Supreme Commander (92 page)

Under the circumstances the battles that took place resulted in little beyond heavy casualties on both sides. On October 1 First Army launched an offensive designed to take Cologne, but it ran into German units brought down from the Arnhem front. Not until October 21 did the Germans, who were encouraged by Hitler’s pleas for a final effort, pull out of Aachen, and even then, Hodges was still far from Cologne. To the south, Third Army tried unsuccessfully to take the fortress town of Metz. Sixth Army Group, meanwhile, made some gains, but General de Lattre’s First French Army, hampered by the task of integrating the FFI into the Regular Army, was unable to drive the Germans out of Colmar.

The temptation at the end of October was to abandon the offensive, create an easily defended line, wait for the supply situation to improve, and prepare to attack when good weather came in the spring. But Eisenhower gave little serious consideration to such an alternative. There was
still a feeling in SHAEF that somewhere the German lines
had
to crack. The German “Miracle of the West” was hardly believable, especially in view of the pressure on them from the Russians and the Allied forces in Italy, and it was obvious that the German line was thin. By attacking everywhere, Eisenhower hoped to find a weak spot through which he could roll up the German flanks and then send his armies in a dash across Germany that would not be unlike the dash across France. The emphasis in his plans was, therefore, not so much on a probe here or a skirmish there as it was on a general attack, designed to make sure the Germans suffered heavy casualties which in turn would mean a further stretching of their line. “During this period,” he wrote after the war, “we took as a general guide the principle that operations … were profitable to us only where the daily calculations showed that enemy losses were double our own.” It had become a war of attrition. Like Grant in 1864–65, Eisenhower could afford to adopt it only because his over-all resources were vastly superior to those available to the enemy and, like Grant, Eisenhower justified what many commentators considered a sterile, cold-blooded strategy on the grounds that in the long run “this policy would result in shortening the war and therefore in the saving of thousands of Allied lives.”
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The comparison of Eisenhower with Grant can be extended. Among other things, Grant’s Wilderness campaign of 1864 indicated his acceptance of the fact that the Confederates were not going to crack, that they would never surrender as long as they could maintain an army in the field, and that there was no short cut to victory. In the fall of 1944 the German Miracle in the West proved that the Wehrmacht was not going to crack either. Montgomery at times likened his single thrust to the German offensive in 1940 in reverse, but what was obvious, and had been since D-Day, was that the Wehrmacht was not the French Army. The Russians had already recognized this fact, and their campaigns were designed to kill Germans, not force a breakthrough to be followed by a dramatic drive to Berlin. In deciding to engage in a campaign of attrition, Eisenhower may have been cautious and unimaginative, but it appeared to him that the only way to defeat the Wehrmacht was to destroy it. In a general sense, this was the policy Montgomery adopted at Caen, and at that time Eisenhower was the one who grew impatient. But Montgomery’s actions before Caen paid handsome dividends; so would Eisenhower’s policy of attrition. As Eisenhower told Steve Early, Roosevelt’s press secretary, “People of the strength and war-like tendencies
of the Germans do not give in; they must be beaten to the ground.”
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Another factor in Eisenhower’s decision to continue the offensive in the fall and winter was internal. MacArthur and Nimitz were on the offensive in the Pacific, and every week they asked for more men, planes, ships, and guns. The resources of the United States were limited. The War Department had taken a deliberate gamble early in the war and decided to raise only ninety combat divisions; almost all of them were already committed, and in the end all but two saw combat. There was, in other words, no strategic reserve available. There were also, as noted earlier, ammunition shortages. Admiral King, one of the most powerful and intelligent of the leaders who believed the Pacific Theater should be the Allies’ primary concern, had gone along with the Europe-first policy only because he expected the war against Germany to end quickly so that he could turn the full fury of the United States against Japan. Had Eisenhower gone over to a defensive strategy, a cry would have gone up from the Pacific Theater to send the excess troops (excess because it takes less men to man a defensive line than to mount an offensive) there, especially the divisions scheduled to go to Europe but not yet sent over. If this had happened, Eisenhower, when spring came, would have found himself with insufficient forces for the final blow.

