Armageddon - Max Hastings [313]
The Allies had tacitly, and in considerable degree explicitly, conceded Stalin’s claims to a blood price, in recognition of Russia’s sacrifice. Even in the last year of war, the Red Army had accepted casualties many times those of the Americans and British, to complete the destruction of the Third Reich. If the Western allies had dashed for Berlin, the Russians would unquestionably have pre-empted them. Stalin would never have stood by while the Anglo-Americans occupied Hitler’s capital. Zhukov and Konev had held their line on the Oder since the end of January, when the Americans were still struggling above the Roer. If the Americans and British had made a rush for Berlin, exactly the kind of messy, perhaps politically disastrous collision Marshall feared could have taken place between the Russians and Anglo-Americans. Eisenhower’s last major decision of the campaign lacked any Pattonesque “lust for glory.” But it was surely the correct one. No Western military action in April 1945 would have changed the post-war settlement. The manner in which Eisenhower allowed the momentous decision to trickle down among his commanders, almost as an afterthought, scarcely suggested the behaviour of a man who was making an important considered judgement, conscious of history’s eyes upon him. Yet Eisenhower’s forbearance about Berlin highlighted his political common sense, together with his rare gift for bearing responsibility, which is too readily taken for granted in a man who had risen from the rank of colonel to five-star general in less than three years.
Staff-Sergeant Henry Kissinger observed: “America doesn’t produce great generals. Eisenhower was the manager of an alliance. If Rommel had commanded the Allied armies, he might have got to Berlin in one go. But what did we have to gain by haste?” It is impossible to share the view of Cornelius Ryan and others that Eisenhower made an historic blunder in April 1945 by declining to drive for Berlin. The die was cast. Churchill’s anguish about the plight of eastern Europe caused him to clutch at unrealistic hopes in April 1945. Even if the British prime minister possessed an historic vision lacking at the summits of U.S. power in those days, it was Churchill and not Eisenhower who displayed naivety about the options open to the Western allied forces to frustrate Soviet imperialism in arms, unless they were prepared to go to war with Stalin.
Among Eisenhower’s last big operational decisions of the campaign, one was indeed political. Montgomery was ordered to abandon his earlier task of covering the American left flank and to strike fast for the Baltic coast at Lübeck, to “seal off the Danish peninsula.” There were real fears that the Soviets might aspire to seize Denmark. Simpson’s U.S. Ninth Army would march east towards the Elbe river. The remainder of the American armies would swing south, to take southern Germany and address Hitler’s Alpine Redoubt, where large enemy forces including many SS fanatics were reported to be gathering. The Alpine Redoubt was, of course, a myth, and it was bizarre in the extreme that SHAEF intelligence embraced it. But it is impossible to argue that the Allied turn southwards made any significant adverse impact upon the last days of the campaign, as the remains of the German Army crumbled in their path. The U.S. Seventh Army drove south on a route that finally took it to Munich and the Brenner Pass. Patton’s Third Army advanced in a great sweep which embraced Chemnitz, western Czechoslovakia and northern Austria. Hodges’s First Army attacked south of the Harz Mountains, towards Halle and Leipzig, while Simpson’s Ninth took an easterly line through Brunswick and Magdeburg which led, at last, to the