The Falaise Pocket: Nazi Germany's Desperate Fight To Survive

Operation Cobra, the American breakout at Avranches on the 25th of July 1944, lifted the lid off the can in which the Germans sought to confine the Allies after the D-Day landings in Normandy seven weeks earlier. Until then, the German defence, savage, hard-fought and extremely costly, had managed to hold the line against all Allied attempts to progress very far beyond the beachheads and move on into the rest of France. This was accomplished despite critical shortages of men and material, and the impossible demands of Adolf Hitler, whose basic and only strategy was never retreat, never surrender, and fight to the last man. After several failed attempts made at tremendous cost, the British and Canadians had at last established control over the northern districts by the 10th of July. But the Germans were still holding out in the south and southeast, and Operation Goodwood, the attempt to dislodge them, had failed disastrously on the 18th of July. This failure caused hot controversy within the Allied high command. There was heavy criticism of General Bernard Montgomery, the British commander of the 21st Army Group, who had initiated Goodwood. US General Omar Bradley believed that Montgomery was going to be sacked. Montgomery remained, but at the height of the arguments, Operation Cobra completely changed the picture. Its success negated all the advantages the Germans still retained in France, and made further defense irrelevant. For the Germans, the imperative now was to escape, and preserve what they could of their hard-pressed forces, for the defense of the fatherland. The situation after the success of Operation Cobra was symptomatic of the Axis war effort as a whole. Neither Germany nor Japan could match the industrial might of the Allies, and their losses, which the Allies could absorb, were slowly strangling their war efforts. After five years of a war that had seen their early spectacular victories, both Germans and Japanese were on the run, fighting desperately to prevent the enemy from closing in on their home territories. The Japanese were being chased from one Pacific island to the next, and fought with manic desperation. Often, they reacted to defeat by committing seppuku, ritual suicide. The finishing line for the Americans' island-hopping campaigns was the islands of Japan themselves, which to the Japanese were sacred soil. For them, the fate of their divine emperor Hirohito was also at stake. But by mid-1944, the noose was tightening fast, as the Americans reached Guam, in the Mariana Islands in the West Pacific. Guam was about 1,100 miles from the nearest Japanese territory, the Bonin Islands. And the Americans had those vital advantages, command of the air and of the seas. In Europe, the Germans were being assailed in the east and the south, as well as the west. By 1944, the Russians had advanced beyond their own borders to force the surrender of Germany's ally, Romania, and enter the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. In southern Europe, despite the masterly defense put up by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the Allies had captured Rome, Rimini, and Florence, and were pressurizing the Germans' Gothic defense line. Under these immense pressures, Hitler's ideas for staving off disaster had turned bizarre. His vengeance weapons, the V-1 pilotless flying bomb and the V-2 rocket, were the stuff of fantasy science fiction. The vengeance was Hitler's answer to the Allied bombing of Germany. But the notion that the V-weapons might turn the course of the war in Germany's favor was also present. In England, the first V-1, which was powered by a pulse jet engine and carried a one-ton warhead, fell on London on the 13th of June, 1944. The throaty roar of its engine, then the sudden silence as it cut out and the V-1 plunged to earth, was a terrifying moment for everyone who heard it. The V-2 liquid-fueled rocket, 46 feet long and weighing 13 tons, was able to fall out of the sky with only a whisper of sound as a last-minute warning that always came too late. The sheer craziness of the V-weapon campaign doubtless played its part in a plot to kill Hitler that had been brewing since 1942. On the 20th of July, 1944, a one-armed veteran, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, placed a briefcase containing a time bomb beneath a heavy oak map table in a hut at Hitler's Rastenburg headquarters. The bomb blew up at 12.42 hours during a high-level conference, but Adolf Hitler was not among the dead. He had, it seems, been saved by the thickness of the tabletop. The Fuhrer's revenge was terrible. Around 200 people were put on trial and executed. Some of them had been only on the periphery of the plot, but implication was enough. Several high-ranking suspects were obliged to kill themselves, including Erwin Rommel, who was in hospital after suffering a fractured skull when his staff car was strafed on the 17th of July, General Ludwig Beck, former chief of the General Staff, and Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, who