THE BREAKOUT FROM NORMANDY

AND THE LIBERATION OF FRANCE

Everything that Rommel had tried with his beleaguered and depleted 7th Army during the week following the landings to contain the Allied beach-head and drive the invasion back to the sea had failed. The superiority of Allied air power was overwhelming. Everything that moved, it seemed, was attacked by the rockets and bombs of the Typhoons and Thunderbolts of the RAF and the US Army Air Force. Experienced field commander that he was, Rommel knew he was beaten; that Germany had little prospect of anything but defeat. Covertly, he was deep in the ill-destined plot to overthrow Hitler that was to cost him, Count von Stauffenberg and many other prominent Germans their lives - but still he knew his duty and his job, and fought tenaciously and well for the country he had served so brilliantly. The appalling mortality of senior German commanders in Normandy was already making itself felt - General Marcks of LXXXIV Panzer Corps had been killed, and more were soon to follow - and the German troops desperately needed success to boost their morale.

That success, albeit on a limited scale, almost came as Lieutenant-General Collins' VII Corps began its attempt to take first the West coast of the Cotentin, and then the port of Cherbourg. Montgomery's whole strategy for the initial battle of Normandy was aimed at drawing the firepower and the strength of Rommel's force to the Eastern sector of the beach-head, around Caen, so as to reduce the German defences in the West and give VII Corps an opportunity to take the vital port facilities that the Allies needed to control if their armies were to be supplied. The much criticised failure of the British 2nd Army to take Caen quickly achieved this secret objective fully, although the world's press did not realise the fact, and levelled many harsh words at Montgomery. Despite the weakening of German strength along the Western side of the beach-head, the first attempt by a US division to break out was unsuccessful. The 90th Division failed to get across the River Douve in the face of fierce opposition, and had to be withdrawn.

But now one of those rare commanders of vision and spirit made his appearance - Major-General Eddy, in command of the US 9th Division. Starting on June 14th, he led his division in a remarkable advance that earned him praise at all levels of the Allied armies, sweeping across the Cotentin in less than 24 hours, cutting off the remnants of three Divisions of General von Choltitz' LXXXIV Corps and wheeling smartly round to join the other two divisions of VII Corps in the attack on Cherbourg. As reinforcements poured in via the beaches before the great four-day storm that began on June 19th wrecked the Mulberry harbour on Omaha Beach, the American XIX and V Corps joined the front facing General Schlieben's Cherbourg defence. Nonetheless, a combination of spirited defence and prevarication about surrender ensured that it was not until July 3rd that the port fell to the American troops. The capture of Cherbourg provided the landfall, in August, for PLUTO, the undersea pipeline that was to supply a quarter of a million gallons of fuel per day to the Allied armies.

Now General Bradley, in command of the US 1st Army, who had arrived in Normandy on June 12th, regrouped his forces rapidly for an all-out attack on the German 7th Army between Coutances and St Lo, which began on June 24th. Appallingly wet weather had made the marshy ground soft and almost impassable to tanks, and the Normandy woodlands provided in any case a natural obstacle, so the armour had little options but to use the roads. This made the Churchill and Sherman tanks easy targets for the redoubtable German 88mm gun, and for the mighty 52 ton Mark VI Tiger tank, whose gun, also of 88mm, was capable of "brewing up" a Sherman almost instantaneously. In one remarkable incident at Villers-Bocage in the British sector, SS-Obersturmfuhrer Wittman destroyed the whole of a column of 25 assorted tanks and armoured vehicles with his one tiger tank. Not surprisingly, US Army progress was slow and fearsomely expensive of life. During the four weeks between June 19th and July 22nd, American casualties went from 3,012 dead since D-day to 10,641, and from 15,362 wounded to 51,387.

Meanwhile, in the East of the beach-head, Dempsey's British 2nd Army had been fighting against mounting German odds to take Caen. On June 25th, General Sir Richard O'Connor, back from captivity after the Italian armistice, took his new command, VIII Corps, into action and by the 27th had captured a bridge over the River Odon on his way to positions near Villers Bocage, South of Caen. But there he was held, under increasing pressure, while the Battle for Caen raged on. Not until July 9th were the ancient town (now virtually in ruins), and the nearby Carpiquet airfield, finally taken.

To keep the German Panzer Divisions busy for a little longer until Bradley's great thrust to break out of the beach-head was ready to go, the British 2nd Army was now given the task of fighting their way out of Caen southwards towards Falaise against German opposition that was well prepared and ready to fight for every inch. Initial progress on July 18th was rapid, aided by an effective bombardment of the German 21st Panzer Division's positions from the air, but by the afternoon of the 18th the advance had slowed to a stop, and the British 11th Armoured Division was badly hit by a late night counterattack. The real success came the next day, not militarily, for O'Connor's force remained (literally) bogged down, but strategically, as Montgomery's main objective was realised. Believing that the British were about to take Falaise, Field Marshal von Kluge, who had just taken over from von Rundstedt, ordered the 2nd Panzer Division from St Lo in the West, to the area of Caen in the East, and committed (at long last) the German 15th Army to the fight against the British. Getting this far had cost the British 2nd Army 34,700 wounded, killed and missing. But there were now three times as many tanks defending Falaise against the British as there were facing the Americans.

On the German side, the casualties were mounting and, unlike the Allies, they were unable to bring up reinforcements at a rate sufficient to maintain strength. In the six weeks after D-Day, the German Army had lost 97,000 men killed, wounded or missing, including 28 Generals and the remarkable figure of 354 Lieutenant-Generals. Perhaps most portentous of all, Field-Marshal Rommel had been seriously injured when his car was strafed on July 17th, and had left the front for what was to prove to be the last time.

The US Army Breaks Out

On July 24th, the German LXXXIV Corps to the west of the Normandy beach-head experienced Allied air power at its most formidable, as 4,000 tons of bombs were dropped on its positions. Next morning, 2,410 aircraft poured more than 4,000 more tons of high explosive and napalm on to the German positions along the River Vire, opposite the US VII Corps - although some of that explosive was dropped on the Allied positions by mistake, and killed 111 men including a Lieutenant-General. The carnage on the German side was horrifying; all along the front up to half the men and much of the equipment of the defending units were put out of action. As a "softening-up" exercise, the attacks were both successful and thorough. On July 26th, General Collins was able to break through the German line, and advance to Marigny and Saint Gilles.

Now Field Marshal von Kluge began to realise what Montgomery had succeeded in doing around Caen and Falaise. Hastily, he attempted to withdraw two Panzer Divisions back to the west, but they were two days getting to the Marigny area, and by then the breach in the line was permanent. General von Choltitz, in command of LXXXIV Corps, could do nothing but pull back and try to keep his battle-scarred forces together and in fighting order. The US VIII Corps under General Middleton was making the retreat more difficult for von Choltitz in the region of Periers, and Field Marshal von Kluge issued, against von Choltitz' wishes, the order to withdraw in a South-Easterly direction rather than to the South-West. Unwillingly, von Choltitz did just that, and thereby provided the Allies with the opportunity to send the US VIII Corps into Brittany, which, as we shall see, was captured in less than a week.

July 28th had seen the US 4th Armoured Division take Coutance and, only one day later, the 6th Armoured Division captured Avranches. The pace of the advance threw the German army into confusion, and von Kluge demanded reinforcements from Hitler, who reluctantly decided at long last that the invasion in Normandy was the real thing, and that there was not to be a further bigger landing in the Pas de Calais. Too late to achieve any real effect, a Corps and two divisions were ordered from the 15th Army to von Kluge's line, and a further Corps and two divisions were ordered up from the South of France to join the 7th Army. But large scale troop and tank movements take time. The US VIII Corps was now commanded by General George C. Patton, and on July 31st, hearing that the US 4th Armoured Division was at Pontaubault and had captured a bridge intact, he decided to push ahead and break out of Normandy once and for all.

Two US divisions, the 6th Armoured and the 79th Infantry set out across Brittany for the port of Brest, and two more made for Rennes. Patton, who had once had General Omar Bradley under his command in Italy, was now subordinate to Bradley, who had recently been confirmed in his appointment as C in C 12th Army Group. That this arrangement worked well most of the time is a tribute to both men. Nonetheless, during the first week of August, as Patton thrust on towards Brest, and Bradley issued orders to hold the advance until intermediate objectives were taken, there were moments of considerable discord and confusion. By August 5th, the 6th Armoured Division was tackling the German 265th defending Lorient, the 4th Armoured was attempting to flush the German 2nd Parachute Division out of Brest - and Patton was eyeing with interest a 65 mile gap in the line between Rennes and Nantes caused by the rapid advance of the US armour. When Eisenhower ordered that Brittany should not be allowed to occupy more than the minimum Allied forces, Patton seized his chance for a lightning advance which excited the world.

