Churchill and Stalin converse on the effectiveness of their respective offensives.
Posted by Mitch Williamson in WWII on Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Soviet offensive had now begun, and I kept Stalin
constantly informed of our fortunes.
Prime Minister to
Marshal Stalin 25 June 44
We now rejoice in the opening results of your immense
operations, and will not cease by every human means to broaden our fronts
engaged with the enemy and to have the fighting kept at the utmost intensity.
2. The Americans hope to take Cherbourg in a few days. The
fall of Cherbourg will soon set three American divisions free to reinforce our
attack southward, and it may be 25,000 prisoners will fall into our hands at
Cherbourg.
3. We have had three or four days of gale — most unusual in
June — which has delayed the build-up and done much injury to our synthetic
harbours in their incomplete condition. We have provided the means to repair
and strengthen them. The roads leading inland from the two synthetic harbours
are being made with great speed by bulldozers and steel networks unrolled.
Thus, with Cherbourg, a large base will be established from which very
considerable armies can be operated irrespective of weather.
4. We have had bitter fighting on the British front, where
four out of the five Panzer divisions are engaged. The new British onslaught
there has been delayed a few days by the bad weather, which delayed the
completion of several divisions. The attack will begin tomorrow.
5. The advance in Italy goes forward with great rapidity,
and we hope to be in possession of Florence in June and in contact with the
Pisa-Rimini line by the middle or end of July. I shall send you a telegram presently
about the various strategic possibilities which are open in this quarter. The
overriding principle which, in my opinion, we should follow is the continuous
engagement of the largest possible number of Hitlerites on the broadest and
most effective fronts. It is only by hard fighting that we can take some of the
weight off you.
6. You may safely disregard all the German rubbish about the
results of their flying bomb. It has had no appreciable effect upon the
production or life of London. Casualties during the seven days it has been used
are between ten and eleven thousand. The streets and parks remain full of
people enjoying the sunshine when off work or duty. Parliament debates
continually throughout the alarms. The rocket development may be more
formidable when it comes. The people are proud to share in a small way the
perils of our own soldiers and of your soldiers, who are so highly admired in
Britain. May all good fortune attend your new onfall.
Stalin sent me his congratulations on the fall of Cherbourg,
and gave further information about his own gigantic operations.
Marshal Stalin to
Prime Minister 27 June 44
The Allied forces have liberated Cherbourg, thus crowning
their efforts in Normandy with another great victory. I greet the increasing
successes of the brave British and American forces, who have developed their
operations both in Northern France and Italy.
If the scale of military operations in Northern France is
becoming increasingly powerful and dangerous for Hitler, the successful
development of the Allies’ offensive in Italy is also worthy of every attention
and applause. We wish you new successes.
Concerning our offensive, it can be said that we shall not
give the Germans a breathing-space, but shall continue to widen the front of
our offensive operations by increasing the strength of our onslaught against
the German armies. You will of course agree with me that this is indispensable
for our common cause.
As regards the Hitlerite flying bombs, this expedient, it is
clear, can have no serious importance either for operations in Normandy or for
the population of London, whose bravery is known to all.
I replied:
Prime Minister to
Marshal Stalin 1 July 44
This is the moment for me to tell you how immensely we are
all here impressed with the magnificent advances of the Russian armies, which
seem, as they grow in momentum, to be pulverising the German armies which stand
between you and Warsaw, and afterwards Berlin. Every victory that you gain is
watched with eager attention here. I realise vividly that all this is the
second round you have fought since Teheran, the first of which regained
Sevastopol, Odessa, and the Crimea and carried your vanguards to the
Carpathians, Sereth, and Pruth.
The battle is hot in Normandy. The June weather has been
tiresome. Not only did we have a gale on the beaches worse than any in the
summer-time records of many years, but there has been a great deal of cloud.
