How the Allies Let Victory Slip in 1944

An advance to Berlin was out of the question:Cherbourg-Eindhoven :716 km;Eindhoven -Berlin:643 km : it was impossible to supply a fighting force that was advancing to Berlin,if the suppies were 1359 km away from Berlin .


Even when the supply situation became better(between september and the use of Antwerp),an advance to Berlin was highly questionable,because this claim, starts from the assumption that the Allied forces were much better than the Germans,and that only lack of suppies prevented them to finish the war before Christmas .

 

Well, every major campaign that resulted in a breakthrough against the German front between 1943-45 were achieved by broad front tactics using concentration in time. Without powerful, simultaneous offensives elsewhere, it is hard to see how a hypothetical Allied attack could mass enough firepower and numbers to both overwhelm German Pak front backed by Panzers yet avoid collapsing under its own weight via cratering the terrain and traffic congestion. There is a maximum amount of men and guns a commander could stack on any given frontage before his line of communication gets choked to death and his artillery turns no man's land into an impassable moonscape. The advantage is with the defenders, and in addition the Germans had better anti-armor firepower.

 

The view that additional resources would help either Patton or Montgomery is dubious. Patton had the Metz fortifications in front of him. Even assuming more supplies in the form of shells and gasoline could be squeezed from other armies, the same was also true of the Germans, who could now shuffle the formations that would have been fighting the First US Army to the Metz sector.

Nor do I see how Market-Garden could have been helped by more supplies. There certainly weren't more airborne divisions to go around. And the Guards Armoured Division couldn't go any faster on Hell's Highway. Where would they deploy the additional armor?

 

The forces avaikable to Montgomery /Patton were to small and to big :


Patton had 6 divisions :this was to small for a decisive break-through of the Siegfried line and to big to be supplied during an advance to Berlin .

It was the same for Montgomery.

 

One gets the idea the authors believe the Allies should have done something bold.... like Market Garden.

 

In Rückzug: The German Retreat from France, 1944, Joachim Ludewig argues that Eisenhower, Montgomery and Patton were all wrong. The allies were thinking in terms of geographical objectives such as a rhine crossing or liberating countries. His argument is that had the allies concentrated on surrounding and capturign the german armies withdrawing on foot then the Germans wopuld not have had the trained manpower to man the west wall.

The key decisions were

1: The failure of 2nd British Army to advance North from Antwerp and isolate the Walcheran peninsular enabled much of the 15th Army to escape.
2. The failure to direct Patton on Bescancon enabled much of the German 19th Army to escape from the South of France.

With out these two armies the Germans might not have been able to man the West wall. The Western allies might have been able to at least liberate the Nether;lands and reach/cross the Rhine by Christmas.
.

 

How practicle were those two? In particular would the logistics of the time supported both of them?

 

The interesting point is that most of the West Wall guns and artillery hasd been transferred to the Atlantic wall, and also as they started to prepare the defensive positions nobody knew where the keys to the bunkers were- The Germans sure were in trouble to start with.

 

but what about the logistics??? is the Scheldt secured?? can the Allies push enough supplies fast enough and far enough to create the breakdown and continue on?? if it wasn't for hitler messing around at Normandy, the Germans would've been much stronger after Normandy....however, they were still a great, disciplined army with great weapons on defense, getting closer to their supplies and homeland..a tough nut

 

The Germans pretty much lost all their heavy armor and artillery first in Falaise pocket, then trying to escape over the rivers in France towards Germany, as jabo´s destroyed the ships and barges and the men had to escape with light weaponry and hopefully some vehicles with them.

Rundstedt-Model aug-Sept 1944: Model told OKW that this would require 25 divisions of fresh troops, but these were no longer to be had. Instead the line was held by patched-up divisions escaping from the debacle in France, and Volksgrenadier divisions made up from transferred Navy and Air Force personnel, older men and teenagers: these units were fit for static defence, but not much else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_von_Rundstedt

 

Ludwig's suggestions were far less ambitious that either Patton making a dash for the Rhine or Op Market Garden.

