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A hill to die on: why the Allies almost failed in the battle of Monte Cassino in WW2
In early 1944, the Allied advance in Italy was brought to a halt at a rocky outcrop called Monte Cassino. And at the heart of the bloodbath that followed, writes James Holland, was flawed leadership
For the men of the US 34th ‘Red Bulls’ Infantry Division, just getting up onto the Monte Cassino massif was an achievement. To reach this rocky outcrop, in late January 1944 those troops had crossed a two-mile-wide flooded valley, an area laced with enemy mines and overlooked by German troops in the mountains above. The weather was cold, wet and miserable, and the Americans’ route had taken them across a badly smashed causeway that offered an easy target for enemy artillery. Those troops had then traversed the bed of the Rapido river, which was impossible for tanks to cross, and clambered up into the hills and gulleys that comprise the lower reaches of the towering massif. Finally, they had slipped and scrambled their way up onto two of the ridges that cross Monte Cassino. By 6 February, the Second Battalion of the 135th Infantry, one of the three regiments of the Red Bulls, was within a stone’s throw of Point 593, the rocky outcrop at the end of one of these long ridges dubbed ‘Snakeshead Ridge’ by the Americans. The Germans launched a frenzied assault to displace them, only for the Red Bulls to counter-attack. Read more | Hell in Italy: the Allies' hardest fight of WW2? Bayonets fixed, shooting from the hip, they moved from rock to rock, picking their way through the increasingly loose and stony terrain along the narrow ridge. Bullets were zipping and pinging all around, mortars and grenades were exploding, and shrapnel and lethal shards of razor-sharp rock were fizzing through the air. “There was a lot of screaming and cursing,” recalled 23-year-old Sergeant Ralph Schaps from Minnesota. “We were not going to let the goddam krauts push us off the hill.” So close was the fighting that a rifle butt smashed into Schaps’ jaw but, somehow, he survived. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/12/GettyImages-1193060764-bf5e784.jpg" width="4516" height="3009" alt="The Benedictine abbey on Monte Cassino, established in the sixth century and destroyed by Allied bombing. Unreliable intelligence had suggested that the monastery was a key German observation post." title="The Benedictine abbey on Monte Cassino, established in the sixth century and destroyed by Allied bombing. Unreliable intelligence had suggested that the monastery was a key German observation post. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> The Red Bulls prevailed, though Point 593 itself remained tantalisingly in enemy hands. Schaps found an abandoned bottle of brandy, which he swilled around his mouth. After spitting out some blood and fragments of teeth, he took a couple more swigs and started to feel better. A costly campaign The Americans were now looking down over the far side of the Monte Cassino massif, directly onto the Liri Valley and, more importantly, onto Highway 6, the ancient Via Casilina – the main road north. If they could reach it, the entire German Gustav Line – the system of defences constructed across Italy from the mouth of the Garigliano river on the Tyrrhenian Sea to the mouth of the Sangro on the Adriatic, south-east of Pescara – would be unlocked and the route to Rome, around 75 miles to the north-west as the crow flies, laid wide open. All of which raises the question: if things were going so well at this point, why did the battle result in such a waste of lives, with the Allies suffering at least 55,000 casualties? It can be partly explained by difficult terrain and awful weather conditions; heavy rain fell almost continuously through much of the previous winter. Yet, though this was clearly a terrible place and time to fight, there were sound reasons to do so – and, were it not for lamentable failures of leadership, casualties might have been far fewer. The Allied invasion of mainland Italy in September 1943 had four key aims: to ensure that Italy was knocked out of the war for good; to draw German troops away from the eastern front and soon-to-be-opened western fronts; to capture Rome; and, perhaps most importantly, to take control of the airfield complex around Foggia, in Puglia near the spur on Italy’s heel, from where heavy bombers could further tighten the noose around Nazi Germany by bombing the southern Reich. Three of these four aims had been achieved swiftly after the initial landings at Salerno, south-east of Naples, on 9 September. However, by early 1944 Rome still eluded the Allies. In addition, having captured Foggia in September 1943, they needed to ensure that it wasn’t retaken by the Germans, who had more divisions in Italy than the Allies did. Establishing a buffer of at least 50 miles north of Rome was, therefore, a priority. That’s why, in early 1944, the Allies were desperately trying to break through mountain defences to clear a route to the capital. Read more | How Italian dictator Benito Mussolini became the first face of fascism By the time the Red Bulls approached Point 593, the German forces had already suffered a battering at the hands of a polyglot international force led by General Mark Clark, commander of the US Fifth Army. The ferocity of the onslaught had so depleted the troops of the German 44th Hoch und Deutschmeister Division, which was defending the Monte Cassino massif, that its numbers were down to about 800 men from a full-strength complement of 15,000. That high level of casualties explains why, all things considered and despite the privations their troops had endured, the Americans had enjoyed a comparatively easy time getting up onto the massif. Though they’d mounted a highly effective defence up to that point, almost every senior German commander in Italy now believed that the time had come to pull back. In the north of the country, mountains stretched almost continuously across the peninsula between Pisa and Rimini, forming a natural barrier. Defences were already being built along this new front, where supply lines were shorter and positions easier to maintain.With German forces in retreat on the eastern front, and with an Allied assault imminent west of the Reich, it made sense to cut losses and withdraw to this defensive line far north of Rome. The führer’s folly Hitler, though, refused to cede ground – and his supremo in Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, was determined to do the führer’s bidding. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/12/GettyImages-3293961-801febb.jpg" width="2200" height="1466" alt="Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (centre), commander of German forces in Italy, in March 1944. His decision to stubbornly hold Monte Cassino, following Hitler’s refusal to cede ground, led to the battle. (Photo by Getty Images)" title="Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (centre), commander of German forces in Italy, in March 1944. His decision to stubbornly hold Monte Cassino, following Hitler’s refusal to cede ground, led to the battle. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> On the podcast | Keith Lowe tells the story of the liberation of Naples, the first major European city to be freed by the Allies during the Second World War The result was an appalling misuse of infantry divisions: units were pulled apart, sent hither and thither, filling holes and gaps, and being butchered as a result. The replacements that arrived were largely older men and teenagers with little training. So worried was General der Panzertruppe Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, the German XIV Corps commander, that he decided to risk the wrath of Kesselring and Hitler, and made one more personal appeal to withdraw. “This proposal,” von Senger noted tersely in his diary, “was not approved.” By doggedly defending the Gustav Line, Kesselring was committing his troops to ever more sacrifice – and for no tangible long-term benefit. Whatever the shortcomings of the overall German approach, the situation at Monte Cassino was being bolstered. Reinforcements were hurriedly sent forward, including the 90 Panzergrenadier Division and First Fallschirmjäger (Airborne) Division. Sent to take command was General Ernst-Günther Baade, a highly intelligent, experienced and skilful leader. Baade immediately organised the defence of Monte Cassino far more effectively. He created two linked rings of defence, rather like a figure of eight, with Point 593 where the two circles met. This meant that, should it be overrun, heavy fire could be directed on the attackers from each side, allowing the defenders to quickly retake it. Manning machine guns and mortars effectively required some skill and training, but the key was to avoid giving up ground and to keep firing. The newly arrived Fallschirmjäger, though hideously understrength, were ideally placed to do this, with enough experienced warriors to ensure that the under-trained teenage replacements could provide stout defence. Among those now defending Point 593 were Major Rudolf Kratzert and his Third Battalion of the Third Fallschirmjäger Regiment, which reached Monte Cassino with just 236 troops rather than the 1,000 he should have been commanding. (It was one of his men who walloped Ralph Schaps.) Time and again, the Red Bulls tried to take Point 593 and the parallel Phantom Ridge and Colle d’Angelo. Every time, they were pushed back. Down in the valley, US commanders reckoned that one more push would do it – but they had no idea of Baade’s defensive system, and could not see how these narrow ridgelines were canalising the attackers. Rather than attacking on a broad front and overwhelming the enemy, the Americans were forced to inch forward companies of 100 or fewer men across bare rock, while being mown down by mortars, grenades and machine guns. The Red Bulls were rapidly running out of steam. So General Sir Harold Alexander, the Allied Army Group Commander, created the New Zealand Corps comprising men from the New Zealand Second Division, Fourth Indian Division and British 78th Division. Leading that new force was New Zealand Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg VC, the most senior divisional commander, who had already briefly led a corps in Tunisia. He’d won his Victoria Cross on the western front during the First World War, but he was no great intellect – and, compounding this deficiency, he’d been given no corps staff. Read more | Operation Mincemeat: how a corpse duped Hitler and got the Allies onto Sicily Political sensitivities As General Clark quickly discovered, Freyberg had been horribly over-promoted. Yet the Fifth Army commander’s hands were tied because of political sensitivities. The New Zealanders represented a British dominion, and were punching significantly above their weight in the war. There were also morale problems. Some 6,000 Kiwi veterans of the North Africa campaign had been sent home on furlough – only to discover that large numbers of their compatriots had avoided the draft. Most of these experienced soldiers refused to return for a second stint until those exempted had done their first. News of this mutiny spread to New Zealanders in Italy, and Clark had been warned to tread carefully. Freyberg’s shortcoming shouldn’t have been an issue, because commanding the Fourth Indian Division was the extremely able Major-General Francis Tuker, a soldier who could provide the strategic thinking that Freyberg lacked. Having arrived at the front ahead of Freyberg, Tuker soon realised that the only rational option was to abandon the Monte Cassino massif and to instead attack farther north. There the ground was higher but wider and less scored with gulleys, fissures and narrow ridges. It was also significantly less well defended. Tuker additionally suggested mounting a crossing of the Rapido where the Texans had earlier attempted, but this time with properly planned fire support (which the Texans had, inexplicably, not used). Freyberg readily supported these suggestions – then disaster struck: Tuker was hit by a crippling bout of rheumatoid arthritis, and had to be taken to hospital. Left without Tuker’s strategic vision, the easily swayed Freyberg was influenced by the views of the US II Corps commander General Geoffrey Keyes and General Charles ‘Doc’ Ryder, commanding the Red Bulls, who both questioned Tuker’s plans. Neither had been on the mountain, and were unaware of the situation on the ground. Freyberg was persuaded to continue the assault on the Monte Cassino massif. When Tuker learned of this change of tack, he forced himself from his hospital bed to plead with Freyberg – but found the New Zealander deaf to his arguments. Tuker pointed out the problems of troops attacking along narrow ridges, and suggested that the only way to break the German defences was with an overwhelming bombardment of the entire massif using high-capacity 2,000lb and 4,000lb ‘bunker buster’ bombs. Among other things, this would be necessary to destroy the tall, thick stone walls of the ancient Benedictine abbey perched at the end of the massif, which the Allies believed housed a German observation post. “The 1,000lb bomb,” Tuker told Freyberg in a follow-up note, “would be next to useless to effect this.” Heavy four-engine bombers were needed, not fighter-bombers, and the bombing should be carefully co-ordinated with an immediate infantry attack to follow. “The essence of the bombardment,” Tuker added, “should be its obliterating weight, suddenness and duration and the immediate continuance of the bombing by artillery bombardment and infantry attack early in the night under the artillery bombardment.” Read more | Mussolini's willing followers? The Italians devoted to Fascism and the duce Fatal misunderstanding Tuker’s intention had been to shock Freyberg into readopting his original plan. Instead, the New Zealander headed to Clark’s command post, where he demanded an air assault using single-prop ‘Kittybombers’ and 1,000- pounders to destroy the abbey. How Freyberg could have so badly misunderstood Tuker’s suggestions is hard to fathom: the latter had followed up his personal visit, conducted in acute pain, with written instructions so that there was no chance of mistaking his very specific plans. Clark was, understandably, opposed to destroying the abbey for what seemed to him to be no good reason. The way Freyberg presented it, there was no co-ordinated plan involving the infantry or the destruction of other German positions on the massif. Moreover, the historic site was originally founded in the sixth century, and the Allies aimed to portray themselves as liberators, not cultural vandals. Clark appealed to Alexander, who backed Freyberg. Had Freyberg been American, it’s clear, Clark would have kicked this plan into the long grass. The bombing itself was a catastrophe. The Fourth Indian Division was delayed in getting onto the mountain, because so many of the surviving Red Bulls had to be carried back down, and because different ammunition had to be brought up. In addition, in Tuker’s absence his command had passed to Brigadier Dimoline, the division’s artillery commander, who had neither the experience nor the strength of character to impose himself. Having finally ascended onto the massif, the Fifth Indian Brigade discovered that – despite being told otherwise – Point 593 was still in German hands, and hatched plans to capture it first in a preliminary assault on the night of 15 February. That morning, however, without any warning from Freyberg or anyone else, they learned that the bombers would arrive to unleash their loads at any moment. There was to be no co-ordination between air and ground forces. The strategic air forces had a weather window and a gap in action elsewhere, so flew over quickly, dropping a handful of 1,000-pounders but mostly 500-pounders – far less powerful than the bombs that Tuker had insisted would be necessary. True, the abbey was destroyed, leaving a shattered wreck of tumbling debris and killing hundreds of civilians sheltering there – though not, it seems, a single German. But when the First Royal Sussex tried to take Point 593 that night, they failed. So did a subsequent attack the following night and, with it, the chance of swiftly clearing Monte Cassino. The Germans held firm in their figure-of-eight positions, with the Fourth Indian Division, supported by the Texans on their right flank, holding the Allied half of the massif. A subsequent German counter-attack in Italy – Operation Fischfang, launched on 16 February at Anzio on the coast between Cassino and Rome – was thwarted by the Allies. This only served to re-emphasise the challenges of launching a successful offensive in this inhospitable terrain during a savage winter. Alexander thus decided to wait for better weather before the next push, and to bring both the Eighth Army – mainly on the Adriatic flank of Italy – and Fifth Army side by side, to hammer German supply lines with air power and then to strike along a broad front once he had built up overwhelming strength. Read more | The thorns in Mussolini’s side: the anti-Fascists who opposed the Italian regime Alexander was, though, persuaded to make one more attempt on Monte Cassino and at capturing the town below. Rain fell solidly for more than three weeks, so the attack was not launched until 15 March. Freyberg was still in place – a situation that Clark, much to his frustration, was unable to change, such were Allied politics. This time, Freyberg insisted on obliterating Cassino town with the same weight of bombs and shells Tuker had suggested for the mountain above. The town was destroyed but, instead of sending in overwhelming numbers of tanks and infantry immediately after, as Clark had instructed, a couple of battalions carefully inched into the town from one direction only. Overnight, the Germans reinforced – and the chance to sweep through the town was lost. What followed was a brutal attritional battle amid the ruins. After this debacle, the New Zealand Corps was finally dissolved and Freyberg posted away from the immediate firing line. With the arrival of spring, the ground hardened. Alexander was able to bring his two armies side by side and, with the advantages in men and materials he had always wanted, on the night of 11 May he launched Operation Diadem. Monte Cassino fell on 18 May to the Polish II Corps in what was their first battle. It was the Poles, after their initial assault had failed, who finally discovered the secret of the figure-of-eight defences. Once Monte Cassino was taken, the entrance to the strategically vital Liri Valley – and the route to the capital – was secured, and the Allies pushed rapidly north. Rome fell on 4 June. Diadem was a great Allied victory – an operation that showed what could be achieved when skies were cleared, the ground was dry, and commanders had time to plan and prepare properly. Yet it is the earlier setbacks, and especially the images of the shattered abbey and the utterly obliterated town below, that continue to define the campaign in Italy, rather than the enormity of the victory two days before D-Day. The tragedy is that these dark stains on the campaign were so very avoidable. This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Hell in Italy: the Allies' hardest fight of WW2?
