The Eisenhower Dream Fantasy Scenario of the 1944 Campaign

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

The Eisenhower Dream Fantasy Scenario of the 1944 Campaign

The failure of Ike, Bradley and Monty to ‘finish off’ Hitler in the fall of 1944 has been endlessly debated. I tend to regard most of it as bovine excrement: the amazing part was how far they sustained the logistics and administration of the German collapse in early August of 1944 rather than why it proved to be impossible to cross the Rhine to take the Ruhr.

Nonetheless virtually all the commentators do in my mind correctly focus on two totally avoidable errors by Ike.

The first was a blind adherence to prior staff plans forcing Patton after the Cobra breakthrough to waste a corps going west into Brittany at a time when the obvious line of advance should have been a mix of north and east. Essentially after a slow, bloody Normandy campaign neither Ike nor Bradley was prepared to admit Patton was right when he proposed changing plans. In Bradley’s case one must add a large measure of spite at being one upped by his former superior and now subordinate. We will presume that Ike was even half as mad at Bradley as he should have been for everything from Omaha beach to the hedgerow campaign. Given the size of the German forces cut off in Brittany there was a zero chance of taking a port intact. So have Ike leave them for the FFI. This gives Patton an extra corps for what will follow.

The second change is to have Ike bag the Germans in their pocket south and west of Falaise. Actually closing the neck of the pocket was at the time a much more difficult challenge than later armchair historians would portray it as. However again Patton offered a solution which in OTL was rejected, to sweep down the Seine and link up with the British that way. Ike, Bradley and Monty all objected to this one as it put Patton square across Monty’s line of advance. They were all correct that it was administratively untidy. It would also have bagged the entire German army group. So add a few days to this battle and take out the cadres around which Hitler rebuilt his defense of much of the Westwall.

So far we are clearly in the land of the quite possible and easily doable. The question becomes what happens next. Essentially we have a German pocket with the US 1^st Army on the south half, the British 21^st Army Group of the west side, and Patton strung out across the northeast and north sides. What would have followed next is where the fantasy begin.

Ike was never a great field commander but August and September of 1944 was perhaps his nadir. He was physically unwell. He lacked a proper headquarters. He was totally unprepared for the exploitation situation that arose, even more than he had been for the attritional slugfest that was Normandy. He essentially lost control of his three main subordinates [Montgomery, Bradley and Lee]. He all but ignored Devers entire army group. Arnhem, his one major intervention was idiocy compounded with disaster.

So the Ike I am going to use is some doppelganger in Ike’s body. Everything I will propose was within Ike’s powers. He just wasn’t enough of a field general to have seen any of this and lacked the balls to have done it. Ike was a staff officer and diplomat who was simply unsuited for higher command. He should have had a ground forces commander. The problem was finding a Brit the Americans would accept or an American the Brits would.

The plan had been to put Monty on the left and Bradley in the center. The plan was essentially braindead logistics. It was more convenient to land the British on the right and the Americans on the left in Normandy because of which garrison areas the initial US forces had been assigned in the UK in 1942. This was completely the wrong answer. By the late summer of 1944 the British were simply too brittle. They were disbanding a division a month to keep the others at strength. Normandy had given them a one time manpower influx as the coast defense and then AAA defenses of the UK were stood down or transferred to part timers. However Monty was aware of this being the bottom of the barrel. Monty had seen the beginnings of this while still in the Med in 43. The disbanding of some divisions to keep the rest in the war had started there in the summer of 1943. All of this aggravated Monty’s inherent fussy tendencies to slowness, set piece battles and getting his own way. Yet deployment patterns from 1942-43 put this army group in the key coastal line of advance.

In OTL there was never any time or place to question this between Normandy and the German surrender. Here Patton is now on the extreme left. We will leave him there. However we will NOT place him under Monty. Patton’s 3^rd Army will be on Monty’s left but as a direct report to Ike. Bradley will be told to split the First Army, activating the 9^th Army ahead of schedule. This is not a matter of new troops. The limits on the number of divisions was a matter of logistics, port capacity, shipping. The dash of five Franco-American divisions across France to link up with Devers will be made this time by Simpson. Simpson was a competent man. He might be a few days later than Patton not because he or his divisions were slower but rather because he will be starting the dash a few days later. So have a few more German units escape the closing ring into Lorraine. The difference is that Simpson will obey the stand down order instead of using the American press to force supplies into a bloody and essentially pointless push into Lorraine. Patton could manipulate the system to keep attacking. Simpson both couldn’t and wouldn’t.

