Chapter 30: Riviera to the Rhine: An Evaluation
The operations of the Seventh Army and the 6th Army Group constituted one of the most successful series of campaigns during World War II. Although opposed by many Allied political and military leaders from its inception and largely ignored by historians of the war, the campaign in southern France, including the ANVIL landings, the seizure of Toulon and Marseille, and the battles for the lower Rhone valley, set the stage for the more significant ventures to the north. The subsequent pursuit north up the Rhone and Saone valleys, the drive northeast of Lyon to the Belfort Gap, the difficult Vosges campaign that followed, and the ultimate conquest of Alsace were critical to Allied military fortunes on the Western Front. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the southern invasion was placing a third Allied army group—one with two army headquarters, three corps, and the equivalent of ten combat divisions—with its own independent supply lines, in northeastern France at a time when the two northern Allied army groups were stretched to the limit in almost every way. Whether a third army group could have been supported by the Atlantic ports without an exceedingly lengthy struggle is doubtful, and without such a force Bradley’s 12th Army Group would have had great difficulty holding the additional frontage from the Lunéville–Saverne area to the Swiss border. With the added strength of German units retreating unscathed from the Atlantic and Mediterranean, the German counterattack against the Third Army’s exposed southern flank in September 1944 might have been far more effective, drastically retarding the initial Allied drive to the German border in the north. More important, Allied strength in northeastern France would have been much diluted without the forces of the 6th Army Group, and the Ardennes counteroffensive—or something similar—might have had a better chance of success or, at the very least, done more damage. In such a case the starting date for the final invasion of Germany might have been greatly delayed with unforeseen consequences.
The Campaigns
The significance of the ANVIL landings themselves is difficult to evaluate. An earlier invasion date would undoubtedly have meant much stiffer
opposition, but could also have diverted German reinforcements from the OVERLORD invasion area in Normandy and possibly resulted in an earlier Allied breakout there from the beachhead. Allowing the ANVIL forces to remain on the Italian front, however, would have given no immediate assistance to OVERLORD and only eased additional German deployments to Normandy. In Italy Allied success in the rugged Italian peninsula north of Rome would have, at best, forced the German defenders back into even more defensible terrain along the Alps, while lengthening Allied supply lines and dispersing Allied ground combat strength. But even a successful march across the Po and over the Alps to the borders of Austria and Hungary would have profited the Allied cause little if the campaign in northern France had been indefinitely stalled. Moreover, without the southern invasion the Germans might have retained strong forces in southern France. The Allied breakout at St. Lo never isolated the German forces in the south, and certainly they would have been able to survive more easily than the smaller German forces in the Channel and Atlantic ports. In such a scenario the bulk of the Nineteenth Army might well have been transferred to Italy, more than matching the strengthening of Allied forces there if ANVIL had been permanently canceled.
Although the landings themselves were eminently successful, Allied logistical limitations, specifically the shortage of amphibious shipping, made the ANVIL campaign plan somewhat inflexible and prevented Patch and Truscott from taking full advantage of German weaknesses in the south. Had more fuel and vehicles been available, Truscott would have been able to bring more pressure to bear on Montelimar and other locations along the German route of withdrawal and could have done more damage. In the same vein, the demands of security and invasion timetables made it difficult for the ANVIL commanders to make full use of the strong FFI organization in southern France. Had more coordination between the two components been possible, Allied combat power during the Riviera–Rhone campaign would have been significantly increased.
In balance, Blaskowitz and Wiese were fortunate to escape from the south with any forces at all. In this respect the German tactical commanders deserve no more than an average grade for their performance during the early campaign. It was not the weakness of their forces, but their inability to best use what they had that made the ANVIL landings such a success and made the German withdrawal north such a harrowing one. From beginning to end, the southern France campaign and the operations that immediately followed were characterized by the aggressiveness of the American and French commanders and their ruthless pursuit across the coast and hinterlands of southern France and then north up the Rhone valley. If the aggressive personality of Lucian Truscott, the American VI Corps commander, seemed to dominate the drive north, certainly he was well matched by the enthusiastic, dynamic Devers, the competent but more taciturn Patch, and the fiery de Lattre, all of whom pushed with equal
determination for early seizure of the great French ports, without which the northern campaign could not have been supported. The German leaders, in contrast, appeared to be confused and indecisive. Rarely did they try to take the initiative, even at the local level. There was no organized defense of the critical ports, and German forces in Italy did not even attempt to pose a threat to the vulnerable Allied eastern flank. Only the Allied shortage of fuel and vehicles saved Wiese’s forces from a worse disaster. The later stubborn German resistance in the Vosges by forces that were less well trained and equipped only underlined the poor initial performance of the Nineteenth Army in the Riviera campaign.
Despite Truscott’s judgments regarding the state of the German Nineteenth Army in mid-September and the VI Corps’ ability to force the Belfort Gap, the Seventh Army would have had extreme difficulty in achieving more than a local tactical success in this area. Given the army’s precarious logistical situation and the ever-growing distance between the southern ports and the front lines, both Patch and Truscott probably would have been unable to exploit an early penetration of the Belfort Gap, despite the more favorable weather conditions that prevailed. The subsequent campaign showed how easily the Vosges–Rhine area could be held by relatively weak infantry forces, which were often hard to dislodge without a major attack. Devers warned Patch at the time that the VI Corps was “living with just one day’s supplies ahead of the game,”1 and Truscott was, in effect, grabbing what territory he could before his inevitable supply problems made further advances impossible.
