone of action.”
Leclerc, on de Gaulle’s instructions, ignored Gerow’s order. When Ike called on de Gaulle, it was apparent to him that Gerow had been out of bounds. Gerow was ordered out of the city that afternoon, and gratuitously informed General Koenig that he was turning Paris over to him. Koenig replied icily that he had been military governor of Paris since August 25, 1944, when the first troops arrived.
Gerow was one of “Marshall’s men,” a number of senior officers, including Hodges and Bedell Smith, who had not graduated from West Point and with whom the chief of staff felt a comradeship. After the war, when Marshall appointed Gerow head of the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth, Patton wrote his wife that it was a joke. GSP to Beatrice Patton, August 18, 1945, in Blumenson, 2 Patton Papers 739, 740. Also see de Gaulle, 2 War Memoirs 358; cf. DDE to GCM, August 31, 1944, 4 War Years 2107–8.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GERMANY
The epigraph is from a letter Ike wrote to Mamie, November 12, 1944. DDE, Letters to Mamie 219–20.
1. For an authoritative statement of the American head-on doctrine, see FM 100–5, Field Service Regulations, 1939 para. 91. Also see Crosswell, Chief of Staff 252–53; Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939–1945 30–34 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982). A useful contrast between American and German strategic thinking and a critique of the head-on doctrine is provided by Professor Russell F. Weigley in Eisenhower’s Lieutenants 4–7.
2. Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries 587. For Eisenhower’s proposal, see DDE to GCM, August 22, 1944, 4 War Years 2087–89.
3. Speidel, We Defended Normandy 152.
4. Vincent J. Esposito, ed., 2 The West Point Atlas of American Wars map 56 (New York: Praeger, 1967); D’Este, Eisenhower 585.
5. The SHAEF report is quoted in Montgomery, Memoirs 238–39.
6. Model to von Rundstedt, September 27, 1944, in German Army Documents, Dealing with the War in the Western Front from June to October, 1944, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.
7. B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War 558 (London: Cassell, 1970).
8. Montgomery to Brooke, August 18, 1944, in Nigel Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield 798. “I entirely agree,” Brooke replied the following day. Ibid. 799.
9. Montgomery, Memoirs 239.
10. Crosswell, Chief of Staff 257.
11. Quoted in Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War 562. The chronology of Eisenhower’s broad-front decision is laid out in commendable detail by Nigel Hamilton in chap. 16 of Master of the Battlefield 806–18.
12. Speidel, We Defended Normandy 152–53. (Emphasis added.) Speidel’s reference to “beast”reflects the fact that by 1944 well over half of the Wehrmacht’s transportation was horse-drawn.
13. Blumentritt’s comment was made after the war to Liddell Hart and is reported in Liddell Hart’s The Other Side of the Hill: Germany’s Generals, Their Rise and Fall, with Their Own Account of Military Events, 1939–1945 428 (London: Cassell, 1951). Blumentritt also believed Patton’s drive on Metz was unnecessary and that “a swerve northward in the direction of Luxemburg and Bitburg would have met with great success.” Ibid.
14. Siegfried Westphal, The German Army in the West 172–74 (London: Cassell, 1951).
15. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War 561.
16. Ibid. 566.
17. Bradley and Blair, General’s Life 311.
18. Ambrose, Supreme Commander 529.
19. A German panzer grenadier division (armored infantry) had an authorized strength of 14,446 men versus 14,037 for the standard American infantry division. Van Creveld, Fighting Power 54–55. For usage figures, see Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945 (New York: Knopf, 2004) 23–24.
20. Pogue, Supreme Command 322–23.
21. See DDE to John C. H. Lee, September 16, 1944, 4 War Years 2153–54.
22. Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay 182–84.
23. DDE, Crusade in Europe 332–33.
24. Hastings, Armageddon 196.
25. Bradley and Blair, General’s Life 343.
26. Montgomery to Brooke, December 7, 1944, in Nigel Hamilton, Monty: Final Years of the Field-Marshal, 1944–1976 162 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987); Bryant, Triumph in the West 252.
