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Von Rom -> RE: Why was Patton so great? (7/12/2004 4:49:29 AM)
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Here are more views by a wide variety of writers about the decision to stop Patton from closing the Falaise Gap:
The Falaise Pocket
World War II Allied Encriclement of the German Armies. Failure or Success of the Allied Leadership and Planning?
Authors: DeLauder, Braden P.; MARINE CORPS COMMAND AND STAFF COLL QUANTICO VA
Abstract: By August 1944, the Allies had broken out of the Normandy beachhead and were rapidly exploiting a breakthrough in the German lines. In early August, Hitler ordered a heavy single pronged attack to the west to cut off the US forces to the south. Bradley recognized this as an opportunity to encircle the German Army in France. By turning Patton's Third Army, in the south, north towards Argentan, Bradley formed the lower jaw of a pincer movement while Montgomery ordered Crerar's First Canadian Army south to push towards Falaise to form the upper jaw. Connecting the Allied armies between Falaise and Argentan would completely surround the German army. To the north, Montgomery's forces struggled to push south against the German defensive line. Patton's Third Army, in concert with the XIX Tactical Air Command, was making extremely rapid progress. bate on the 12th of August, Bradley stopped Patton's forces from moving north of Argentan. The decision to stop Third Army's movement north allowed many German personnel to escape from the Falaise pocket. The failure of the Allied forces to close the Falaise Gap was the result of lack of communication directly linked to the type of personalities of the commanders.
http://www.stormingmedia.us/05/0593/A059304.html
In August 1944 Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, commanding the 12th U.S. Army Group, abruptly halted the advance of the XV Corps of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army. He thus prevented its movement northward through Argentan toward a juncture with Canadian forces coming south from Caen toward Falaise. As a consequence, the Allies failed to close the Argentan-Falaise pocket. The virtually surrounded German forces in Normandy, escaping through the Argentan-Falaise gap, avoided complete encirclement and almost certain destruction.
Why General Bradley made his decision and whether he was correct are questions that have stirred discussion ever since World War II.
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/70-7_17.htm
When Patton died, an “official history” was indeed agreed upon and corroborated by Bradley, Eisenhower and Montgomery. They blamed each other for various aspects, but in the main part lied about the true cause of each’s largest disasters: Market Garden, Caen, Hurtgen, the Battle of the Bulge, the failure to capture Berlin, the failure to keep all of the armies supplied, the failure to take Prague, the failure to close off the Falaise Gap and seal the fate of the 11 divisions trapped there; each had an “official” cause, an “official” whipping boy. Documents from each of these episodes were fudged while others were removed, destroyed and tampered with; and the generals corroborated each others stories in their memoirs.
The reason why the generals cooperated so well on this issue was because each of them had made mistakes. Each had committed an atrocious disaster which they felt had to be kept from public knowledge. Only one general, Patton, had never lost thousands of men on a hopelessly mismanaged mission, and thus only he was above corruption. If a spiteful general were to bring up the Battle of Metz, the Third’s most bloody battle, Patton could counter that there were 3 dead Germans to 1 dead American, even in that desperate battle. And the Battle for Metz would never be investigated because investigation would only uncover the damning evidence of SHAEF’s decision to starve the Third Army, and Com Z’s negligence and wastefulness in keeping the armies supplied.
http://www.pattonuncovered.com/html/chapter.html
Yet the deepest problem with A Soldier's Life is that it really is not a soldier's life. One could make the argument that on key occasions—the approach to Brest, the closing of the Falaise Gap, the crossing of the Seine River, the August race to the Siegfried Line, the initial desire to go much deeper to the rear of the Bulge, and the decision to stop before Prague—thousands of lives might have been saved had superiors ceded to Patton's judgment. Such controversial and monumental decisions affected an entire theater; yet they warrant only a few pages in Hirshson's account and are overshadowed by stories of Patton's purported liaisons, insensitive language, and blinkered class biases. In lieu of in-depth military analysis, we get a few extended quotations from Chester Wilmot, B.H. Liddell Hart, and S.L.A. Marshall—none of whom is known for consistency, fairness, or sympathy to Patton.
http://victorhanson.com/Curiosities/Patton.html
Unlike the Falaise Gap in the West, where a too-cautious Bradley again did need heed Patton's calls to allow him to drive ahead and seal the trap shut, the Soviet commanders did not make the same mistake. No one got out of the Minsk pocket. The swamps and forests of Belorussia became a huge killing zone as Red Army forces and their partisan auxiliaries took their overdue but thorough revenge.