Two months later, however, the situation had changed dramatically, and Eisenhower’s November decision not to exploit in some way the Belfort and Saverne penetrations to the Rhine is difficult to understand. Although long gone, Truscott would have been the first to remonstrate the call. At the time, the Seventh Army might have moved south in strength to help the First French Army clear the Alsatian plains around Colmar. Or it could have moved north; advancing up either the west or east banks of the Rhine through Rastatt, Lauterbourg, and beyond, thereby unhinging the German Saar basin defenses and achieving significant operational (destruction of the German First Army) and strategic (the Saar industries) goals. Instead, both Eisenhower and Bradley sought to have Devers’ American forces go directly to the aid of Patton’s stalled Third Army, taking over portions of the Third Army’s front and transferring two divisions from the Seventh to the Third Army. Yet, at the time, Patch’s Seventh Army had no more than two armored divisions (one French division and one completely inexperienced American unit) and seven infantry divisions, four of which were nearly exhausted. Giving up any of these forces would have made it even more difficult for Patch to push north on both sides of the Vosges (in direct support of the Third Army) and simultaneously hold Strasbourg in the center and assist the French in the south. Devers later blamed himself
for overestimating the ability of de Lattre’s forces to clear the Colmar area, but it is doubtful that he could have given the French any more assistance without ignoring Eisenhower’s instructions to support Patton in the north. Eisenhower’s later criticism of Devers’ inability to eliminate the Colmar Pocket thus appears both unfair and unjustified.2 In any case, the Germans surely wasted as much manpower holding the awkward wedge of terrain—primarily for political reasons—as the Allies did surrounding it, and in the process Army Group G was never able to use the better defensive terrain along the upper Rhine River and in the Black Forest, or to put much of an effort into its final West Wall defenses. More to the point, a Seventh Army crossing of the Rhine at Rastatt or its penetration of the German West Wall immediately west of the Rhine would have made the German defensive buildup in the Colmar region extremely unlikely and, at best, a waste of the Wehrmacht’s declining manpower resources.
NORDWIND proved a true test of the 6th Army Group, the Seventh Army, and the associated American—and French—corps, divisions, and regiments. Although the attacking panzer, panzer grenadier, and infantry divisions may have been fewer in number than the German forces sent into the Ardennes counteroffensive, and decidedly less well equipped, they clearly outnumbered their Allied opponents who were also defending less favorable terrain than the Americans in the north. During the campaign, the American soldiers fought well, but it was good intelligence analysis and effective defensive deployments that gave the Seventh Army troops, including nine new infantry regiments that were rushed to the front with no combat experience, a distinct edge over the American defenders in the Ardennes. Patch, Brooks, and Haislip, making good use of their interior lines of communication, were able to checkmate almost every German initiative and, when the pressure became too great, conduct a rapid, orderly withdrawal that the Germans were unable to exploit.
Nevertheless, the German offensive was a close call. Had the attackers been able to articulate their units with the speed and, most important, with the unity of purpose that characterized the movements of their opponents, the results might have been far different. The capture of Saverne would have threatened the survival of the VI Corps, greatly strengthened the position of the Germans in the Colmar Pocket, isolated the First French Army in the south, and opened the rear of Patton’s Third Army to German armor just when his forces were directing their main effort to the Ardennes in the north. Although perhaps neither the Ardennes counteroffensive nor the NORDWIND attacks ever had the chance of decisively reversing German fortunes in the west, greater success in either offensive would have assuredly delayed the end of the war in Europe.
If the actions of the American generals
were critical in halting NORDWIND, credit for the victory in the Vosges must go to the American and French small-unit commanders and their unheralded infantrymen. The campaign in the High Vosges from late September to early December was one of the bitterest contests of the war. There the American army, corps, and divisional commanders had little room for maneuver, and their direct influence on the battles was limited. Waged in wet, cold, and then frozen mountain jungles where the matériel superiority of the Allied forces had little impact, the mountain battles continually tested the skill and determination of the average soldiers and their small-unit leaders. Despite the advantages that the terrain conferred on the German defenders, the constant fighting steadily sapped the strength of the Nineteenth Army, forcing the German high command to throw ever greater numbers of their precious infantry into the mountain forests in a losing war of attrition. The war in the Vosges ultimately made the relatively rapid penetrations of the Belfort and Saverne gaps possible and reduced the manpower available for the battlefields in the north. Nevertheless, for the Allied troops, the Vosges campaign was an uphill struggle all the way, with success depending on a policy of almost constant pressure. Attacking French and American infantry, supported by armor and artillery when feasible, continually exploited small gaps in the German lines, always pushing the defenders back and wearing them down bit by bit. Although weather and terrain largely canceled out Allied air, armor, and firepower superiority (as did Allied munitions shortages3), the German commanders, again conducting a rather unimaginative defense at the division and corps levels, were rarely able to use the terrain and their interior lines of communication to stem the steady Allied advance by force of arms.
