Authors: Stephen E. Ambrose
Supreme Commander (110 page)
The picture that Montgomery saw was open ground between Twenty-first Army Group and Berlin. Churchill looked at the situation maps, saw the link-up of Twenty-first Army Group and Twelfth Army Group east of the Ruhr and the relative weakness of the German forces standing between the AEF and Berlin, concluded that the war was won, and advocated policies designed to strengthen the postwar position of the West. Eisenhower saw something altogether different. His forces were advancing almost at will, but not into those areas in which the Germans might mount a prolonged defense. Until he had taken the alpine redoubt and Denmark and secured a broad link-up with the Red Army, he could not be sure of a quick, decisive end to the war. In one message to the CCS, Eisenhower warned that if the Germans in Norway decided to fight on he would not be able to mount an offensive there until winter, when because of the terrain and weather conditions it would be “almost impracticable.” As long as the Germans held Norway they could continue the submarine war and if the continued German resistance in isolated parts in France was any guide, the enemy in Norway could hold out for a long time. The same was true of the Alpine redoubt, so “it must be our aim to break into it
rapidly before the enemy has an opportunity to man it and organize its defense fully.”
The final decision was the Supreme Commander’s, and he based it on the situation as he saw it. On April 14 he informed the CCS that when the AEF had a firm front in central Germany on the line of the Elbe he would then concentrate on taking Lubeck and driving into the Alpine area. “Since the thrust on Berlin must await the successful outcome” of those operations, he declared, “I do not include it as part of my present plan.”
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He sent out the orders to the field commanders the next day.
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The last campaign had taken shape.
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The British had assumed, when they agreed to this policy, that Eisenhower would deal with the Red Army staff, not Stalin; Eisenhower had decided to contact Stalin directly, since everything had to be decided by him anyway, and Eisenhower wanted to save time.
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What Churchill wanted to trade was the Western-occupied areas of the Russian Zone for American and British entry into Berlin. In addition, the Red Army was probably going to overrun Austria, which had not been divided; Churchill wanted to make sure the West got into Austria and the best way to do so, he felt, was by trading. He also wanted food from eastern Germany for the Ruhr.
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The first link-up came on April 25 at Torgau on the Elbe River; others followed rapidly along the entire front. The line did not apply in the north, where Twenty-first Army Group did cross the Elbe. There were no major incidents.
Victory
By late April 1945 the Germans were finished. SHAEF G-2 reported that all but the most fanatic Nazis had given up hope, and even the Nazis were beginning to wonder. They could see only three dim possibilities that could reverse their situation: (1) a falling out between the Western Allies and the Russians when they met in central Germany; (2) a holding action in the Alpine redoubt through the winter; (3) large-scale guerrilla warfare throughout Germany.
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Eisenhower, aware of these German hopes, shaped his operations to prevent any of the three possibilities from coming to fruition. Specifically, this meant that he fanned out the AEF in order to overrun Germany and at the same time did everything he could to avoid a clash with the Russians. He did not race them to Berlin but instead arranged for the easily recognized stop lines on the Elbe-Mulde line.
All through April the AEF rolled forward. Superiority in quality of troops, mobility, air power, material, and morale was enormous. Commanders chose objectives for units that, more often than not, were reached and captured before the time set by the commander. Regiments, companies, squads, sometimes even three men in a jeep dashed on ahead, leaving their supply bases far behind, ignoring wide gaps on their flanks and enemy units in the rear that sometimes were superior in numbers, roaming far and wide with only sketchy knowledge of the enemy’s positions—all the time certain that there was little or nothing the Germans could do about it. The German high command was, for all practical purposes, non-existent; even regimental commanders did not know where their troops were. Most German units were immobilized because of the lack of fuel. There was no coherent defense.
