Cornelius Ryan on Courage

Cornelius Ryan

"I continue to be constantly amazed by the courage of men in battle," said Cornelius Ryan, "and by their humor in the midst of catastrophe. Ryan, the author of three volumes on World War II, dictated these words as he labored over volume that was perhaps the most famous of the three, A Bridge Too Far, as he himself faced a private battle with cancer at the age of 53.

“There is a desperateness, I suppose, in courage and in wartime humor. I have seldom encountered a soldier who thought he had been courageous and I would tend to discount a man who said he was. I rather think that courage is man’s unplanned positive reaction to what appears to him to be a last-ditch situation. I believe courage is at its peak when one has run out of hope. A soldier figures he has nothing to lose because subconsciously he has arrived at the conclusion that he has no future.”[1]

---

[1] Cornelius Ryan and Kathryn Morgan Ryan, A Private Battle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 307.

Favorite TV Shows of the Past: Tom and Jerry

Many a Saturday morning spent watching these two make believe creatures.  They were--and still are--amusing.  But the source of my most remembered laughter was when I watched these guys with my grandfather.  I never knew he was even the slightest bit interested until one morning he startled me by his deep laughter.  He laughed so hard that he attention to the cartoons ceased.  It was almost as if the TV wasn't even on.  It was just me and Granddaddy Huffman sitting in the living room of his house ... laughing our heads off.

Bias and the 'Heroine of Popular History"

Barbara Tuchman

The Teleprompter, Barbara Tuchman told an interviewer in the early 1980s, "allows an inadequate, minor individual to appear to be a statesman" wrote Bruce Cole in the Wall Street Journal.[1]  Mrs. Tuchman (1912-1989) was a historian, probably best known for her 1962 history of the beginning of World War I, The Guns of August.  The WSJ’s Cole is careful to point out that, given Mrs. Tuchman’s “liberal leanings” (her father owned the leftist publication The Nation and Barbara Tuchman began her writing career as a correspondent for the magazine, covering the Spanish Civil War), she was actually referring to President—and statesman—Ronald Reagan.

Of course, when one reads just the bare statement, without any clueing in as to its background, the image one immediately conjures up is of one sad excuse for a statesman—and president—Barack Hussein Obama, mmmm-mmmm-mmmm.

In his effort to present Barbara Tuchman as a ‘heroine of popular history,’ Mr. Cole unwittingly sheds light on more of the writer’s biases than intended.  (No judgment here, we all have them).  Describing her thinking as a writer and historian, Cole emphasized that Mrs. Tuchman stressed “the importance of using primary sources and unpublished material, the necessity of visiting the sites where history was made, the use of corroborative detail—‘history by the ounce’ as [Mrs. Tuchman] called it—to keep the historian from "soaring off the ground into theories of his own invention."[2]

All very well, an ideal for which all historians should strive, and quite interesting in light of what follows.  For Mr. Cole goes on to point out that Mrs. Tuchman also “believed sensibly that it's better to ‘arrive at theory by way of evidence than the other way around, like so many revisionists today.’”[3]

Again, sage advice; but, one cannot help but wonder if this was how the “heroine of popular history” arrived at her conclusion about Teleprompters and the fortieth president of the United States.

---

[1] Bruce Cole, “a Heroine of Popular History,” The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/

article/SB10001424052970203960804577243093554779020.html (accessed 28 August 2012).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Making Do

Here's recent episode from the continuing saga of Earl and Opal Pickles ...



At my house, Connie is still making do with our old TV set .. and me, thank goodness.

Favorite TV Shows of the Past: Petticoat Junction

It's on in Augusta weekday mornings at 0630.  Connie and I watch it while I'm getting ready for work.

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.

______________________________

[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.

__________________________

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

Evernote

Spending the morning learning something new.

I probably should run over to Barnes and Nobles and pick up a copy of Evernote for Dummies.

A friend of mine, a published author, told me about Evernote yesterday.  It's seems like a good way to keep track of research notes ... and lots of other things.

Keeps everything in "the cloud" so it can be accessed from any machine you happen to be working on.

So far, I'm just experimenting with the free side.  Of course, users can upgrade to the premium version ... for a small fee.

Saturday Morning

The view from my office

Started the day with a cup of coffee and Rick Atkinson's Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War at Starbucks.  Came back to the house about 0730 and within the hour the bottom fell out of the sky ... a big, loud thunderstorm.  

Rained for a couple of hours.  Filled the pool right up to the brim.

Great morning to get some work done ... or not!

Turning Point(s) of the Second World War

George C. Marshall. Was his appointment as Army 
chief of staff the turning point of World War II?