The Allied invasion of Italy in 1943 was envisaged as a swift push on Rome. Yet, as James Holland explains, by the end of the year, the campaign was stymied by German defences far from the capital
Jerry sending shells over. Deathly chatter of machine-guns. Rumbling of falling buildings.” Major Roy Durnford, padre of the Canadian Seaforth Highlanders, was writing his diary in a church in what remained of Ortona, a small town midway down Italy’s Adriatic coast. Ortona was by then a smashed wreck, as was the countryside immediately to the south. Just a few weeks earlier, this had been a lush region of vineyards and peaceful olive groves. Now it was a hell of churned-up mud, vines and tree stumps punctuated by scores of dead, bloated bodies, shattered buildings, grotesquely torn metal and blackened tank hulks. It was Christmas Day, 1943. Durnford recorded those observations more than three months after Allied forces had launched their invasion of Italy with landings in Calabria and at Salerno, on the west coast, south-east of Naples. They had confidently expected to be masters of Rome by now, and for the front line to be at least 50 miles north of the capital. Yet even adjusted ambitions had not been met. Two days later, on 27 December, the wreck of Ortona would finally be taken – still some way south of Pescara, the revised year-end target for the British Eighth Army. Meanwhile, on the west coast, the Fifth Army – a multinational force of US, British and French troops under the command of US general Mark Clark – was also struggling to make much headway. At the beginning of November, it had come up against the first of two formidable German defensive lines. The Bernhardt Line – or Winter Line, as the Americans called it – across the peninsula was strongest at one of the very few routes through the mountains. This was the Mignano Gap, through which ran a railway line and the Via Casilina – Highway 6 – from Naples to Rome. The long, low saddle of Monte Lungo sat in this gap, flanked by Monte Sammucro and Monte Camino standing sentinel like monstrous gate guardians, the former soaring well over 1,000m. Either side of these loomed a phalanx of yet more mountains – huge, forbidding, seemingly impassable. The Bernhardt Line had finally been broken 10 days before Ortona fell – but only after brutal and costly battles fought over the summits of Camino and Sammucro. On the lower slopes of Sammucro, the village of San Pietro – largely untouched and unchanged in centuries – lay more ruined even than Ortona. Behind them, all the way from Salerno, the Allies left a trail of destruction in their wake as their typhoon of steel ripped through the region. Towns and villages crumbled to ruins; the ground was poisoned with mines, booby traps and unexploded ordnance; and refugees were constantly on the move. Neither the German defenders nor the Allied attackers were trained in mountain warfare, yet this was the terrain in which they had been fighting. The soil was thin or non-existent; this harsh, unyielding ground exacerbated the shattering effects of shellfire and mortars, and created thousands of razor-sharp rock splinters that were sprayed on troops along with shrapnel during explosions. It was also freezing cold, with near-constant rain and a merciless, biting wind. After the Bernhardt Line was finally broken, Fifth Army came up against another firmly bolted door: the even-stronger Gustav Line. As the new year dawned, the Allies would have to take a deep breath, square their shoulders and start again. Rome was still 70 miles away. Reversal of fortune So why had the Allies’ situation, which had earlier looked so promising, spiralled so badly over the previous four months? It was a gloomy end to a year that had earlier brought glittering successes. May had seen the Allies defeat Axis forces in Tunisia – an immense victory that had followed the Soviet annihilation of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. The U-boats had been defeated in the Atlantic, so the Allies could now plan future operations, certain that most of their shipping would safely reach its destination. In March, RAF Bomber Command had launched its all-out strategic air campaign, pummelling the industrial heartland of the Ruhr region in western Germany and, in late July, largely destroying Hamburg, the Reich’s second city. The Germans had also been pushed back at Kursk, south of Moscow, and were in retreat along the eastern front. In the Mediterranean, the Allies had launched an amphibious invasion of Sicily on 10 July, conquering the island in just 38 days. Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy, had been overthrown. Meanwhile, though, the demands of a global war were growing. The cross-Channel invasion, at the time planned for May 1944, was to be the primary theatre and therefore the priority for resources. The war against Japan was also being fought concurrently, demanding vast amounts of shipping. Operations in the Mediterranean were important, but deemed to play second fiddle following the successful end of the campaign in Sicily. Even so, in August 1943 there were good reasons for following up the capture of Sicily with an invasion of mainland Italy. It would unquestionably help to force Italy out of the war, meaning that there would be one less enemy to deal with. But it would also force the Germans to either abandon Italy, the Balkans and Greece, or to occupy those areas with troops drawn from the eastern and western fronts. And the Germans would be certain to do that, because the Romanian city of Ploiești, close to Yugoslavia, was Germany’s only source of real oil. Hitler was not willing to risk losing such a precious asset. A further very good reason for invading Italy was to swiftly capture the complex of airfields around Foggia, a rare area of flat ground in the south-east of the country from where heavy bombers could further tighten the noose around Nazi Germany. There was, though, a big snag: the shortage of shipping. Already, huge numbers of landing craft had been withdrawn; though plenty of troops were in place, the shipping wasn’t available to support them properly – and certainly not for a major amphibious landing in a region far more strongly defended by German troops than Sicily had been. A Rubicon had been crossed, however. On 17 August, the Combined Chiefs of Staff – the Allies’ supreme military leadership body – had decided to invade mainland Italy, even if it meant doing so with a fraction of the forces that had been available for Sicily. Negotiations had begun with Italian representatives about a surrender, and it was hoped that the Italians would help to diffuse any German response to an invasion. Allied leaders had also latched onto old – and spurious – intelligence suggesting that Hitler planned to retreat to a line some 150 miles north of Rome. The sensible, methodical, materiel-heavy approach that had worked so well for the Allies over the previous year was now abandoned in favour of an extremely high-risk operation based on a number of assumptions – and which had no guarantee of bearing fruit. Confusion and mistrust To make matters worse, confusion and mutual mistrust surrounded the announcement of the armistice on 8 September (it had been agreed five days earlier with an Italian delegation at Cassibile on Sicily). The Italians, riven by internal factions and the self-interest of their king, had expected it to come later, and were not ready. Their entire army was swiftly disarmed with clinical efficiency by the Germans, who had anticipated Italian surrender. Hitler had been intending to pull back to the north, and had been preparing to issue orders to that effect on 9 September – the very day that Mark Clark’s Fifth Army landed at Salerno. Instead, the 16th Panzer Division met the landings, and were swiftly joined by five further divisions and elements of a sixth. There would be no hasty withdrawal north of Rome after all. Salerno, then, was a close-run thing. The Allies were saved by overwhelming air and naval power, but also by heroic fighting on the ground by initially just three divisions, joined by US and British divisions landed in the first days after the initial assault. Clark performed very well indeed, considering he had never commanded an army in battle before, and the woefully under-resourced situation in which he found himself. He’d last commanded troops in battle in 1917, as a junior officer, yet at Salerno he directed his meagre forces with cool-headed bravery and imperturbable leadership, making the most of the bad hand he’d been dealt. Meanwhile, the British Eighth Army had earlier landed a small force on the very toe of Italy, with more troops arriving after the swift capture of Taranto, Brindisi and Bari. Incredibly, the south-east of Italy was taken with barely a fight. Foggia – the single most important location south of Rome – was captured on 27 September. As a result, three of the four aims of the Italian campaign had been won by the Allies in just three weeks: Italy was out of the war; some 50 German divisions were either now in or heading towards the southern front; and the Allies had their airfields. Strategic bombers would be operating from southern Italy as soon as they were ready. An attacker’s nightmare By early October, then, only Rome still eluded the Allies. But as they pushed north – Eighth Army through the central southern and Adriatic coast, Fifth Army through Naples and on to the Volturno river – the awful reality of fighting through this mountainous country became clear. With its vast mountains, endless rivers running towards the sea (against the Allied advance northwards) and poor road network, Italy was a defender’s dream – and an attacker’s nightmare. The weather added to the misery. The campaign had been planned in the heat of August beneath azure-blue skies, but at the beginning of October the clouds opened. “Rained some,” scribbled Bud Wagner, a US artilleryman in the 34th Division, on 2 October. “Rained again,” he added two days later. “Are in a muddy spot.” The rain barely stopped for the rest of the year. Italy was not a suitable arena for mechanised armies equipped with thousands of vehicles. The Germans blew up any infrastructure that could be used by the Allies – roads, bridges, buildings, power plants, rail networks – and laid a web of mines and booby traps. The pace of the Allied advance slowed. Mission creep also played a part. Originally, six heavy bomber groups were to be sent to Foggia; by the end of November, this number had grown to 21. That required thousands of personnel, as well as vast amounts of fuel, ammunition and spares – not to mention aircraft. This build-up had to compete with ground forces for the ever-diminishing amounts of shipping. Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and the Combined Chiefs became increasingly frustrated with the status in Italy. Blame has since largely been aimed at General Sir Harold Alexander, the overall Allied field commander; General Bernard Montgomery of Eighth Army; and Clark of Fifth Army. But they were doing the best they could with grossly insufficient supplies for the task. If anyone was to blame for the slowing of the campaign, it was the Combined Chiefs. “Once undertaken, the operation must be backed to the limit,” said General George C Marshall, US chief of staff, back in May 1943. But Marshall had not followed his own sage advice. Fighting every step It was the men on the ground – above all the infantry – who suffered the most. Fighting in conditions for which they’d not been properly trained and with insufficient support, they took enormous casualties. Infantry battalions rarely operated at full strength, were kept in the front line longer than reasonable, and suffered privations not previously experienced by Allied troops in Europe. It was miserable for the Germans, too. Kesselring had won Hitler’s support and backing, but that brought the führer’s full gaze to bear on his efforts – and that meant fighting for every step. Yet Foggia had already been ceded without a shot and, militarily, fighting south of Rome instead of gradually retreating north to the Pisa–Rimini Line made little sense. Kesselring was able to keep his show on the road only by sacrificing entire divisions while fire-fighting and plugging holes with mixed-up troops from other units. Meanwhile, the poor Italian civilians caught up in this maelstrom witnessed the destruction of their homes and livelihoods – and many lost their lives. As the year advanced, so the Allied campaign slowed and the misery of those caught up in the battle spiralled. At Ortona, the young Canadian officer Farley Mowat was struggling badly with combat fatigue. He’d narrowly avoided death on several occasions, even being blasted by a shell onto the rotting corpse of a dead German. “Too difficult trying to find the sense and meaning in any of this,” he wrote in a letter home. “Pray God we get a decent break.” He was not going to get one any time soon. The first phase of the Allied invasion had ground to a halt, stymied by bad weather, harsh terrain, resource limitations and planning problems. The next few months would be pivotal in determining its success, or otherwise. For now, though, the situation was dire – on both sides. “Plague of lice and fleas,” noted Major Georg Zellner, a battalion commander in the German 44th Infantry Division, on 29 December. “Dead and wounded by mines. The artillery fire continues with its monotonous regularity... The suffering is great.” His 9th Company received a direct hit the following day, killing and wounding more men. That night, Zellner slept fitfully, then woke and thought of home. “Outside,” he jotted, “rides death.” LIBERATION V DEVASTATION James Holland on the moral dilemmas surrounding the destructive Allied assault “Our cause,” concluded US general Mark Clark at a pre-invasion conference, “is a righteous one.” Yet that ‘righteous cause’ came at a terrible cost for Italy. Al- ready, much of Sicily lay in ruins, as did many towns and cities in mainland Italy. And the situation was only going to get worse. “Today every step reveals to me a show of misery and devastation,” wrote Filippo Caracciolo in his diary a couple of weeks later, on 16 September, following his return to Naples. “Collapsed houses, cluttered streets of rubble, piles of garbage.” A few weeks more down the line, the British 56th Heavy Regiment, Royal Artil- lery, was just south of the Volturno river. “We are at present shelling villages by the river,” noted RSM Jack Ward. All of the towns and villages his regiment passed through had been damaged, with some largely obliterated. A key strategy for the Allies during the Second World War was ‘steel not flesh’ – using technology and mechanisation to avoid the slaughter of a generation of young men that had happened in the previous conflict of 1914–18, placing much emphasis on aerial bombing and firepower. It was still brutally dangerous for the ‘poor bloody infantry’ but, crucially, there were now significantly fewer of them than there had been a generation earlier. Broadly speaking, the policy worked well, especially in the sparsely populated deserts of North Africa. Italy, however, was home to 40 million civilians, and – from 3 September 1943 – no longer in the war. The Allies were supposed to be the liberators, yet they were destroying much of the country they were fighting through. This posed a terrible dilemma. Did the Allies still hold the moral high ground if they were bringing so much death and destruction to those who were not their ene- my? Their main priority, they reasoned, was to win the war as quickly as possible, minimising casu- alties among their own troops. If that meant destroying Italian towns and lives, then so be it. The morality of the cause, however, was unquestionably becoming murkier as they inched their way up the leg of Italy. James Holland is a historian, broadcaster and writer. His new book, The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy 1943, was published in September 2023 by Transworld This article was first published in the November 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine
