Montgomery, having given the task of clearing the approaches to Antwerp to the First Canadian Army, seemed to pay little further attention in that direction. He was more interested in exploiting the Nijmegen salient seized during Operation Market Garden to attack towards the Reichswald, the forest just across the German border. But the Canadians, when they eventually finished in northern France and began the Scheldt operation in early October, found that German resistance was far stronger than imagined. They had a bitter fight on their hands, now that the remnants of the German Fifteenth Army had been given the time to escape and reinforce the island of Walcheren and the South Beveland peninsula.
Eisenhower, prompted by a report from the Royal Navy, was even more concerned at the slow progress. Montgomery became angrily defensive at any implication that he was not doing enough to open Antwerp and argued once more that the US First Army should be placed under his command, to speed the attack on the Ruhr. On 8 October, he again criticized Eisenhower’s strategy, but this time to General Marshall himself who was visiting Eindhoven. It was a bad mistake. Even the supremely self-disciplined Marshall nearly lost his temper at this example of what he called Montgomery’s ‘overwhelming egotism’. The field marshal, devoid of any emotional intelligence, then renewed his onslaught on Eisenhower’s command abilities with a paper entitled ‘Notes on Command in Western Europe’. Montgomery was almost certainly sharper in his criticisms because of the heavy hints he had heard that his failure to secure the banks of the Scheldt was what had halted the advance of the Allied armies. He even implied that Market Garden had failed because he had not received sufficient support from SHAEF.
Eisenhower replied several days later with a powerful rebuttal which he had shown to Marshall for his approval. Neither his chief of staff General Walter Bedell Smith nor Marshall would let him soften the draft. Even the rhinoceros-hided Montgomery could not miss the import of one paragraph. ‘If you, as the senior commander in this theater of one of the great Allies, feel that my conceptions and directives are such as to endanger the success of operations, it is our duty to refer the matter to higher authority for any action they may choose to take, however drastic.’ Montgomery promptly climbed down. ‘You will hear no more on the subject of command from me. I have given you my views and you have given your answer. That ends the matter … Your very devoted and loyal subordinate, Monty.’ But for Montgomery, the matter would rumble on for the rest of his days.
The battle for the Scheldt approaches, which finally began on 2 October with a drive north and north-west from Antwerp, was conducted under heavy rain. It took the Canadians, with the support of the British I Corps on their right, two weeks to reach the base of the South Beveland peninsula and the rest of the month to clear it. Another force from II Canadian Corps meanwhile took most of October to clear the large pocket inside the Leopold Canal on the south side of the mouth of the Scheldt. To help take Walcheren, the RAF eventually agreed to bomb the dykes to flood most of the island and force the German garrison of more than 6,000 men out of their defensive positions. British commando forces from Ostend arrived in landing craft at the western tip and, despite heavy losses, met up with Canadian troops crossing from the captured southern enclave. On 3 November, the last German prisoners were rounded up, making a total of 40,000 Germans captured, but the Canadians and British had suffered 13,000 casualties in the Scheldt operation. Even so, the need to clear the German mines in the estuary meant that the first supply convoy did not enter the harbour of Antwerp until 28 November. That was eighty-five days after the 11th Armoured Division had taken the city by surprise.
The first American patrol crossed on to German soil from north-eastern Luxembourg on the afternoon of 11 September. From high ground, they sighted some concrete bunkers of the Siegfried Line. Many units from then on proclaimed their arrival on Nazi territory by symbolically urinating on the ground. The same day just north-west of Dijon, the French 2nd Armoured Division in Patton’s XV Corps, the 2ème Division Blindée, met up with the 1st French Division of the Seventh Army coming up from the south of France. The Allies now had a solid line from the North Sea to Switzerland.
Patton took Nancy on 14 September, but his Third Army was blocked by the ancient fortifications of Metz and faced hard fighting to get across the Moselle. ‘We took enough prisoners’, reported an officer, ‘to work on the river edge where the Germans were hitting our medics trying to get wounded back in assault boats. They shot and riddled wounded soldiers that could have pulled through. We made the prisoners expose themselves for this work and they even shot them. Finally, we said, “To hell with it,” and shot the whole damned bunch.’
