Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Montgomery vs Eisenhower on Operation Market Garden's True Purpose | History Debate" video.
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@John Burns
The US armies NEVER had to divert supplies in the manner described. General LEE and IKE were totally in charge of such matters, NOT Bradley, not Patton.
That's why they had to sit on their azzes and watch MG while doing nothing. If they'd had any say at all, they'd have kept on going.
Ike TOTALLY SHUT THEM OFF with a phone call to Lee.
He issued orders to General Lee, who ran the supply echelon.
The American system was unlike that of any other army's. All supplies were brought up by non-combat troops that the generals at the front had no control over. They were delivered to the various army-level supply depots, whence 1st, 3rd and 9th picked them up to haul them the last miles to the front. That's how the system really worked.
When Bradley was desperate for soldiers, he requested that Lee's boys be diverted to combat. He was shot down in flames. He didn't get ANYBODY. General Lee, of course, had a FIT.
Ike was trying to mollify Monty, nothing more.
Official histories are nothing more than azz wiping for the record. When you've read enough of them, it becomes baffling why anyone in any army ever put a footstep wrong.
( In this regard, Halder's revisionism is epic by any standard. )
NO WAY is the American official history -- or any other official document -- going to put the blame on Monty -- or the British, more generally.
Grow up.
As for 'Maxwell' (Taylor) -- you're looking at parachute DOGMA. No way is the school for parachutists going to opine that the biggest drop of the war was all goofed up because Browning -- its godfather -- phu cked up. Instead, the official line had to be: it could've worked, yes it could.
Well, who can argue against could'ves?
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@John Burns
Can't you get ANYTHING right?
The Aachen story has been documented in both book and made for TV video broadcast.
The Germans were totally befuddled as to why the Americans didn't show up 'on time.' They'd been rolling right along.
The fact that 1st Army was stopped by Ike, at this time, in favor of Monty was something that you have to piece together, as neither the US Army nor the British Army want that connection made, then or now. It's evaporated from the narrative.
But the German general's plan would've put US 1st Army CLEAN over the Rhine within HOURS -- a full week before the Garden drop.
He, literally, expected to surrender Aachen to a jeep -- the traditional lead element of an American Armored Corps. By this time, Germans were accustomed to surrendering to jeeps.
[ It was common for the jeeps to announce themselves by way of 50 caliber machine gun bursts. This always terrified Germans, as the M2 machine gun usually required a closed coffin for the dead. Jeeps, of course, never travelled alone. They'd pack a tank brigade over their shoulder. ]
(Two jeeps took the surrender of Prague in 1945 -- an event that the Czech Republic honors to this very day. It refuses to acknowledge the Red Army is its liberators. Those monuments have all been torn down. A plaque thanking the US (3rd) Army was erected in their place.)
The jeeps were driven by Jewish Americans on a hunt for their cousins, BTW, and totally against orders. When they returned, their colonel told them, "Don't do that again." And that was the extent of their punishment for disobeying orders. Now contrast that with any other WWII army. Heh.
When Gavin rolled north to the Baltic, (April 1945) he just used two jeeps, with his mounting an American flag. That ended all resistance. The arrival of the US Army was a fantasy come true for northern Germans. They feared the British or Russians.
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@bill
Your analysis is fact-free, I'll give you that.
1) Grabner was ACROSS the Arnhem bridge BEFORE Frost arrived.
That meant that MG was DEAD, DEAD, DEAD.
Arnhem bridge was ALREADY lost before Frost showed up.
Interdicting the northern approach is ALWAYS conflated by British eyes with taking the Arnhem bridge. Such is not so.
2) Once Grabner was on the island, he proved to be too much for both the 82nd and the 1st Airborne. He'd brought FLAK with him.
Yeah, he had both 88mm & 20mm FLAK.
XXX Corps accounts tell of 4 88mm guns. Which would ring true, as that was the standard deployment for such guns. ( They were simply not deployed singly or in duos. Back in 1940, a quad-set destroyed the British counter-attack at Arras. a quat-set destroyed the British ( Indian ) attack at Hell Fire Pass. ( North Africa, see TIK's video on that campaign.)
Once Grabner was across, Frost, Urquhart, and Gavin -- and BROWNING -- were all screwed.
2) Even without Grabner, the SS had continuous access to the island and to the southern end of Arnhem bridge.
Consequently there was ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to stop the SS from dropping the Arnhem bridge into the lower Rhine -- it didn't mater what Horrocks// XXX Corps did.
THIS ^^^ is the REAL reason why the Irish Guards didn't charge off into the night after rolling across the Nijmegen bridge. All other tales are BS.
Not only would the Irish Guards have to blindly roll up a solitary causeway at NIGHT but they could absolutely COUNT ON SS Panthers showing up before they reached the approaches to Arnhem bridge.
Regardless of the opinions of this or that para, the Irish Guards knew from bitter experience that the SS was sure to pull a rabbit of their helmet and slot four more 88s some place further down the causeway. They were the #1 killer of Allied tanks. Nothing else comes close. The Irish Guards had just destroyed four of them around the southern approach to Nijmegen bridge, and that took ALL DAY with both their grenadiers and the 82nd paras.
[ A single 88 could wipe out a platoon of Shermans faster than you can drop your underwear. This was a known fact. ]
The Germans had routine access to the island by way of a ferry that the RAF never put out of business. For some reason, the RAF is given a pass on this matter -- while TIK and jingoist John Burns tees off on Gavin.
If Gavin were such a boob, why did he get a prompt promotion?
If Browning were such a whiz why did he disappear from WWII history?
It takes a LOT to disappear a national hero with three-stars -- an army commander. Browning attained this distinction; yeah he was sent off to INDIA.
( Good grief, what a demotion! )
"In December 1944 he became Chief of Staff of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten's South East Asia Command. "
Considering the travel time, Monty had him hustled out of England ASAP.
( Americans would call that the MG Lloyd Fredendall 'solution.' If you'll recall Lloyd was even 'promoted.' Well, that's what the paperwork said. Heh. )
His trip to India kept Browning away from Fleet Street, that's to be sure.
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You Brits, knock it off with the Gavin thesis.
Browning blew it with the drop zones. Monty, Ike, Urquhart, Gavin, Horrocks ALL saw that to be true -- after the battle was decided. The after-action report must have been BRUTAL.
( Frost didn't comment: he was in enemy hands, wounded. )
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@Benedict... Adolf phucked up in the Ardennes. Other than the trite influence of the British 43rd division, and the preening of Monty, the Ardennes was a purely American show.
In the eyes of Germany -- and history -- the Americans crushed the offensive -- throwing it totally off the rails within 72 hours -- the single fastest reversal of a Nazi offensive during that war.
Famous for a time, but now lost to the kids, American engineers totally derailed 6SS Panzer Army -- its spearhead in particular. These were not front line assault engineers. They were trained in bridge building. Which also meant they knew where all of the bridges were and how to blow them up.
Strategy & Tactics magazine cranked out a Wacht on Rhein simulation that used the US Geological Survey of that battle zone. If you should ever obtain a copy -- it's an eye-opener. With it you can follow company level movements during every account -- both sides.
( Wacht on Rhein is the tune being sung by Germans in Casablanca, for you film buffs. It was written in the 19th century as an honor to the Germans that fought against Napoleon. Hence, the Casablanca scene is irony compounded many times over. The French anthem is the aggressive one. By the time of Hitler, what had been a totally defensive ode had been transformed into an opus of offense.)