One trouble with the strategy of attrition was that Great Britain could no more afford it than Germany could. Another was that, at least in Montgomery’s eyes, it took a lot of time which meant a delay in the end of the war. This bothered the War Department, too, for it meant in turn a delay before redeployment of troops to the Pacific could take place. Marshall, always under great pressure from the Asia-first group in the United States, was especially concerned about this. He did not think the single thrust could bring a quick victory but did feel there might be other more favorable alternatives available. On October 23 he wired Eisenhower to say that the CCS were considering issuing at an early date a directive for an all-out effort to end the war in Europe before 1945. If the CCS did so, it would require extraordinary measures to carry out the directive, including “the use of Strategic Air Forces to get maximum immediate tactical advantage from use of our air power, expedited movement and employment of units and the use of the proximity fuze,” a secret weapon that exploded as a shell reached the vicinity of the target. There was no point, however, in speeding up the flow of replacements to ETO, or in changing once again the targets of the heavy bombers, unless Eisenhower thought that these measures would
bring a quicker end to the war. “Be frank with me,” Marshall concluded his message. “I will accept your decision.”

Eisenhower assured Marshall that he was just as anxious to “wind this thing up quickly” as anyone else, but he did have serious problems. For example, he could use more infantry replacements but until Antwerp was operating he could not support additional full divisions in the line. “This … is another of those gambles that we are forever faced with in war,” he explained, for if he took the riflemen only, he could keep his front-line units fresh and might “produce the desired break,” but when Antwerp was open he would want more full divisions in the line. He thought the best compromise was to send the infantry directly to northwest Europe, with the heavy elements of the divisions coming through Marseilles.

The problem of how to make proper use of air power was even more complicated. Ground force leaders felt strategic bombing took too long to have an effect and were pressing the air forces to undertake in Germany something similar to the Transportation Plan that had been so successful in France. Marshall’s message indicated that he shared this sentiment. Eisenhower talked to Tedder about it and found that this time Tedder disagreed with the U. S. Army Chief of Staff. “As you are aware,” Tedder told Portal on October 25, “the British Army have for months now been allowed to feel that they can, at any time, call on heavy bomber effort, and it will be laid on practically without question.… I am doing my best to get things straight, but I am sure you will realize that, the Army having been drugged with bombs, it is going to be a difficult process to cure the drug addicts.…” To Eisenhower, Tedder explained that, while the Transportation Plan had certainly been a success in France, the lesson could not literally be applied to Germany. He thought that the bombers should concentrate against the Ruhr and its rail centers, oil targets, canal system, and centers of population. The oil targets would be especially important, for the German stocks were low, but if the enemy had an opportunity to recover he could do so quickly.

Eisenhower told Marshall that using the bombers in direct tactical support work to help achieve another COBRA was out of the question. Such an operation was difficult enough in balmy July weather; with the overcast sky and almost constant rain of the autumn it was impossible. He felt that the only thing to do was keep the bombers on strategic targets inside Germany, with perhaps a slight increase in effort on the rail centers in the Ruhr.

