Supreme Commander (90 page)

But if Eisenhower did not waver, a more important question remains. Was his insistence on a broad front wise? Was he right or was Montgomery? Since the AEF did not deliver the final blow in the fall of 1944, it is clear that Eisenhower’s way did not work. The situation that Eisenhower had been afraid of but had been willing to ignore came about—his armies got overextended and became immobilized because of a lack of supplies. There was no point in reaching the German border unless the armies could exploit that position when they got there, Eisenhower had told Marshall, but that is exactly what happened. When the AEF reached the West Wall it was immobilized. But to say that Eisenhower’s policy was unsuccessful does not say that Montgomery’s would have succeeded. Since the single thrust strategy was not tried, it is impossible to judge.

Eisenhower’s reasons for rejecting the single thrust were manifold. On military grounds, he doubted that Montgomery could deliver it, since SHAEF still had only the inadequate Channel ports available and they were insufficient to supply a thrust beyond the Rhine, even if Eisenhower followed Montgomery’s advice and immobilized everyone outside of Twenty-first Army Group. Further, despite Montgomery’s spectacular advance beyond the Seine, Eisenhower had doubts about his abilities. The failure of GOODWOOD still lingered in his mind. Had Bradley and Patton been on the left, Eisenhower might have given greater consideration to the single-thrust concept, but handling Montgomery was another matter. Eisenhower’s thinking was reinforced because of the people around him, the officers he saw every day and to whom he looked for information and advice; none had confidence in Montgomery.

Even Montgomery’s chief of staff disliked the single thrust concept. De Guingand saw Eisenhower on a number of occasions in late August and early September, and he made it clear he did not think the plan would work. As a competent staff officer, he had thought about some of the problems that would arise if it were used and he thought they were
numerous. When (and if) Twenty-first Army Group reached the Rhine, for example, the bridges would almost surely be blown. To bring forward the necessary bridging material would have been a large and lengthy task and would have meant going short on other needed supplies. Also, there was no guarantee that the Germans would surrender once Montgomery was over the Rhine, and they would have been fighting there close to their supply bases with their homes at stake. De Guingand did not know that the Germans would fight to the bitter end, but he suspected they would, and we now know that it took 160 Russian divisions, seven armies from the west, plus eight additional months of devastating air attack, to force the Germans to capitulate. After the war De Guingand said he found it hard to believe that Montgomery could have brought about the same result with Twenty-first Army Group alone, even if reinforced by First Army, especially since it would have been fighting during a period of increasingly bad weather, which would have meant fewer supporting air sorties and less air lift support. “My conclusion is, therefore,” De Guingand wrote, “that Eisenhower was right.”
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If the disadvantages of Montgomery’s proposal were obvious, so were the advantages. Montgomery believed, both at the time and afterward, that he could get to Berlin before winter. In a way, he could turn around De Guingand’s argument about fanatical German resistance to fit his own. If De Guingand was right, Eisenhower’s policy made no sense at all, since even Eisenhower admitted that, once he had reached the German border (or the West Wall, or some point slightly beyond there), his armies would be forced to pause and wait for Antwerp to become operational. The Germans meanwhile, if they were really determined to fight to the bitter end, would recover and patch up a defensive line. What Eisenhower was unconsciously counting on was a repetition of November 1918, when the Germans signed the armistice while their armies were still well west of the border. Eisenhower had chosen the safe, cautious route. Under his directives no army would take heavy casualties, no general would lose his reputation, credit for the victory could be shared by all, and there was no chance of the Germans reversing the situation by surrounding and destroying an advanced force. Eisenhower’s policy would surely lead to victory. The only trouble was that if the Germans decided to fight on it would take time.

Time was what Montgomery wanted to save. The British economy and manpower situation were stretched to the limit. Every day that the war continued meant it would take Great Britain that much longer to recover from victory. The only chance of winning the war in 1944 was to take risks, and to take them right away, in the first week of September.
The AEF would never again have such an opportunity. The only problem was logistical, and the way to solve it was to immobilize Patton and those elements of First Army not supporting the single thrust.

