A Bridge Too Far Read online

  The legendary Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, renowned for his victories in the North African deserts in the first years of the war and sent by Hitler to command Army Group B under Von Rundstedt, was equally appalled by the Fuhrer’s confidence. To Rommel, the coastal defenses were a “figment of Hitler’s Wolkenkuckkucksheim [cloud cuckoo land].” The aristocratic, tradition-bound Von Rundstedt and the younger, ambitious Rommel found themselves, probably for the first time, in agreement. On another point, however, they clashed. With the crushing defeat of his Afrika Korps by Britain’s Montgomery at E1 Alamein in 1942 always in his mind, and well aware of what the Allied invasion would be like, Rommel believed that the invaders must be stopped on the beaches. Von Rundstedt icily disagreed with his junior—whom he sarcastically referred to as the “Marschall Bubi” (“Marshal Laddie”); Allied troops should be wiped out after they landed, he contended. Hitler backed Rommel. On D Day, despite Rommel’s brilliant improvisations, Allied troops breached the “impregnable” wall within hours.

  In the terrible days that followed, overwhelmed by the Allies, who enjoyed almost total air supremacy over the Normandy battlefield, and shackled by Hitler’s “no withdrawal” orders (“Every man shall fight and fall where he stands”), Von Rund-stedt’s straining lines cracked everywhere. Desperately he plugged the gaps, but hard as his men fought and counterattacked, the outcome was never seriously in doubt. Von Rundstedt could neither “drive the invaders into the sea” nor “annihilate them” (the words were Hitler’s).

  On the night of July 1, at the height of the Normandy battle, Hitler’s chief of staff, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, called Von Rundstedt and plaintively asked, “What shall we do?” Characteristically blunt, Von Rundstedt snapped, “End the war, you fools. What else can you do?” Hitler’s comment on hearing the remark was mild. “The old man has lost his nerve and can’t master the situation any longer. He’ll have to go.” Twenty-four hours later, in a polite handwritten note, Hitler informed Von Rundstedt that, “in consideration of your health and of the increased exertions to be expected in the near future,” he was relieved of command.

  Von Rundstedt, the senior and most dependable field marshal in the Wehrmacht, was incredulous. For the five years of war his military genius had served the Third Reich well. In 1939, when Hitler cold-bloodedly attacked Poland, thereby igniting the conflict that eventually engulfed the world, Von Rundstedt had clearly demonstrated the German formula for conquest—Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”)—when his Panzer spearheads reached the outskirts of Warsaw in less than a week. One year later, when Hitler turned west and with devastating speed overwhelmed most of western Europe, Von Rundstedt was in charge of an entire Panzer army. And in 1941 he was in the forefront again when Hitler attacked Russia. Now, outraged at the jeopardy to his career and reputation, Von Rundstedt told his chief of staff, Major General Gunther Blumentritt, that he had been “dismissed in disgrace by an amateur strategist.” That “Bohemian corporal,” he fumed, had used “my age and ill health as an excuse to relieve me in order to have a scapegoat.” Given a free hand, Von Rundstedt had planned a slow withdrawal to the German frontier, during which, as he outlined his plans to Blumentritt, he would have “exacted a terrible price for every foot of ground given up.” But, as he had said to his staff many times, because of the constant “tutelage from above,” about the only authority he had as OB West was “to change the guard in front of the gate.”*

  From the moment of his recall and his arrival at the end ofAugust at the Rastenburg Wolfsschanze (“Wolf’s Lair”), as it was named by Hitler, Von Rundstedt, at the Führer’s invitation, attended the daily briefing conference. Hitler, according to the Deputy Chief of Operations General Walter Warlimont, greeted his senior field marshal warmly, treating him with “unwonted diffidence and respect.” Warlimont also noted that throughout the long sessions Von Rundstedt simply sat “motionless and monosyllabic.”* The precise, practical field marshal had nothing to say. He was appalled by the situation.

  The briefings clearly showed that in the east the Red Army now held a front more than 1,400 miles long, from Finland in the north to the Vistula in Poland, and from there to the Carpathian Mountains in Rumania and Yugoslavia. In fact, Russian armor had reached the borders of East Prussia, barely a hundred miles from the Führer’s headquarters.

