War and Game

The Franks were small in numbers and they needed to maintain a reputation for ferocity and success. Saladin had united Egypt and Syria in an empire with huge resources. In the early 1180s, he ravaged the kingdom savagely. The crusader leadership, notably in 1183 under Guy of Lusignan as Regent, responded with Fabian tactics – staying close to Saladin’s army and checkmating it. This was not the earlier tradition when, even under Baldwin IV, confrontation had been the rule, and Guy was bitterly criticized. Fabian tactics had a high price in destruction of the land, but an even higher price in the erosion of the Frankish reputation for ferocity and success in war. By 1187, when Saladin came again, many Franks must have felt the need to reassert themselves. Their heavy equipment made them masters of close-quarter warfare, which was the essence of battle tactics at this time, and they seem to have come to a good understanding of the limitations of the Turkish horse-archers. The consequence was that their tactics relied heavily on close formation. Clearly, they were somewhat at a disadvantage when it came to manoeuvre in the open lands of the Middle East. When faced with the necessity of making a long journey in the presence of the enemy, the crusaders formed themselves into a tight packed column for a fighting march through the enemy forces. It is not the least tribute to Richard I’s military genius that he was able to establish and hold precisely this formation in the march from Acre to Arsuf, which led to the victory at Arsuf in 1191. On this occasion, Richard ordered his cavalry in three divisions and threw around them a cordon of footsoldiers and crossbowmen, who held off the enemy. As infantry tired, so they retreated to the seaward side of the march, where the fleet shadowed their progress. Conventional Frankish tactics, emphasizing mass and close order, with cooperation between infantry and cavalry, were brought to new heights in the Holy Land. This was possible because this was a heavily militarized society, whose members must have served together time after time. These methods served the crusaders well and so they were not radically altered.

Much ink has been spilt on one other component in the Frankish armies – the Turcopoles – because they do seem to represent an adaptation of Frankish methods to Syrian conditions. They formed a substantial unit in the army of Roger of Antioch which was defeated at the “Field of Blood”, were “innumerable” amongst the Franks at Hattin and even accompanied Louis IX in 1252. In the early twelfth century, Albert of Aachen and Raymond of Aguilers both described Byzantine Turcopoles as the children of mixed Turkish–Christian marriages. As a result, some historians see this as a name given to any kind of native soldiery enlisted under the crusaders, while others think that it refers to light cavalrymen. It is fairly certain that they were light cavalry employed to raid, harass and ambush enemy forces. In major battles, they seem to have been amalgamated with the traditional Frankish heavy cavalry. Usamah unequivocally calls them the “archers of the Franks”, and other evidence bears out the suggestion that at least some of them were mounted archers. The balance of the evidence by the end of the twelfth century suggests that they were light cavalry and often mounted archers, sometimes of native and sometimes of Frankish origin, used in special roles, as scouts, messengers and above all raiders who harassed the enemy. However, they were not numerous enough in pitched battle to face the light cavalry and mounted archers of the Turks, and so were used simply as a supplement to the heavy cavalry. This probably explains why the Templar Rule distinguishes between them and mounted sergeants, while associating the two in time of war. Conditions in the Middle East favoured the use of light cavalry, and the Frankish Turcopoles were a useful adjunct to the Frankish army.

There is no doubt at all that contemporaries were impressed by the power of the Frankish cavalry. At Marj as-Suffar on 25 January 1126, the forces of Damascus had pushed the Franks into retreat, but they turned on their enemies and defeated them with their “famous onset”. In the fighting around Damascus on the Second Crusade, we find the Frankish cavalry “delaying to make their famous onslaught until the opportunity should be offered” and seeking a “clear field for their own charge”, while in 1149 at Inab the Franks “made their famous charge”. Their horses were much admired – to Ibn alQalanisi, they were “magnificent” even in death. The importance of cavalry arose from the general conditions of fighting in open empty land characteristic of much of the Middle East. This tactic of the massed charge was a necessary riposte to the greater range of tactical expedients open to the Muslims. Tight formation could hold off envelopment, but eventually mounted bowmen could take a toll of even the most closely knit formation. The Franks, therefore, needed infantry; bowmen to hold the enemy at a distance and spearmen to protect the archers, because their relatively low rate of fire would expose them to being ridden down. This involved a high degree of discipline by all, and in particular the knights had to time their charge to the point where the enemy offered a good target, a formation whose defeat would be decisive. At the same time, they had to be able to mount small-scale attacks to counter enemy movements, all without upsetting their basic formation. It was a fundamental condition of this kind of war that Frankish armies had to hold together even when surrounded.