It is Bradley that smeared Patton as Blood & Guts. Under Bradley's leadership, 1st US Army suffered crazy high casualties -- especially to include the Hurtgen Forest. He OWNED it.
In contrast, Patton was parsimonious with blood. He correctly understood that you can't allow the Germans to get their bearings back. You must keep driving them like a broken herd of sheep.
The second the Germans recover their wits, they become Hell to shift.
THAT was Monty's epic mistake. When his own subordinate commanders brought this fact up -- he had them canned. ( retired, sent to India -- something that happened to Browning. )
The fact that Browning was CANNED by Monty is not something that Burns & Coy can bear to face.
In contrast: Monty and Gavin had a (military reputation) love affair to the ends of their careers. Monty 'forgave' Gavin -- yet NEVER forgave Browning. ( Gavin was absorbing the blame truly belonging to Browning and Monty knew absolutely everything about the events. )
The 1,000 panzers came from BROWNING and Bletchley intercepts. No British general would put ANY faith in brigadier general Gavins strategic insights. No-one tossed off Bletchley's transmissions.
Bletchley was not wrong. They got the timing off. The panzers were for the BULGE. Adolf really expected Speer to crank out that many panzers in time for his dream counter-offensive.
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@David
All during MG, the Germans started shelling the highway with heavy artillery. (150mm guns)
Any successful hits would cause pure chaos -- as the British not only had to attend the wounded, but they had to haul the crippled trucks away.
Doing so was a first class bitch... with no tow trucks to hand, the Brits had to improvise with Tommies and tow cables.
BTW, the film leads to the wrong impression: it shows British lorries.
Whereas, Monty received 2,000 GMC trucks from Ike for this battle. This was a Big Deal. They were off the essence -- specifically demanded by Monty. The whole op was delayed by three-days just for these 2,000 trucks.
It's a pretty good bet that Monty wanted them for their 4x4 capability in the polders. British lorries were dead meat should they leave the highway. They didn't have limited-slip differentials. So when the ground got soft, they totally lost traction.
In 4x4 mode, GMC trucks would LOCK UP their differentials so that all wheels received power. ( This mode could not be used on a tarmac as it'd tear up the transmission, duh. ) Monty saw this problem coming a mile away, of course.
The Germans did more than shell the highway. They penetrated it with ground assaults, too. Such interdictions cut the highway for as much as a day and a half at a stretch. (!!!)
This is why I contend that Monty screwed up by not requesting jeeps. Jeeps would've permitted British grenadiers and infantry the luxury of establishing a distant defense of the highway. Jeeps had such a light foot-print that they could roll ANYWHERE. And, when it counted, there were no Germans to run into. All that was necessary was to drive on over and set up your machine gun positions, your OPs, etc.
Even Universal Carriers ( aka Bren Carriers) could not compete with 4x4 jeeps. Jeeps were simply a faster, lighter machine. And the enemy could barely hear them until they were pretty close. Tracked machines put up an awesome racket: it's the track itself that does so.
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@Bob Fink
Monty was AWOL for this battle. ALL of the evidence indicates that he was so drunk with Victory Disease that he left the matter to Browning.
Here's the rub: Browning didn't have the 21st Army Group's staff. Monty had gathered around him the Cream of the British Army. It's what you'd expect of Britain's top field command.
The result was a plan that was loaded with brain farts from end to end. And the average Joe or Tommy actually STILL thinks that MG was Monty's plan.
It's so against Monty's style -- it's not funny.
Monty, himself, would NEVER have failed to drop the 101st on the island between the two bridges. In all of the posting here, no-one addresses this mega-gaff. That goes double for Brits.
Forget Gavin, Browning and all the rest -- how in the WORLD could ANY senior officer look at these drop zones and miss the fact that THE critical terrain was the ISLAND between the two bridges?
The fact that it's an island is lost for most civilians as the map they see does not back away far enough to show that the island is part of the greater delta of the lower Rhine.
The idea that you can't parachute onto a polder because the ground is soft -- that's a GOOD one. Just tell the boys to land soft and roll into the mud. Make absolutely no attempt to stand up until you're at a stop.
BTW, the Poles DID land on the island -- just too late to be shot up something silly by German FLAK.
No-one discusses why Monty didn't ask for JEEPS. These were known to be perfect for off-road transport -- even in the polders. They WERE used by both the 82nd and 101st to great effect. Why not XXX Corps? I'll tell you why, they were overlooked.
In the film, XXX is shown using British trucks. Whereas, Monty specifically demanded 2,000 American GMC trucks for this battle. What happened? Monty, rightly, figured that XXX Corps trucks would have to drive off the road and onto soft ground. He KNEW that his lorries wouldn't roll five feet once they left the high ground.
The lack of observation aircraft passes without remark. Strange. Most strange. The Americans had been able to get away with observation aircraft at all times prior.
Naturally this omission led to no co-ordination between ground and air. The standard drill was for buddies to be assigned such duties. That is the ground trooper was a USAAF airman from the same outfit that was overhead. They'd switch positions from operation to operation. This way both ground-man and air-man knew how things looked from both positions.
What actually happened is that Monty put his seal on Browning's plan -- without tearing open the box and looking inside. Browning's reputation was on par with all army commanders. So there was no WAY that Monty was going to smear Browning's rep. This is why the chit landed on the Poles. It certainly couldn't be dumped on the Americans. ( Which would be politically insane. )
Monty, Gavin -- BOTH are covering for Browning's gaffs.
The failure to drop the 101st on the island makes every other gaff look tiny by comparison.
Frost would've had a cake walk if the southern end of the bridge was held by the 101st. They'd just come marching over the span by the battalion. There'd be no-one for them to fight on the island.
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@Bob Fink
Military politics dictates that officers that rise to the top ALWAYS dump gaffs onto others. The slightest bit of stink is usually a career ender. That's the world as it is.
My own sister in a corporate climber of the first order.
She's not bright, not bright at all. Just check out her academic record.
What she's is a first class blame shifter and credit taker... and not a bad liar, either. Consequently she fits right in with her corporate peers. She's one of the club. They're all like that.
If you've EVER met a top corporate honcho you soon realize that he's nothing special. He's got political skills: blame shifting and azz kissing being at the top of the list.
Such is the nature of man.
Rommel, Monty, Patton, MarArthur, on down the line, all owe their reputations to junior officers, that you know not of.
(Sometimes they are revealed in specialist histories.)
In the case of Allied generals, their track record is immensely puffed up by Bletchley Park -- and the code breakers in America.
[ Strangely, the biggest intercepts of WWII occurred by reading Purple transmissions from the Japanese embassy in Berlin to Tokyo. It was the Americans that broke this code -- and sent Purple machines to London. These were so few in number that London's machine came at the expense of Pearl Harbor. (!!!)
The USN was PISSED. (King)
This was a DIPLOMATIC code -- only. The reason it was so important was that Hitler loved to spill his guts to the Baron. Then the Baron, with an astounding audio memory, transmitted every last bit to Tokyo. ( What a FOOL. )
These were the transmissions that informed the Allied that Patton could NEVER be given Army Group command in Normandy. Why? Adolf told the Baron that if and when Patton showed up -- then that would be the main show -- and then he, Adolf, would commit EVERY reserve to that front.
This was NEVER explained to Patton. Hell even Bradley didn't know it.
