Hitler's Strategy by Late 1943

Hitler and the Nazi symbol

As 1944 dawned, Hitler faced this problem: that a successful Soviet offensive in the east would probably cost him the Ukraine and Belorussia—potential areas of German lebensraum, but space that was not essential to the Reich’s existence. A successful U.S.-British invasion in the west, however, could well cost him the Rhine-Ruhr region—the life’s blood of his Army. The former areas were expendable, but not the latter. Therefore, by all means possible, Germany must prevent the western Allies from gaining a foothold on the continent. The Axis’ central problem, therefore, was for the Wehrmacht to throw the invaders back into the sea. The Wehrmacht certainly tried to accomplish this, but obviously failed. Hence the decisiveness of D-Day.

Allied establishment of a second front in Western Europe would spell certain doom for the Third Reich. Hitler knew this. He also knew, as 1944 approached, that an Allied invasion from England was imminent, which is why he sent Rommel to northern France. The Reich’s strategic aim, given that it must soon fight on two fronts, east and west, was “the defeat of one enemy so that all resources could be concentrated against the other and a stalemate achieved.”[1]

The invasion, therefore, must be stopped in its tracks. As early as March 1942, as he withdrew his Luftwaffe from the battle over the skies of Britain, Hitler’s concept of the situation in the west was that “Atlantic coast defenses should be so organized and troops so deployed that any invasion attempt would be smashed before landing or immediately thereafter.”[2] 

On this point, Rommel and Hitler agreed.  “The main battle line,” he said,” must be the beach.”[3]

So at the beginning of 1944, Hitler faced this problem: a successful Soviet offensive in the east would probably cost him the Ukraine and Belorussia—potential German lebensraum, but not essential to the Reich’s existence. A successful U.S.-British invasion in the west could well cost him his Rhine-Ruhr region—the life’s blood of his Army. The former areas were expendable, but not the latter. Therefore, by all means possible, Germany must prevent the western Allies from gaining a foothold on the continent. The Axis’ central problem, therefore, was for the Wehrmacht to throw the invaders back into the sea.

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[1] David Fraser, Knight’s Cross: A Life of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 453.

[2] Stephen E. Ambrose, D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 36.

[3] Fraser, 455.

Chronology of the Normandy Campaign

6 June 1944	Allied landings in Normandy.
7 June	Bayeux falls.
8 June	U.S. First and British Second Armies link near Port-en-Bessin.
12 June	Omaha and Utah beachheads united.
13 June	British 7th Armored Division checked and repelled at Villers-Bocage. Germans open V-1 flying bomb offensive against Britain.
17 June	Rommel meets Hitler at Margival, near Soissons.
18-21 June	The ‘great storm’ in the Channel.
18 June	U.S. VII Corps reach west coast Cherbourg peninsula at Barneville.
19 June	Americans take Montebourg.
22 June	Russians open their summer offensive against Army Group Center with 146 infantry divisions and 43 tank brigades attacking on a 300-mile front.
25-29 June	British Operation EPSOM southwest of Caen.
26 June	Americans in Cherbourg.
27 June	Resistance in Cherbourg ends.
29 June	Rommel meets Hitler at German Armed Forces High Command in Berchtesgaden.
1 July	General Gyre von Schweppenburg (Panzer Group West) sacked and replaced by General Hans  Eberbach. Americans secure Cap de la Hague.
2 July	Von Rundstedt (OB-West) sacked and replaced by von Kluge.
8 July	British attack Caen, Americans seize La Hay-au-Puits.
10 July	British occupy Caen.
17 July	Rommel wounded and replaced as commander of Army Group B by von Kluge.
18 July	British Operation GOODWOOD east of Caen. Americans take St. Lo.
20 July	Hitler wounded by assassination attempt at his headquarters at Rastenburg (Prussia), abortive conspiracy and its aftermath rocks the Third Reich.
25 July	American Operation COBRA launched west of St. Lo.
30 July	British Operation BLUECOAT launched southeast of Caumont. Americans “turn the corner” at Avranches.
31 July	Russians within 10 miles of Warsaw.  Uprising begins.
1 August	Hodges assumes command of U.S. First Army; Patton’s Third Army activated; Bradley becomes commander of U.S. Twelfth Army Group.
7 August	Germans launch Mortain counter-attack. Canadian Operation TOTALIZE launched towards Falaise.
10 August	TOTALIZE broken off.
12 August	U.S. XV Corps takes Alencon.
14 August	Canadian Operation TRACTABLE launched towards Falaise. DRAGOON landings in southern France.
17 August	Model assumes command of German armies, orders full retreat east from Allied pocket. Falaise falls.
19 August	Polish Armored Division and U.S. 90th Division reach Chambois.
21 August	Falaise Gap closed.
25 August	Paris falls.
1 September	Eisenhower assumes direct command of Allied ground forces. Montgomery promoted to Field Marshal
2 September	U.S. First AND Third Armies ordered to halt by Eisenhower in view of huge fuel and supply problems.
3 September	Brussels falls.
16 September	U.S. First Army units cross the German border near Aachen.
17 September	Operation MARKET-GARDEN launched against Arnhem and the Maas and Waal bridges.