took over Rommel's command after he was injured. Kluge was sacked within a month for failing to warn Hitler of the bomb plot. Hitler had always entertained deep hatred and jealousy of the Prussian officer class, to which von Stauffenberg and other high-ranked conspirators belonged, and came to believe that the entire Wehrmacht was riddled with them. He wasn't wrong either. The German army had been the focus of several plots to assassinate the Fuhrer since before the war. Army officers, for their part, had contempt for Hitler and his fanciful ideas of military strategy, which had already brought disaster and shame on the German army in Russia. Fear, suspicion, and the dread that Hitler's vengeance might fall on anyone at any time was a corrosive factor in the plight of German commanders in France. All the more so when their task was to save what they could of their remaining forces and extricate them from the Allied trap that began to close after Operation Cobra. U.S. General George Smith Patton, Jr. was a hot-headed, egotistical commander, but one whose capacity for aggression made it impossible for General Eisenhower to dismiss him. Patton's behavior gave Eisenhower plenty of opportunity. The incident in Sicily, when he slapped the face of a young soldier suffering from battle fatigue, made Patton notorious. He did it again a week later. Though he apologized, Patton was relegated and spent almost a year kicking his heels before he was given command of the U.S. Third Army in January 1944. But Patton's stern war face and his mask of insensitivity and swaggering self-confidence hid a man of too much emotion and too much self-doubt to justify his own concept of an effective military commander. War, said Patton, is very simple, direct and ruthless. It takes a simple, direct and ruthless man to wage war. In this context, Patton's performance as a hard-nosed bully was impeccable. Not surprisingly, he aroused opposing reactions. He was hated and admired in equal measure. The contrast between the pugnacious Patton and the self-effacing General Omar Nelson Bradley could hardly have been more complete. Whereas Patton was always hot news for war correspondents, Bradley's understated style of command afforded little copy. Bradley failed to distinguish himself at West Point and the first 28 years of his military career were frustrating. His assignments kept him at home in the United States and he once remarked that he spent the years between the First and Second World Wars apologising for his lack of combat experience. But those years were far from wasted. As a tutor at West Point, Fort Benning and Leavenworth Infantry School, Bradley developed his tactical skills and his own sympathetic style for the handling of troops. In 1943, Bradley transferred to the North African Front where he served as Eisenhower's advisor and at last saw action when he led the Second Corps of Patton's Seventh Army in Sicily. The following year, in Normandy, Bradley commanded the First Army on D-Day and later saw them through the long, laborious struggle to overcome German resistance in the Cotentin Peninsula. At last, the war correspondents had something to write about. Noting how greatly Bradley was admired by his troops, the journalists labelled him the Soldier's General. Field Marshal Gunther Hans von Kluge was one of the elder statesmen among German military commanders in the Second World War. His career had begun as long ago as 1901. Later, Kluge was in command of Army Group Centre, which challenged but failed to overcome the Russian defenders of Moscow in the winter of 1941. In July 1944, when Hitler dismissed Field Marshal von Rundstedt, Kluge replaced him as overall commander of the German forces defending France. But by this time, Kluge had realized that Hitler's strategy meant the destruction of the army. Kluge became extremely pessimistic about Germany's chances in the war, but he never discovered if his prognosis was correct. Hitler suspected that he was implicated in the bomb plot of the 20th of July. He was relieved of his command on the 17th of August and ordered back to Germany. Two days later, while on the way, Kluge killed himself at Metz in northeastern France. Late in June 1944, Colonel General Paul Hauser was given command of the 7th Army, despite the protests of Erwin Rommel. Like Kluge, Hauser came from a long-established military family. He was 64 years old and a convinced Nazi, which Rommel was not. Hauser had seen service in the First World War, but defeat in 1918 left him anxious for a chance to restore Germany's military reputation. Hauser's command of the 7th Army was a poisoned chalice. It was already in a parlous state after a month of desperate defense in Normandy, and in the subsequent retreat through the Falaise-Argentin Gap, suffered more losses in men and material. Hauser was one of those who managed to get away, riding to safety on a Panther tank, but he was badly wounded and had to relinquish his command. Hauser, who appeared as a witness for the defense at the Nuremberg