27. Bryant, Triumph in the West 257. When Bryant published Triumph in the West he omitted the last sentence. It is printed in the 2001 edition of Alanbrooke’s War Diaries, published by the University of California Press, at page 628.
28. Bryant, Triumph in the West 256. On December 15, 1944, there were 3.24 million men under Eisenhower’s command: 1,965,000 American; 810,584 British; 293,411 French; and 116,411 Canadian. Hastings, Armageddon 380.
29. Bryant, Triumph in the West 258.
30. War Office interrogation of Field Marshal von Rundstedt, July 1945, quoted in Milton Shulman, Defeat in the West 205–6 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1948).
31. Ibid. 247.
32. Quoted in Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt 246.
33. Westphal, German Army in the West 174.
34. Korda, Ike 542.
35. Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt 211. At Hitler’s order, the Todt Organization constructed a shelter while von Rundstedt was on leave and then carefully restored the garden. Ibid. 212.
36. Summersby, Eisenhower Was My Boss 184.
37. Ibid.
38. Kay Summersby Morgan, Past Forgetting 214–15.
39. Quoted ibid.
40. Lord Alanbrooke, “Notes from My Life,” November 14, 1944, quoted in D’Este, Eisenhower 631.
41. Susan Eisenhower, Mrs. Ike 225.
42. DDE, Letters to Mamie 219–20.
43. “I was staggered,” said von Rundstedt after the war. “Hitler had not consulted me. It was obvious that the available forces were far too small for such an ambitious plan. Model took the same view as I did. But I knew by now it was useless to protest to Hitler about the possibility of anything. After consultation with Model and [General Hasso von] Manteuffel I felt the only hope was to wean Hitler from this fantastic aim by putting forward an alternative proposal that might appeal to him. This was for a limited offensive with the aim of pinching off the Allies’ salient around Aachen.” Liddell Hart, Other Side of the Hill 447.
44. D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life 644.
45. Blumenson, 2 Patton Papers 599.
46. Ibid. 600.
47. Hastings, Armageddon 220.
48. Quoted in Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President 174.
49. Message 383, 2255 hrs, December 20, 1944, quoted in Nigel Hamilton, Monty 213. This was four days after the battle had begun. Montgomery reported that morale was low at the First and Ninth armies, and questioned Hodges’s capacity, but a day later reported that he seemed to have recovered. Because Hodges was American, Montgomery chose not to relieve him.
50. Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants 552. Also see DDE to GCM, January 1, 1945, 4 War Years 2390–91.
51. De Gaulle, 3 War Memoirs 169–70.
52. David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War 604.
53. DDE, Crusade in Europe 363.
54. Liddell Hart, Other Side of the Hill 464.
55. The battle statistics are from Hastings, Armageddon 235. Cf. Pogue, Supreme Command 396–97.
56. DDE, Crusade in Europe 341.
57. Grant, 1 Personal Memoirs 100.
58. Wilmot, Struggle for Europe 614. Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke concurred. “Calamity acted on Ike as a restorative,” said Brooke. “It brought out all the greatness in his character.” Quoted in Bradley and Blair, General’s Life 323.
59. Sir Edgar Williams, interview by Nigel Hamilton, December 12, 1979, quoted in Hamilton, Monty 303–4.
60. Quoted in Hastings, Armageddon 231. Also see Nigel Hamilton, Monty 303–4.
61. “No handsomer tribute was ever paid to the American soldier than that of Field Marshal Montgomery,” reported The New York Times on January 9, 1945. As for Bradley and Patton’s reaction, Eisenhower wrote: “I doubt that Montgomery ever came to realize how deeply resentful some American commanders were. They believed he had belittled them—and were not slow to voice reciprocal scorn and contempt.” DDE, Crusade in Europe 356.
62. Hastings, Armageddon 232.
63. For Eisenhower’s intent, see especially David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War 608–20.
64. Memorandum of Conference with Marshal Stalin, January 15, 1945, EL.
65. Quoted in Merle Miller, Ike the Soldier 748–49.
66. Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower 763.
