Supreme Commander (87 page)

Another factor in Montgomery’s failure to get his own way was that Eisenhower controlled logistics. As the operations around Arnhem and Antwerp would illustrate, Montgomery could take an extremely broad view of Eisenhower’s orders and in essence follow his own inclinations. But he could not conjure up supplies out of thin air. He had to fight within a framework that was tightly constricted by the amount of material Eisenhower chose to give him. And this situation applied not only to logistics but to manpower as well. Montgomery’s army group was not strong enough by itself to carry out his proposed offensive across the north German plain to Berlin. He had to have help from
U. S. First Army, and it was Eisenhower’s prerogative to decide whether First Army fought under Montgomery or Bradley.

Most of all, however, Montgomery failed to win Eisenhower over because there never was the slightest chance that he would be able to persuade Eisenhower to stop the Third Army where it was and put First Army under a British commander. No matter how brilliant or logical Montgomery’s plan for an advance to the Ruhr was, (and a good case can be made that it was both), and no matter what Montgomery’s personality was, under no circumstances would Eisenhower agree to give all the glory to the British. The American people would not have stood for it, nor would Patton, Bradley, Marshall, or Roosevelt.

Had the troops of the AEF been composed of one nationality only, Eisenhower might have adopted Montgomery’s plan. Eisenhower almost never admitted, even to himself, that the alliance created problems on the battle front, but once, in Italy, he confessed in a private memorandum, “I think we have made Allied command work here with reasonable efficiency, even though at times it lacks the drive that could be applied were the force entirely homogeneous with respect to nationality.”
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But as things stood Eisenhower could not make his decisions solely on military grounds. He could not halt Patton in his tracks, relegate Bradley to a minor administrative role, and in effect tell Marshall that the great army he had raised in the United States was not needed in Europe.

Montgomery sensed these political truths, but he was still anxious to try to change Eisenhower’s mind. When he received Eisenhower’s directive of September 4, which gave Patton permission to continue his offensive toward Metz, Montgomery was unhappy. It was not yet apparent, but there were already signs that his warnings about the price that would have to be paid for a broad-front advance were about to be proven valid. Tanks and other vehicles had gone so long and so far without maintenance that in one armored division less than a third of the authorized number of medium tanks were actually fit for combat. Another armored division had left so many tanks by the wayside, either because of mechanical failure or for lack of fuel, that its vehicles were spread over the country for more than a hundred miles. Worn-out tank engines could not be replaced, nor could tracks that were falling apart. Jeeps and armored cars had been driven without pause for days and were literally falling apart. Ammunition was short. Com Z was getting further and further behind on deliveries every day.

The German defense, meanwhile, fighting close to its homeland, was
beginning to stiffen. German troops had formed a continuous, if not solid, defensive line from the North Sea to the Swiss border. In what they would later call the “Miracle of the West,” they were preparing to stop the Allied drive. When Von Rundstedt took over on September 5 his problems were enormous. A glance at the casualty lists showed him that his armies had lost 500,000 troops in France. The Allies, meanwhile, had landed 2,100,000 men on the Continent and sustained less than half the German losses. In their retreat the Germans had left most of their equipment in France. Von Rundstedt had forty-eight infantry and fifteen Panzer divisions, but he estimated their true worth at twenty-six infantry and six or seven Panzer divisions at the most, as opposed to Eisenhower’s total of forty-nine combat divisions. But although Von Rundstedt’s divisions were not up to full strength, German organization was intact. The staffs of all higher headquarters had stayed together, re-established their communications, and were functioning. Discipline remained or was being restored. By early September the German divisions that had been battered, outflanked, encircled, and apparently destroyed had miraculously reappeared and were making an honest effort to protect the German border.
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Still, the officers and men of the AEF found it hard to believe that the pursuit was about to end. They were sure that the Germans would be unable to mount a defense of the West Wall or even the Rhine, and continued to believe that the only limiting factor on their own advance was logistics. Montgomery was no exception to this response, although to his mind time was already running out. He felt his supply situation was so stretched that only a dramatic reversal of policy on Eisenhower’s part, one that would give him all the resources available to SHAEF, would allow him to exploit the victory in France to bring about the end of the war.