Trials, was a long-term survivor of the Second World War. He was 92 when he died in 1972. The strategy of the Allies after the breakout from Normandy was complete on the 31st of July 1944, was to converge on the Germans as they attempted to escape from France through the gap between Argentin and Falaise. If the Allies could eliminate the main German armies in France, it would serve as a virtual death blow, removing them from the scene as the Allies advanced towards the German border and invaded the fatherland itself. The Allied forces certainly seemed capable of such a feat. By the 1st of August, the US 3rd Army had been unveiled, General George Patton commanding. The 3rd Army formed part of the new US 12th Army Group, commanded by General Omar Bradley, which also included the 1st Army, led by the taciturn Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges. Patton's force took up position on the right of the Allied line. The British were on the left, comprising the 21st Army Group, which had been expanded to include Lieutenant General Henry Creerer's Canadian 1st Army. To the Canadians' right was the British 2nd Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey. With military power of these proportions against a critically decimated German army, there was talk that the Second World War in Europe could be over before 1944 came to an end. The gap between Argentin and Falaise was the obvious exit from France, and the German 7th and 5th Army, formerly Panzergruppe West, headed for it, hoping to elude the Allied pincer movement that was about to build up against them. The best the Germans could do now was somehow fight their way through before the Allies closed the gap. Top German commanders were pessimistic about their prospects, but among the lower ranks, who probably knew less about their real situation, hope was not yet lost. Some fainthearts had deserted, more than 1,600 were executed in 1944, but others still had faith in the brilliance of their leaders and their own fighting spirit. It was not impossible either that the Germans could count on further mistakes by the Allies, the same mistakes that had already plagued their assaults on Caen. Allied strategy around Caen had proved both faulty and costly, and there was too a strange torpor afflicting some of their units, which reduced their battle effectiveness. On paper, therefore, it seemed as if the decimated German defence had little chance. On the ground, the picture was not quite so dark as this might suggest. Even before the D-Day landings in Normandy on 6th June 1944, the Allied commanders had come to believe that wherever Allied forces met the Germans in anything like equal strength, the Germans were going to prevail. It followed from this that to triumph in Normandy, the Allies must create the most favourable conditions possible for their forces. These conditions depended, in the main, on the overwhelming size of the invading armies and the vastly superior numbers of their weapons. In this rather nervous scenario, the Allies would have to swamp their way to success or not succeed at all. However, by July 1944, the steady, if slow, build-up of Allied capability in France was creating the mammoth military strength the scenario required. Already by the end of June, 875,000 Allied troops, 150,000 vehicles and 570,000 tons of stores had arrived in Normandy and replacements exceeded casualties by over 17,000 fresh troops. There was now no question that the Allies and the Germans would meet on the basis of equality, even if Allied dominance of the air were not included in the equation. The American Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, wingspan 103 feet, was a giant among the Allied aircraft of the Second World War. When first introduced in June 1939, the B-17 was the world's most advanced heavy bomber and became the most predominant used by the United States between 1942 and 1945. The 1939 model had to be upgunned several times and fitted with extra armor to become equal to the challenge of the German Luftwaffe. This requirement produced the final Flying Fortress variant, the B-17G, and 8,630 were delivered to the United States Army Air Force in Europe by April 1945 when production ceased. The B-17G Flying Fortress was manned by between six and ten air crew. Powered by four 1,200 horsepower Wright Cyclone engines, the bomber could reach a maximum speed of 287 miles an hour and had a ceiling of 35,000 feet. With a full bomb load of 12,800 pounds, the Flying Fortress' range was 1,100 miles. For defense, the bomber carried 13 half-inch machine guns, some of them sighted in the front turret. The flamethrower was one of the horror weapons of the war, capable of engulfing and incinerating an enemy, his position, and everything else within a range of about 50 yards or more. By their very nature, flamethrowers rarely inflicted the sort of light injury that would enable an enemy to continue fighting. Under flamethrower fire, the enemy was more likely to be severely disabled by burns and too agonized to fight back. Initially, flamethrowers