Operation Eclipse

Discussions on WW2 in Western Europe & the Atlantic.
Lightbob
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Posts: 124
Joined: 11 Feb 2010, 16:36

Re: Operation Eclipse

#16

Post by Lightbob » 02 Jul 2010, 19:01

I have followed your discussion with interest could I put my two pennyworth in.

I'm afraid that I cannot agree with statements made by both as to the origins of WW2 I will try and give you another opinion not perhaps 100%, but certainly give another prospective


There is a number of stories and rumours surrounding Operation Eclipse, the name eclipse was changed from Operation Talisman after Talisman was thought to have been compromised.

The Operation was drawn up to put the Allied plan for the division of Germany into three Zones of authority, into operation. The plan agreed at the Yalta Conference did include France on Russian insistence. This plan which obviously, if know by the German would dash their hopes for a negotiated WW1 type armistice. But added to the announcement of the unconditional surrender order by Roosevelt and later the notorious announcement of Morgenthau’s plan to turn Germany from being a giant manufacturing economy into to a solely agrarian society, arguably lengthened the war by at least 6 month sand resulted in perhaps a million needless casualties

Nevertheless, one factor was very important to the German High Command and that was the assumption that if the Russians were to have Berlin in their zone and the boundary between the Russians and Western Allies zones was to be drawn a hundred miles further west. The boundary would be the full extent of the Western allies drive into Germany. A copy of the SHAEF order for Op eclipse is at:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Sur ... index.html

A copy of the order or Eclipse fell into the Germans hands and is in the German Bundes Archives. Cornelius Ryan’s ‘The Last Battle’ mentions it being captured, together with an attached note from Gen de Guingand Monty’s Chief of Staff, from a British Command Post during the battle of the Bulge. The British Historian and author Charles Whiting claims that according to a German historian Herbert Schartzwalder, the document was found a month later by German Paratroops in a destroyed British Scout car. The problem according to Whiting, a former Intelligence Officer in the 2nd Army in Europe, is that no British Command post were overrun in the Ardennes battles and it is impossible to check both claims either way. However after seeing the document he asks the following questions:
1. What would a British fighting unit be doing with such an important document?
2. When and how could it have been obtained?
3. Why, when all such documents were numbered and registered as a matter of form was Operation Eclipse, or a copy of it never reported missing. (Embarrassment perhaps – Bob)

According to Louise his wife, Field Marshal Jodl after reading the captured report deducted from it that the Western Allies would stop at their allotted boundary with the Russians and leave them to continue the fight until their forces met with those from the west. So what was left for the US and Britain to fight for. However, de Guingand attached note made it quite clear to Jodl what Eclipse meant it said; ‘the only answer to total war’ the document maintained, ‘is total defeat and total occupation’.

However Whiting goes on to relate a conversation with Gen ‘Slim’ Jim Gavin who claims that the document comes from a different source a Russian spy in either Washington or in Eisenhower’s HQ. At the time Gen Sir Kenneth Strong Eisenhower's Chief of intelligence that the innuendo regarding a spy adH no foundation in fact. But we all know now that information was being passed to Germany via many sources, Military, diplomatic and commercial.

See: Charles Whiting’s ‘Bloody Bremen’ page 1 and Appendix page 201

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Guaporense
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Re: Operation Eclipse

#17

Post by Guaporense » 05 Jul 2010, 21:18

The situation in March 1945:
Image

Clearly, the USSR had much better conditions to take over Berlin than the Western Allies.
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz


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