D-Day quiz: how much do you know about the Normandy Landings?
How much do you know about the Normandy landings? Test your knowledge of D-Day with this quiz written by military historian James Holland
View Riddle on the source website How did you score? Share your result on social media to see how your knowledge compares with other HistoryExtra readers! Learn more about D-Day Your guide to D-Day: what happened? The road to D-Day: the masterplan What happened after D-Day? D-Day: the WW2 battle through the eyes of the men who were there
The battle for Sicily: breaking into Fortress Europe
The invasion of Sicily in 1943 marked the Allies’ return to ‘Fortress Europe’ – and, despite hellish terrain and an obdurate enemy, ended in victory in just 38 days. So why, asks James Holland, is the operation chiefly remembered for its failings?
Listen to this article: The mountain-top town of Centuripe had proved a tough nut for the Allies to crack. The artillery had been forced to advance, completely exposed, to near the foot of the town, dodging enemy shelling and navigating the smashed road in search of somewhere to deploy that offered even a modicum of cover. Once they had finally done so, however, they were able to give the attacking infantry the support they needed, and by late on 3 August 1943 the town had fallen. The 3. Fallschirmjäger [Paratroop] Regiment then pulled back, down into the Salso Valley and up to the next town of Adrano – ready to do it all over again. Major Peter Pettit, second-in-command of the 17th Field Artillery Regiment, had the unenviable task of trying to work out how he was going to get all 24 of his 25-pounder field guns up to Centuripe, down the other side and then repeat the gruelling ordeal they had just gone through. Centuripe itself was old, smashed about and, with tiny, twisted streets, not suited to large Quad gun-tractors towing an ammunition limber and the gun itself. And these behemoths were competing with a further 80-odd guns of various sizes, as well as tanks, trucks and other vehicles, that all needed to pass through the town. Early in the morning of 4 August, Major Pettit and his opposite number in the 57th Field Artillery went down the only road leading out of Centuripe to try and work out how to achieve this logistical miracle. Winding, narrow and with numerous switchbacks, it was also in full view of the enemy, who had now dug in on the lower slopes of Mount Etna on the far side of the Salso Valley. Halfway down, a large part of the road had been destroyed, but it was too dangerous to repair in daylight; it would have to wait until dark. Recognising it was quite impossible to move until night fell, Pettit headed back up to Centuripe and then brought down reconnaissance parties to where he thought they should deploy that night. Once darkness had fallen, 6,000 rounds of ammo were brought down, and then the convoy of Quads and guns began rumbling down, nose to tail, before inching round a diversion hastily built by the engineers around a blown section of road and finally getting into position for first light. Pettit had had just two and a half hours sleep, but he was now forced to frantically try to get the guns in place and camouflaged as much as possible before the sun rose high enough to show their every movement. Three lorries following behind the guns were hit by enemy shelling and exploded. After days of bitter fighting, Allied infantry forced the enemy back from their positions at Centuripe – but these were just some of the challenges that were faced by those fighting in Sicily. Listen | James Holland tells the story of the dramatic Allied assault on the island of Sicily in the Second World War A Baedeker guide warned travellers never to visit the island in July or August, when temperatures were unbearably hot, yet those were the months in which the battle took place. “The sun became an implacable enemy,” noted the Canadian lieutenant Farley Mowat, “and our steel helmets became brain furnaces.” The island was also rife with malaria, dysentery and other debilitating diseases. “My brain swam,” recalled the American infantryman Audie Murphy, “and my internal organs rumbled. Finally, I could take it no longer. I fell out of the ranks, lay down on the roadside, and heaved until I thought I would lose my stomach.” There was little mains water outside of the cities, and many of the rivers were dry. In between were wide open plains and endless hills and mountains, linked by a narrow web of insufficient roads. Sicily was ideal for defence and a nightmare for any attacker, and yet the Allies took the island in just 38 days. Hustled out of the war July and August 1943 would prove a critical period in the war in southern Europe. Benito Mussolini was overthrown, Sicily subdued and a path paved for an invasion of mainland Italy. But despite these achievements, something of a black mark has remained against the assault on Sicily. Successive historians have condemned the Allies for the initial plan, their subsequent slow progress, and, finally, for allowing nearly 40,000 Germans to escape back across the Strait of Messina to reinforce the defence of the mainland. It’s time, however, that such a view was kicked very firmly into touch. The decision by the Allies to invade Sicily was initially made at the Casablanca conference in January 1943, a meeting between British and American war leaders to thrash out a strategy to win the war in the west. By this time, they knew they must surely win in north Africa, and although it had been agreed that they would attempt a cross-Channel invasion of France the following year, there were very good reasons for invading Sicily. It would mean Allied troops would once more be back on European soil; it would help hustle Italy out of the war (if north Africa did not achieve that strategic goal); and it would further tighten the noose around Nazi Germany. Considerable forces had been built up in north Africa and the Mediterranean, and they could not sit back and do nothing until the following spring. Despite complex deception plans, from incriminating bodies being dropped off the Spanish coast to sabotage operations in Greece – all engineered to suggest the Allies were going to invade Sardinia and Greece – simple logic pointed to Sicily. Certainly, this was what Mussolini and the Italian war leaders thought, and it was what Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the German commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, also believed. Operation Mincemeat: how a corpse was used to dupe Hitler ahead of the invasion of Sicily The idea that Sicily was the obvious next target was based on the simple fact that command of the air over the invasion front was a pre-requisite for any amphibious invasion. This meant not only having bombers available but fighter aircraft too, which would be needed to fly protective high cover. The presence of Allied air bases on Malta and in northern Tunisia meant this could be only effectively achieved over Sicily: Sardinia and Greece were simply too far away. Planning for Husky, codename for the invasion of Sicily, began immediately after the Casablanca conference, but by the time a plan for the assault was agreed upon, it had already gone through eight different variations. The ninth iteration of the plan was accepted on 3 May 1943. It was a mind-bogglingly complex operation and drawn up while having absolutely no idea what the enemy reaction would be, or in what strength German units might be sent to Sicily. Italian forces had fought well in Tunisia and had held up the Eighth Army very effectively at Enfidaville (in north-east Tunisia) in April 1943. There was a concern that they might fight even harder on Sicily, since they would now be doing so on Italian soil. The Germans, they knew, would fight determinedly. Read more | All you need to know about Hitler's planned invasion of Britain, Operation Sealion And the shape of Sicily and the location of airfields and ports, which were spread around the island, was another thorny matter. Somehow, the Allies needed to get 6,000 tonnes a day ashore, even though most of the island’s ports would not be available. The air commanders wanted troops to swiftly capture the airfields on the west, south and south-east all at once. On the other hand, the army wanted to land on as narrow a front as possible and quickly build up supplies from there. In other words, the differing Allied forces had entirely contradictory requirements. In the end, a compromise was agreed. The British and Canadians would land on the south-east coast and head straight to the ports of Syracuse, Augusta and then Catania, and from there on to Messina as quickly as possible, while the Americans would land on the central southern stretch around Gela. It meant the airfields there and in the southeast could be captured swiftly, but not those in the west. Air power alone would have to deal with those. Control of the air For all the various planning drafts, there was no doubt that the one decided upon was the best in the circumstances and the one that gave the Allies the best chance of success. Nor should the Allied planners be criticised for the final plan’s evolution when developing an operation so complex; most major offensive operations in the war – from the German attack in the west in 1940 to Overlord, the invasion of Normandy – went through a number of drafts. As it happened, many of the concerns raised during planning were resolved by the start of the operation, not least because Allied air power before – and during – the invasion was spectacularly effective. This moment in the war saw the emergence of a new, sophisticated marriage of overwhelming Allied air power working together with naval and land power. Bombers pummelled airfields, railways and lines of supply in Sicily but also far beyond as well, while fighters engaged enemy planes. By 10 July 1943, the Axis air forces had been largely neutralised. In fact, over the summer, the Luftwaffe lost 3,504 aircraft in the Mediterranean. By comparison, they lost 702 on the eastern front. The Allied dominance certainly ensured that, when the invasion was launched, the threat from enemy airfields in the west of the island was considerably reduced. Read more | 8 reasons why the Luftwaffe didn’t stand a chance of beating the RAF in the Battle of Britain Such success in the air was not so certain at the time of planning. The most important factor at this stage of the war was to ensure the landings were successful. There could be no reverses. It also meant that General Alexander (army group commander for Tunisia, Sicily and then Italy) agreed with Bernard Montgomery (commander of the Eighth Army) to land as many troops as possible to ensure a bridgehead was quickly established and that no effective attempt to repel them could be mounted. That too, however, involved even more compromises, because for all the impressive build-up of troops and supplies in the Mediterranean, there was still a limit to how much shipping and landing craft was available. Large numbers of troops could only be landed at the expense of large numbers of vehicles – the kind of vehicles that would then transport troops quickly up to Catania and beyond. In the end, 160,000 men were dropped or landed – more than on D-Day the following year – along with 14,000 vehicles and supported by 2,590 vessels and 3,462 aircraft. Bloated bodies As events turned out, the British landings were easier than had been feared. But Allied caution was entirely justified when mounting an operation of such scale, and when the cost of failure was simply unthinkable. Better to play safe than risk an upset that could have set the war back many months, if not longer. There was a consequence, however. Because of the front-loading of troops, there was not enough motor transport to take the leading British units swiftly north. Rather, troops had to march north on foot, in sweltering heat, until transport could arrive in numbers over the following days – and going by foot, of course, took a lot longer than advancing by motorised transport. In the meantime, the Germans on Sicily had been reinforced and resistance was, as a result, considerably stiffer. Nonetheless, the very real jeopardy that Husky would end in failure outweighed the necessity to move north towards Catania and Messina quickly. The ponderous pace at which the Allies advanced has clouded their effort in Sicily ever since. As Italian resistance crumbled, the Germans were able to both substantially reinforce and regain their balance, falling back on a succession of defensive lines that initially ran west-east and which then covered the narrowing north-east corner. First the Catania Plain and then successive hilltop towns became scenes of brutal fighting. “The bodies are bloated,” wrote a German called Hanns Cibulka, “flies squat on the blood-crusted uniforms.” Read more | WW2 timeline: 20 important dates and milestones you need to know The Primosole Bridge in the Catania Plain was a particularly deadly choke-point. Lieutenant David Fenner of the 6th Durhams jotted: “The air was thick with the stench of rotting bodies, explosives, smoke and lemons, the citrus scent heavy from the shredding the groves had received.” It was not far from here that the legendary England cricketer Hedley Verity was mortally wounded, leading a failed attack against the German Hauptkampflinie (main line of defence). West and north of the plain, British, American and Canadian troops were forced to prise the Germans from one hilltop town after another, each a Herculean struggle, and each leaving the towns pummelled into rubble, with homes destroyed and civilians killed, wounded or turned into refugees. They were doing this, however, as quickly as supplies and the terrain allowed. The heat, the mountains, the narrow and often primitive roads, as well as the challenges of supply, disease and the casualties among front-line troops, all