Breakout

From Goodwood to Falaise;
From the Bocage to the Pocket

In my last blog, which I called ‘Inch by Bloody Inch,’ I described the ferocious battles which culminated in the capture of Caen by the British and Canadian armies on July 18^th, 1944, D+43, and the capture of St. Lo by the US 1^st Army on July 19^th. What the D Day planners had hoped would take 7 days or less had taken 7 weeks and cost the Allies approximately 40,000 lives and over 150,000 wounded.

But now the pace and nature of the conflict were about to change.

• It should be noted that Germany’s best battlefield general, Erwin Rommel, was seriously wounded on July 17^th, and the Allies’ best battlefield general, George Patton, took command of the US Third Army on August 1^st. With Rommel out and Patton in, the balance of battlefield expertise, imagination, and energy shifted in the Allies’ favor.

In the first hours of the invasion the German reaction was slow. Several of the senior commanders were not in Normandy and Rommel was in Germany. Hitler retained personal control over almost all the vital Panzer tank forces, complicating and slowing the chain of command.

It was not until the afternoon of D Day that German armor counterattacked the Allies, 18 hours after the first paratroopers landed. The 192^nd Panzergrenadiers of the 21^st Panzer Division reached the coast between Sword and Juno beaches, splitting the beaches. However, rather than isolating the vulnerable Sword beach, 192’s commander, Josef Rauch, mistakenly thought 192 was in danger of being surrounded and withdrew—a tactical error with potentially huge implications.

• It should also be noted that Russia had launched its vast Operation Bagration against Hitler’s eastern armies, leading to a staggering German defeat at Minsk in Belarus on July 4^th, in which four German armies were encircled and destroyed, with over 500,000 men killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. This eliminated any chance of transferring reserves from the eastern front to reinforce Normandy.

• The Allies had total air superiority over France and increasing superiority over Germany itself. This meant that Allied ground offensives could be preceded by massive bombing attacks on German defensive positions. Both Goodwood and Cobra began with carpet bombing entrenched German positions. Once the battle commenced, unchallenged Allied fighter-bombers provided aerial reconnaissance and tactical air support.

Goodwood, for example, began with 1,000 RAF heavy bombers at only 3,000 feet dropping 5,000 tons of high explosives on specific German positions, followed by 400 Eighth Air Force B24s dropping 600 tons of antipersonnel fragmentation bombs. Cobra began with 1,800 Eighth Air Force B17s (1,800, a mind-boggling number!) dropping 5,000 tons on an area 3 miles by 1.5 miles—roughly 1000 tons per square mile—preceded and followed by an additional 600 aircraft in two supporting waves.

This was force projection on an unprecedented, industrial scale.

• Just to round out Hitler’s cumulative woes, the Stauffenberg plotters had attempted to assassinate him on July 20^th. Although the plot was unsuccessful it demonstrated that Germany’s generals believed the war was lost: the Third Reich was being strangled ever tighter in a vice between the eastern and western fronts.

Hitler, in his turn, was losing what little faith in his generals he had left, as defeat followed defeat. He foolishly dismissed his ablest officers and inserted himself into tactical as well as strategic decisions.

In that context, let’s look at the extraordinary month of August in Normandy.

Breakout

By the end of July, the Allies had finally captured St. Lo and Caen, giving them a secure beachhead and control of the Cherbourg peninsular. They now had four armies in France, the US 1^st and 3^rd under Bradley to the west, and the British and Canadian armies under Montgomery to the east.

German defenses were still overloaded south of Caen, where the Wehrmacht 5^th Panzer Army and 7^th Army were concentrated. That meant that the German left or western flank was vulnerable to attack by the US armies, although the bocage or ‘hedgerow’ terrain in that area offered excellent natural defenses.

Two thousand years of farming in small fields had produced a landscape with sunken lanes between high, thick hedges, creating very difficult terrain for attacking tanks and infantry but excellent for defensive positions and ambushes.

However, the Allies had literally thousands of bombers and ground support fighter-bombers, leaving the German defenders no place to hide.

On July 25^th, D+50, the US launched Operation Cobra. Nineteen days later, on August 13^th, D+69, the US Third Army had liberated almost all of Brittany and the remainder of Normandy and the Wehrmacht was in headlong retreat.

While the British and Canadians continued to hold the German Panzer divisions in the Falaise area, the American 1^st and 3^rd armies were able to breakout in the far west, racing south into Britanny and east in central Normandy. Patton’s 3^rd Army, in particular, sliced through what little German opposition it encountered.

Patton took full advantage of the numerical advantage of his armor; RAF and Eighth Airforce rocket-armed fighter-bombers; his excellent logistics based on fleets of ‘deuce-and-a-half’ trucks; and his superior radio communications technology. He was at heart a cavalry man, I have always thought, and he loved to charge.

A pocket forms

By August 13^th, D+69, the US Third Army was at Argentan, just 15 miles south of Falaise. The retreating German 4^th Panzer and 7^th armies were in danger of being trapped and surrounded in an area now known known as the ‘Falaise pocket.’ The Canadian army, which included the Polish Armored Division, launched Operation Tractable on August 14^th, D+70, and captured Falaise on August 16^th.

Patton, always ready for a fight, wanted to push north from Argentan to Falaise and cut off the two German armies, but Bradley overruled him, fearing Patton’s 3^rd Army was already spread too thinly. The mouth of the pocket, between the Canadians and Poles in Falaise, and the Americans in Argentan, was now only 15 miles wide.

The Canadians and Poles continued to grind their way south in fierce, sometimes hand-to-hand fighting, while the Germans retreated eastwards through the still open gap.

On August 16^th D+72, Hitler, far away in his Wolf’s Lair in eastern Prussia, ordered the German 7^th Army to counterattack. Gunter von Kluge, Rommel’s successor as Army Group B commander, refused and Hitler sacked him on the 17^th. Kluge committed suicide rather than face Hitler’s wrath. His replacement, Walter Model, had Hitler’s trust and was able to convince the Fuhrer that retreat was necessary. On August 18^th Model positioned all his remaining armor on the flanks of the gap, holding the gap open while the rest of the 7^th Army—what was left of it—fled to the Seine.

For the next three days, August 19^th to 21^st, D+75 and 77, the battle raged, with the remnants of the SS Panzer divisions tearing at the Poles holding the northern side of the gap around Trun. At one point on the 20^th the Poles managed to link with the Americans in the south near Chambois, but only briefly.  The gap was finally closed on the 21^st, and the German defense of Normandy—and effectively of France—was ended. The road to Paris now beckoned the Allies.

The Falaise pocket was as complete a defeat for Hitler’s western armies as he had suffered at Minsk in Belarus a month before, and as heroic an action by the Poles as they had achieved at Monte Cassino in Italy earlier in the year.

When the battle was over Eisenhower described the gap as a scene from Dante’s hell. There were so many dead bodies that the area was declared a health hazard, and it was not until November that the last remains were buried. What more can be said?