Eisenhower vs. Devers on crossing the Rhine
Charles Packer
it's claimed that the war in Germany could have ended
sooner had Eisenhower not disliked Devers. I'd be
interested to read the other side of the story (here
or in cited sources), i.e. that Eisenhower's decision
not to let Devers cross the Rhine was sound strategy.
A casual Google search didn't turn up anything with
that point of view.
--
Charles Packer
http://cpacker.org/whatnews
mailboxATcpacker.org
Shawn Wilson
> In a NY Times Op-Ed piece on Monday,
>
> http://tinyurl.com/yzqjpzh
>
> it's claimed that the war in Germany could have ended
> sooner had Eisenhower not disliked Devers. I'd be
> interested to read the other side of the story (here
> or in cited sources), i.e. that Eisenhower's decision
> not to let Devers cross the Rhine was sound strategy.
> A casual Google search didn't turn up anything with
> that point of view.
Note that Market-Garden was premised on the same idea- that Germany
was a balloon that would 'pop' once pierced. Didn't work. The German
army fought to the death.
Attacking forward would have meant danger from the Germans on their
flanks, and that other American units that would otherwise have had
some pressure taken off by attacks against those German units would
not have. Devers did not have, and could not have been given, given
the logistical constraints, enough troops to really exploit a
breakthrough.
Sure, maybe, with a crystal ball and 20-20 hindsight we could say that
such an attack would have led to a chain of events predicated on
things the Allies didn't know that would have shortened the war. But
Eisenhower had decided on a broad front strategy, and he followed
through with it. I think history has borne him out.
Joe Osman
The terrain of the area may be such that it is more defensible (it is
just north of the Alps). There were a lot of French troops involved.
The French were getting rid of their best and most seasoned troops,
the colonial units, in favor of metropolotan French. The French were
having problems assimilating the former maquis into their army. IIRC,
they were sending them up against the bypassed Germans in the Atlantic
ports for training about this time.
Joe
Rich Rostrom
> In a NY Times Op-Ed piece on Monday,
>
> http://tinyurl.com/yzqjpzh
>
> it's claimed that the war in Germany could have ended
> sooner had Eisenhower not disliked Devers. I'd be
> interested to read the other side of the story (here
> or in cited sources), i.e. that Eisenhower's decision
> not to let Devers cross the Rhine was sound strategy.
> A casual Google search didn't turn up anything with
> that point of view.
The "resurgent German army" of late 1945
wasn't resurging because of Eisenhower's
caution or dithering. It was recovering
because after the tremendous rush across
France, Allied forces were running out of
gas, both literally and figuratively.
The troops at the front were running short
of fuel, food, ammunition, vehicles, and
men. Everything had to come longer and
longer distances from the ports and beaches
where they were landed.
The American way of war relied on the lavish
expenditure of ammunition, for one thing.
Bill Mauldin once wrote "When one of our
observers sees a few Germans, he is apt to
get all excited and throw a concentration
of shells at them. The battered krauts,
coming from a land where lives are cheap
and shells are expensive, can't understand
why we didn't send an infantry patrol."
But in October and November 1944, U.S.
forces weren't getting enough shells for
that. Allied forces _were_ fighting, and
fighting hard, keeping pressure on the
German forces, but the resources for a
great breakthrough just weren't there.
Meanwhile the Germans had fallen back to
their fortified positions on the German
frontier, and on their base of supply.
It was noted in the op-ed that the German
Ardennes counterattack came only three
weeks after Devers' proposed Rhine crossing.
This shows that the Germans already had
rallied their forces and built up substantial
reserves.
The Allied position in France and Belgium
was still in many ways precarious. Devers
had liberated Strasbourg and touched the
Rhine, but the Germans held the large
Colmar pocket to the south on the French
side.
MARKET-GARDEN was a brutal lesson in what
happens to armies that overreach in pursuit
of a "routed" enemy.
Crossing the Rhine at that time would have
been useful in some ways, but it does not
seem clear to me that it would have been a
success. 6th AG could not IMO put a large
force across the Rhine with adequate supply,
and German reserves would have made a strong
counterattack.