Fighting the Second World War was an immense operation.  Viewing the war as a single event, one must still be cognizant of its many parts and pieces.  These parts and pieces—the war’s battles and campaigns—were the subplots of the overall war.  Each had its own story, its own unique circumstances and challenges, its own turning points.  Like beauty, the construing of any single one of these as the point upon which the entire outcome of the war turned, depends much upon the eyes of the beholder.

A couple of years ago, historian Laurence Rees framed a question for a list of distinguished historians (he doesn’t say how many), asking each of them, “what was the turning point of World War II?”  What is probably not so surprising is that he got a range of answers.  One gentleman, writes Rees, thought the entire war turned upon the Germans’ victory in France in May of 1940.  His argument was that the French and the British had the advantage in terms of terrain and equipment, that attacking with such a disadvantage the Germans assumed a huge amount of risk, and that the outcome of the battle turned upon the superiority of German leadership.  “If the [Allies] had not performed so appallingly in this one fight,” argues this one historian, “then World War II would have ended by the summer of 1940 in an ignominious defeat for the Germans.”[1]

Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was the answer to Rees’s question by two historians, Conrad Crane and Akira Iriye. Crane, a former West Point history professor and current director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, chose Pearl Harbor because that is the point when the conflict became truly a world war.  Mr. Iriye, a Harvard University professor of Japanese descent, chose Pearly Harbor because it “turned out to be such a monumental mistake.”[2]

Six historians, including Robert Dallek and Max Hastings, chose Stalingrad.  "Stalingrad changes everything," said Hastings.  "Once the Germans have been thrown back from Stalingrad, once they've lost that battle, the war was never the same again."[3]  Winston Churchill is said to have exclaimed “we have won!” the minute he learned of what happened at Pearl Harbor.  But another historian, Richard Overy, argued that Stalingrad was “not a turning point necessarily in strategic terms, because a lot more has to be done before the Soviets can be certain of defeating Germany."  But what was made clear there, more than anything else, is that the Germans were vulnerable.[4]

Air Superiority: The Impact of the Allies' Strategic Bombing Campaigns in World War II

Bomber Harris

The Allies’ gaining of air superiority, in each of the major theaters of the war, essentially determined the conflict’s outcome in that theater. Superiority in the air meant two things. First, it meant that the Allies could capitalize on their vast advantage in terms of strategic bombing. Second, because of their advantage in strategic bombing capabilities, they soon achieved significant advantages in terms of battlefield maneuver. Superiority in the air enabled the Allies to mass firepower against the enemy in two domains, on land and from the air. Allied air superiority meant that the enemy was restricted to fighting only, or mainly, in the land domain. 

Virtually ever since the invention of the airplane, aviators have believed that wars could be decided by air power alone. Even today there are many who subscribe to this view, despite much evidence to the contrary, but the opinion was much more widely held during World War II, when air power was just coming into its own. In America, the name of Billy Mitchell attaches itself to many of the early theories touching upon the effectiveness of air power. Essentially, what Mitchell espoused as early as the 1920s was set forth in a concept written by Sir Charles Webster and Dr. Noble Frankland, entitled The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany part of which was cited in B. H. Liddel-Hart’s history of the Second World War— 

“The strategic air offensive is a means of direct attack on the enemy state with the object of depriving it of the means or will to continue the war. It may, in itself, be the instrument of victory or it may be the means by which victory can be won by other forces. It differs from all previous kinds of armed attack in that it alone can be brought to bear immediately, directly, and destructively against the heartland of the enemy Its sphere of activity is, therefore, not only above, but also beyond that of armies or navies.”

Against Germany. “The Army Air Forces (together with Britain’s Bomber Command) blasted German cities into rubble using mainly B-24 and B-17 heavy bomber aircraft, but the war in Europe ended only when Allied armies occupied Germany’s territory.”[1] Strategic bombing—by itself—was never the ‘be all, end all’ solution to the essential military problem of the war, which was to destroy the warfighting capabilities of the Axis nations. 

The Vietnam War explained as never before, in hard numbers and good facts

I am testing out the new Google Chrome app that lets you post articles from Reader straight to your blog. This one is from Tom Ricks' blog The Best Defense hosted by Foreign Policy.

The Vietnam War explained as never before, in hard numbers and good facts:

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on January 12, 2011.

Hey, how come no one ever mentioned to me Thomas Thayer's War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam? What do I pay the frequent friers for, anyway? (You know who you are.) I finished reading it over the weekend, while it snowed in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and I think it is one of the best books I've ever read on the war, with page after page of good, usable, dispassionate data, much of it counterintuitive.

Here are just some of the things that surprised me:

Doctrine 2015 Update

The 'Doctrine 2015' hierarchy

Recently, I was asked to review an author's draft of an emerging publication ... Army Techniques Publication 4-16 Movement Control.  The U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM) is the preparing activity responsible for this publication.  It's an update and republication of Field Manual (FM) 4-01.30 Movement Control as an ATP.  Under the guidance of the Army's Doctrine 2015 concept, there will only be 50 FMs.  Those that didn't make the cut, if the material in them is still relevant, are to be converted to ATPs.  That's what CASCOM is doing with FM 4-01.30, converting it to ATP 4-16, updating a thing or two in its content in the process.