Accordingly, when on September 7 Montgomery learned that although Eisenhower was giving the northern thrust “priority” in supplies he still intended to support Bradley’s drive to the east, he protested. The field marshal pointed out that he had been forced to cut his intake to 6000 tons a day, which “is half what I consume and I cannot go for long like this.” He needed an air lift of 1000 tons a day and was getting only 750 tons. After reciting the facts and figures of more of his complaints, Montgomery added, “… it is very difficult to explain things in a message like this.” He wondered if it would be possible for Eisenhower to come and see him.
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It was typical of Montgomery that he should make such a request.
It evidently did not occur to him that he, not Eisenhower, was the supplicant, neither then nor at any other time during the war. Not once during the entire campaign did he visit Eisenhower at SHAEF, even though he was frequently invited to attend conferences; he always insisted that Eisenhower come to him. When they did meet he often refused to allow anyone else to be present, even the chiefs of staff.

Montgomery’s request of September 7 was particularly untactful, for Eisenhower had just suffered an accident and movement was painful for him.
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Montgomery knew about the injury, which occurred during a plane landing, but still he decided it would be better for Eisenhower to come to Brussels than for him to fly to Granville. Eisenhower asked Montgomery to come to SHAEF, but Montgomery said he had to meet with Dempsey and could not do it.

Eisenhower therefore flew to Brussels on the afternoon of September 10. He could not get out of the airplane because of his wrenched knee, so Montgomery came aboard. Tedder and Lieutenant General Sir Humfrey Gale, Eisenhower’s chief administrative officer and the man primarily responsible for liaison between SHAEF and Twenty-first Army Group, were also on the plane. Montgomery asked that Gale leave, although his own administrative officer was with him. Eisenhower agreed. Immediately upon Gale’s departure, Montgomery pulled from his pocket Eisenhower’s directive of September 4 and in extreme language damned Eisenhower’s policy. As the tirade gathered in fury Eisenhower sat silent. At the first pause for breath, however, he leaned forward, put his hand on Montgomery’s knee, and said, “Steady, Monty! You can’t speak to me like that. I’m your boss.” Montgomery mumbled that he was sorry.
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Montgomery then proposed that he make a single thrust through Arnhem to Berlin. Eisenhower, according to Tedder, thought “it was fantastic to talk of marching to Berlin with an army which was still drawing the great bulk of its supplies over beaches north of Bayeux.”
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Montgomery thought it could be done if he got all the supplies, but Eisenhower refused even to consider the possibility. As Eisenhower put it in the office diary later, “Monty’s suggestion is simple, give him everything, which is crazy.”
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Eisenhower finally agreed to a less ambitious plan, Operation MARKET, in which Montgomery would use the First Allied Airborne Army (three divisions) to get across the Lek River at Arnhem, outflanking the Rhine and the West Wall. There would be a companion operation,
GARDEN, an attack northward by British Second Army designed to link up with the paratroopers near Arnhem.
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It was a bold plan involving a high degree of risk, and only commanders who were convinced that the enemy was routed could have agreed to it. “Had the pious teetotaling Montgomery wobbled into SHAEF with a hangover,” Bradley recalled after the war, “I could not have been more astonished than I was by the daring adventure he proposed. For in contrast to the conservative tactics Montgomery ordinarily chose, the Arnhem attack was to be made over a 60-mile carpet of airborne troops.… Monty’s plan for Arnhem was one of the most imaginative of the war.”
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It did have obvious disadvantages. By concentrating on MARKET-GARDEN, Montgomery would not be able to give his attention to Antwerp, so there would be a delay in opening the port. By moving northward, Second Army would open a gap between its right flank and First Army’s left. Hodges would have to slide his divisions to his left to cover the gap, which meant an even broader front than before, with more stretching by everyone. Finally, the direction of the attack would carry Montgomery away from the Ruhr and give him another river to cross.