mitigated against a battle of rapid manoeuvre. Meanwhile, the Germans were struggling with ever-weakening air support, supply shortages and declining morale as it became increasingly clear that the island was lost. The battle being fought had become one of buying time. By the beginning of August, the Hauptkampflinie had been smashed, and the Americans at Troina and the British at Centuripe faced the next defensive lines. Firepower ground down the Germans, but it was the infantry, fighting on thin soil, and often exposed, that had to slug it out the hard way. Finally, by the second week of August, the Germans had fallen back behind Etna, but the tapering of the northeast of the island allowed them to hold ever-shortening defensive lines while the bulk began evacuating. Although 39,569 Germans and 62,000 Italians escaped, only 25,000 of the Germans that left the island were fighting troops, and their four divisions on Sicily had been appallingly mauled. This escape has been nevertheless one of the biggest causes of Allied criticism. Yet the history of the war shows that evacuations were generally pretty successful. At Dunkirk, 338,000 Allied troops escaped; 42,000 out of 46,000 British troops deployed were evacuated from Greece in 1941. That same year, nearly 19,000 of the 32,000 Allied troops on Crete were also evacuated. And at the end of the war, more than 2 million Germans were successfully evacuated from East Prussia and Danzig at a time when the Red Army was bearing down upon them. None of these evacuations took place at such a short crossing point as the Strait of Messina, which was little more than a mile wide, nor at a spot that was more densely defended: there were 333 anti-aircraft guns either side of the strait (compared with 135 along the Normandy coastline the following summer). It was impossible to stop them, and their escape made almost no difference to the Italian campaign that followed. To stand today at the top of Centuripe, or any of the other mountain-top towns over which these bitter battles took place, is to marvel at how anyone managed to fight there at all. That they did so – in the first combined Allied assault of Fortress Europe – and managed to succeed at all was a remarkable achievement, and it should be remembered and better commemorated as such. James Holland is an author and broadcaster. His books include Sicily‘43: The First Assault on Fortress Europe (Bantam Press, September 2020) This content first appeared in the January 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine
From the Sahara to Europe’s frozen borderlands, the Sherwood Rangers were at the very heart of the fight against Nazi Germany. James Holland recounts this regiment’s extraordinary road to victory
A little after 6am on 18 November 1944, Operation Clipper – the battle to smash wide open the defences in the German border town of Geilenkirchen – erupted in a blaze of fire and fury. The plan was for four flail tanks, with their rotating chains, to clear two lanes through the minefields and for the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry – a British armoured regiment in the vanguard of the Allied assault on Germany – to follow and clear the bunkers. American infantry, only arrived in Europe in October and never before tested in combat, would then pour through and, together with the British armour, further clear the Siegfried Line, the enormous defensive network that guarded Germany’s western border. Allied artillery was already thundering, sending over a heavy barrage, while searchlights had been brought in to help light the way, a double-edged sword if ever there was one. Conditions were appalling: the freezing cold, the dark, the rain – which inevitably worked its way into the tank because the hatches were open. Periscopes were ineffective at the best of times but especially when streaked with rain, which meant Major John Semken, the squadron commander, had his head out of the turret of his Sherman tank, and so did Johnny West, his driver. The first flail tank to approach the minefield broke down in the mud before it had even started. Soon after, a second flail became bogged in the mud. This meant a path that was supposed to be four tanks wide was now two. Then a third flail became stuck and then the fourth, some 50 yards short of a railway line that lay ahead. Semken, who was leading A-Squadron, had to reverse or push on regardless through the uncleared mines. He now radioed all of A-Squadron, 19 tanks in all. They had a job to do: to get through the minefield and help the infantry. He was going to push on. If they hit a mine, then the next tank was to take over and so on, until they were across the railway and the minefield. James Holland will be talking about One Legendary Tank Regiment's Bloody War from D-Day to VE-Day in a virtual HistoryExtra LIVE event on Thursday 11 October, at 7pm GMT. Find out more and book tickets Staccato explosion Everyone in Semken’s tank was tense as they inched forward through the mud, waiting for the explosion that would surely come. Ten yards gone, then another. Small-arms tracer stabbing through the dark, clattering around the tank. Then a massive staccato explosion that lifted the tank in the air and whammed it back down into the mud. Semken: was everyone all right? Yes. All answered. Incredibly, they had just detonated four mines simultaneously and survived. The Sherman, its tracks and wheels shattered, now lay in a big crater of mud. The rest of A-Squadron pressed on, crossed the railway and made surprisingly good progress along with the rookie American infantry. Despite the mire and carnage, Operation Clipper was a success, the Geilenkirchen salient reduced and the line straightened with more room for the Americans now to manoeuvre. Yet such success had come at a price. By the time the Sherwood Rangers were withdrawn six days later, 10 tanks had been destroyed, 15 damaged, and a further 12 lost forever in the mud. The human cost for the Sherwood Rangers was worse still: 63 casualties in all, including 16 killed in action and a further three who would later die of their wounds. That made 326 casualties since D-Day, which was comfortably more than 100 per cent of the regiment’s tank crews at any one time. “Everybody was going through the motions,” wrote Peter Mellowes, an A-Squadron troop commander, “of living, fighting and waiting for their time to die.” A further casualty was John Semken who, despite being back in a tank and commanding the squadron by 19 November, was soon sent home. “That was my last battle,” he said of Geilenkirchen. “I lost my touch after that... After that, I was finished. And I was invalided home.” He’d served throughout the north Africa campaign, and had then fought across western Europe since D-Day. He was just 23. Hard yards of fighting A huge amount was expected of the mostly young men who found themselves at the coal-face of war. Britain – and the United States – had a very sensible strategy of using their immense global reach, access to resources, industrialisation and technology to do as much of the hard yards of fighting as possible and to limit the numbers of men in the firing line. On the ground, there were no longer massed divisions of infantry, but those that did take the field were superbly well supported by a long logistical chain. That’s why 43 per cent of the personnel manning the British Second Army in north-west Europe were service troops running the long tail, while just 14 per cent were infantry. A consequence of this approach was that if a soldier was unfortunate enough to be in the infantry or tanks, his chances of surviving unscathed were worse than they had been in the First World War. The Sherwood Rangers ended the war with more battle honours than any other unit in the British Army, which was no small feat, having been a prewar territorial part-time cavalry outfit that had headed off to Palestine in early 1940 still with their horses. They became mechanised in the autumn of 1941, with their first tank action at the battle of Alam Halfa at the end of August that year. They then played a key role at Alamein and from then were at the forefront of the fighting until the north African campaign was over in May 1943. Tobruk: 8 facts about the WW2 confrontation in North Africa They were a somewhat eccentric bunch, initially mostly country folk from Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, but later expanded by a rich seam of characters drawn from all walks. Stanley Christopherson, for example, who joined the Sherwood Rangers in 1939 and rose to take command of the regiment soon after D-Day, had worked in goldmines in South Africa and then the City before the war; John Semken was a Londoner and planned to become a lawyer. The Sherwood Rangers had poets, printers and plasterers among their number. Men like Christopherson and Semken, who might never have worn a military uniform had it not been for the conflict, soon realised that war was a seriously bloody business and that the better they became, the greater their chances of survival. That, however, was only true to a point, because the more proficient they became in north Africa, so they were marked out as a class outfit good for greater things. By D-Day, on 6 June 1944, they were one of three tank regiments in 8th Independent Armoured Brigade, which meant they would be in the firing line, operating hand-in-hand with the infantry divisions to which they were attached. Listen | Military historian, author and broadcaster James Holland tells the story of the Sherwood Rangers Flush with weaponry The Sherwood Rangers landed on Gold Beach on D-Day, successfully moved inland, helped capture the city of Bayeux on 7 June, and then the following day pushed further south, taking a key piece of high ground, Point 103, which overlooked the river Seulles valley and the villages of Tilly, St Pierre and Fontenay. There they met the Panzer Lehr, possibly the most experienced panzer division in the west at that time, and the 12th SS-Panzer Division “Hitler Jugend”, both still flush with men and weaponry. On 11 June, tragedy struck when regimental headquarters, a farmhouse in St Pierre, received a direct hit, with the commanding officer among those killed. Taking over command was Stanley Christopherson, who immediately imposed a firm but more open style of leadership that allowed for tactical flexibility. The Sherwood Rangers were operating in terrain that was unfamiliar and for which they had little training. What’s more, they were fighting alongside infantry that was entirely new to combat and over whom they had absolutely no control. This flexible approach to tactics was embraced by the squadron leaders and not least John Semken, who, like Christopherson, had realised that the battlefront was no place for complacency. One of the principles Semken rammed home to all his crews was the need to fire first and keep firing. The Sherman might have thinner armour than a German Panther or Tiger, but its 75mm main gun was incredibly quick-firing for a tank. “It was absolutely vital that you shoot the first time you see any sort of target,” said Semken. “Shoot, shoot and keep shooting, because it may not do him any damage but it will discourage him.” Semken also decided to incorporate the squadron’s four Fireflies – Shermans fitted with a high-velocity 17-pounder anti-tank gun – into the Sherman troops. Instead of five troops of three, he made the change to four troops of four, with one Firefly in each. The idea was to use the Shermans to pummel a target and for the Firefly to deliver the killer shot. Despite rapidly evolving tactics, communication with the infantry remained an ongoing problem, while the No 19 radio set in the tanks was never as reliable as needed. A tank commander had to have his head out of the turret or else he was effectively blind. He had to communicate with his crew on the intercom and listen to the squadron radio net all the time. Timeline: The Sherwood Rangers’ remarkable campaigns 12 January 1940 The Sherwood Rangers leave England for Palestine with their horses July 1940 The regiment loses its horses and retrains as artillery April–July 1941 Half the regiment is deployed as gunners during the successful defence of Tobruk. The other half is involved in the battle for Crete August 1941 The Rangers’ training begins as an armoured regiment 31 August 1942 The regiment experiences combat in tanks for the first time at the battle of Alam Halfa in Egypt May 1943 The north African campaign ends in Allied victory December 1943 The Rangers return to the UK to train for D-Day 6 June 1944 D-Day sees the regiment landing on Gold Beach as a spearhead of the invasion of Europe 10–12 September 1944 The Rangers help British forces seize the Belgian city of Gheel following a bloody battle 17-25 September 1944 The regiment participates in Operation Market Garden, the failed attempt to establish a bridgehead in Germany 18–23 November 1944 Rangers tanks lead the assault on the German town of Geilenkirchen January–March 1945 The Rangers play a prominent role in Operation Blackcock and Operation Veritable as Allied forces forge east 26 March 1945 Sherwood Rangers cross the Rhine in Operation Plunder 5 May 1945 The war ends for the Sherwood Rangers. During the course of the conflict it has won 10 battle honours in north Africa and 18 in the 11 months from D-Day to VE Day Life and death decisions In Normandy it was summer time, so the days were long. After being pulled back from the fighting for the night, there was refuelling, rearming and briefings to attend. It was rare to get one’s head down before midnight and then they would be up again just a few hours later. It was physically and mentally draining. Troop leaders faced even more responsibility and squadron leaders yet more. There was just so much to think about, so much danger to face. Every decision made might be a matter of life and death. John Semken was so utterly exhausted when first pulled out of the line on 13 June that he slept 12 hours straight through despite artillery firing just a few hundred yards away. As the months rolled on, new challenges presented themselves. Shorter days arrived, but came with a dramatic fall in temperatures and rain, then snow and frost, and then rain again. Geilenkirchen nearly sank in the treacle of mud. Operation Blackcock, which aimed to straighten a salient near the river Roer on the German border in January 1945, was conducted in snow and freezing temperatures. Operation Veritable, the advance to the Rhine, was fought through flooded land and the smashed, bombed-out towns of Cleve and Goch. No sooner were the crews on top of one landscape and set of conditions than they faced another. It was relentless and the cost was appalling. An armoured regiment had around 700 men, of which 400 were support troops in the supply echelons and around 300 were actually in tanks in the three sabre squadrons – A, B and C – and the recce troop. Between D-Day and VE Day, the Sherwood Rangers lost 148 men killed and 299 wounded, a tally