Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "War Academy"
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Logistics was the major issue in Eisenhower's mind after the Normandy breakout, so focused on Antwerp. But Antwerp wasn’t the only option. If Eisenhower had let Monty go for a Rhine crossing in late August/early September supported by US divisions, his pursuit operation Operation Comet, they could have got Rotterdam and even Amsterdam instead.
Antwerp was an awkward port, being 80 km inland reached by a winding river, with a warren of tidal inlets, islands and estuaries covering the approaches. Many armies came to grief in that part of the world, including a British army in 1809, of which Monty was aware of. Monty was all for bypassing the problems of Antwerp and its approaches, going for Rotterdam. The Germans were still in disarray. The First Allied Airborne Army were on standby and there was fuel in the British tanks. Rotterdam was possible, stopping to open up Antwerp was always going to take too much time.
Eisenhower wanted to concentrate on Antwerp as the logistical supply head before pressing on. Antwerp needed protecting from German counter-attack and artillery securing Noord Brabant. Operation Market Garden was that plan. Once Noord Brabant was secure then the approaches to Antwerp could be opened which will take time.
Antwerp would not be fully open to allied shipping until early January 1945. The first ships entered in October 1944, but the majority of supplies would come from Normandy until November. Le Havre was operational in October supplying the US armies to the east. Le Havre was not too far away in distance than Antwerp, so there was an over focus on Antwerp. That was around three months from Antwerp's capture. By that time the French railway service had been largely rebuilt and stores coming in from Normandy and Le Havre for Bradley’s 12th Army Group, and through Marseilles for Devers’ 6th Army Group.
In August 1944 Monty was for pushing on with a 40 Division thrust. Eisenhower was for caution with his broad-front. Eisenhower's caution allowed the Germans breathing space to reinforce, gifting them an opportunity to counter-attack. Eisenhower's caution only made it easier to supply those armies to force the Germans back.
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@Martha G
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
▪ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein;
▪ March 1943 - Medenine;
▪ June 1944 - Normandy;
▪ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
▪ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
▪ Battle of Alam Halfa;
▪ Second Battle of El Alamein;
▪ Battle of El Agheila;
▪ Battle of Medenine;
▪ Battle of the Mareth Line;
▪ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
▪ Allied invasion of Sicily;
▪ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
▪ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
▪ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
▪ Operation Veritable;
▪ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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This vid is nonsense.
The British won the decoy battle Goodwood. The Goodwood battle was at the crux of the Normandy campaign. It requires some careful study of the various elements if it is to be fully understood. The prime points are:
1) Operation Goodwood was linked with Operation Cobra, the US breakout at St-Lô, being part of the strategic policy Montgomery had been following since before D-Day. The British to hold the eastern flank and pull the German armour on to that front to destroy it - the British destroyed over 90% of German armour on the west.
2) The Americans build up their forces and brake out in the west - Operation Cobra.
This strategy was frequently misunderstood. This had always been the plan as laid down in St.Paul's school in London. Eisenhower never understood it.
‘I should think it quite likely that we should work up to a battle of about a million a side, lasting throughout June and July. We plan to have about two million there by mid-August. Eisenhower’s unfortunate obfuscation has coloured the military accounts ever since, polarizing chroniclers into nationalistic camps. This was, Monty felt, a tragedy in view of the fact that the battle for Normandy was, at all stages, an Allied battle, in which Allied soldiers gave their lives, conforming to an Allied plan to defeat the German armies in the West - not to ‘break out towards the Seine’ in some mythical Lancelot charge...Dempsey’s brief then was not to ‘break out towards the Seine’, but to play his part in a truly Allied undertaking, bringing to battle the mobile German forces that would otherwise - as Rommel wished - destroy the American assault on Cherbourg.”
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944.
