From Victory to Stalemate

The Western Front, Summer 1944?Decisive and Indecisive Military Operations, Volume 1

Charles J. Dick

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780700622931, 9780700622931
• eBook ISBN: 9780700622948
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Stone & Stone Editor’s Choice

By the summer of 1944, the war in Europe had reached a critical point. Both the western Allies and the Soviets possessed the initiative and forces capable of mounting strategic offensives against the German enemy. Writing a study of operations on first the Western then Eastern Front, respected military analyst C. J. Dick offers rare insight into the strengths and weaknesses of generalship on both fronts, especially the judgments, choices, and compromises made by senior commanders. At the same time, he clarifies the constraints imposed upon leadership—and upon operations—by doctrinal shortcomings, by logistics, and, not least, by the nature of coalition war.

From Victory to Stalemate focuses on the Western Front, specifically American, British, and Canadian operations in France and the Low Countries. Dick’s lens throughout is operational art, which links individual tactical battles to broader strategic aims. Beginning with the D-Day landings in Normandy and the strengths and weaknesses of the armies, including their military doctrines, Dick goes on to analyze the offensives launched in the high summer of 1944. He considers the strategic factors and plans that provide the context for his main concern: the Allied commanders’ handling of army, army group, and theatre offensive operations.

Dick—s analysis shows us an Allied command limited by thinking that is firmly rooted in the experience of small wars and the World War I. The resulting incremental approach was further complicated by a divergence in the ideas and interests of the Allied forces. The man responsible for pulling it all together, Dwight D. Eisenhower, proved remarkably capable in his role as statesman; he was to be less effective as a military technician who could govern such difficult subordinates as Bradley and Montgomery. As a result, the Allied offensive faltered and became a war of attrition, in contrast to the Soviet effort on the Eastern Front.

CHAPTER ONE

Immature Armies

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CONCEPTS OF WAR FIGHTING

A Little Theory: Strategy, Operational Art, Tactics, and Doctrine

Nowadays, three interrelated and interdependent levels of war are identified: strategy, operational art, and tactics.¹ The operational level provides the vital connection between military-strategic objectives and the tactical employment of troops on the battlefield. It is the realm of the conception, planning, and execution of major operations and campaigns designed, through a succession of steps, to destroy the enemy’s centre of gravity. In other words, it determines where, when, and to what purpose tactical units and formations are committed to battle. Probably the most succinct explanation of their relationship was provided by the Soviet theorist A. A. Svechin in the 1920s: “tactics makes the steps from which operational leaps are assembled; strategy points out the path.”²

Strategy sets out the goal of operations in a theatre of war. In the era of major interstate conflicts, this was usually the destruction of the principal enemy grouping or the seizure of specified territorial objectives of critical economic or political importance. The aim depended on the perception of the enemy’s centre of gravity—that is, which facet of his political, economic, or military power would, if eliminated, destroy the enemy’s will or ability to continue the war. Until the Napoleonic era, it was sometimes possible for one climactic battle to destroy the enemy’s main force or seize an objective indispensable to the enemy. This kind of decisive battle, which determined the outcome of the war, was the aspiration of most commanders in chief. In the industrial age, however, states could mobilize and equip mass armies. Their size and resilience meant the strategic aim was rarely achievable (against a major opponent, anyway) in a single operation. Rather, it required a campaign (or even successive campaigns) in which a series of operations by several major formations cumulatively led to the accomplishment of the strategic aim. Of course, the attack on the enemy’s centre of gravity did not have to be direct, grinding attritionally through the strongest enemy groupings. Often an indirect approach, which dislocated the enemy by not conforming to his expectations and by exploiting his comparative disadvantage, was more economical, more effective, and, in the end, faster.

Operational art consists of the sequencing and synchronization by theatre, army groups, and armies of a series of operations and battles conducted by subordinate formations. Taken together, these must produce a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts, which results in progress toward a successful campaign and thence strategic success. Strategy makes demands on operational commanders in terms of the destruction to be wrought, the territory to be seized (or defended), and the time allowed for the accomplishment of these goals. In turn, the strategic concept must be rooted in operational reality. It is not merely pointless but fatal to set goals that are beyond the capabilities of the forces available—as Hitler often did, to the ultimate ruin of his Third Reich. That said, Allied strategists sometimes forgot that almost as important as correctly identifying the aim was choosing what not to do; in the event, excessive effort was dissipated on secondary or even marginal tasks. The skill of the operational-level commander lies in using deception, interdiction, operational maneuver, logistic resources, and carefully orchestrated battles to structure a successful campaign. It follows from this that operational requirements provide the sole justification for fighting battles; these requirements determine why, where, when, and how an enemy grouping is to be engaged. Fighting unnecessary battles, whether they are won or lost, inevitably absorbs valuable, usually scarce resources that might be more gainfully employed elsewhere and wears them down, to the detriment of future operations.