The whole idea of ending the war in 1944 was, in fact, wishful thinking. Marshall’s proposal came too late. As Eisenhower explained to him, “… our logistical problem has become so acute that all our plans have made Antwerp a
sine qua non
to the waging of our final all-out battle.…” Until Antwerp was open, using new weapons and shifting bombing priorities would be of little use.
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In November 16 Marshall tried again to restate his position. He said he had been talking to a scientist employed by the AAF who “has pictured to me a concept of aerial war this winter, which seems to me to have very great possibilities. He firmly believes that if the effort were put into it, fighter bombers almost unaided could win the war in Germany this winter.” The idea was to move Eighth Fighter Command forward to Belgium or Holland, then fly fighter-bomber missions in all weather. The planes could fly low under the overcast, because of their speed and ability they could take care of themselves in combat, and they could drop their bombs on the first target of consequence that they saw. Fighter-bombers might attack 2500 targets a day “rather than the few which we now hit.”
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Eisenhower replied that the fighter-bombers were already carrying out low-flying attacks on their way back from escorting heavy bomber penetrations, and that he did not think it would be wise to stop the strategic air campaign for an unproven panacea.
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The search for some cheap method to end the war, one that would make the gruesome battles on the ground unnecessary, continued. Eisenhower himself, willing to try anything, took part in it. By November 20 he was becoming discouraged, as attrition had brought no noticeable decline in the strength of the German defense. German morale, he confessed, showed no sign of cracking, and the “enemy’s continued solid resistance is a main factor postponing final victory.…” The average German soldier continued to fight because of the iron discipline of the Wehrmacht and because of successful Nazi propaganda, “which is convincing every German that unconditional surrender means the complete devastation of Germany and her elimination as a nation.” Eisenhower thought something should be done to lower the German resistance, and one obvious method was to announce that unconditional surrender would not in fact lead to national destruction.
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Marshall agreed, and he reported to Eisenhower that Roosevelt had sent a message to Churchill asking him to join in a statement to the German people, one that stressed that the Allies did not seek to punish the people or to devastate Germany, but only to eliminate the Nazi Party. Churchill refused. He “thought it would be wrong at this juncture to
show that we were anxious for them to ease off their desperate opposition. Goebbels would certainly be able to point to the alteration of our tone as an encouragement for further resistance, and the morale of the German fighting troops would be proportionately raised.”
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Churchill thus convinced Eisenhower that a propaganda statement would achieve just the opposite of its desired result. The Supreme Commander then told Marshall he had decided that “a statement at this moment would probably be interpreted as a sign of weakness rather than of an honest statement of intention,” and said the Allies should wait for a major victory to make one.
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There was to be no short cut to victory—it would have to be won on the ground. On October 18 Eisenhower met in Brussels with Montgomery and Bradley to discuss future operations. Since Montgomery was occupied with the opening of Antwerp, Eisenhower decided to put the main offensive in November under Bradley. The Twelfth Army Group commander, fearful of losing one of his armies to Montgomery, had shifted his relatively untried Ninth Army northward, between Twenty-first Army Group and First Army. Eisenhower told Bradley to have Ninth Army drive east in support of Hodges, whose task was to establish a bridgehead south of Cologne. Patton should attack in a northeasterly direction in support of Hodges, while Sixth Army Group attempted to cross the Rhine. For the first time since early August, therefore, the main effort would be by the U.S. forces, although Montgomery did get Eisenhower to agree that once Antwerp fell the main effort would switch back to his army group and the offensive toward the Ruhr.
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The campaign that followed was the least glamorous, and the hardest, of all the actions in Europe. Hodges fought against bitter opposition, especially in the Huertgen Forest, where roads were nothing more than forest trails. Rain and snow added to the difficulties of mines, artillery, and the German infantry. By a supreme effort at the end of October, First Army reached the Roer, but it was still far from crossing the Rhine. Patton, meanwhile, did little better. Eisenhower eloquently described his difficulties to Marshall: “Every day we have some report of weather that has broken records existing anywhere from twenty-five to fifty years. The latest case is that of the floods in Patton’s area. His attack [launched on November 8] got off exactly as planned.… Then the floods came down the river and not only washed out two fixed bridges, but destroyed his principal floating bridge and made others almost unusable. It was so bad that in one case where we had installed a fixed bridge, the approaches to it were under three feet of water. At one point the Moselle is more
than one mile wide, with a current of from seven to ten feet a second.” Still, Eisenhower remained an optimist. He hoped that “some little spell will come along in which we can have a bit of relief from mud, rain, and fog” so that the tanks, infantry, and air could do their job.
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But the better weather did not come, and although Patton was able to take Metz on November 23 and, on his right, reach the Saar, his offensive soon ground to a halt.