Hi all, I know that after Normandy there was hope that the German collapse would be total and the war could be ended by the end of 1944. What I was wondering is how long did those hopes persist - specifically, after the failure of Operation Market Garden?
If you are looking for a specific date when all hope of ending the war in 1944 was finally lost, I'd be inclined to put forward 16 October 1944. That is the day Eisenhower ordered Montgomery to give clearing the Scheldt Estuary and the approaches to Antwerp top priority. In other words, diverting the main effort of 21st Army Group away from attacking towards Germany. By that time it was clear an attack into Germany could not be supported without opening up the port of Antwerp (some had come to this conclusion much earlier). The first convoy only arrived in Antwerp on 28 November, so no time to finish the war in '44.
I'm not sure it has ever been established that there was wide spread belief in that 1944 collapse theory, beyond Monty. It's really a moot point to define a date for a notion that was not universally accepted in the first place. There have been evidence put forward that both Churchill and Eisenhower were skeptical.
Like most of these “battle of the generals” type debates it is always easy to selectively quote letters, signals and directives from all and sundry to support an already and often long held prejudged viewpoint. Monty sent optimistic signals before and during Market Garden but so did Eisenhower, Bradley, et al. Regards Tom
From my reading everyone was infected with the 'Christmas disease' and it was far from just Monty. Not that his detractors will stop blaming (just) him for everything that went wrong.
For all we know, Monty may not have truly believed the "over by Christmas" promise either. It was, however, a compelling and effective pitch which secured him priority and resources.
It can't have been that compelling or effective as it took Eisenhower a week or so to come to a decision, by which time the window of opportunity had all but closed. I can't shake the feeling that Monty would rather have had Eisenhower backing a Patton thrust on Day 1 instead of his plan a week later. His real frustration was that nothing was being done, not that 'his thing' wasn't.
Hi Keeny.You are dead right.All the generals had the ;;Victory smell;; Patton 3rd army running out of fuel on the charge into the Secfried line plus long supply lines back to Normandy beach head.for all army groups. 1500 british trucks u/s due to wrong pistons fitted does not help the situation bringing supplies up.pennywell.
There were some good reasons to think that Germany might collapse after the 1944 defeat in France. #1 In 1918, after the German army was beaten in France Germany sued for peace before enemy troops set foot on Germany. The situation facing Germany on 1st September 1944 was much worse than the same date in 1918. in 1944 the Germans were fighting a two front war while in 1918 they had won in the east. In 1944 they had to abandon France. In September 1918 the Germans were still on the Hindenberg line, #2 There was evidence of discontent in the German military - 20th July Plot OP Market Garden, the US Army impasse in the Huertgenwald and Patton;s slow progress in Lorraine demonstrated that Hitler's Germany had more resilience than that of Kaiser Bill.
I came at this from a slightly different angle. I've recently been researching the Admiralty warship building programmes which by 1944 were focussed on the end of the Pacific war. The working assumption had been that this would end some 18 months after that in Europe and this was confirmed at the Octagon Conference in mid-Sept 1944. In Oct 1944 the Admiralty were still planning for an end in the Pacific in late 1946 which means that they were working to an end of the European war in mid 1945. So I was a bit surprised to turn up a paper submitted to the joint Chiefs of Staff at the Octagon Conference in Quebec in mid-Sept 1944 from the Combined Intelligence Cmtte, dated 8 Sept 1944, and titled Prospects of a German Collapse or Surrender. The very last sentence reads:- "We consider that organized resistance under the effective control of the German High Command (Oberkommando der Wermacht) is unlikely to continue beyond 1 December 1944, and that it may end even sooner." So the thinking across the services doesn't seem very joined up. It also shows that the "victory disease" went to the highest levels. Something else caught my eye, given the comment above about Eisenhower and the clearance of the Scheldt. In the Minutes of a Joint Chiefs Meeting at the Conference on 12 Sept 1944, a report from Eisenhower was considered. There were comments from Sir Alan Brooke that the British felt that insufficient emphasis had been placed on securing sea communications and the ports of Antwerp & Rotterdam as well as a northerly drive into Germany. Brooke was proposing an airborne operation to clear that territory, but General Marshall thought that the Germans could be bombed out. This was followed up by a telegram (as drafted by the British) to Eisenhower approving his proposals and highlighting the additional matters that the British had raised. I haven't yet found either Eisenhower's report (and therefore his proposals) or the wording of the subsequent telegram. But it makes me wonder if Eisenhower's order of 16 Oct is actually a reaction to the telegram coming from "on high" telling him to sort out the Scheldt rather than his own initiative. Had the British raised this with him directly previously and been ignored? Or was it just a way of giving him a subtle wake-up call? Maybe Brooke wasn't as confident about the intelligence report and realised that logistics would become vital. Lots of interesting questions. If anyone is interested in pursuing this line of research further this is what I found. Be warned it takes about 20mins to download the 302 pges. Octagon conference, September 1944: papers and minutes of meetings, Octagon conference and minutes of Combined Chiefs of Staff, meetings in London, June 1944. :: World War II Operational Documents
Nooo...Not the old 'Austin K5s nearly lost the war' allegation again ? Haven't we managed to comprehensively repudiate this confused and inaccurate slur ?
I 'read' that June 1945 (the infamous 'Phase Lines) was the expected date of German surrender and that in late 1944 UK contracts for equipment and research that would not deliver by then were being pruned or cancelled. Turned out quite well for the forecasters!