Tactics are employed by corps, divisions, and their subordinate units to solve the problems that must be surmounted to achieve operational goals. Tactics, in other words, is concerned with the conception, planning, and execution of current and very near future battles. The tactician does not, however, have a free hand. He is constrained by the demands of his operational superior, who lays down objectives and specifies groupings, forms of action, and their sequencing and timing. As at the higher level, the plans of major formations must be firmly based on the actual capabilities and limitations of their subordinates; without sure steps, no leaps will be possible. At the tactical level, as at the operational level, successful generalship is a function, among other things, of achieving synergistic effects. Battles, and the operations of which they are a part, must be linked in aim, timing, and geographic location, such that the totality of their achievements is greater than the sum of the individual parts.

Operational art has always been concerned with the relationships between mass, firepower, and maneuver. Its evolution has been conditioned largely by the impact of technological development and scale of deployment on these three factors, coupled with creative conceptual thinking (or, more often, its absence). By the First World War, the immense reserves accumulated as a result of conscription had resulted in armies of unprecedented size and resilience. The range and destructiveness of their firepower had increased by several orders of magnitude compared with armies of a hundred years earlier. Yet, although they could travel rapidly over long distances by railway in strategic moves (and therefore countermoves), on the battlefield they still moved at the speed of (usually excessively laden) men on foot or on horseback who were often impeded by ground torn up by shell fire or turned into a sea of mud. Moreover, armies had grown to such a size that there was no flank for the enemy to turn. The inevitable result was static (or in Russia, semistatic), trench-dominated warfare and generals who saw the grim business of attrition as the only realistic way to destroy the enemy.

The interwar years saw the development of weapons and equipment that had been in their infancy between 1914 and 1918. Tanks, combat aircraft, mechanical transport, and relatively efficient and portable radios promised at least a partial shift in the balance between firepower and mobility toward the latter. This “revolution in military affairs” (to use a term coined by the Soviets), in turn, offered maneuver as an alternative to the sterile campaigns of attrition. Instead of bludgeoning the enemy to death, and inevitably being bludgeoned back in the process, the aim was to reject battle on the enemy’s terms and instead paralyze him by rapidly shifting the focus of combat to his rear areas, destroying the command and control and logistic systems on which he depended and demoralizing his troops and leaders by doing the frighteningly unexpected. Such an approach emphasized not force ratios but surprise, deception, unexpected maneuvers and tactics, and speed in the advance.³ A rapid convergence of forces from dispersed assembly areas onto an apparently unlikely sector could concentrate sufficient strength against weakness. The superiority of this unexpected ground force could be coupled with the focused application of airpower on the chosen sector. The protracted artillery preparations that had previously been needed to penetrate a strong defense could be dispensed with. Thus, there would be no painstaking and obvious buildup for the offensive to provoke a defensive counterconcentration. Surprise is an all but essential prerequisite for unbalancing the enemy; it thus sets the conditions for the early achievement of the momentum that makes operational maneuver possible. Its restoration as a key principle was central to maneuver warfare. The wholeheartedness with which both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army accepted the logic of this revolution in warfare and changed their methods would set them apart from the British and the Americans.

Maneuver and attrition are often portrayed as opposite approaches to war fighting. This is too simplistic a dialectic. In Normandy, a preliminary wearing down of German strength was an inescapable prelude to breakthrough and the generation of operational maneuver; so too was the fixing and grinding down of the enemy’s main strength by the Red Army.⁴ It is also a false dichotomy: maneuver is not the opposite of attrition. Attrition’s true opposite is annihilation, which is best accomplished through a judicious combination of firepower and mobility, battle and maneuver.⁵ In the German and Soviet views, offensive battles were generally worth fighting only if they enabled the subsequent generation of operational maneuver. In turn, the purpose of operational maneuver was to make a major contribution to strategic success through the destruction of the enemy. This would be accomplished by disrupting the enemy’s cohesion, command and control, and logistic support on a large scale by driving rapidly into his depth and causing his forces to become progressively less capable of putting up effective resistance, not least through fragmentation, psychological shock, and demoralization. It is easier to convince significant numbers of enemy soldiers that they have lost the battle, thus persuading them collectively to withdraw from combat through retreat or surrender, than it is to wear down formations in a toe-to-toe slugging match.