As the British Official History points out, ‘Although he, (Montgomery), had made it clear to the CIGS (Alan Brooke) and the War Office that Goodwood was not an attempt to break out eastwards, he hoped it might appear so to the German command’. ‘It will be seen later,’ the account continues dryly, ‘that not only the Germans misread his intentions.’ It is certainly possible that Eisenhower never did understand the aims of Goodwood. In his report to the Combined Chiefs a year later, in July 1945, when the European war was over, Eisenhower states that the aim of Goodwood was ‘a drive across the Orne from Caen towards the south and south-east, exploiting in the direction of the Seine basin and Paris’ ... which is light years away from Montgomery’s oft-stated intentions. Moreover, the Goodwood offensive had kept the German eyes fixed in the east while the Cobra operation geared up in the west. A greater advance would have been better, but the strategic aims of the battle had in fact been achieved. Besides this seven-mile advance by six British and Canadian divisions in two days is as far as twelve US divisions had recently advanced towards St-Lô in seventeen days. …. The emerging fact is that Eisenhower simply did not understand Montgomery’s strategy.
— The Battle of Normandy 1944: by Robin Neillands
"I have never understood why Ike said in his dispatches that, when the British failed to break out towards Paris on the eastern flank. The Americans were able [to break out], because of our flexibility, to take it on, on our western flank. I have always thought that was an unfair criticism of Dempsey and the 2nd British Army."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
So much for the Germans winning Goodwood...
"My discussion today with the commanders in the Caen sector has afforded regrettable evidence in face of the enemy's complete command of the air there is no possibility that our strategy will counter-balance its truly annihilating effect unless we give up the field of battle. In spite of our intense efforts on this front, already heavily strained, will break. And once the enemy is in open country an orderly command will be hardly practicable in view of the insufficient mobility of our troops."
- Field Marshal Von Kluge in his dispatch to Hitler on the day Goodwood ended
"The acquisition of territory on the eastern flank of the beachhead in the Caen sector was not really important. What was important there was to draw the maximum number of German divisions, and especially the armour, into that flank. The acquisition of territory was important on the western flank [the US sector]." ...."an accusation drawn at me, that I ought to have taken Caen in the programme on D-Day! And we didn't. I didn't mind about that because....The air force would get very het up because I didn't go further down towards Falaise and get the ground suitable for airfields. I didn't bother about that, it would have meant enormous casualties in doing it and it wasn't necessary."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
The US forces were hopelessly slow getting into position for their brake out. If they had captured the the St.Lo-Periers road in the first week of D Day, British forces would not have faced so many German armoured units in the east, the greatest German concentration of armour in WW2, more that at Kursk.
"I could reply to that criticism [not taking Caen in the first few days] that on the American front the line from which the breakout was finally launched, was a line, the St.Lo-Periers road, should have been captured in the initial plan by the American First Army on D-Day plus 5, that was the 11th June. But they didn't actually capture it until the 18th July. But I have never returned the charge with that accusation. ...until now"
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
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The British drew in German armour at Caen to grind it up, to allow the Americans to break out - Operation Cobra. General Omar Bradley...
While Collins was hoisting his VII Corps flag over Cherbourg, Montgomery was spending his reputation in a bitter siege against the old university city of Caen. For three weeks he had rammed his troops against those panzer divisions he had deliberately drawn towards that city as part of our Allied strategy of diversion in the Normandy Campaign. Although Caen contained an important road junction that Montgomery would eventually need, for the moment the capture of that city was only incidental to his mission. For Monty’s primary task was to attract German troops to the British front that we might more easily secure Cherbourg and get into position for the breakout.
In this diversionary mission Monty was more than successful, for the harder he hammered towards Caen, the more German troops he drew into that sector. Too many correspondents, however, had overrated the importance of Caen itself, and when Monty failed to take it, they blamed him for the delay. But had we attempted to exonerate Montgomery by explaining how successfully he had hoodwinked the German by diverting him toward Caen from the Cotentin, we would have also given our strategy away. We desperately wanted the German to believe this attack on Caen was the main Allied effort.
But while this diversion of Monty’s was brilliantly achieved, he never the less left himself open to criticism by overemphasizing the importance of his thrust toward Caen. Had he limited himself simply to the containment without making Caen a symbol of it, he would have been credited with success instead of being charged, as he was, with failure at Caen.