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Eisenhower felt a deep sense of pride as he watched the Americans
drive forward. He wanted Marshall, the man who built the Army that was doing so well, to share the feeling. “If you could see your way clear to do it,” he wrote the Chief on April 15, “I think you should make a visit here … while we are still conducting a general offensive.” Eisenhower was sure Marshall “would be proud of the Army you have produced.” The U.S. air and ground forces were operating as a unit “all the way down the line from me to the lowest private.” Eisenhower could see no evidence of any jealousy, suspicion, or lack of understanding. Marshall would also be impressed by the veteran quality of the organization. “Commanders, staffs, and troops, both air and ground, go about their business in a perfectly calm and sure manner that gets results.” Eisenhower was sure that no organization had ever existed that could reshuffle and regroup on a large scale as well as the American Army in Europe could. This, in turn, was a reflection of the “high average of ability in our higher command team.” The corps commanders were without exception outstanding, and the only weakness among the army commanders he could single out was Patton’s unpredictability. Bradley “remains the one whose tactical and strategical judgment I consider almost unimpeachable.”
Eisenhower concluded with another plea to Marshall to come to Germany so “you could see, in visible form, the fruits of much of your work over the past five years. In a matter of three or four days I am sure you would see things that would be of great satisfaction to you from now on.” Eisenhower did not need to add that, since redeployment would soon begin, this would be Marshall’s last opportunity to see the greatest armed force the United States had ever put together. Unfortunately Marshall’s commitments at home, compounded by Roosevelt’s death, prevented him from making the trip.
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The AEF, meanwhile, spread out in all directions. Its dispersion soon became so great that army and corps commanders did not know where their units were at any particular time of the day. Under the circumstances, Eisenhower played a small role in the direction of the battle. He intervened only when army group shifts were required, or where a major change in the direction of an army was called for, or when a command question with political overtones was involved.
During the first two weeks of April, while spearheads of Twelfth and Sixth Army Groups moved into central Germany, Bradley undertook the systematic reduction of the Ruhr pocket. By April 18 resistance there came to an end as 317,000 German soldiers surrendered—the largest mass surrender of German troops in the war. To the north, Montgomery’s
Canadian and British troops made good progress, while at the other end of the front Devers’ French and American soldiers overran the area between Frankfurt and the Czech border. Patton and Hodges were closing to the Elbe while Simpson, skirting the northern edge of the Harz Mountains, drove forward. On April 11 spearheads of Simpson’s Ninth Army reached the Elbe at Magdeburg. Simpson got two bridgeheads over the Elbe, one north of Magdeburg on April 12 and another to the south on April 13. The one to the north was wiped out by a German counterattack on April 14, but the one to the south held.
Suddenly it seemed that the Americans had an opportunity to take Berlin. The Russian drive for the capital had not yet started and Simpson was within fifty miles of the city. He thought he could get to Berlin before the Russians and asked Bradley’s permission to try. Bradley checked with Eisenhower, who said no, and Simpson was stopped where he was.
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On April 15 Eisenhower explained his thinking to Marshall. He felt that getting to Lubeck and clearing up the Alpine redoubt area were tasks “vastly more important than the capture of Berlin.” He also thought that Simpson could not get to the capital before the Russians and so it was foolish to try. “We’d get all coiled up for something that in all probability would never come off.” While it was true that Simpson had a bridgehead over the Elbe, “it must be remembered that only our spearheads are up to that river; our center of gravity is well back of there.”
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When Simpson reached the Elbe the Russians were still thirty-five miles from the city, but the Red Army had had two months in which to build up its strength, while Simpson had just covered more than two hundred miles in two weeks. The American center of gravity was indeed far back. No one, on either side, could have sustained an offensive of this scope and magnitude beyond the Elbe. Modern armies are unable to live off the countryside, and their means of transportation cannot forage for themselves. The armies of World War II were dependent on gasoline, a new phenomenon in the history of war. Offensives ordinarily reached their limit after a 200 to 250-mile advance. This was true of the German campaign in Russia in 1941, of the Russians in their 1944–45 winter offensive, and of the AEF in September 1944. It happened to the AEF again in April 1945. As one example of the problems involved in a headlong advance, Eisenhower’s armies had left the fighter strips so far behind that airplanes had to carry reserve gasoline tanks on their wings just to keep up with the troops. They left their bombs behind.
