Supreme Commander (75 page)

But unfortunately this was not to be the case. In the next two months the V-1s killed more than 5000 people, injured 35,000 more, and destroyed some 30,000 buildings.
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For the war-weary English, this was a major disaster. The attacks were not especially damaging to actual military capabilities, but it was the moral effect that mattered. At first Churchill hoped to ignore them. On June 16 he talked with Tedder and said he would refuse to allow the flying bombs to upset Allied concentration on the battle in Normandy. Two days later he had changed his mind.
On June 18 he came to Widewing to meet with Eisenhower and Tedder. He had had to order a halt to all anti-aircraft fire in the London area and try to knock the V-1s down over non-populated areas, for when a flying bomb was hit it plummeted to earth and exploded. The program was not working well, however, and it was increasingly obvious that the only way to nullify the threat was to get the weapons at their source, either by bombing the sites or by actually overrunning them on the ground. Since the armies were still bottled up in Normandy, the latter policy was not feasible. Churchill therefore turned to Eisenhower, who controlled the air forces, and asked him to make the launching sites the first priority for Eighth Air Force and Bomber Command. Eisenhower agreed and told Tedder to see that it was done. That afternoon the Supreme Commander put the order in writing, instructing Tedder to keep CROSSBOW targets at the top of the priority list (except for the urgent requirements of the battle in Normandy), “until we can be certain that we have definitely gotten the upper hand of this particular menace.”
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The attacks began in earnest, but results were not satisfactory. It developed that it was fairly easy for the Germans to repair damaged launching sites, so efforts were transferred over to hitting supply sites and storage dumps, which in turn meant that it would take some time before the effectiveness of the bombing could be judged.
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Whatever the results, the pressure to do something, anything, was great, and Eisenhower continued to emphasize CROSSBOW. On June 23 he reminded Smith that the air forces had two, possibly three, months of good flying weather left in 1944, so “we should strive in every possible way to make the maximum use of our air” during that period. Spaatz and Harris had been complaining about ignoring strategic targets in Germany, but Eisenhower insisted that there were five operations that came before the strategic campaign—close support of ground forces, the Transportation Plan, airborne operations, supply of troops by air, and now most of all CROSSBOW.
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Spaatz and Harris had co-operated handsomely in CROSSBOW, putting forty per cent of the bomber effort into the program, but both were, in Tedder’s words, “not unnaturally anxious to return to the kind of operation which seemed to them to offer the prospect of decisive, early triumph.”
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On June 28 Spaatz urged Eisenhower to make a basic policy decision. He thought that, on days when the weather made visual bombings over Germany possible, the bombers should concentrate on operations “designed to deny the German Armies the means to continue resistance.” Spaatz agreed to two exceptions to strategic bombing: (1) a major emergency involving ground forces and (2) CROSSBOW. But on those
few days when weather over Germany was suitable, Spaatz still felt the most useful operations were attacks on the Reich itself, for operations by bombers against CROSSBOW targets or for tactical ground support just were not as relatively effective. The bombers, in short, were, he felt, being misused, although Spaatz was willing to continue CROSSBOW for its moral effect—it did give the British public the feeling that something was being done.
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Spaatz’ arguments brought to the fore the disagreement and even bitterness latent in the question of the proper use of air power. The airmen remained committed to the belief that their primary role was to destroy Germany’s potential to make war. Ground commanders, while often agreeing with this view at least for conversational purposes, tended to call on the bombers for close-in support nearly every day. This was especially true during the discouraging period when the armies were penned up in Normandy. Eventually the air commanders began to mutter that the ground commanders were “too hesitant in spirit and too reluctant to take advantage of favorable situations which air effort had brought about.”
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The political need for CROSSBOW was obvious to all, and the airmen complained less about that program, but they still were not very pleased about the priority it received.

