Crusade in Europe Read online

  Copyright, 1948, by Doubleday & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81657-3

  v3.1

  To the Allied Soldier,

  Sailor, and Airman of World War II

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Maps

  Illustrations

  1. PRELUDE TO WAR

  2. GLOBAL WAR

  3. COMMAND POST FOR MARSHALL

  4. PLATFORM FOR INVASION

  5. PLANNING TORCH

  6. INVASION OF AFRICA

  7. WINTER IN ALGIERS

  8. TUNISIAN CAMPAIGN

  9. HUSKY

  10. SICILY AND SALERNO

  11. CAIRO CONFERENCE

  12. ITALY

  13. PLANNING OVERLORD

  14. D-DAY AND LODGMENT

  15. BREAKOUT

  16. PURSUIT AND THE BATTLE OF SUPPLY

  17. AUTUMN FIGHTING ON GERMANY’S FRONTIER

  18. HITLER’S LAST BID

  19. CROSSING THE RHINE

  20. ASSAULT AND ENCIRCLEMENT

  21. OVERRUNNING GERMANY

  22. VICTORY’S AFTERMATH

  23. OPERATION STUDY

  24. RUSSIA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FOOTNOTES

  APPENDICES

  A. Allied Order of Battle for Final Offensive

  B. The Allied Air-ground Team for the Final Offensive

  C. The German Ground Forces

  GLOSSARY OF MILITARY CODE NAMES

  MAPS

  CARTOGRAPHY BY RAFAEL PALACIOS

  COLOR MAPS

  FESTUNG EUROPA

  ALLIED MEDITERRANEAN CAMPAIGNS

  OVERLORD FORECAST

  LIBERATION OF FRANCE

  OVERRUNNING OF GERMANY

  THE MEDITERRANEAN

  TEXT MAPS

  LIFE LINE TO AUSTRALIA

  TRANSATLANTIC SHIPPING ROUTES

  BOMBERS OVER AXIS INDUSTRY

  LANDINGS IN NORTH AFRICA

  NOVEMBER RACE FOR TUNIS

  THE KASSERINE COUNTERATTACK

  SPRING OFFENSIVE IN TUNISIA

  TUNIS—FINAL PHASE

  THE INVASION OF SICILY

  FINAL STAGE—SICILIAN CAMPAIGN

  THE INVASION OF ITALY

  ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

  GENERAL STRATEGY OF OVERLORD

  ISOLATION BY AIR

  D-DAY ASSAULT

  OPERATIONS AGAINST CHERBOURG

  BEACHHEAD EXPANSION

  THE BREAKOUT AND EXPLOITATION

  THE FALAISE ENCIRCLEMENT

  BRITTANY SWEEP

  ANVIL-DRAGOON

  PLAN AND PERFORMANCE

  OPERATION MARKET-GARDEN

  THE SCHELDT ESTUARY

  THE COLMAR POCKET

  THE RHINE BARRIER

  THE ARDENNES RISK

  THE ARDENNES—HODGES’ FIRST ARMY FRONT

  THE ARDENNES—INITIAL GERMAN DRIVE

  THE ARDENNES—MAXIMUM GERMAN PENETRATION

  THE ARDENNES—ALLIED OFFENSIVE

  TO DESTROY THE GERMANS WEST OF THE RHINE

  THE REMAGEN BRIDGE

  THE SAAR-PALATINATE TRIANGLE

  THE RHINE BARRIER BREACHED

  ENCIRCLEMENT AND REDUCTION OF THE RUHR

  MILITARY SITUATION AT GERMAN SURRENDER

  ORIGINAL FOUR POWER ZONES OF OCCUPATION

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  PHOTOGRAPHS SELECTED BY EDWARD STEICHEN

  3.1 RECONNAISSANCE INTO RUIN

  “In Germany … a carpet of destruction and desolation had spread over the land. Her bridges were down, her cities in ruins …”

  Infantry Patrol Advances Through Zweibrücken

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  3.2 PEACEFUL IS BATTLE’S EVE