 

Patton's 3rd Army was only 6 divisions?

 

I don't think that final victory over Germany was possible in 1944.

1. German resources and reserves were greater than the Allies realized. The final call-up and comb-out (16 year-olds, Luftwaffe ground staff, etc) produced sufficient numbers to rebuild many of the divisions that had been destroyed at Falaise and in the East. Speer's factories were still working at top speed despite Allied bombing and the Germans were able to re-equip many formations adequately. Many cadres and staffs had survived the encirclement battles at Falaise and in White Russia and Romania, and these served as cores for the new intakes. The Germans had already shown a remarkable ability to recover following serious defeats earlier in the war, and they did it again in the autumn of 1944.

2. The terrain along the German border did not favor a rapid penetration anywhere. The Saar and the Schnee Eifel were hilly, the Vosges were mountainous, and the so-called "Aachen Gap" was actually choked with mining and manufacturing towns and minor waterways. The Hurtgen was thickly wooded and badly roaded. Holland was flat and well-roaded, but the whole country was seamed with waterways that provided natural lines of defense. The many bridges could be (and were) easily blown and the high-banked roads canalized advances. In addition to this, most of Germany's western front was covered by the Siegfried Line and much of it by the Maginot Line as well. Even mediocre and hastily reorganzied German units could and did give a good account of themselves behind such natural and man-made lines.

3. Logistics have already been alluded to in this thread. One may argue the particulars, but the lack of a major port was a severe handicap to the western Allies. Moreover, all major land offensives in the course of WWII followed a similar pattern; all reached an inevitable point of exhaustion and logistic breakdown, requiring a pause for another build-up before the next lunge forward. The Soviets reached this point outside Warsaw, and the Allies reached it a little later just west of the German border. Eisenhower and Montgomery stretched the rubber as far as it would go, and it just wasn't going to go any further without the clearing of the Scheldt estuary. The Allies did not "let [final] victory slip" in 1944; it was not yet within their grasp, and would not be until a final bout of attrition along Germany's borders destroyed Hitler's last reserves.

 

Terry D lays it out pretty clearly above. Bullets, beans and gas. It was that simple.

 

I just don't see how Monty could imagine that Marshall and Roosevelt would ever approve of a plan that would render most of the US army in France inactive. Even if it happened what would prevent the Germans from taking troops from the inactive sectors and concentrating them against the narrow thrust. A final question is how exactly would Monty take Berlin due to the British manpower issues

 

I think John A. Adams in his The Battle for Western Europe, Fall 1944: An Operational Assessment is a fair treatment of all this. He gives due respect to Eisenhower's "2-phase, 2-thrust" strategy (somehow simplified by posterity as "broad front"), as well as to the reasons for Montgomery's insubordinations, neglect of Antwerp, and belief that 21st Army Group could get to Berlin by itself. Adams is also realistic in evaluating that Montgomery's belief in a totally defeated German army were wrong and that a 21st AG push on its own would have been like the Battle of the Bulge in reverse. Ike is given credit for realizing the logistic difficulties that would ensue post-Normandy and for insisting that the German army be defeated in France and not simply be pushed back into Germany. Having the decisive battles in France were much more logistically attractive than doing them in Germany. Montgomery, Bradley, and Patton (in descending order of culpability) are blamed by Adams for styming Ike's strategy. The "2-thrust" part of Ike's strategy was to invade Germany not on a broad front, or on a narrow front, but on two thrusts, only one of which will turn out to be the real one, based on circumstances. A single thrust would just an invitation for the Germans to glom onto and smother it. Adams also gives due value to DRAGOON and the opening of Marseilles as a very important part of the logistic lifeline.

 

The thing that would have helped them to the victory was the harbour to send shipments in, and without one, they were stuck with the lorries bringing fuel, ammo etc. They had a plan to create a huge harbour in western France coast but Patton decided to attack east ( cannot blame him ) to create the Falaise pocket.