Monty and the Battle for Normandy

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Tom from Cornwall
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Monty and the Battle for Normandy

#1

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 04 Apr 2007, 22:19

In Jan 44 when Monty and Eisenhower came to the UK to take over Overlord they changed the COSSAC plan so that the emphasis, quite sensibly, was placed on the early capture of the port of Cherbourg - as only the capture of a protected port would guarantee that the forces being built up in Normandy could be supplied during bad weather. That mission was given to 1st US Army and the 2nd Brit Army was given the role of driving south of Caen to form a protective front behind which the Americans could operate to gain the first vital objective. Due to the movement of 21 Panzer Division into the Caen area in May 44, German strength prevented the seizure of Caen on the first day and then a succession of reinforcing Panzer Divisions prevented the British forming the protective front that had been in the initial plan. The British did, however, achieve the ojective of protecting the Americans until they had captured Cherbourg and could then turn south to begin to expand towards the south on their way to securing the ports of Brittany which Monty and Ike both thought would be required to support the Allies as they made an assault crossing of the Seine.
Given the fact that British 2nd Army achieved the aim, but not in the way originally intended, various authors from 145 to the present day have used the failure to capture Caen as "evidence" that the original plan failed, that Monty was too cautious and that eventually, after a succession of failed British "Breakout"attempts, the Americans were forced to take a larger role than Monty had originally allowed them.
Surely the time has come to recognise that Monty was responsible for both Armies, and should be congratulated for the capture of Cherbourg if he is to be balmed for the failure to capture Caen. To say that his plan "failed" in Normandy is as ridiculous as saying that Wellington's plan failed at Waterloo as he lost Le Haye Sainte, or that Napoleon failed at Austerlitz as it took him all day to beat the Allies.

Regards
Tom

ChristopherPerrien
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#2

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 05 Apr 2007, 16:57

Hi Tom,

Well of course this looks alittle differrent from this side of the pond.

Monty should have pushed to Caan the first and second day NO MATTER WHAT. As it was it the British forces and Monty were just happy the landing went well with little opposition on their end of the beach and they did not advance expeditously like they should have. Failing to seize Caan quickly due to this lack of iniative allowed the Germans to build up an impenetrable defense around Caan and all those set piece, single lane advance/attacks the British mounted for the next couple months gained very little ground. The US Army took Cherbourg(Jun26) long before Caan ( GoodWood Jul19-21) was taken. And the real stalemate caused by the failure to take Caan quickly, as per the plan, was only broken by the Americans finally kicking through the right flank(Cobra Jul 24) and going around and behind the entire German line during the proceeding two weeks after Cobra.

Chris


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#3

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 05 Apr 2007, 19:23

Christopher,

You lay out the American anti-Monty point of view very clearly, but the thing I was trying to point out (not very well obviously!!) was that Monty was not a British General at this point, but an Allied Ground Force commander. Given a choice of captuing Cherbourg or Caen relatively quickly, I'm sure the sensible option is to take Cherbourg. Yes it left 2nd British Army with a very difficult problem, but the capture of the port of Cherbourg guaranteed that the Allies were there to stay for as long as it took.
After all, why do people harp on about the importance of capturing Cherbourg on D Day or D+1 - all the important objectives were in the west. Monty aimed to draw the German panzers onto 2nd British Army in defensive positions, to protect 1st US Army while also limiting the number of casualties the British took. When the British were held north of Caen, 2nd British Army had to meet the same aim, protection of 1st US Army, but by a series of attacks - the last thing the British Army needed when it was so strapped for infantry relacements.
Anyway, I guess the fact that Monty was "not a nice chap" and tried too hard to defend himself against his critics means that many historians will not look objectively at the Battle of Normandy as an Allied campaign, rather trying to separate it into 2 battles, one British and one American.
Thanks for your reply,

Tom

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#4

Post by JonS » 05 Apr 2007, 22:13

ChristopherPerrien wrote:Monty should have pushed to Caan the first and second day NO MATTER WHAT.
NO MATTER WHAT, huh? And ALL IN CAPS no less. Clearly this is an obvious deduction. NO MATTER WHAT. So, that means that losing Pegasus Bridge, losing GOLD, not clearing Bayeux, losing SWORD, losing JUNO, and not linking up with the Americans near Port en Bessin all would have been fully justified had Monty but managed to secure Caen.

