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of his bombast, in the winter of 1944 represented an attempt to wrest strategic primacy for the army under his command, in the face of logic and the instincts of almost all the Allied planners. Patton’s genius for self-promotion, together with such striking achievements as Third Army’s intervention in the Ardennes battle in December 1944, has retained for his soldiers the avid attention of history. Yet the critical battles were fought, and the gravest disappointments suffered, in First Army’s sector further north. If Patton had commanded First Army, even granted his limitations in a tough battlefield slogging match, he might have provided the impetus which Hodges could not give. In Alsace-Lorraine, Patton faced substantial German forces, and it is unsurprising that Third Army failed to achieve a breakthrough. Even if they had done so, a salient driven into southern Germany would not have meant much. Had Patton been employed further north, however, he might have been able to secure a decisive penetration of the West Wall in the autumn of 1944, and changed the course of the north-west Europe campaign.

Three distinguished British officers who fought in Holland that winter and later became army commanders believed that the Allied cause could have profited immeasurably from giving a more important role to Patton. Lieutenant Edwin Bramall said: “I wonder if it would have taken so long if Patton or Rommel had been commanding.” Captain David Fraser believed that the northern axis of advance was always hopeless, because the terrain made progress so difficult. He suggests: “We might have won in 1944 if Eisenhower had reinforced Patton. Patton was a real doer. There were bigger hills further south, but fewer rivers.” Brigadier Michael Carver argued that Montgomery’s single thrust could never have worked: “Patton’s army should have been leading the U.S. 12th Army Group.” Such speculations can never be tested, but it seems noteworthy that two British officers who later became field-marshals and another who became a senior general believed afterwards that the American front against Germany in the winter of 1944 offered far greater possibilities than that of the British in Holland, for which Montgomery continued to cherish such hopes.

STORM OF STEEL

FOR SOLDIERS WHO took part, the north-west Europe campaign seldom looked like a clash of mighty armies, after the fashion of Waterloo or Gettysburg. Rather, it was an interminable series of local collisions involving a few hundred men and a score or two of armoured vehicles, amid some village or hillside or patch of woodland between Switzerland and the North Sea. Only the generals grasped the big picture—or not, as the case might be. For the student of history, it is impossible to follow the course of events without some understanding of how the soldiers of the Second World War fought their battles.

All the combatants accepted some common tactical principles, but applied them in different ways and emphasized different skills. The Germans were frequently obliged to jettison all the rules in 1944–45, because they had to fight with whatever resources were at hand. Theory held good, however, whatever the lapses in practice. Infantry divisions—each 15,000 strong in the case of the Americans, often less for the British and much less for the Germans—supported by modest numbers of tanks, started an attack. The footsoldiers were expected to occupy enemy forward positions after these had been pounded by artillery. Preliminary bombardment sometimes continued for several hours before an assault, with the intention of paralysing those defenders who were not killed. Once the enemy’s front was broken, it became the responsibility of armoured divisions to leapfrog the infantry and exploit success by dashing on across country.

If an advance was sustained through some days or even weeks, fresh troops were passed through the front to take over the attack, as spearheads became exhausted or depleted by casualties. Because some divisions were far more effective than others, all commanders overtaxed their