served different uses for the British and Americans. The Germans had already used these weapons in their blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939 and 1940, and the British expeditionary force in Western Europe was well aware of their punishing potential. The Americans, on the other hand, realized very early what fanatical enemies the Japanese were in the Pacific, always willing to die rather than surrender, and fighting in a fashion tantamount to suicide. In the Pacific theater, the flamethrower was used against Japanese pillboxes and blockhouses. In this context, the flamethrower was less of a direct fighting weapon, more of a shortcut to avoid the slaughter that would ensue if the Japanese were allowed to deploy their full strength in more conventional warfare. Most flamethrowers used in the Second World War were portable one-man weapons. Their range was, of course, limited, but the recompense was the flamethrower's awesome effectiveness. The British three-inch mortar and the American 81-millimeter mortar were basically the same thing. The mortar was a fairly simple three-inch caliber weapon requiring a three-man team, one to carry the short stubby barrel, another to carry the base plate, the third carrying the bipod, which was adjustable, all in addition to several three-round ammunition carriers. The mortar, which had a characteristic thud when in action, was percussion fired and had to be reloaded for each shot. After seven weeks of near suicidal defense, German military capability in France was on the brink of collapse. By mid-July 1944, the Germans had lost over 96,000 men, but had received only 5,200 to replace them. They'd lost 225 tanks, with only 17 received. Whole regiments had virtually ceased to exist. The remnants of four of them made up a battle group within the 2nd Parachute Corps, whose manpower stood at no more than 3,400 riflemen. The elite Panzer Lehr division was reduced to 40 tanks and just over 2,000 men. This paltry strength was weakened still further after 1,500 bombers of the 8th U.S. Army Air Force bombed the Panzer Lehr's positions. The raid took place on the 24th of July in bad visibility, and several bombs fell on American frontline troops. Even so, the Panzer Lehr was virtually wiped off the face of the battlefield. Almost all its remaining tanks were lost, and barely 700 of its men survived. Essentially, the German 7th Army in France had been reduced to scratch formations, and all they had to back them up were four battalions of the 275th Division, all of them weak and hardly capable of holding back the onslaught of the Allies. The Jagdpanther tank destroyer was an amalgam of two extremely powerful weapons. The mighty Pak 43 88mm gun was mounted on the basic chassis of a Panther tank, complete with its original powertrain and lower hull. The Jagdpanther, which had an MG34 machine gun at the front, weighed more than 100,000 pounds and was capable of a maximum 28 miles per hour. Armour was up to four inches thick. The Jagdpanther was a late development in German weaponry of the Second World War. It became available only just in time for the Germans to oppose the D-Day landings in June 1944. By that time, the German armaments industry was already so hard pressed that it could produce only 382 Jagdpanthers before the war came to an end in 1945. But although comparatively few in number, the Jagdpanther had a deadly effect on the Allied armour in Normandy. The Jagdpanther could manoeuvre with ease across most types of terrain, though the Normandy bocage, with its network of small fields surrounded by thick hedgerows, considerably reduced its effectiveness. But then that applied to all tanks and self-propelled artillery that ventured in this tortuous maze. But in favourable terrain, the Jagdpanther could stand off beyond the reach of most Allied tank guns. Firing from close to 1,100 yards distance, the Jagdpanther was able to destroy Allied tanks virtually at leisure. German hand grenades were mainly designed to kill by exploding on or close to their targets. Unlike Allied grenades, there was only minimal fragmentation, so that hot and deadly fragments were not expelled by the blast when the grenade blew up. The Steilhandgranat 24, the S-24, was a grenade of this type. It was primed by unscrewing the base and pulling on the detonation cord attached to a wooden stick. It was relatively simple to use and had a particularly effective pin mechanism. The S-24 measured around 16 inches in length. It weighed around 14 ounces and contained just under 6 ounces of explosive. This grenade was an adaptation of the stick hand grenade 23, called the potato masher by the Allied troops. The furtive nature of anti-personnel mines has always made them a much feared weapon, and minefields were extensively sown by the Germans during the Battle of Normandy. When the British and Canadians captured Northern Caen, they found it was alive with mines and the area remained dangerous for some time before they were cleared away. The S-Mine 35 was one of the Germans' smaller mines, 5 inches in