Eisenhower rejected Spaatz’ arguments. The Supreme Commander told Tedder, “Instructions for continuing to make CROSSBOW targets our first priority must stand,” and adding that CROSSBOW, the Transportation Plan, oil, and everything else “must give way … to emergencies in the land battle.…”
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Still the flying bombs came. By early July, with Montgomery as far from breaking out as ever, the Prime Minister began to grow desperate. He began to toy with the idea of reprisal, of warning the Germans that unless the V-weapons attacks ceased the Allies would wipe out certain named towns in Germany. Portal was opposed, for he felt it would be a mistake to enter into what amounted to negotiations with the enemy, since this would provide them with proof of the success of the flying-bomb campaign. He also thought that retaliation would not alter the German plan. In any case, for the Allies to bomb civilian population centers would merely divert effort from attacking targets directly connected with Germany’s power to carry on the war. Cunningham felt the threat of retaliation might have some effect and that “we should not lightly discard anything which offered a chance of stopping the flying-bomb attacks.” But Brooke agreed with Portal.
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The decision rested with Eisenhower, and at the bottom of the minutes
of the BCOS meeting where the issue had been discussed, the Supreme Commander wrote a memorandum to Tedder. “As I have before indicated,” Eisenhower declared, “I am opposed to retaliation as a method of stopping this business—at least until every other thing has been tried and failed. Please continue to oppose.” On July 5th BCOS discussed the possibility of using gas against CROSSBOW installations. Eisenhower told Tedder that he would refuse to be a party to the use of gas: “Let’s, for God’s sake, keep our eyes on the ball and use some sense.”
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That gas could even be considered revealed how badly Britain was being hurt and how poorly CROSSBOW was doing in eliminating the threat. It had become clear that the only way to stop the attacks was to overrun the V-l launching sites. This in turn added to the pressure, already great, to break out of the beachhead. The problem, as SHAEF saw it, was Montgomery. Tedder complained that Montgomery could be “neither removed nor moved” to action.
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Intimately connected with CROSSBOW and the stalemate was the question of what to do in the Mediterranean. On June 5 Wilson’s forces in Italy had liberated Rome, and it had long been assumed by the JCS that when the capital had been reached operations in Italy would shut down. This in turn meant that the Allies would have, potentially, a large strategic reserve in the Mediterranean. The proper use of this reserve now became a matter of hot dispute, forcing Eisenhower into “one of the longest-sustained arguments that I had with Prime Minister Churchill throughout … the war.”
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When ANVIL was canceled in the spring, the Americans had thought of it as only being delayed and felt it would go ahead when the needed landing craft were available. Not so the British, who had never liked ANVIL. Consequently the CCS had considered four possibilities for the use of reserve forces in the Mediterranean, without reaching a decision: a descent on Bordeaux, for a thrust into central France; a landing near Séte in the Gulf of Lion, for a thrust northwest; a landing in the Marseilles-Toulon area, followed by a thrust northward up the Rhône Valley (ANVIL); and a landing at the head of the Adriatic, to turn the German flank in Italy and to aid the Yugoslav partisans. Alexander added another possibility. He proposed to keep all his forces in Italy, drive overland up the peninsula to the Lombard plain, and then a thrust either eastward into northern Yugoslavia and toward Austria, or westward into southern France.
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A landing north of the Seine River was never
considered, probably because the German defenses in the Pas de Calais were too strong.

Wilson’s resources were limited, so only one of the proposed plans could be carried out. Each had something to recommend it. A landing at Bordeaux or Sète would set central France aflame, open a port through which U.S. divisions could enter the Continent, and improve the supply situation. ANVIL would accomplish the same objectives, although at higher cost, provide a better port, and threaten the German flank between Burgundy and Switzerland. An Allied force at the head of the Adriatic would help to contain and disrupt the German forces already pinned in Yugoslavia and threaten the southern flank of the German homeland. Driving north to the Lombard plain would hold German troops in the Italian Peninsula and give the Allies options when the goal was reached.