The term operational art is rightly chosen because it is not a science. There is great scope for creativity at the operational level, and the more senior the commander, the more scope there is. Many tacticians who were competent at the corps level and were promoted to army command proved capable only of massing superior forces for what was essentially an attritional contest. They lacked the necessary imagination and flair—indeed, daring—to make the transition from careful craftsman to inspired artist. Fundamentally, tactics is largely concerned with getting the most out of a combined-arms team to maximize the enemy’s attrition. At least until the enemy’s defense has been penetrated, most attacks are frontal. As the situation becomes more fluid, there are greater opportunities to maneuver and mount flank attacks, and even to bypass. However, the operational commander orchestrating these tactical battles often requires the destruction of the enemy facing him, at least initially, if only to create an opening sufficient for the committal of exploitation units and then whole formations into the enemy’s depth. A crucial link between tactics and operational art is therefore the provision, in advance, of forces and plans to convert tactical into operational success. A division or corps might destroy the enemy to its front, seize ground vital to the integrity of the defense, and thus create a gap in the enemy’s deployment. This, however, is of little operational significance if the hole is not exploited by the successive insertion of additional forces to penetrate first into the enemy’s tactical depth and then into his operational rear. Moreover, against a capable enemy like the Wehrmacht, which was famous for its quick reaction to emergencies, the committal of subsequent echelons or reserves had to follow the initial penetration immediately. Delay would have given the defender time to react and restore the integrity of his defense before the damage became irreparable.

Time is a critical factor in war, especially in fluid, maneuver-dominated operations. These operations therefore assume the character of intense contests for that precious commodity. Win the battle for time, thus retaining the initiative and forcing the enemy into a purely reactive posture, and the defeat of the physical enemy becomes much easier. A rapid advance capitalizes on surprise, and speed itself is surprising—indeed, shocking—to the enemy. A formation that achieves a high tempo in the advance can generally disrupt and fragment the defense, disorient or paralyze its commander, and damage the morale of his troops; the commander’s capabilities become less than the sum of the parts, and self-preservation becomes the main focus of the increasingly uncontrollable elements of his command.

Exploitation is the decisive phase of a battle or operation, the time when the fruits of hard fighting are gathered. Armies wary of exposing any significant elements to flanking counterattacks or even encirclement generally eschew vigorous exploitation or undertake it so cautiously as to give the enemy time to recover or to withdraw and restore the integrity of his defense. In this case, tactical attacks continue to be frontal, for the most part, with only limited scope for tactical maneuver. In turn, operational formations are condemned to fight attritional battles rather than keeping the foe off balance and causing his position steadily to worsen and his reactions to become increasingly belated as the tempo of the offensive mounts, until his position becomes irredeemable.

Doctrine consists of an approved set of principles and methods that provides an army with a common outlook and a uniform basis for action; in simplistic terms, it determines how an army fights. The organizational structure and equipping of an army stem from its doctrinal precepts, and doctrine provides the basis for military training and for command and control. Its importance cannot be overemphasized. If doctrine is unsound or contradictory, or if it has not been properly disseminated and thoroughly absorbed, the army will enter battle with systemic problems. At the operational level, doctrine comprises principles and guidance, as befits an art, where creativity is encouraged. At the tactical level, its character is largely prescriptive. It cannot dissipate Clausewitz’s “fog of war,” but it can simplify decision making under the stress of combat by limiting the range of choices that are deemed relevant in given circumstances. By ensuring that all commanders and staff officers view similar situations in broadly similar ways, it ensures that they will react in a more or less predictable fashion when faced with tactical problems. This is important for operational-level and higher-level tactical commanders, as they have neither up-to-the-minute knowledge of a situation nor the time and means to micromanage their subordinate commanders and solve problems for them. Effective common doctrine is one of the few means by which senior commanders can, albeit indirectly, influence the conduct of the tactical battle. Doctrine helps to ensure that all the moving parts work together to propel the military machine forward in a broadly predictable way, without Clausewitz’s “friction” bringing it to a juddering halt.