Five months later, when Germany was all but
crushed, a battle group of the U.S. 2nd
Armored Division crossed the Elbe River near
Magdeburg. The Germans counterattacked and
destroyed the bridgehead. This was in mid-April
1945. If the German army could still do so
much then, ISTM that Devers' Rhine crossing
would have met a similar fate. At best (IMO)
the Allies could have maintained a small
bridgehead under continual siege, at the
cost of starving all other operations in the
area.
If the Allies had sent a large force across
the Rhine at Strasbourg... the obvious risk
was that the Germans would counterattack from
the Colmar Pocket to the south and from the
Saar to the north. There was only about 100 km
between these two positions. If the Germans
succeeded, then Allied forces east of the Rhine
would be cut off and destroyed - a major disaster.
Eisenhower wasn't going there.
David H Thornley
> In a NY Times Op-Ed piece on Monday,
>
> http://tinyurl.com/yzqjpzh
>
> it's claimed that the war in Germany could have ended
> sooner had Eisenhower not disliked Devers.
There's been all sorts of claims on Eisenhower's bad
generalship, mostly (as far as I can tell) by people
who really don't understand logistics.
The big problem in the fall of 1944 was that, in order
to get supplies to the front, they had to be landed on
a beach, loaded on a truck, and driven to the front lines,
which had suddenly gotten quite a distance away. The
Germans had managed to destroy most of the port facilities,
and the Allies themselves had trashed the rail network
before the invasion.
The capture of Marseilles, mostly intact and connected to
working rail lines, was a considerable help, but not enough.
The Brits captured the great port of Antwerp intact, but
with tired men and beat-up vehicles and very low
supplies, and their effort to exploit the victory by
capturing the sea approaches was stopped really fast.
It took months to get the Germans out of their
strongholds blocking the port.
In this light, Eisenhower's plan to advance on a broad
front and destroy as many Germans as possible west
of the Rhine looks more reasonable. Any attempt at
a narrow-front advance would put even greater strain on
the logistics, particularly if it were successful.
I'd be
> interested to read the other side of the story (here
> or in cited sources), i.e. that Eisenhower's decision
> not to let Devers cross the Rhine was sound strategy.
> A casual Google search didn't turn up anything with
> that point of view.
>
At that time, Devers' Army Group consisted of the Seventh
Army, which had closed up to the Rhine, and the First
French Army, which was having a great deal of trouble with
the Colmar Pocket, and which was undergoing "blanchement"
- whitening - for political purposes. This removed a good
many veteran soldiers from Africa, and substituted
Continental Frenchmen of much less experience and often
sketchy training.
(At this point, De Gaulle had achieved one of his main goals,
which was the liberation of most of France, and apparently
felt he could afford to cut the effectiveness of French
land forces temporarily for grand strategic purposes, which
of course none of the other Allies shared.)
Devers certainly could have gotten across the Rhine, at
which time Seventh Army would have been deep in a salient
and divided by a major river, with Germany controlling
adjacent territory on the west of the Rhine. At this time,
the Germans were building up massive armored forces for
the Ardennes attack, and also forces in the south
that struck Devers in the Nordwind attack on December
31st, the last large German attack in the West.
Whether having Patch cross the Rhine would have been a good
idea or not, I don't know. There are reasons why it might
have turned out really badly.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
Louis C
> The capture of Marseilles, mostly intact and connected to
> working rail lines, was a considerable help, but not enough.
Marseilles was not mostly intact when captured, but by then Allied
logisticians had enough experience with refitting destroyed ports that
proper provisions had been made to repair and expand it quickly.
The two factors that really helped were the working rail lines, as you
mentioned and the pace of the Allied advance. The former meant that
all the Allies had to repair was the effect of their own air attacks
plus casual German destruction, rather than the systematic effort to
pount the network to rubble that had been applied further north. The
latter meant that Allied logisticians could immediately get to work
repairing Marseilles without being shelled by enemy artillery or
diverted to help with the throughput of the landing beaches.
> At that time, Devers' Army Group consisted of the Seventh
> Army, which had closed up to the Rhine,
Note that the unit which had liberated Strasbourg was the French 2nd
armored division, part of XV Corps landed in Normandy and which had
been transferred from 3rd Army because, precisely, Devers had made it
know that he had the supply for - just - one additional corps and
Patton didn't, so Eisenhower transferred XV Corps to 7th Army.