For Monty’s success should have been measured in the panzer divisions the enemy rushed against him whilst Collins sped on toward Cherbourg. Instead, the Allied newspaper readers clammered for a place name called Caen which Monty had once promised but failed to win for them.
The containment mission that had been assigned Monty in the Overlord plan was not calculated to burnish British pride in the accomplishments of their troops. For in the minds of most people, success in battle is measured in the rate and length of advance. They found it difficult to realise that the more successful Monty was in stirring up German resistance, the less likely he was to advance. For another four weeks it fell to the British to pin down superior enemy forces in that sector while we maneuvered into position for the US breakout. With the Allied world crying for blitzkrieg the first week after we landed, the British endured their passive role with patience and forbearing.
Brdaley wrote>>
"Allied newspaper readers clammered for a place name called Caen which Monty had once promised but failed to win for them."
Monty never promised 2nd tier target Caen at all.
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@michaelkenny8540
“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s excruciating pause”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flow in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52... "by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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Al generals were against the USSR attack. One moved towards Hitler's whims skewing matters.
Wages of Destruction, by Prof Adam Tooze:
Page 454:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorised infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly."
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a "poor army". The fast striking motorised element of the Germans army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber" "the fuel shortage of 1941 was so expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil." "Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."
Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people." "Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."
"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviets' immense stock of tanks and aircraft."
Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 457:
"Halder noted in his diary: Barbarossa: purpose not clear, We do not hurt the English. Our economic base is not significantly improved."
At the top of page 459 Tooze emphasises that Hitler misinterpreted Backe's comments about the Ukraine grain. A region that had little surplus and had a substantial population increase from WW1.
Page 459:
"On 22 January 1941 Thomas had informed his boss, Keitel, that he was planning to submit a report urging caution with regard to the military-economic benefits of the invasion. Now he reversed directions. As it became clear that Hitler was justifying Barbarossa first and foremost as a campaign of economic conquest, Thomas began systematically working towards the Fuehrer."
Thomas was head of the OKW economic planning staff. He modified his reports from negative to positive, presenting the Ukraine as an economic breadbasket. Thomas was an insider and it is assumed he had heard of the misinterpreted Backe's comments to Hitler.
Page 459:
"The OKW now claimed that in the first thrust the Wehrmacht would be able to seize control of at least 70% of the Soviet Union's industrial potential."
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire." "If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon.
The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come in service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexican and eliminating the population.
War Production:
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
1) Germany was third behind the USA, then the UK in GDP, in 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
2) UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
3) Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"
Wages of Destruction, Prof Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
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@papajohnloki
"Montgomery was a competent , if cautious, commander."
More US propaganda. Competent he was indeed! Cautious? He never outstripped his supply you mean.
"it would have meant [taking Caen] enormous casualties in doing it and it wasn't necessary."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
That nonsense about Caen. Caen was a second tier objective being an inland city. If it was easily taken then take it, if strong resistance, then leave it and let the RAF sort it out - which they did with 500 bomber raid. Ports were important.
Montgomery was very clear in his briefings to allied leaders at St Pauls School in London on the 7th April and again on 15th May 1944 (St Paul's School is in West London - that is in England). Caen was a 2nd tier D-Day target, not a must have. The most important objective in the first phase of the invasion was Cherbourg - which was not taken by US forces until 30th June. Taking Caen, at great expense, without taking Cherbourg would have been of little help to the allies, only depleting vital men and materials.
Montgomery's handling of this phase met the approval of Eisenhower:
CRUSADE IN EUROPE,
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER,
CHAPTER 14. D-DAY AND LODGMENT
Page, 282
‘Knowing that his old antagonist of the desert, Rommel, was to be in charge of the defending forces, Montgomery predicted that enemy action would be characterized by constant assaults carried out with any force immediately available from division down to a battalion or even company size. He discounted the possibility that the enemy under Rommel would ever select a naturally strong defensive line and calmly and patiently go about the business of building up the greatest possible amount of force in order to launch one full-out offensive into our beach position. Montgomery’s predictions were fulfilled to the letter.’
