Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "TIKhistory"
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I will let the Germans have the first say on the Bulge:
General Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counter-offensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley at his HQ, who said, "let 'em come".
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately, without consulting Eisenhower, took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip. General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army, while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines. Bradley should have been fired. Hodges ran away from his command post.
British officer Whiteley & American officer Betts of SHEAF visited the U.S. First Army HQ after the German attack, seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only the two British officers approached Bedell Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days communicating little with Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two shambolic US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about.
And yet biased American authors such as Stephen Ambrose said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
At the end of the Bulge would you believe it, Eisenhower gave Bradley an award.
Read:
Battle of the Bulge by Charles Whiting
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seth1422 (or Rambo),
The 9th SS infantry poured south over the bridge at 1930, 5.5 hours after the 82nd was ready to march. The 82nd should have secured the bridge by then. The 82nd, as it says in the US Official History, only started to move to the bridge at 1830 hrs with forty men. The Germans occupied the bridge and town. The first 82nd attack was at 2200 hrs, which is near 8 hours, after being ready to march. An appalling performance when jumping with no opposition and few German low grade troops hanging around Nijmegen. At 1400 hrs on D-Day only 18 to 19 low grade soldiers were on the bridge, with some 20mm guns and one 88mm gun around the bridge. No tanks traps or barbed wire. A walk over. The 82nd met no armour on the way to any of the bridges.
By the time XXX Corps seized the bridge, unlike what that daft film shows, no 82nd men were involved in taking the bridge, the Germans had tanks between Nijmegen and Arnhem. When XXX Corps rolled up at about 0800 hrs on D-Day+2, there was pretty well nothing between Nijmegen and Arnhem. The tanks could have rolled up to Arnhem bridge by about noon on D-Day+2. The British paras denied the use of the Arnhem bridge to the Germans. The Germans were quite populous around Arnhem, but with no armour until D-Day+1 late in the evening.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away."
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen."
- Poulussen
Events on the evening of the first day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards the Nijmegen at all.
- Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a Jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
Poulessen's info comes from Major Delamater, Executive Officer of 1st Battalion 508th - who "wrote a coherent and technical account" of the actions of 1st Battalion 508th in 1947. It is the most detailed account of the 82nd's actions at Nijmegen.
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@davidtuttle7556
Falaise?
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks,16 ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Read George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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MakeMeThinkAgain
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 September, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery also wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive. He devised Operation Comet to be launched on 2 September 1944. It was cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 September incorporating divisions of the US 1st Army, incorporated Montgomery's view of a thrust taking the bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. To do this the British 2nd Army, some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow) would clearly be needed. Hodges' would protect the right flank. The Canadians would be on the coast of Belgium and Holland protecting the left flank from the German 15th army. The idea was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy, preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
Neillands on this point...
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only one crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, and give a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven. This was a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
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One problem that has bedevilled any objective study of Anglo-US military history in the post-war decades is the tendency of some US commanders and many US historians to play the ‘British’ or ‘Montgomery’ card in order to conceal some glaring American blunder. Omar Bradley’s disastrous failure to provide adequate armoured support for the US divisions landing on Omaha on D-Day, with the terrible losses thus caused to the infantry companies of the 1st and 29th Divisions, have been largely expunged from the public mind — at least in the United States — by constant harping about the British or ‘Montgomery’s failure to take Caen on D-Day — a failure that turned out to have no strategic significance whatsoever.
Nor is Omaha the only example. As we have seen in earlier chapters, harping on about the ‘slowness’ of XXX Corps or the ‘flawed’ plan of General Urquhart at Arnhem, has successfully diverted critical minds from the cock-up in command that prevented the 82nd Division from either taking the Nijmegen bridge on the first day of the attack or avoiding a frontal attack across the Waal in borrowed boats three days later.
It appears that all that was necessary to avoid critical press comment in the USA and any unwelcome Congressional interest in the competence of any American commander, was to murmur ‘the British’ or — better still — ‘Montgomery’, and critical comment in the USA either subsided or went unvoiced.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The fact is, that XXX Corps were not slow, reaching Nijmegen ahead of schedule. Urquart's paras took one end of the Arnhem bridge preventing its use by the Germans. If the US 82nd had taken the Nijmegen bridge immediately XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on time relieving the paras and fully securing the bridge.
Caen was a nice to have objective, but Monty saw no need to tie up vital resources on a strategically unimportant target. As Neillands stated it was of "no strategic significance whatsoever."
Neillands highlights the glaring unthruths of the US press and historians.
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