Only Ike knew it. It is of the record that Ike stayed away from Patton -- lest he let this little detail slip -- as Patton was a buddy of his going back decades. Indeed, Patton's three stars came directly off of Ike's old uniform... with a photo op to match. ( North Africa )
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@Donald Hill
You've got everything backasswards.
Marshall told Ike that he'd be relieved of command if he mirco-managed.
Yup.
Ike let Monty be Monty. No-one could stop him anyway.
Just ask Alexander and Tedder.
Ike NEVER dipped his toes into battle tactics. He didn't have the time of day to play at being despot. ( Two exceptions: the Kasserine fiasco and Pantelleria -- hope my spelling isn't too bad -- note these both occurred when Ike was commanding tiny formations -- just few armies.)
(Stalin, Churchill, Hitler all loved that game. FDR didn't have either the energy nor the inclination. And playing despot during wartime has always blown up for American presidents. Note how President Trump promptly moved war decisions back to the Pentagon, unlike Barry. )
Bradley and Patton were fit to be tied when they found out that Ike had given Monty ALL of their gasoline and 2,000 trucks and anything else he wanted. This decision was a done deal without Tedder, Bradley, Patton, Hodges, Simpson, et. al. having a word edgewise. Bradley and Patton opined that Ike had committed treason, that he'd gone over totally to the British. Tempers were HIGH.
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@MrStoneycool
The NUMBER ONE source of looting: local Frenchmen. After years of privation, they just could not sit still and watch all that coffee roll by. So what you had was a conspiracy: the French would conjure up fresh eggs, the occasional chicken, cognac, and more -- and the GI would discover coffee beans, chocolate, tobacco, even cigarettes.
The other item looted: gasoline. After PLUTO came out of the Channel, it pumped gasoline into a storage farm. (Cherbourg ) Thence it traveled by multiple 4" pipes (laid directly on the ground) towards the front. It was THIS pipeline that the French kept robbing. It got to the point that the US Army had to station two divisions of "pipeline guards" to stop the theft.
Naturally, all of this stuff was kept hush, hush, as it would be VERY bad PR, bad for morale.
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@John... good grief. After taking all of that credit Monty nearly got FIRED. It's pure BS. Bradley was down in Luxembourg City. He wasn't dithering. What a hoot. Bradley was shamed for not 'getting it.' It was IKE that sent the 7th Armored south, the 10th Armored north and the 18 Airborne Corps into the fray. He did so BEFORE the evidence was in.
(Said evidence was what Bradley was waiting for. That's not quite dithering. Rather, he was working to British//Russian speed. It was doctrine at that time that one didn't send in reserves until enemy intentions were clear. Ike had enough clarity to figure it out just by the screams from the front. BTW, it took V Corps's commander, Gerow, ALL DAY to figure out that his 2nd Division MG was right to disobey his attack order of the day. He apologized, humbled by the reality. Bradley placed HUGE weight on Gerow's opinion. Between the two of them, they basically ran 1st American Army, Hodges was a place holder for Bradley who never wanted to leave.)
This German offensive was the WORST performance by them during the war. They went off the rails within the first 72 hours -- that's the GERMAN opinion -- not mine.
The war was running long because of Market Garden. Stopping the 12th AG (gasoline restriction) caused the battle of Aachen.( ... and then the Bloody Hurtgen.) It was going to be surrendered as an open city. With that, the main bridges into Germany would've been secured. (!!!!) This is so embarrassing to the Allied cause that both British and American histories bury it.
Losing Aachen as an open city was the REAL tragedy of MG. Break out a map some time.
The British were barely in contact during the Bulge. They were, generally, relegated to being WEST of the Meuse. They just weren't needed. By the time XXX Corps was settled in -- the tide had reversed.
You're STILL eating Monty's BS. The stuff that nearly got him canned. It's a fraud. BTW, at the time the British army couldn't keep its divisions at proper strength. So they were broken up. In contrast the US Army was adding about a regiment every day at the time. We were still building up 9th Army... and then lending it to Monty! He was bitching and fetching when he had to give it back to 12th AG. US 9th Army WAS Monty's Big Punch. Once he had it, it became his leading attack formation straight through until he lost it to Bradley. Once that happened, the British Army kicked it back into idle. No-one wanted to be the last Brit to die at the front. Read the British accounts.
Monty forced the Americans to retreat -- to clean up their lines. Gavin was choking on such orders. Read his account. Monty got the 7th Armored to withdraw from St. Vith -- just for starters. These quite unnecessary retreats ran up the American blood lost. St. Vith was more important than Bastogne. It was THE choke point frustrating 6th Panzer Army -- later 6th SS Panzer Army.
The Bulge was an American victory. Period. Hitler lost his entire strategic reserve -- two panzer armies and the gasoline to power them. This campaign is the PRIMARY reason that Monty had a walk-over when he crossed the Rhine. Duh.
Then again, Monty was the LAST Allied commander to get across the Rhine, Bradley (Hodges) and Patton had stolen the march. Patton's punch through was so extreme that Bradley made him hold up. At the time Patton joked that he'd captured four ( 4) armies: 6th AG + two German armies. Heh.
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@thunderbolt
Don't invent history, please.
It was Freddie de Goungand, Monty's chief of staff, that brought Monty around. Churchill was not even in the picture.
He returned to 21st Army Group HQ -- having just left Ike -- who had ALREADY drafted the magic letter addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Freddie flipped out, BEGGED Ike to not send it on until he'd had a chance to 'smooth things over with Monty.'
When he revealed to Monty just how perilous his position was -- Monty countered with the astonishing question: "Who can (possibly) replace me?"
Freddie had to tell his own boss that Monty's old boss FM Alexander was the American favorite to succeed Monty. [ The Americans had wanted Alexander ALL ALONG. ] And that their thinking was that Monty would be 'promoted' to some command back in England, and Alexander would be brought up from the Med, where he was already operating as a theatre supreme commander.
(SHAEF actually didn't cover the Med. You can see the politics of it: Britain had its Supreme Commander; America had its Supreme Commander. Their joint status was fuzzed by the press during wartime.
BTW, Churchill bitterly railed against 'Dragoon' precisely because it would take two armies away from Alexander. Churchill had all kinds of crazy ideas about using them in the eastern Med: Rhodes being at the top of the list. Ike had a major row with Winnie over the matter. )
"[Alexander] Commander-in-Chief Middle East and commanding the 18th Army Group in Tunisia. He then commanded the 15th Army Group for the capture of Sicily and again in Italy before receiving his field marshal's baton and being made Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean."
The fact that Alexander was independent of SHAEF is only apparent when you pull the organizational chart for SHAEF. His entire command is missing, of course. The Med was considered a theatre in its own right. But, with D-Day the BIG action had shifted to Northwest Europe. This latter term was ginned up to make explicit the split between Ike's command and Alexander's command. Both reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As you can imagine, Alexander would cough up anything that Ike needed -- namely the newly constituted 6th Army Group. ( French 1st Army; American 7th Army )
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AFTER Monty realized that Churchill would accept Alexander with no qualms at all... he drafted a contrite 'apology' to Ike about how he LOVED working as a team-member, etc. etc.
Obviously, Freddie drafted this letter. He'd been crafting it while on the plane flying to 21st Army Group HQ.
( Monty never went to Ike's HQ if it could possibly be avoided -- and it usually was. )
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@steve w
One SS Major, having fought everywhere against everybody, up from the ranks the whole way to major, stated that fighting Americans was by far the WORST he'd ever known.
