While the unconditional surrender of German armed forces represented a resounding Allied success, the path to this outcome was influenced by the strategic decisions of both sides. In retrospect, it is clear that particular factors and choices strongly affected the pace and course of the campaign.

• The Allied deception as to where the D-Day landings would take place was very successful, with the majority of the German command convinced the landings would take place at Calais. For their part, the Germans underestimated Allied willingness to risk an amphibious assault over a route longer than the shortest path across the English Channel. While the Allies meticulously planned the landings, they failed to assess the countryside immediately beyond the beaches,^[4] which resulted in the Germans very successfully using the hedgerow country (Bocage) as a system of natural defensive works that took the Allies two months to clear at a staggering cost in infantry casualties.^[5] Historians have also asserted the U.S. Army should have landed on the eastern end of the Normandy beaches and formed the northern wing of Allied forces in Northwest Europe.^[6][7] The primary argument in support of this is that the mobility of American forces could have been better used in the more open terrain and most direct route to Berlin that the northern approach offered. As it was, the pre-invasion basing of troops in England determined the arrangement of the landing forces.

• While the Germans had reason to occasionally doubt Allied military proficiency,^[8] it is clear the Germans too often underestimated Allied competency. In its most damaging expression, this habit of underestimation led to the rejection of any notion that the Allies might have broken German military ciphers, most famously the Enigma code. The ability to monitor German military communications was an Allied strategic asset of the highest order. Less dramatically, the Germans often underestimated Allied troop proficiency, a habit that resulted in occasional sharp defeats for overconfident German units.^[9][10]

• Manpower strongly affected the course of the campaign. The German ability to form a cohesive defensive line (the so-called "Miracle in the West") after the disaster their forces endured in Normandy was due almost entirely to the ability of the German Ersatzheer (Replacement Army) to quickly deploy large numbers of new troops. These inexperienced troops were paired with seasoned cadres who swiftly transformed the replacements into combat units sufficiently competent to defend fortified positions. Thus, while the Allies took large numbers of German prisoners during their advance from Normandy to the German border, they underestimated the ability of the Germans to reconstitute their forces under very disadvantageous circumstances.^[11] The Allies also seriously underestimated the infantry casualties their forces would suffer in Northwestern Europe and the number of divisions that would be required to win the campaign. British manpower shortages became so grave that two infantry divisions had to be disbanded, while the Americans were forced to shake excess personnel out of their logistical and Army Air Force units in order to bring rifle units up to strength.^[12][13] Shortages of American manpower were strongly aggravated by a tendency to attack head-on regardless of circumstances,^[14] a habit that was particularly in evidence during the months of fighting in the Huertgen Forest.^[15][16] The Allied logistical crisis that dominated their operations from September through December had the further pernicious effect of limiting the number of divisions in England that could be moved onto the continent to reinforce the front, since the Allies were only able to supply a limited number of divisions east of the Seine River. After the Allies mastered the logistical crisis, the Americans diverted divisions bound for the Pacific Theater to Europe in a belated realization that more divisions were needed for operations in Europe.

• While the Germans achieved strategic surprise with their offensive in the Ardennes, the Panzer divisions that had been so painstakingly rebuilt could have been more profitably used to defend the Siegfried Line and the Rhineland, or perhaps, in the defense of Berlin against the Red Army.^[17] The German thrust failed to shatter their enemies' alliance and cost Germany high casualties and equipment losses it could ill-afford. This folly was repeated in Alsace in January, but with the added disadvantage this time that the Allies were expecting the attack.

• The Allies made serious errors and questionable uses of their forces several times during the course of operations in 1944–45.

• Upon breaking out of Normandy in August, the Americans committed two armored divisions to operations in Brittany when armored units were direly needed for the pursuit of the German army across France. While the port of Brest, France was ultimately captured by the Americans, it consumed the operations of an American corps for an entire month and ultimately did little for the Allied effort because the Germans so thoroughly destroyed the port before it was captured.^[18]

• Out of fear that two wings of their forces might collide, the Allies failed to definitively close the Falaise Gap in August, allowing trapped German forces an escape route to the east.^[19] Although the operations around Falaise trapped a considerable number of German prisoners, experienced German leadership cadres evaded Allied forces and were available to reconstitute a cohesive front line along the Siegfried Line.