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Source:  Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 333.

The Falaise Pocket

The battle of the Falaise Pocket, which took place from 16 to 19 August 1944, took its name from a combat situation that developed late in the Normandy Campaign, subsequent to the Allied breakout which turned the direction of the Allied invasion eastward toward Germany. A popular military history website has postulated, concerning this battle, that it actually gave rise to the operational thinking behind the more famously known operation—MARKET-GARDEN. The gist is that the “unexpected” success of Operation OVERLORD, the Normandy Campaign, created an opportunity for striking Germany’s industrial region much more quickly than earlier thought possible. For it had been anticipated that the advance of the western front towards Germany would be a long, hard slog—and it was that until about eight weeks into the Normandy Campaign when, rather suddenly, the German defenses in front of the southward advance of the Allied right flank, in the west around the town of St. Lo, collapsed. “What actually happened,” writes the author of this particular posting—

“was that the Allies were bogged down for many weeks in a virtual stalemate in Normandy and that the German defense … virtually collapsed overnight leading to the Falaise pocket, which was a complete disaster for the Germans, of the same magnitude as Stalingrad had been on the Eastern Front.”[1]

Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery

Now, while it is somewhat of a stretch to compare the impact upon the Third Reich of battle of the Falaise Pocket with the stupendous disaster at Stalingrad, it is no stretch to say that the German lines fronting St. Lo did collapse virtually overnight. Because of the generally steady advance of British armor-supported infantry operations in the vicinity of Caen, on the Allies left flank—in the east and therefore much closer to Paris—German forces in the west, facing the steady advance of U.S. forces in the west faced the possibility of being cut off. Quite literally overnight those western units were pulled back to shore up the defense of the approaches to the Seine River—and to Paris. Their pull-back, coupled with the rapid advance and eastward turning of the U.S. divisions under Bradley, the so-called Allied breakout, created a “pocket” or an ever-dwindling space between the advancing Allied front on the right (west), as it wheeled eastward, and then northeastward, and the rear of the Allied (Dempsey’s) forces on the left (east). For a time there was a very real possibility that 80,000[2] Germans might be caught in this pocket and be totally wiped out. That they were not destroyed was the result of a combination of factors, the most significant being the Allied ground commander, Montgomery’s, propensity for over-cautiousness, the slowness of the Allied operational machinery to take swift advantage of developing battlefield situations, and the length of the Allied lines of communications, particularly behind the right wing advance of Bradley’s. The very last thing the Allied commanders wanted was to make the kind of mistake that would put their forces into the kind of predicament the Germans in the vicinity of the town of the town of Falaise found themselves in late August, 1944. Hence, though much of their equipment was destroyed,[3] “something over 20,000” German soldiers, “with only the clothes on their backs and personal weapons,”[4] lived to fight another day.

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[1] Unknown, “Operation Market-Garden,” History of War.org, http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/
battles_arnhem.html (accessed 27 July 2012).

[2] Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (New York, E. P. Dutton, Inc., 1983), 430.

