Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "German Army: Why No Collapse" video.
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If Montgomery's forty division thrust to the north, then east on the North German Plains, had been adopted, instead of the ridiciuous broad-front of Eisenhower, the war would have been over in 1944. Allied forces stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland. They were too thinly spread with no real punch anywhere along the line to break through.
General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall and the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 would have fallen automatically.
If Montgomery's proposal for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of aimlessly moving about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west, and most probably completely.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."
- Gunther Blumentritt quoted in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
After Bagration and Normandy, the Germans had a thin line to their west with the Soviets to their east who extended their supply lines, needing quite a time to regroup and resupply. They could handle that, as no steamroller was coming their way. They were gently squeezed from both sides then they collapsed.
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