Eisenhower nevertheless decided to let Montgomery mount MARKET-GARDEN. Patton and Hodges were already slowing down, and although it was felt that their pause was only temporary and would be halted once supplies caught up with them, Eisenhower did want to make sure of getting a bridgehead over the Rhine before the momentum of the offensive was lost. The use of the Airborne Army in a major strategic operation as a unified force appealed to him, especially since both Arnold and Marshall had been recommending just such a deployment of the paratroopers for months. An added advantage of the plan was that the airborne troops could be supplied without imposing a further strain on the overburdened transport lines. Montgomery liked the operation because he felt it would outflank the West Wall, hit the enemy at a place he could hardly expect an Allied offensive, and occur in an area within easy range of support from the airborne forces.
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The conference ended on a happy note of agreement. Tedder wired his superior in London, “I felt the discussion cleared the air, though Montgomery will, of course, be dissatisfied in not getting a blank cheque.”
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Eisenhower returned to Granville, where in order to rest his knee he spent the next few days in bed. The morning he got up, he received a wire from Montgomery, who said that because the Supreme Commander had failed to give him priority in supplies he would not
be able to launch MARKET-GARDEN until September 26.
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Bradley, Bull, Smith, and Strong joined Eisenhower for lunch at his small house, where from his bedroom window they could see Mont St. Michel; together they discussed the logistical situation and MARKET-GARDEN.

Bradley was opposed to the Arnhem operation, in part because he thought it too risky, in part because it would cost him elements of his First Army and meant therefore that Patton had lost the contest of supplies (Patton had just started across the Moselle River).
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Montgomery later made the serious charge that Bradley opposed the operation for fear it “should open up possibilities on the northern flank and I might then ask for American troops to be placed under my command to exploit them.”
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Tedder rather agreed with this view, although he tended to think that Montgomery, not Bradley, was the villain. “The advance to Berlin was not discussed as a serious issue,” he said in his report on the Brussels airport meeting, “nor do I think it was so intended. The real issue is the degree of priority given to the American Corps operating on Montgomery’s right flank, and the extent to which Montgomery controls its operations.”
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Eisenhower’s view was less parochial than that of his army group commanders. He was more concerned with getting across the Rhine than he was with who commanded what units, and he decided to give Montgomery all the support he could within the over-all structure of the broad-front policy. He told Smith to go to Montgomery’s headquarters and inform the British field marshal that he could count on 1000 additional tons of supply per day, to be delivered by Allied planes and U.S. truck companies. In return, Eisenhower wanted MARKET-GARDEN started much sooner than September 26. To get the trucks to deliver the goods, Eisenhower ordered three newly arrived U.S. infantry divisions stripped of their vehicles, which immobilized the units at their ports of debarkation. Their trucks were used to supply Montgomery. The field marshal responded handsomely; he pushed the target date of MARKET-GARDEN up to September 17 and wired Eisenhower, “Most grateful to you personally and to Beetle for all you are doing for us.”
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MARKET-GARDEN was designed to exploit a favorable local situation and had a limited objective. If successful, it would bar the land exit of the German troops in western Holland, outflank the West Wall, and position Twenty-first Army Group troops for a subsequent drive into Germany along the north German plain. It was not strong enough
to qualify as a single thrust and did not, therefore, provide a test of the feasibility of Montgomery’s plan. What it did do was to slow Patton and, much more important, delay the opening of Antwerp. For although Montgomery captured the city in early September, the Germans had reinforced the Scheldt Estuary and Walcheren Island, and as long as they held these places they could deny the use of Antwerp as a port to the Allies. The Canadian First Army was in the process of attacking the Germans, but since the British Second Army was getting all available supplies, no great gains could be expected. On September 11 Eisenhower wrote in the office diary, “Monty seems unimpressed by necessity for taking Antwerp approaches,” but in effect Eisenhower’s decision for MARKET-GARDEN meant he was agreeing to slow Patton and ignore Antwerp to achieve a tactical—not a strategic—gain. All the AEF was now involved in half measures, or less.