Page, 288
‘Montgomery’s tactical handling of the British and Canadians on the Eastward flank and his co-ordination of these operations with those of the Americans to the westward involved the kind of work in which he excelled.'
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@andym9571
The state of play on the 17th was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@Sharon Whiteley
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
1) Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
2) Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
3) Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
4) Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
5) Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
6) Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
7) Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgment or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this. The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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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, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"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 and 1st 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 in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@reginaldmcnab3265 wrote:
"the British empire had a population of 500 million people."
The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so it will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. They were supplied by a massive merchant fleet, via the Cape. The equivalent of sailing halfway around the world.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa.
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@pfarden5836
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
* August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein;
* March 1943 - Medenine;
June 1944 - Normandy;
* Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
* December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
i) Battle of Alam Halfa;
ii) Second Battle of El Alamein;
iii) Battle of El Agheila;
iv) Battle of Medenine;
v) Battle of the Mareth Line;
vi) Battle of Wadi Akarit;
vii) Allied invasion of Sicily;
viii) Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
ix) Market Garden - a 60 mile salient
x) created into German territory;
xi) Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
xii) Operation Veritable;
xiii) Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@pfarden5836
"The Battle of the Generals" by General Blumenson makes it clear that Bradley, not Montgomery, ordered Patton to stop at Falaise;
1) Bradley, on his own initiative, ordered Patton to stop on August 12 (page. 206-207);
2) Bradley's post-war effort to blame this on Montgomery was "dishonest and anti-British" (page. 211);
3) Despite Bradley stating he ordered it. Patton was running off to Paris, but Bradley failed to stop him from making a long hook encirclement of the Germans towards Dreux at the Sein (page. 223);
4) This was in clear contradiction to Montgomery's suggestion that he do so (page. 218).
In Bradley's memoir A Soldier's Story he says on page 377, "Monty had never prohibited and I never proposed that U.S. forces close the gap from Argentan to Falaise." He gives a number of reasons for not pushing north from Argentan, but Monty forbidding it is not one of them.
In A General's Life Bradley writes, "Montgomery had no part in the decision; it was mine and mine alone. Some writers have suggested that I appealed to Monty to move the boundary north to Falaise and he refused, but, of course, that is not true... I was determined to hold Patton at Argentan and had no cause to ask Monty to shift the boundary."
Nigel Hamilton, Monty's official biographer, states in The War Years that the decision was Bradley's. "Dempsey's diary record of his meeting with Monty and Bradley proves there was certainly no plot to deny Patton glory, since Dempsey specifically recorded: `So long as the Northward move of Third Army meets little opposition, the two leading Corps will disregard inter-Army boundaries'" (page. 788).
There are plenty of secondary sources that pin the blame on Bradley.
a) Russell Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants" page. 216: "Bradley, having set the stage by urging Eisenhower and Montgomery to grasp the opportunity of a short envelopment at Falaise-Argentan, failed to persist in completing his own design. He abandoned the short envelopment before its potential was achieved, and meanwhile he had delayed the long envelopment at the Seine."
b) Peter Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe page. 171: "Bradley was slow to concentrate sufficient force to close the Falaise Gap from the south when he had the opportunity to do so."
c) Robin Neillands, The Battle of Normandy 1944 page. 358: "Bradley's memoirs and the British Official History make it abundantly clear this decision was Bradley's."
There are many more sources where these came from.Carlo D'Este states on page 444, "When Dempsey met Bradley and Montgomery there was apparently no restraint placed on further northward movement by XV Corps... the fact that the Third Army did not move north of Argentan appears to have been Bradley's choice rather than a prohibition by Montgomery." On page 448 he writes, "The assertion that Montgomery made no effort to close the gap is without foundation." D'Este also dismisses the view of Strafford on page 451. No reasonable reading of D'Este on Falaise could possibly support blaming Montgomery. The US Official History, the British Official History, BRADLEY HIMSELF (twice!) and a multitude of secondary sources say Monty did not order Patton to halt. Neither Bradley himself, nor Montgomery, nor the senior British Army commander, nor the British or American official historians think Montgomery ordered Bradley to stop. THERE WAS NO HALT ORDER by Monty.