This fast-moving warfare was very different from European warfare and represented an impressive development of Western tactics. It depended on discipline and coordination within the Frankish field-army of a very notable kind. The formidable nature of the Frankish army can be judged by the respect conceded by their opponents. In the great campaigns of 1182 and 1183 Saladin, although enjoying superiority of numbers, was very wary about risking battle: the Franks for their part were prepared to checkmate him by shadowing his army, although many disliked this and reviled Guy for it. But the fact was that for the Franks a stalemate campaign was a success: it was Saladin, not they, who needed to conquer. However, by the mid-1180s the charms of these Fabian tactics must have been wearing thin, as the cumulative effect of enemy raiding and major expeditions imposed enormous costs on a nobility that was already in difficulties. In addition, the accession of Guy had divided the kingdom: he had many enemies prepared to criticize whatever course of action he took. The Battle of Hattin was an occasion when all of the military and political factors went wrong and destroyed the Latin Kingdom.

The cause of the war that broke out in 1187 was a raid during a period of truce by Raynald of Châtillon, now lord of Kerak, on a Muslim caravan for which he refused, despite the urgings of King Guy, to pay compensation. But Saladin was already well prepared and his call to jihad was quickly issued. The scale of the threat that he posed was clearly understood, for Raymond of Tripoli renounced his understanding with Saladin after Cresson and became reconciled, at least outwardly, to his bitter enemy King Guy and his supporters, although acute tensions remained. The Franks now made a full muster of all the forces available to the kingdom, about 1,200 knights and 15,000– 18,000 foot and Turcopoles. The figure for cavalry seems reasonable – an amalgam of the forces of the barons and those of the Orders plus mercenaries and pilgrims. But the figure for infantry represents an enormous scale of mobilization. We know that the kingdom could provide 5,000 sergeants, but we can only guess that Guy had called up virtually every able-bodied man, and possibly recruited natives and mercenaries. It was remarkable that a kingdom of this size could produce an army larger than that of Philip Augustus in 1214. It points to the military nature of the Frankish settlement, where every man must have been a soldier. Of course, all Western societies were militarized, but the degree varied according to their situation, and the exposure of the Holy Land to attack meant that it was perhaps the most militarized of all, with every fit man being prepared to serve. Against them, Saladin had mustered 12,000 first-rate cavalry, supported by others and foot, making a total of perhaps 30,000. The crude overall figures indicate a huge numerical advantage to Saladin, but in reality it was far greater, for even if there were as many Turcopoles as heavy cavalry in the Frankish army, he still had four times their numbers of front-line cavalry, and cavalry was the decisive arm. In this light, Frankish losses at the Springs of Cresson seem enormous.

Guy’s army gathered in late June at Saffuriyah, where a castle with ample springs, set in the ruins of an ancient town, offered a good base. Saladin crossed the Jordan just south of the Sea of Galilee on 27 June and then moved up to Kafr Sabt, halfway between Tiberias and Saffuriyah, where he established his main base. After a reconnaissance failed to provoke the Franks to leave Saffuriyah, he attacked Tiberias on 2 July, capturing the town and besieging the wife of Raymond III of Tripoli in the citadel. King Guy called a council of war and on 3 July marched out against Saladin. Historians have devoted enormous attention to this council in order to discover why Guy sallied out from his safe base. Most of our accounts have something to say on this, but Muslim ones are inevitably speculative, while Christian writers were concerned to affix blame on the basis of party allegiances. For example, in both De Expugnatione and the Continuation of William of Tyre, Raymond of Tripoli is portrayed as urging the army to leave his countess to her fate, but other sources suggest that he begged Guy to go to her aid. There is no doubt that the arguments rehearsed in our sources were the kind deployed, but they are probably somewhat simplified and their attribution is highly suspect. In favour of the Fabian tactics so far pursued, it was argued that even if Tiberias fell it would gain Saladin no permanent lodgement, because in time his army would break up: this is a somewhat doubtful argument, because since the Franks had lost the castle at Jacob’s Ford much of Galilee had been devastated and Baisan abandoned, so the fall of Tiberias might well make a permanent lodgement possible. It was certainly true that if Saladin wanted a battle it would be better for the Franks to let his army march around until it could be attacked at a point of their choice, but the price of that in devastation might be very high. Certainly it would be hazardous to attack him before Tiberias, because it was 26km away, with little water along the road. But Guy had to be concerned that a vassal had begged for aid and that an opportunity existed to smash the menace of Saladin once and for all. Moreover, Guy’s Fabian tactics against Saladin’s attacks in 1182 and 1183 had earned him great hostility, so he may have felt the need for a victory. This may have struck a sympathetic note with the barons of Jerusalem, exasperated by Saladin’s harassment and perhaps eager for a settling of scores.