Although I judged it a reasonably well written draft, and that it contained no language inconsistent with emerging signal doctrine, I had to submit a critical comment on it, because of the timing of this draft's staffing to an Army-wide audience.  We are a good year now into the concept of Doctrine 2015, the SAMS-developed, CSA-approved, doctrine refinement concept the purpose of which is to streamline the Army's inventory of doctrinal publications and put more relevant doctrine into the hands of Soldiers faster.  Still, there are a lot of people who don't understand the transformation.  I've used this blog to write about Doctrine 2015 before.  I still get questions, like "What's an ADP?"  Which is higher, and FM or an ADRP?  "Do we still have ATTPs? or just ATPs?"   

The Impact of Lessons Learned When Really Learned

World War II Soldier

In 1942, in the war in North Africa, the Americans were stung by a serious defeat at Kasserine Pass. In that defeat, their eyes were opening to the realities of war. They received a further sting from a British general’s biting criticism. General Alexander, the 18th Army Group Commander, called his American allies “soft, green, and quite untrained [lacking] the will to fight. My main anxiety,” he said— 

“is the poor fighting value of the Americans. They simply do not know their job as soldiers and this is the case from the highest to the lowest. Perhaps the weakest link of all is the junior leader, who just does not lead, with the result that their men don’t really fight.”[1]

But even as the U.S. soldier was licking his wounds, something was changing. Ruthlessly, Eisenhower began sacking incompetent commanders. Soldiers who could lead started doing so. The Brits, who had been fighting for almost two years, referred to the Americans’ experience as Kasserine as their “being blooded.” There is a line in Rick Atkinson’s history on the war in North Africa that succinctly describes this change. Atkinson’s line was this, that— 

“a great sorting out was under way: the competent from the incompetent, the courageous from the fearful, the lucky from the unlucky. It would happen faster in the American Army than it had in the British. Alexander was not wholly wrong, but he was wrong.”[2]

“The Battle of Kasserine Pass was humiliating.” That’s how one of General George C. Marshall’s biographers described it.[3] It had the effect, however, of galvanizing the American fighting spirit. Eisenhower himself spoke of “lessons learned,” and of how all his soldiers and commanders were actively “seeking from every possible source methods and means perfecting their own battlefield efficiency,” and of how good a teacher combat had been.[4] Kasserine Pass was to the Atlantic theater what Pearl Harbor had been in the Pacific. It was defeat, it didn’t taste very good, and it made GIs want to do something about it. 

A Primer on Military Doctrine

Doctrine

The blueprint for forces in combat.[1]

Fundamental principles by which the military forces, or elements thereof, guide their actions in support of national objectives.  It is authoritative but requires judgment in application.[2]

It is the “fundamental principles by which the [operational Army] and elements of the generating force that directly support operations guide their actions in support of national objectives.[3]  [Emphasis mine].

“The principles that shape military operations are based on centuries of experience and institutional refinement and are used almost universally.  When codified and applied in training and wartime operations, such principles are called doctrine.  Doctrine (principles) usually applies to operations (by specifying how to conduct campaigns and extended battles) and to tactics (how to conduct a single engagement or series of similar engagements), but not to strategy.  “Strategic doctrine” is an oxymoron since strategy is defined by contingent war aims.”[4]

Principle—a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption.[5]  The 12 principles of war [objective; offensive; mass; economy of force; maneuver; unity of command; security; surprise; simplicity; restraint; perseverance; legitimacy] are defined in JP 3-0, Appx A.

Principles illustrated

“George C. Marshall, whose 1941 war manual served as a model for the 1982 [FM 100-5 Operations], had warned that mobile combat was ‘a cloud of uncertainties, haste, rapid movements, congestion on the roads, strange terrain, lack of ammunition and supplies at the right places at the right moment, failures of communication, terrific tests of endurance, and misunderstandings in direct proportion to the inexperience of the officers.’”[6]  Consistent with the Joint definition of doctrine, General Marshall, in that war manual of his, just listed nine fundamental principles of mobile warfare.