The Soldier
From the sunny beaches of the Riviera to the frozen forests of the Vosges, the campaign gave the average American soldier a tour of the European heartland that he would not soon forget. As one later exclaimed as he returned home, “I wouldn’t trade the experience for a million dollars—but I wouldn’t give a nickel to do it all over again.”4 Recalling his reactions going into combat for the first time, one former infantryman described his emotions as “taciturn; diffident; frightened, almost meek; mechanically going forward,” as his unit moved up to the line, where, surrounded by “an alien landscape,” he contemplated his situation.5 Closer to the front, he recalled, conversation languished and tension steadily mounted. Rifles, ammunition belts, and hand grenades were mechanically checked and rechecked; helmets clamped down a bit snugger; chin straps tightened. The sudden sound of small-arms fire and artillery electrified each man, paralyzing him for a few seconds
American Infantrymen
as he automatically hunched closer to the ground. Then, as the unit moved forward to “the objective,” the noise of exploding shells grew deafening, each one causing the earth to shake and pieces of dirt, metal, and wood to whine overhead. The tangy smell of burnt powder filled the air and the sounds of men screaming and officers cursing and yelling were quickly lost in the general din. Then suddenly the attack was over—the goal reached, the objective secured. At that point, he recalled, “the fear we had felt descended on us like an avalanche, leaving us only cold and wet and exhausted.”
Later, attacking at Jebsheim in the Colmar Pocket, he could only remember “the incessant, unrelenting noise ... the fellows attacking, our artillery fire, my rifle jerking with every shot ... [and] the German fire pouring into us, and how, at any instant, a bullet might smash into me.” His emotions in battle alternated between a kind of detachment—“a state neither easily achieved nor easily defined”—and “a feeling of fear, stark, cold fear ... [that he] fought to control.”
At rest, the foot soldier’s lot was little better. Far from the amenities of the rear bases, he explained:–
An infantryman has to fashion means for his comfort. He has to resort to expediencies to ameliorate some of the harshness
of field living for he becomes filthy by tramping for days without washing; his hair becomes matted, dirty and stiff with the constant wearing of the metal helmet, and as he tries to comb it, it falls in tufts, and his scalp pains to the touch. He picks up ticks, fleas, and body lice from sleeping in hay stacks, on open fields, holes in the ground, with animals in barns, and in demolished, filth-spewed hovels. And he just might conceive, as we once did, of dousing his clothes and body with gasoline in order to rid himself of lice.
The severe cold weather was another constant problem. Feet quickly became wet either with perspiration or from tramping through the snow or fording small streams and brooks. With more experience the infantryman learned to carry extra socks close to his body, either to dry them or keep them dry while on the move. But feet inevitably became wet and cold in the field, growing alternately numb and then sore as more skin was rubbed raw. Most soldiers continued to hobble on, attempting to dry or at least air their feet at every momentary halt; both trench foot and frostbite were gnawing concerns.
Disease took a measured toll of the 6th Army Group infantrymen, as it had in all combat formations during the war. Because of the weather and terrain during the Vosges and Alsatian campaigns, trench foot and frostbite were the primary causes of nonbattle casualties. Both were the result of extensive tissue damage due to prolonged exposure to cold and dampness, conditions that were common in the front lines throughout the long winter.6
Trench foot reached epidemic proportions in mid-November throughout the American front lines and increased sharply during the next four months whenever units were in prolonged action. The problem quickly received command attention in all units: dry socks went forward with daily rations; and the availability of shoe-pacs, insulated rubber boots, increased. Trench-foot control officers, teams, and committees were created to discuss, formulate, and enforce preventive measures, and a SHAEF-sponsored press campaign was launched to encourage them. But the only reliable solution was the regular rotation of units from the field, and American manpower policies as well as the general combat situation on the Western Front rarely allowed such measures to be taken on a large scale. In the end, solutions to the problem depended primarily on the ingenuity of small-unit leaders and the infantryman himself. Yet, even in a highly disciplined unit such as O’Daniel’s 3rd Division, the incidence of cold injuries rose dramatically a few days after each major operation began. The Seventh Army’s rate of these injuries was almost always substantially less than that of the neighboring Third Army throughout the winter, reflecting either greater command attention or the experience absorbed by the VI Corps and its three veteran divisions during the preceding winter in Italy.7
Neuropsychiatric disorders—shock and combat exhaustion—also depleted
the ranks of the combat infantrymen, and testimonies of the hollow, blank faces of the young soldiers coming out of the line were common.8 Again, rotation of units was the best solution, but could rarely be done. Between 15 August and 31 December 1944, a period of four and a half months, the Seventh Army suffered over 10,000 psychiatric cases, of which about one-third were returned to duty; between 1 January and 31 March 1945, a three-month period but with double the number of forces, the army sustained over 3,700 more cases, of which two-thirds were returned to their units. Contemporary analyses of these statistics showed that the high rate in 1944 was attributable to the larger number of veterans in the three “older” divisions; the rate steadily shrank as attrition reduced their number, while the high return rate of 1945 was mainly due to the inability of inexperienced medical personnel in the newer divisions to diagnose such cases properly. Further studies showed that frequent changes in leadership also resulted in higher psychiatric casualty rates—a result that could easily be seen in the 36th Division’s three regiments—while, not unexpectedly, the rates for all units increased during prolonged combat operations. How such problems affected the majority of soldiers, officers and men alike, was not analyzed at the time, but the general wear and tear of combat, especially offensive operations, must have worn away the fresh edges of many new American combat units—an acceptable trade-off for the experience acquired in learning to survive.
The rapid campaign put a terrific burden on combat commanders at all levels. Most had done surprisingly well on the battlefield with a new army, and from Montelimar to the Vosges and on to the Alsatian campaigns, few were relieved, although many, especially in the lower ranks, were casualties. At the tactical level, the indirect attack became the hallmark of the American commanders; even their opponents noted that the Americans rarely attempted a frontal assault, feeling perhaps that in always striking for their enemy’s flanks or rear they had become predictable.9 But despite their superiority in matériel and firepower, Seventh Army officers were hesitant to use their infantry in direct assaults against even hastily prepared defensive positions.