67. Merle Miller diary, February 26, 1945, quoted in Ike the Soldier 752. Miller went on to write that Eisenhower was particularly vague when discussing Montgomery. “He took about five minutes to say absolutely nothing.”
68. Ibid. 753.
69. DDE, Crusade in Europe 379–80. Also see Bradley and Blair, General’s Life 406–7. For the German critique, see Shulman, Defeat in the West 273–75. Shulman quotes Göring to the effect that the capture of the Remagen bridge “made a long defense of the Rhine impossible and upset our entire defense scheme along the river.” Also see Westphal, German Army in the West 193–97.
70. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President 186.
71. DDE to MDE, March 19, 1945, DDE, Letters to Mamie 244–45.
72. Kay Summersby Morgan, Past Forgetting 217. For the composition of Ike’s party, I have consulted Summersby’s Eisenhower Was My Boss 226; Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President 187; and Bradley and Blair, General’s Life 411.
73. Ambrose, Supreme Commander 625.
74. Bradley, Soldier’s Story 535.
75. DDE, Crusade in Europe 397. In reality, the national redoubt existed only in the propaganda disseminated by the Nazis. But it was not until after the war that the ruse was exposed. “It grew into so exaggerated a scheme that I am astonished we could have believed it as innocently as we did,” wrote Bradley in Soldier’s Story 536.
76. DDE to Alan Brooke, February 16, 1945, 4 War Years 2480–82.
77. WSC to DDE, February 22, 1945, ibid. 2494n1. Eisenhower’s reply to Churchill is at page 2494 as well.
78. M562, March 27, 1945, reprinted in ibid. 440.
79. The full text of Eisenhower’s March 27, 1945, press conference at the Scribe Hotel in Pa
ris is reprinted in Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower 779–90.
80. David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War 740.
81. DDE to Stalin, March 28, 1945, 4 War Years 2551. David Eisenhower, who had unlimited family cooperation when writing about his grandfather, states explicitly that Ike’s purpose in writing to Stalin was twofold: “to bid for quick Soviet approval to seal the issue of Berlin; [and] to display the scope of his authority over American and British forces so that the Soviets would refer all military questions to SHAEF” and not the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Eisenhower at War 741.
82. DDE to Montgomery, March 28, 1945, 4 War Years 2552. Eisenhower dispatched a final cable to Marshall that day informing the chief of staff of his message to Stalin but not mentioning the message to Montgomery or the change of plans entailed. DDE to GCM, March 28, 1945, ibid. 2552–53.
83. Nigel Hamilton, Monty 442.
84. Montgomery to Brooke, April 8, 1945, quoted in ibid. 443.
85. Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries 679, March 29, 1945.
86. Diary of Admiral Lord Cunningham, First Sea Lord, March 30, 1945, quoted in Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders (New York: HarperCollins, 2009) 563.
87. Prime Minister’s Personal Minute, March 31, 1945, in Gilbert, 7 Winston S. Churchill 1273–74.
88. DDE to WSC, March 30, 1945, 4 War Years 2562–63.
89. GCM to DDE, March 29, 1945, W-60507, ibid. 2559n1.
90. DDE to GCM, March 30, 1945, ibid. 2559–62.
91. Memorandum by the U.S. Chief of Staff, March 30, 1945, 5 Papers of George Catlett Marshall 106–7.
92. WSC to DDE, March 31, 1945, WSC, Triumph and Tragedy 463 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953).
93. Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries 680, April 1, 1945.
94. WSC to FDR, April 1, 1945, Kimball, 3 Churchill and Roosevelt 603–4.
95. FDR [Marshall] to WSC, April 4, 1945, ibid. 607–9.
96. WSC to DDE, April 2, 1945, WSC in Triumph and Tragedy 467.
97. Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries 680–81, April 3, 1945. Also see Tedder’s With Prejudice 681.
98. Roberts, Masters and Commanders 564–65.
99. Gilbert, 7 Winston S. Churchill 1296. The official U.S. translation rendered Churchill’s words as “Lovers’ quarrels always go with true love.” Kimball, 3 Churchill and Roosevelt 612.
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