Yep. History would have looked favourably on Montgomery if NEPTUNE had failed but Caen had been captured - albeit presumably somewhat briefly - in early June.

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#5

Post by jon prince » 12 Apr 2007, 01:47

Well, it was rather a stain on Monty's record that it took so long to capture Caen. In the wider scheme of things however it mattered little, what was important was that the majority of German Panzer and mobile forces were forced to sit around it and the eastern end of the lodgement to prevent a feared Brtish/Canadian breakout. Capturing Caen had no more of a sigificant effect than bombing the place flat did. The early drives towards Caen showed what would have happened if the Anglo-Canadian forces had gone 'all out' to reach it, they would have got a large scale shoeing and adversly affected the progress of the campaign. As it was, the offensives of July and August did enough harm in terms of personnel lost, and neither British nor Candian forces had the seemingly bottomless supplies of manpower and equipment that US forces had.

The key was keeping the Germans tied down around Caen, if nothing else to at least stop them from moving troops freely between western and eastern sectors, and this was done as the cost of a lot of blood. The British/Canadian offensives failed to capture a lot of ground, yes, that's true, but they did tie up and destroy a lot of the best German forces in western Europe and I don't think anyone looking at the numbers would argue that point. I also seem to recall that American units found things tough going when they also met the kind of Bocage contryside the other armies were slogging through. Whether by design on coincidence things worked out probably as they should have, the comparatively slow moving British and Canadian forces taking more than their share of the beating and thus allowing the faster and more flexible US forces a freer hand to manoeuvre for the breakout. If you also look at things like topography then the holding of the right flank between Caen and the sea along the Orne waterways was far more significant than Caen itself. A large, old Norman city wasn't exactly ideal for the movement of large Armoured forces through it having narrow streets, lack of multiple wide metalled roads, bisected by waterways etc. Names on maps wern't important, destroying the German army as a fighting force was important. After that was done then the Allies could and did rapidly capture/liberate territory, evevn the slow moving British and Canadian forces. Overall the plan for the build-up and breakout went largely to schedule, it started more slowly than planned, but finished more rapidly than expected, much like other previous plans of Montys' infact.

There were also 2 very different reasons for the capture of Caen and Cherbourg, the former was important to limit the ability of the German to defend whilst the latter was important for the Allies ability to attack. In the event the Germans had sufficient time to make enough of a mess of Cherbourg to ensure it was of little use to the Allies for the rest of the campaign in n.w. Europe. Similarly Caen was of little use to the Germans after it got levelled, not that they ever made a great deal of use of it before hand anyway. Neither of these places had that great a significance to the wider strategic issues of the war in western Europe but were of importance only for their value in affecting the tactical situation in Normandy and comparative levels of Allied and Axis forces.

There's also this absurd idea that the US forces were slowed by the failure to take Caen, I've never understood this, their at opposite ends of the battlefield, US forces were no more dependent on the British/Canadians taking Caen for their move on Cherbourg than they were the capture of Monte Cassino, or some volcanic island in the Pacific. I believe it was just a handy excuse to pile yet more criticism on the slower British/Canadian armies and specfically on individuals like Monty without considering why the campaign in the eastern sector worked out the way it did. It didn't matter whether German forces were beaten infront of, behind or in the streets of Caen, as long as they were beaten.

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#6

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 13 Apr 2007, 06:46

Montgomery very likely would have had more respect had he not been prone to fatuoss & egotistical pronouncements. He made great claims for his planned attacks & when they fell flat folks naturally recalled his grandiose remarks.