Speaking for the career officers, General Dahlquist noted the intense psychological pressure on the regimental, divisional, and corps commanders as well as the difficulties of maintaining control over all their diverse
subordinate elements, whether in the pursuit or deep in the French mountains.10 During the Alsatian campaign he brushed off the matter of physical danger as the “least worry” of a division commander, explaining that the most “terrible strain” was “the responsibility for the men you have committed to an action—the ever-present gnawing wonder if you have taken the right step because usually, once deployed, the decision is irrevocable.” Partly to escape such pressures, Dahlquist found himself visiting the front-line battalions whenever he could, where, he found, “confidence is usually the highest.”11
From a higher perspective, General Patch, the Seventh Army commander, was most concerned over the effects of the campaign on the junior leadership in combat units. Although in November 1944 SHAEF had lifted previous restrictions limiting the number of direct officer appointments to twenty per division every ninety days, and had given division commanders unlimited authority in this area, no new officers from outside the theater were expected until March 1945; furthermore, the massive use of direct commissions was risky. Patch estimated that the older divisions, the 3rd, 36th, and 45th, had just about used up their leadership resources from the enlisted ranks through attrition; and, despite the slightly more elaborate training programs for direct appointment candidates, there seemed no satisfactory way to make up for the high number of losses among small-unit officers and NCOs that his units suffered in the Vosges.12
Such difficulties undoubtedly contributed to the disciplinary problems that afflicted many American combat units in the European theater—AWOLs, desertions, stragglers, combat refusals, and so forth. But the troubles experienced here were, in balance, minor and fairly commonplace. In this regard French officers had a much harder time controlling their African troops recruited in the colonies who had perhaps a lesser stake in the war than their American counterparts, and even the Wehrmacht had its special disciplinary battalions (sonderbataillons) composed of unruly German soldiers whose enthusiasm for battle was unsatisfactory. In other areas the surrender of small units and the refusal of some to advance reflected the nature of the war: the inability of conventionally armed troops to continue fighting when cut off from their sources of supply, especially ammunition and fuel, and the growing ineffectiveness of both troops and troop leaders when isolated or when simply left in the field too long. Tactical commanders on both sides and at all levels were well aware of these conditions and constantly sought to use them to their advantage, outmaneuvering their opponents, rather than overrunning them with frontal assaults, and wearing them down through continuous attack and harassment activities of all kinds.
In the French colonial units cultural and linguistic differences between officers
and men made it difficult to replace experienced cadre, and de Lattre’s blanchiment (“whitening”) of his tropical African units proceeded slowly.13 American military leaders, in contrast, had no such excuse for the poor treatment often given to black American soldiers whose cultural and intellectual background was essentially no different from that of their Caucasian troops. Although black combat units had compiled an excellent history in the regular Army since the American Civil War, the Army made its own segregationist policies worse by relegating blacks mainly to support units. After its successful action at Climbach, the black 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion continued to perform well; after proving itself in combat, its members later related that they quickly developed close ties with the white regiments of the 103rd Division. Although disappointed that their unit had never been reequipped with the new self-propelled guns, they bragged that even with their towed pieces, the 614th “could still split trail, beat them to the draw, and hit the target.”14 In March 1945 another black unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, joined the 103rd Division, and in the ensuing campaign across Germany the two units often led the advance of the division. But in this area the Seventh Army had not learned its lessons well. Patch later chose to dissolve another black tank destroyer battalion—an inexperienced and poorly led unit that Brooks had thrown into the general Hatten–Gambsheim area with mixed results—and he had a difficult time persuading his two armored divisions to accept platoons of black volunteer riflemen to bolster their depleted infantry ranks. Had more black volunteers been used in this manner, the combat strength of all Seventh Army units would have been measurably improved and the shortage of infantry greatly alleviated.15
In both black and white units, African and European, the quality of leadership often determined whether or not a unit fought well. Nevertheless, the postwar conclusions reached in S. L. A. Marshall’s Men Against Fire were unsettling. Based on his extensive field research of American troops in the European and Pacific theaters, Marshall charged American troops with a widespread lack of aggressiveness in combat, citing the low percentage of riflemen that claimed to have fired their weapons in combat.16
Most U.S. soldiers, he concluded, relied too much on armor, artillery, or airpower to push back or destroy the enemy. However, as one former infantryman of the 7th Infantry regiment (3rd Division) recalled, American small units generally did not advance in linear formations (abreast), but attacked in small groups of infiltrating columns led by officers and NCOs and, if available, supported by automatic weapons, tanks, and artillery. Skirmish lines could be built up when engaged, but were difficult to control for any length of time, and attacking in open waves, as the Germans had done at the beginning of NORDWIND, was often suicidal. Under such conditions, he noted, it was sometimes difficult and even dangerous to fire one’s rifle during the attack, especially when other friendly soldiers were all around and the enemy was difficult to locate.17 In defensive positions the situation was often quite different, but then American soldiers, especially those interviewed by Marshall in the latter part of the war, were rarely on the defensive.