that amounted to 61 per cent of the entire regiment and 142 per cent of the total serving in tanks at any one time. Statistically, the chances of tank crews getting through unscathed were close to zero. Artillery and mortar fire, mines, panzerfaust strikes, machine guns, snipers, enemy tanks – danger lurked at every turn. Each tank was hit at some point, and whether those in the tank got out without injury, were hit as they escaped, or incinerated, was largely a matter of chance. Inevitably, it soon began to prey on the men’s minds. Ernie Leppard, an operator-loader, had to help pull out a fellow operator from the tank in front after it was hit in the final weeks of the war. The man had lost both his legs, while the others were shattered, dead and splayed about the turret. Leppard had joined the previous October. “And at that point,” he said, “I’d lost my nerve. I’d been all right up to then, but getting them out...” A sleigh and a tank Somehow, however, the Sherwood Rangers kept going, right until the very end, and never seemed to lose their innate humanity, either. The doors continued to revolve as men came and went but some, like Stanley Christopherson, battled on. In the snow and ice of Christmas 1944, he arranged for the men to lay on gifts for the local children in the Dutch border town of Schinnen. One of the officers dressed up as Father Christmas and a sleigh was found and towed by a tank. The men had saved up their sweet and chocolate rations, so these were then distributed. In February 1945, Christopherson noted spotting his first snowdrop. They ended their war on the morning of 5 May 1945 at the small village of Karlshöfen between Bremen and Hamburg, as German forces surrendered to Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. Theirs had been an extraordinary journey and their achievements enormous. The Sherwood Rangers were just one regiment, but their story can be seen as representative of almost any frontline Allied armoured unit serving in the final 11 months of the war in Europe. What they suffered and yet achieved remains truly awe-inspiring. Fire engines: Three tanks that powered the Rangers’ advance on Germany THE M4 SHERMAN, HIGHLY EFFECTIVE ON THE MOVE Some 49,000 Shermans were built in the United States, and numbers most definitely counted. It had a quick-firing main gun, two machine guns and, uniquely in the war, a gun stabilising gyro, which made it very effective on the move. Highly manoeuvrable, the Sherman was easy to maintain and reliable. It had many advantages despite thinner armour and a less powerful gun than the German Panther or Tiger. Its gun could still prove highly effective in the close ranges of north-west Europe: Sergeant George Dring’s crew, for example, knocked out two Panthers, one Tiger and two Panzer IVs on 26 June 1944 – all with their 75mm main gun. THE M3 AND M5, STUART A “HONEY OF A TANK” This light 16.5-tonne tank was also built in large numbers – 22,700 in all – and was fast and manoeuvrable. Although thinly armoured and equipped with only a 37mm main gun and machine gun, it was widely used for reconnaissance, the role for which the Sherwood Rangers employed it. Although officially called the “Stuart” by the British, most British and Commonwealth troops knew it as the “Honey”. This was because when it was first issued to British troops in north Africa, it was called a “honey of a tank” because it was so sweet to drive. THE FIREFLY, THE REGIMENT’S KILLER SHOT This was a Sherman adapted by the British to house the 17-pounder anti-tank gun, a weapon that exceeded even the German 88mm in terms of velocity. When armour-piercing discarding sabot (APDS) rounds were introduced in August 1944, the 17-pounder could fire them at a staggering 4,000 feet per second, compared with around 2,900 for the 88mm. The barrel was too long for the body of the tank and the gun fired with a very bright muzzle flash – two disadvantages – but it certainly packed a punch and the crews soon learned how to use them effectively. This article first appeared in the November 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine
8 reasons why the Luftwaffe didn’t stand a chance of beating the RAF in the Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain, the aerial campaign fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe from 10 July to 31 October 1940, was one of Britain's most important victories in the Second World War. But did the German air force have any chance of succeeding? Not at all, writes historian James Holland...
Insufficient radio communciations The Germans had far more sophisticated radar than the British but failed to use it. Radio communications once in the air were non-existent between fighters and bombers, leading to repeated confusion. There were no ground controllers as such, so that once on their way to England, the Luftwaffe were left with the pre-flight orders and nothing more. Otherwise, they were on their own. Confusion frequently ensued. Your guide to the Battle of Britain: how the RAF turned back the Luftwaffe The Battle of Britain (10 July – 31 October 1940) was the first major military campaign in history to be fought entirely in the air, described by Churchill as the RAF’s finest hour. What exactly happened, how was the battle won, and what did it mean for Hitler? Get the answers to these questions and more in our full guide to the Battle of Britain. Hitler had his own shortcomings Because of his background and lack of military command experience, Adolf Hitler’s geopolitical understanding was poor. He spent much of the summer of 1940 in a state of indecision, unsure what to do about Britain’s refusal to play ball. He mostly remained in his Bavarian retreat, and there was no joint-service planning or joined-up thinking in any way. The woman who gave birth for Hitler Intelligence was poor Luftwaffe intelligence was woeful and largely in the hands of Colonel ‘Beppo’ Schmid, who spoke no other languages, liked the bottle, and had barely been out of Germany. He was also a sycophant who told Göring what he wanted to hear rather than the reality. He massively underestimated British strength, and had no idea that the RAF was divided into three commands. Moustaches, Cossacks and an inland lighthouse: a brief history of the Royal Air Force There was an overdependence on dive-bombing The Luftwaffe high command were obsessed with dive-bombing and placed the future of bomber development with this in mind. Dive-bombing was fine when the Luftwaffe controlled air space and when attacking a fixed target, but as Dunkirk had shown, it wasn’t so effective when targets such as ships were moving or when British fighters were waiting to pounce. Over England, the Stukas were decimated and swiftly withdrawn. The 11 most significant battles of the Second World War A lack of home advantage If an RAF pilot was shot down, then provided he was uninjured, he could be flying again later that day. In contrast, if Luftwaffe aircrew came down over England, for them the war was over. British pilots were also treated like heroes whenever off-duty, whereas if a Luftwaffe pilot went to a French bar when off-duty, the chances were he’d be treated with cool contempt. Furthermore, Luftwaffe pilots had to cross the Channel to fight, and the fear of being lost and drowning increasingly played on their nerves. The Few: who exactly were the heroes of the Battle of Britain? Care for German pilots was insufficient One of the reasons that Fighter Command commander-in-chief Dowding was so worried about squadron strength dipping to 75 per cent was because he feared it would mean putting too much strain on his pilots. The Luftwaffe command had no such concerns, forcing their aircrew to fly and fly and keep flying. Unlike in Fighter Command, any kind of leave was rare and irregular. Combat fatigue was the result. How the RAF won the war Low aircraft production Aircraft production lagged badly behind that of Britain. In July 1940, for example, Britain produced 496 new single-engine fighters, while the figure for the Luftwaffe was just 240. It was a ratio that only worsened as the battle progressed. Complacency, shortage of materials, and increasingly chaotic staff procurement were to blame. Days of destiny: 5 key dates in the Battle of Britain The Luftwaffe was not a strategic air force The Luftwaffe was designed to support the army, and was highly effective at this role during the war’s early campaigns. As such, it was later called a tactical air force. Taking on the RAF, independently from ground forces, was a strategic rather than a tactical role – and one for which it had never trained. This article was first published in the July 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine
The real history that inspired WW2 film Greyhound
Set in 1942, at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, a World War Two film starring Tom Hanks tells the story of a newly-appointed naval captain heading to the front for the first time, tasked with commanding a convoy of 37 Allied ships across the treacherous North Atlantic while being hotly pursued by wolf packs of Nazi U-boats. Historian James Holland explores the real history that inspired Greyhound – based on C S Forester’s 1955 novel The Good Shepherd – and explains why the Battle of the Atlantic was the most vital campaign of the Second World War…
The mid-Atlantic, sometime in the winter of 1942. Commander George Krause has been on the bridge of his destroyer, the USS Keeling, for nearly 24 hours, locked in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a wolf pack of German U-boats – exactly how many is not clear. One U-boat was destroyed in the grey afternoon of the day before, and since then, Keeling and one other of Krause’s four-ship escort team – a Polish destroyer, the Viktor – have been pursuing another enemy sub without success, despite unleashing some 50 depth charges between them. It is freezing cold, the ice covering the surfaces and rails of the destroyer’s deck. Krause, having eaten barely half a sandwich and drunk only a couple of cups of coffee in that time, is utterly exhausted, cold, hungry and thirsty, but keenly aware he must keep going until they push through this screen of U-boats and get back within the range of Allied air cover. It means another long day ahead of them and already six ships in the convoy have been hit and destroyed. The responsibilities on the shoulders of this devout 42-year-old man are immense and he repeatedly has to make heart-wrenching choices. Should he pick up men in the freezing water or plough on and potentially save more? Every decision, calculation and educated guess regarding the enemy’s next move has potentially fatal consequences, not just for his own ship but for the entire convoy it is his task to protect. To add to the weight of his responsibility, this is his first transatlantic convoy. Yet by stint of his seniority of rank and age he is the ‘Comescort’ – the overall commander of the four-ship escort of a Canadian corvette, British and Polish destroyers, and his own in the United States Navy. It is at dawn, having been up all night, that Commander Krause conjures up a picture in his mind of an ideal convoy escort force: “With eight escort vessels and four destroyers a good job could be done,” he thinks, “and air cover.” But this was still 1942 and such forces were not yet available; he would have to make do with what he had. C S Forester’s The Good Shepherd The depiction is fictional, but it is brilliantly conveyed by the legendary historical thriller writer C S Forester. Although The Good Shepherd was published in 1955, some 10 years after the Second World War ended, Forester certainly did his research. The evocation of this one 48-hour moment in the Battle of the Atlantic is powerfully done, while the enormity of the decisions and the complexity of commanding a convoy escort is written with a nod to historical accuracy and detail that is second-to-none. How and when did the Second World War end? It’s something of a forgotten classic – or rather, it has been, although not one passed over by Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks, a self-confessed Second World War nut, who has used Forester’s book to write and star in a new film based on the novel called Greyhound. Hanks plays Commander Krause (in the film he is named Ernest, not George). View oEmbed on the source website It’s certainly a great subject for a movie and one that has been ignored for far too long by Hollywood, because the Battle of the Atlantic was an epic of drama and of strategic importance. In fact, it can be argued pretty convincingly that it was the most vital of all campaigns in the Second World War. The Battle of the Atlantic: the desperate WW2 campaign featured in Tom Hanks film Greyhound Why? All shipping in and out of Britain went through the Atlantic. Had the Atlantic been lost, so too would have Britain. There would have been no Mediterranean campaign, no D-Day, no VE Day or VJ Day. The vast, global supply chain upon which the Allies depended – the Soviet Union included – would have been cut, and with it the lifeline. What was the Battle of the Atlantic? In March 1941 Winston Churchill coined the phrase ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ to describe a six-year series of battles that opened on 3 September 1939 and did not conclude until the last day of the war. In a struggle for control of the sea lanes from Britain to the Americas, the Royal Navy and United States Navy were pitted against the German Kriegsmarine. Against the sea lanes, upon which depended Britain’s ability to feed and maintain itself in the war, Germany deployed U-boat submarines, surface raiders, mines and aircraft, says historian GH Bennett. The convoys of merchant ships were defended by a variety of armed escort vessels from makeshift ships like armed merchant cruisers and trawlers through to purpose-built corvettes, frigates and destroyers. From 1940 until 1943 the combat in the Atlantic hung in the balance. Yet, due in part to the fact that they were able to make better use of technical innovations than the enemy, from the middle of 1943 the Allies slowly gained the upper hand. The Battle of the Atlantic “was the longest, and perhaps strangest, clash of the Second World War” says GH Bennett, “one that would see British merchant seamen using kites and wire-carrying rockets in defence of their ships.” The campaign was a brutal one in which nearly 38,000 British sailors alone lost their lives, while a staggering 79 per cent of U-boat crewmen died. The Battle of the Atlantic was vital to the outcome of the Second World War. “The Atlantic was the route by which all resources came to Britain, without which the country would have collapsed,” says Jonathan Dimbleby. “Had we lost the battle, we wouldn’t have had enough weapons – nor the industrial capacity to make weapons – and American troops would not have been able to get across for D-Day. In fact, there wouldn’t have been a D-Day.” Read more about the Battle of the Atlantic It was