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#7

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 13 Apr 2007, 09:47

jon prince wrote:Well, it was rather a stain on Monty's record that it took so long to capture Caen. In the wider scheme of things however it mattered little, what was important was that the majority of German Panzer and mobile forces were forced to sit around it and the eastern end of the lodgement to prevent a feared Brtish/Canadian breakout. Capturing Caen had no more of a sigificant effect than bombing the place flat did. The early drives towards Caen showed what would have happened if the Anglo-Canadian forces had gone 'all out' to reach it, they would have got a large scale shoeing and adversly affected the progress of the campaign. were beaten infront of, behind or in the streets of Caen, as long as they were beaten.
Caan was a road junction and river crossing point and in either side's hand it was a great defensive bulwark and a jumping off point for further operations. Without Caan to secure that end of the beach, the Allied line was "floating" on that end. The British lost alot more troops not having Caan as a strong flanking position to defend against all those German counter -attacks or as a point/road-hub to exploit the beachead on that flank than if they had taken it on D-day or D+1. As it was because Caan was not taken, and then it became such a stumbling block, that the only way to get "off the beach" was on the other flank. It really doesn't matter that this was the American sector, the whole invasion force could have been British and the "stalemate" caused by the failure to capture Caan demanded that if something was going to happen it was going to happen at the other end of the line. I don't think the battle for Caan wore down the Germans as much as the battle in the center of the line did from the pressure of both British and American attacks in that area. Finally the German line did break in the center a couple days after Cobra, and the whole right flank of the German line fell apart. I suppose the German lines could have fallen apart on the British end, but Caan was there, and formed a rather good roadblock even after it was finally taken, due to its destruction.

Chris

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#8

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 13 Apr 2007, 16:11

Christopher,
Yes, I agreee the failure to capture Caen quickly gave the Allies a major headache defensively on their eastern flank and forced them to launch a series of limited attacks both to gain ground for defensive purposes and to pin the German reserves in that area. What I don't agree with is the fallacy that the British tried to "breakout" and failed, (even today this myth is repeated - see Osprey's book on Normandy title "Caen: Monty's Breakout Attempt") and that the Americans then had to come riding to the rescue with Operation Cobra. Alot of Normandy history is tainted by the increasingly bitter divisions between Monty and the Americans, for much of which, of course, Monty must take the blame. I have great respect for him as a general, but during this campaign he allowed his military judgement to blind him to the political reality that what counted to the American establishment was not how quickly the war was won, but that America, and therefore the Roosevelt administration, should take the credit.
BTW nothing I ever say in my posts is intended to suggest that I have an anti-American bias, I am truly grateful that the US decided to adopt a "Germany First" policy. My wish is, however, to try and find the truth so that we can try to learn from it.
My current interest is in how a very minor partner, such as the British in Iraq for example, can influence the majority partner when it sees things going wrong. There must be historical comparisons to be drawn I would think, between the Brits and French in 1940, Brits and Americans in 1944 and 2003, etc...

Regards

Tom

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#9

Post by jon prince » 14 Apr 2007, 22:57

ChristopherPerrien wrote:
jon prince wrote:Well, it was rather a stain on Monty's record that it took so long to capture Caen. In the wider scheme of things however it mattered little, what was important was that the majority of German Panzer and mobile forces were forced to sit around it and the eastern end of the lodgement to prevent a feared Brtish/Canadian breakout. Capturing Caen had no more of a sigificant effect than bombing the place flat did. The early drives towards Caen showed what would have happened if the Anglo-Canadian forces had gone 'all out' to reach it, they would have got a large scale shoeing and adversly affected the progress of the campaign. were beaten infront of, behind or in the streets of Caen, as long as they were beaten.
Caan was a road junction and river crossing point and in either side's hand it was a great defensive bulwark and a jumping off point for further operations. Without Caan to secure that end of the beach, the Allied line was "floating" on that end. The British lost alot more troops not having Caan as a strong flanking position to defend against all those German counter -attacks or as a point/road-hub to exploit the beachead on that flank than if they had taken it on D-day or D+1. As it was because Caan was not taken, and then it became such a stumbling block, that the only way to get "off the beach" was on the other flank. It really doesn't matter that this was the American sector, the whole invasion force could have been British and the "stalemate" caused by the failure to capture Caan demanded that if something was going to happen it was going to happen at the other end of the line. I don't think the battle for Caan wore down the Germans as much as the battle in the center of the line did from the pressure of both British and American attacks in that area. Finally the German line did break in the center a couple days after Cobra, and the whole right flank of the German line fell apart. I suppose the German lines could have fallen apart on the British end, but Caan was there, and formed a rather good roadblock even after it was finally taken, due to its destruction.