My point here is that the center of gravity of Devers' force was not
on the Rhine, even though the French had technically reached that
river near the Swiss border, too. Being on the Rhine made nice titles,
it allowed them to interdict rail traffic with Switzerland but there
was no talk of an exploitation into the Black Forest.
http://www.military.com/Resources/ResourceFileView/worldwarii_europe_maps_map70_largerview.htm
> (At this point, De Gaulle had achieved one of his main goals,
> which was the liberation of most of France, and apparently
> felt he could afford to cut the effectiveness of French
> land forces temporarily for grand strategic purposes, which
> of course none of the other Allies shared.)
It was never a case of sacrificing military effectiveness for
political goals. Here are reasons why "blanchiment" took place.
Military reason #1: manpower shortages. French colonies had never been
all that populated, they had been heavily tapped for manpower and the
resource was running out. Colonial troops had experienced very high
casualty rates as they had been involved in continuous fighting with
inadequate equipment and very aggressive (often too aggressive)
tactics. The boldness that helped break the Cassino deadlock had a
price. The colonial divisions had lost 50% of their initial strength
by the end of 1944, the Algerian division had lost a little over 100%.
Losses had to be replaced, no significant amounts of replacements were
to be had in North Africa (mobilization had been very extensive
there), so the French Army was going to undergo some "whitening" due
to the very nature of the available manpower resources.
Military reason #2: battle fatigue. Colonial troops were
overwhelmingly infantry, they had been engaged continuously for a year
and a half (Tunisia, Italy, France) and were beginning to feel the
strain. There were the usual complaints along the lines of having done
their bit and let someone else do his for a change, aggravated by the
racial issue: De Lattre feared that the rumor might spread France was
deliberately using its non-white citizens as cannon fodder to spare
the rest.
Military reason #3: Black troops - not the North African ones - were
particularly sensitive to cold, and 1944-45 was a harsh winter. The
French Army had used colonial troops in Europe since WWI and was well-
aware of the issue, it was a common practice to pull them out to
southern France or overseas during the colder months. Note that the
majority of the colonial troops undergoing "whitening" were quite glad
about it.
Political reason #1: There were enormous tensions between Frenchmen.
One of De Gaulle's challenge was to prevent a civil war, and one way
to reconciliate his countrymen was to have them fighting side by side
against a common enemy. So it was vitally important to have units
mixing formely vichyst officers (the majority of the career officers
had remained loyal to Vichy prior to taking up arms again in 1944),
former Free French military units, and resistance groups, some of them
led by communists. De Gaulle would have loved to raise as many units
as possible for that to happen, but the Americans would only let him
have 8 divisions because of shipping shortages and Roosevelt's
justified concerns that the French couldn't organize a much larger
number of effective fighting units, so if he wanted to rotate
resisters into the regular army, he had to rotate another group out.
Colonial troops weren't concerned by the Vichy vs De Gaulle vs
communist opposition, so they were an obvious candidate for removal to
make room for others.
Political reason #2: It was important in De Gaulle's rhetoric to make
his countrymen believe that they had liberated themselves (with a
little help from their friends). So if the liberating French Army was
reasonably white-looking, that was abonus, especially in Alsace. But
that wasn't all that much of a concern, as most of France had already
been liberated by the time 'blanchiment' was carried out.
Simple, ordinary racism wasn't a political reason per se. It certainly
existed, but it was so deep-rooted among officers with the notion that
black troops could not become regular officers or mix with white ones,
that these assumptions were never challenged.
My point here is that making the French Army appear whiter-looking was
certainly on De Gaulle's and other people's agendas but the idea never
was to sacrifice military effectiveness in order to do so, even though
that inevitably happened. The loss in military effectiveness shouldn't
be overstated, though. The French advanced stalled in front of the
Colmar pocket, but American units fighting the same pocket from the
north weren't doing any better. It just wasn't easy.
LC
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:a0cdcde3-6b96-41c4...@h10g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...
> In a NY Times Op-Ed piece on Monday,
>
> http://tinyurl.com/yzqjpzh
>
> it's claimed that the war in Germany could have ended
> sooner had Eisenhower not disliked Devers. I'd be
> interested to read the other side of the story (here
> or in cited sources), i.e. that Eisenhower's decision
> not to let Devers cross the Rhine was sound strategy.
> A casual Google search didn't turn up anything with
> that point of view.