Chester Hanson and Ralph Ingersoll promoted that Monty halted Patton at Falaise were Anglophobes. Ingersoll had Communist leanings who wrote in order to convince people to trust the Russians and hate the British "imperialists".
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@andym9571
The narrative from the US since WW2 was that Monty planned Market Garden. Massed panzers were in Arnhem being ignored. The radios never worked. The British tankers sat around all day drinking tea. That the reason for the failure was that XXX Corps was too slow. All false.
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
1) Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
2) Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
3) Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
4) Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
5) Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
6) Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
7) Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgment or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 650 men and then a brigade of the 9th SS Panzer Division (recon infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump.
The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge XXX Corps found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this. The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
The Germans did not consider that they had some sort of victory in Market Garden. Far from it. A 60 mile salient was rammed between German armies right up to the Rhine in a few days, right on the German border. The Salient was fleshed out to the Meuse. Not one mm of territory was retaken by the Germans. A buffer was created to protect Antwerp keeping the port from artillery range and counter-attack. V weapons could not operate in that salient, or in NW Holland.
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪️ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪️ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪️ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪️ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪️ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪️ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪️ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪️ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪️ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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The imminent concern of Germany was to get the resources to fend off the coming air war with Britain.
Wages of Destruction. Prof Adam Tooze:
Planning for Barbarossa..
Tooze Page 454:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorised infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly."
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a "poor army". The fast striking motorised element of the German army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber"
"the fuel shortage of 1941 was so expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil."
"Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."
Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people."
"Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."
"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviets' immense stock of tanks and aircraft."
Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire."
"If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon. The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come into service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexican and eliminating the population.
War Production:
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
- Germany was third behind the USA then the UK in GDP
- In 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
- UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
- Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"
Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
- page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
Interesting from Harrison at Warwick uni.
Snippets:
"Soviet exceeded German GDP in 1940"
"The Allies won the war because their economies supported a greater volume of war production and military personnel in larger numbers. This was true of the war as a whole, and it was also true on the eastern front where the Soviet economy, of a similar size to Germany's but less developed and also seriously weakened by invasion, supplied more soldiers and weapons."
"the technological key to Soviet superiority in the output of weapons was mass production. At the outbreak of war Soviet industry as a whole was not larger and not more productive than German industry. The non-industrial resources on which Soviet industry could draw were larger than Germany's in the sense of territory and population, but of considerably lower quality, more far-flung, and less well integrated. Both countries had given considerable thought to industrial mobilisation preparations, but the results were of questionable efficacy. In both countries war production was poorly organised at first and productivity in the military-industrial sector had been falling for several years. The most important difference was that Soviet industry had made real strides towards mass production, while German industry was still locked into an artisan mode of production that placed a premium on quality and assortment rather than quantity. Soviet industry produced fewer models of each type of weapon, and subjected them to less modification, but produced them in far larger quantities. Thus the Soviet Union was able to make considerably more effective use of its limited industrial resources than Germany."
"Before the war Soviet defence industry was in a state of permanent technological reorganisation as new models of aircraft, tanks, and other weapons were introduced and old ones phased out at dizzying rate."
The USSR had access to oil and more natural resources and far more men. Making their ability to produce far greater than Germany, which actually happened.
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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, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"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 in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@trevorhart545
The allies had the armour, air forces and men to just steamroll north and onto the North German plains using Monty's plan. The British had destroyed over 90% of the German armour in Normandy.
Market Garden
The state of play on the 17th was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@rabbit251
Thx.
Read what I wrote. The operation "failed" by a whisker.
1) The road was clear from Zon to Arnhem;
2) The two bridges the US paras failed to seize were easy bridges to secure.