The Americans reached the Elbe on April 11. They had one small bridgehead, were faced by one weak German army, and had a number
of water barriers between them and Berlin. American strength in the area was not much more than 50,000 men, with little artillery. There were a few reinforcements available in the area, but to supply a drive beyond the Elbe Eisenhower would have had to devote to it nearly his entire air transport. The Russians, fifteen miles closer to Berlin, had two solid bridgeheads, 1,250,000 men, and 22,000 pieces of artillery. They were faced by two weak German armies and had flat, dry land between them and Berlin. The only way, under the circumstances, for the Americans to beat the Red Army to Berlin would have been with German help. Had the Germans decided that it was in their interest to have an American occupation of their capital, they might have fought fiercely against the Russians to the east while welcoming the Americans coming in from the west. They might have so decided, but Eisenhower could not be sure of it at the time, and thus far the Germans had shown no inclination to surrender on their western front while continuing to fight in the east. As long as Hitler lived and continued to direct the Battle of Berlin from his bunker in the city, it could be expected that the Germans would put up a fight against all comers.
Simpson was not alone in thinking that Berlin was worth a try. On April 16, after learning of Eisenhower’s plans, the BCOS suggested to the JCS that they jointly direct Eisenhower to take any opportunity to advance to Berlin. Churchill agreed with the position his Chiefs took. The next day, April 17, Eisenhower flew to London and had a conference with the Prime Minister. The Supreme Commander convinced Churchill of the soundness of his views, and shortly after the meeting Churchill wired his Foreign Minister, who was in the United States. “It would seem that the Western Allies are not immediately in a position to force their way into Berlin,” Churchill declared. “The Russians have two and a half million troops [
sic
] on the section of the front opposite that city. The Americans have only their spearheads … which are covering an immense front and are at many points engaged with the Germans.”
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Eisenhower also convinced Churchill of the significance of Lubeck. The Supreme Commander emphasized the importance of Montgomery’s taking the city in order to keep the Russians out of the Danish Peninsula. To British eyes Denmark, in comparison to Berlin and eastern Germany, was relatively unimportant, but Eisenhower concentrated on it for three reasons. First, he had to have Denmark if he was later forced to undertake a campaign into Norway. Second, he was not willing to give the Russians anything the EAC had not already assigned to the Soviet sphere. Third, by stressing Lubeck he gave Twenty-first Army Group a
significant role to play, which hopefully would mollify the British. One of the things Eisenhower and Churchill discussed at their April 17 meeting was Eisenhower’s position with respect to Russian requests that he withdraw the AEF from areas assigned to the Russian Zone. Churchill insisted that Eisenhower should move his men as far forward as possible and keep them inside the Russian Zone until the heads of government had worked out withdrawal procedures. After the meeting Eisenhower wrote Marshall, “I do not quite understand why the Prime Minsiter has been so determined to intermingle political and military considerations.…” He added that he had proposed that each side withdraw from the zone of another upon request because of “the possibility that the Russians might arrive in the Danish peninsula before we could fight our way across the Elbe and I wanted a formula that would take them out of that region on my request.”
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To give Montgomery enough strength to get to Lubeck first, Eisenhower assigned the U.S. airborne corps to Twenty-first Army Group and told his staff to give Montgomery all necessary logistical support. He sent a series of messages to Montgomery, urging him to press on, and a letter for the record to Brooke, recording all that he had done with respect to Lubeck.
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Churchill, unable to get Eisenhower to change his mind on Berlin, decided that Lubeck was the best he could get, both in relation to the role British forces would play and on political objectives. He told Eden, “Our arrival at Lubeck before our Russian friends from Stettin would save a lot of argument later on. There is no reason why the Russians should occupy Denmark, which is a country to be liberated and to have its sovereignty restored. Our position at Lubeck, if we get it, would be decisive in this matter.” As indeed it was. Churchill also agreed with Eisenhower’s decision to push on south of Stuttgart to capture the German atomic research facilities in the area.
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