The article is picking up on the book, Decision at Strasbourg,
Ike's Strategic Mistake to halt the Sixth Army Group at the
Rhine in 1944 by David Colley.
The book seems to use quotes from people like Patton and
makes the usual claims, the road to Berlin might have been
opened. It also claims it was going to be a sizeable US force
crossing the river, but only part of the Army Group forces
were actually on the river and mainly around Switzerland and
Strasbourg. Furthermore the on the German side was the Black
Forest with associated hills and mountains.
The book refers to the idea of an attack by the army group in
either late November or early December 1944, it has been out for
about a year now.
The French reached the Rhine river near Switzerland on 19
November while Third army had almost cleared Metz On 21
November 7th Army, using 2 corps instead of the originally
planned single corps start to capture Strasbourg. Mulhouse
was entered on 22 November.
There were allied attacks all long the line in late November,
slowly pushing the Germans back. On 26 November Antwerp
was opened, also that day the US 7th Army finally crossed the
Vosages mountains in Alsace.
In mid November the US forces are using what is supposed to
be 35 days worth of artillery ammunition in 10 days
On 20 November SHAEF tried to form a reserve corps, this
is not possible and the only reserves are the refitting airborne
divisions, the situation does not change before the Ardennes
offensive. COMZ, the US supply organisation for 12th Army
Group gains control of 6th Army Group supply system.
On 27 November Eisenhower orders 7th Army to help 3rd Army
capture the Saar region. On 28 November the French forces
now 10 miles south west of Strasbourg are halted by the defences.
In late November a special coal shipment is sent to the Southern
French rail system from England, to overcome the shortage. The
Tarascon-Beaucaire bridge across the Rhone is given a priority
repair to enable coal shipments. PoWs used as coal miners
produce "unsatisfactory results". The 21st Army group advanced
depot has 127,000 tons of supplies, there still is a further 62,000
tons in the Normandy depots. Similar story for 12th Army group
it seems. Air transport is still being used, 3rd army receiving 3,227
tons in November.
The US army starts to see a steady stream of trenchfoot victims,
ultimately they will make up 9.25% of total US Army theatre
casualties.
On 2 December Devers orders 7th Army to concentrate ahead of
a major attack planned for the 6th, the French 1st Army, with 1 US
division is given responsibility for the Colmar pocket, planning to
attack it from two sides and make the Rhine south east of Colmar.
On 3 December 21st Army Group finally clears the west bank of
the Maas. US 1st Army reaches Brandenburg.
On 4 December 3rd Army reaches the Siegfried line at Fraulautern.
On 5 December the 7th Army attacks towards the Maginot/Siegfried
line with 2 corps.
On 6 December the French 1st Corps attacks, the 2nd Corps is
holding strong German counter attacks.
On 10 December the west bank of the Rhine from Krebs to Switzerland
is in French hands.
On 12 December 7th Army's advance is halted on the Maginot line.
On 14 December it looks like the US 1st and 3rd armies have been
effectively halted.
On 16 December the Ardennes attack starts.
On 21 December the southern rail system reached Strasbourg.
In late December the southern rail network is having severe trouble
with the winter weather in the mountains, together with a lack of coal and
illness amongst the civilian staff, rail jams grow to the equivalent of 8
days
supply, with the situation becoming worse during January.
In the south by the end of December the 9 extra divisions
transferred from 12th Army Group or landed in the south
(instead of the original plans to land in the north) have
overloaded the supply system, the Quartermaster units are
handling three times their rated capability. The extra US
forces are in addition to around 50,000 French volunteer
soldiers. First French Army indulges in some creative
accounting and works the differences in US and French
supply methods in order to try and equip the men. A total
of 618,775 men have been landed in southern France.
In South France some 4,000 miles of track were in service, with the
usual problems with congestion and weather. All up some 3,500 miles
of single and 5,000 miles of double track were in service, around a
third of the French rail system.
At the end of 1944 there are 9,000 PoWs working in the 7th
Army area and 7,500 in 1st French Army area. In addition the
southern supply system had 32,194 US, 7,003 French, 10,350
Italian, 8,350 PoW and 3,162 civilian workers. The Italians make
up 1 base depot, 1 railhead, 1 salvage collecting, 4 salvage
repair, 2 laundry, 2 bakery and 24 service companies plus 5
Quartermaster Battalion HQs.