U-5 CLASS (1910)

U-5 (8 January 1910), U-6 (18 May 1910), U- 7 (28 June 1910), U- 8 (14 March 1911)

Builder: Germania

Displacement: 505 tons (surfaced), 636 tons (submerged)

Dimensions: 188900 x 18940 x 119100

Machinery: 4 Körting kerosene engines, 2 electric motors, 2 shafts. 900 bhp/1040 shp = 13.5/10.25 knots

Range: 1900 nm at 13 knots surfaced, 80 nm at 5 knots submerged

Armament: 4 x 450mm torpedo tubes (2 bow, 2 stern), total 6 torpedoes

Complement: 29 

Notes: Hans Techel designed this class, bringing together the best features of earlier Germania and Unterseebootkonstruktionsbüro boats. Apart from the continued use of kerosene engines for surface propulsion, they were the equals of, or superior to, their foreign contemporaries, and were in front-line service at the outbreak of World War I. The U- 5 was mined off Zeebrugge on 18 December 1914. The U-22 torpedoed and sank the U-7 in error on 21 January 1915; the British destroyers Ghurka and Maori sank the U- 8 near Dover on 4 March 1915; and the British submarine E- 16 torpedoed and sank the U- 6 off Stavanger on 15 September 1915.

Despite Bauer’s early work and the considerable effort expended on submarines in both Russia and France in the later nineteenth century, there was little German interest in the type until the dawn of the twentieth century. The Krupp industrial conglomerate, however, saw the potential for a new market and began working aggressively to stimulate it. It began by building a small boat designed by a Spanish engineer, Raimondo Lorenzo D’Equevilley-Montjustin, whose ideas owed much to Nordenfelt’s submarines. His Forelle proved moderately successful but did not attract German naval attention. Fortunately for Krupp, lack of U.S. Navy interest in his designs led Simon Lake to turn to Europe as a market for his boats. He attempted to negotiate a license arrangement with Krupp, in the process transferring much of his design information to the firm as an inducement. The deal fell through, but Krupp retained the data; D’Equevilley exploited this knowledge to produce a very competent design that found buyers in Russia, Norway, Austria- Hungary, and Germany. This activity stimulated official interest, leading the Torpedo Department of the Imperial German Navy to set up the Unterseebootkonstruktionsbüro in 1904, led by Gustave Berling; it developed its own somewhat similar submarine design, which went into production in 1907.

The departure of the non-German D’Equevilley and his replacement by Hans Techel on 1 July 1907, opened the way for cooperation between Krupp and the navy and rapid design development in the years before World War I. The result was technical improvement and growth in size and capabilities, although it is notable that the navy was slow to adopt diesel engines in place of gasoline or oil engines.

During World War I the Imperial German Navy accepted some 100 new boats of the Mobilization type, a largely standardized design subject to continual improvements culminating in the Mittel-U type, which proved very capable. These standard submarines were supplemented by mass-produced coastal boats particularly suited to the geographic advantage of operating from Flanders against enemy shipping from 1915. The UB series of conventional submarines evolved, from very small UB-I boats of 127 tons with 14-man crews, to the 516-ton UB-III boats that were essentially diminutives of the Mittel-U type. The parallel UC series of coastal minelaying submarines followed a similar evolutionary path. In addition, the navy also commissioned a few full-size minelayers and a series of very large, long-range boats, the U-cruisers.

Post WWI Influence

German submarine designs exerted a major influence, either directly or indirectly, on most of the world’s submarine development in the years between the two world wars—except in Britain and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. All the major navies of the victorious Allies—Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States—received examples of the latest German U-boats under the terms of the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. They intently examined and analyzed these German craft to determine the applicability and suitability of their features for incorporation into their own types and, in several instances, commissioned former German submarines into their own services to acquire operational experience in their use. Both Italian and French designers were very much influenced by studying and operating examples of the later Mittel-U and UB-III types prior to developing their first new postwar boats. The big U-cruisers had even more impact. The first French oceangoing submarines, the Requin class, benefited substantially from their designers’ study of U-cruisers. The big U.S. Navy fleet boats owed a great debt to the German boats (including even their diesel engines, in some cases), and German engineers were intimately involved in the development of the early Japanese kaidai and junsen types.

German design influence spread to lesser fleets too, largely through the activities of the Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw (IvS). The IvS was established in July 1922 at Den Haag in The Netherlands by a consortium of the Krupp and Vulcan shipbuilding yards to circumvent the Versailles Treaty’s prohibition on submarine design and construction. The engineering staff was led by Hans Techel, who had headed Krupp’s submarine design team since 1907, and the firm also received clandestine financial support from the German Navy, which was desirous of maintaining German submarine design expertise despite the treaty. IvS engineers produced submarine designs that were constructed for Turkey, Finland, the Soviet Union, Spain, and Sweden, and also served as prototypes for the German Navy’s Type IIA coastal, Type IA long-range, and Type VII oceangoing U-boats.

