Armageddon (8 page)

In late August and September, senior American officers believed that Lee, the man responsible for finding urgent means to carry the armies into Germany, was chiefly preoccupied with his own creature comfort. A U.S. Army report of 1 December condemned in withering terms the “lethargy and smugness” that had been displayed throughout the campaign by some ComZ—Communications Zone—personnel. “Lee . . . never ceased to be a controversial figure,” in the understated words of the official historian.

It is a serious criticism of Eisenhower that he failed to focus upon Lee’s shortcomings, and to replace him, when the Supreme Commander was foremost among those who recognized the tyrannical influence of logistics upon the battlefield. General Everett Hughes, ETO (European Theater of Operations) Chief of Staff, puzzled over Eisenhower’s indulgence of Lee and observed sourly to his diary: “Alexander the Great loved
flatterers
.” Even an administrator of genius might have been dismayed by the supply problems facing the Allied armies in September 1944. But Lee’s failure to prepare contingency plans for a rapid Allied advance seemed deplorable to field commanders. Again and again, U.S. Army inspectors uncovered scandalous lapses and snarl-ups in the supply system. Bradley urged irritably: “Many of our ground forces have done the impossible; let [ComZ] try the impossible for a while. I am not convinced they are doing all they could.” Likewise Patton: “Hell, have ’em get off their asses and work the way our troops have.”

An energetic and imaginative officer occupying the post so indolently filled by Lee might have found ways to move fuel and supplies to the Allied spearheads in eastern France, to maintain the pace of their advance. This could have been decisive, in enabling Eisenhower’s armies to exploit their summer successes before the Germans regrouped. In the event, the momentum triumphantly achieved in August was tragically lost in September. Hitler’s armies used every day of grace they were granted, to create defensive lines on the borders of Germany against the Allied host.

MONTGOMERY TRIUMPHANT

I
N THE EARLY
days of September, there occurred one of the most notorious of many confrontations between Eisenhower and Montgomery. The fact that these did not end in a disastrous fracture of Allied relations reflected the self-control and political discipline of the Supreme Commander. For all Eisenhower’s limitations as a strategist, his wisdom and generosity of spirit in the management of the Anglo-American alliance were worthy of the highest respect. He recognized the need to defer whenever possible to the sensitivities of the British, battered and wearied by five years of war, bleakly conscious of their shrinking power. Eisenhower would never jeopardize the vital interests of the United States, but he would go far to avoid trampling upon the fragile self-esteem of the British nation. As far as possible, he humoured the conceit of its most famous soldier.

The British commander was a highly gifted professional, “an efficient little shit,” as one of his own generals confided to the Canadian Harry Crerar. Montgomery considered clearly and planned meticulously. “The difference between him and other commanders I had known was that he actually
thought,
as a scientist or a scholar thinks,” wrote Goronwy Rees, an academic who served on Montgomery’s wartime staff. Montgomery was acknowledged as a master of the setpiece operation. Whereas Eisenhower called for options from his planners, then made a choice, the British soldier believed that it was the business of generals to determine courses of action, and then invite staffs to execute them. If his vanity was a crippling weakness, it was balanced by a remarkable ability to inspire the confidence of his subordinates from top to bottom of the British Army. “We had total faith in Monty,” said Lieutenant Roy Dixon of the South Staffordshire Yeomanry. “He achieved results, and he kept a lot of us alive.” Montgomery retained the trust of his own soldiers until the end of the war, assisted by the fact that only a handful of British and American officers were aware of the depth of his egomania and the gravity of his wrangles with the Supreme Commander. Doubts persisted, however, about Montgomery’s capacity for flexible thinking, for making a rapid response to evolving opportunities. He had battered several smaller German armies into defeat, but he had never managed a wholly successful envelopment, cutting off a retreating enemy. He possessed a shrewd understanding of what could, and could not, realistically be demanded of a British citizen army. But he had done nothing on the battlefield to suggest that his talents, or indeed those of his troops, deserved eulogy. The British had fought workmanlike campaigns in North Africa, Italy and France since their victory at El Alamein in November 1942. But their generals had nowhere shown the genius displayed by Germany’s commanders in France in 1940, and in many battles since.