  “During those hours that we paced away among Gibraltar’s caverns, hundreds of Allied ships, in fast- and slow-moving convoys, were steaming across the North Atlantic …”

  U. S. Navy-Escorted Convoy Nears North Africa (Official U. S. Navy Photo)

  5.1 PUNCHING OUT A SNIPER

  “The trained American possesses qualities that are almost unique. Because of his initiative and resourcefulness, his adaptability to change and his readiness to resort to expedient …”

  Anti-Tank Gun Gets New Normandy Role

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  5.2 CONQUEST IN SINGLE FILE

  “In the advance eastward from Palermo … the only road was of the ‘shelf’ variety, a mere niche in the cliffs interrupted by bridges and culverts that the enemy invariably destroyed as he drew back fighting.”

  Infantrymen Advance Along Sicilian Cliff

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  12.1 BOMBERS’ HOLOCAUST

  In Italy, “head-on attacks against the enemy on his mountainous frontiers would be slow and extremely costly.” Only by utter destruction of his strongholds could the battle toll be tolerable.

  Smoke Pall Shrouds Cassino as Bombing Begins

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  12.2 BEYOND THE DUNE—EUROPE

  “ ‘You will enter the continent of Europe and … undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her Armed Forces.’ ”

  Assault Troops Hit Normandy Beach on D-day

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  13.1 CARGO FOR INVASION

  “… we had … to build up on the beaches the reserves in troops, ammunition, and supplies that would enable us, within a reasonable time, to initiate deep offensives …”

  Ships, Troops, Trucks, Supply Crowd French Beach

  (Photo by U. S. Coast Guard)

  13.2 AXIS ALLY—MUD

  “Some soldier once said, ‘The weather is always neutral.’ Nothing could be more untrue.” In Tunis, Italy, and across the Continent, mud was a formidable barrier to Allied advances.

  Even the Jeep Succumbed to Italian Mud

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  16.1 RED BALL ROARS FORWARD

  On Red Ball Highways, “every vehicle ran at least twenty hours a day … allowed to halt only for necessary loading, unloading, and servicing.”

  Tank Transporters Rush Armored Supply

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  16.2 NAKEDNESS OF THE BATTLEFIELD

  “… each man feels himself so much alone, and each is prey to the human fear and terror that to move or show himself may result in instant death.”

  German 88 Pounds Paratroopers Near Arnhem

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  17.1 ISOLATE, THEN ANNIHILATE

  “… battles of annihilation are possible only against some isolated portion of the enemy’s entire force. Destruction of bridges, culverts, railways, roads, and canals by the air force tends to isolate the force under attack …”

  Ulm Rail Yards After December 1944 Raid

  (Photo by U. S. Air Force)

  17.2 SUPREME OVER GERMANY

  “By early 1945 the effects of our air offensive against the German economy were becoming catastrophic … there developed a continuous crisis in German transportation and in all phases of her war effort.”

  Bremen Is Target of B-17 and B-24 Flight

  (Photo by U. S. Air Force)

  22.1 THESE WERE HITLER’S ELITE

  “… within eighteen days of the moment the Ruhr was surrounded it had surrendered with an even greater number of prisoners than we had bagged in the final Tunisian collapse …”

  Nazis Taken Prisoner in the Ruhr Pocket

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  22.2 DOUBLE-LOADED FOR HOME

  This plan required “one man to sl
eep in the daytime so that another could have his bunk during the night.… I never afterward heard of a single complaint …”

  The Queen Elizabeth Brings Them Home

  (Photo by U. S. Coast Guard)

  23.1 SURVIVING BOMBS AND HITLER

  But no edifice, however sacred, will survive atomic war. “Even the bombed ruins of Germany … provide but faint warning of what future war could mean to the people of the earth.”

