Martin King - Driving Back the Nazis: The Allied Liberation of Western Europe, Autumn 1944

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

Galatians 6:9

For many Europeans, the months of September, October and November 1944 were a time of liberation and jubilation, but it was simultaneously a time of anarchy and retribution for others. Historians often neglect what transpired between the close of the Normandy campaign and the start of the Battle of the Bulge, but it would define the eventual duration and direction of World War II in the European Theatre. In many respects those three seminal months marked the lowest ebb in Allied fortunes since D-Day.

Eisenhowers decision to attack everywhere at once wasnt proving particularly advantageous, and for the time being only served to show precisely why the war would most definitely not be over by Christmas. Nevertheless, the generals at SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, Eisenhowers command centre) initially concurred that victory was in sight, and there was a pervasive, almost palpable feeling disseminating throughout the ranks of weve got them on the run. As enemy resistance declined and Allied momentum increased, it appeared that parts of Europe were finally beginning to emerge from four long years of punitive Nazi subjugation.

Despite having sustained more damage than originally anticipated, the Allied armies began to race across France toward the Belgian and Luxembourg borders after D-Day. Enthused by recent successes, General George S. Pattons Third Army had stretched its supply lines to breaking point. Looming confrontation and a disturbing lack of cohesion at SHAEF had resulted in widespread confusion and almost insurmountable logistical problems. That initial tidal wave of triumphalist euphoria quickly dissipated during the autumn fighting, as did confidence in Allied military acumen.

As swarming olive drab and khaki Allied columns spread their tentacles and bonhomie into French towns and villages, most of those being liberated were irrepressibly ecstatic. They shed tears of happiness, lined the streets with bunting, waved flags and cheered heartily. The all-conquering heroes were welcomed with Vive les Allies, hugs, kisses and copious bottles of booze. For some it was a great time to be alive, a great time to live in the moment. The excitement was all-consuming, the victors had finally arrived, to hell with the evil Nazis; now was the time to dispel the past and absorb the heady, celebratory atmosphere. Well, it was for most, but there were marked exceptions.

If you or your family had actively, or even passively, collaborated with the Nazis things were about to turn very ugly indeed. If you didnt escape before the Allies arrived, the glorious liberation had the potential to devolve into castigatory retribution. And what about the defeated German soldiers? A vanquished grey-green mass of dejected, weather-beaten faces both young and old, laboriously marching and traipsing forward in ragged uniforms with expressionless eyes glazed in fixed stares, barely acknowledging the taunts and insults from passing Allied vehicles, or the spitting and punching of recently emboldened civilians. There was absolutely no pity for the seemingly endless procession as it moved toward a very uncertain future. The general consensus was that the Nazis were vanquished. The media was unambiguous. These insidious sentinels that had inflicted years of misery and terror on Europe neither merited nor deserved compassion. They were the epitome of evil, and for the moment at least good had triumphed.

While the Allies advanced, suffering prisoners in Nazi labour and concentration camps had other pressing concerns. Would they even survive the liberation? Then there were the thousands of captives languishing in the Stalags. What would become of them?

For many it was a time of great uncertainty. The liberation would mean vastly different things to different people. In this volume I will attempt to encapsulate and relate the experiences of some of those who were there at the time, based on one-to-one interviews with the main protagonists and previously unpublished accounts.

These human stories aptly demonstrate what it was really like to be in Europe during that tumultuous autumn of 1944. These are not the inane ramblings of generals harrumphing through self-aggrandizing autobiographies. These are real people who were emotionally engaged, who experienced the ultimate polemics of hope and despair, love and loathing, and some of the accounts are derived from immediate family members, most of whom are now sadly deceased.

The word liberation is derived from the Latin word liberates, which means, to set free. This equally infers to free an occupied territory from the enemy, but the Allies demonstrated that the word liberation had many connotations. Its too easy to employ the passionate approach when describing the events of World War II. It is equally difficult to make sense of those who remained morally equivocal when confronted with the shocking realities of precisely what subscribing to Nazi ideology entailed. Decades after the fact, owing to the unprecedented situational and emotional extremes experienced by the protagonists, the subject of World War II remains influential to this day.

This is the history of a certain time during World War II, when the world was recovering from a massive nervous breakdown, and remedial therapies may have been available but were not always correctly applied. The cure for those long years of occupation didnt always alleviate the condition or the symptoms, because for some the affliction was irrevocable, and for some it was terminal.

In 1944, as deciduous trees began to erupt in glorious shades of gold and scarlet and the sun cast long shadows, from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and beyond the war was still reaping a lethal harvest of fear and destruction. Was it possible, or even remotely conceivable, that Axis hegemony was finally beginning to crumble and dissipate? It was indeed, but not before the world had reluctantly been compelled to confront a fundamental reality. What the Western press had described as inhuman behaviour was in fact very human; the basest manifestation of the true soul of humanity, and this war had proved beyond any reasonable doubt that people, normal, average people were indeed capable of enacting deeds of petrifying evil. But now the Allies had gained the upper hand. There were clear indications that this ostensibly indestructible veil of hate and subjugation, which had devastated so many lives, was finally beginning to lift. It would all depend on that one tumultuous season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, a time that would pivot precariously between decision and indecision, action and inertia, and ultimately determine the eventual outcome of the war in Europe.

The pervading opinion among the Allied armies in September 1944 was that after four arduous years, final victory over Nazi Germany was now within reach. On 1 September 1944 the Canadian First Army captured Dieppe, the French port that had been the site of the abortive commando raid in 1942, and were hammering a path along the northern French coast toward Belgium. A few days later the British Second Army had captured Brussels, while the US First Army entered the Belgian town of Tournai.

There were changes afoot. Freshly appointed German commander of the western theatre (Oberbefehlshaber West), Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who had a habit of falling out of favour with Adolf Hitler, had replaced Walter Model. The new appointment would do little to prevent or stem the Allied tsunami currently heading from the east and west toward the German heartland.