Montgomery himself was a strange man, respected by his subordinates yet often causing them bewilderment and dismay. Like many able soldiers of all nationalities, notably including Patton, MacArthur and the leading Germans, the field-marshal possessed an uncongenial personality. Monastically dedicated to the conduct of war, he seemed oblivious of the loathing he inspired among his peers. After the field-marshal relieved Eighth Army’s armoured corps commander back in North African days, the victim declared in his London club: “I’ve just been sacked because there isn’t enough room in the desert for two cads as big as me and Monty.” A member of Montgomery’s staff told a bizarre story from the north-west Europe campaign. One of the field-marshal’s young liaison officers returned to duty after recovering from wounds, and found himself summoned to Montgomery’s caravan. He was ordered to remove his clothes. The bemused young man stood naked at attention before his commander, who observed that he wished to ensure that he was fully fit for duty again. “Right!” said Montgomery after a few moments, in his usual clipped bark. “You can dress and go now!” According to one of his staff, that episode caused considerable surprise even at a headquarters well accustomed to “Master’s” foibles.

Montgomery’s most serious weakness, which he shared with other prominent British officers, stemmed from a refusal to acknowledge that in north-west Europe it was now essential for the British to defer to the overwhelming dominance of the United States. Sir Alan Brooke, senior British Chief of Staff and Montgomery’s mentor, matched the disdain of 21st Army Group’s commander for American military judgement, though he concealed his sentiments better. Sir Arthur Tedder, Eisenhower’s deputy, quailed before the shameless nationalism of the British media, which he feared “was sowing the seeds of a grave split between the Allies.” The absence of common courtesy, far less diplomacy, in Montgomery’s dealings with the most senior American commanders was extraordinary. His status as a British national hero caused him to consider himself beyond any risk of dismissal. Whatever the doubts of others about his limitations, 21st Army Group’s commander was confident that he possessed the stuff of genius, while the Americans remained rank amateurs in the conduct of war.

Still bitterly resentful that, after exercising overall command of Allied ground forces in Normandy, on 1 September he had been obliged to surrender this authority to Eisenhower, he urged that it was time for a big decision. Instead of merely allowing the Allied armies to advance on a broad front towards Germany, it would be vastly more effective, he said in a signal to SHAEF on 3 September, to throw the full weight of Allied logistics behind a single heavy punch: “I consider we have now reached a stage where one really powerful and full-blooded thrust towards BERLIN is likely to get there and thus end the German war.” This would be commanded, of course, by himself, and involve a drive for Germany on an axis north of the Ruhr by some forty British and American divisions.

This proposal was certainly not politically viable, was probably also logistically impossible and militarily unsound. Characteristically, however, Eisenhower did not reject the field-marshal’s proposal with the clarity which was essential if any message was to penetrate Monty’s rhino-hide skin. “There was a confusion of purpose at the very moment when the Wehrmacht was desperately piecing together ad hoc divisions from the remnants of the old,” wrote Brigadier Charles Richardson, one of Montgomery’s senior staff officers. “It can be argued that in view of the prize at stake—victory in Europe in 1944—the attempt [to drive for Germany on a northern axis] should have been made in late August while the Wehrmacht was still reeling. That it was not made was due primarily to the formidable political obstacles barring the way to such a decision; these were brushed aside by Montgomery but fully appreciated by Freddie [de Guingand, 21st Army Group’s Chief of Staff].”

Eisenhower never for a moment accepted the British view about a “single thrust” in the north. He made plain, in terms which everyone save Montgomery understood, that whatever advances the British made in the north, U.S. forces would meanwhile address the Siegfried Line further south, on the German frontier. At a big press conference in London on 31 August, he asserted that “General Montgomery’s forces were expected to beat the Germans in the north; General Bradley’s to defeat them in the centre; and the Mediterranean forces, under General Jacob Devers, to press from the south.” Harry Butcher, Eisenhower’s aide, described his master’s plan as being “to hustle all our forces up to the Rhine.” Nowhere in his career did the Supreme Commander reveal talent as a battlefield general. Few even among his biographers attempt to stake such a claim for him. Yet he displayed a greatness as chief manager of an alliance army for which he deserves the gratitude of posterity. No plausible candidate has ever been suggested who could have managed the personalities under his command with Eisenhower’s patience and charm.