In providing a framework of understanding, doctrine is useful as a guide to action. But if it becomes a template, it can also become a straitjacket, inhibiting some commanders. Mediocre commanders, especially if they fear the wrath of overcontrolling superiors who are intolerant of any error, commonly suffer paralysis in decision making when the textbook does not provide a clear prescription for action. In this case, they may do the safe thing, rather than boldly grasping a fleeting opportunity that could pay big dividends; worse, they may fail to act without orders from above, which inevitably arrive far too late by the time the situation is reported, a decision is made, and orders are communicated back down the chain of command. Doctrine that is allowed (or used) to stifle initiative may not prevent victories from being achieved, but it will probably result in their being more costly and less decisive.

The theoretical prescriptions outlined above are well known to today’s senior officers, at least in terms of conventional interstate warfare.⁶ It was not always so. All armies are prisoners of their own experience. For instance, there are some that, for societal, political, or historical reasons, will probably not progress beyond the suppression of their own populations. Others are capable of fighting one sort of war better than another, at least until they accumulate experience in the less familiar environment. Major continental armies and, in the era of universal conscription, the societies they served became used to large-scale, bloody, and sometimes protracted struggles. As a result of the climactic First World War, the French became convinced that linear-attritional warfare was inevitable in fighting their historic enemy, Germany. For the next two decades, France prepared diligently and thoughtfully to reprise the methods of 1918—failing to understand the implications of the revolution in military affairs that took place during that period. This failure led directly to its catastrophic defeat in 1940.

The Germans and the Russians had different experiences in the vast, featureless expanses of the Russian front, where trench deadlock was less intractable. Even more formative for the fledgling Red Army was the civil war that swung to and fro over all of Russia before the Soviets finally triumphed. Given creativity, it was clear that maneuver could be decisive. Moreover, both these powers were losers in the First World War, which gave impetus to thoughts about the future of warfare. How to avoid the pitfalls of the last war and do better in the next one became the obsession of their General Staffs. It was this imperative that led to their separate arrivals at the concept of operational art. The British and American victors had no such incentive to develop military theory. Both their societies, though for different reasons, rejected the very idea that there might be another such cataclysmic war, and both denied their armies the incentive and the resources to fight one. Thus, it is not surprising that the theoretical developments that did take place (for instance, the British Field Service Regulations of 1935) proved inadequate when exposed to the test of another major war.

Principles of War

While superior technology, numbers, and various other advantages may contribute, victory depends ultimately on sound generalship. Successful generalship requires adherence to certain principles. Those enunciated by the British Army after the First World War and elaborated on below are almost identical to those cited in US doctrinal publications (albeit with slightly different phrasing). They are very broad in nature—so broad, in fact, as to be universal; as such, they are far from being a recipe for victory. Rather, they provide some guidelines that must underpin decision making and planning. They vary in relevance and importance from one situation to another, and their application requires judgment and intelligent interpretation.⁷

Selection and Maintenance of the Aim. The aim of any operation must be carefully selected to contribute toward the attack on the enemy’s correctly identified centre of gravity. It must also be clear and unambiguous. The commander must have no doubt about what he is trying to achieve, and his subordinates must be equally clear so that all their efforts are directed toward the desired end. Moreover, the aim must be realistic and achievable with the forces and in the time available. Conversely, consistency in pursuing the aim does not require bullheaded persistence in carrying out a plan that has proved far from optimal; the aim is constant, but the means employed to achieve it may—indeed, should—change to fit altered circumstances.

Maintenance of Morale. One of Napoleon’s aphorisms was that the moral is to the physical as three is to one. High morale is probably the most important factor in war. It leads to an offensive spirit and the will to win. By contrast, however numerous and well equipped, a dispirited army that lacks faith in its leadership is unlikely to succeed. High morale stems from good leadership at all levels and the trust and confidence that this engenders; strong discipline, which is as necessary as leadership to overcome fear; unit cohesion, which comes from fostering comradeship (another facet of leadership) an...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps
• Foreword by David M. Glantz
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Selected Foreign Words
• Introduction
• 1. Immature Armies
• 2. The Tipping Point
• 3. July: Breakthrough and Near Breakthrough
• 4. August: Incomplete Encirclements
• 5. September: Operational Ideas and Developments on the Ground
• 6. Logistic Realities
• 7. Command, Operational Art, and Generalship
• Postscript
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover