Flight Turns to Fight!

2 Flight Turns to Fight! We have lost a battle, but I tell you we will win this war. Despite everything that has happened, do not allow your firm, confident faith in Germany’s future to be shaken one bit. Gain the time which the Führer needs to bring into operation new troops and new weapons. They will come. This was September 1944. The speaker wasn’t a senior Nazi apparatchik like the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, or the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, but Walter Model, Germany’s top military officer in the West – the Oberbefehlshaber West; OB West for short. This text is from his Order of the Day – Tagesbefehl – a full two days before Dolle Dinsdag. Hollow bombast? Or was there something more to Model’s bold statement? Hauptmann Barthel appeared to agree with his commander: ‘It still won’t be fatal for us if France falls.’1 Even the ever- cynical Wolfgang Dombrowski seemed to be adopting more of a glass half-full attitude: We believed the war was probably over, but you must realise that we lower ranks were only eighteen to nineteen years old, and our officers were only aged between twenty-four and twenty-nine – still all only youngsters! Life’s deeper issues didn’t concern us too much, so we were prepared to fight on.2 Barthel and Dombrowski typified a change in the Westheer as it left the bitter fields of France and Belgium behind it, and found itself closing up on the borders of the Reich itself; German resolve was stiffening, and it was stiffening at exactly the wrong time for the Allies. The wrong time? Everything was going the Allies’ way, surely? Well, actually it wasn’t, and the problem was at the very top of the Allied To VE-Day Through German Eyes military leadership, where politics, missed opportunities and downright mistakes would squander an undeniable chance to end the war by Christmas. Senior command among the Allies on D-Day, and during the campaign in Normandy, was united and balanced, with clear roles and responsibilities for all concerned – the exact opposite of their German counterparts in fact. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the man in overall charge, acting as the coalition’s unifier and the bridge between the political leaders in London and Washington and the military commanders in the field. Montgomery was the battlefield supremo, subordinate to Eisenhower, and responsible for planning and executing a strategy for the Allies to establish a secure landing and then go on to grind the Westheer to dust. Then came success at Falaise, and with it conflict and confusion, at the very moment when there should have been neither. The nub of the issue was simple; what was the best and quickest way finally to defeat Nazi Germany and end the war in Europe? Montgomery – as acting Allied land force commander – was clear in his appraisal of the situation. A single, all-powerful thrust into Germany, aimed at capturing Berlin, was the answer. Resources would be ruthlessly stripped from all other fronts to maximise force at one critical point – and that would be in the north through the Netherlands, over the Rhine and into the Ruhr – Germany’s industrial heart – and then on across the north German plain to the capital. Naturally, this thrust would be commanded by Montgomery himself, and spearheaded by his Anglo- Canadian 21st Army Group. This proposal was massively controversial among the Allies. Controversial, because it seemingly ignored the changing realities in the Allied alliance, and relegated the emergent American behemoth to a subordinate role. Back on D-Day, it had been the Anglo-Canadians who had borne the weight of the landings; three-quarters of the invasion fleet, more than half the air armada, and over half of the assault troops were Anglo-Canadian. This was the high-water mark for Britain and her Empire in terms of military power in the war; from then on, that power leaked inexorably away. The Canadian government’s decision that only volunteers would serve overseas – a policy that placated many French Canadians and others opposed to involvement in ‘Britain’s war’– inevitably starved Harry Crerar’s First Canadian Army of the manpower it desperately needed. By August, Canadian divisions were undermanned, and British units were being used to prop them up. Not that Britain was in any better shape – far from it. Indeed, fighting a global war for five years had worn Britain’s resources wafer thin. Being an imperial power, with possessions and interests worldwide, Britain’s premier armed service had always been its oldest; the magnificent Royal Navy. It had maintained its pre-eminence over the seas ever since it had 28 Flight Turns to Fight! prevailed at Trafalgar by outbuilding its opponents, and by 1939 was the largest naval force on the planet comprising no fewer than 332 warships (in 2019 the Royal Navy had seventy-five commissioned vessels). Even after the heavy losses of the early war years, including the Royal Oak, the Hood, Repulse and Prince of Wales, the Navy grew to over five hundred warships by mid-1944, with manpower quadrupling from two hundred to eight hundred thousand men.3 The Royal Air Force grew even more rapidly, with just under two hundred thousand aircrew in 1944, kept flying by an additional million men and women in its support services. But it was in Britain’s Army where the greatest wartime explosion in strength occurred. Britain has always favoured an all-volunteer army, only resorting to conscription at times of maximum national emergency, such as in early 1939 when the National Service (Armed Forces) Act was rushed through Parliament to counter the growing threat of Nazi Germany. The initial stipulations of the bill created a liability to military service for all fit men between the ages of twenty and twenty-three. This age range was progressively increased as the war dragged on, until it applied to all men between eighteen and forty-one years of age, increasing the size of the Army to a peak of 2.9 million. However, this seemingly rosy picture masked the grim reality of growing shortfalls on the frontline. A British infantry division in north-western Europe in the summer of 1994 had a theoretical establishment of 18,347 men, but this was rarely achieved, particularly amongst the fighting companies at the sharp end, who totalled a little over six thousand of that number. This was the inevitable consequence of an Allied infrastructure with a ratio of combat to support troops of 1:9, and a philosophy that emphasised artillery, intelligence and logistics above the man with the bayonet – and it was the latter that was desperately needed in the late summer of ’44. Even as early as D-Day itself, the British War Office estimated that the Army would have one hundred thousand men fewer by December than it had at the end of 1943. By August, as casualties mounted, that grim prediction was fast coming true, with just 2,654 fully trained, combat- ready infantrymen left in the country awaiting deployment to the Continent. To try and fill the gaps a series of measures were introduced; at first these were relatively minor, such as the amalgamation of different battalions within the same regiment – for example the merger of the 2nd and 6th Battalions of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Then troops were stripped from subsidiary fronts; most British infantry battalions in Italy were reduced from four to three rifle companies, with the surplus men sent to France. Next, formations had some of their subordinate units reduced to cadres; like the 168th Brigade of the 56th (London) Infantry Division – again, the men released went to fill the gaps in France. At the same time, thirty-five thousand men from the Royal Artillery and the RAF Regiment (the RAF’s ground security arm) were compulsorily retrained 29 To VE-Day Through German Eyes as infantrymen and sent up the line, along with thousands of comb-outs from support and service units. Needless to say, these measures were hugely unpopular among the vast majority of men concerned, who knew just how dangerous the frontline really was. Many of their new comrades weren’t too happy about the process either, with one British infantry company commander complaining about the replacements: ‘Many men are weak in weapon-handling, I know several who didn’t even know that a grenade had to be primed. Some NCOs can’t map read, even on roads.’4 Not even this proved enough, and all too soon much more drastic steps had to be taken, as Montgomery explained to the Chief of the British Imperial General Staff – Alan Brooke – in a telegram. Regret time has come when I must break up one Inf Div. My Inf Divs are so low in effective rifle strength that they can no (repeat no) longer fight effectively in major operations. Request permission to break up 59 Div at once. Montgomery. The 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division – whose shoulder patch was a charming slag heap crowned with a pit winding gear tower to commemorate the coal-mining heritage of its recruitment area – had fought with distinction in Normandy, and its disbandment was no black- mark on its record or the men in it, rather, as the American historian Carlo D’Este explained, it ‘…had been selected because it was the junior division in 21st Army Group and not as a result of its performance in battle’. The 59th wasn’t alone. The British 1st Armoured Division in Italy, having suffered severe losses in the August battles in the peninsula, was also broken up with most of its men sent to other units as replacements.

Load more