With three Corps, Patton headed South and South-East. By August 7th, XII Corps had liberated Nantes and Angers, and XV Corps had taken Chateau-Gontier and Laval. Now Patton was all set to drive South and East with his newly constituted US 3rd Army from Laval to take Le Mans, a move which would create the potential for a pincer movement carried out with the British 2nd Army, now almost due North of the Americans, to encircle von Kluge's German Army Group B, part of which was positioned between them.

Unknown to the Allied commanders, a substantial disagreement had been taking place between von Kluge and Hitler following von Kluge's request a week earlier to be allowed to withdraw and regroup in better defensive positions. Hitler had, after initially agreeing with Colonel-General Jodl that von Kluge should be permitted to retreat, changed his mind and issued an order for a counterattack that was sheer fantasy. Von Kluge was ordered to advance on Avranches and cut off the American troops in Brittany as a prelude to advancing on St Lo, overthrowing the US 1st Army and throwing the Allies back to the sea. To do this he was to use the Panzer units of the 7th Army. In vain, von Kluge pointed out that the Panzer Divisions were now desperately under strength, that his losses of troops were into six figures with almost nil reinforcements, and that those German soliders who were nominally still fit to fight were exhausted. The attack was set for August 7th.

Thus, as Patton was taking Chateau-Gontier and Laval, and beginning his push to Le Mans, heading Eastwards, the German 7th Army to its North began its thrust Westwards towards Avranche, increasing its danger of being encircled as it went. The counterattack was mounted by four Panzer divisions - the 2nd and 116th, plus two SS divisions, the 1st Leibstandarte and the 2nd Das Reich . Their thrust, which went well for the first eight hours, was countered by the US VII Corps (Major-General Collins) and the US 30th Division (Major-General Hobbs), both of which stood their ground well. As the weather and visibility improved after mid-day, the RAF Typhoons launched rocket attacks against the Panzer units, unhindered by the Luftwaffe aircraft that had been promised as air support because these had been attacked by Allied aircraft as they left their bases.

Once more, von Kluge recommended retreat. Once more it was refused, and, despite the obvious risk of the British 2nd Army attacking southwards from Caen, von Kluge was ordered to reinforce the attack on Avranches at the expense of the defence of Falaise. As General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps was detached from Falaise, Montgomery attacked from the North at midnight with two infantry and two armoured divisions. By morning, the headquarters of I SS Panzer Corps had been overrun, the 89th Panzer Division was in desperate trouble, and the 272nd was clearly losing ground. But, not for the first time, the redoubtable Brigadefuhrer Kurt Meyer and his 12th SS Hitlerjugend Panzer Division fought the attack to a standstill. Two days after it had begun, and only ten miles from Falaise, the Anglo-Canadian offensive ground to a halt. On the same day, Patton arrived in Le Mans and turned North towards the British 2nd Army, hoping to join up with them and encircle Kluge's Army Group as it tried to attack Westwards.

By August 13th, the US XV Corps was only 15 miles from Falaise, and seemed likely to get to the British and Canadian forces before the German Army, now beginning to retreat, could escape through the Falaise gap. But Bradley, on still-controversial orders from Eisenhower, ordered Patton to stop, and not to close the gap, whereupon the German Army Group, whether Hitler liked it or not (which he did not), went into headlong retreat in an attempt to escape the pocket. SS General Sepp Dietrich, now C in C 5th Panzerarmee , succeeded in extracting what was left of I SS Panzer Corps, and, adding to it a motley collection of German troops of every imaginable unit, broke through to the East of the gap, just as the Canadians took Falaise and joined up with the US V Corps to close the ring on August 17th.

For those German troops left within the pocket, the next few days were hell. A US 90th Division artillery barrage killed thousands. In full-scale panic, thousands more deserted their equipment and attempted to break out on foot. In the Argentan/Chambois area the Allies took 50,000 prisoners and burried 10,000 German dead. The 90th Armoured Division captured 380 armoured vehicles, 700 guns and 5,000 trucks. The French 2nd Armoured Division took a further 100 guns and 700 vehicles.