Montgomery was surely correct in supposing that a ground-force commander was needed, to provide the focus and impetus of which Eisenhower was incapable. But none of the available candidates, least of all himself, could credibly fill the role. To understand what took place in north-west Europe in 1944–45, it is important to note that no American or British general possessed the experience in manoeuvring great armies which was commonplace among their Russian and German counterparts. American and British staff colleges before the Second World War taught officers to fight battles involving tens of thousands of men, not millions. Many times Churchill was driven to despair by the difficulty of identifying British commanders capable of matching those of the Wehrmacht. “Have you not got a single general . . . who can win battles?” the prime minister cried out to Brooke early in 1942. The U.S. Army produced at least five outstanding corps commanders, whereas the British and Canadians boasted only two officers at corps level—Horrocks and Simonds—who could be considered competent. Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O’Connor, commanding VIII Corps, did nothing for his staff’s confidence in him when he observed cheerfully in Holland one day: “Whatever balls-ups I make, chaps, I know you’ll see me through.” At divisional level too, the Americans were better served than the British, but it is hard to argue that either ally’s general officers matched those of Germany. Exceptional professional skills coupled with absolute ruthlessness rendered many German—and Russian—generals repugnant human beings but formidable warriors. The democracies recruited their generals from societies in which military achievement was deemed a doubtful boon, if not an embarrassment. The American and British armies in the Second World War paid a high price for the privilege of the profoundly anti-militaristic ethos of their nations.

Montgomery was a superb planner and trainer, but he was always most comfortable directing a static battle, of the kind with which he had become familiar a world war earlier. He failed repeatedly in exploitation. Bradley was a steady, likeable officer who possessed solid virtues as commander of 12th Army Group, but showed no greater gifts than Eisenhower in the creation of grand strategy. In the last stages of the war, he became prey to jealousies and frustrations which caused him not infrequently, and almost literally, to sulk in his tent. Only Patton showed himself at ease in the imaginative direction of large forces. Had he not been disgraced for the notorious “slapping incidents” in Sicily* 
³
—behaviour curiously characteristic of a German or Soviet general rather than an American one—he might have commanded 12th Army Group in north-west Europe. Patton’s critics point out that he suffered as many difficulties as other American generals, in persuading Third Army’s infantry to show the determination against tough German opposition to match their commander’s vaulting ambition. Patton’s streak of recklessness and absolute lack of diplomatic skills disqualified him from the highest commands. Yet at 12th Army Group or at First Army, he might have provided an impetus that was to prove sorely lacking between September 1944 and May 1945.

The management of alliances is very hard. Battlefield decisions must be constantly subordinated to national sensitivities. Marlborough suffered huge frustrations alongside the Dutch in the eighteenth century, echoed a hundred years later by those of Wellington among the Spanish, yet they were responsible for forces scarcely larger than a corps in the armies of the Second World War. It has sometimes been suggested that, if MacArthur had been transferred from the Pacific to north-west Europe in 1944, he could have provided the strategic vision which Eisenhower lacked. Yet MacArthur’s ignorance of Europe and his loathing for the British rendered him an implausible candidate for alliance command. Some historians of the Second World War have underrated the animosity, jealousy and mistrust between senior American and British officers, which it required Eisenhower’s rare diplomatic gifts to overcome. The cautious Kansan regarded the avoidance of disaster as his most vital responsibility. He sought to defeat the German armies in north-west Europe by a measured series of advances. He saw no virtue in excessive haste, and certainly none in excessive casualties. He had been given a mandate to accomplish the defeat of Germany which took no heed of political matters, foremost among these the shape of post-war Europe. Eisenhower handled himself throughout as a corporate chairman rather than a director of armies.