German divisions faced different handicaps. A regimental commander with the 17th SS Panzergrenadier-Division Götz von Berlichingen complained that his vehicles ‘kept breaking down because the petrol was poor. There was water in it. That’s the way we are supposed to fight a war! I had absolutely no artillery at all. You know, when our soldiers have to continually haul their own guns around then they soon say: “You can kiss my ass. I’d rather be taken prisoner.”’ Such sentiments were certainly not revealed to Führer headquarters. ‘Relations between officers and men in the front line remain excellent and give no cause for alarm,’ the German First Army reported to the OKW, and on balance that appeared to be true, to judge by letters home.
‘The war has reached its climax,’ an Obergefreiter wrote to his wife. ‘I’m in the sector opposite my birthplace. As a result I can defend my homeland and you with more courage and determination … We must never contemplate the unthinkable possibility of defeat.’ Others expressed disdain for their enemy. ‘He doesn’t attack without aircraft and tanks. He’s too cowardly for that. He has every imaginable weapon at his disposal.’ Another wrote: ‘The American infantryman isn’t worth a penny. They only operate with heavy weapons and as long as a German machine gun is still firing, the American soldier doesn’t advance.’ But Obergefreiter Riegler acknowledged that ‘Whoever has air superiority is going to win this war, that’s the truth.’ And Obergefreiter Hoes was bitter about the lack of effect from the V-weapons. ‘Why sacrifice more and more men? Allow more and more of our homeland to be destroyed? Why has there been no success with the V-weapons of which so much has been said?’
On 16 September, the day before Market Garden was launched, Hitler astonished his entourage at the Wolfsschanze when he summoned another meeting after the morning situation conference. Generaloberst Alfred Jodl was just speaking of the scarcity of heavy weapons, ammunition and tanks on the western front when, as General der Flieger Kreipe noted in his diary: ‘Führer interrupts Jodl. Decision by the Führer, counter-attack from the Ardennes, objective Antwerp … Our attack group, thirty new Volksgrenadier divisions and new panzer divisions in addition to panzer divisions from the east. Attempt to break the boundary between the British and Americans, a new Dunkirk. Guderian [the army chief of staff responsible for the Russian front] protests because of the situation in the East. Jodl points to the superiority in the air and the expectation of parachute landings in Holland, Denmark and northern Germany. Hitler requests 1,500 fighter planes by 1 November! Offensive should be launched during the bad weather period, then the enemy cannot fly. Rundstedt is to take over the command. Preparations up to 1 November. The Führer again summarizes his decision in a long discourse. Binds us by obligation to maintain strict secrecy and asks us to employ few and reliable men … Briefed Göring who flies back to Karinhall at night. I am quite tired, headache.’
Guderian was dismayed by the plan because he knew that almost as soon as the ground froze hard enough to carry the Red Army’s T-34 medium tanks, Stalin would launch a massive offensive against East Prussia and westward from the Soviet bridgeheads across the River Vistula. ‘OKH [Army High Command] has serious doubts about the Ardennes plan,’ Kreipe noted.
Hitler, having sacked Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt as commander-in-chief west during the battle for Normandy in July, recalled him in the same role.
The ‘old Prussian’ was seen as the archetypal safe pair of hands. Hitler exploited him as a symbol of rectitude, having corrupted him with money and honours. Although Rundstedt still showed sound military judgement, he remained an alcoholic and had little to do with operational decisions. In December 1941 when Hitler had sacked him for the first time on health grounds, everyone thought that this was a pretence. In fact Rundstedt, exhausted and suffering from a grossly excessive consumption of brandy, had been screaming in his sleep at night, and sometimes had to be held down by his aides and given tranquillizers. That sacking had been sweetened by a ‘birthday present’ of 400,000 Reichsmarks. More recently, to the disgust of many traditional officers, Rundstedt had presided over Hitler’s ‘Court of Honour’ to expel in disgrace any officer thought to have been connected with the July plot.