Despite these explanations, the alleged reticence of American infantry has merited considerable attention since World War II, and Marshall’s accusations seem to have been fueled by the performance of the U.S. soldier in subsequent conflicts. Evolution of the criticism is somewhat complex. Postwar American scholars, seeking explanations for German military successes during the war, concluded that the German Army consistently produced better soldiers than did their Allied counterparts.18 Implied was the assumption that German officers and men fought longer, harder, and better than their opponents, despite vastly inferior resources, and that their ultimate failure on the battlefield was primarily due to overwhelming Allied matériel and manpower superiority. Their success, critics believed, lay in two factors: the superior leadership of the German officer corps and the strong interior “cohesion” of the German small-unit combat formations. The former was the product of good training, sound doctrine, and a military tradition that emphasized leadership on the battlefield; the latter, strong unit cohesion, was the result of a training and replacement system that attached the German soldier to the unit in which he would be fighting from the time of his induction into the Wehrmacht until the moment he entered the battlefield.19
Taking up where S. L. A. Marshall left off, these critics have contended that the American infantrymen lacked such advantages and thus made poorer soldiers in the field. The impersonal American replacement system, which assigned soldiers solely according to the immediate needs of the combat units, was often cited as the primary reason behind the supposedly low cohesion in American fighting units and their correspondingly lower performance on the battlefield. One military researcher even constructed elaborate models, or equations, showing that even in defeat German units outperformed American units and inflicted more casualties on the Americans than should have been expected, given the general situation and the manpower and matériel available to both forces at the time of the battle. The American soldier was good, but the German soldier was better.20
A complete examination of these charges is clearly beyond the scope of this book; however, since they obviously impinge on many aspects of the Seventh Army’s campaigns, some discussion is needed. Not surprisingly other writers have challenged many of the assumptions and conclusions made by these authors, deeming them either erroneous or irrelevant.21 Some have pointed out that the German territorial recruitment and replacement system, hardly unique, was inefficient and unable to keep German units up to strength or ensure a uniform quality of training. The lack of combat effectives, especially in the German infantry battalions, may have made their actual ratios of enlisted men to officers and combat to noncombat (“tooth to tail”) even lower than those of the American Army, which has often been criticized in this regard (higher ratios indicating a lean, or efficient, military force; lower ratios signifying one with supposedly excess “fat,” that is, too many officers or support units). Other historians have directly challenged the battlefield performance models, pointing out, for example, that the Americans faced a much higher proportion of the better German formations, the panzer and panzer grenadier divisions, while the Wehrmacht posted most of its neglected infantry divisions to the Eastern Front, where mass was more important than quality. Still others have noted that German inability to sustain their supposedly high combat power on the battlefield made claims of superior military prowess irrelevant. An army is the measure of many things, and, for example, General Erwin Rommel’s successes in the western desert must be balanced by his failure to expand the Libyan ports and thereby ease his
continual logistical problems.22 What good did it do the Wehrmacht to put its best formations and impressive war machines on the battlefield, if it failed to provide the means to support and sustain them?
In southern France and during the campaigns in the Vosges and Alsace, the discussion is still ambiguous, and judgments are amply colored by national and personal prejudices. Were new troops to be considered “fresh,” or were they to be judged “green” and liable to panic or make mistakes on entering the battlefield? Were older units “worn out” or “experienced”? Poor logistical capabilities curtailed the mobility of German panzer divisions just as inclement weather reduced the impact of Allied airpower on the battlefield, and unit cohesion was of little use to anemic infantry battalions that could obtain no replacements. In the 6th Army Group, perhaps all that can be said is that the American and French infantrymen did the job that had to be done, and it is doubtful that even with better small-unit leadership or cohesion they could have accomplished their missions sooner or suffered fewer casualties in the process. As the Wehrmacht discovered time and time again, too much focus on one aspect of an army only caused serious difficulties elsewhere, which ultimately affected the entire organism. Sorting out and mathematically weighing all of the variables on the battlefield is probably an impossible task. Nevertheless, at least the ongoing debate has placed more attention on the capabilities and accomplishments of the average foot soldier, whose exploits are often undocumented and forgotten.
Allied Strategy and Operations
Allied “strategy” in western Europe and the relationship between General Eisenhower and General Devers have also been subjects of much debate. Ironically, the British and American positions on Allied ground strategy seem to have reversed themselves between 1943 and 1944. At first, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his British commanders leaned heavily toward a peripheral operational strategy that took advantage of the superior mobility (seapower) of Allied military forces in order to attack the German-held Continent at many points, thereby eroding Germany’s military strength. (The RAF bombing campaign against Germany fit into this category, as did Britain’s early economic blockade of the Continent.) The Americans, on the other hand, led by General Marshall and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, favored a more direct approach and championed a war-winning ground strategy involving the concentration of all Allied resources for the OVERLORD cross-Channel invasion, followed by a direct strike into the German heartland over the north European plains. (The land strategy had its counterpart in the U.S. Army Air Force’s strategic bombing campaign.) Eisenhower’s position in the debate seems ambiguous, but once charged with the Allied campaign in northern France, he appears to have supported a “broad front,” or
flexible, operational strategy, aimed at destroying German military forces west of the Rhine and then pushing into Germany itself. The British, however, led by Field Marshal Montgomery, advocated a war-winning ground strategy involving either a knife-like thrust deep into the German heartland or at least the immediate seizure of the Ruhr industrial area, thereby ending Germany’s war-making capabilities. Lacking the logistical resources for a broad front campaign, Eisenhower adopted the British point of view, but seems to have compromised somewhat by giving Bradley’s southern force, Patton’s Third Army, the task of seizing the Saar basin—also a “strategic” industrial region—which kept his American generals in Bradley’s center army group occupied along with many German divisions. But this operational plan allowed the Germans to concentrate their inferior defensive resources against two relatively narrow and easily recognizable Allied axes of advance, and it denied Eisenhower the flexibility to shift his attacks elsewhere once his main offensives were halted.
