From invading Normandy till German Capitulation.
Note: I only read sections of this book that I never knew about and were very interesting, and not in other books I had read
The End of th Day 10
1944 June 6th.90 thousand GIs entered France by land or sea, More than 2 million would follow. There were some teenagers but the average age was 22 to 23 amongst the enlisted me. From Sept to Spring 1944 they came in at Cherbourg and Le Havre and came as liberators not conquerors. The intelligence had not realized that the hedgerows was unlike those in England the kind that fox hunter jump over. Hedgerows dated back from Norman times French farmers would pile up soil around their fields and plant hedges and trees there. The troops had no specialized equipment against this.
Hitler was sure that the spoiled sons of democracy couldn't stand the solid sons of dictatorship. Victory depended on Junior officers and NCOs on the front lines. Here no terrain in the world was more suited for defensive action.
Young men just arriving learned to keep head down , dig deep, distinguish between incoming and out going artillery , judge when an where a mortar barrage would hit and that fear is inevitable but can be managed.
Artillery does not fire forever guns over heat , ammunition's runs low. A soft spoken kid in camp could be a standout in combat. Combat brought out the best in some men it brought out the worst in others.
Montgomery shunned women after his wife died did not smoke or drink and was conceited. His arrogance offended even British officers. Eisenhower was modest. Personality difference strained relationship. Eisenhower's military theory was straight forward and aggressive, you keep up constant attack. Monty believed in unbalancing the enemy abut keep your own balance. Monty in theory was responsible to Ike but in reality looked to Field Marshal Alan Brooke. Ike had no choice but to put up with Monty.
Hedgerows 11
Ultra radio intercepts showed that the Germans were stretched to the limit. Bradley was working on plan Cobra to break out to the right. Ike's advantage was that he had control of the air. They wanted to bring special dozer tanks or some commercial bulldozers which they had at the Normandy beach but not enough. Using explosive was slow difficult and not available in the quantities needed .
1944 The German's produced 24,410 tanks The British 24,843 and the Americans 88,410 mainly Sherman's. American were better at recovering damaged tanks and fixing them to return to action, half the damaged tanks saw action again.by maintenance battalions. An army in the field has individual initiate that comes forward and does what it has to. Sherman's used less gasoline that Wehrmacht's tanks and their tracks lasted 2,500 miles as apposed to the enemies 500 miles. German tanks were better designed for hedgerow fighting.
GIs reported that 8 dud shells fell around them and failed to explode. From the Germans they never heard of US shells failing. American equipment was build by free labour while the Germans used slave labour, who sabotaged some of the shells. 1998 the author received a letter from a Jewish slave labourer in the panzerfaust shell factory. He said when they could they added sand to the sulfur. Only German soldiers dealt with the trigger mechanism but when they were on brake the slaves sped up their output and they never inspected the shells made during their brake but this increased the soldiers production.
The early success of the Germans in bringing troops to Normandy was the rain and fog and bad weather.
There were experiments of welding teeth to the front of the Sherman's. Then they took scrap iron from the German roadblocks and constructed a hedge cutting devise that looked like a rhino. They also plugged a radio handset into the tank so that infantrymen could speak to them. Now the 1st and 3 armies were ready to break through.
Breakout and Pursuit 12
German units were made up of people from the same town. The worst thing that could happen to a German soldier was to be thrown in a unit where he knew nobody, as nobody was motivated to look after him. Patton lusted to seized the opportunity to surround the German Army as he saw a clear road. "Victory in the next war will depend on execution and not plans" said Patton, Monty agreed with Patton.
Falaise Pocket this trapped 50 thousand German troops that became prisoners, their commander was told to fight to the end. About 15 thousand died Germans . The Battle of Normandy had lasted 75 days and Allies lost 209, 672 casualties and 39,976 killed. It cost the Germans430,000 men 240,000 killed.. Of 1,500 German tanks only 67 got out 3,500 artillery and 20,000 vehicles were left behind. 2.6million pounds of beer and 500,000 of German canned beef was left behind and distributed to the troops. The PLUTO pipe line under the ocean to bring gasoline ran from England to Omaha to Chartres. Patton wanted to invade Germany from both the north and south via the Ardennes.