The logistical argument could work both ways. The problems Com Z faced when Eisenhower decided to leap the Seine were multiplied many time over as the AEF raced across northwest France. The armies required a million gallons of gasoline daily. Each division ate thirty-five tons of field rations per day. Every man in the AEF wore out shoes and clothes, expended ammunition and other material, and lost or wore out equipment. Port capacity was minimal, transport ability stretched to the absolute limit. The situation was made worse because transport airplanes were called off supply missions to get ready for air drops, which in turn were canceled because the armies overran the ground objectives before the paratroopers were ready to jump. Paris required 1500 tons of supplies per day. Com Z did what it could, with the famous Red Ball Express truck line, the construction of as much as forty miles a day of pipe lines for carrying fuel, and the reconstruction of railway lines, but all of this was insufficient to meet the constantly pressing supply needs.

Every mile that the advancing troops moved away from the Normandy ports added to the problems. For example, forward airfields had to be constructed if the armies were to have air support from short-range fighters. But to construct them it was necessary to move men and materials forward, at the expense of other supplies. After the war the chief of staff of IX Engineer Command pointed out that if Patton had gone across the Rhine in September he would have done so without any logistical or air support at all. “A good task force of Panzerfaust, manned by Hitler youth, could have finished them off before they reached Kassel,” he said in analyzing Third Army’s chances.
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Montgomery, with the Belgian airfields for support, could have done better. He might have crossed the Rhine while the Germans were still unprepared and the shock of that event might possibly have caused a general German collapse. But if it had not, it is doubtful that Montgomery could have been maintained either, since he would have been forced to operate without Antwerp, and even had Patton stayed in Paris the transportation system was inadequate to the task.

Forrest Pogue points out that a real failure on the part of SHAEF was the lack of optimism on the part of the pre-OVERLORD planners. They had built Com Z with a slow, ponderous advance in mind. No one was prepared for what happened, and largely for that reason Eisenhower could not take advanage of the AEF’s great victory.
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The situation was not unlike that which had faced the Germans in the
summer of 1940. The Allies had achieved something tremendous, but the results turned out to be disappointing, largely because they had not expected to score such an overwhelming success. In 1940 the Germans defeated the French Army, but they did not win the war because they were not prepared to invade Britain, and they were not prepared because they had not dreamed they would win in France so quickly. Similarly, in 1944 the AEF defeated the German Army in France but it did not win the war, for the Allies were not primed for their own victory.

“In hardly any respect were the Allies prepared to take advantage of the great opportunity offered them to destroy the German forces before winter,” Pogue writes. “Virtually the whole intricate military machine was geared to a slower rate of advance than that required in late August.” If Com Z was behind in performance of its tasks, so was the civil affairs division. Not until three weeks after the Allies crossed the German frontier did SHAEF have occupation money for Germany to issue. Eisenhower spent much of his time in the first week in September desperately working on a handbook for occupation policy in Germany.
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There was a great deal of preparation for the problems that victory would bring, but meanwhile that victory itself was slipping away. “There was not sufficient time,” Pogue concludes, “however vast the effort, to make the necessary readjustments in the logistical machinery which would insure speedy victory.”
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The CCS never entered the dispute, for by its nature it was not a matter for the Chiefs’ intervention. At issue were two alternatives of a campaign whose object and shape they had already set and involved forces already within the theater. They were not called upon to provide reinforcements to support either the single thrust or the broad front; indeed, they had already provided more troops than Eisenhower could currently use because of supply. The individual members of the CCS followed the argument closely but did not interfere.
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Up to a point it is difficult to see how anyone could have acted any differently. In approving MARKET-GARDEN, Eisenhower was reinforcing success, and it was not only a risk worth taking, it was almost imperative that he take it. Montgomery felt that once Eisenhower had agreed to the Arnhem operation he should have stopped Patton cold, but Montgomery should have known better than to think that Eisenhower could just cut off all Patton’s supplies. Aside from the political implications, Patton’s men had to eat, had to have replacements, had to have ammunition to defend themselves from the German counterattacks, had to have gasoline for local battlefield maneuver. It would have been impossible
to decide at exactly what point Patton was receiving more supplies than he needed for a defensive mission, and in any case the percentage of supplies that Patton did receive over his minimum needs was small.