Nothing compared.
1) Pure physical strength. Americans were bigger, better fed, just flat out stronger across the board.
2) Technical acumen. Americans could not only operate and fix their own stuff, they were astoundingly adept at fixing and using enemy (German) equipment against its former master.
3) The American army simply didn't have any formations that rated less than First Line divisions. It also had Elite formations. It did not have Static troops, Second Line divisions, stomach and ear battalions, ... etc.
4) Uniquely, the American army was the only combatant power that kept its combat formations at 90-105% of TO&E strength all the time. In the event a unit took heavy casualties, it was pulled out of the line and promptly re-blooded, and at a very fast tempo.
This was not the smartest move by a long shot, but it was a fetish that George Marshall had. He regarded troops as so many machine parts.
The greatest division of WWII -- any army -- was the 29th Division on D-Day.
Why?
General Bradley totally rebuilt it in the previous two-months. He took only the CREAM of the US Army in Britain and stuffed it into this one formation. The typical company within this division only retained ONE trooper through this reformation process. (Junior officers, too.)
Everyone else was washed out due to athletic reasons:
a) Wore glasses -- gone
b) 'Slow' in training camp -- gone
Only the top 1% passed Bradley's muster. (!!!)
c) Couldn't read or write -- gone
d) Couldn't read a map -- gone
e) Couldn't field strip an M-1 blind-folded -- gone
f) Overweight -- gone
g) Underweight -- gone
h) Too short -- gone
i) Couldn't shoot well -- gone
This above wash-out and rebuild is virtually buried in military history. It's only alluded to in Bradley's autobiography.
It's historically significant in that this ultra-elite formation was shredded on D-Day -- with immense consequences thereafter.
The loss of so many elite troops on D-Day meant that the formations that they'd been robbed from were seriously weakened. These were the guys that would've been natural promotables in the field. In effect, this was a division of sergeants.
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@Shandwen
Patton was relegated by the Grand Plan to the TRADITIONAL invasion route into Germany. The further south you go, the smaller the Rhine gets. By the time you're in Holland, the Rhine is an absolute monster. It's as big as the Volga, Mississippi, Columbia, etc. MOST of that water landed north of the southern Rhine.
In the actual event, 3rd Army found that it was a cakewalk to set pontoon bridges across the Rhine.
Patton didn't use ANY of the exotic preparation that Monty required -- and he was across BEFORE Monty was.
The Germans were so concerned about 1st Army ( Remagen ) and 21st Army Group ( Monty ) that the door was wide open.
Shortly thereafter 3rd Army made a MASSIVE penetration that was so DEEP that Bradley told Patton to knock it off, to stop, damn it!!!
You'll never find any battle maps showing this -- no matter how far you look. You'll have to craft one yourself from 3rd Army records.
What happened is that 3rd Army was forced to stay in place, killing time, while 1st Army caught up. Only then Bradley permitted position maps to be published for general release.
The big hang-up with 1st Army was that Hitler had thrown EVERYTHING in front of it at Remagen. So it took 9th Armored and friends a lot of fighting to eliminate this blocking force.
Once this was done, one arm swung north to meet 21st Army Group and the Ruhr was pocketed. The rest of 1st Army ( it was a monster ) then pushed forward at the same time -- ultimately to the Elbe.
It was at this time that 15th Army was established. It was a huge army. You'll have to look long and hard to find 15th Army in any history map. Why? It was an administrative and occupation army. It took over the vast bulk of 1st Army -- so that the fighting troops could spend the final weeks of the war taking it easy.
1st Army was, day by day, re-blooded with brand new infantry divisions. There were some exceptions: the 2nd Armored was loaded with Pershing tanks, so it was sent forward so that the Soviets would be impressed. ( It's sole reason for staying in the front line. ) It didn't take part in any substantial fighting. Bradley absolutely did not want it crossing the Elbe.
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@Donald Hill
On the contrary, I'd rate Monty VERY high as a logistician.
The British Army was as good as it gets, logistically.
Proof: El Alamein. Monty 'logged' the hell out the 8th Army.
Indeed, one can easily maintain that Monty was TOO obsessed with logistics.
Let's all get this straight: Monty had an ego bigger than Jupiter.
Every single account agrees on this point, even Freddie.
But Monty is FAR from incompetent. He has some of the MOST significant battles and campaigns to his credit. He'll never be forgotten by history -- long after all of us are dust.
Ike, Tedder, Bradley, -- hell everyone -- found Monty's pre-D-Day lecture spellbinding -- just totally awesome. He knew is chit... down to extreme, even excessive detail. He was a remarkable general. It was this level of knowledge that he had, that FEW could ever hope to attain that led to his arrogance.
[ Patton was of the same stripe. In Patton's case the guy was a walking military history professor. You (literally) couldn't bring up ANY battle, modern or ancient that Patton didn't know more about than you. Then sit down for a major lecture -- like you're back at West Point. These would be spellbinding, BTW. ]
Lord Allenbrooke considered him the best field commander he'd ever had the pleasure to command. He LOVED the man.
Churchill loved Monty, too. Now THAT'S saying something. Winnie was hell on generals. IMHO, Churchill ruined the reputations of some of Britian's finest... starting with Wavell. I regard Wavell as tip top. He reached five-stars -- no thanks to Winnie. I think Winnie took years off his life, BTW.
I would've had a stroke if I had to work under Churchill.
Like Adolf and Stalin, Winnie would brook no rational argument.
We're talking about national heroes that have no peers. Yeah, they screwed up, really screwed up, but they never screwed up like the Russians, Germans, or the Japanese -- let alone the Chinese.
All four were colossal screw-ups compared to Britain and America. The graveyards are full of their victims.
The Russians didn't defeat the German Army.
The German Army defeated the German Army.
Halder & Co must have been high on crack cocaine and heroine in '41.
Lastly, what makes MG such painful reading is that Monty was NOT Monty for this operation. He'd come down with VICTORY DISEASE.
This damn illness had become pandemic across all Allied counsels.
If you think Monty was the only fella infected, check out the insanity that floated through 12th Army Group.
It was EVERYWHERE. For us, sitting 70 years after the event, it's impossible to wrap ones mind around how strange generals get when Victory Disease hits -- especially after a LONG war.
It hit the Japanese during early '42. It hit the Germans in late '42.
They went crazy, too.
One could well argue that the American and British armies had Victory Disease in the Summer of 03. Then things went sideways.
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@Sanders, nuisance attacks. Antwerp entirely replaced London as the strategic bombardment objective. Antwerp suffered FAR MORE than London. (!) That includes the record one-shot kill.
What had been a rain of terror became a propaganda stunt -- unable to arouse the British... though they were looking for some pay-back.
Bomber Command supplied THAT.
The Nazis even continued to fire off V-1s, too. But having lost their coastal bases, they were forced to use He-111 bombers as mother craft. These flew out over the North Sea to get around the British AAA along the Channel. However, again, it was a propaganda stunt. The Krauts had run out of gas. A trickle of V-2 and V-1-s looks great for the history books but totally lacks the umph that the Nazis wanted and the British feared.