height and 4 inches in diameter. Within its hidden casing, the S-35 concealed up to 18 ounces of TNT, with a firing load of 360 steel balls. It could be activated in several ways, either by a pressure trigger, or by trip wires, or by firing it electrically. Before blowing up, the S-35 would jump between 3 and 5 feet into the air by means of a propellant charge. In order to render the S-35 harmless, the trip wires had to be cut and the igniters neutralised. Then the plugs were removed so that the mine could be disarmed by removing the detonator. On the 15th of July 1944, Erwin Rommel warned Hitler that the moment was fast approaching when the hard-pressed German defences would crack. The moment arrived 10 days later, on the 25th of July. Delayed by rain, low cloud and bad visibility, Operation Cobra at last got off the ground, although it stuttered rather than leapt into life with a preliminary raid that hit the American forward positions. Over 100 GIs were killed and nearly 500 others were injured. Nevertheless, the prestigious Panzerlehr Division was all but destroyed and the way was open for a full-scale Allied advance. The raid provoked the customary blaze of artillery from the German defenders, who gave their performance more credit than it was due. When the friendly fire from their own air force made the Americans hastily vacate their positions, the Germans presumed that they were withdrawing in the face of their guns. Meanwhile, there had been another distraction. Another attack was launched on the 25th of July, Operation Spring, a British and Canadian effort against the German forces south of Caen. The Germans responded quickly and forcefully. The 1st and 9th SS Panzer Divisions hit back so hard that within 24 hours the attack had to be called off. Operation Spring was, of course, a sideshow, but the Germans got the impression that it was the main Allied onslaught. This was not surprising, considering the parlour state of their intelligence and their poor communications. But while the Germans were occupied with Spring, Cobra gained unexpected time to get going before they realised their mistake. The delay proved invaluable, clearing the ground of a preachable opposition. On the 25th of July, the US 7th Corps had pushed more than two miles into the German positions. On the 26th, US 8th Corps had joined in and the Germans were pushed back a further four miles. These successes set up the conditions for the US 2nd Armoured Division, known as the Hell on Wheels Division, to break through into open country on the 27th of July. The next day, the US 7th Corps reached Coutances. By then, the Germans had at last realised what was happening and switched the 2nd and 17th SS Divisions to pose a threat to the Americans' flank. But it was too late. The Germans succeeded in blocking the way into Coutances for a few hours, but by the evening they'd been driven off and the Americans were in possession. On the 30th of July, General Patton's 3rd Army seized the important road junction at Avranches and the southern extent of the Cotentin Peninsula. By this time, Allied forces had advanced 37 miles, covering more ground in six days than in the whole of the previous seven weeks. The Normandy countryside that now lay before the Americans was a very welcome sight. At last, they were out of the bocage, that obstructive maze, where even their Rhino tanks, tanks equipped with blades for cutting through the hedgerows, had managed only minimal progress. By the 2nd of August, the Americans were also presented with a sweep of open country, five miles wide, at Avranches, where a gap was being held open for them by Allied air forces and armour. Four divisions of Patton's 3rd Army passed through Avranches on the 3rd of August, cleared the bocage and emerged onto the plains of Normandy. They encountered no serious resistance. The German defences had broken, just as Rommel predicted they would. More than that, the 7th Army was disintegrating into small, scattered battle groups, some no bigger than battalion size. Columns of men were wandering the countryside, looking for a way out. Most of the Germans were short of ammunition, especially for their anti-tank guns. Tanks ran out of fuel and were abandoned by the roadside. The Germans were constantly hammered from the air and sustained enormous casualties. By the 6th of August, 1944, they'd lost more than 144,000 men and replacements, when they managed to get through, numbered less than 20,000. It was a scene of chaos and despair, but as so often happened with the Germans, it was not the whole story. Where they were able to regroup and mount a defence, even where they could mobilise only a few tanks, they could still impede the Allied advance. It seemed impossible that they could turn it back, and the Allies tended to take that for granted. But it was unwise, just as it was four months later in the Ardennes, when the Americans were surprised by a last-ditch armoured offensive. The Fuhrer still hoped to transform German fortunes in Normandy with a brilliant last-minute strike. And however