why, from the outset, Britain devoted so much of its energy to winning this most critical of battlegrounds. New inventions came thick and fast, from the development of the cavity magnetron – which enabled the reduction in size of radar so that instead of vast masts it could be fitted onto a ship or aircraft – to rapid improvements in radio technology, stunning intelligence successes, and superbly orchestrated organisation. In fact, by the end of May 1941, Britain had reached a point where already it could no longer lose the battle, even though another two long years would follow before the U-boat threat in the Atlantic was defeated. Fortunately, before the war, Hitler favoured creating a large surface fleet rather than a sizeable submarine force, even though his warships could never hope to compete with the Royal Navy let alone the French or US navies, and despite the almost war-changing effect U-boats previously had in the First World War. As a result, the U-boat arm was just 3,000-men strong on the frontline when war broke out, and throughout 1940, when Britain was at its most vulnerable, there were never more than 13 U-boats operating in the Atlantic at any one time. In January 1941, there had been just six. It wasn’t nearly enough in so vast an ocean. Timeline: Germany and the Allies in the Atlantic August 1939 In preparation for hostilities, the German submarine fleet deploys into the North Sea, sinking its first ship a few hours after the outbreak of war with Britain June 1940 Capture of the French Atlantic ports gives Germany easy access to the North and South Atlantic Late 1940–1941 First ‘happy time’ of the U-boat arm as convoys sail with weak escorting forces January–June 1942 German submarines enjoy great success off the east coast of the United States March 1943 In a series of convoy battles German submarines threaten to overwhelm the escorting warships April–May 1943 Allies regain the initiative in the Atlantic, sinking more U-boats and losing fewer merchant ships Late 1943–1945 Long decline of the German submarine campaign From September 1941, the US Navy had joined the battle in the Atlantic despite having not yet declared war, although after the Japanese entry into the war that December, the mantle was for the most part handed back to the Royal Navy and the rapidly growing Royal Canadian Navy, while the US Navy focussed on the Pacific. Meanwhile, the U-boat fleet grew in number but suffered from faltering experience and equipment that had flat-lined. In contrast, the Allies continued to improve detection techniques and weaponry with a combination of ships and long-range aircraft operating from North America, Iceland and Britain. By early 1942, the U-boats had been pushed to the east coast of North and South America where there was no convoy system yet in place. A slaughter followed until convoys began to be introduced and the U-boats were pushed back into the mid-Atlantic. From ‘the hunters’ to ‘the hunted’ U-boats were more effective at night, when detection was harder, as they were also more efficient and faster when operating on the surface. This meant winter, when the nights were longer, provided richer pickings. Yet despite the incredibly vivid depiction of the convoy in the winter of 1942 in The Good Shepherd, U-boats were increasingly becoming the hunted rather than the hunters by this time. Although horrific battles were fought when convoys were successfully intercepted, in all more than 80 per cent of Allied convoys crossed the Atlantic entirely unscathed, and after a renewed effort in the first half of 1943, the Allies were able to finally defeat the u-boats by May 1943. That month, some 41 U-boats were sunk – a totally unsustainable number that led to their withdrawal. How important was the battle of the Atlantic to the outcome of WW2? Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s devastating conclusions: why December 1941 was the most important month of the Second World War The Battle of the Atlantic was a brutal one in which nearly 38,000 British sailors alone lost their lives, while a staggering 79 per cent of U-boat crewmen died – the worst of any part of the German armed services. Incredible deeds of heroism were carried out in the battle by both sides, and one that was often fought against a further enemy – the cruel Atlantic Ocean itself. The importance of this immense battle, and the extraordinary human drama carried out, deserves its time on the big screen – and if any man can deliver this to a wider audience, it is Tom Hanks. Hopes for Greyhound are high…
9 things you (probably) didn’t know about Dunkirk
In 1940, as British troops retreated through France under fire from an advancing German Army, a massive evacuation was launched to bring the soldiers safely home. Between 26 May and 4 June 1940, a mammoth 338,000 troops were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, France, in the remarkable Operation Dynamo. Here, military historian James Holland shares some lesser-known facts about the evacuation at Dunkirk, and the fighting that led up to it...
Dunkirk: what happened? On 10 May 1940, Adolf Hitler began his long-awaited offensive in the west by invading neutral Holland and Belgium and attacking northern France. Holland capitulated after only five days of fighting, and the Belgians surrendered on 28 May. With the success of the German ‘Blitzkrieg’, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and French troops were in danger of being cut off and destroyed. To save the BEF, an evacuation by sea was organised under the direction of Admiral Bertram Ramsay. Over nine days, between 26 May and 4 June 1940, warships of the Royal and French navies together with civilian craft successfully evacuated more than 338,000 British and Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk, in the remarkable Operation Dynamo. The success of the evacuation strengthened not only Britain’s defences in the face of a German invasion threat, but also Churchill’s position against those like the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, who favoured discussing peace terms. Seventy years later, Dunkirk is still synonymous with refusing to give up in times of crisis. But did you know... Britain had the only 100 per cent mechanised army in 1940 Britain in the early years of the war has often been perceived to have been full of Blimpish commanders, out-of-date equipment and antiquated, stuck-in-the-mud tactics. In fact, the British Army’s equipment in 1940 was certainly a match for that of the Germans. The Bren light machine-gun did not have the rate of fire of the German MG34, but was solid, accurate, and more dependable than its far friskier German rival. Meanwhile, the new British uniforms were the most modern in the world at the time, and unlike anything any soldier had worn before. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was also entirely mechanised, which was certainly not the case for the German Army. In fact, of the 135 German divisions used in the attack in the West, only 16 were mechanised; the other 119 used horses and their soldiers' own two feet. British tanks were mostly superior to those of the German Army too, and while they had not invested as heavily in radio as the Germans, the BEF still had proportionally considerably more radio sets than the French. The reason for defeat in France in 1940 was not a failure in equipment, tactics or training, but the BEF's small size: just 10 divisions. This meant they could only ever play a supporting role in the action. When Belgian and French forces on their flanks collapsed, the BEF had no choice but to fall back in line with their allies. For Britain, an island nation with a large seaborne empire, the Royal Navy was the senior service. Pre-war rearmament had sensibly focussed on naval and air power. After all, France was an ally with a vast army. The idea was that Britain would take the lead at sea, France on land, and both would contribute to air power. There were no telephones at French Army headquarters Until he was fired on 19 May (following the catastrophic collapse of the Meuse Front), General Maurice Gamelin was commander-in-chief of all French and British forces in France. He was also the overall architect of plans to defeat any German attack. Gamelin firmly believed any future war would be much like the previous one of 1914-18: long, drawn-out and largely static war of attrition. He was half-right, or half-wrong, depending on which way one looks at it. The Second World War lasted longer than the First World War. While it was a war of attrition in many ways, it was not static. The German approach was always to try and win battles and wars swiftly and with considerable skill of manoeuvre. This was a strategy forced upon them by their fundamental lack of resources. In this regard, little had changed since the days of Frederick the Great. By the Second World War, however, Germany had harnessed radio technology to these age-old principles to very great effect. In contrast, the French had largely eschewed radio technology in favour of landline telephones and traditional dispatch riders. At his headquarters on the edge of Paris, Gamelin insisted there should be no telephones at all, such was his paranoia of a security break. This meant he was repeatedly and fatally out of touch with his commanders at a time when swift and rapid decision-making was essential. With German artillery and the Luftwaffe also repeatedly cutting phone lines, the French were ever more dependent on dispatch riders, who were forced to battle through roads clogged with refugees. Often they became lost, took too long, or failed to return altogether. Inevitably, the French Army ground to a halt, unable to move or respond to the rapidly unfolding situation. The Second World War: a timeline The Luftwaffe suffered its worst day It is widely accepted that the Germans had it pretty much their own way from the moment they launched Case Yellow (the invasion of France and the Low Countries) on 10 May 1940. Spearheading the attack and apparently ruling the skies was the Luftwaffe, with its mix of screaming Stuka dive-bombers, Messerschmitt fighters and Heinkel and Dornier medium bombers. However, that first day of the campaign was the worst the Luftwaffe suffered for some three years. A staggering 353 German planes crashed or were shot down. (To put that in perspective, the worst day for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain saw them lose 67 aircraft). Most were transports bringing in airborne troops, but these Junkers 52s had only been brought to bear by scouring training schools and their losses severely set back aircrew training. In fact, the Luftwaffe had still not made good on its losses by the time they invaded the Soviet Union the following June. The game-changing ‘eastern mole’ was discovered purely by chance The Senior Naval Officer tasked with overseeing the shore end of the Dunkirk evacuation was Captain Bill Tennant. Tennant arrived on the afternoon 27 May, and had been told they might be able to evacuate 45,000 troops if he were lucky. The harbour facilities had been smashed and the port's quays were unusable, so Tennant signalled back to Dover asking for every available craft, no matter how small, to sail to Dunkirk to help lift men from the beaches. Getting men onto boats and ships direct from the beaches was an incredibly slow and laborious process. The situation looked bleak. Later that same evening, though, Tennant noticed the Luftwaffe had not hit the two long moles [wooden breakwaters] that extended some 1,600 yards out into the sea. There was no obvious way of reaching the western mole across the harbour's mouth, but the eastern mole began from the harbour wall and was easily accessible. Made of latticed concrete piles and topped by a narrow wooden walkway, it was a breakwater rather than a jetty. While at first glance it looked as though it was not strong enough to take a moored ship alongside, Tennant felt there was nothing to lose from trying. The cross-Channel steamer, Queen of the Channel, was called to test it and after gently nudging her stern against the concrete piles, managed to drift alongside. The mole withstood this strain without any obvious difficulty. A lifeline had been discovered and over the next five days and nights, the eastern mole not only remained intact but also undamaged by either the sheer weight of ships mooring alongside or by enemy bombs. Of the 338,226 men lifted from Dunkirk, 239,555 – the vast majority – were taken from the eastern mole. The Battle of Britain began over Dunkirk Officially, the Battle of Britain began on 10 July 1940. (This was the date given by Hugh, the commander-in-chief of RAF Fighter Command. Yet as Dowding admitted, as far as he was concerned, it began the day Britain entered the war.) However, RAF Fighter Command was created to defend Britain and first entered the fray over Dunkirk and the Pas de Calais on 20 May 1940. The Luftwaffe had been given a lead role in preventing the evacuation and Fighter Command more than played their part in ensuring German air forces failed in their task. Few on the ground saw them as the sky was filled with low cloud. Thick, black smoke from burning oil storage tanks rose to some 15,000 feet and spread across the entire area. They were there, nonetheless, and managed to shoot 326 enemy aircraft during the operation, while losing of 121 of their own. Logical military thinking played no part in Hitler’s decision to issue a halt order On 24 May, Hitler issued his infamous order for his panzer divisions [armoured tank divisions] to halt, denying them the chance to completely encircle the retreating British Expeditionary Force. Ever since the order, there has been speculation as to Hitler’s motives. It has even been suggested that he wanted to give the British a chance to escape. The truth is more straightforward, and underlines Hitler’s utter ineptitude as a military leader. After all, he never went to staff college [to train as a military officer] and was ill-qualified to be making high-level military decisions in almost every regard. The initial halt order was issued by General von Kleist on 23 May. He did not understand new mobile panzer tactics and feared his armoured tank divisions were getting too far ahead of the foot-slogging infantry. This order – which was to be in place for 24 hours – was reinforced by Field Marshal von Rundstedt. When General Halder, army chief of staff, heard about the order, he immediately rescinded it and furthermore transferred all panzer divisions to rapidly close in on Dunkirk from the north. Von Rundstedt, piqued to have been humiliated by Halder, complained to Hitler. Hitler, who had been told nothing of all this beforehand, exploded with anger. He hated the Prussian military elites, and was deeply suspicious of the army leadership. Clearly, they needed to be taught a lesson. He immediately countermanded all Halder’s decisions and gave the authority to lift the halt order back to von Rundstedt. Logical military thinking