In this regard, Eisenhower’s plans were undoubtedly influenced by national considerations—keeping the Allied coalition intact—and by his evaluations of the various Allied commanders. His personal dislike for General Devers was well known, as was his supposedly low opinion of Devers’ military abilities. In 1943, when Eisenhower commanded the Allied forces in the Mediterranean theater, Devers, who was Eisenhower’s senior in age and also a protege of General Marshall, occupied a somewhat analogous position in England, where he was charged with the buildup for the OVERLORD attack; the two were often at odds over the distribution of resources between the two theaters. Then, when Eisenhower came to England in early 1944 to head the invasion force, he recommended that Devers be made deputy to General Wilson, Eisenhower’s successor in the Mediterranean theater. At the time, Marshall felt that Eisenhower was trying to ship out his potential rivals for the post of Supreme Allied Commander, and he was disturbed that Eisenhower rejected Devers for any high command positions in the invading forces. Nevertheless, Marshall approved the transfer, feeling that Eisenhower would be more at ease with generals who had served under him during the recent campaigns in the Mediterranean. As a result, Devers and Eisenhower were again at opposite ends of the Allied European military effort, competing for a limited number of military resources. Thus, Eisenhower may have been unpleasantly surprised in July 1944 when he learned that Marshall intended to appoint Devers to head the new army group moving up from southern France. Although acquiescing to the appointment, he may have retained serious reservations regarding the capability of the newly designated army group commander. On the other hand, the politically astute Eisenhower must have realized that the appointment of Devers would ensure the survival of ANVIL, a vital consideration given the difficulties Eisenhower was personally facing in Normandy at the time.
The success of ANVIL and the subsequent drive north apparently did
not change the Supreme Commander’s feelings toward General Devers. In the end, his misgivings may have only reflected personality differences between the two high-ranking officers. Such differences, however, can have a direct effect on an individual’s actions and may explain, in part, Eisenhower’s reluctance to assign additional forces to the 6th Army Group when it was established in September or even to consider allowing it to exploit the Saverne Gap penetration in November 1944. On 1 February of the following year, in preparing an evaluation of American generals requested by Marshall, Eisenhower’s low estimation of Devers was striking. Rating him twenty-fourth of thirty-eight—far below all of the other principal Army commanders—he described him as “loyal and energetic” and “enthusiastic, but often inaccurate in statements and evaluations.” He added that, despite the fact that Devers’ accomplishments were “generally good, sometimes outstanding ... he has not, so far, produced among the seniors of the American organization here that feeling of trust and confidence that is so necessary to continued success.” Devers was still not part of the team.23
Eisenhower’s low assessment of Devers is highly questionable. Certainly the forces under the 6th Army Group had chalked up an impressive record of military successes during the November offensive, the Alsatian battles, and the reduction of the Colmar Pocket. His record prior to November had been equally impressive. The success of ANVIL had led directly to the acquisition of Marseille and other Riviera ports, opening up a major Allied logistical gateway to France for Eisenhower’s hungry armies. By September the southern ports were accounting for over one-fourth of the Allied supplies arriving in France and over one-third during October and November; they were not surpassed by Antwerp until sometime in March 1945 (Table 1). Moreover, going back further, Devers had always been a proponent of both OVERLORD and ANVIL and, on becoming deputy commander of the Mediterranean theater, was one of the principal officers who kept ANVIL alive. As the Commanding General, NATOUSA, he continued logistical preparations for the southern France invasion throughout early 1944, even after the operation had been temporarily canceled. In this respect, the Allies probably could not have undertaken ANVIL without the attention that Devers had devoted to it.
Once securely installed as the 6th Army Group chief, Devers took issue with Eisenhower’s operational guidance. Initially he viewed the Supreme Commander as more concerned with the acquisition of territory—the Saar and the Ruhr—than with the destruction of the German Army. Although fully accepting Eisenhower’s decision to concentrate on destroying the German Army west of the Rhine,
Table 1: Tonnages discharged at Continental Ports: June 1944–April 1945
[Long Tons*]
| Year and Month | Total | OMAHA Beach | UTAH Beach | Cherbourg | Normandy Minor Ports† | Brittany Ports | Le Havre | Rouen | Antwerp | Ghent | Southern France |
| 1944 | |||||||||||
| June | 291,333 | 182,199 | 109,134 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| July | 621,322 | 356,219 | 193,154 | 31,658 | 40,291 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Aug | 1,112,771 | 348,820 | 187,955 | 266,644 | 125,353 | 9,499 | – | – | – | – | 174,500 |
| Sept | 1,210,290 | 243,564 | 150,158 | 314,431 | 100,126 | 75,198 | – | – | – | – | 326,813 |
| Oct | 1,309,184 | 120,786 | 72,728 | 365,603 | 58,816 | 77,735 | 61,731 | 26,891 | – | – | 524,894 |
| Nov | 1,402,080 | 13,411 | 12,885 | 433,301 | 48,707 | 64,078 | 148,654 | 127,569 | 5,873 | – | 547,602 |
| Dec | 1,555,819 | – | – | 250,112 | 50,749 | 27,327 | 166,038 | 132,433 | 427,592 | – | 501,568 |
| 1945 | |||||||||||
| Jan | 1,501,269 | – | – | 262,423 | 47,773 | – | 198,768 | 157,709 | 433,094 | 15,742 | 385,760 |
| Feb | 1,735,502 | – | – | 286,591 | 41,836 | – | 195,332 | 173,016 | 473,463 | 69,698 | 495,566 |
| Mar | 2,039,778 | – | – | 261,492 | 39,691 | – | 192,593 | 268,174 | 558,066 | 172,259 | 547,503 |
| Apr | 2,025,142 | – | – | 181,043 | 47,542 | – | 165,438 | 240,708 | 628,227 | 277,553 | 484,631 |
* Exclusive of bulk POL and vehicles.
