Chester Wilmot - The Struggle For Europe

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Text originally published in 1952 under the same title.

Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE

By

Chester Wilmot

Oh, how comely it is and how reviving

To the Spirits of just men long opprest,

When God into the hands of their deliverer,

Puts invincible might.

SAMSON AGONISTES

Contents

Distribution of German Divisions, June 6th, 1944

Operation SEALION

The Wehrmacht in the West, June 6th, 1944

Normandy, April 1944

Normandy, June 1944

Pre-Invasion Bombing

Operation NEPTUNE: The Assault Plan

OMAHA: The Assault

The British Assault

OMAHA: Evening D-Day

The Caen Sector: Evening D-Day

UTAH: D-Day

Advance from OMAHA

Main Bridgehead, June 7th-18th

Operation PERCH

The Cherbourg Campaign

The Rival Plans

The Odon Offensive, June 25th-29th

The American Front, July 3rd-25th

Operation GOODWOOD: The Plan

Operation GOODWOOD: The Battle, July 18th-22nd

German Dispositions in Normandy, July 25th

Operation COBRA: July 25th-31st

The Mortain Counter-Attack, August 7th-8th

The Exploitation from Avranches

The Capture of Mont Pinon, August 5th-6th

Operation TOTALIZE

The Falaise Pocket

The Drive to the Seine

The Mediterranean Front, Summer 1944

Broad Front or Single Thrust?

The Advance to Antwerp

The Battle for the Belgian Canals

The Campaign in Lorraine

The Arnhem Landing, September 17th

The Nijmegen Air-head, September 17th-18th

Operation MARKET GARDEN: The Plan

MARKET GARDEN: The Break-out, September 17th-18th

The Advance to the Neder Rijn, September 20th-25th

Opening the Scheldt Estuary, October-November 1944

The Ardennes Offensive: The Plan

The Attack to the River Roer, November-December 1944

The Western Front, Autumn 1944

The Ardennes Offensive: The Assault

The Ardennes Offensive: The Exploitation

The Eastern Front, 1945

Poland and Yalta

The Battle of the Rhineland

Berlin: The Prize

The Final Phase

Hitlers Europe, 1944-1945

TEN days before the end of the war in Europe, Mr. Churchill sent Marshal Stalin a personal letter in the course of which he said: There is not much comfort in looking into a future where you and the countries you dominate plus the Communist parties in many other states are all drawn up on one side and those who rallied to the English-speaking nations and their associates or dominions are on the other. It is quite obvious that their quarrel would tear the world to pieces and all of us leading men on either side who had anything to do with that would be shamed before history. Even embarking on a long period of suspicion, of abuse and counter-abuse, and of opposing policies would be a disaster hampering the great development of world prosperity for the masses which is attainable only by our trinity.

We know how well founded were the fears that prompted this letter. The cleavage between East and West, then becoming apparent, has grown wider with the years until to-day it is difficult to foresee how the gap may be bridged. The Iron Curtain, the Satellite State and the Cold War seem to have become permanent features of the political landscape of Europe, and the threat of another conflict which might indeed tear the world to pieces casts its shadow across the peoples so lately released from the scourge of the last. If we are seeking the origins of this situation, we must examine not the development of relations between Russia and the Western Powers since the war, but the course of their relations during the war and the impact that these had on both German and Allied strategy. We must discover, if we can, what caused the destruction of the European balance of power which Britain went to war to maintain and which she and those associated with her in the North Atlantic Treaty are now making such sacrifices to restore.

In this book, therefore, I have endeavoured to explain how the present situation came about; how and why the Western Allies, while gaining military victory, suffered political defeat; how and why, in the process of crushing Nazi Germany and liberating Western Europe, they allowed the Soviet Union to gain control of Eastern Europe and to prevent the application there of the principles of the Atlantic Charter for which they had fought. In considering the history of the war in the West from the perspective of the 1950s, I have tried to show not only how Hitler was overthrown but also why Stalin emerged victorious.; how Russia came to replace Germany as the dominant power on the Continent; and how Stalin succeeded in obtaining from Roosevelt and Churchill what he had failed to obtain from Hitler.

In seeking the answers to these questions, I have started with the situation on the eve of Dunkirk, when the struggle for Europe seemed to have been decided in Germanys favour. In the first part of the book, which is called The Way Back, I have considered the stages by which Hitlers power in Western Europe was weakened and Allied power was developed until it again became possible for a British Army to establish itself on the far shore of the Channel. During the four years between the evacuation bf Dunkirk and the invasion of Normandy the problem of crossing the Channel, in one direction or the other, exerted a decisive influence on the conduct and development of the war. It was the refusal of the British to admit defeat and the frustration of the German invasion plan in 1940 that drove Hitler into attacking Russia. It was the necessity of defeating the Red Army before the Anglo-American forces could strike back across the Channel that led Hitler to seek in the East a quick victory which exhausted the Wehrmacht. When the question of cross-Channel invasion became identified with the Soviet demand for the opening of a Second Front it assumed a new significance. Accordingly, the Second Front controversy has been considered here not merely in the light of its influence on the defeat of Germany, but also as a political issue the outcome of which was that Anglo-American military power was employed in Western Europe, not in the Balkans.

In the second part, The Battle of Normandy, I have dealt with the actual operations in some detail, for the story of the invasion is intrinsically exciting, especially now that it can be told from the evidence of both adversaries. More important, this battle was the supreme test of the Angles-American alliance in action and provided its greatest single victory. Since so much depends on that alliance to-day, it is profitable to consider how it worked in the field last time, and in particular to evaluate the achievements of the commanders, Eisenhower, Montgomery and Bradley, who have been the subject of so much controversy and who are again in positions of great responsibility. Finally, these operations provide a warning that, if another aggressor enjoying complete security on his eastern front were to advance to the Channel, the Anglo-Saxon Powers would have little chance of liberating Europe by invasion, except at terrible cost to themselves and to Western civilisation. The cross-Channel assault of 1944 would certainly have been defeated if the Germans had not been fighting with the Russians on their backs.