Sheldrake wrote:There is a good case for claiming that the Germans won the race to the Rhine
It is quite a remarkable feat, given that they many traveled on foot or horseback through hostile country populated by the FFI and Maquis, under a sky full of allied aircraft.
Well, to be fair, they only had the one objective, to get to Germany...and the role of the FFI, Maquis, and air forces is consistently exaggerated.
The argument over whether the broad or narrow front geographic strategy misses a key point. The Germans feared the loss of their remaining armies. Montgomery and Patton were aiming for the Rhine. A better objective might have been for 21 Army group to surround the 15th Army on the Belgian coast and head north from Antwerp and for Patton to prevent Army Group G escaping by heading doe the Swiss border.
Well, yes, but the tyranny of logistics was taking command by the first week of September.
On the evening of 3 September, Brussels was liberated by Guards Armoured. The I Corps had invested Le Havre and the Canadians were across the Somme at Etaples. On the same day, Admiral Ramsay urgently cabled SHAEF and 21st Army Group regarding the necessity of clearing the Scheldt Estuary and approaches to Antwerp and Rotterdam. On the evening of 4 September, {OOOPS!
11 Armoured captured Antwerp...its what I get for posting before coffee] and by 5 September Antwerp and its docks are secured, but by 3 September the attention of Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Bradley were focused northeast and east to the Rhine. It isn't until 13 September that Eisenhower adds clearing the Scheldt to Montgomery's task list, but Montgomery, concentrating now on developing MARKET-GARDEN since Ike authorized it on 10 September, cheerfully ignores it. 15. Armee was never on 21st Army Group's radar.
Also by 3-4 September, Third Army was about 95 miles from the Swiss border...and about 95 miles from the Rhine, while it was about 200 miles from the Seventh Army advance at Lyon, which was pushing steadily north through Burgundy. By the end of the week (9 September) First Army reported 0.0 days of fuel on hand and Third Army 1.1, both of which included supplies allocated at rear dumps as well as what was on hand with the troops in the front line. On 8 September, the 12th Army Group fuel pipeline had reached Chartres, but did not begin operations for another week. The pipeline was sufficient to supply one-third of the Army Group's fuel requirement...and Chartres was 200 to 270 miles from the front. A week later the pipeline was operating...and First Army days of fuel was still 0.0, while Third Army decreased to 0.7. Meanwhile, the front had advanced perhaps 20 to 25 miles.
The pursuit phase is generally considered to have been from D+80 (23 August) to D+98 (12 September). In those 18 days, the allies advanced from the D+90 line to the D+350 line...they had captured territory the NEPTUNE plan expected would take 260 days. Also in those 18 days, as an example, Guards Armoured Division had covered some 495 miles and has been issued some 692,000 British or 831,000 US gallons of fuel. (BTW, straight line distance was about 285 miles, so the planning presumption that for every mile of advance, two miles of movement occur is pretty accurate.)
There simply is no way that 15. Armee or 1. and 19. Armee would get destroyed unless Montgomery's attention shifted away from the Rhine and Ruhr to the Scheldt and no way Third Army can advance to the Swiss border unless circumstances changed so that it would have enabled an advance to the Rhine as well. The first is possible and may have improved the supply situation earlier...but not early enough that it would have enabled the Allies to restart a pursuit, given that by mid-September the Germans were stabilizing on the Westwall and rapidly reinforcing.