pessimistic their own views, his commanders were still duty-bound to try to make Hitler's dreams come true. On the 3rd of August, Hitler ordered a counter-attack, Operation Lüttich, to take place at Avranche three days later. The purpose of Lüttich was to isolate the US Third Army, turn north, and crush the Normandy beachhead. This was, of course, unduly, even criminally, ambitious. The Germans had to scrape together the required forces from what remained of five panzer divisions. Between them, they had only 185 tanks, and their mobile armoured attack would inevitably attract attention from Allied planes. Erwin Rommel, who knew about such things, would never have approved, but at the time he was out of action and out of favour. He was under suspicion for complicity in the July bomb plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Hitler's acquaintance with military realities had always been shaky, and no one else seriously believed in the success of the counter-attack. But it was dangerous to gainsay the Fuhrer. Lüttich went ahead. The German assault would begin at Mortain, which had been captured by the US Seventh Corps, and the positions to be targeted were those of the 30th US Division. Hitler's purpose was to split the American forces in two, seize control of the road network around Mortain, and then drive on to the coast. However, the ultra-codebreakers were intercepting the German radio transmissions, and warned the Allied commanders of the German plans. The panzers managed to capture Mortain, but it was of no use to them without control of the road junctions to the north, which were blocked by the Americans at La Baie Blanche. The strategic hill 314, sited on the high ground east of Mortain, also eluded the Germans. The hill remained in the hands of the US 30th Division, who used it to plaster the Germans with artillery fire. But the Germans were undeterred by difficulties. They kept on attacking hill 314, and at one point, an SS officer presented the Americans with a surrender ultimatum. The Americans declined to accept. This refusal was answered by even more vigorous attacks, in which several American foxholes were overrun. In the bitter fighting that followed, the Americans on hill 314 had to call on their artillery for rescue. But the sound and fury of the German assaults were hollow, and their successes were short-lived. The Americans sent out tanks to hunt down their infantry, and early on the 7th of August, Allied fighter bombers arrived, and pounded them so heavily that half their tanks were destroyed. Next, a five-mile advance by the panzers into the American lines came to an ignominious end when they ran out of fuel. The German armour took so much punishment that they had only eight of their 88mm tank guns left. Field Marshal Kluge and Colonel General Hauser were so appalled that they dared to protest when Hitler ordered the panzers to remain in position on the 9th of August. As usual, protest proved useless. Hitler issued orders for a further attack on the 11th of August in the direction of Avranche, 20 miles west of Mortain. For this purpose, all available German armour was to be concentrated on a new formation, Panzergruppe Eberbach, General Hans Eberbach commanding. The new group comprised the scratchings of those forces that had been able to survive. But the German attack at Mortain had valuable uses for the Allies. The doomed German attack at Mortain fitted very neatly into General Montgomery's plan to envelop and trap the enemy between Argentin and Falaise. The Germans had been ordered not to retreat from Mortain and this placed them just where Montgomery wanted them. On the 6th of August, Montgomery issued a directive that required the Canadian 1st Army to attack towards Falaise and then turn east towards the River Seine. Meanwhile, the British 2nd Army would move towards Argentin and also turn east. The American 12th Army was ordered to continue its eastward advance and then head for Paris. The German counterattack at Mortain and their subsequent failure to retreat while there was still time meant that the whole of their army, Group B, the remnants of the force assigned to defend Normandy, stood between the jaws of Montgomery's trap. The encirclement was amended on the 8th of August when Patton's 15th Corps was ordered to Alenion to cover the southern sector of the trap. Three days later, the Canadians received new orders to capture both Falaise and Argentin while the 12th US Army Group completed the entrapment by advancing to Argentin. On paper, it all appeared straightforward but as so often happened with the Germans, the reality on the ground was different. Instead of enclosing and mopping up a depleted and dispirited enemy, the Allies found themselves fiercely resisted. One of the Germans' great strengths was their ability to switch armour, guns and men from one place in immediate danger to the next and to do it quickly. This strategy had succeeded several times already and now it was going to succeed again. Operation Totalize, the Canadian advance on Falaise, began on the 