Ever since the failed assassination attempt, relations between the Nazi Party and the German army had deteriorated. A captain, whose wife was in Reutlingen east of Strasbourg, recounted: ‘The [Nazi Party] Kreisleiter of Reutlingen told a women’s meeting that the German army was just a crowd of low-down swine and that if it had not been for the SS and the Hitler Jugend Division, the war would have been over long ago. That German officers had slept with French girls and that when the English arrived they had been hauled out of bed, wearing only underpants, and that he despised every officer. Of course the women cried “Shame!” and my wife left the place amid a general uproar, yet she felt, perhaps naturally enough, not quite so sure of things after that denunciation.’ The captain, when he heard of this from his wife, complained to his general. ‘That’s not the sort of thing to tell the people at home, even if it’s partly true, for otherwise they will lose faith in the troops.’ But his protest achieved little and must have been reported back. The local Nazis took their revenge against his family by billeting so many people on them that they had no room left to themselves.
Near Aachen, an Obersturmführer Woelky in the 1st SS Panzer-Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler was taken aback when German women started to object to the likelihood of fighting when they had hoped that the Americans would simply overrun the place. ‘We have been lied to and cheated for five years, and promised a golden future, and what have we got?’ the most outspoken of them railed. ‘I just can’t understand how there can be a single German soldier left who will fire another shot.’ She was fortunate to have chosen Woelky for her outburst, because he must have been one of the very few in his division to have privately agreed that Germany could not hold out for long. And once the war is over, he thought cynically, ‘They will start by re-educating us, the SS, to be democrats.’
The Battle for Aachen
On the northern flank of the US First Army the XIX Corps had secured Maastricht, but lacked ammunition and fuel to push on much further. V Corps, on the right flank of the US First Army, had meanwhile advanced into the Belgian and Luxembourg Ardennes. It included the 4th Infantry Division, which Ernest Hemingway had made his own, and the 28th Infantry Division, which had marched through Paris. The glow from that triumphant parade had gone. There seemed little glory in the slow, tedious and often dangerous reduction of the Siegfried Line. ‘As we pass a pillbox,’ wrote a soldier in the 30th Infantry Division, ‘I see a GI sprawled pitifully on the ground, his face in the dirt – helmet on the ground near his head. Bulging from each hip pocket is a never-to-be-eaten K ration.’
Simply to blast a path through the concrete pyramids known as ‘dragons’ teeth’, Sherman tanks needed to fire about fifty rounds. The Americans found that they first needed to infiltrate the area during the night to get troops in between the German mortar positions and the pillboxes. Assault teams of at least a dozen men, supported by tanks, tank destroyers or anti-tank guns, would take on each pillbox. The concrete was too strong to penetrate except by 155mm self-propelled guns, but tank destroyers firing armour-piercing rounds at the embrasures caused casualties from concussion. ‘The wounded come out dazed and bleeding from the nose and mouth,’ a US report stated. The Americans also used armour-piercing rounds on the steel doors, or pole or satchel charges containing at least thirty pounds of TNT. ‘If they still refuse to surrender, deafen them with a fragmentation grenade down the ventilation shaft,’ the same report advised. And a white phosphorus grenade ‘placed in the same air-shaft is found to be a great little reviser [of attitudes]’. They should then shout ‘Kamerad?’ and ‘Wir schiessen nicht!’ (‘We won’t shoot!’). ‘If all this fails, call a tank to blast the rear of the pillbox or get a tank dozer to fill in the hole [and bury them].’
Soldiers were advised never to enter a pillbox; they should make the defenders come out. ‘When the doors and ports had been blown in,’ the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment with the 2nd Armored Division reported, ‘and enemy automatic weapon fire silenced, the infantry moved to the blind side of the [pill]box and called for the occupants to come out. This was obeyed promptly. At one [pill]box, only 13 prisoners came out. A grenade was thrown through a blasted port and seven more emerged.’
If any German soldier called back to say that they could not move because they were wounded, the advice recommended another explosion. ‘After a second charge of TNT, they somehow manage to walk out.’ But the attackers should still throw in grenades or use a flamethrower in case anyone was left hiding. Men had to be careful to watch for ‘ointment box mines’ which were very small, only two inches across and an inch deep. Finally, they needed to seal up the steel doors with blowtorches or a thermite grenade to prevent Germans from reoccupying the pillboxes. One unit had six pillboxes in its sector which had to be retaken three times. On one occasion, a whole platoon, exhausted and wet from the incessant rain, piled into a captured pillbox and fell asleep. A German patrol returned and the whole platoon was taken prisoner without a shot being fired.