On 1 January, despite the commitment to the Ardennes the
Germans attack 7th Army in operation Nordwind.
At the end of 1944 the tyre shortage is really hurting, putting many
vehicles off the road, arrangement are made for local manufacture,
coal shortages continue to delay trains (in January Paris receives
only 60% of the stated minimum coal requirements), SHAEF claims
it needs another 33,000 vehicles.
The allied supply situation was about to be relieved by the opening
of Antwerp, but only after the usual moving congestion. That is
first the port clogged, then the supply depots clogged trying to
handle more cargo more quickly.
Given the above timetable I am at somewhat of a loss to know where
the win the war months earlier attack by crossing the Rhine with
apparently the US part of 6th Army Group in late November or early
December 1944 comes from, they were only on the Rhine in parts of
their front, mainly near the Swiss border. Their supply system was
being stretched to support them where they were.
Why is it yet again the Germans are supposed to collapse if 1 or
2 US corps made it to the east bank of the Rhine? That idea has
been proposed so many times, for different US armies at
different times. How come in this case the French are going to be
left behind, even though they have more forces on the Rhine than
the US?
The German forces that did attack in the Ardennes would have
been available to stop any attempt to cross the Rhine if it was
launched in the first week of December. The Ardennes attack
probably enabled the allies to defeat the Germans more easily
than having to destroy those forces acting in a defensive role.
It was one reason the once the German lines were broken
west of the Rhine in February 1945 the allies began an
accelerating pursuit into Germany.
Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.
ThePro
<snip>
>
> Political reason #2: It was important in De Gaulle's rhetoric to make
> his countrymen believe that they had liberated themselves (with a
> little help from their friends).
AFAIK there was quite a bit of propaganda about this in the post-war
years.
I have some French friends, in their forties, who learned in school
and still believe that De Gaulle "saved France from the Americans" and
that Overlord was not needed because the French Resistance by itself
was just about to get rid of the Germans. Go figure...
Pierrot Robert
Chicoutimi, Canada
Alan
> There's been all sorts of claims on Eisenhower's bad
> generalship, mostly (as far as I can tell) by people
> who really don't understand logistics.
I've always thought Eisenhower's mistakes were when he ignored
logistical considerations. Most glaringly when he prioritized Market-
Garden over clearing the Schelde Estuary. Even well after the fact he
thought his decision was the right one. Once again, he thought winning
the bridgehead at Arnhem would shorten the war.
IMO the opening of the port of Antwerp a month earlier would have been
far more useful. Not just because of the port discharge capacity, but
also the supply line length for the 12th Army Group would be halved.
This would functionally nearly double the transportation available to
move supplies from port to depot to front.
Alan
Louis C
> AFAIK there was quite a bit of propaganda about this in the post-war
> years.
There certainly was for a while, though I wonder how much it was
really believed, deep down, as opposed to it being acquiesced to as a
narrative that everybody could agree with. Remember that people who
had been adults during WWII didn't start stepping aside before the
1960s. Until then, the hatreds born from the war were still very much
alive.
> I have some French friends, in their forties, who learned in school
> and still believe that De Gaulle "saved France from the Americans" and
> that Overlord was not needed because the French Resistance by itself
> was just about to get rid of the Germans. Go figure...
It is quite true that De Gaulle was the difference between a self-
governed France and one under US military administration (AMGOT). It
then becomes a matter of opinion whether the verb "to save" should be
the most appropriate. Personally, I'd agree an American military
government was better avoided as there's no telling who they would
have picked as their favored French puppets. The Americans lacked any
form of interest in European politics except for a general dislike of
communism, and as a result their political acumen was minimal. Given
the intense hatreds generated by the war in countries like Italy and
France, I think the country was better off under its own government.
Going from there to saving France from the Americans is silly (De
Gaulle didn't prevent the Americans from invading the country, and
they were generally very welcome guests) but then that's only to be
expected from standard anti-Americanism, the French equivalent to
jokes about the French army surrendering. I can't even advise you to
pick better friends as I know quite a few otherwise knowledgeable and
nice people who hold patently absurd views about that suject or
another.
LC
SolomonW
> Political reason #1: There were enormous tensions between Frenchmen.