  In the west Von Rundstedt saw that his worst fears had been realized. Division after division was now destroyed, the entire German line thrown helplessly back. Rear-guard units, although surrounded and cut off, still clung to vital ports such as Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, Le Havre, Brest, Lorient and St. Nazaire, forcing the Allies to continue bringing supplies in from the distant invasion beaches. But now, with the sudden, stunning capture of Antwerp, one of Europe’s greatest deep seaports, the Allies might well have solved their supply problem. Von Rundstedt noted, too, that the tactic of Blitzkrieg, perfected by himself and others, was being borrowed with devastating effect by Eisenhower’s armies. And Field Marshal Walter Model, the fifty-four-year-old new Commander in Chief, West (he took over on August 17), was clearly unable to bring order out of the chaos. His front had been ripped apart, slashed in the north by tanks of the British Second Army and the U.S. First Army driving through Belgium toward Holland; and, south of the Ardennes, armored columns of the U.S. Third Army under General George S. Patton were heading for Metz and the Saar. To Von Rundstedt the situation was no longer merely ominous. It was cataclysmic.

  He had time to dwell on the inevitability of the end. Almost four days elapsed before Hitler allowed Von Rundstedt a private audience. During his wait the Field Marshal stayed in the former country inn reserved for senior officers in the center of the vast headquarters—a barbed-wire-enclosed enclave of wooden huts and concrete bunkers built over a catacomb of underground installations. Von Rundstedt vented his impatience at the delay on Keitel, the chief of staff. “Why have I been sent for?” he demanded. “What sort of game is going on?” Keitel was unable to tell him. Hitler had given Keitel no particular reason, short of an innocuous mention of the Field Marshal’s health. Hitler seemed to have convinced himself of his own manufactured version for Von Rundstedt’s dismissal on “health grounds” back in July. To Keitel, Hitler had merely said, “I want to see if the old man’s health has improved.”

  Twice Keitel reminded the Führer that the Field Marshal was waiting. Finally, on the afternoon of September 4, Von Rundstedt was summoned to Hitler’s presence, and, uncharacteristically, the Führer came to the point immediately. “I would like to entrust you once more with the western front.”

  Stiffly erect, both hands on his gold baton, Von Rundstedt merely nodded. Despite his knowledge and experience, his distaste for Hitler and the Nazis, Von Rundstedt, in whom the Prussian military tradition of devotion to service was ingrained, did not decline the appointment. As he was later to recall, “it would have been useless to protest anyway.”*

  Almost cursorily, Hitler outlined Von Rundstedt’s task. Once more Hitler was improvising. Before D Day he had insisted that the Atlantic Wall was invulnerable. Now, to Von Rundstedt’s dismay, the Führer stressed the impregnability of the West-wall—the long-neglected, unmanned but still formidable frontier fortifications better known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line. Von Rundstedt, Hitler ordered, was not only to stop the Allies as far west as possible, but to counterattack for, as the Führer saw it, the most dangerous Allied threats were no more than “armored spearheads.” Clearly, however, Hitler was shaken by the capture of Antwerp. Its vital port was to be denied the Allies at all costs. Thus, since the other ports were still in German hands, Hitler said, he fully expected the Allied drive to come to a halt because of overextended supply lines. He was confident that the western front could be stabilized and, with the coming of winter, the initiative regained. Hitler assured Von Rundstedt that he was “not unduly worried about the situation in the west.”

  It was a variation of a monologue Von Rundstedt had heard many times in the past. The Westwall, to
Hitler, had now become an idée fixe, and Von Rundstedt once again was being ordered “not to give an inch,” and “to hold under all conditions.”

  By ordering Von Rundstedt to replace Field Marshal Model, Hitler was making his third change of command of OB West within two months—from Von Rundstedt to Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, to Model, and now once again to Von Rundstedt. Model, in the job just eighteen days, would now command only Army Group B under Von Rundstedt, Hitler said. Von Rundstedt had long regarded Model with less than enthusiasm. Model, he felt, had not earned his promotion the hard way; he had been elevated to the rank of field marshal too quickly by Hitler. Von Rundstedt thought him better suited to the job of a “good regimental sergeant major.” Still, the Field Marshal felt that Model’s position made little difference now. The situation was all but hopeless, defeat inevitable. On the afternoon of September 4, as he set out for his headquarters near Koblenz, Von Rundstedt saw nothing to stop the Allies from invading Germany, crossing the Rhine and ending the war in a matter of weeks.