Similarly the US First Army will make its historic dash a few days later but again facing fewer Germans because Falaise was completed in this ATL. The big difference will come when the Westwall is reached. In OTL Ike could not politically ground Bradley for Patton. The US forces could not be seen as flank protection while Monty and the British won the war. In this ATL Patton will be one of the supply priorities. By prioritizing both US and British troops, Ike can essentially stop US First Army as soon as it meets serious resistance. Bradley in OTL threatened to resign. In this ATL Ike is in a position to call his bluff. The job of the US First Army will be to maintain the link between Simpson advancing due east and Monty’s essentially straight north thrust. Hodges will not be in time to get a lodgment behind the Westwall in the Eiffel or at Aachen. The big battles at Aachen and the Hurtgen Forest won’t happen.

Paradoxically by putting Patton on the right Ike will be able politically to accept Monty’s ‘full blooded thrust’ of three armies into the Low Countries. It will be Anglo-American but not solely under a British Army Group. It will be Patton’s 3^rd Army on the left, with 21^st Army Group beside them but in the reverse of the order of OTL. The main thrust will be British 2^nd Army on Patton’s right with the Canadian First Army on Monty’s right to maintain contact with Hodges and Bradley.

Contrary to US propaganda, Patton’s dash across France was only a marginally faster advance than either US First or British 2^nd Armies. The big difference is what happened when resistance was encountered. The British essentially skidded to a halt after taking Antwerp. Patton kept pushing. Only in this ATL what he is pushing into is Holland instead of Lorraine. So Patton pockets German 15^th Army retreating up the coast, takes the Scheldt Estuary on the bounce which opens Antwerp, and pushes on into Holland.

We will presume that these successes nerve Ike to fire Lee after he moved his HQ from the UK to Paris against direct orders. In OTL Ike played the army politics of essentially letting Lee do anything he wanted. Lee had two protectors who were Marshall’s key people in the US. Here we have a more competent Ike fire Lee’s ass and replace him with Devers Com Zone chief.

In turn the combination of the replacement of Lee and opening Antwerp immediately enable Dempsey to keep up with Patton. The two together chase the tiny German 25^th Army out of Holland before 1^st Parachute Army can be rushed in to reinforce it. The Dutch ports will fall in the first half of September of 1944 as well as the bulk of Holland. With any luck this will happen before the Germans can blow many of the dikes.

Regrettably for the victory in 1944 fantasists the fun stops in the second half of the month just as it did in OTL. With their backs on the German frontier the Germans will rally. With Ike’s entire push essentially on a two army front all the German reinforcements from the last major mobilization round can be essentially sent to one Army Group holding the Dutch-German border. The autumn of 1944 will turn into a bloody slog in wet weather. It will take months to land enough new US divisions, bring divisions up from Italy and mobilize more French. The French rail net will have to be rebuilt and new supply dumps established. However the three attacking armies [3^rd US, 2^nd British and 1^st Canadian] will have short fronts, abundant artillery and tac air based right behind the front on captured Belgian airfields. The attrition will be MUCH more in our favor.

Past November of 1944 there are too many variables to predict what would have happened. However it is unlikely that an Ardennes type offensive would have been possible for Hitler in this ATL. Bradley’s army group will have been mined and wired in instead of burning itself out between Aachen, Hurtgen and the Saar. With the entire supply situation less drastic the material to do this will be there. So if the Ardennes is mounted it will be more like Alsace where a prepared US force loses some ground but is not ruptured.

Monty may well have enough kittens over the command structure to finally nerve Ike to fire him. Failing that Monty and Patton should be across the German border by the end of January, racing Zhukov for Berlin. It is doubtful that Ike will let them take it but FDR and Churchill should have a MUCH stronger hand at Yalta.

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