• Although British forces conducted a brilliant pursuit across northern France that resulted in the liberation of the critically important port of Antwerp in early September, they failed to promptly clear the Scheldt Estuary of Germans.^[20][21] The Germans immediately grasped the significance of the Scheldt Estuary and moved in troops to conduct a lengthy defense.^[22][23] The Allied failure to swiftly clear the Scheldt Estuary meant the port of Antwerp could not be used until November 28, and strongly contributed to the lengthy logistical crisis that hamstrung Allied operations for four months. Operation Market-Garden was a double failure in the sense that the resources used for it would have been more profitably committed to clearing the Scheldt Estuary instead of carving out an extended salient that did nothing but extend an already over-extended Allied front line.^[24]

• Despite grave shortages of riflemen, American operations in front of the Siegfried Line, particularly in U.S. First Army's area, were characterized by bloody frontal assaults.^[25] Stubbornness and misplaced notions that the U.S. Army could not allow itself to abandon unprofitable operations^[26][27] saw five infantry divisions shredded in the Huertgen Forest fighting, with the attack being abandoned only in December after the Germans attacked into the Ardennes. The concentration of divisions in the Huertgen Forest–Aachen area also forced a corresponding lack of concentration along the Ardennes front, with the result that only four U.S. divisions were initially available in the Ardennes to parry a German offensive that was 26 divisions strong.

• When, in November, the Allies enjoyed significant success in 6th Army Group's area, General Eisenhower refused to reinforce the success and even forbade his commanders in the south to attempt to assault across the Rhine in the area of Strasbourg while the German defenses were in shambles.^[28] This lack of bold enterprise^[29] was a by-product of General Eisenhower's decision to conduct limited-objective attacks on a broad front even though the Allies lacked a sufficient number of divisions to both man a broad front and concentrate enough combat power in chosen areas to achieve breakthroughs.^[30][31] And there were other instances of cautious Allied generalship.^[32][33]

• After crossing the Rhine, Allied force deployments were tainted by misplaced priorities,^[34][35] lack of firm direction from supreme political echelons,^[36][37] and to some extent, by exaggerated fears of German capabilities.^[38][39] When American troops reached the Elbe River in mid-April, General Eisenhower unilaterally decided that Berlin was no longer a significant military objective.^[40] He knew that Berlin would be deep within the Soviet zone of post-war Germany and saw no reason to fight for land that would have to be given to the Soviets after the war.^[41] Eisenhower pointed out to Patton that it was of no military strategic value and would take up a lot of resources to occupy and asked Patton "Who would want it?" Patton replied "I think history will answer that question for you." Unswayed by Patton, Simpson or even Churchill, Eisenhower ordered U.S. forces to halt along the Elbe and Mulde rivers.^[42] Thus, these spearheads were practically immobilized while the war raged on for three more weeks. Simultaneously, General Bradley considered the Germans trapped in the Ruhr Pocket to be the most significant threat and committed surprisingly large numbers of U.S. troops to collapse (as opposed to containing) the pocket instead of reinforcing his troops at the Elbe River.^[43] As a consequence of Eisenhower's decision, the British 21st Army Group was ordered to drive northeast in the direction of Hamburg instead of proceeding due east in the direction of Berlin. Finally, the Allies proved curiously gullible about German propaganda claiming the existence of a "National Redoubt" in the Alpine hinterlands of Bavaria and Austria.^[44] Fearing a large-scale last stand by the Nazis in this so-called redoubt, General Eisenhower directed no less than three field armies to clear southern Germany at a time when the largest groups of German forces stood to the east, not the south, of General Eisenhower's troops. Fortunately for the Allies, the German Army of April 1945 was in no position to exploit troop concentrations and movements of questionable merit.

Thus, while the Allies enjoyed a great victory, on occasion their prosecution of the campaign afforded their German adversaries opportunities that prolonged the fighting unnecessarily.^[45][46]

[

Footnotes

[

References

• Clarke, Jeffrey J., and Robert Ross Smith. Riviera to the Rhine. Government Printing Office, 1993.
• Hastings, Max. (2004). Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-41433-9.
• Seaton, Albert (1971). The Russo-German War. New York: Praeger Publishers.
• Weigley, Russell F. (1981). Eisenhower's Lieutenants. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-13333-5.

[

Further reading

• Ellis, L. F. (1968). Victory in the West (Volume II). London: HMSO.
• Kurowski, Franz. (2005). Endkampf um das Reich 1944–1945. Erlangen: Karl Müller Verlag. ISBN 3-86070-855-4.
• Young, Peter, editor. World Almanac of World War II. St. Martin's Press.

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