  On this same day in Wannsee, Berlin, Colonel General Kurt Student, fifty-four-year-old founder of Germany’s airborne forces, emerged from the backwater to which he had been relegated for three long years. For him, the war had begun with great promise. His paratroops, Student felt, had been chiefly responsible for the capture of Holland in 1940, when some 4,000 of them dropped on the bridges of Rotterdam, Dordrecht and Moerdijk, holding the vital spans open for the main German invasion force. Student’s losses had been incredibly low—only 180 men. But the situation was different in the 1941 airborne assault of Crete. There, losses were so high—more than a third of the 22,000-man force—that Hitler forbade all future airborne operations. “The day of parachute troops is over,” the Führer said, and the future had dimmed for Student. Ever since, the ambitious officer had been tied to a desk job as commander of an airborne-training establishment, while his elite troopers were used strictly as infantry. With shattering abruptness, at precisely 3 P.M. on this critical September 4, Student emerged into the mainstream once again. In a brief telephone call, Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Hitler’s operations chief, ordered him to immediately organize an army, which the Fuhrer had designated as the “First Parachute Army.” As the astounded Student listened, it occurred to him that “it was a rather high-sounding title for a force that didn’t exist.”

  Student’s troopers were scattered all over Germany, and apart from a few seasoned, fully equipped units, they were green recruits armed only with training weapons. His force of about ten thousand had almost no transportation, armor or artillery. Student didn’t even have a chief of staff.

  Nevertheless, Student’s men, Jodl explained, were urgently needed in the west. They were to “close a gigantic hole” between Antwerp and the area of Liege-Maastricht by “holding a line along the Albert Canal.” With all possible speed, Student was ordered to rush his forces to Holland and Belgium. Weapons and equipment would be issued at the “railheads of destination.” Besides his paratroopers, two divisions had been earmarked for his new “army.” One of them, the 719th, Student soon learned, was “made up of old men stationed along the Dutch coast who had not as yet fired a single shot.” His second division, the 176th, was even worse. It consisted of “semi-invalids and convalescents who, for convenience, had been grouped together in separate battalions according to their various ailments.” They even had special “diet” kitchens for those suffering from stomach trouble. Besides these units, he would get a grab bag of other forces scattered in Holland and Belgium—Luftwaffe troops, sailors and antiaircraft crews—and twenty-five tanks. To Student, the expert in paratroop warfare and supertrained airborne shock troops, his makeshift army was a “grotesque improvisation on a grand scale.” Still, he was back in the war again.

  All through the afternoon, by telephone and teletype, Student mustered and moved his men out. It would take at least four days for his entire force to reach the front, he estimated. But his toughest and best troops, rushed in special trains to Holland in what Student called a “blitz move,” would be in position on the Albert Canal, as part of Model’s Army Group B, within twenty-four hours.

  Jodl’s call and the information he himself had since gathered alarmed Student. It seemed apparent that his most seasoned group—the 6th Parachute Regiment plus one other battalion, together totaling about three thousand men—probably constituted the only combat-ready reserve in the whole of Germany. He found the situation ominous.

  Frantically, Field Marshal Walter Model, Commander in Chief, West, tried to plug the yawning gap east of Antwerp and halt the disorderly retreat from Belgium into Holland. As yet no news of Von Rundstedt’s appointment as his successor had reached him. His forces were so entangled, so disorganized that Model had all but lost control. He no longer had contact with the second half of his command, Army Group G in the south. Had General Johannes Blaskowitz, its commander, successfully withdrawn from France? Model wasn’t sure. To the harassed Field Marshal the predicament of Army Group G was secondary. The crisis was clearly in the north.

  With dispatch and ferocity, Army Group B had been split in two by armored columns of the British and Americans. Of the two armies composing Army Group B, the Fifteenth was bottled up, its back to the North Sea, roughly between Calais and a point northwest of Antwerp. The Seventh Army had been almost destroyed, and thrown back toward Maastricht and Aachen. Between the two armies lay a 75-mile gap and the British had driven through it straight to Antwerp. Plunging along the same route were Model’s own demoralized, retreating forces.