The situation after MARKET-GARDEN was another matter. Almost all Eisenhower’s associates, British and American, agreed that the Supreme Commander was more tolerant of strong dissent from Montgomery than he should have been. In its way it was a repeat performance of GOODWOOD, when the feeling at SHAEF and among the American field commanders was that Montgomery should have been relieved. On both occasions, Eisenhower would not consider it. Eisenhower felt he had to listen to his British allies and he believed he had to grant Montgomery the right to give full expression to his views.
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The political factors were crucial, in spite of Eisenhower’s oft-repeated assertions that he made all his decisions on military grounds. Whether or not he was technically right in insisting on a broad front, it was simply inconceivable that he should accept Montgomery’s proposition and stop U.S. troops where they were while allowing the British to make the kill. The Americans felt they had contributed at least as much to final victory as their British cousins, and they insisted on getting some of the glory. If Eisenhower had agreed to a single thrust by Twenty-first Army Group, General Marshall would have been furious. Montgomery showed no appreciation of the pressures on Eisenhower when he argued as long and as persistently as he did, but then Eisenhower’s worries were not his responsibility. Montgomery did what he had to do. So did Eisenhower.

But if Eisenhower was firm in his views he was hardly decisive in the way he communicated them to Montgomery. His patience with the field marshal was enormous and he allowed Montgomery to carry every argument to its bitter end. Even Eisenhower had a limit to his tolerance, however, and Montgomery reached it on October 10, when he wrote Smith to suggest that the trouble with MARKET-GARDEN was lack of coordination between his forces and Bradley’s. Montgomery said he should take over command of Twelfth Army Group.
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It was obvious that a crisis had been reached and the time had come to have it out with Montgomery. The reply to his suggestion, therefore, had to be just right. Eisenhower asked Whiteley to draft it, since Whiteley knew Montgomery so well; Smith then went over the letter. The result was a stronger letter than Eisenhower would have drafted himself, but after some hesitation Eisenhower approved of it and it went out over his signature. It was the beginning of Eisenhower’s assertion of his authority as Supreme Commander.

Eisenhower declared that the issue in question was not one of command but of taking Antwerp. It was essential, he felt, that it be done immediately. He said this view was shared by both Brooke and Marshall. “The Antwerp operation does not involve the question of command in any slightest degree,” Eisenhower declared to Montgomery. He hoped that the “same close and friendly association” between them that had characterized their work in the past would continue, but if that were to be accomplished there would have to be agreement on logical command arrangements. Eisenhower then presented his own views. “If, having read these,” he said, “you feel that you must still class them as ‘unsatisfactory,’ then indeed we have an issue that must be settled soon in the interests of future efficiency.” He said he was well aware of his own powers and limitations, “and if you, as the senior Commander in this Theater of one of the great Allies, feel that my conceptions and directives are such as to endanger the success of operations, it is our duty to refer the matter to higher authority for any action they may choose to take, however drastic.”

Eisenhower agreed that for any one major task on a battlefield “a single
battlefield
commander” was needed. This was the reason for creating armies and army groups. But when the battle front stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea, Eisenhower could not agree “that one man can stay so close to the day by day movement of divisions and corps that he can keep a ‘battle grip’ upon the overall situation and direct it intelligently.” The campaign over such an extended front was broken up into more or less clearly outlined areas of operations, of which only one could be the principal and the others by necessity of secondary nature. The Supreme Commander had the task of adjusting the larger boundaries, assigning support by air or by ground and airborne troops, and shifting the emphasis in supply arrangements. A general who was involved in the detailed direction of a principal battle could not make such broad decisions.