Von Kluge, dismissed and disgraced by Hitler, replaced by Field Marshal Model and totally disillusioned, took cyanide on August 18th. Model had taken over a chaotic situation on August 17th, with rampant Allied advances in Normandy all set to head for Paris, and his depleted Army Group B being ordered to withdraw to positions along the Seine by the same Commander in Chief who had so recently forbidden Kluge the withdrawal that would have saved half an army. Two days before, on August 15th, the overall situation in France had been further confused for the Germans by the Allies' embarking on their long-projected landing in the South of France. This was the next step in the elimination of the German occupation, and another nail in the coffin of the Third Reich.

Operation Dragoon, Nee Anvil

At successive Allied conferences, Roosevelt and Churchill had discussed at length the potential value and the risks of a landing on the Mediterranean coast of France either simultaneously with or shortly after the "Overlord" landing in Normandy. As a result, "Operation Anvil" had been a part of Allied strategy since the Casablanca conference, but, as late as August 6th 1944, Churchill was expressing doubts about the validity of the operation and propounding his oft-asserted belief in the potential benefit of an invasion in the Balkans. By now, the Mediterranean invasion was known as "Operation Dragoon", and the Americans, correctly, believed that it could in part provide the coup de grace against German occupation in France.

The third major amphibious landing in Europe of 1944 took place on August 15th between St Raphael and le Lavandou, close to Monaco and the Italian border on the French Riviera. A fleet of a thousand ships and landing vessels, including five battleships, nine escort carriers with 216 aircraft, and 146 other warships brought the US 7th Army under the command of Lieutenant-General Patch to land under the guns of the German 19th Army, part of Colonel-General von Blaskowitz' Army Group G. The 19th Army, after losing some of its strength to the Normandy battles, consisted of six divisions - three each side of the Rhone, commanded by General Neuling.

Before the landing itself, following what was by now the established practice, the Allies launched on August 13th and 14th an air offensive all along the Mediterranean coastline from Genoa in the East to Port Vendre in the West, attacking communications, gun emplacements and coastal defences. On the day of the landing, the fleet, under the command of Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, fired some 50,000 shells in a prolonged barrage on enemy positions, while the Air Forces flew a total of 4,250 sorties opposed by only a token appearance by the once-powerful Luftwaffe . As the US VI Corps landed, supported by part of the French 1st Armoured Division, they met relatively little resistance by comparison with that of the Normandy beaches. By the end of the first day, the Allies had safely put ashore 60,000 men, 6,000 vehicles and 50,000 tons of supplies for the loss of 320 men.

Progress from the beach-head was rapid. Just twenty-four hours after the first toehold, the Americans had taken Le Luc (and with it the German commander, General Neuling), Draguignan and Frejus, and had spread out along the coast on a broad front. The second wave arrived on the 16th, and brought four divisions of French colonial troops, whom the Germans had learned in Italy to dread, plus the French 1st Armoured Division, all under the command of the immensely capable and much respected General de Lattre de Tassigny. The German Panzer units who were to do battle with the French 1st Armoured were to discover just how effective and spirited the French commanders were, and to comment many times after the war that these were some of the finest soldiers of the Second World War.

Enthusiastically, the Frenchman set about liberating their homeland, taking in rapid succession Salerne, Brignoles and Cuers. The US VI Corps, followed by the US 36th Division, set off from Digne, in the Basses Alpes, towards Sisteron, intending to cut off the German 19th Army at Montelimar, the US 45th Division set out for Aix en Provence, and the Germans decided that the time had come to fall back. In fact, Hitler had issued the initial order for the evacuation of South and South-East France on the day after the landing, August 16th, and it was decided that Army Group G would retreat to join up with Model's similarly retreating Army Group B at or near Sens. The ports of Toulon and Marseille were, however, to be defended to the last, and the 11th Panzer Division was ordered to cover the retreat.

As the Germans fell back from the South, hotly pursued by the Americans and French, Hitler issued a new directive on August 20th instructing Field-Marshal Model's Army Group B to hold a line around Paris and South to Switzerland - but it was already, like so many of Hitler's directives in the last year of the war, far too late. General Patton was already almost at Sens and Montereau, and was about to order XV Corps across the Seine at Mantes. The US XX Corps had reached Chartres as early as August 16th, 20 days ahead of schedule. The Wehrmacht in France had lost almost 300,000 officers and men since June 6th, and much of its equipment. To stop the headlong advance of Patton's US 3rd Army and the hardly more sedate push of Bradley's and Montgomery's troops further North was simply impracticable.