  In a desperate effort to halt their flight, Model issued an emotional plea to his troops.

  … With the enemy’s advance and the withdrawal of our front, several hundred thousand soldiers are falling back—army, air force and armored units—troops which must re-form as planned and hold in new strong points or lines.

  In this stream are the remnants of broken units which, for the moment, have no set objectives and are not even in a position to receive clear orders. Whenever orderly columns turn off the road to reorganize, streams of disorganized elements push on. With their wagons move whispers, rumors, haste, endless disorder and vicious self-interest. This atmosphere is being brought back to the rear areas, infecting units still intact and in this moment of extreme tension must be prevented by the strongest means.

  I appeal to your honor as soldiers. We have lost a battle, but I assure you of this: We will win this war! I cannot tell you more at the present, although I know that questions are burning on your lips. Whatever has happened, never lose your faith in the future of Germany. At the same time you must be aware of the gravity of the situation. This moment will and should separate men from weaklings. Now every soldier has the same responsibility. When his commander falls, he must be ready to step into his shoes and carry on …

  There followed a long series of instructions in which Model “categorically” demanded that retreating troops should immediately “report to the nearest command point,” instill in others “confidence, self-reliance, self-control and optimism,” and repudiate “stupid gossip, rumors and irresponsible reports.” The enemy, he said, was “not everywhere at once” and, indeed, “if all the tanks reported by rumormongers were counted, there would have to be a hundred thousand of them.” He begged his men not to give up important positions or demolish equipment, weapons or installations “before it is necessary.” The astonishing document wound up by stressing that everything depended on “gaining time, which the Führer needs to put new weapons and new troops into operation.”

  Virtually without communications, depending for the most part on radio, Model could only hope that his Order of the Day reached all his troops. In the confusion he was not even sure of the latest position of his disorganized and shattered units; nor did he know precisely how far Allied tanks and troops had advanced. And where was the Schwerpunkt (main thrust) of the Allied drive—with the British and Americans in the north heading for the Siegfried Line and thence acros
s the Rhine and into the Ruhr? Was it with Patton’s massive U.S. Third Army driving for the Saar, the Siegfried Line and over the Rhine into Frankfurt?

  Model’s dilemma was the outgrowth of a situation that had occurred nearly two months earlier at the time of Von Rund-stedt’s dismissal and Hitler’s swift appointment of Von Kluge as the old Field Marshal’s successor. On sick leave for months from his command in Russia, Von Kluge happened to be making a courtesy call on the Führer at the precise moment when Hitler decided to dismiss Von Rundstedt. With no preamble, and possibly because Von Kluge happened to be the only senior officer in sight, Hitler had named the astonished Von Kluge Commander in Chief, West.

  Von Kluge, a veteran front commander, took over on July 4. He was to last forty-four days. Exactly as predicted by Von Rundstedt, the Allied breakout occurred. “The whole western front has been ripped open,” Von Kluge informed Hitler. Overwhelmed by the Allied tide pouring across France, Von Kluge, like Von Rundstedt before him, found his hands tied by Hitler’s insistent “no withdrawal” orders. The German armies in France were encircled and all but destroyed. It was during this period that another convulsion racked the Third Reich—an abortive assassination attempt on Hitler’s life.

  During one of the endless conferences at the Führer’s headquarters, a time bomb in a briefcase, placed by Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenberg beneath a table close to Hitler, exploded, killing and wounding many in the room. The Führer escaped with minor injuries. Although only a small elite group of officers were involved in the plot, Hitler’s revenge was barbaric. Anyone connected with the plotters, or with their families, was arrested; and many individuals, innocent or not, were summarily executed.* Some five thousand people lost their lives. Von Kluge had been indirectly implicated, and Hitler also suspected him of trying to negotiate a surrender with the enemy. Von Kluge was replaced by Model and ordered to report immediately to the Führer. Before leaving his headquarters the despairing Von Kluge wrote a letter to Hitler. Then, en route to Germany, he took poison.