This denies us the full use of our overwhelming air superiority, and also helps
the flying bombs to get through to London. However, I hope that July will show
an improvement. Meanwhile the hard fighting goes in our favour, and although
eight Panzer divisions are in action against the British sector we still have a
good majority of tanks. We have well over three-quarters of a million British
and Americans ashore, half and half. The enemy is burning and bleeding on every
front at once, and I agree with you that this must go on to the end.
Aftermath of
Operation Bagration
Compared to other battles, this was by far the greatest
Soviet victory in numerical terms. The Red Army liberated a vast amount of
Soviet territory (whose population had suffered greatly under the German
occupation). The advancing Soviets found cities destroyed, villages
depopulated, and much of the population killed, or deported by the occupiers. In
order to show the outside world the magnitude of the victory, some 50,000
German prisoners, taken from the encirclement east of Minsk, were paraded
through Moscow: even marching quickly and twenty abreast, they took 90 minutes
to pass. In a symbolic gesture the streets were washed down afterward.
The German army never recovered from the materiel and
manpower losses sustained during this time, having lost about a quarter of its
Eastern Front manpower, similar to the percentage of loss at Stalingrad (about
20 full divisions). These losses included many experienced soldiers, NCOs and
other officers, which at this stage of the war the Wehrmacht could not replace.
The operation was also notable for the number of German generals lost: nine
were killed, including two corps commanders; 22 captured, including four corps
commanders; Major-General Hahn, commander of 197th Infantry Division
disappeared on 24 June, while Lieutenant-Generals Zutavern and Philipp of the
18th Panzergrenadier and 134th Infantry Divisions committed suicide.
Overall, the near-total annihilation of Army Group Centre
was very costly for the Germans. Exact German losses are unknown, but newer
research indicates around 400,000 overall casualties. Soviet losses were also
substantial, with 180,040 killed and missing, 590,848 wounded, together with
2,957 tanks, 2,447 artillery pieces, and 822 aircraft also lost.
The offensive cut off Army Group North and Army Group North
Ukraine from each other, and weakened them as resources were diverted to the
central sector. This forced both Army Groups to withdraw from Soviet territory
much more quickly when faced with the following Soviet offensives in their
sectors.
The completion of Operation Bagration also coincided with
the destruction of many of the German Army's strongest units in Normandy in the
Falaise pocket, although the scale was much smaller than Bagration in numerical
terms and especially in terms of damage to the Wehrmacht in both personnel and
materiel. On both eastern and western fronts, the subsequent Allied
exploitation was slowed and halted for some time by supply problems rather than
German resistance. However, the Germans were able to transfer armoured units
from the Italian front, where they could afford to give ground, to resist the
Soviet advance near Warsaw.
Aftermath of Normandy
1944
By 22 August, all German forces west of the Allied lines
were dead or in captivity. Historians differ in their estimates of German
losses in the pocket. The majority state that between 80,000 and 100,000 troops
were caught in the encirclement of which 10,000–15,000 were killed,
40,000–50,000 taken prisoner, and 20,000–50,000 escaped. In the northern sector
alone, German material losses included 344 tanks, self-propelled guns and other
light armoured vehicles as well as 2,447 soft-skinned vehicles and 252 guns
abandoned or destroyed. In the fighting around Hill 262, German losses totalled
2,000 killed and 5,000 taken prisoner, in addition to 55 tanks, 44 guns and 152
other armoured vehicles. The once-powerful 12th SS Panzer Division had lost 94%
of its armour, nearly all of its artillery, and 70% of its vehicles. Mustering
close to 20,000 men and 150 tanks before the Normandy campaign, after Falaise
it was reduced to 300 men and 10 tanks. Although elements of several German
formations had managed to escape to the east, even these had left behind most
of their equipment. After the battle, Allied investigators estimated that the
Germans lost around 500 tanks and assault guns in the pocket, and very little
of the equipment that was extricated survived the general retreat across the
Seine.
