OCR Text |
Show V which reflects credit upon our fighting men and their leadership. It is by no means certain that they could have avoided disaster even if they had sent the Fifteenth army to the Normandy sector more quickly. As a result of the brilliant campaign cam-paign in France the sixty-odd German Ger-man divisions, guarding France and the Low Countries, have been all but destroyed as a fighting force. Units not decimated have been shattered and will have a difficult dif-ficult job to emerge as an effective effec-tive army. The probability is that Nazi forces from Denmark ' and Norway, and other points, rushed to the German border to plug the gap made by the heavy losses in the Eattle of France, will be likewise like-wise destroyed. The end of the war with Germany Germa-ny is "around the corner." There may be no definite day of surrender. surren-der. Isolated units may fight until overwhelmed but the Nazis have no force left in Western Europe to successfully resist the crushing pressure of the triumphant Allied armies. else. This is a paraphrase of Gen. Eisenhower's remark. Ninth Day Was Decisive Time . . . General Montgomery, according to Gen. Eisenhower, was entrusted entrust-ed with the execution and direction direc-tion of the Allied plan of battle, under which the American First army broke through around St. Lo and the American Third army, ready for the task, swarmed be-! hind enemy lines, eventually swing- j ing north to close the trap and eastward to take Paris and move toward Germany. In 1 appraising the campaign General Eisenhower says that the German command made a mistake in not withdrawing from the solid base-line when they discovered on the ninth day of the campaign that they could not drive the Ailed invaders in-vaders back into the sea. At that stage they could have made an effective retirement to a line north of the Seine, east of the Orleans gap. Instead, the enemy still worried wor-ried about what might happen in the Pas-de-Calais area, let the Seventh army fight its own battle. Not until sixty days of heavy fighting did the enemy have to reinforce re-inforce the hard-pressed Seventh. Then it was too late. It is easy to assert, in the light of what has happened, that "had the Germans moved much more quickly to the aid of the Seventh army the whole course of the Nor-andy Nor-andy fight would have been different dif-ferent and the outcome might have been changed." However, the Nazis were afraid of another cross-Channel cross-Channel attack, not knowing where the American Third army was, and it is quite possible that had they moved the Fifteenth army ar-my sooner the Allies would have seized the opportunity to invade the sector denuded of soldiers. Sllllion Men Dissipated . . . The Germans were up against the age-old problem of trying to beat a superior force. They failed, despite splendid defensive positions i i l i i i 'i i' i hi i i mil i i i i mill i ii iii FORWARD . MARCH By H. S. Sims, Jr. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIHIIIIIlllllllllllillllllllllllllllllMllllllilltlllMlilHIINIIIKimilll FIXED DEFENSE OF CAEN LINE AND FAILURE TO MOVE 15TH ARMY INVITED NAZI DISASTER The Battle of France will probably prob-ably go down as one of the most decisive manoeuvres in military history, resulting in the expulsion of the Germans from France and the Low Countries and the destruction, de-struction, of the German army assigned as-signed to prevent an invasion of the Reich. It is slowly permeating public consciousness that the German di- visions in France, numbering close to a million men, have been almost al-most totally destroyed as an effective ef-fective fighting force. Nothing else explains the rapid advance of Anglo-American contingents after the decimation of the Nazi Seventh army. Superior Power Irresistible . . . The catastrophe that has overwhelmed over-whelmed the Germans stems from out superior power but it was facilitated by the Nazi decision to stake the outcome of the campaign cam-paign on a rigid defense of the base-line of the Norman peninsula peninsu-la with a defensive hinge on Caen. Here the Seventh army was planted and here it was practically practical-ly destroyed when the Americans broke through between St. Lo and the sea, rushed eastward toward Paris and turned northward to trap the defenders of the vital Caen anchor. The Germans had risked too much too long and they could not get out of the net. The belated effort to reinforce the Seventh army by units of the Fifteenth was not sufficient to turn the tide and these, in turn, became enmeshed in the great sweep of the Allied right wing, leaving the entire Nazi position along the coast and in Belgium tottering. Fast-moving Allied soldiers sol-diers did the rest. German High Command Hesitated . . . We must go back to the beginning begin-ning of the invasion to understand the full meaning of Allied strategy. strate-gy. The Germans were expecting the attack across the Channel, but they did not know where it would be launched. They were extremely anxious to protect the Pas-de-Calais area which was guarded by the Fifteenth army. When Gen. Eisenhower's men landed in the Bay of the Seine on the shores of Norandy the Nazis were uncertain whether the invasion in-vasion represented the main Allied attack, or a feint for a heavier offensive of-fensive elsewhere. They had to depend de-pend upon the Seventh army until they could determine the intentions inten-tions of the Anglo-American forces. forc-es. With this idea in mind they committed themselves to an inelastic inelas-tic defense in Normandy and as ; early as the eighth day after the ! invasion of the Allied leaders, in- eluding Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery and Tedder, decided upon a plan to encircle and crush the Seventh army, which based its position on Caen. i The enemy concentrated their i armored divisions, making this ahenor one of the strongest de--: fenBlve lines on the entire front. Having decided to stand firm the Germans knew that their position was as good as the Caen anchor ' and that here every inch was worth ten miles lost anywhere |