Thanks for all the answers so far, everyone, I have no opinion or additional information to add, I'm just interested.
I think the question is moot anyway as Hitler was never going to seek terms. The Germans were beaten by Christmas they just ignored reality.
I've now found and read Eisenhower's report (not sure how I missed it really as it was the first document in the 302 pages!). I now understand why the British felt they needed to push the Scheldt clearance. Eisenhower's emphasis is very much on breaking the Siegfried Line and crossing the Rhine to allow the Ruhr and Saar to be attacked as the main routes into Germany, with the emphasis on the northerly route. While he appreciates that Brest, Le Havre and either Antwerp or Rotterdam are important and that logistics are stretched he wants to push on into Germany without delay. His report was written on 9th Sept and Operation Antonia to recapture Le Havre started the next day and the city surrendered on 12 Sept. The harbour was of course thoroughly trashed, as was Brest when it was taken on the 19th. Antwerp was captured relatively intact on the 4th Sept by the British. I begin to suspect that the British had a better appreciation of the jewel that had landed in their hands than Eisenhower. But surely the Americans must have realised what would happen to ports that had to be fought for given the experience in the Med and with Cherbourg. I also find the politics surrounding this exchange interesting. When the British raised the subject in the Joint Chiefs meeting the Minutes record the order as firstly Antwerp then the northerly approach to Germany. In the telegram sent to Eisenhower on the 12th Sept it was the northerly route and then Antwerp" before the bad weather sets in". Why change the order they were set out? Maybe I'm reading more into this than was meant but then again.....
Something which is often overlooked is the V2 threat. The first V2 was fired from near The Hague on 8 Sept. Even more so than the V1 it had a massive psychological effect as a terror weapon, even to the extent that authorities tried to cover up what was causing the destruction in London. Only a few days later (Sept 12?) Eisenhower gave the all clear for Market Garden. Amongst other objectives, this thrust to the Ijsselmeer would have cut off supplies to the rocket sites. I would contend (although I have no proof), that the V2 threat was a significant factor - perhaps the deciding factor - in Eisenhower giving priority to Market Garden.
Interesting theory but one I don't buy into. In the overall scheme of things the V2 is a sideshow. Defeat Germany and it goes away. That is the big goal and it seems possible to do that by Dec 1944. Eisenhower's report to the JCS on 9 Sept makes it clear that his objective is to break the Siegfried Line, cross the Rhine and enter Germany by the northerly route to the Ruhr. He notes that "An airborne operation to sieze crossings over the Rhine and in the area Arnhem-Nijmegen has been twice postponed on account of weather and only awaits favourable weather conditions". So the final go on Market Garden may have been the 12th Sept but it was already planned before the V2s started falling. There is no mention of V2 in his report. So what was Allied intelligence saying as to when the V2 assault would start and did they know from where? Its been a while since I did any reading around the V2 campaign. If the objective was to stop the V2 onslaught, then firstly it would have made more sense to clear the Scheldt estuary as some of the early V2s were launched from there (Serooskerke area in Zeeland in mid Sept) and then to move the advance to a northerly direction on a line Breda / Utrecht rather than NE on an Eindhoven, Nijmegen, Arnhem line. That was probably a line that the Dutch would have preferred, which would have saved them a lot of suffering in 1944/45.
Unfortunately the winter of 1944/45 was adverse resulting in a real old slog for the Allies in NW Europe.The Germans were still holding out in Italy but it was recognised to bring the Third Reich to a collapse it was paramount to take Germany.Montgomery's initiative of shorting the war in the west by the Market Garden operation had clearly failed. The Red Army also found it difficult to continue their steam rolling towards Berlin until March when the rot set in for German forces in the east. Yet as said the Germans ere still holding on firmly to parts of Holland and the location flexibility of the portable V2 weapon was such the the last launch was in March 1945....the weapon sites must have been difficult to pin point. The German war machine had taken a pummelling from the Allies bomber offensive but equally important was the continual assault on the synthetic oil plants which had a marked effect from November 1944 when flying training was liable to be interrupted. Fuel to land forces was beginning to be unreliable but that did not prevent Hitler launching his Operation Bodensee with a foolhardy plan to take Antwerp and spilt the Allied forces....when the weather improved over the 1944 Christmas period,the advantage swung to the Allies and German forces were again on the defensive. As it was, the Germans fought to the end...some might comment that the Allies Unconditional Surrender policy contributed to that but the fact is that the Wehrmacht largely stayed loyal to Hitler despite the July 1944 plot.The Third Reich had be be completely defeated and the ideology banished from Europe and could only be achieved by the occupation of Germany,unlike the Great War when the armistice provided for an Allied occupation of Germany restricted to west of the Rhine. (Incidentally the Versailles Treaty was signed reluctantly by a German civilian government a 100 years ago yesterday......the military leadership were quick to depart to safe havens when it was obvious that the German Imperial war machine was close to collapse.) Without doubt, planning and forecasting can easily go astray in any military or civilian dimension as new events arise.At least Montgomery got his forecast correct by predicting with his Normandy plan of operations,that the Allies would be over the Seine at D Day +90...he achieved it with a few days to spare.
Do we think the Morgenthau Plan had much affect on German determination to fight to the last? It is said to have been milked by Berlin for propaganda value? Morgenthau Plan - Wikipedia Modern-day 'salting the earth'.