[3] Maps of World War II: Battle of the Falaise Pocket: August 16-19, 1944, On War.com, http://www.
onwar.com/maps/wwii/westfront/falaise.htm (accessed 27 July 2012).

[4] Max Hastings, OVERLORD: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), 314.

FORTITUDE

FUSAG was fake, but
Patton was very real.

Allied Operation FORTITUDE was a program of deception—and a supplemental operation—to Operation OVERLORD, the Normandy Campaign. At the center of the FORTITUDE deception was the entirely fictitious First United States Army Group (FUSAG) ostensibly commanded by the very well-known American officer, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton. In what today would be termed a military information support operation, FUSAG was given a network of installations, had its own imaginary organizational structures, fabricated radio message traffic, conjured up plans, missions, and briefings, even false insignia. The ghost command had its own— 

“training grounds, a communications network, plans, orders of battle, and a specific target, the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, or even, so the Germans were encouraged to believe, farther northeast [and thus further away from Normandy] on the Belgian and Dutch coasts.”[1]

German intelligence agents in England repeatedly confirmed much of this “evidence” which completely fooled the German high command, including Hitler, as to both the magnitude of the Allied forces available and the intended target for their imminent cross-channel attack So convinced were the Germans of the reality of FUSAG, that even after the Normandy landings had begun, the German high command kept the powerful 15th Infantry Division positioned, and most of their Panzer units held in reserve, to defend against what they were sure would be soon coming, the main cross-channel attack by Patton’s forces striking the Calais area, 100-150 miles northeast of Sword Beach. 

As evidenced by the German high command’s decisions regarding its Panzer reserves and its heavily armed 15th Infantry Division, not only is the Third Reich’s strategy for its defense of its western approaches discovered, but the fundamental purpose of Operation FORTITUDE is revealed. Its purpose was to fool the Germans into thinking the invasion would come at a place far away from the area of the actual landings. German uncertainty as to where the landings would occur left them with no choice but to defend well over a thousand miles of coastline from Denmark in the north to the Bay of Biscay in the west, forcing them to violate Frederick the Great’s dictum that he who defends everything defends nothing. Once the invasion came, the deception wrought by FORTITUDE remained so strong that senior commanders up to and including Hitler remained steadfast in their conviction that it was just a feint and that the real invasion would come further up the coastline. 

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[1] Martin Gilbert, D-Day (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2004), 61.

Decisive Operations: The Normandy Campaign and the Fate of Hitler’s Germany

General Eisenhower

“Decisive operations,” according to the United States Army doctrine, “lead directly to the accomplishment of a commander’s purpose.”[1] The problem with the Army manual from whence that statement is lifted is that it uses the word “decisive” twenty-two times but never defines it. That one sentence, just quoted, is the closest it comes. The absence of a clear definition of the term leaves readers to interpret it as they see fit. Decisiveness, then, probably has much in common with beauty: its quality seems to mostly in the eyes of its beholder.

Like beholders of beauty, observers of military history can and do offer compelling descriptions of what they see. ‘Decisiveness’ seems to be one of their favorite terms, though some may be hesitant to use it overmuch. One historian, Williamson Murray, avoided the term ‘decisive’ in all his analyses of the Normandy campaign, though he did refer to it as “a great success.”[2] In calling the campaign a “flawed triumph,” it was almost as if Murray was saying that OVERLORD could have been decisive if it hadn’t been for the generals that fought it—““It was in the tragic nature of life,” he wrote, “and in the fact that no general can ever make perfect decisions that victory in Europe would not come until May 1945.” Max Hastings, on the other hand, called OVERLORD “the decisive western battle of the Second World War, the last moment at which the German army might conceivably have saved Hitler from catastrophe.”[3]

Still another historian, Cornelius Ryan, also believed that D-Day, the start of the Normandy campaign, was the decisive battle of the war. He called it “the battle … that ended Hitler’s insane gamble to dominate the world.”[4] More expansively, he observed that—

“Germany was still far from beaten, but the Allied invasion would be the decisive battle. Nothing less than the future of Germany was at stake, and no one knew it better than Rommel.”[5]