Chris
Thats fair enough Chris but I'm afraid I still have to politely disagree. Much has been said about the importance of Caen both in the eastern part of the bridgehead and as part of the wider campaign. But look at actual events and Operations around Caen and you'll see that the capture or failure there of was far from the defining reason for the inability of the British and Canadian forces to effectively breakout. I'd agree that once the German defence had congealed in the eastern sector that the only real opportunites for breakout was from the American sector, for the reasons mentioned previously. Indeed, as I say, it was probably the best thing to do in using the Americans ability to move quickly and in massive strength, whilst the British/Canadians used their slower, more ponderous yet highly resiliant forces to push slowly on yard by yard. The fighting in the eastern sector was far more of a slow grind, when not even the massive efforts of 'Epsom', 'Goodwood', 'Bluecoat', 'Totalize' etc. were able to really break that defence. But Caen was not the overwhleming reason for this, lot's of heavily armed Germans and outstanding defensive terrain were far more of an issue. The large British/Canadian Operations inteded to capture Caen depended largely on envelopment and outflanking than direct attack. It's issolation was the important thing, not it's capture i.e. denying it to the enemy, not having it as a launching point for attack. Yes, it would have been nice for it to be swiftly taken, it remained a thorn in the sides of the fighting around it, but no more than the rest of the geography and topography of Normandy did, to the west of Caen you have those shallow valleys of small fields, rivers, headgerows, poor roads that bogs down armour and splits up units. To the east of Caen you have that flat rolling, open plain, so-called 'Good tank country', but also ideal anti-tank country! Combined with heavy German armour and frankly a lot of men who knew what they were doing and conducted a superb defence and you have the reason for the slow progress of the British and Canadians. You have the outcome of a campaign being dictated at almost the lowest tactical level, the ability of Companies, Battalions, Regiments and Divisions to inch forward, field by field and mile by mile. Caen resolved itself into being an insignificance in the end, flattened, choked with rubble and largely bypased, left to British and Canadian Infantry to struggle through and consolidate. The campaign was decided to it's west and east, in the sky's above it and the country beyond.

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#10

Post by pitman » 15 Apr 2007, 19:09

I'd say that had the British and Canadian units been more capable, and had been handled better, they would have had much better chances to reach the open ground beyond Caen. Too many of their offensives were too small, launched on too narrow a front, and with little in the way of diversionary attacks. Moreover, it took too long for them to comprehend the defense-in-depth German positions, with the result that British artillery (typically an effective arm) was less effective in June-July 1944. This meant that the German defenses were typically able to survive pre-attack preparation and the small size of the attacks and narrow frontages meant that they were able to concentrate effectively to blunt them.

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#11

Post by kamehouse » 15 Apr 2007, 21:04

Maybe we should consider the opponents too?Is it correct to say the german troops were more effective in the Caen area?
That could be a factor to consider.My knowledge of which german troops were used against the American army is quite limited so please correct me if i am wrong.
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k

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#12

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 15 Apr 2007, 21:40

Pitman.
I do agree that at times the performance of British units left something to be desired, but the continued emphasis on the battles around Caen have tended to obscure the fact that many US units also had problems to begin with. Carlo d'Este's book "Decision in Normandy" is a case in point, he devotes a whole chapter to castigate the performance of British troops and then adds a very small footnote to say something along the lines of "it should be noted that American units also performed poorly at times". The fact that the vast majority of the "sexy" German units, all but one of the SS Panzer Divisions, the Tiger battalions, the Werfer Brigades, etc, fought against the British have also meant that hostorians of German units have concentrated on this end of the front.
As for the fact that "to many of their offensives were too small" well I guess the answer is that they just didn't always have the forces, the ammunition and the space to launch large offensives. Note that it wasn't until the Americans launched a British style concentrated attack that they managed to make a break thorough of their own.