Major Lueder, commander of sPz.Abt. 501 (right), confers with his intelligence officer. The 501 was an independent Tiger unit.

The Allied forces in the north had reached Cape Serrat and taken it by 1 April. At Heidous, the Free French and Moroccan forces, coupled with elements of the U.S. 1st Armored Division, achieved a penetration in the sector of Manteuffel’s ad hoc division. Hasso von Manteuffel personally led his reserves in a successful effort to seal off the penetration.

On 7 April, the 78th Infantry Division attempted to take “Longstop Hill,” which was being held by the mountain troops of the 334. Infanterie-Division. The Germans were forced to pull back, step-by-step, but they were able to continue controlling the hill.

The fighting in the Tunisian Bridgehead approached the end. From 14 to 16 April, the newly arrived British 4th Infantry Division attacked Kampfgruppe Lang of the 334. Infanterie-Division, which was holding at Sidi Nsir.

During the night of 19/20 April, the 8th Army opened its offensive against the Enfidaville position. The city fell, and Montgomery shifted his attack’s main area to the coastal area, since he estimated that the Germanheld positions from Enfidaville to Zaghouan would cost too many casualties.

On 24 April, “Longstop Hill” finally fell to the 78th Infantry Division. That opened the gates to Tunis.

The final round of fighting started. Divisions from the Allied forces stormed from all sides. Nineteen large formations, including four armored divisions, were advancing on Tunis. The German formations, increasingly burned out, pulled back to Tunis and the Cape Bon Peninsula. Individual pockets of resistance held out until the beginning of May.

Oberst Irkens, in his role as Panzerführer Afrika, threw 70 tanks from all of the armored formations against the enemy. More than 1,000 tanks were rolling forward to break through to Tunis. When he finally disengaged from the enemy, he had 20 tanks left. His men had accounted for 90 of the Allies’ seemingly inexhaustible supply of armor.

During the night of 6/7 May, the remaining tanks of Heeresgruppe Afrika rolled back to the El Aila airfield, west of Tunis. There was a series of smaller engagements, until the last of the ammunition had been fired off and the fuel consumed. The remaining seven operational tanks were driven into a wadi.

The Allies continued their attacks on the morning of 7 May, with the artillery hammering into the ever-shrinking bridgehead. Allied airpower smashed pockets of resistance. They were able to do that without any aerial opposition, since the last Luftwaffe formations had left the continent.

At 1740 hours on that day, the first Allied formations entered Tunis, splitting the forces of Heeresgruppe Afrika into two. By the next morning, all of the city was in the hands of the English.

It was not until 9 May, however, that the Allies were able to break through east of Bizerta Lake and take Fort Farina. The last order of the 5. Panzer-Armee was issued at 1524 hours: “Destroy documents and equipment—Good-bye —Long live Germany!” The next day, the British 6th Armoured Division broke through at Hammanlif. It was followed by the Indian 4th Infantry Division, which then turned in the direction of Cape Bon. By the evening of 12 May, it had completely occupied that northernmost peninsula of Tunisia.

The divisions of the Germans’ “Middle Group” sent their last radio transmissions during the morning of 12 May to Heeresgruppe Afrika. The field-army group’s last command post was at Ste. Marie du Zit. General der Panzertruppe Cramer had been able to get there before the capitulation with the last two armored vehicles of the DAK. Around 1100 hours on that day, von Arnim sent a message to Rome indicating that his command post was surrounded on two sides. Immediately thereafter, he made a surrender offer to the Allies. It was General der Panzertruppe Cramer who sent the final message, however:

To: German Armed Forces High Command

Ammunition expended. Weapons and materiel destroyed. The Deutsches Afrika-Korps has fought to the point where it is no longer capable of fighting.”

Early on the morning of 13 May, General Alexander sent a message to the Prime Minister in London:

Sir, it is my duty to inform you that the Tunisian Campaign is over. All enemy resistance has ceased. All of Africa is ours!

The end in Africa was just as catastrophic as that in Stalingrad. In addition to 130,000 German personnel, some 180,000 Italian personnel were taken captive. What was even more serious: the fighting morale of the Italians had been broken. They had lost the fight for their colonial possessions and were then in fear for their homeland, since the writing was on the wall that the Allies would soon kick open the door to “Fortress Europe.”

In all, one hundred thousand soldiers of all nations lost their lives in the fighting for North Africa.

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.