Ike's Spies (20 page)

But both men had much in common too, beginning with a belief in Ike and a willingness to trust him, no matter what. In addition, each man had dark, deep-set, penetrating eyes that missed nothing; a grim, determined, square chin; a broad, hard-set mouth; and a face that displayed singleness of purpose. The United States could well be proud of this trio of generals.

Eisenhower was with Bradley at his headquarters when Bradley made the decision to hold at Mortain. Ike approved his plan, Tedder recalled, “there and then. He told Bradley that if the Germans should temporarily break through from Mortain to Avranches and thus cut off Patton's thrust, we could give the advance forces two thousand tons of supply per day by air.”
⁹

How could the American leaders take such a risk, knowing that Hitler intended to attack with four armored divisions in the initial assault? Partly because air power could supply Patton and protect his flanks, more because of
ULTRA
. They were confident that the oracle of Bletchley Park would give sufficient advance warning of where, when, and in what strength the attack would come for them to prepare for it. What they were really depending on was that Hitler would try to control the battle and thus fill the air with radio signals.

By August 6, Kluge had three armored divisions ready at their jump-off points. Although well-camouflaged, for reasons that were inexplicable to the Germans, they were taking a terrific air and naval gun bombardment. In contrast to the usual daily personnel losses of about 3 percent for units in combat, the casualty reports for August 6 in the divisions scheduled for the attack reached heights of 40 percent.
¹⁰

The Germans had to attack or fall back. Right after midnight,
the engines of two hundred assault tanks roared into life and the Battle of Mortain was on. By daylight, the 2d ss Panzer Division had overun Mortain. There was no significant American opposition. The Germans assumed they had achieved complete surprise and gleefully began to drive beyond Mortain toward Avranches.

As they did so, and as the light strengthened, American artillery shells began to drop all around them, setting vehicles afire, kicking up dust, raising hell generally, forcing the panzers to seek cover, throw up camouflage, and dig in. On the flanks, the 1st
SS
Panzer Division and the 2d Panzer Division were going through similar experiences. The attack had come to a halt almost before it got started.

What had happened was that elements of the U. S. 30th Division had stayed on Hill 317, immediately east of Mortain, while other elements had thrown up road blocks that funneled the German tanks in predetermined and selected directions. Bradley had also set up artillery batteries on each flank. With daylight, the men on Hill 317, enjoying unexcelled observation, called the artillery fire right down on the Germans' heads.
¹¹

Simultaneously, British rocket-firing Hurricane and Typhoon fighter airplanes swooped down on the enemy, firing rocket after rocket into the massed tanks. They were soon joined by American Lightnings, Thunderbolts, and Mustangs from General Pete Quesada's 9th Tactical Air Command. Thirty years later, Quesada still recalled that triumphant attack. He told Lewin, “You know, Brad and I never used to talk together about our
ULTRA
signals. We just took it for granted that each of us knew what was in them. But I can still see that moment when we stood with those signals in our hands, and grinned, and said, ‘We've got them.' ”
¹²

Hitler promised Kluge extensive air cover. He said that every Luftwaffe plane in France would be thrown into the battle. But not one—not one—appeared in the sky over Mortain that August 7. Where were they? Mostly shot up. Thanks to
ULTRA
, the Allies were able to engage them the moment they got off the ground from their airfields around Paris. Only a few got out of sight of their airfields; none reached Mortain.
¹³

On the afternoon of August 7, Kluge sent a gloomy report to Hitler's headquarters. He had lost fully half his tanks, he said, and was still losing them. The attack had been brought to a standstill.
He wanted to disengage what was left of his three panzer divisions at Mortain and use them to blunt the Canadian drive at Falaise.
¹⁴

Hitler was furious. He thought that Kluge had launched the attack prematurely, hastily, and carelessly. In Hitler's view, he should have waited for the arrival of three more armored divisions, on their way to Mortain, and then made a truly massive effort. From Hitler's point of view in East Prussia, that made sense; from Kluge's point of view in Normandy, to wait meant that the units already assembled would be destroyed in place by Allied artillery, air, and naval fire.