Keep in mind that the British were reacting to intel they were getting from the French. They were being told that a MASSIVE expansion was in the wings. They were being told that a HUGE longer range rocket was deep into development. The Germans were going to gang together their engines to create a monster missile. ( This is actually true.) No-one knew just how fast this project would come along. No-one knew if the Germans were going to greatly improve their aiming accuracy. They'd ALREADY introduced the world's first Smart Bomb. They'd been experimenting with the world's first SAM, too. The prototype was massively instrumented -- and fell into Allied hands. If that guidance system had been retrofitted to the V-2 -- good grief. THIS is what the British were facing. THIS is what they are reacting to. Once V-2 launches halted, then trickled on, well, priorities had moved on. When it counted, the V2 'problem' was at the top of the list.
This is the ONLY explanation for why Monty got total priority and why the Scheldt fell to the back-burner. Once you accept these facts, everything else falls into place. Suddenly, Monty, Ike and Churchill don't look so stupid.
If you're going to take the island -- why not take the WHOLE ball of wax? So that's what Monty shot for. MG would kill two birds with one campaign. Indeed, getting across the Rhine would absolutely shut down even nuisance V-2 attacks. Driving on and on to Berlin was a pure fantasy. For by this point it was obvious that trucks couldn't provide that much strategic logistical reach. The rail system and ports would have to be restored. And the storms of Autumn would surely shut down the 35,000 tons per day coming over the beach at Omaha. Yes, it was still up and running. Omaha's 'instant port' didn't stop until the weather made it unworkable.
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@Sanders... you're not my college professor. These days we have Google. At my rate of pay, zero, I'm willing to post the facts as best I know them after fifty-years. I'm not willing to pull through half-a-century's worth of books and articles.
If you use your HEAD you'd understand that the V-2s sold the project to Ike. The idea that Monty was just going for the bridges would have been a total non-starter. Ike had shot down Monty's grand vision time and time again -- going all the way back to Normandy.
When Monty brought up the reality that V-2s were ruining London -- Ike was SOLD.
BTW, for your edification: the British -- with the highest secrecy -- got the Germans to recalibrate their V-1s so as to drop short. This was done by way of turned German agents in London. They just kept reporting that the V-1s were flying past the city -- and hitting empty farmland. Heh. Good one.
So the Nazis kept choking the range back -- such that they were now landing on Tunbridge Wells... which was where Ike, himself, was hidden away. (!!!!) The area was chosen because Kent was up-scale with lots of nice homes -- and had a low population density. It was this latter fact that had the V-1s sent its way.
There were so many V1s landing on top of Ike that he moved to France WEEKS early. This entailed a tremendous disruption as he insisted on this on short notice. By this time his HQ had the manning usually associated with a brigade -- if not a small division -- only most of the fellas were officers or high non-com officers.
NOW you can see why Monty's plea that the V-2s had to be shut down RIGHT NOW hit home. This is why Ike didn't even ask Tedder his opinion. Tedder tried to get the damn operation cancelled -- but it was too late. Ike would not go back on his pledge to Monty -- even though Tedder, Bradley, Patton, Hodges, and others were all howling. Tedder saw everything that was to come to pass. He knew the personalities -- and had outstanding judgment. When it was all over, Ike admitted to Tedder -- Tedder was right again!
Tedder argued, correctly, that it was MUCH wiser to just keep the pedal to the metal and never let Jerry get back on his toes. At the rate 21st AG was advancing, the V2 problem would take care of itself without the paras. Indeed, the paras ought to be saved for the Rhine.
Tedder never seems to get enough ink. Tedder was Ike's COO -- actual chief of operations. He let Ike take all of the limelight -- while he did plenty of heavy lifting, himself.
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@ The colonel...
In "Patton", the movie, Omar Bradley explains to Patton that SHAEF has new priorities.
1) Churchill demanded that Monty stop the V-2 attacks.
2) 12th Army Group would NOT get its normal supply of gasoline, etc.
3) Because it had to go to 21st Army Group. ( Monty, his peer )
4) Patton, you're a pain in the neck.... Obey orders... I do.
Elsewhere in Bradley's memoirs and biographies it's repeatedly established that 2,000 GMC trucks were promptly diverted to 21st AG. My own father drove one... until it was taken away for for MG.
Yup. So he had a week's 'vacation.'
The movie is relevant because Bradley -- basically -- wrote the script. For financial reasons, the money went to his wife. (!) The scene where Bradley tells Patton he's a pain in the neck is straight from the actual event.
The credits are inverted. The actual author is BRADLEY. He used ghost writers -- and then un-ghosted them -- so as to ghost himself.
Bradley wrote the grosser script for "Patton" but did not want that fact publicly know. Note how many scenes in the film turn ENTIRELY upon Bradley and Patton. Yup. Those scenes were not fiction. They constitute a docudrama.
The scenes that don't involve Bradley came from well established records.
For you Brits: officers are NEVER to strike an enlisted man -- and vice versa. So, regardless of the condition of the GIs -- Patton had REALLY crossed the line. A lesser figure would've been busted out for such a stunt.
You'll never convince me, or anyone, that an AG Commander was not totally in the loop on strategic thinking. That was their primary task.
The total absurdity of crossing the Rhine// Waal into Germany must be evident: it's NOT tank country. Holland is like Switzerland: before airpower and parachute troops, Holland was impossible to invade.
The French were stymied during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Strangely, DD tanks were at hand -- hundreds of them. Jeeps in their thousands were to hand. DUKWs were to hand, too. Monty and Browning didn't ASK FOR THEM.
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@Burns
Can't you get anything right? Generals LIE. Check out Bradley and Manstein -- et. al.
In his writing Monty is HIDING all of the Allied intelligence and discussion that had been rolling along for MONTHS. The true nature of the V-2 peril came from the FRENCH. Their spy was sleeping with the SS General in charge. The RAF had been all over the V2 project going back many months.
For the last time:
CHURCHILL called the tune;
Monty obeyed orders;
Ike was INSTANTLY persuaded -- didn't even pass it by Tedder. (!)
The trickle V2 fire AFTER MG was merely an irritant. Before MG, Churchill, Monty and Ike all thought that the V2 could reverse the course of the war. Nazi propaganda claimed it was so. They also KNEW that the island was launch central. The entire launch procedure was replicated by the British after the war - with captured SS rocket troops. You can view it on UTube.
Moving their parade to a new launch zone was quite a production... since they had virtually no gasoline... and were running low on locomotion. The RAF had flown no end of recon // reccee missions over the island, day and night. The insane level of FLACK at night is what caused Browning to lay out the terrible drop zones for MG.
The tale of soft turf is a ruse. Parachute troops LOVE soft ground. In the whole scheme of the Airborne -- gliders were deemed BACK-UP. Somehow, in the heat of the moment, they were brought in during the original drop. Just dumb!
FINALLY -- IKE shot down Monty's single thrust idea at every other point of the war.
BTW, if you think about it, Sicily was a Monty single thrust -- until Patton threw away Monty's over-write of his own plan -- which entailed him marching east from Palermo. Monty was truly pissed to see Patton get his way. The blow-back came as soon as Salerno. Monty deliberately got the S L O W S. Gallipoli Narvik Winston had his back.
The critical problem for 21st Army Group -- the LOWER Rhine is a bitch -- it defeated virtually every army in history. ALL successful commanders -- once the word got out -- took the southern route. Longer was QUICKER. In the era of trucks, the distance difference was meaningless. Terrain was critical.
Patton and Bradley were flipping out because they KNEW that they had to get into the super fortresses before Hitler corrected things. Even with scrub formations defending, taking Metz was a first class BITCH.
