Normandy to Falaise: A Critique of Allied Operational Planning in 1944 - Endnotes
1. This essay, with minor revisions, originally was published under the title “From the Normandy Beaches to the Falaise-Argentan Pocket,” Military Review 70, no. 9 (September 1990): 45–64. It is reprinted with the permission of the author and the editors of Military Review.
2. Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: June 6, 1944 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959). “A Note on Casualties,” p. 279, gives carefully considered estimates of casualties; the number of killed given here is my own estimate projected from Ryan’s figures. The planning for the cross-Channel invasion is examined in minute detail in Gordon A. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1951), pp. 54–82, 164–97.
3. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 188–90.
4. Ibid., p. 192; Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1952), pp. 182, 195, 291–92; Robin Higham, “Technology and D-day” in Eisenhower Foundation, D-day: The Normandy Invasion in Retrospect (Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press, 1971), pp. 221–46.
5. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, p. 48.
6. Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1987), p. 78, is strong in demonstrating Montgomery’s intent to take Caen on the first day; see also Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1951), p. 251.
7. Martin Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1961), p. 193; D’Este, Decision in Normandy, pp. 356, 363, 390–99.
8. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 71–73; D’Este, Decision in Normandy, pp. 32–33.
9. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, p. 284; Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 13, 41–44.
10. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 286–87; Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 78–88.
11. D’Este, Decision in Normandy, pp. 85, 87, 153–54, and Max Hastings, Overlord: D-day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), pp. 36, 146, for such anticipation as occurred; but, see again Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, p. 284.
12. Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, p. 201; see also pp. 175–76, 200.
13. See Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies, May 1941–September 1944, 2 vols., U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1953), 1: 460–61, for the large and largely unanticipated replacement problem.
14. In the Normandy fighting, the British deployed the 7th and 11th Armored Divisions (in addition to the specialized 79th used in the landings); D’Este, Decision in Normandy, index, p. 535. The United States deployed or had ready to participate by the time of the Cobra breakout the 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th Armored Divisions (index, p. 554).
15. So much was the alignment of the British on the left and the Americans on the right taken for granted that the literature contains almost no discussion of the issue. It is touchedupon, mainly as it determined the subsequent occupation zones in Germany, in Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), pp. 144–45.
16. Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 185–223; Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, pp. 329–34, 338–42; J. Lawton Collins, Lightning Joe: An Autobiography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), pp. 233–38; D’Este, Decision in Normandy, pp. 337–51.
17. Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 228–33 (p. 229, for casualties); Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, pp. 346–47; Collins, Lightning Joe, pp. 238–39.
18. Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 231–66 (particularly p. 241, for Collins’ decision); Collins, Lightning Joe, pp. 241–46 (particularly p. 242, for the same decision); D’Este, Decision in Normandy, pp. 403–07.
19. See Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 343–44, for the new command arrangements; see pp. 347–49 for the plans for the Third Army and VIII Corps to advance into Brittany.
20. Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1954), pp. 204, 261–63; Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 343–44, 684, and 684, for Montgomery’s promotion.
21. On Montgomery’s wishes to throw the overwhelming bulk of the Allied armies eastward with no emphasis on Brittany, see The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, K.G. (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1958), pp. 238–40; Nigel Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield: Monty’s War Years, 1942–1944 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1983), pp. 778–79.
22. For the American belief in the importance of the Breton ports, see Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 209–10, 343–44; for the operations in Brittany, see pp. 337– 415, 631–56; for the end of resistance at Brest on 20 September, see p. 652; for the inutility of the Breton ports as events unfolded, see pp. 655–56. For subsequent Allied logistical problems, see pp. 657–75, 676–702, and Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies, 2: 3–21.
23. For Allied envelopment plans, see Pogue, The Supreme Command, pp. 208–09; Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 479–81, 492–99. For the German counterattack, see Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 457–75.
24. D’Este, Decision in Normandy, pp. 415–17, 420–21; Ralph Bennett, ULTRA in the West: The Normandy Campaign of 1944–45 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980), pp. 115–19.
25. For the halt on 13 August, see Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, p. 505. For Bradley’s and the Allies’ decision-making and the problems of inter-Allied command relations, see Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, pp. 373–79; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1948), pp. 276–79; Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 506–09, 523–24, 527; D’Este, Decision in Normandy, pp. 439–60. For Bradley’s blaming Montgomery, see Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 377; Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, p. 508.
26. Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, p. 523.
30. Ibid., pp. 537–42, for 19 August; p. 557, for the number of Germans captured; p. 558, for the German dead and losses of equipment.
31. Ibid., pp. 530–35, 538, 540, 542–58, and Wilmot, Struggle for Europe, pp. 423–44 on the escape of German cadres. For the implications, see Wilmot, Struggle for Europe, pp. 477–82, 545–61; Charles B. MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1963), pp. 18–19; Hugh M. Cole, The Lorraine Campaign, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1950), pp. 31–35. On the Allies’ supply, particularly fuel problems, see the references in note 21, supra, and especially Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, pp. 691–92, 696–97.
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