  The Cathedral Stands Amid Cologne’s Rubble

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  23.2 PARTNERS IN VICTORY

  “The Russians are generous. They like to give presents and parties … the ordinary Russian seems to me to bear a marked similarity to what we call an ‘average American.’ ”

  East and West Celebrate at Torgau

  (Photo by U. S. Army Signal Corps)

  Chapter 1

  PRELUDE

  TO WAR

  IN THE ALLIED HEADQUARTERS AT REIMS, Field Marshal Jodl signed the instrument of German surrender on May 7, 1945. At midnight of the next day there ended, in Europe, a conflict that had been raging since September 1, 1939.

  Between these two dates millions of Europeans had been killed. All Europe west of the Rhine had, with minor exceptions, lived for more than four years under the domination of an occupying army. Free institutions and free speech had disappeared. Economies were broken and industry prostrated. In Germany itself, after years of seeming invincibility, a carpet of destruction and desolation had spread over the land. Her bridges were down, her cities in ruins, and her great industrial capacity practically paralyzed. Great Britain had exhausted herself economically and financially to carry on her part of the war; the nation was almost entirely mobilized, with everybody of useful age, men and women alike, either in the armed forces or engaged in some type of production for war. Russian industry west of the Volga had been almost obliterated.

  America had not been spared: by V-J Day in the Pacific, 322,188 of her youth had been lost in battle or had died in the service and approximately 700,000 more had been wounded.1 The nation had poured forth resources in unstinted measure not only to support her own armies and navies and air forces but also to give her Allies equipment and weapons with which to operate effectively against the common enemy. Each of the Allies had, according to its means, contributed to the common cause but America had stood pre-eminent as the arsenal of democracy. We were the nation which, from the war’s beginning to its end, had achieved the greatest transformation from almost complete military weakness to astounding strength and effectiveness.

  Europe had been at war for a full year before America became alarmed over its pitifully inadequate defenses. When the nation began, in 1939, first steps toward strengthening its military establishment, it started from a position as close to zero as a great nation could conceivably have allowed itself to sink.

  That summer the Germans were massing against the Polish frontiers 60 infantry divisions, 14 mechanized and motorized divisions, 3 mountain divisions, more than 4000 planes, and thousands of tanks and armored cars. To oppose them the Poles could mobilize less than a third that strength in all categories.2 Their force was doomed to quick destruction under the fury and weight of the German assault. But the Polish Army, easy victim though it was to Hitler’s war machine, far surpassed the United States Army in numbers of men and pieces of equipment.

  On July 1, 1939, the Army’s enlisted strength in the United States—air, ground, and service—was less than 130,000; of three organized and six partially organized infantry divisions, not one approached its combat complement; there were two cavalry divisions at less than half strength; but there was not one armored division, and the total number of men in scattered tank units was less than 1500; the entire Air Force consisted of approximately 1175 planes, designed for combat, and 17,000 men to service, maintain, and fly them. Overseas, to hold garrisons from the Arctic Circle to the Equator and from Panama to Corregidor, eight thousand miles away, there were 45,300 soldiers.3

  Two increases, authorized during the summer and fall of 1939, raised the active Army at home and overseas to 227,000. But there it remained during the eight months that Germany, brutally triumphant over Poland, was readying her full might for the conquest of western Europe.

  The American people still believed that distance provided adequate insulation between us and any conflict in Europe or Asia. Comparatively few understood the direct relationship between American prosperity and physical safety on the one hand, and on the other the existence of a free world beyond our shores. Consequently, the only Americans who thought about preparation for war were a few professionals in the armed services and those far-seeing statesmen who understood that American isolation from any major conflict was now completely improbable.

  In the spring of 1940, with the German seizure of Denmark and Norway, the blitz that swept from the Rhine through France to the Bay of Biscay, and the crippled retreat of the British Army from Dunkirk, America began to grow uneasy. By the middle of June the Regular Army’s authorized strength had been increased to 375,000. By the end of August, Congress had authorized mobilization of the National Guard; six weeks later Selective Service was in operation. By the summer of 1941 the Army of the United States, composed of regulars, Guardsmen, and citizen soldiers, numbered 1,500,000. No larger peacetime force had ever been mustered by this country. It was, nevertheless, only a temporary compromise with international fact.4

  The million men who had come into the Army through the National Guard and Selective Service could not be required to serve anywhere outside the Western Hemisphere or for more than twelve months at home. In the summer of 1941, consequently, with the Germans racing across Russia and their Japanese ally unmistakably preparing for the conquest of the far Pacific, the Army could only feebly reinforce overseas garrisons.

