The Western Front

Taught by: [Imperator]



Sections in order

1. Fall of France 1940
2. The Battle of Britain 1940-1941
3. Battle of the Atlantic 1941-1943
4. Dieppe 1944
5. D-Day 1944
6. Battle of France 1944
7. Operation Market Garden 1944
8. Battle of the Bulge 1944-1945
9. Over the Rhine River 1945



Fall of France 1940

The French had after World War I built an extensive system of fortifications and tunnels along the German border to fend of any attack from the Germans. Just to the north of this system was what the French believed was the impassable Ardennes Forest. For British and French military thinking, this left only Belgium as a possible through point for the German armies. So they thought. Originally, the German leadership had planned to do just that, rush at the allied defensive positions on the Belgian border head on but they decided to change the plans favoring a diversionary attack through Belgium as the allies expected but the main force move through the 'impassible' Ardennes. On May 10, 1940, the German armies put the plan into action. The diversionary force in Belgium moved quickly causing allied leaders to believe that this was indeed the main attack force while at that moment, German panzers and troops were moving through the Ardennes. The attack hit the scattered French who were completely taken by surprise and overwhelmed them. German panzers rushed to the river Meuse and had pontoon bridges across it within hours. By the 15th of May, the successful German attack had ripped deep into undefended French territory. On May 20th German units made it to the English Channel, cutting off the allied armies in Belgium. The new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, ordered the evacuation of the allied armies from a rapidly shrinking pocket on the English Channel from Dunkirk. By June 4, 1940, 338,000 allied troops had been rescued from France but had left all of their heavy equipment behind. With most of the allied strength gone, German troops soon broke through the remaining French and took Paris without a fight on June 14th. Two days later, France surrendered.




The Battle of Britain 1940-1941

Now that Germany was in control of France, Hitler turned to Britain. An invasion plan was constructed called Operation Sea Lion to land 400,000 German troops on Britain. But this plan would be very risky against the British Royal Air Force. In response, Hitler chose to launch an air attack against the RAF to clear the way for the follow-up invasion of Britain. Some 1700 German aircraft were ready to fight being opposed by 650 RAF fighters. In August 1940, the attack began. German bombers struck at airbases and radar installations all over Britain. Soon, losses in aircraft for the British were larger than the number of aircraft actually produced. It seemed like the end was near. Then Goring, the Commander of the German Luftwaffe chose to focus on bombing London to try and draw more of the RAF into battle. This change in strategy gave the British time to recover from the attacks on their vital airfields and radar installations, effectively saving the nation from invasion. On September 17, 1940, Hitler called off Operation Sea Lion. The air attacks on Britain continued, however, and Goring once again shifted strategy to night bombing London. Fighting went on in the spring of 1941 but Hitler was preparing for the invasion of the Soviet Union, ending the Battle of Britain.




Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1943

Early in the Battle of the Atlantic, when the war had just started, German U-Boats were few and rather ineffective. Britain had established a blockade of Germany by closing off the North Sea and the English Channel to Germany. After Germany managed to take control of France and Norway, however, the blockade became useless as the ports of these two nations outflanked the blockade. Additionally, now U-Boats had a shorter sail to go before reaching allied shipping lanes and could go far into the Atlantic to take convoys by surprise. The U-Boats soon began to take a fearful toll on the allied shipping. The Commander of the German submarine service, Admiral Donitz, then came up with the idea for submarines to operate in "Wolf Packs". Once a convoy was sited, all the submarines in the area would converge on the enemy ships at night and attack. This dramatically increased the number of allied merchant ships being sunk. In May 1941, the German High Command authorized the pride of the German Navy, Bismarck to break out into the North Atlantic. This monster of a ship at 41,600 tons and 823 feet long carried 8, fifteen-inch guns and 56 other guns including anti-aircraft. The battleship managed to make it into the North Atlantic and once the British found where the ship was, they sent every available ship in the Atlantic to hunt it down and destroy it. The Royal Navy's largest battleship, the Hood moved in to make battle with the Bismarck on May 24. In the first few minutes of the battle, a shell from the Bismarck hit the Hood and exploded in the powder magazine. The resulting explosion was huge. The Hood was ripped apart and every single one of the 1400 man crew died except for 3 survivors. The Bismarck, damaged somewhat by the exchange, headed for the safety of France for repairs. But the British got to it first. On May 26, a group of British biplanes attacked the mighty German ship and damaged its rudder, leaving the ship helpless. The following day, several battleships of the Royal Navy attacked the Bismarck and a fierce battle took place as the Germans fought with all they had. Hit after hit blasted the Bismarck and the once proud ship, flaming, rolled over and sank. Only 110 of the 2000 man crew survived. As 1941 progressed, the British began to retake control of the Atlantic and merchant ship losses decreased sharply. But when the U.S. entered the war on the side of the British in December 1941, huge areas of ocean were suddenly available to the U-Boats. America had not ordered blackouts on coastal cities and shipping was unguarded along the North American coastline and suddenly U-Boats were once again sinking ships at an even more alarming rate in 1942. After the U.S. adopted British methods of fighting the U-Boats, losses receded greatly but the U-Boat remained an ever-diminishing threat. By 1943, more convoy protection, long-range aircraft, and better tactics ended the U-Boats ability to sink allied shipping and the battle of the Atlantic was over.