C. Ryan spent years in research -- and never discovered what you Brits tell me was plain in your face obvious. In the film, you have to love the way the ferries evaporate from the tale. The Grenadiers were WISE to not advance into the night after Nijmegan. (SP?) The Jerries were ferrying over heavy equipment EVERY night.
Monty began MG with total confidence in Browning. After MG, Monty fire him. The ultimate humiliation: being sent to a desk job in India... not any part of the final campaign.
In both the American and British armies, to be sent out of theatre was the supreme burn. All of their peers knew that they were skunked.
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@ Burns
Patton's route was -- and ever remains -- THE classic route into Germany from France.
In an era of trucks, pure distance became almost meaningless. The USA never ran out of logistical reach because they never ran out of ever more 2.5 ton trucks. So many that they were backed up in England. The Pentagon assumed that truck losses would be vastly higher than events proved. That's why America had trucks coming out of its ears.
IKE stopped Patton.
The flick you doubt is nothing more than scenematic testimony by BRADLEY. He wrote those lines. The convo was strictly private at the time. Bradley was the only surviving witness -- and a witness privy to EVERYTHING. He was, de facto, the American ground commander. 6th Army Group (Devers) was out of the Med and notionally under Alexander. [ Obviously, only on paper. Once the 6th AG merged with the 12th AG Alexander had backed entirely away from further involvement. He had all of Italy on his plate.]
It was PATTON that split the Jerries in two in Sicily. It was BRADLEY that tore into Patton's reputation -- not Monty. And he did so mostly within the film you dismiss.
Both Bradley and Monty were wrong. Going up the coast, side by side would've been logistically insane. What tactician would cross mountains instead of the pass? No-one.
What pissed off BRADLEY -- far more than Monty -- was that he was junior to Patton -- and was getting NO PRESS. He -- at the time -- believed that he was in danger of being stopped out as merely a corps commander.
Being a genius ( est IQ 153 ) it was galling for Bradley to see sloppy, impulsive staff work. In his own bio, Bradley openly wrote that he STILL couldn't understand how Patton got such good performance out of a staff that Bradley wholly disdained.
The crazy idea that Bradley was in Patton's corner must be dismissed. It must have totally stunned Bradley that Patton gifted him 1st Army -- by breaking the ultimate taboo -- slapping an enlisted man -- while in a hospital -- no less.
What Bradley didn't know, nor did Ike, was that Marshall had already decided that it was IMPOSSIBLE for Patton to lead 1st Army. Why? The Japanese ambassador sent massive missives to Tokyo. In one of them he detailed Adolf's opinion that ONLY Patton would lead the Americans in Overlord. And once his leadership was correctly established, Adolf would send his ENTIRE French garrison to oppose him.
This was exactly what London and Washington wanted to prevent. In this regard, the English performed one of the greatest deceptions in military history. Astonishing, really.
McNair was originally supposed to lead 12th AG. About which Bradley has lied his ass off about. McNair had no other job at that time, having previously been in charge of the USA build-up -- which was effectively over.
So what you have is Bradley telling you the absolute truth one moment -- when it makes him look good -- and then lying his ass off when the truth would diminish is awesomeness.
In sum: the classic, striving, climbing, military general.
A pattern you'll find in Monty, Patton... and many another.
Instead of quoting obtuse historians, you must use your HEAD. All of the decisions in written form were reached many hours if not days and weeks before. For security reasons, generals don't even let their staffs in on what's to come -- until there really is no other choice. Being inside the insider's loop is what command is really all about.
All in all, the Anglo-American alliance of WWII makes all other collaborations look bad. Think of the French-British command situation in WWI. That crap is exactly what Marshall and Ike had to stop. De Gaulle was astounded when Ike treated him as peer to FDR and Winston. He was allowed inside the insider's information loop. He was totally ungracious - and rightfully earned the ire of Churchill.
Let's face it, De Gaulle was a prick, a genius, but still a prick.
In sum: with all of these inflated egos bloating around it's amazing that Ike could keep the crew together. Ike's right-hand man was Tedder, of whom not enough is praised.
The fight was against Adolf's tyranny -- not which peacock had the nicest military record.
BTW, Monty, Bradley and Patton and all the rest had their days of excellence -- and some full on fiascos, too.
Let it go. They're all dead.
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@ Burns
As for MG -- Monty shielded Churchill's involvement -- his insistence on it. His line of reasoning TOTALLY turned on what the French spy was feeding him -- and she was always right. London knew practically all they needed to know about the V2 -- in terms of stopping it -- they couldn't once it got going.
From the first, the RAF spared no resources (fighters// recce ) trying to shoot up the rockets before launch.
As Desert Storm showed, even decades later, neither the RAF nor USAF could perform a decent job against Saddam.
So the counter-V1 program that had worked so well -- all of those launch ramps being destroyed -- would not work. As you well know, the NAZIS built the first 'IBM' launch base. It looked all the world like today's USAF Minuteman in a silo scheme.
The RAF pulverized it. That's one reason the V2 arrived so late in the war. Plan A was destroyed by the RAF! So von Braun's team had to develop -- on the fly -- the mobile launch system. That the Jerries didn't see that they HAD to be mobile -- well, I guess they were not super men after all.
Under Plan A, the Nazis figured to launch and launch and launch from the handful of ultra-bunkers that they'd crafted. This would save them a LOT of gasoline -- and actually decrease the need for launch crews. The silos would be factories of death.
This is the kind of stuff that had Winston freaking out about. He put his own son-in-law on the case. Any news about the V2 went straight past all other commands straight to the top.
Even Monty would've loved to have just carried on the same old way. 21st AG was advancing VERY rapidly and in good order. That would look great in the history books, every general saw that.
Monty was no child. He knew that he could never stop Patton from grabbing headlines. But then, Monty was ALL OVER the news with his victories, much to the dismay of the Americans. Their desks were over flowing with British newspapers -- whereas American papers were at least a day or more behind the British. On some days, the British press covered the entire front page with the 21st AG. Well, what would you expect?
Whiners need to grow up.
That MANY British authors disdain America, its army, its culture -- infects their take on reality.
Check out the crazed bias of Zucker versus Trump. Everything that Zucker hates in Trump is but a mirror of Zucker's own personality. This is typical human behavior -- to see in others ones very own faults.
Bradley, Patton and Monty were of exactly that stripe. In the movie, Bradley -- its ghost author -- paints himself as a SAINT. What tripe.
He takes virtually no swipes at Monty at all. Indeed, virtually every subordinate commander under Monty sung his praises. But then, that's also true of Patton. My father worships him. When his division was under Bradley -- it bled to death. When under Patton things ran smooth. It was like night and day.
So Bradley has everything backwards. Patton was the GI's general -- flash and all -- whereas Bradley -- the genius -- is bleeding his AG white. BTW, Bradley NEVER let go of 1st Army. Marshall stopped him from growing it even larger than 15 divisions. So he kept the best.
When 3rd Army broke out across France -- it was HALF the size of 1st Army. It was to take weeks to bring the rest of 3rd Army over. Patton was well set to liberate Paris. Bradley stopped him by vectoring him south. Yet, no-one comments on that vanity.
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@Marko
You're deluded. Patton was relegated to 3rd Army because Hitler flatly told the Baron that if he showed up any earlier, he'd unleash his entire strategic reserve at once.
As for Bradley, he was never intended to be 12th Army Group commander. McNair was. But you can't lead when you're dead.