played no part in Hitler’s decision, rather, it was motivated by a determination to show who was boss and stamp his authority on his subordinates. But in so doing, Hitler very possibly lost the war. Britain’s army may have been small in 1940, but on 27 May, the country came its closest to defeat. Foreign secretary Lord Halifax and new prime minister Winston Churchill argued over whether Britain should put out peace feelers. Halifax briefly threatened to resign, which almost certainly would have brought down the government. Churchill insisted that even putting out feelers would be crossing a Rubicon from which there could be no return. He won the day, but had the BEF been lost, the outcome may well have been very different. The halt order was not lifted until late on 26 May, and no panzers began moving again until the following morning – by which time the perimeter at Dunkirk had been secured and the evacuation had begun. Why did the Allies win the Second World War? An England cricket captain was among those rescued at Dunkirk Among those rescued at Dunkirk was former England cricketer, Douglas Jardine, who had captained the national side back in 1932–33. Jardine had retired from cricket in 1934, and although he was a qualified lawyer, made his living from journalism and writing. In August 1939 he joined the Territorial Army and then was commissioned into the Royal Berkshire Regiment on the outbreak of war a few weeks later. He was then sent to France with the BEF. Jardine served well, but was wounded in fighting near Dunkirk. He became separated from most of his men, making him among the last in his battalion to be lifted. Ironically, the ship that took him home was a destroyer called the HMS Verity. Jardine’s greatest friend during his England cricketing days had been the Yorkshire bowler, Hedley Verity, who had even named his son Douglas after his friend. Verity was less lucky – he was mortally wounded in Sicily in July 1943 leading his company in an assault on German positions. The last British soldier to leave Dunkirk was a Major-General The last British soldier to leave Dunkirk was not a member of the rank and file but rather Major-General Harold Alexander. Alexander had taken over as acting commander of the BEF on 31 May. His imperturbability was legendary, and he was given the task of overseeing the last stages of the evacuation. The last British troops began boarding at around 9pm on Sunday 2 June. By this time, the perimeter had collapsed. Although French troops were still heroically defending the town, German artillery was raining down on the harbour. At 11.30pm, Alexander, along with Captain Bill Tennant, boarded a motor launch and began a last tour of the harbour and then the length of the beaches as far as Bray Dunes, calling out to any last remaining troops. They heard no replies; all that remained were the silhouettes of abandoned vehicles. Satisfied they had fulfilled their task, they signalled, “BEF evacuated. Returning now”. Then they, too, set sail for England. Many British vehicles abandoned at Dunkirk ended up in Russia Although not a single British soldier was left on the Dunkirk beaches, some 70,000 troops were left behind in France, either dead, wounded, prisoner or still stuck further south. The British also left behind 76,000 tons of ammunition, 400,000 tons of supplies and 2,500 guns. On top of that, a staggering 64,000 vehicles were abandoned. This was a salivatingly large number for the vehicle-short Germans. Although many of those left at Dunkirk had sand poured into the radiators and fuel tanks, a large proportion were salvageable and were used again. In fact, many of them went on to provide sterling service to the Wehrmacht and a large number ended up crossing into the Soviet Union a year later as part of the German invasion, Operation Barbarossa. By then, the German Army was using some 2,000 different vehicles, all of which required different parts, from gaskets and distributors to fuel pumps. Needless to say, of those British vehicles that did make their way to the USSR, very few ever headed west again. James Holland is a historian, writer and broadcaster who has presented and written programmes for the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, History and Discovery, and is co-founder of Chalke Valley History Festival This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2017
Your guide to D-Day: what happened, how many casualties were there, and what did it accomplish?
HistoryExtra Academy D-Day and the Normandy Campaign course
It was the largest seaborne invasion in history, marking the beginning of the campaign to liberate north-west Europe from German occupation. But how much do you know about D-Day? And what does D-Day stand for? Here, historian James Holland brings you the facts…
What does D-Day stand for? Literally, the ‘D’ stands for day, as in the day of the invasion. The earliest known reference goes back to 1917, but early in the Second World War it was called ‘Dog-Day’ after the phonetic alphabet of the day. It was used during Operation WATCHTOWER, the US invasion of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, for example. Later, it became simply known as ‘D-Day’ and was used for all major amphibious operations including north-west Africa, Sicily and southern Italy. The term ‘H-Hour’ was also used – the time of the landings – which was 6.30am on the two western beaches (Utah and Omaha); an hour later at 7.30am a little further to the east for the British landings; and 7.45am for the Canadians at Juno. This was because the Allies wanted to land when the tide was out in order to both avoid the beach obstacles (the Germans assumed any invasion would be at high tide so the Allies had less beach to cross and so had placed them closer to the high tide line) and because they needed the beach at low tide to allow successive waves of troops and vehicles the space and time to unload. D-Day: a resounding success for the Allies What happened on D-Day? The invasion was codenamed Operation OVERLORD and took place on Tuesday 6 June, having been delayed by 24 hours because of poor weather. American, British and Canadian troops were to be landed on five different beaches across the Normandy coastline: the Americans at Utah at the base of the Cotentin Peninsular and at Omaha at the western end of the northern Normandy coast; the British were to land at Gold Beach, east of Omaha; then the Canadians at Juno; and the British again at Sword, the easternmost invasion beach. Allied airborne troops would be dropped by parachute or glider and secure the flanks ­– the Americans in the west and the British and Canadians in the east. Read more | From the USA's 'good war' to Britain's 'great hurrah': how is D-Day remembered around the world? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/05/GettyImages-3290204-ea86a21.jpg" width="2956" height="2140" alt="American assault troops and equipment landing on Omaha beach on the Northern coast of France on D-Day, 6 June 1944. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)" title="American assault troops and equipment landing on Omaha beach on the northern coast of France on D-Day, 6 June 1944. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)" /> In all, some 7,000 vessels were used including 1,213 warships and 4,127 landing craft of various types and sizes. Some 23,000 airborne troops were dropped and 132,000 men landed on the beaches. They were also supported by a staggering 12,000 Allied aircraft. Contrary to popular myth, more British and Canadian troops were delivered to Normandy on D-Day, while two-thirds of the aircraft; more than three-quarters of the landing craft and 892 of the warships involved were British, not American. Not all D-Day objectives were achieved, but the airborne troops did secure the flanks as planned and landings were broadly very successful. Why did D-Day happen? Back in June 1940, the British had retreated back across the Channel and then France, Britain’s ally, had surrendered. Nazi Germany then occupied much of continental Europe and also Norway. Following the defeat of France in the third week of June 1940, Britain successfully withstood the threat of invasion by decisively defeating the Luftwaffe; without control of the skies over southern England, a German invasion was an impossibility. This consigned Germany to a long, drawn-out war it could ill afford and to invading the resource-rich Soviet Union far earlier than planned. How far did the German people support the Third Reich? The United States had been gearing up for war since the fall of France and when Germany’s Axis partner, Japan, attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii [on 7 December 1941], America was finally drawn into the increasingly global conflict. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/05/GettyImages-2660140-1-3bd0359.jpg" width="2861" height="2181" alt="An explosion at the Naval Air Station, Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, during the Japanese attack on 7 December 1941. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)" title="An explosion at the Naval Air Station, Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, during the Japanese attack on 7 December 1941. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)" /> In December 1941, British and American war leaders met and agreed that the defeat of Nazi Germany was their first priority and that the best way to achieve this was by an invasion of France, using Britain as a launch-pad. The build-up of US forces in Britain began in January 1942, but it soon became clear this new coalition of Britain and the United States was not ready to crack Nazi-occupied Europe any time soon. Instead, a joint invasion of north-west Africa, held by pro-Germany Vichy France, was launched first in November 1942. With the British Eighth Army attacking from Egypt and the Anglo-US First Army from Algeria, the German-Italian forces were caught in a pincer in Tunisia, which finally fell in May 1943. 12 things you (probably) didn’t know about Pearl Harbor With increasingly large Allied forces now in the Mediterranean and with Italy teetering, it made sense to follow up with an assault on Sicily in July 1943 – and after victory there, a further invasion of southern Italy that September. Vital airfields were captured in southern Italy, from which Allied strategic air forces (those independent of ground operations) could work in tandem with bomber forces operating from Britain – and so tighten the noose around the Third Reich. Gaining air superiority over all of Western Europe was a non-negotiable prerequisite for any invasion and not until the spring of 1944 had that condition been met. Finally, in early June 1944, the Allies had the weight of men and materiel as well as control of the skies with which to invade. The date was set as 5 June 1944, which was then pushed back a day due to poor weather, to Tuesday 6 June. What was the goal of D-Day? The immediate goal was to make sure the invasion was successful. The Allies had amassed vast forces, but despite the thousands of warships and landing craft, only a fraction of Allied strength could be initially transported across the Channel. Allied intelligence was superb and so long as the exact location and timing of the invasion remained secret to the Germans, the attackers would achieve tactical surprise when they began landing in Normandy. This proved the case but thereafter the race was on as to which side could build up a decisive weight of forces in Normandy first. D-Day: the successes and failures in focus This was where Allied air power came in, because it was the bombers and fighter-bombers that were responsible for slowing German reinforcements to the front, both of infantry units, but particularly their panzer divisions – formations of motorised infantry, artillery and tanks – which were the best Nazi Germany had. By blowing up bridges, railways and roads and harrying anything that tried to move in daylight, they were able to greatly slow up German movement to Normandy and allow increasing numbers of Allied troops and materiel to cross the Channel. Listen| Military historian Peter Caddick-Adams answers key questions about D-Day Once a decisive materiel advantage had been achieved, then the outcome of the battle in Normandy – and ultimately all of France and Western Europe – would not be in doubt. By brilliantly coordinating their forces in the air, at sea, and on land, and by using the full weight of their industrial and technological superiority, the Allies not only secured a foothold on D-Day, they won the race to build up forces at the front. The result was overwhelming victory in Normandy 77 days later in August 1944 and a catastrophic defeat for Nazi Germany. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/05/GettyImages-3137447-22265d2.jpg" width="3464" height="2719" alt="Bomber crews of the US Ninth Airforce leave their B26 Marauder aircraft after returning from a mission to support the D-Day landings in Normandy. (Photo by Fred Ramage/Keystone/Getty Images)" title="Bomber crews of the US Ninth Airforce leave their B26 Marauder aircraft after returning from a mission to support the D-Day landings in Normandy. (Photo by Fred Ramage/Keystone/Getty Images)" /> How many casualties were there? The Allies had braced themselves for as many as 40,000 casualties on D-Day, but they were far fewer – around 10,000 all told. Even on the American-assaulted Omaha Beach, made famous by films such as The Longest Day [1962] and Saving Private Ryan [1998], the Allies lost only 842 dead. It was a lot, but not as bad as most people think today or was feared at the time. German casualty figures on D-Day are not at all precise, but estimates put them at a similar number. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/05/RN7G8D-235384c.jpg" width="3100" height="1997" alt="A still from the 1998 film 'Saving Private Ryan' starring Tom Hanks (front-right). (Photo by Allstar Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A still from the 1998 film 'Saving Private Ryan' starring Tom Hanks (front-right). (Photo by Allstar Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Overall, however, the Normandy campaign was brutal and spectacularly violent. Including both sides as well as civilians – and some 15,000 French civilians were killed – the average daily casualty rate of each of the 77 days of the battle was 6,675: higher than the Somme, Passchendaele and Verdun in the First World War. ‘Big war’: the Allies’ winning strategy Allied strategy was to use ‘steel not flesh’: they wanted to use their enormous global reach and access to resources to make the Allied war effort as mechanised and technologically advanced as possible and to use machines – steel – in order to keep the number of men at the coal-face of war as low as possible. This they achieved very well: in Normandy only 16 per cent of British troops were infantry and just 7 per cent in tanks – figures that were much the same for the Canadians and Americans too. Read more | The woman who picked the date of D-Day More than 40 per cent, however, were service troops [men supporting the front line – Royal Army Service Corps, Royal Army Medical Corps etc]; this was the long supply tail that was a benchmark of Allied strategy. They harnessed naval and air brilliantly with the troops on the ground, while in contrast, by 1944 Nazi Germany’s much-reduced navy and Luftwaffe were able to contribute to the battle hardly at all, suppressed by massive Allied superiority. The Allies were fighting ‘big war’, whereas the Germans were forced to fight largely on land only. For too long, the narrative of D-Day and the battle for Normandy has focused on the fighting on land, whereas it needs to be understood in its wider context and from the perspective of the Allies’ broader strategy. This article was first published on HistoryExtra in June 2019 Discover more learning from the fourth and final week of the HistoryExtra Academy course on D-Day and the Normandy Campaign HistoryExtra Academy video lecture: launching Operation Overlord – watching time 19 mins D-Day: 24 hours that changed the world – reading time 10 mins History explorer: D-Day beaches – reading time 6 mins D-Day: the WW2 battle through the eyes of the men who were there – reading time 14 mins “Free people everywhere should remember them": the Canadians' role in D-Day – reading time 10 mins Podcast series: D-Day: Land, Air and Sea The battle for Normandy: what happened after D-Day? – reading time 11 mins