3) The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
4) The Germans were is disarray;
5) The bridge were not properly defended, few tank traps or barbed wire.
6) German resistance only increased when they used the generous time window given to them by the failings of the two US para units.
Market Garden was a success:
♦ It kept Antwerp out of German artillery range.
♦ It split German armies in two, largely isolating their 15th army on the Dutch Coast.
♦ The largest road bridge in Europe was in allied hands on the German border.
♦ It created a 60 mile buffer between Antwerp and German forces. Antwerp was the only port taken intact. This buffer proved itself in the German Bulge attack right through US lines. The German went through a forest rather than the direct route, which would have been through the Market Garden salient.
♦ It created a staging point to move into Germany at Nijmegen, which was used.
♦ It eliminated V rocket launching sites aimed at London.
♦ It isolated the German 15th army in Holland.
♦ They reached the Rhine.
♦ The salient was fleshed out to the Meuse.
♦ The Germans never retook one mm of ground taken.
♦ It captured the important Philips radio factory at Eindhoven.
To flesh out the salient the US 7th Armor was sent into Overloon. They were so bad they were extracted with British forces sent in to take the town.
The Germans never thought Market Garden was a failure. It punched a 60 mile salient right into their lines in a few days, right on their border. They saw it as a staging area to jump into Germany - which it was. In late '44/early '45, the longest allied advance was the 60 mile Market Garden advance. The only operation to fully achieve its goals in that time period was Monty's clearing of the Scheldt.
'It is interesting to consider how far we failed in this operation. It should be remembered that the Arnhem bridgehead was only a part of the whole. We had gained a great deal in spite of this local set-back. The Nijmegen bridge was ours, and it proved of immense value later on. And the brilliant advance by XXX Corps led the way to the liberation of a large part of Holland, not to speak of providing a stepping stone to the successful battles of the Rhineland.'
- OPERATION VICTORY by MAJOR-GENERAL DEGUINGAND, 1947, page 419.
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@dmbeaster
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The well supplied American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger well supplied advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards.
According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52..."by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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@dmbeaster
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, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"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 in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@dmbeaster
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control.
The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@pfarden5836
You have comprehension problems. Again for you......
"The Battle of the Generals" by General Blumenson makes it clear that Bradley, not Montgomery, ordered Patton to stop at Falaise;
1) Bradley, on his own initiative, ordered Patton to stop on August 12 (page. 206-207);
2) Bradley's post-war effort to blame this on Montgomery was "dishonest and anti-British" (page. 211);
3) Despite Bradley stating he ordered it. Patton was running off to Paris, but Bradley failed to stop him from making a long hook encirclement of the Germans towards Dreux at the Sein (page. 223);
4) This was in clear contradiction to Montgomery's suggestion that he do so (page. 218).
In Bradley's memoir A Soldier's Story he says on page 377, "Monty had never prohibited and I never proposed that U.S. forces close the gap from Argentan to Falaise." He gives a number of reasons for not pushing north from Argentan, but Monty forbidding it is not one of them.
In A General's Life Bradley writes, "Montgomery had no part in the decision; it was mine and mine alone. Some writers have suggested that I appealed to Monty to move the boundary north to Falaise and he refused, but, of course, that is not true... I was determined to hold Patton at Argentan and had no cause to ask Monty to shift the boundary."
Nigel Hamilton, Monty's official biographer, states in The War Years that the decision was Bradley's. "Dempsey's diary record of his meeting with Monty and Bradley proves there was certainly no plot to deny Patton glory, since Dempsey specifically recorded: `So long as the Northward move of Third Army meets little opposition, the two leading Corps will disregard inter-Army boundaries'" (page. 788).
There are plenty of secondary sources that pin the blame on Bradley:
a) Russell Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants" page. 216: "Bradley, having set the stage by urging Eisenhower and Montgomery to grasp the opportunity of a short envelopment at Falaise-Argentan, failed to persist in completing his own design. He abandoned the short envelopment before its potential was achieved, and meanwhile he had delayed the long envelopment at the Seine."
b) Peter Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe page. 171: "Bradley was slow to concentrate sufficient force to close the Falaise Gap from the south when he had the opportunity to do so."
c) Robin Neillands, The Battle of Normandy 1944 page. 358: "Bradley's memoirs and the British Official History make it abundantly clear this decision was Bradley's."
