Comments by "Aleksa Žunjić" (@aleksazunjic9672) on "Why did Eisenhower stop Devers from crossing the Rhine?" video.

  1. Well, war is won by unified war effort, not by flashy victories of flamboyant commanders. Overall, Eisenhower was under lot of pressure: win war quickly, but not too many casualties, balance national interests of allies, stroke the ego of vain generals and above all do not let Germans pull a fast one on you. Thus he elected safe and sound broad front strategy to grind down Germans instead of risking it all in one place.
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  2. Americans could have defended, but there was no real opportunity to advance from such bridgehead, and especially no opportunity to "end war quickly". Thus it was strategic dead end.
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  3.  @johnwolf2829  Job of Eisenhower was to be a bureaucrat, and politician even more. He had to carefully balance between egos of his filed commanders, national interests of various allies, public opinion at home, directives from Washington ... Thus he choose to play it safe and stick to the plan of winning by taking Ruhr (industrial center) and letting Soviets get Berlin (political center) . And he did decently good job.
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  4.  @joeclaridy  I would not call either of generals you mentioned particularly competent . Montgomery was skilled in set-piece battles where he had advantage, but not terribly effective in decisive battles (Market Garden) . Patton was good in quick advance against already weakened enemy, but terrible against prepared defenses. Devers was simply second-tier and lukewarm all of his career, promoted above his grade. Eisenhower thus had to keep them in line, and precisely use their strong points, while not letting them squander army on something they were incapable to do. Broad war strategy thus safely brought war to its logical conclusion, without risking sudden German counterattack, bad preparations and things going wrong like they did during Market Garden . Realistically, there was no chance Western allies could singlehandedly defeat Germany in late 1944, no matter what they did because Germans still had enough resources for one more final push . Only after Soviet East Prussian offensive and failure of Spring Awakening in Hungary, German reserves were depleted and they could not parry Allied moves.
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