In defence of Monty: James Holland on the Allied commander's D-Day decisions
For 50 years, historians have lined up to attack the architect of D-Day. But, writes James Holland, their criticisms are misguided
On Friday 30 June 1944, American general Omar Bradley visited Bernard Montgomery’s Tactical HQ, near the village of Blay, a few miles west of Bayeux. He found the architect of the Allied assault on Normandy in a particularly spikey mood. “I say,” he remarked to Bradley, looking at Chet Hansen, who had been recently promoted, “now do you have a major for an ADC [aide-de-camp]? Simply a dog’s body, you know, a whipping boy. I would not have an ADC who is more than a captain.” What on earth compelled him to say such a thing? It was insulting to Bradley (commander of the US First Army), insulting to Hansen, whom Monty had seen many times before, and spectacularly rude and unnecessary. “Messenger boys, simply messenger boys,” added Montgomery. He then launched into a withering critique of the superbly designed American M1 steel helmet. It is hard not to cringe recounting this outburst. Montgomery and Bradley needed to work hand in hand, side by side, with unity of purpose, mutual respect and fellowship. How much harder it was when a small Englishman in corduroys and a sweater was sitting there being so appallingly discourteous. Your guide to D-Day: what happened, how many casualties were there, and what did it accomplish? The Allies’ big idea: the largest air battle of the Second World War A monstrous ego History has not been kind to Montgomery, particularly not over the last 50 years, as one historian after another has lined up to crucify both his character and his military reputation. To a certain extent, he brought it upon himself through his monstrous ego, the crass way in which he spoke to his peers and superiors, and the very large chip that remained planted on his shoulder. Montgomery never exuded the easy charm of many of his contemporaries. He also had a social inferiority complex, which he masked with haughtiness and arrogance – an arrogance that was supported by a growing self-belief. Discipline, clear thinking, preparation and sound, solid training were his watchwords, all of which had much merit. Yet he liked to impose himself by giving the impression of absolute self-assurance. Montgomery wasn’t the only senior commander with an ego. His great character flaw, however, was his social awkwardness. He simply did not know how to interact with others. He compensated for his lack of charm by talking entirely on his own terms, regardless of what offence he might be causing. He lacked the ability to read the emotions of others very clearly – and that repeatedly got him into largely avoidable hot water. But these failings of character did not mean he was a bad general, and all too often since the end of the war successive historians have put their personal distaste towards his character ahead of sound historical judgment. The reality requires more nuance. Tactically he was arguably not the most imaginative. But, at this stage of the war, sound strategic vision and operational skill were more important for the Allied armies. D-day: why the training was deadlier than the assault Churchill and D-Day: did the prime minister oppose the Normandy landings? Montgomery understood that, although most of the men under his command were now well trained, they were also reluctant soldiers, conscripts who were in uniform only because of a global war in which they had no choice but to participate. He also espoused the Allied mantra of ‘steel not flesh’, a strategy Britain had been determined to pursue long before war was declared and one to which the United States was equally wedded. This meant using their global reach, modernity and technological know-how to allow industrialised mass-production and mechanisation to do as much of the hard work as possible, thus limiting the number of those in the firing line to an absolute minimum. In the British Second Army in France, only 16 per cent of troops would be infantry and 7 per cent in tank units. Britain and America were fighting highly complex, long-chain, industrialised war that harnessed air, land and sea power. It required a very effective operational commander, and Montgomery was certainly that. Listen | Giles Milton on lesser-known stories of soldiers and civilians who were involved in the Normandy landings Plan under attack Criticisms of Monty’s performance in Normandy usually begin with the plan. The thesis of Carlo D’Este’s 1983 book, Decision in Normandy – one that has largely held sway ever since – revolved around its perceived shortcomings. Montgomery was appointed Allied land commander at the end of 1943 and so had a big say in how the overall plan for Overlord (the battle for Normandy) looked. He rightly insisted on expanding the invasion beaches to five from three and also insisted on using airborne forces to help secure the flanks. However, it was a combined team that actually worked out the plan – albeit under his overall direction – and this was approved at an early stage by Dwight D Eisenhower as supreme Allied commander, and his chief of staff, General Walter Bedell-Smith. Monty presented the main plan for Overlord to all the senior commanders on 7 April 1944. It had to be this early to allow enough time for the naval plan, Neptune, to be prepared and organised, and for the component parts of Overlord to be worked out. It was not Monty’s job to oversee the detailed planning on each invasion beach. At the 7 April meeting, he included a map, which showed ‘phase lines’ of where the Allies might be in the days and weeks that followed the invasion. On D plus 17, for example, the phase line suggested they would be 50 miles inland. Bradley cautioned against showing this; he felt it risked making them open to criticism if they did not achieve these predicted lines, which saw the Allies in Paris in 90 days. Monty brushed aside such concerns. There was a palpable sense of doom among many of the Allied leaders, and he correctly sensed the need to present the invasion plan with confidence and with a clear sense of what was achievable. Based on German performance in previous campaigns in Tunisia, Sicily and southern Italy, his assumptions were entirely reasonable. It made no sense for the Germans to continue to fight close to the coast after a successful Allied invasion; their lines of supply would be over-extended and they would then remain within range of powerful and extensive off-shore naval guns. Arguments about phase lines aside, the plan was accepted by all and reinforced again on 15 May when Eisenhower asked his commanders to speak up if any had any concerns about it at all. None did, because it was the best possible plan for the shipping available. Although there were 4,126 landing craft on hand, everyone wanted greater numbers, so that more men, more tanks, and more materiel could be delivered on D-Day. As it was, fewer men were to be landed on D-Day than on the Sicilian beaches the year before. Operations were ongoing in the Pacific, while a second planned invasion was to take place in southern France in August. In this still global war, there was much competition for landing craft and shipping. Despite these constraints, the vagaries of the weather and the risks of mounting such a massive operation, D-Day was a huge success. The absolute priority was to ensure Overlord did not fail. That trumped everything else. Montgomery deserves credit for this. Monty gave priority to securing the flanks, which was achieved, and to consolidating the bridgehead, which also followed in swift order. It’s true that British forces didn’t meet their objective of capturing Caen on the first day of the operation, but historians have become too fixated by this failure. This obsession is, in part, the result of criticism at the time by the air commanders. Both Arthur Tedder, the deputy supreme commander, and Air Marshal Arthur Coningham, the commander of the RAF’s 2nd Tactical Air Force, were anxious to capture the high ground south-east of Caen onto which airfields could be swiftly built. When this didn’t happen immediately, they blamed Montgomery for perceived sluggishness. But Caen proved a tough nut to crack for a reason no one could have predicted: Hitler’s decision to keep his armies fighting as close to the coast as possible. This made no ­military sense – and Field Marshal Erwin ­Rommel, the commander of German Army Group B covering Normandy, pointed this out to the führer when the two met on 17 June. That Hitler refused to take Rommel’s advice – ordering his men to fight for every yard – was hardly Montgomery’s fault. In fact, in many ways, Hitler’s tactics worked to the Allies’ advantage. By fighting close to the coast, they could indeed continue to benefit from the support of naval guns. And while it was true the bridgehead became congested by mid-July, the supply lines were shorter and a large number of airfields were swiftly constructed close to the coast. Slow progress The Allies, and Monty especially, have been criticised for being heavy on their feet and risk averse. Neither of these accusations are fair. The terrain did not favour rapid exploitation. When the well-equipped and highly motivated 12th Waffen-SS Panzer Division counter-attacked on 7 June, they made little progress, despite coming up against just two Canadian infantry battalions and a few tanks shorn of fire support. It was the same story for the Panzer Lehr Division, arguably the best in the entire Wehrmacht, who threw themselves against British infantry and armour at Tilly, south of Bayeux and made no headway. Attacking in Normandy was tough. What’s more, the Allied way of war was to probe forward with infantry and armour, goad the enemy into a counter-attack, then hammer them with the full force of their immense firepower. Co-ordinating naval guns, artillery, tactical air forces, as well as armour, anti-tank units and infantry, took time. Replacements, ammunition stocks and reserves also had to be in place. These were the constraints of the Allies’ materiel wealth. German weakness The Germans, by contrast, shorn of air support, with no naval firepower and more limited resources, could organise themselves far more swiftly into the tactically agile battle groups that have so impressed historians. These were enabled by the freedom of their poverty, however, and fundamentally were a sign of weakness. Tactical chutzpah was not enough to win the battle, let alone the campaign – and certainly not the war. Monty’s men – the British and Canadians – ground down the Germans very effectively. During the battle for Normandy, they came under attack from one of the largest concentration of panzer divisions of the war, and almost entirely destroyed them in the process, while pushing them back. It is true that the bombing of Caen, beginning on D-Day and championed by Montgomery, achieved little. It is also the case that Montgomery allowed Eisenhower and Tedder to believe Operation Goodwood, Second Army’s drive to capture the high ground south-east of Caen from 18–20 July, could achieve a decisive breakthrough when he himself had more limited and realistic aims. But Goodwood was General Dempsey’s plan, not Monty’s, and it did result in the Second Army advancing seven miles, to within reach of the Bourguébus Ridge. Montgomery had always aimed to tie down the bulk of German armour in the British and Canadian sector and this is exactly what happened, albeit further north than originally expected. For those back in London and Washington, however, looking at a two-dimensional map, and with V1s now landing on England, it looked like the Allies were barely making progress at all. Montgomery’s failing in Normandy was his inability to explain the reality: that the Germans were being chewed up and that, soon enough, the floodgates would be open and the Germans would collapse. British and Canadian efforts around Caen meant there were fewer panzer divisions facing the Americans, which in turn meant that when the breakthrough did finally arrive in the US sector, following the brilliantly executed Operation Cobra, the Germans were already on their knees, short of reserves, unable to move swiftly, and on the point of complete collapse. It was not long in coming. In the end, the campaign in Normandy was won after 80 days, a week and a half ahead of schedule. Of the 2,500 German armoured fighting vehicles thrown into Normandy, barely two dozen escaped. Two armies were annihilated: by any reckoning it was a stunning victory. As the mastermind of that battle plan, Montgomery is owed far greater credit for his handling of this initial phase – and for his generalship throughout the campaign in western Europe. James Holland’s latest book, Normandy ‘44: D-Day and the Battle for France, was published by Bantam Press in May. To listen to his new podcast on the Second World War (which he hosts with comedian Al Murray), head to iTunes or your favourite podcast provider Discover more learning from week two of the HistoryExtra Academy course on D-Day and the Normandy Campaign HistoryExtra Academy video lecture: Planning for D-Day – watching time 16 mins The road to D-Day: the masterplan – reading time 9 mins Podcast: Peter Caddick-Adams on whether D-Day could have failed – listening time 1 hour In defence of Monty: James Holland on the Allied commander's D-Day decisions – reading time 9 mins Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt: the big three’s war of words – reading time 9 mins