There are many more sources where these came from. Carlo D'Este states on page 444, "When Dempsey met Bradley and Montgomery there was apparently no restraint placed on further northward movement by XV Corps... the fact that the Third Army did not move north of Argentan appears to have been Bradley's choice rather than a prohibition by Montgomery." On page 448 he writes, "The assertion that Montgomery made no effort to close the gap is without foundation." D'Este also dismisses the view of Strafford on page 451. No reasonable reading of D'Este on Falaise could possibly support blaming Montgomery. The US Official History, the British Official History, BRADLEY HIMSELF (twice!) and a multitude of secondary sources say Monty did not order Patton to halt. Neither Bradley himself, nor Montgomery, nor the senior British Army commander, nor the British or American official historians think Montgomery ordered Bradley to stop. THERE WAS NO HALT ORDER by Monty.
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“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s excruciating pause”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flow in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52..."by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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Logistics was the major issue but Antwerp wasn’t the only option. If Eisenhower had let Monty go for a Rhine crossing in late August/early September - Operation Comet - with the intent of making the inland sea in Holland they could have got Rotterdam and even Amsterdam instead.
Antwerp was an awkward port, being 80km inland with a warren of tidal inlets, islands and estuaries covering the approaches. Many an army came to grief in that part of the world - a British one was destroyed there in 1809. If Monty was all for bypassing the problems of Antwerp and gaining Rotterdam it wouldn't have been the worst judgement, it was very sound. The Germans were still reeling, the paras were on standby with fuel in the tanks. Rotterdam was possible. Stopping to open up Antwerp was always going to take considerable time. Eisenhower, felt it was better to concentrate on Antwerp as the supply head before pressing on - operation Market Garden was that plan. And then the endless operations from Hurtgen Forest to Walcheren.
Antwerp would not be fully open to allied shipping until early January 1945. The first ships entered in October 1944, but the majority of supplies would come from Normandy until November. That was three months from Antwerp's capture. Twice the time it took to break out of Normandy. By that time the French railway service had been largely rebuilt with stores coming in from Normandy and LeHavre, for Bradley’s 12th Army Group, and Marseilles, for Devers’ 6th Army Group. The supplies could be shifted faster.
Monty was for pushing on in early September,, Eisenhower was cautious. Eisenhower's caution allowed the Germans breathing space to reinforce gifting them an opportunity to consolidate then strike back. Pushing Monty into Holland and then going for caution was sound - you get Rotterdam and possibly Antwerp .
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In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a German rabble full of eyes and ears units. Patton move 10 iles in three months at Metz. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said: "I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans." Patton failed to reach the Westwall in the Lorraine.
Below is from:
The Lorraine Campaign, An Overview, September-December 1944,
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel,
February, 1985,
U.S Army Command and General Staff College.
The document states:
Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers. Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months. He [Patton] discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter.
The US Army study highlighted Patton's tendency to overstretch his supply lines, then stall.
The American armored elements in Lorraine were not at their best either.
..
Patton's reluctance to mass his armor came as a pleasant surprise to the Germans, who believed that their panzer divisions were just as useful in creating breakthroughs as they were in exploiting them.
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In addition, American tank crews repeatedly paid a heavy price for a doctrinal decisions made before the war that declared tanks to be offensive weapons not intended as defensive combat against other tanks. As a result of this official policy, the M-4 Sherman tanks in Lorraine were badly outgunned by German panzers that mounted superb anti-tank pieces. The tank-stopping task was officially assigned to the tank destroyers, which were supposed to be thinly armoured, highly mobile, heavily armed anti-tank destroyers.
..
Third Army didn't need an antitank reserve in Lorraine because German tanks usually appeared a few at a time.
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