“Tactical doctrine—institutionally recommended ways of fighting used to train individuals and units before they enter combat.”[7]

“A military organization’s doctrine spells out the conceptual framework that determines how the organization will fight.”[8]

Under the Army’s Doctrine 2015 concept, doctrine is defined as the fundamental principles by which military forces or elements thereof guide their actions in support of national objectives.  It is authoritative but requires judgment in application.  Army doctrine includes not only principles, but also tactics and procedures.  Field manuals are defined as a Department of the Army publication that contains principles, tactics, procedures, and other doctrinal information.  It describes how the Army and its organizations conduct and train for those operations. [9]

 "Effective doctrine is current, relevant, well-researched, flexible, understandable, consistent, concise, enduring, and timely … a system of thought.” [10]

“Army doctrine is a systematic body of thought describing how Army forces intend to operate as a member of the joint force in the present and near term, with current force structure and materiel.”  Doctrine “describes how … to think … and what to train.”[11]

If doctrine represents how the Army intends to fight, and history is a record of how its operations were actually conducted, then, for better or worse, history and doctrine are practically mirror images of each other.

 “Write with an understanding of the current fight, but remember, doctrine is not just about today, it’s about posturing us intellectually as a profession for the next fight.” [12]

“Joint doctrine promotes a common perspective from which to plan,

train, and conduct military operations.  It represents what is taught,

believed, and advocated as what is right.”[13]

  

“One of the most persistent trends is the lack of signal corps officers, noncommissioned officers (NCOs), and Soldiers who understand their duties and responsibilities. Let’s face it; we as signaleers do not have an established and written doctrine to follow like the infantry or field artillery.” [14]

Perennial problem:  the Army’s implicit or tacit expert knowledge … gained by [Soldiers] in the field [and] in the classroom, is [normally] well ahead of its explicit expert knowledge, which is recorded in doctrine.[15]

Doctrine and Lessons Learned

Early in World War II, the British army’s “most serious problem was failing to develop a coherent combined-arms doctrine based on a thorough study of the last war.”[16]

On the other hand, the Germans developed Leadership and Battle with Combined Arms (1923)—the 1933 version of which became Truppenfuehrung—written by Generals [!] Werner von Fritsch and Ludwig Beck [which] provided [their] doctrine for the coming war.”[17]

General Hans von Seeckt, commander of the German army in the interwar years, on lessons learned:  “It is absolutely necessary to put the experience of the war in a broad light and collect this experience while the impressions won on the battlefield are still fresh and a major portion of the experienced officers are still in leading positions.” [18]

U.S. General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing performed such an analysis which “culminated in the Field Service Regulation of 1923, the army’s basic doctrinal manual [The ADP/ADRP 3-0 of that day], which explains why the U.S. was able to adapt so quickly to the tactical conditions of combat in World War II.”[19]

General William DePuy “personally wrote [!] much of the 1976 version of FM 100-5.”[20]

“The rule of officer training [the same could be said about doctrine] is to reduce the conduct of war to a set of rules and a system of procedures—and thereby to make orderly and rational what is essentially chaotic and instinctive.”[21]

“…extended range of procedures which have as their object the assimilation of almost all of an officer’s professional activities to a corporate standard and common form.”[22]

“ … instantly recognizable and universally comprehensible vocabulary.”[23]

“ … formalized … ‘observations’, ‘conclusions’, and ‘intentions’.[24]

“ … he [the young officer] learns ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ … by reference to simplified manuals …”[25]

The purpose of [doctrine] is to equip the young officer with the ability “to organize his intake of sensations [in battle], to reduce the events of combat to as few and as easily recognizable a set of elements as possible …”[26]

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[1] Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993), 252.

[2] JP 1-02.

[3] TR 25-36, Final Draft, 8 July 2011, para. 3-3a(1).

[4] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: 2000), 586.

[5] Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10^th Ed.

[6] Rick Atkinson, 253.

[7] Murray and Millet, 589.

[8] Murray and Millet, 22.

[9] ATZL-MCK-D memo, Subj: Review of TRADOC Regulation 25-36, The TRADOC Doctrinal Literature Program, dated 31 October 2011.

[10] TR 25-36.

[11] TR 25-36, Final Draft, 8 July 2011.

[12] General Robert W. Cone, Commander, U.S. Army TRADOC Memorandum, subject: Doctrine 2015 Guidance, dated 23 August 2011.

[13] JP 1 Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States.  I am of a mind that we should not distinguish between ‘joint’ and ‘service’ doctrine.  Doctrine is doctrine; if it is a fundamental principle, it is doctrine, no matter who writes it.

[14] JRTC Signal Newsletter, Vol. IV (12-04), 9.

[15] Antulio J. Echevarria II, “Transforming the Army’s Way of Battle: Revising Our Abstract Knowledge,” The Future of the Army Profession, 2^d Ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill), 374.

[16] Murray and Millet, 24.

[17] Murray and Millet, 22.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Murray and Millet, 28.

[20] Robert Scales, Jr., “Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War (Washington: Brassey’s), 13.

[21] John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 20.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., 20-21.

[24] Ibid., 21

[25] Ibid., 21

[26] Or officer training, Ibid., 22.

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.

---

[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.