Devers doesn't tell Ike that he has secured a river crossing

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Keitel
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Devers doesn't tell Ike that he has secured a river crossing

#1

Post by Keitel » 18 Mar 2014, 21:35

As the tin says, General Devers instead of telling Ike he has a way across the Rhine after smashing the 19th German Army on November 23rd, 1944, just goes ahead and pushes the US 15th Corps across the river, then tells Ike he is across the Rhine, "damn atmospher... Wha... Press to Berlin... Y.. Mee. in Berlin...," with a friendly radio operator making the convincing static.

No one knows why in OTL Ike ordered Devers to hold, but if Devers had pulled a Patton and presented a fait accompli to Ike, the breakthrough into Germany would have happened 4 months earlier. The Allies would not have been suckered punched by the Ardennes Offensive and then sit waiting for the Rhine Floods to recede.

The Soviets for their part had spent out their Armies for the next few months as they recovered and now was a good time for the US and French forces of the 6th Army Group to completely outflank the gathering German might for the Ardennes and gobble up more of Germany before the Soviets and liberate several camps earlier, saving more lives.

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Baltasar
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Re: Devers doesn't tell Ike that he has secured a river cros

#2

Post by Baltasar » 19 Mar 2014, 02:15

I had the impression that the US / UK / Free French forces in western Europe were outrunning their supply lines and that the units themselves were exhausted after months of continuous offensive operation?


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Kingfish
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Re: Devers doesn't tell Ike that he has secured a river cros

#3

Post by Kingfish » 19 Mar 2014, 02:17

The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
~Babylonian Proverb

Carl Schwamberger
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Re: Devers doesn't tell Ike that he has secured a river cros

#4

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 19 Mar 2014, 11:04

Baltasar wrote:I had the impression that the US / UK / Free French forces in western Europe were outrunning their supply lines and that the units themselves were exhausted after months of continuous offensive operation?
Not in the south. The superport group of Marsailles/Toulon were operating at full capacity, and the high capacity railroad running north up the Rhone valley was captured nearly intact. In September 6th AG was passing supplies over to the 3rd Army, enough to keep a corps of two divisions running east. What Devers asked Ike for were the newly arriving infantry divisions from the US.

As I found in the game boards tests, described in the thread Kingfish linked, those divisions are necessary to get 6th AG to the Rhine. It also is necessary for the 3rd Army to aim more towards Straussberg, instead of Trier, to cover the 6th AG flank and allow concentration of the 7th Army.

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victor82
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Re: Devers doesn't tell Ike that he has secured a river cros

#5

Post by victor82 » 23 Mar 2014, 18:15

Devers goes north and runs into an assembling concentration of German panzer troops is what and exposes the German assault plan. Eighth Air Force comes in and hammers the Germans, I suspect. Monty does NOT do Market Garden, for which reason Devers was halted. War ends in 1944. Soviets extremely p/o'd because they believe that their casualty count justifies their taking Berlin.

Although we do know now that because of Soviet influences in the Roosevelt Administration (Harry Dexter White, Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins) and Soviet penetration of British intelligence (Kim Philby and the Ring of Five), it is almost certain that even in an alternate reality, the Red Army would have taken Berlin.

People also underestimate the overwhelming importance that Operation DOWNFALL was beginning to have on American manpower and deployment considerations. Marshall wanted to start deploying troops to the Pacific as early as the summer of 1945 to prepare for the November invasion of Kyushu (OLYMPIC) and its subsequent follow-up invasion of the main island of Honshu (CORONET). Indeed, Marshall was relieved that the U.S. didn't have to take Berlin because of the increasing demands of the Pacific Theater and titanic requirements of DOWNFALL, which were beginning to dwarf anything that the European theater had required.

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Kingfish
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Re: Devers doesn't tell Ike that he has secured a river cros

#6

Post by Kingfish » 24 Mar 2014, 01:28

victor82 wrote: Monty does NOT do Market Garden, for which reason Devers was halted.
Devers didn't close on the Rhine until November, a good 2 months after M/G
The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
~Babylonian Proverb

Carl Schwamberger
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Re: Devers doesn't tell Ike that he has secured a river cros

#7

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 24 Mar 2014, 01:54

Kingfish wrote:
victor82 wrote: Monty does NOT do Market Garden, for which reason Devers was halted.
Devers didn't close on the Rhine until November, a good 2 months after M/G
...and the conference with Eisenhower where this was proposed is dated after Market-Garden was over.

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