7th of August but became bogged down four days later. The Canadians' reserves and the 1st Polish Armoured Division were fighting their first battle and they proved unequal to the task of either capturing Falaise or driving through to Argentin to meet up with the Americans. By the 11th of August, when the Canadians came to a halt, they were only halfway to Falaise after an advance of nine miles. The American XV Corps, which included the 2nd French Armoured Division, had little difficulty in reaching Argentin where they waited impatiently for the Canadians to catch up. The Canadians' next attempt, Operation Tractable, went in on the morning of the 14th of August and this time they managed to break through to Falaise to take up positions 12 miles north of the Americans. However, valuable time had been lost. Now a huge pocket was formed with the German 7th Army, the 5th Panzer Army and Panzergruppe Eberbach inside it. The only exit was at Falaise and on the 13th of August, in a typically aggressive gesture, General Patton had tried to persuade General Bradley to let him close the gap by driving his XV Corps north of Argentin. Bradley refused. The Allied line was too thinly stretched for him to risk a German strike against both ends. Bradley preferred to wait until troops of the 1st US Army arrived at Argentin to take over the position of the XV Corps. Bradley was not alone in his caution. Most of the Allied commanders, except for the fiery Patton, were somewhat awed by German military tactics, which were admittedly superior. This was particularly true when their skills were likely to be exercised in as tight a corner as the Falaise gap. The Allies also went in dread of inflicting an unacceptable casualty rate on their own forces. Add to that a lack of experience in conducting a large encirclement and these inhibitions were going to limit the success the Allies were able to achieve at Falaise. There was of course no question that the Germans were going to hold the Falaise pocket. The point was how much of their decimated, exhausted army and remaining armour would be able to escape. All the Germans could do before the inevitable collapse was to hold on to every yard of ground. On the 15th of August, a German tank screen brought an advance by Canadian armour to a halt. The 3rd Canadian Division was forced to withdraw from the village of Solange by a spirited German counter-attack. The 2nd Canadian Division had better luck near Falaise. The Germans pulled back, allowing them to reach positions about a mile away. From there the Canadians drove into the town where the last-ditch style of the German defence was once again typified by a handful of Hitler youth from the 12th SS Panzer Hitlerjugend Division. Outside, there were about 100 men of the Mount Royal Fusiliers with anti-tank guns, mortars and Bren carriers. At the end, the Fusiliers took only 4 prisoners. The rest were all dead. Falaise itself was a sea of ruin and rubble so extensive that it was impossible to make out where the streets had been. Bulldozers set to work clearing up the mess. Several hours passed before bulldozers were able to clear paths for the Canadian vehicles. The previous day, Field Marshal Von Kluge informed army headquarters that holding the gap at Falaise was impossible. This time, and at long last, Adolf Hitler saw sense and agreed to a retreat. But he dismissed Von Kluge whom he suspected not only of complicity in the July bomb plot, but of negotiating with the allies behind his back. Von Kluge was replaced by Field Marshal Walter Model who found himself in charge not of an army, but of a rabble avid to get away from the killing fields of Normandy. Time for escape was now running very short. On the 17th of August, the 2nd Canadian Corps and the US 5th Corps made advances that reduced the exit from the Falaise pocket to just a few thousand yards. The Germans fought desperately to prevent it shrinking further. At the village of Saint-Lambert on the 19th of August, Canadian infantry dueled all morning with the German defenders who forced them to dig in. The Germans mounted successive counterattacks so the Canadians would not prevent them keeping open the route for their escape eastwards. The Germans were being helped from an unusual quarter. Elsewhere, the advance by Canadian and Polish troops was agonizingly, inexplicably slow despite frantic urgings from Montgomery and Lieutenant General Guy Simmons, commander of the Canadian 2nd Corps. The Allied air forces hammered the German infantry and tanks now pouring through the still open gap. Allied fighter bombers flew up to 3,000 sorties a day and the slaughter and destruction were immense. But still, the Falaise gap remained open and still the fleeing Germans surged through despite the deadly gauntlet they had to run. The Poles had seized the high ground at Montaumelle and set up machine gun positions from which they blasted down fire on the Germans passing below. They called up artillery to pound columns of German vehicles as they drove by. The Canadians, meanwhile, fired at every group of