The area in which the pocket had formed was full of the
remains of battle. Whole villages had been destroyed and ruined and abandoned
equipment made some roads totally impassable. Corpses littered the area—not
only those of soldiers, but civilians and thousands of dead cattle and horses.
In the hot August weather, maggots crawled over the bodies and hordes of flies
descended on the area. Pilots reported being able to smell the stench of the
battlefield hundreds of feet above it. General Eisenhower recorded that:
The battlefield at Falaise was
unquestionably one of the greatest 'killing fields' of any of the war areas.
Forty-eight hours after the closing of the gap I was conducted through it on
foot, to encounter scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was
literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing
but dead and decaying flesh.
Fear of infection from the rancid conditions led the Allies
to declare the area an "unhealthy zone". Clearing the area was a low
priority though and went on until well into November. Many swollen bodies had
to be shot to expunge gasses within them before they could be burnt, and
bulldozers were used to clear the area of dead animals.
Disappointed that a significant portion of Seventh Army had
eluded them, many in the Allied higher echelons—particularly among the
Americans—were bitterly critical of what they perceived as Montgomery's lack of
urgency in closing the pocket. Writing shortly after the war, Ralph Ingersoll—a
prominent peacetime journalist who served as a planner on Eisenhower's
staff—expressed the prevailing American view at the time:
The international army boundary arbitrarily
divided the British and American battlefields just beyond Argentan, on the
Falaise side of it. Patton's troops, who thought they had the mission of
closing the gap, took Argentan in their stride and crossed the international
boundary without stopping. Montgomery, who was still nominally in charge of all
ground forces, now chose to exercise his authority and ordered Patton back to
his side of the international boundary line. … For ten days, however, the
beaten but still coherently organized German Army retreated through the Falaise
gap.
Some historians agree that the gap could have been closed
earlier; Wilmot notes that despite having British divisions in reserve
Montgomery did not reinforce Simonds, and neither was the Canadian drive on
Trun and Chambois as "vigorous and venturesome" as the situation
demanded. Hastings writes that Montgomery—having witnessed what he
characterises as a poor Canadian performance during Totalize—should have
brought up veteran British divisions to take the lead. However, while
acknowledging that Montgomery and Crerar might have done more to impart
momentum to the British and Canadians, these and others such as D'Este and
Blumenson dismiss as "absurd over-simplification" Patton's
post-battle claim that the Americans could have prevented the German escape had
Bradley not ordered him to stop at Argentan.
Wilmot states that "contrary to contemporary reports,
the Americans did not capture Argentan until 20 August, the day after the link
up at Chambois". The American unit that closed the gap between Argentan
and Chambois, the 90th Division, was according to Hastings one of the least
effective of any Allied army in Normandy. He speculates that the real reason
Bradley halted Patton was not fears over accidental clashes with the British
but an appreciation that with powerful German formations still effective at
that stage of the battle, the Americans lacked the means to defend an early
blocking position and would have suffered an "embarrassing and gratuitous
setback" at the hands of the retreating Fallschirmjäger and 2nd and 12th
SS Panzer Divisions.
The battle of the Falaise Pocket marked the closing phase of
the Battle of Normandy with a decisive German defeat. Hitler's personal
involvement had been damaging from the first, with his insistence on hopelessly
optimistic counter-offensives, his micro-management of his generals, and his
refusal to countenance a withdrawal when his armies were threatened with
annihilation. More than 40 German divisions were destroyed during the Battle of
Normandy. No exact figures are available, but historians estimate that the
battle had cost the German forces a total of around 450,000 men, of whom
240,000 were killed or wounded. The Allies had achieved this blow at a cost of
209,672 casualties among the ground forces, including 36,976 killed and 19,221
missing. In addition, 16,714 Allied airmen were killed or went missing in
direct connection with Operation Overlord. The final battle of Operation
Overlord—the Liberation of Paris—followed on 25 August, and Overlord reached
its end by 30 August with the retreat of the last German unit across the Seine.
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