> One of De Gaulle's challenge was to prevent a civil war, and one way
> to reconciliate his countrymen was to have them fighting side by side
> against a common enemy. So it was vitally important to have units
> mixing formely vichyst officers (the majority of the career officers
> had remained loyal to Vichy prior to taking up arms again in 1944),
> former Free French military units, and resistance groups, some of them
> led by communists.
An allegation made at the time, that I think is correct is that De Gaulle
wanted to remove away from the center of power as many Frenchmen with
political ideals that he disapproved of. So he put them in military units
under officers that he controlled far away. Several communist felt that the
army was more a prison.
Alan
> It is quite true that De Gaulle was the difference between a self-
> governed France and one under US military administration (AMGOT). It
> then becomes a matter of opinion whether the verb "to save" should be
> the most appropriate. Personally, I'd agree an American military
> government was better avoided as there's no telling who they would
> have picked as their favored French puppets. The Americans lacked any
> form of interest in European politics except for a general dislike of
> communism, and as a result their political acumen was minimal. Given
> the intense hatreds generated by the war in countries like Italy and
> France, I think the country was better off under its own government.
The Americans avowed purpose was self determination. At least this was
their aim under FDR. I don't know if this would have been achieved,
whenever the US meddles in another countries politics it usually turns
out bad for everyone concerned.
Another aspect is the distrust of De Gaulle's motives by the US and
the reciprocal distrust of US motives by De Gaulle. This was greatly
exacerbated by the North African political mess. Which in turn was a
product of the recriminations hurled back and forth by the Vichy
military and De Gaulle.
Alan
Louis C
> The Americans avowed purpose was self determination. At least this was
> their aim under FDR. I don't know if this would have been achieved,
> whenever the US meddles in another countries politics it usually turns
> out bad for everyone concerned.
There is no doubt that France would have ended up an independent
country.
But the postwar elections saw a new generation entering politics, with
the old elites thoroughly discredited by both the 1940 defeat and
their colllaborationist record under Vichy. Had the Americans run the
country, they would likely have supported "tried and true" political
elites with a demonstrated ability to administer the country
(demonstrated by previous experience). All in the name of avoiding the
nasty reds of course, but the simmering resentment against that
obvious continuation of Vichy under another name (at least from a
domestic political point of view) would probably have been bad.
LC
Alan
> But the postwar elections saw a new generation entering politics, with
> the old elites thoroughly discredited by both the 1940 defeat and
> their colllaborationist record under Vichy. Had the Americans run the
> country, they would likely have supported "tried and true" political
> elites with a demonstrated ability to administer the country
> (demonstrated by previous experience). All in the name of avoiding the
> nasty reds of course, but the simmering resentment against that
> obvious continuation of Vichy under another name (at least from a
> domestic political point of view) would probably have been bad.
>
perceived as handing the government to De Gaulle. They wanted a free
election to allow the French to chose whoever they wanted. I'm certain
you know far more than I about post war French politics, so I'll
gladly agree with your assessment of what happened vs what might have
happened.
Alan
Louis C
> I think there was some fear by the Americans that they would be
> perceived as handing the government to De Gaulle. They wanted a free
> election to allow the French to chose whoever they wanted.
De Gaulle was a very difficult person to work with. It took him a long
time to commit openly to restoring democracy, not because he wasn't a
democrat but because he considered it insulting that he should even
have to dispel any doubt about his beliefs. By the time he did, this
was interpreted as reluctance in those quarters that he had alienated
with his behavior.
The Americans were afraid that De Gaulle would turn out to be a sort
of dictator, and some of the French were afraid that the Americans
would be, if not truly dictators, at least dictating what postwar
politics should look like. After the Darlan episode, goodwill for the
Americans was unaffected but confidence in their political acumen was
near zero. So in effect, both sides feared that the other would turn
out undemocratic.
Again, I have no doubt that France would have been an independent and
democratic country even if the Americans had been allowed to have
their way. It just seems to me that the fiction of self-liberation
helped cool things down. Maybe a comparison with, say, Italian postwar
politics would prove interesting.
LC
SolomonW
> The "resurgent German army" of late 1945
> wasn't resurging because of Eisenhower's
> caution or dithering. It was recovering
> because after the tremendous rush across
> France, Allied forces were running out of
> gas, both literally and figuratively.
Partly but also because the German had a fine defensive position in the
Western Wall. It took the Allies many months and over a quarter of million
causalities to overcome it.