Much has been written, and much claimed, about the arguments that ensued. A great deal of what has been said has been colored by the Cold War that followed so quickly on the heels of the hot one. To generalize, the British have accused the Americans of being shortsighted, of having only one objective—to defeat Germany—and of having no idea at all as to what kind of Europe they wanted in place of one dominated by the Nazis. The British claim they recognized the threat of the Red Army and the dangers inherent in the vacuum that would be created upon the unconditional surrender of Germany. Some power had to flow into the Balkans, southern Germany and Austria, and even central Europe when the Wehrmacht retreated; better that it be the British and Americans than the Russians.
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Mark Clark agreed with the British position. In his memoirs he declared, “The weakening of the campaign in Italy in order to invade Southern France, instead of pushing on into the Balkans, was one of the outstanding political mistakes of the War.” What Stalin wanted most, Clark felt, was to keep the Western Allies out of the Balkans, which was the reason he had been so enthusiastic about ANVIL. Had the Allied Mediterranean forces gone on to the Lombard plain and then into Austria, Clark later claimed, it would “have changed the whole history of relations between the Western world and the Soviet Union,” drastically reducing the postwar influence of the Soviets.
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Marshall and Eisenhower were the two men most insistent on ANVIL. Because of their limited horizons, the argument goes, the military campaigns were run with no political objectives in view (this assumes that defeating the Nazis was not a political objective); as a result, the political fruits of victory fell to the Soviets instead of to the West. The great
difficulty with this argument is that neither Clark nor Churchill nor anyone else mentioned the political imperatives
at the time
. Clark, for example, favored extending the campaign in Italy
only
because the Allied forces there had the Germans on the run and he did not want to see his army broken up.
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Churchill too insisted that he had no political aims in the Adriatic and was only advocating the militarily correct course.

The debate in June-July 1944 over what to do with the strategic reserve in Italy never involved any political differences. It was initiated, discussed, and settled on military grounds. To choose among five possible courses of action, strategists must set priorities. In this instance general agreement was easily reached—the first and only priority was the defeat of Germany. What was done with the Allied forces in Italy should be done to bring about unconditional surrender. There was disagreement on the question that followed the setting of priorities. There were two ways of approaching the problem: was OVERLORD the key to victory, and if so could the forces in Italy help SHAEF; or should Wilson’s troops make an independent contribution? Marshall and Eisenhower insisted that everything turned on OVERLORD and argued that the Italian forces could make a real contribution to it. Churchill felt that OVERLORD was going to be successful anyway, that the Allied forces in Italy could not help the armies in Normandy, and that Wilson and Alexander could help speed the victory through independent operations.

Churchill could point out that southern France was a long way from the main battlefield; the Americans could reply that Italy was too. Both sides were in fact proposing scattering the effort. Under the circumstances, it seems strange that no one discussed, much less advocated, a landing at the Pas de Calais, especially since the landing craft were already in England. That they did not only indicates how cautious everyone was, including Marshall. A landing in southern France made little sense, except as a method of preventing an extension of activities in the eastern Mediterranean, unless it were essential to opening ports. Even then, Marseilles was so far from northern France that much of what was unloaded there would be used up in transporting goods to the main SHAEF armies. An attack directed at Pas de Calais, if successful, would open Antwerp sooner, and Antwerp was the real key to the success of the campaign. Churchill was right in objecting to an operation that landed thousands of men hundreds of miles south of Normandy, but even he would not advocate the risk involved in an assault against the German defenses at Pas de Calais. The irony was that the Germans, who had always expected an attack at Pas de Calais for the very good reason that it
offered great strategic advantages to the Allies, had finally decided there would be none and had pulled their troops out of the area.

More important by far to the debate than the then non-existent question of postwar control of central Europe was the fact that the Mediterranean was a British theater, while in practice northwestern Europe belonged to the Americans. Each side naturally emphasized operations in its own area. At the commanders’ level, the ANVIL debate at times seemed almost to be a simple case of the two theater commanders, Eisenhower and Wilson, asking for everything they could get for themselves. Time and again the two generals presented long, detailed arguments, based on a thorough analysis of the world-wide situation as it changed from week to week, but they always came to the same conclusions—the strategic reserve should be used in their particular theaters.