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Preface
- Indiana University Press
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xi Preface Look at some old news footage taken in France during late August 1944. Under brilliant sunshine, columns of speeding Sherman tanks race ahead, looking to catch fleeing Germans. Overhead, P-47 fighters swoop by, machine-gunning anything ahead of the armor that looks even suspicious. Certainly, the horrid Nazi monster must be on its last legs. View news film clips taken four months later. Snarling Panther tanks emerge from the cold, dense morning mist, spitting fire at retreating Americans looking to simply get out of the way of the hulking, advancing monsters. What happened? Conventional wisdom holds that the Allies, due to some supply problems , poor theater strategy, and inter-Allied squabbling, lost their opportunity to finish the Nazis in the early fall of 1944. Maybe the Allies could have marched all the way to Berlin. Readers more familiar with the details of that period recall debate among the Allied generals about a “narrow thrust” versus a “broad advance” toward Germany. The narrow thrust advocated by the British field marshals would have concentrated the limited supply of Allied strength into a single “full-blooded” thrust north of the Ardennes and into the heart of Germany. Some American generals proposed giving the rampaging U.S. Third Army more supply and letting its commander perform a similar feat through Lorraine and into the Saar. Instead, Eisenhower, and more properly his Allied SHAEF staff, promulgated what has been dubbed a “broad front strategy.” That strategy dictated that the Allies complete a continuous front from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Detractors claimed this meant little more than “everyone attack all the time.” Rather than run out of steam, this faulted strategy dissipated the limited head of Allied steam and prevented the Allied engine from further eastward movement in the fall of 1944. xii · Preface In the pages that follow, SHAEF planning machinery and existing constraints will be more closely examined. What develops is a far more intricate plan formulated by Eisenhower and his staff than is commonly recognized. Describing its important working parts, it will be called the “two phase, two thrust” theater strategy. First, what was the overall objective, the grand strategic objective, that the theater strategy was supposed to achieve? Eisenhower and Marshall agreed emphatically: destruction of the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht , in the field. Most Allied generals repeated this goal. The British field marshals did, too, but in practice they wandered away from this objective in favor of seizing geography (Berlin) and war-making potential (the Ruhr) deep within Germany. As will be demonstrated below, Eisenhower did not advocate a simple “everyone charge” approach. He and his staff created an offensive with a strong primary thrust and a smaller secondary one—standard practice among those planning an offensive. But this basic notion was encased in a two-phased pair of operations. First the Wehrmacht would be forced into decisive battle west of the Rhine and destroyed, while the logisticians created a solid base of supply. In a second phase, the Rhine would be crossed and final dismemberment of the Nazi monster completed. Was this a war-winning theater strategy? Or did Eisenhower’s two principal army group commanders, Field Marshal Montgomery and General Bradley, botch this plan in its execution? This will be examined closely. Were several subsidiary opportunities also missed? A long time ago along some sun-baked, long-forgotten dirt road, a dust-covered, sweat-streaked, cursing quartermaster must have mouthed, “tactics is the art of what is logistically possible.” As is often the case, logistics dominated events in Western Europe during the fall of 1944. Chapter 2 is devoted to deriving the elements of the iron logistical calculus that governed decision making. (Those readers who can’t stand numbers can skim over this chapter without losing the thrust of the argument.) Throughout the remainder of the story, logistics will constantly interrupt with its overpowering base tones. Many good people provided comment on and support for this work. I wish to especially thank the hard-working archivists at the U.S. Army Military History Institute at the Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, the Marshall Library at Virginia Military Institute, and the [23.20.220.59] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 14:59 GMT) Preface · xiii Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas. Especially I thank David J. Haight at the Eisenhower Library for his patient and thoughtful guidance into the extensive holdings at that facility. I also wish to thank Professors Malcolm Muir and...