Promptly after McNair died at the front, Marshall had to make Bradley AG commander. There was absolutely no-one else in a position to move up, not even Patton. And Patton had already shown that he could go off the rails. Whereas Bradley was a Marshall boy to the core.
Bradley naturally took his 1st Army staff -- on no notice -- and kicked McNair's staff out of the way. Bradley never explained in his writings who his staff replaced ultra-quick. He pretended that McNair's staff wasn't even in the theatre.
But he facts are that McNair was ONLY there to take command of 12th AG. He was at the front to familiarize himself and to show his flag and his bona fides, which cost him his life.
Patton didn't need ANY education from Bradley, the other-way-round happened all the time.
The Cobra breakout was Patton's idea, not Bradley. Patton wrote it all up in his diary BEFORE he met Bradley in Normandy. Bradley instantly adopted it as his own -- and lied about all of this to the end of his days. Of course, Cobra has Patton's style all over it, not Bradley's.
Patton didn't need ANY explanation WRT the broad front. You won't find Patton begging for a narrow thrust into Germany -- the Monty plea. Patton just wanted to remain in supply. After that, he didn't really care what the other armies were doing -- not all that much.
His ego was such that naturally he figured he'd somehow end up in the vanguard.
Reason #1 was that HIS was the traditional invasion route going back to ancient times. All other armies were marching towards either a forest wall or epic river crossings. In the south, crossing the Rhine is tough, but not ridiculous.
When it happened, Patton didn't even need an artillery prep. He actually snuck across! The total lack of artillery completely faked out the Germans. Normally, artillery is the American calling card. The Germans figured that they'd have hours of advance notice, and so should hold back from the river, only advancing when the artillery fire calmed down. This thinking was exactly what Patton saw coming.
Marko, it's obvious that you post to troll, as you don't have any insightful commentary.
As for logistics, those were ENTIRELY handled by General Lee. He had a supply army that was fifteen times the size of the fighting front. Consequently, all front line commanders never had to sweat logistics whatsoever. It was totally outside their command. All that was necessary was phone calls and paperwork. And up the trucks would come, by the thousand.
Inre Rommel, his problem was MALTA. Bletchley Park, and the RAF. Bletchley was finking on Rommel -- telling Monty just how rotten his supply situation was. Indeed, at one point, Monty had to disobey orders and inform Smuts that London was reading German transmissions. This news was delivered in person, in private, and so that Smuts would continue to press the line with his blooded South African division. This he did. It was this final attack that broke Rommel's position. (near the coast, XIII Corps, IIRC)
Operationally, Rommel was brilliant, with a ton of prior battles to demonstrate his expertise. So you're post indicates that you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
As for myself, 45 years of obsession builds a picture.
If there was any money in it, I'd write my own history of the war.
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@John Burns
Can't you get ANYTHING right?
Patton had no involvement with the 17 Airborne Division. Hard to imagine him opining on it. It was up with 21st Army Group, so it's not as if he'd even be getting after action reports.
The path to Bastogne was blocked by the 7th German Parachute Division. The fighting went on around the clock -- in the dead of Winter. The fighting was so intense that the leading American battalion and its counter part German defender lost ALL of their officers... save a single American Lt. Every local building was flattened -- except for their cellars -- which is where you'd find surviving locals.
The rest of your drivel is so crazy and off base it constitutes an Alternate Reality.
BTW, the #1 detractor of Patton is and remains Bradley. He was a real meat-grinder. ( Hurtgen ) Patton has the best stats, going away.
The reason that the Panther Brigades existed was because Adolf had given up on the Heer. He had no intention of ever rebuilding formations that lacked the correct Nazi zeal. These brigades were, AFAIK, ALWAYS given Panthers. I've never heard of one getting Mark IV tanks.
Green troops routinely destroyed the final drive// transmission of their Panthers. In one battle -- against Patton's 4th Armored -- 35 Panthers were ruined and lost from this very fault in a single afternoon. This was a crisis for Berlin. Speer was called in to face Hitler over the issue.
It was resolved that the drivers needed more training -- and that -- above all -- Panthers had to be driven slowly, softly, whenever they went 'off-road.' The published stats for Panthers proved to be all wrong. Because of the weakly engineered final drive (the Panther was over-weight) panzer crews were instructed to take it easy, to never apply full power from a dead start.
It's for this reason the typical wargame values for Panther mobility are MILES off from reality. It ended up being a slower tank than the Mark IV. ( On flat level, paved, test track ground, it could look impressive, however. )
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@John Burns
Get help.
The reason that Ike couldn't let Patton touch Overload was due to Purple intercepts -- achieved by the British. The US had given London one Purple machine. Though it's a diplomatic code -- and you'd think it couldn't carry much military info...
Hitler talked up a storm with Baron Oshima:
I hope the wiki survives YouTube:
"Baron Hiroshi Ōshima (大島 浩 Ōshima Hiroshi, April 19, 1886 – June 6, 1975) was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, Japanese ambassador to Germany before and during World War II — and unwittingly a major source of communications intelligence for the Allies. His role was perhaps best summed up by General George C. Marshall, who identified Ōshima as "our main basis of information regarding Hitler's intentions in Europe". After World War II, he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment."
The Baron's most important contribution to the Allies was by way of telling us that Hitler was waiting for PATTON to show up before he'd release his entire strategic reserve.
Meaning, in this instance, the 1st SS Panzer Corps.
Contrary to popular histories, Hitler did NOT block the deployment of his panzer divisions. Just this corps, and a few Heer divisions. (116th immediately comes to mind )
In the event, the 12th SS was committed anyway by Hitler.
The 21st Panzer was automatically committed, even without contacting Berlin.
At every HQ there was a notice on the door:
If the Allies landed parachutists -- real or dummies -- a landing was on. All local forces were to be committed without further ado, by order of the Fuhrer. ( Other conditions would also trigger panzer release, but this one sticks out the most. Parachute dummies were detected no later than 12:30AM. They didn't put up much of a fight, BTW.)
Amazingly, most German commanders forgot this and other standing orders June 6, 1944 -- they were that excited.
It's with the above knowledge that you may come to realize why Patton's arrival was so delayed and why Hitler was paralysed about committing his panzers out of 15th Army. Instead, they just trickled in.
Our Russian friends ought to be reminded that the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions were withdrawn from Poland to reinforce the German position in front of Caen. Then Bagration occurred. Whoops.
The Allies had sucked off: 1p,2p,9p,10p, 12p, 17mot SS divisions -- just in France alone.
The Russians faced 3p,5p,6p SS panzers. The rest were a motley crew of SS infantry and police units usually tasked with atrocities.
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@Sanders... don't write for me.
Compared to the Germans, the US Army had virtually infinite supplies -- as every captured German attested.
Bradley told Lee that he didn't need much more artillery after the break-out. That's how severe Victory Disease had gotten. This promptly led to ANOTHER supply crisis -- totally self-inflicted. It was patched over by using 6th Army Group's artillery supplies. Since these were trucked in FORD, not GMC trucks, Devers had to bring the ammo up out of Marseilles in Fords into the rear areas of 12th AG. Then the stuff was moved from Fords to GMCs for the next leg of the journey -- to 9th, 1st and 3rd Armies. (!) This crisis is mentioned by Bradley in his second autobiography of the campaign -- but almost entirely over looked by historians.