But Hitler was in charge, not Kluge, and Hitler gave the orders (they were read by Ike within an hour of Kluge's reading them). “I command the attack be prosecuted daringly and recklessly to the sea,” Hitler began. “Regardless of risk,” he wanted three panzer divisions withdrawn from the Fifth Army facing the Canadians and committed in the Avranches sector “to bring about the collapse of the Normandy front by a thrust into the deep flank and rear of the enemy facing Seventh Army.” To consummate what to him had become the master stroke of the Western campaign, Hitler concluded, “Greatest daring, determination, imagination must give wings to all echelons of command. Each and every man must believe in victory.”
¹⁵

Kluge, despondent, told one of his subordinates, “I foresee that the failure of this continued attack can lead to collapse of the entire Normandy front, but the order is so unequivocal that it must be obeyed.”
¹⁶

The U. S. 30th Division could not by itself withstand an assault from six German armored divisions.
^*
Bradley sent in the U. S. 2d and 3d Armored Divisions to meet the German spearheads, along with two infantry divisions to strengthen the flanks and provide additional artillery fire. Meanwhile other units continued to move through the gap between Avranches and the sea, then drive north toward the German rear or east toward Paris.

By nightfall of August 7, the battle that had begun at midnight was essentially over, despite Hitler's preemptory orders to Kluge.
American artillery batteries set new records for shells fired; they operated on the premise that it was better to waste shells than miss a possible target. The air forces had flown hundreds of sorties. As a result, of the two hundred or so German tanks involved in the initial assault, only twenty-five were left the next morning.
¹⁷

Although Hitler continued to wallow in his fantasies and order attack after attack, the Battle of Mortain was over. Little remembered today, it was nevertheless a great Allied victory. The elements that made it possible included American mass-production techniques, which provided the fighting men with well-nigh unlimited artillery ammunition and virtually complete air cover, excellent tactical dispositions, the courage and skill of individual American soldiers (especially those in the 30th Division), and calm, cool, firm leadership at the top. But, clearly, the most important element in the victory was
ULTRA
.

Ironically, August 7 was the last day of the war that
ULTRA
would be decisive. The main reason for this development was that as Eisenhower went over to an all-out offensive, the Germans had to react to his moves, rather than the other way around, as had been the case during the battle of the buildup and at Mortain. Another reason was Monty's rather strange disregard of
ULTRA
information. Winterbotham complains throughout his book,
The Ultra Secret
, about Montgomery never acknowledging
ULTRA
, much less thanking all those involved in getting
ULTRA'S
priceless information to him. That Monty hated to share the credit for a victory is clear enough, but why he frequently ignored
ULTRA
information (or other forms of intelligence, for that matter) remains mysterious. The best example of this phenomenon is Mortain.

By the morning of August 8, the Allied High Command knew that Hitler had ordered most of the armor in the Fifth Army to leave the Canadian front near Falaise and proceed to Mortain, there to participate in the attack. Although it was true that if this mighty force had managed to break through to the sea beyond Avranches it would have created serious problems for the Allies, especially Patton's Third Army, it was also true that Bradley had by then gathered together two armored and five infantry divisions to greet the German tanks. There was, in fact, almost no chance at all of a German breakthrough, as Kluge himself knew full well. Under these circumstances, Monty's most logical move would have been to hold back the Canadians until the panzers had departed from
their front, wait for Kluge to commit his tanks at Mortain, and then unleash the Canadians for a drive to and through Falaise, which would completely sever the supply and communications lines of two entire German armies.