Cheers
Tom

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#13

Post by Michael Kenny » 15 Apr 2007, 22:32

D'este wrote: 'Decision in Normandy: The Real Story of Montgomery and the Allied Campaign'
In it he says;

"the supposed shortage of British manpower may have been a myth itself, perpetuated by Churchill or others who wanted to retain a 'home defense' force".

this has been comprehensively debunked in this book

http://www.amazon.com/Colossal-Cracks-M ... 717&sr=1-1

D'este also wrote:

'Patton: Genius for War'

It should be noted that if Montgomery had a fan club D'este would not be joining.

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#14

Post by jon prince » 16 Apr 2007, 01:12

Tom from Cornwall wrote:Pitman.
I do agree that at times the performance of British units left something to be desired, but the continued emphasis on the battles around Caen have tended to obscure the fact that many US units also had problems to begin with. Carlo d'Este's book "Decision in Normandy" is a case in point, he devotes a whole chapter to castigate the performance of British troops and then adds a very small footnote to say something along the lines of "it should be noted that American units also performed poorly at times". The fact that the vast majority of the "sexy" German units, all but one of the SS Panzer Divisions, the Tiger battalions, the Werfer Brigades, etc, fought against the British have also meant that hostorians of German units have concentrated on this end of the front.
As for the fact that "to many of their offensives were too small" well I guess the answer is that they just didn't always have the forces, the ammunition and the space to launch large offensives. Note that it wasn't until the Americans launched a British style concentrated attack that they managed to make a break thorough of their own.

Cheers
Tom
Again, there's another factor that had a significant effect on what actually happened on the ground in Normandy. Many Allied units simply didn't have the 'right amount' of combat experience at the start of the campaign, having either been overseas for many years and already with more than their share of fighting under their belts, or almost entirely green, having nothing other than training to go on until they got some experience after a few months or hard lessons. Neither did many have a lot of training in actually fighting in the unique conditions of Normandy.

To be fair many of the Germany units were by no means all that some authors have suggested in terms of ability, they didn't need to be because they found themselves in a defenders paradise. They still also had significant numbers of troops that were highly combat experienced or very well motivated or at worst compitent enough to stand behind an MG42 in a hedgerow and hammer anything sticking it's nose out. The German also had their fair share of poor performances though, the early action of Panzer Lehr for example show little of the outstanding abilities one might have expected from troops of an armoured warfare school and even the Waffen SS could make very costly mistakes when they found themselves taking the initiative.

To be brutely honest the British and Canadian units in Normandy did have some very basic and fundamental problems in the quality of training and equipment (though I wouldn't personally go as far as to say the quality of manpower as I think that was no worse than any other nation) aswell as it's employment, arguably it wasn't until late 44 and early 45 that they were able to make positive changes and resolve many of the issues (just in time for VE day really!). But these fundamental issues do go a long way in explaining, when combined with other factors, how and why things worked out the way they did, it was cause and effect. It wasn't some simple map-board and flow-chart excercise conducted by uber-personalities, yet the focus of traditional history writing on what the men at the top did or wanted to do can blind us to how much of history was decided at the bottom.

Manpower shortage a myth ehh, I think D'este would have benefitted from going through some Regimental war diaries and manpower returns for the period and he woudn't have bothered to even suggest the manpower shortage was anything other than very serious fact.

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#15

Post by pitman » 18 Apr 2007, 22:07

I think Russell Hart (twin brother of the Hart whose "Colossal Cracks" is sited above), a former graduate school colleague of mine, did a pretty good comprehensive comparative analysis in his "Clash of Arms" of U.S., Canadian, British, and German combat performance at Normandy. Of the three Allied nationalities, Hart (a Brit) grades British forces most harshly. All three nationalities suffered from inexperienced units, terrain against which they had no training, ammunition shortages, and other problems. But, Hart suggests, the U.S. managed to improvise and retrain itself pretty well to overcome those problems. The Canadians, he suggests, were less successful, but still managed to exhibit adaptability and increase their performance. The British, he says, were the least able to overcome the difficulties, internal and external, that they faced, and improved the least in Normandy.

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