  The attack at Pearl Harbor was less than four months away when, by a one-vote margin in the House of Representatives, the Congress passed the Selective Service Extension Act, permitting the movement of all Army components overseas and extending the term of service.5 The congressional action can be attributed largely to the personal intervention of General George C. Marshall, who had already attained a public stature that gave weight to his urgent warning. But even he could not entirely overcome the conviction that an all-out effort for defense was unnecessary. Limitations on service, such as the release of men of the age of twenty-eight, reflected a continuing belief that there was no immediate danger.

  Thus for two years, as war engulfed the world outside the Americas and the Axis drove relentlessly toward military domination of the globe, each increase in the size, efficiency, and appropriations of the armed services was the result of a corresponding decrease in the complacency of the American people. But their hesitation to abandon compromise for decisive action could not be wholly dispelled until Pearl Harbor converted the issue into a struggle for survival.

  Thereafter, in the space of three and a half years, the United States produced the fighting machine that played an indispensable role in beating Germany to its knees, even while our country, almost single-handed, was conducting a decisive war against the Japanese Empire.

  The revolutionary transformation of America was not achieved overnight; the fact that it was ever achieved at all was due to the existence of staunch allies and our own distance from the scene of combat. At the outset none of us could foresee the end of the struggle; few of us saw eye to eye on what was demanded of us as individuals and as a nation; but each began, step by step, to learn and to perform his allotted task.

  America’s transformation, in three years, from a situation of appalling danger to unparalleled might in battle was one of the two miracles that brought Jodl to our headquarters to surrender on May 7, 1945. The other was the development, over the same period, of near perfection in allied conduct of war operations. History testifies to the ineptitude of coalitions in waging war. Allied failures have been so numerous and their inexcusable blunders so common that
professional soldiers had long discounted the possibility of effective allied action unless available resources were so great as to assure victory by inundation. Even Napoleon’s reputation as a brilliant military leader suffered when students in staff colleges came to realize that he always fought against coalitions—and therefore against divided counsels and diverse political, economic, and military interests.

  Primarily the Allied task was to utilize the resources of two great nations with the decisiveness of single authority.

  There was no precedent to follow, no chart by which to steer. Where nations previously had been successful in concert against a common foe, one member of the coalition had usually been so strong as to be the dominating partner. Now it was necessary to produce effective unity out of concessions voluntarily made. The true history of the war, and more especially the history of the operations Torch and Overlord, in the Mediterranean and northwest Europe, is the story of a unity produced on the basis of this voluntary co-operation. Differences there were, differences among strong men representing strong and proud peoples, but these paled into insignificance alongside the miracle of achievement represented in the shoulder-to-shoulder march of the Allies to complete victory in the West.

  On the day the war began, in 1939, I was in the Philippines, nearing completion of four years’ duty as senior military assistant to General Douglas MacArthur, who had been charged with building and training an independent Filipino military establishment.

  Local interest in the war was heightened by outbreaks in Manila clubs of arguments and fist fights among members of foreign consulates—Hitler was a deep-dyed villain to most but a hero to a small though vociferous element. Hirohito was rarely if ever mentioned: all attention centered on the next move of the Nazi dictator.

  The news of the invasion of Poland reached us and we heard that the Prime Minister of Great Britain was to make a radio address. With my friend, Colonel Howard Smith, I listened to the declaration that Britain and Germany were again at war. It was a solemn moment, particularly so for me because I was convinced that the United States would soon find it impossible to retain a position of neutrality.

  I was certain that the United States would be drawn into the whirlpool of the war, but I was mistaken as to the manner of our entry. I assumed that Japan would make no move against us until after we were committed to the European war. Moreover, I was wrong as to time. It seemed to me that we would be compelled to defend ourselves against the Axis within a year of the war’s outbreak.