† Including Granville.
Source: Historical Report of the Transportation Corps, ETO, Vol. VII, April–June 1945, App. 7, Table 8A.
Devers obviously favored a more flexible “operational” strategy for SHAEF, one that would allow the 6th Army Group to exploit its successes on the battlefield. Even before taking over the army group, Devers had observed that it was “not cracking the line or pushing the enemy back to a line or river” that was important, “but the destruction of the enemy itself that counts”; he emphasized that “we must capture the German army or what exists of it and take our minds off terrain.”24 He did agree that Antwerp was an exception, but judged that the port and the Schelde approaches should have been secured before Montgomery continued his advance; he labeled the British commander “a prima donna who thinks more of himself than he does of winning the war.”25 His own attitude toward Eisenhower was equivocal. According to the Seventh Army operational chief (G-3), Col. John S. Guthrie, Devers was often openly critical of Eisenhower’s judgments when such matters came up in 6th Army Group or Seventh Army staff meetings.26 Since Devers expressed his misgivings publicly, Guthrie thought it inevitable that Eisenhower would have learned of them and that Maj, Gen. David G. Barr, the affable 6th Army Group chief of staff, played a vital role in smoothing out the difficulties between the two commanders. Eisenhower was certainly stung by Devers’ criticism of his operational strategy during their 24–25 November meeting and was surely angered by
his almost open refusal to withdraw the Seventh Army from the Lauterbourg salient in December. The cancellation of Operation INDEPENDENCE, whatever its merit, on the pretext that de Lattre’s forces were on the verge of eliminating the Colmar Pocket, must also have been annoying. Although Eisenhower may have overrated Devers’ political influence within the upper echelons of the American high command, the persistent differences between the Supreme Commander and Field Marshal Montgomery may have made Eisenhower even less forgiving of Devers’ independent attitudes. Not surprisingly then, Eisenhower continued to be more comfortable dealing with Bradley, a long-time subordinate and friend, than with more demanding commanders such as Montgomery, Truscott, or Devers. In the upper reaches of the Allied high command, there was room for only a few mavericks, like the irascible Patton.
Within his own headquarters, Devers, was less controversial. If some of his verbal directives were vague at times, he delegated enough authority to enable subordinates, such as Barr, Maj. Gen. Reuben Jenkins (his G-3), and even the young liaison officer, Lt. Col. Henry Cabot Lodge, to clarify his wishes to Patch, de Lattre, and others.27 In general, he ran the 6th Army Group as an operational rather than a strategic or tactical command, assigning general objectives to his two army commanders and preferring to let the corps commanders fight the battles. Although allowing the two large subordinate army headquarters to run their own logistical and administrative affairs, he also had his own staff serve as a link between the armies and the theater headquarters and the theater communications zone logistical and personnel agencies. Consistent with U.S. Army doctrine of the time, his army group headquarters thus performed a minimal amount of administrative functions and, except for engineer and signal services, had none of the special staff sections that were normally found at the army headquarters level.28
Patch, the Seventh Army commander, proved more enigmatic than Devers, Truscott, or any of the other major commanders in the 6th Army Group. Rarely did his hand appear on the battlefield. Yet, it was Patch and not Truscott who had made almost all of the critical planning decisions for ANVIL and had kept a tight rein on the U.S. VI Corps until de Lattre’s Army B forces were well on their way into Toulon and Marseille; thereafter he did his best to keep his rather jumbled Franco-American army on the road to Lyon and Belfort. Unlike his German opponents, however, Patch rarely stepped into the daily fighting arena and was more concerned with seeing that the combat forces under his command, both French and American, received the men, equipment,
and supplies necessary to accomplish their missions. This task was, in fact, the primary textbook responsibility of an American army headquarters; furthermore, given the compartmentalized nature of the Vosges campaign, there was little else for him to do once the mountain barrier had been reached. But during the German offensives in Alsace, Patch quickly changed his role and became an active tactical commander, juggling forces between his two corps and the army reserve and keeping close track of the course of the battle, current intelligence on enemy dispositions and intentions, and the status and plans of his own forces. Still he allowed his two corps commanders the freedom to fight their own battles within their assigned zones, backstopping them with advice and assistance. In this regard, his actions continued to reflect his quiet, almost paternal style of command. Although sometimes regarding the antics of Patton as both “greatly amusing” and beneficial to Third Army morale, he never attempted to emulate his well-known neighbor, who would later come to symbolize the entire American combat effort in northern France.29
De Lattre, whose First French Army headquarters was more tactically oriented, did not see the role of his army headquarters in this light and kept a much closer rein on his corps and division commanders than Patch did. In many nontactical areas, however, de Lattre’s authority was more limited, and Devers and his staff often had to assist the French in such matters as ammunition stockage and expenditures, backing up the understandably weak French logistical and administrative support organizations. Although French commanders generally regarded many of the administrative and logistical elements that supported U.S. combat forces as luxury items, American commanders gave even their lowly laundry units a high degree of respect: dry socks and uniforms were vital to the health of their army and could not be ignored.