Marseilles was never crippled like Cherbourg, so 7th Army was able to start importing supplies right from the docks almost from the first. They had so many supplies that they fitted out 1st French Army -- on the fly. (!) Yup. This was totally unanticipated. The Rhone river valley boys had totally missed out on the 1940 campaign. They fell out into their ranks as the 7th Army advanced up country. They had their uniforms, they were trained reservists. They were missing all weapons. so 7th US Army simply diverted their supplies to flesh these divisions out. THAT'S how well endowed the US Army was -- across the board.
Somehow it doesn't sink in: the Allied generals were LYING: the V-2 problem caused ALL OTHER PRIORITIES to take a back seat. This is something that simply could not be admitted to at the time, nor even after the war. The V-2 problem is why Ike was brought around to accepting Monty's pitch in one single session -- Bradley and Patton had a fit. They were not consulted for any counter proposals.
BTW, note the goofs: the Brits missed the ferries -- both of them -- they failed to ask for jeeps, DUKWs -- both would've been decisive for MG.
My own Father sat on his azz during this period. The gasoline was just piling up in the PULTO storage tanks. No attempt was being made to drive it to the front PERIOD. Get it?
America had thousands of trucks IDLED at this time. Yup. When this latter on proved mighty embarrassing, it was scrubbed from the official accounts. There was NO WAY to make it look good.
General Lee had FAR MORE manpower than the front line army commanders. When Bradley pleaded for them to be diverted to his cause -- he was shot down in flames. Supply troops were simply not at all set up for front line duties. After basic, they'd never touched a rifle -- as a rule. As it was, Bradley was getting a regiment every 24 hours. He then wasted them in the Hurtgen -- another tale that the Army history does not want brought to full exposure.
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@Sanders...
At the scale of armies, Patton couldn't pull off the theft/ diversion you're dreaming of. One, he'd have to steal it all from Bradley, his boss. Such a stunt would get him sent back to the states. The diversion is a MYTH. 1st Army and 9th Army never faced shortages because of 3rd army. They got clipped by IKE and LEE. There were absolutely no work-arounds. A couple of sergeants have absolutely no influence at the scale required. They certainly DID help out with table chow. I'll give you that pranks were pulled. However, they didn't amount to a hill of beans.
The biggest drain on the supply echelon was the FRENCH civilians. Paris, alone, was a PITA. It sucked down supplies like an entire army. When the Black Market is invoked -- think Paris. The Allies found that feeding the civilians could not be avoided. This task was not in their battle plans. It never quite occurred to Allied commanders that blowing every rail bridge in France would then compel them to throw in thousands of trucks just to haul food to Paris.
My Father bitterly complained for decades about hauling coal to Paris on the Red Ball express. He couldn't understand it. I had to spell it out: French trains ran on coal. The French coal fields were still under German control, and the lines between Paris and the east were all busted up. THAT'S why thousands of tons of British coal was shipped on a panic basis to Paris in August. They didn't need it for heat -- but for their trains.
You'll look a VERY long time trying to find out about any of this in the written histories. Bringing the French rail net back up and running is deemed an unimportant side-show to the war. Of course, once it was running, the Red Ball was not needed. The trains were restored almost at the same time that Monty cleared the Scheldt.
Even Cherbourg became operational late in 1944, right in front of the worst weather. It became insanely busy straight through to the end of the war.
The PLUTO net was also doubled -- bringing pipes in in the Calais region on top of the Cherbourg operation. This is another event that is hard to find about in histories. You'd have to really dial deep to know of it. PLUTO was an awesome British invention -- and extremely significant for the prosecution of the campaign. It gets short shrift.
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@Sanders... the US armies were NOT in the British supply train. They NEVER took supplies away from 21st Army Group... EVER. PLUTO was designed and scaled from the outset for ALL of the Allied forces. So it was never the issue.
The 2,000 GMC trucks that Monty demanded -- he got. Their primary role, apparently, was to hump even more gasoline from PLUTO to the front. It would've been MUCH wiser for Monty to allocate the GMCs to XXX Corps. They were the only machines that had any chance at leaving the road (up on a berm) without instantly bogging down. Even so, they'd have to be only lightly loaded. Further, they'd have to fan out. The polders can't support repeated traffic. So every truck needed to create its own path.
No matter how strongly Bradley and Patton protested, modern Brits refuse to believe that these generals were CUT OFF from gasoline -- by Ike's order. Ike well knew that Patton would instantly try and make 'rock soup.' ( It's a hobo story, retold by Patton. )
Patton did NOT advance in an insubordinate manner. He advanced too rapidly to suit Monty because Patton had no rivers to cross! His only barrier, the Seine was solved by the Paris bridge network, which was not blown up. In contrast, everyone north of him faced ever widening rivers -- with Monty facing the worst of it. Just look at a map.
THIS is the reason why Patton was thrilled to be relegated to the southern arm of the advance. As a historian he knew that this was the traditional invasion route. Somehow that legacy does not sink in.
What really got Patton's goat was that he was almost able to take Metz via motor march. When he first approached it it was largely EMPTY. MG and the weather shift turned a cake-walk into a PITA. Patton KNEW that he was racing the calendar. He'd fought in that general area in WWI.
Stopping the Allied advance for a FULL week was a strategic gaff of the first water. And Churchill, Brooke, Monty and Ike owned it.
Stopping the V2s added months to the war -- in this way. Ike's order also triggered the nightmare of Aachen, too. It was about to be surrendered as an open city.
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@Sanders, the ONLY supply that could shift from Army Group to Army Group -- across the British-American logistics gap was POL -- namely GASOLINE. To speak of other supplies is to speak in ignorance. Food, medicine, and all the rest -- these could not be trucked under any circumstances from 12th AG to 21th AG. PERIOD.
Monty got Ike to give him 2,000 GMC trucks at the direct and immediate expense of General Lee. ( Not Bradley ) These missing trucks are the primary reason my own Father sat on his azz during MG. This shift was on such a panic basis that the Americans had to await fresh truck deliveries from those in Britain, and ultimately the USA. If Monty had asked for them, the US would've given him ANYTHING: DD Sherman tanks, DUKWs, jeeps, ... even a blimp or two if asked.
The reason Monty was not focused on the Scheldt was because of the V2 'problem' back in London -- and Churchill howling about it. The reason that Monty had primary access to the Allied Airborne Army was because it was expected ever since Overlord to be required to leap down the coast to shut down these strategic Nazi attacks.
The British, via the French, WERE getting horrific news. Namely that the Nazis were going to scale up the V-2 to create a rocket that could -- in theory -- even reach New York City. But long before that, they were told that London would be rubble, that V2 production was scaling to staggering levels. It never happened. But the Allies had to proceed based upon best estimates -- and Hitler had surprised the West more than once.
What infuriated Monty was that Patton was taking the easy way to the Rhine. This is something that didn't sink in until it happened. Patton saw it from the first -- because he was a world-class military historian and KNEW that Monty's path had been a bust for every commander going back into ancient times. Likewise 1st and 9th Armies were headed straight for a wall. The Rhine just keeps getting bigger as it flows north. It's no small thing even back up near Switzerland, either.
The whole myth of Patton advancing without orders myth corn fuses 1945 with 1944. It was in '45 that Bradley ordered Patton to stop in place. Patton was making the other armies look BAD. So the fantastic breakthrough 3rd Army had has been scrubbed from even American military histories. (thank you Bradley) The maps pick up only after 1st Army has finally pulled abreast of 3rd Army. The seven-day delay just was Winston'd down the Memory Hole. This is where the myth was born.
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