General de Gaule had arrived back in France on August 21st, and made representations to Eisenhower about the liberation of Paris. Eisenhower had intended simply to go around the French capital, but de Gaulle was aware of the grave risk of Communist uprising in Paris, fuelled by the acute lack of food in the capital for the population. Since August 16th, the Paris police had been on strike, and the danger was imminent. Reluctantly, Eisenhower agreed to allow the French troops to launch themselves upon the liberation of the city. General von Choltitz, who had since August 7th been Military Governor of Paris, had received on August 21st instructions from Hitler (whom he now regarded, according to his memoirs, as being mad) to defend Paris as a bridgehead against the approaching Americans. The order ended with the instruction `Paris must only fall into enemy hands as a heap of rubble'.

Von Choltitz was both a realistic and a reasonable man. He saw no virtue in destroying a fine city in a spirit of revenge, so conducted clandestine negotiations with the Swedish Consul-General Raoul Nordling and the potential leaders of the uprising in Paris. He gained agreement to a compromise by which, if the uprising did not take place, the Germans would not destroy the city. Thus, the French 2nd Armoured Division was able to fight its way towards the city in two Combat Commands, losing over 300 men and more than 40 tanks to the German anti-tank guns as they went. By the morning of August 25th, the French tanks were in the suburbs of Paris. On the 26th, amid considerable rejoicing, Paris was freed. Hitler, in a bloodthirsty rage, ordered that the city be destroyed by the German Army's huge siege mortars. To his everlasting credit, General Speidel ignored the order, and Paris survived.

Meanwhile, in the South of France, General de Lattre de Tassigny had launched his French divisions on the daunting task of taking the fortresses of Toulon and Marseilles, the German defenders of both of which had been ordered to defend their positions to the last, an instruction taken literally in both cases. The fighting for Toulon on August 21st and 22nd was so fierce, so unrelenting, that heroes and acts of outstanding bravery were commonplace. The French commandos of Colonel Bouvet's famous unit distinguished themselves by climbing into Fort Coudon on ropes in the best Beau Geste fashion and hunting down the German occupants one by one, and on the 22nd earned equal distinction in the battle for the Toulon magazine from which few emerged alive. Toulon finally fell on August 27th after some of the bloodiest fighting of the European war. Over 2,700 French soldiers died, but they took more than 17,000 prisoners.

While the Battle for Toulon was raging, General de Lattre de Tassigny had ordered the French 1st Armoured Division with the 3rd Algerian Division and the Moroccan mountain troops into Marseilles. The battle was almost as fierce as that in Toulon, and culminated on the same day. On August 27th, the German commander asked for terms to end the fighting, and on the 28th an armistice was signed. Although the equipment and installations of the ports of Toulon and Marseilles were blown up by the Germans before their capitulation, the success of the French troops can be measured by the fact that their ending of the war in Provence and the South was a full month ahead of the Allies' schedule, and by the fact that the two ports, once brought into use, were key factors in the landing of Allied supplies for the remainder of the war.

In the northern sector of the battle for France, town after town fell to the remorseless advance of the American, Canadian and British troops until, on September 10th, only the three coastal bastions of Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk remained substantially defended by German troops, and the British and American troops had advanced into Belgium and Luxembourg. Field-Marshal Montgomery (as he now was) had occupied Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent, and the US 12th Army Group was in Liege, Bastogne and Luxembourg. By the 15th September, further South, General Patton had taken Nancy and could see the way ahead into Germany, through Metz, if only he had the fuel. Desperately he appealed to Eisenhower, who remained unmoved. Patton must advance at the more considered pace of his colleagues in arms.

The logistic crisis brought about by the sensationally fast advance through France to Belgium was in fact now affecting all Allied land forces decisions. It was to be the underlying cause of the much-published dispute between Montgomery and Patton as to who was to assault Germany and how. It was to make the next phase of the European war just a little less dazzling than the past three months. For France, give or take the coastal fortresses and a few isolated pockets of German resistance, was free of the German invader for the first time since May 1940. It had been a long four and a half years for the French.