David R. Higgins - Roer River Battles: Germanys Stand at the Westwall, 1944–45

For several weeks after their landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944, Allied forces struggled first to expand and then break out of their beachhead. To best organize this multinational command, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) bisected the lodgment between Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges US First Army and General Sir Bernard Montgomerys British Second Army to its east. The integration of differing national customs, doctrines, and aerial elements under SHAEF control was greater than previous Allied undertakings in North Africa and Italy, and under General Dwight D. Eisenhower, misunderstandings, diversions of effort, and internal friction were considerably reduced. Had this unifying command not been realized, it would have been necessary to coordinate the various national staffs along parallel, probably independent lines (as the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle had threatened before Paris), without overall guidance or arbitration.

With the British occupying eastern Normandy, supplies and reinforcements were shuttled in by ship from across the English Channel. The terrain in their sector was predominantly dry, open ground, but their commander, and that of the overall landing until the buildup became sufficiently stabilized, Montgomery, implemented his trademark cautious, casualty-minimizing strategy to the detriment of progress. Britain had been at war for the last four years and suffered from a chronic lack of replacements that could ill afford to be expended without results. With one eye on the political front, Montgomery would do what he could to avoid repeating the mistakes of criminally incompetent generalship of the previous war, when tens of thousands of British soldiers were sacrificed for negligible gains at places such as the Somme and Ypres.

In contrast, US forces had not experienced significant defeat at the hands of the Germans, save for Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in February 1943. After 16 months of marching across North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, the Americans were confident in their ability to quickly win the war. Historically over-supplied during wartime, the US ground elements in Normandy were no different, with most materiel arriving directly from the United States via the port of Cherbourg at the northern end of the Cotentin Peninsula. Progress remained slow due to the regions bocage farmland, with its numerous hedgerows, hills, streams, and woods that compartmentalized the battlefield and restricted movement and firepower. This force multiplier that favored the German defenders, and an initial lack of combat experience for many of the American formations, added to Allied difficulties.