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:MpbkUDi6pb4J:washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040604-105429-7659r.htm+patton+falaise+gap&hl=en&lr=lang_en
D'Este's portrayal of some of the other leading figures in World War II is most revealing. Contrary to his popular designation as "the GI General" (thanks to the work of Ernie Pyle), General Omar Bradley, who would later win five stars and a rank as General of the Army, is shown to be quite mercurial and a martinet. Contrary to what was shown in Patton, Bradley despised Patton, and sought to undercut him at every turn. When Bradley and Patton were allies, it was mostly out of convenience--at times when Bradley did not know Patton well enough to dislike him, or when Bradley and Patton had a mutual interest in opposing the actions of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery. While Patton was feared as a tough boss, it was actually Bradley who sacked more commanders under his authority, while Patton was in favor of letting his commanders have more of a chance to prove themselves. And Bradley is severely criticized for his indecision and timidity as a commander, particularly in his performance at the Battle of the Falaise Gap--a battle where Patton's genius for warfare and boldness in command would have likely served the Allies better.
http://www.pejmanesque.com/archives/002773.html
Questionable leadership and strategy were abundant during these operations, but never was the courage and bravery of the Canadian soldier questioned. Problems were not limited to the Canadians though. The German counterattack at Mortain can only be considered a monumental failure. Bradley stopping Patton at Argentan was the classic error committed in the Normandy campaign. In protecting the strong, fresh American army which could have been in Falaise a day or two after they reached Argentan, Bradley lost a chance for a quick conclusion to the campaign.
http://www.nwha.org/news_2Q2003/news_page5.html
George S. Patton was a disaster as a proconsul in postwar Bavaria. Yet Eisenhower and Bradley — nicer, steadier, and more judicious men both — failed to close the Falaise Gap, unwisely restrained Patton at the Seine River and near the German border, and employed orthodoxy, not creativity, at the Battle of the Bulge. Thank God that both of them, and not Patton, later became fixtures of American government; but weep for the thousands of GIs dead because they, and not Patton, ruled the American battlefield in Europe.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hansonprint011102.html
Yenne also briefly addresses the controversial decision to halt Patton’s columns at Falaise and wait for the Canadian First Army to close the encirclement of the bulk of the German Seventh Army that COBRA and the eventual British-Canadian breakout produced. Eventually, Bradley was ready to change his mind just as the Canadian forces broke through to close the gap. Ostensibly, the decision was made in order to avoid fratricide between the two converging Allied armies. Had Patton been allowed to continue, the Falaise Gap would have probably been closed in hours rather than days. As it was, tens of thousands of German troops escaped during the delay.
http://members.aol.com/TFGrantel/books/cobra.html
But by that time, what could have been a great encirclement echoing some of the pivotal battles on the Eastern Front had become something less-a victory, but one qualified by the number of German forces that had been able to flee through the gap. The fact that enemy forces did escape outraged American commanders, from the even-tempered Eisenhower and Bradley to the mercurial Patton. They saw it as yet another example of bad generalship by Montgomery, who pressured the pocket's western end, squeezing the Germans out eastward like a tube of toothpaste, rather than capping the open gap. Patton, ever aggressive, pleaded with Bradley for clearance to cut across the narrow gap, in front of retreating German forces, from Argentan north to Falaise. But Bradley wisely demurred, recognizing that the outnumbered Americans might be "trampled" by the German divisions racing for the gap. "I much preferred," Bradley recollected subsequently, "a solid shoulder at Argentan to the possibility of a broken neck at Falaise."
http://www.ehistory.com/wwii/books/d-day1944/0035.cfm
Featherston, a journalist with the Durham, N.C., Herald-Sun , reviews the controversy over Gen. Omar Bradley's failure to close the gap, a measure that would have encircled large German formations in France and shortened the war. Two German armies escaped through the so-called Falaise Gap but, as the author points out, the Allies took 50,000 prisoners and counted 10,000 enemy dead.
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:aldkXZT02O0J:www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0891416625%3Fv%3Dglance+failure+to+close+the+falaise+gap&hl=en&lr=lang_en
Blumenson points out that, though Bradley created the opportunity to destroy much of the German armored force west of the Seine, he marched to the Army Group boundary and waited. In the meantime, the Canadians found the going hard and could not close the gap between themselves and the Americans. Instead of requesting a boundary change and attacking to close the gap, Bradley shifted part of XV Corps, which had reached the boundary south of Argentan, east toward the Seine. Thus, on August 17, at the moment of crisis, U.S. side forces were not positioned to close the gap, and the Canadians still had not reached the boundary. Without spelling it out, Blumenson arrays the facts and demonstrates clearly that the Allies missed an opportunity. In the end, confusion on both sides, an uncharacteristic lack of supervision by Montgomery, Bradley's movement toward the Seine and determined efforts by the Germans produced the first phase of what the Germans called the Miracle in the West.
http://www.ausa.org/www/armymag.nsf/(reviews)/20014?OpenDocument
The Germans now tried to stop the allies’ advance. Against his generals’ advice, Hitler ordered 11 of his best divisions to attack the allies. Patton then went in one huge sweep behind all of the German armies, encircling them between two cities, known as Falaise and Argentan. Patton’s Third Army was at Falaise, and Montgomery’s 21st Army Group was north of Argentan.
In one of the most stupid decisions of the war, Patton was ordered to halt at Falaise and wait for Montgomery to close the gap between the two cities. It took Montgomery 2 weeks to close the gap, during which most of the German divisions escaped. Had Patton been allowed to close the gap, the war would have ended in August 1944. There would have never been an “East Germany” and a Communist dominated Eastern Europe. Thousands of Jewish lives would also have been saved.
http://www.barbaraboland.com/_wsn/page3.html
Operations Tractable and Cobra's pursuit are splendid examples of Allied armor at its operational best and strategic worst. Despite inspiring accomplishments by individual divisions and corps, the dynamic maneuver and total victory offered by Patton's U.S. Third Army were to be rejected by the conservative Bradley.
http://stonebooks.com/archives/010916.shtml
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