Inferno - Max Hastings [350]
The war retained its stubborn, murderous, futile momentum. In the last months of the European struggle, while some German soldiers were visibly grateful to be taken prisoner, many sustained a stubborn defence. They showed a much greater will for sacrifice than had the French in similar circumstances in 1940, or most British troops thereafter. The Wehrmacht’s performance can partly be explained by compulsion—the fact that deserters and alleged cowards were ruthlessly shot, in their thousands during the last months. Between 1914 and 1918, 150 death sentences were passed on members of the kaiser’s army, of which just 48 were carried out. By contrast, between 1939 and 1945 more than 15,000 military executions were officially listed, and the real total was substantially higher. Beyond mortal sanctions, the immediate realities of the battlefield—the presence of the enemy in the next field or street—imposed its own logic. Even in its death throes, the Third Reich proved able to persuade many Germans to display extremes of futile stubbornness.
AFTER A MONTH of fighting in Normandy, the Anglo-American armies held a secure perimeter twenty miles inland. But bad weather impeded air operations and the landing of supplies. Every small advance demanded huge effort and cost casualties on a scale that thoroughly alarmed the Allies, especially the British. When Operation Epsom at the end of June failed to envelop Caen—originally planned as a D-Day objective—Montgomery summoned heavy bomber support: Lancasters duly devastated the city on the evening of 7 July, enabling British and Canadian troops to move into the northern ruins. On 18 July, a formidable armoured force was committed to Operation Goodwood, designed to take Falaise. Montgomery broke off this attack at the end of its second day, after losing 4,000 casualties and 500 tanks, one-third of all British armour in Normandy. The Shermans were replaced readily enough, but the attackers were chastened by their failure. “Our nerves were shot,” wrote tank commander John Cropper of the mood in his crew at the end of July. “Ritchie and Keith started an argument, on music I think. Within seconds they were literally screaming at each other. I had to be very firm with them to break it up … It was a long time before either of them uttered another word.”
Meanwhile on the Allied right, Gen. Omar Bradley’s First Army progressed painfully through the bocage, where difficult conditions were worsened by German flooding of low ground. The Americans lost 40,000 casualties in two weeks, before reaching dry ground around Saint-Lô from which a major armoured assault could be launched. Operation Cobra was preceded by a massive heavy bomber attack, which crippled the German Panzer Lehr Division in its path. On 25 July, the Americans began an advance on Coutances which met little effective resistance: the German army in Normandy was crumbling. Bradley’s forces were soon racing south, with the Germans falling back ahead of them. Avranches fell on 30 July, and seizure of an intact bridge at Pontaubault opened the way west into Brittany, south to the Loire and east to the Seine and the so-called Paris-Orleans gap. Patton, commanding the newly activated U.S. Third Army, dispatched a corps on a dash southeastward to Mayenne and Le Mans, reaching the latter after