Dieppe 1944

As Britain waited for its return to the European continent, it staged several raids on the French coast including the disastrous landing at the small port town of Dieppe. The original plan was to take and hold a town for a short period of time to get intelligence from prisoners, asses German reactions, provide some good news for the media, and gain experience for future landings. On August 19, 1942, 6000 Canadian troops departed Britain and headed for the French coast. Because the attack had not been cleared with the British Joint Chiefs of Staff, the plan lacked much needed support in terms of accurate and up to date intelligence. Almost immediately, problems developed. Some of the ships ran right into a German convoy and were torpedoed by S-Boats and the German shore defenses were alerted. What remained of those Canadians were scattered and overwhelmed upon reaching the beach. Another force of more than 500 Canadians landed and was opposed by only 60 Germans who never called for reinforcements and pinned down the landing party despite being heavily outnumbered. Other landings near Dieppe were also completely crushed with very heavy casualties. At 10:50 in the morning, the order to retreat was given. Over 3000 Canadians had died or been captured out of the 6000 original yet 1000 of those men had never even landed yet.




D-Day 1944

Codenamed "Operation Overlord", the great return to the European continent that had been anticipated for years was about to be launched. For months, troops, tanks, rations, aircraft, fuel, ammunition, and every other imaginable good needed for war had built up on Britain. This massive effort was given its own code name, BOLERO. There were about 3 million British, American, and other nation's men in Britain with another 1 million Americans still in the U.S. that would be carried directly to France once a foothold had been established on the European continent. With Stalin pressing for the opening of a second front in Europe against Hitler, the western allies agreed to launch in invasion in 1943. It wasn't long before that date was shown to be completely unfeasible as the supplies necessary for an attack were still not ready and much still needed to be transported to Britain. The invasion date was moved into 1944. The most controversial part of the invasion, however, was simply where the allied armies should land on the French coastline. The selected area would need to be fairly near to a large port to supply the invasion armies yet maintain the element of surprise. Some argued for an attack on Calais, just 30 miles from Britain and the closest mainland Europe gets to the island. The area was not far from Antwerp, one of the largest ports in Europe, but the Germans anticipated just such a move and had been preparing for an invasion there for years. The Germans strengthened Hitler's "Atlantic Wall" with more bunkers, barbed wire, and other beach defenses than any other stretch of French coast and based more men in Calais to throw back an attack. Realizing this, the allied High Command chose a more remote bit of France for the landings in order to assure surprise and less determined resistance. However, the attack would need just the right conditions to be successful ranging from weather to the element of surprise. The crucial factor for victory, surprise, would be supplied by a massive allied effort to provide faulty intelligence to the Germans and confuse them into thinking the attack would take place in Calais. The tide needed to be low at the time of the attack so landing craft would not get stuck on wooden traps or hit mines placed near the surface of the waters just off shore. Another important factor would be a full moon at the time of the attack, which would happen just before dawn to provide light to the first forces to hit the beach. The date that would provide all the criteria was that of early June 1944. Finally, the last preparations for the return to the European continent were underway. It was now to be at Normandy France that the allied armies would land on the 6th day of June 1944.


The allied build up on Britain.

The plan for the invasion was for several airborne units to land on each of the flanking sides of the landing beaches just before dawn to hold off and confuse the German defenders. Then the main assault would begin while the first rays of light came down on France. The landings would take place at five beaches named Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah, and Omaha. Gold, Juno, and Sword were the British and Canadian beaches while Omaha and Utah were the American beaches. The Americans would take the port city of Cherbourg to the northwest while the British and Canadians would take the town of Caen. Five divisions in total were to land, one on each beach.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, an American, was named Supreme Commander of all allied armies in Europe. It would be he that would guide the invading armies in their quest to remove the Germans from western Europe. Under him were names like Bernard Montgomery, Miles Dempsey, Omar Bradley, and George Patton. These great generals would lead the western allies for the rest of the war and would preside over some of the fiercest battles to take place in World War II as they moved ever nearer to Hitler's Third Reich.