But Monty had been under extreme pressure from Ike for weeks to get going. He knew that Ike's impatience with his performance was shared by all the staff at
SHAEF
, British and American alike, and that even Churchill was beginning to growl. After all, Monty had promised to take Caen on D-Day, but he had not gotten it until nearly the end of July, and since then had hardly advanced beyond Caen. Tedder had urged Eisenhower to demand of Churchill that Monty be relieved of his command. He would not go that far, but as Butcher recorded, “Ike keeps continually after Montgomery to destroy the enemy now.”
¹⁸

So Montgomery, the general who usually waited until the last button on the last private was in place before attacking, attacked too soon. On the morning of August 8 he sent the Canadians forward again, toward Falaise. The attack came just after the 10th ss Panzer Division had started its move to Mortain, and just as the 9th and 12th
SS
Panzer Divisions were starting to follow along the same route. The Canadian attack gave Kluge the excuse he needed to cancel the whole movement; he kept the tanks in place to fight the Canadians. If Monty had only waited twenty-four hours, he could have had Falaise the next day. As it was, the Canadians ran into the massed fire of two German armored divisions and made little headway.
¹⁹

Eisenhower and Bradley, meanwhile, were looking forward to the prospect of devouring two entire German armies whole. After hearing the latest intelligence reports on the morning of August 8, and after studying the map, Eisenhower decided that Patton ought to turn north in order to link up with the Canadians behind the German lines, thus encircling the enemy's Seventh Army and Fifth Army. He went to Bradley with the idea, only to find that “Brad had already acted on it,” a typical example of the similarity of strategic thought between the two generals.

Bradley told Patton to drive on to Argentan, concentrate his forces there, and wait for the Canadians to come to him through Falaise. Eisenhower drove to Monty's headquarters “to make certain that Monty would continue to press on the British-Canadian front.”
²⁰

Kluge, meanwhile, in accordance with his orders, continued to attack on the Mortain front. The men of the 30th Division who were encircled on Hill 317 continued to call in devastating artillery fire from the massed batteries of the division's artillery. By day's end there were one hundred wrecked tanks around the hill. The Germans had attacked again and again in an effort to take the high ground, and although they killed or wounded more than half the seven hundred men on Hill 317, the rest held out. The 30th Division as a whole lost almost two thousand men during the battle. German losses were much greater. As the closest student of the battle, Martin Blumenson, observes, “What the Mortain counterattack might have accomplished seemed in retrospect to have been its only merit.”
²¹

By continuing to attack, Kluge was doing exactly what Eisenhower and Bradley hoped that he would do—sticking his head farther into a noose that would be drawn tight when the Canadians and the U. S. Third Army linked up at Argentan. Patton was making spectacular progress toward that link-up; the Canadian offensive, however, was going slowly. By August 10, Kluge realized that his only hope for escape lay in an immediate withdrawal behind the Seine, but Hitler insisted that he continue the offensive at Mortain. Finally, after an exchange of messages and a telephone conversation, Hitler consented to allow Kluge to suspend the westward attack, shorten his lines, and then strike Patton's leading corps in order to keep the supply lines open. It seemed already to be too late. The German Seventh Army had lost its rear installations and was depending on the Fifth Army for supplies. The Germans were on the verge of an incredible debacle.

On August 12, Patton's Third Army spearhead, the XV Corps, reached Argentan. The Canadians were still eighteen miles to the north and making only slight progress. Patton, impatient, wanted to cross the boundary line Bradley had established in order to close the gap. He pleaded with Bradley on the telephone, “Let me go on to Falaise and we'll drive the British back into the sea for another Dunkirk.”

Bradley refused to change the boundary, and Ike backed him up. Not until August 19 did the link-up occur, too late to do much good, according to Patton, who blamed Monty, and beyond him Ike. At times Patton could be almost idolatrous of Eisenhower; at other times he could be heard to complain, “Ike's the best damn
general the British have got,” meaning that Eisenhower was too much under Monty's and Churchill's influence.

Twenty-three years later, in 1967, when he was reviewing a summary of the criticisms of his generalship at Falaise, prepared as part of the annotation for his official papers, Ike wrote by hand, “Some of these writers forget that grand tactics and strategy must be decided upon by people who are in possession of the overall situation in such matters as relative strength, mobility and logistic possibilities. Patton was an
operational
officer—not an overall commander.”
²²