Like Eisenhower, Devers also found himself arbitrating, or at least attempting to mediate, between Allied military needs and national (French) political concerns regarding such matters as Operation INDEPENDENCE, the defense of Strasbourg, the security of the Franco-Italian border, and the supply of FFI units in the First French Army. Here his diplomatic skills were sorely tested, but he was generally able to iron out the many difficulties among his various constituents, minimizing their impact on military operations. Although having been forced to listen to de Lattre’s temper on many occasions (as had Patch and Truscott in the past) and viewing him as “difficult to handle,” Devers regarded the French commander as a man of “great courage [who] ... will fight the 1st French Army realistically and effectively,” and he went on to make good use of his sometimes troublesome ally.30
Devers, Patch, and de Lattre had two additional concerns that often went unnoticed: the Franco-Italian front and the German pockets on the
Atlantic coast of France.31 Both areas threatened to divert important combat resources from the 6th Army Group throughout the entire campaign. Initially, Eisenhower had decided to generally ignore the German enclaves at Lorient, St. Nazaire, and La Rochelle as well as those on either side of the Gironde Estuary blocking the approaches to Bordeaux. At the insistence of de Gaulle, however, in early November the Supreme Commander had made Devers responsible for clearing the Gironde Estuary. Thus began Devers’ long struggle with SHAEF, the French provisional government, and the First French Army over the deployment of forces to support Operation INDEPENDENCE, always a somewhat questionable effort. Ultimately, General de Larminat’s French Forces of the West headquarters launched the often-postponed endeavor in mid-April 1945 and, with the assistance of Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division and a U.S. artillery brigade, completed the affair in about one week. But by then the Allies had no need for additional ports, and the entire operation, essentially an internal French political effort to boost the legitimacy of de Gaulle’s provisional government, represented a waste of both 6th Army Group and First French Army military strength.
The Italian border was another matter entirely. From the beginning of ANVIL, Patch had no choice but to maintain strong holding forces along the Franco-Italian frontier despite the general inactivity of the German forces there. After taking command of the 6th Army Group in September, Devers would have preferred to deploy both the French 4th Moroccan Mountain Division and General Frederick’s airborne-Special Services task force to the Vosges area as quickly as possible, replacing them with FFI forces; but he judged that the French militia was not up to the task. Not until the end of November was Devers able to exchange the Moroccans for a newly created French Alpine division along the northern frontier, and not until March 1945 were enough additional French forces available to fill in along the southern sector. By then Devers had replaced Frederick’s task force first with the 442nd (Japanese-American) Regimental Combat Team, then with elements of the 14th Armored Division, and finally with bits and pieces of other American units that were arriving in southern France, placing them under the control of the U.S. 44th Antiaircraft Artillery Brigade. But with several weak German divisions stationed opposite the frontier, constantly posing a threat to the 6th Army Group’s line of communications, neither Patch nor Devers could afford to ignore this area. Moreover, they were never able to employ any of Frederick’s elite forces in the north, and Eisenhower ultimately incorporated the airborne units into the SHAEF reserve and reorganized the Special Service units into an infantry brigade under Bradley’s 12th Army Group.32
After World War II, German officers, when asked about the possibility of conducting an attack against the Riviera–Rhone area from northern Italy, cited a host of difficulties that precluded even the consideration of such an operation. Most important were OB Southwest’s lack of transportation to make and support a shift of forces; the Alpine terrain and weather that any offensive would have to face; the lack of air support to protect such an extended movement; and, above all, the constant pressure exerted by Wilson’s forces on the main Italian front.33 On the other hand, the ability of the Wehrmacht to secretly mass and support a small number of mobile forces along the Alpine front was never beyond its scope—as the much larger concentration of divisions for the Ardennes offensive demonstrated. Even the remote possibility of such an attack was enough to keep the Allied high commands concerned. If greater economy of force was necessary, then those units stationed by Bradley and Devers on the Atlantic coast were the most likely candidates for redeployment elsewhere; but such movements depended more on the ability of Roosevelt and de Gaulle to iron out their political differences and make greater use of the FFI.
Finally, the role of ULTRA in the Seventh Army and the 6th Army Group operations should be noted. The availability of the German withdrawal orders on 17 and 18 August represented a rare intelligence coup. Normally individual ULTRA intercepts revealed only mundane information that had to be collated with thousands of other intercepts and intelligence reports from other sources before any value could be attached to it. Truscott’s overreaction to the reported presence of the 11th Panzer Division east of the Rhone on 22 August illustrates the danger of depending too greatly on these sources; in any case, German commanders rarely discussed specific operational plans over the radio, and tactical commanders often altered plans prepared by higher headquarters because of changing situations in the field. In many other areas ULTRA was mute—such as the direction of the German withdrawal north of Lyon or the establishment of the Colmar Pocket. Therefore, those who relied too heavily on these sources, such as Bradley’s 12th Army Group before the Ardennes offensive, sometimes suffered unpleasant surprises.34 As noted in the official British history of the intelligence effort, if the Germans had attacked in the Aachen sector, instead of in the Ardennes, “the [available] intelligence would have been quite
compatible with that outcome.”35 NORDWIND was another case in point. Although ULTRA order-of-battle information, together with other intelligence sources, may have suggested the possibility of a German thrust down the Sarre River corridor, it was unable to predict the German infantry assault south of Bitche, the switch of the German mobile divisions to the Lauterbourg salient, or the double offensive of Himmler’s Army Group Oberrhein—although it is doubtful whether even von Rundstedt could have predicted the place or date of these last attacks.36 Nevertheless, ULTRA played a major role in confirming other intelligence information acquired by more conventional means, and was one of many factors that promoted the success of the Allied forces from the Riviera coast and their decisive contribution to the Allied campaigns in northeastern France during the fall and winter of 1944–45.
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