In the centre of First Army, VII Corps advanced on the city of Aachen, the ancient capital of Charlemagne and lieu sacré of the Holy Roman Empire. The young commander of the corps, Major General J. Lawton Collins, was known to his troops as ‘Lightning Joe’ for his dynamism. With Aachen situated in a slight salient of German territory, the Siegfried Line ran round the west and southern side, with another line of fortifications behind the city. Collins wanted to avoid a house-to-house battle of attrition, so he decided to surround the city in the hope that the Germans might decide to pull out. But this reasoning failed to take into account Hitler’s ‘fortress’ mentality and his obsessive refusal to give up towns, especially a place as historically significant as Aachen. Göring later said in a 1945 interrogation: ‘The Führer wanted to defend Aachen to the last stone. He wanted to use it as an example for every other German city, and defend it, if necessary, until it was levelled to the ground.’
The sudden approach of American forces on 11 September triggered a panic. Nazi Party officials, Luftwaffe flak detachments, local functionaries, the police and troops fled east towards Cologne. According to the chief of staff of the German Seventh Army: ‘The sight of the Luftwaffe and SS troops retreating, with the commanders leading the retreat, was very bad for morale. They simply got into their vehicles and took off. There was a riot in Aachen about it.’
Hitler ordered that the civilian population should be evacuated, forcibly if necessary. He suspected that they preferred an American occupation which would end the bombing. All those who did not leave would be considered traitors. But things did not turn out as he had expected. On 12 September, the 12th Volksgrenadier-Division was rushed to the sector, but the 116th Panzer-Division, which had retreated from Normandy, reached the city first. Its commander, Generalleutnant Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, promptly cancelled the Gauleiter’s evacuation order. Schwerin was considered by colleagues to be too clever, and too contemptuous of the Nazis, for his own good. He had been sacked in Normandy for telling a corps commander what he thought of him, but then reinstated because he was such an effective leader. This perhaps encouraged him to think that he could get away with anything.
Schwerin first re-e
stablished order, with his panzergrenadiers instructed to shoot looters. He then sent an appeal to the American commander explaining that he had stopped the ‘absurd’ evacuation, and requested that the population be treated mercifully. Collins, however, carried on with his plan of encirclement. The 1st Infantry Division advanced from the south-east, with the 3rd Armored Division guarding its right flank. But the state of tank engines after the long advance from Normandy, and the shortage of every calibre of ammunition, greatly limited its striking power. The 1st Division was even short of rations. ‘We were reduced to eating emergency D Rations – rock-hard chocolate bars full of artificial nutrients,’ wrote Lieutenant Gardner Botsford. ‘Three chocolate bars a day can make you very tired of chocolate bars.’
When it became clear to the Nazi authorities that Aachen was not immediately threatened, officials rushed back to restart the evacuation of civilians while a counter-attack was prepared from the north-east to prevent encirclement. News of Schwerin’s letter leaked out, and the rash young general had to hide from arrest on charges of defeatism and even treason. Hitler, surprisingly, forgave him later. The forcible evacuation was carried out brutally. Most civilians wanted to stay. Wild rumours had spread of typhus in Cologne as a result of Allied bacteriological bombs. Many also believed that the Allies had bombs containing leprosy and plague bacilli.
‘You should have seen how they treated their own German people in the evacuation areas,’ Unteroffizier Huttary stated. ‘They drove away cattle without giving any receipt for them. Then they made the owner himself go. The SA [Nazi Brownshirts] drove the cattle away in herds.’ An engineer soldier called Bayer added: ‘And when the houses were empty they looted them. They put up notices or announced that unrationed bread would be available at such and such a place from 2 to 4 o’clock. Then the women took up their places at the shop and when a queue had formed, trucks drove up and they were loaded into them. They picked up children on the street and threw them into the vehicles. Then they just took them out of the immediate danger zone, put them down on the road and left them to their fate.’ Fear of a possible rising by foreign forced labourers prompted the SS to consider mass executions, but in the chaos nothing was done.