Rhineland battle 17
The Americans banged away confident that more shells would arrive, while the Germans husbanded their shells uncertain of more arriving. US Troops following tanks through the mud in tracks that were exploding antipersonnel mine. If the tanks skidded of reversed many were killed. There is no such thing as getting used to combat., Psychotic casualties are as inevitable as gunshot or shrapnel wounds. Soldiers reach the peak of their efficiency after 90 days of combat after that the efficiency began to fall. The Germans knew what they had done as conquerors and occupiers and what they could expect when conquered. At the Siegfried line Germans fired till they were out of ammunition the raised the white flag. The American were through the initial German defenses. Patton always said fixed defenses are useless and the only defense is attack. The Germans got very little for their poured concrete.
The Remagen Bridge was still standing which was reported by an areas photographer and the Allies were able to take it even as the Germans were trying to blow it up. Units in the area now headed for Remagen to get over the Rhine.
Ike said Patton was a good General and a lucky on, Napoleon preferred luck to greatness.
Overrunning Germany 18
Americans saw the people in the countries they liberated, the French were sullen , slow and ungrateful. The Parisians were cunning and indifferent to whether they were cheating Germans or Americans. The British brave resourceful quaint dull. The liked the Dutch in every way but few GIs met them, only the airborne. In Germany at first they liked them the best , identified most closely, clean hard working, educated middle class tastes and had flush toilets and soft toiled paper, and seemed just like us. In Germany everyone goes out and works more ambitious than the English or French.
It is a fact that British and Americans compared to conquering armies of the world behaved correctly. The Germens in areas occupied by the American were lucky and they knew it. The German supply system lay in ruins and all the German soldiers wanted was a safe passage to a POW camp. While German armies were trying to surrender German fanatics were still blowing up bridges on German soil.
General Maxwell Taylor saw Dachau and got the people of Landsberg everyone between ages of 14 to 80 to be rounded up and marched to the camp to bury the bodies and clean up, that evening the crew came along the road and saw how people were still vomiting. Major Winters wrote - "now I know why I am here."
Montgomery wanted to lead his army into Berlin but both Ike and Bradley were against it. Politically at Yalta Germany had been divided into 3 zones with the Elba River as the boundary, The Red army was there in great strength 1.25 million troops. The Hitler Youth and SS were fanatics ,even after the surrender of the Ruhr and never ran out of ammunition. The German troops had received the code Werewolf and it they had lost the war and meant that they were supposed to head east. Hitler wanted to hold out till the Western Allies and Soviets went to war.
For the GIs Eisenhower's decision was that he put them first.
1945April the British got into Belsen and Edward R. Murrow went to Buchenwald.
In Laingsburg when the German troops withdrew the citizens hang out white flags the SS then came in and hanged civilians on trees.
1945 May 7th Germany capitulates to the Allies. The George C Marshall said of Eisenhower "you have commanded with outstanding success the most powerful military Force that has ever been assembled.
The Russians would not accept the surrender sighed in Reims and insisted on another sighing in Berlin.
The G.Is
It is not accidental that so many paratroopers of E Company became teachers It is not surprising after seeing so much death and destruction at one time led them to want to do something creative. They became the men who build modern America. They had learned to work together, knew teamwork and the value of individual initiative. They had also seen the evil of dictatorship. They knew that the way to prevent war was to reject isolationism.
The aim of the war had been to eliminate the Nazi tyranny over the oppressed people of Europe and for security for ourselves in the free world. In June 1945 Eisenhower said "The success of the occupation can only be told 50 years from now. if the Germans have a stable prosperous democracy."
GIs fought because they had to , what kept them together was unit cohesion. They did more to spread democracy around the world than any other generation. They talked about friendship with buddies , No-one ever talked about patriotism and pride. America had sent the best of her young men around the world. They returned to become successful citizens and good family men. Perhaps we think the biggest price of a war is what might have been. When asked Grandpa "were you a hero" he answered no " but I was in a company of hero's"
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