Germans they could see. The Germans were scattered, running in ones and twos from the shelter of one wood to the next. Some were picked off quickly. Some fell to the ground but managed to run on. Some lay injured, unable to continue. Some simply gave up and hoisted white flags. But by then the ground was littered with corpses and the hulks of smoking ruined tanks and vehicles. The gap between Argentin and Falaise was finally closed on the 21st of August when the Canadians and the Poles linked up at Coudar. The 3rd and 4th Canadian Division managed to capture Saint-Lambert after two days of ferocious combat and the US 90th Division secured Chambois. Four days later, Paris was liberated by the 2nd French Armoured Division. All of it should have happened earlier and the reasons why it didn't have been subject to dispute ever since. The nature of the fighting in Normandy between the 25th of July and the 21st of August 1944 seemed inexplicable. The German forces were in a state of collapse. They were outnumbered and outgunned. They had no air cover and were constantly hammered by the Allied air forces. Their intelligence was poor and their communications were faulty. Adolf Hitler, their supreme commander, issued orders no responsible military man would ever have contemplated. By rights, the Allies should have been able to flick away their resistance and surge on into Germany with little or no difficulty. Yet it did not happen. How was this possible? The depressing fact was that in all the essentials of war, the German forces were superior. When it came to tactics, German commanders were more skilled and more adept at making the most of their resources. Their men were better motivated, better led, better trained, much more determined and far more willing to sacrifice themselves for their cause. Among the Allied forces, only the Russians displayed the same urge to fight to the death. By the time the battle for Normandy ended at Falaise, the Germans were being hunted down all over France. The remnants of the German 7th Army were in full retreat, heading for the bridges across the river Seine. Following the invasion of southern France on the 15th of August, the German 9th Army was withdrawing in disorder up the valley of the river Rhône. In a bold Patton-style initiative, troops of the American 6th Corps under General Lucien Truscott managed to overtake the Germans and trap them at Mont-Ely-Mar on the east bank of the Rhône on the 22nd of August. But Truscott was thwarted six days later. The 2nd Panzers counter-attacked and did better than their counterparts at Falaise. They kept the escape route open long enough for most of the German forces to get away. However, they did leave behind 15,000 prisoners and some 4,000 of their tanks and other vehicles were destroyed. This, though, was not an escape to safety. The French resistance, avid for revenge after four years of brutal occupation, sought and savoured every opportunity to kill, torture or mutilate all the Bosch they could find. Whole units of German soldiers wandered around looking for Allied troops to whom they could surrender. Only the haven of captivity could protect them from the fury of the French. Meanwhile, in the west, far from any chances of getting out of France, isolated German garrisons held out at Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle and in the estuary of the Gironde. Brest surrendered after a long siege on the 18th of September 1944 and the rest a few months later, except for Lorient, which remained in German hands until the end of the war. The garrisons had stayed in place on Hitler's orders, but it was a futile gesture. They were nothing but specks left over from a once mighty force that had overrun and occupied France since 1940 and the zest of that triumph had long since faded. The major pursuit, of course, was in northeastern France, where the Allies were chasing their quarry towards the West Wall, the fortifications popularly known as the Siegfried Line that protected the western border of Germany. The British and Americans were still in pursuit well into September, but this was creating its own problems. The further the Allied forces were from the Normandy coast, the longer their supply lines became and a fresh campaign would be needed to shift the Germans from more convenient ports on the Belgian coast. Meanwhile, the German forces that managed to elude the Allies' clutches had a chance to dig themselves in behind the West Wall. The fortifications, popularly known as the Siegfried Line, were three miles deep and had been built after 1938 to protect the western border of Germany. In 1944, reserves were rushed to the West Wall as the survivors of Normandy dug themselves in. They were in a similar state to the Wall itself, battered, dilapidated, feeble, but their discipline and their will to fight was still intact and their leadership, headed by Field Marshal von Rundstedt, was of high quality. If Normandy were anything to go by, the Allies were in for yet another costly struggle and the war was still a long way from its end.