The night of June 5th was a busy one. Ships of all kinds were departing Britain and heading into the English Channel. Lanes in the German minefields in the channel had been cut out by allied minesweepers for weeks in order to provide a safe way through to the French coast. Although there were a few accidents, the allied fleet sailed through safely. Meanwhile, the aircraft carrying the allied airborne units took off from British airbases and approached the French coast. As German radar picked up the approaching aircraft, flak began to burst all around the paratroop's transports. Under cover of darkness, they jumped from their planes and landed on French soil. Others paratroops landed in gliders and began to form up into their units. Although it took a longer time than expected to do this and many landings did not take place in their intended targets, the paratroops managed to successfully harass the Germans as the main assault on the five beaches began. Fighting between allied paratroops and Germans was especially fierce south of Utah beach.

The preliminary bombing of German shore positions had largely failed due to bad weather causing most of the bombs to fall in fields around Normandy. This would make the landings on the five beaches more difficult. Giant LST transport ships began to disgorge their cargo of landing craft, floating tanks, and troops in the early morning of June 6th when they got as close the beach as they could without grounding. The landing craft plowed through the water towards shore while German machine gun fire opened up all around the American, British, and Canadian forces. German artillery also let loose and shells were exploding into the water everywhere. Allied battleships fired on enemy bunkers and positions up to a few miles inland. Then the landing craft made it to the beach. The ramparts fell forward and thousands of allied men poured onto Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches. Desperately trying to avoid withering fire from German positions they waded through the water and onto the sand. As it was low tide, many of the traps laid by German engineers to snag enemy landing craft were exposed above water. It was behind this scanty cover that the allies dug in their heels for the fight of their lives. One German soldier recounted his experience of D-Day and said that when the Americans hit the beach he would select one landing craft and just fire his machine gun into the attackers. He didn't even have to swivel his gun to mow down his enemies. This just proved how vicious the fighting was. As the morning progressed, commanders watched as the British and Canadian beaches of Gold, Juno, and Sword were cleared fairly easily. However, Omaha beach was a different matter. The Americans here got the most heavily defended stretch of Normandy coast that any of the allied forces would face. Resistance was so fierce and determined that some top commanders called for the beach to be abandoned. However, by the end of the day, American troops managed to take control of the beachhead and the danger was past.

By June 10, the five beaches had been linked up into one area as the allied armies pushed inland. The British and Canadians were working their way towards Caen while the Americans moved towards the port of Cherbourg. German resistance was stiff and the bocage of Normandy didn't make it any easier. Bocage, overgrown brush and trees grew along the edges of fields and roads making it very difficult to move from area to area making this terrain perfectly suited for a defending German. Tanks could also not be deployed which seriously hindered the allies' strength. Progress could only be made by bloody infantry thrusts over exposed ground to the next obstacle of bocage. As time went on, British attacks on Caen repeatedly failed and the town remained in German hands. These bloody assaults resulted in heavy casualties which coupled with battle in the bocage began to seriously deplete British manpower. Soon units were under strength and Britain had reached its limit of new recruits. Years of war had simply worn the nation down. To solve the problem, units had to be cannibalized. Meanwhile, the Americans constantly received enough replacement that there never was a manpower shortage.

On June 27, the Americans secured Cherbourg and a major port was finally available for the allies to bring in men, material, and supplies. The British continued to hammer away at Caen but were still beaten back by fierce German resistance. Having the Normandy area secured, the allies now needed to break out from their small lodgment. Dempsey launched a large British armored attack but ran into determined resistance and on July 20, rain halted the attack. The fighting managed to pull more German armor in to oppose the British and therefore aided the Americans as Bradley put the finishing touches on his plan to break out of Normandy, dubbed Operation Cobra. After American troops took the town of St-Lo, a major crossroads in Normandy, the attack could begin. On July 24, the offensive began. Bombers were sent in to hit German positions but some bombs fell on allied forces instead of their intended targets. Despite this, most of one German armored division was completely destroyed. By July 27, Operation Cobra had succeeded and allied forces poured out into open country. The hard shell of the German defense had cracked. American forces rushed out towards the large Atlantic port of Brest to secure another place for supplies to be brought into France. On August 3rd, Hitler ordered a counter attack to split the forces that were moving towards Brest and the main forces still around Normandy. The attack managed to take a small town back from the allies but was quickly rebuked. The Battle for France had now begun.




Battle of France 1944

With allied forces breaking out of Normandy and substantial German forces around the town of Mortain, the allies were presented with a huge opportunity to completely encircle and destroy nearly all German units in France. To achieve this end, British and Canadian forces began determined attacks south towards the town of Falaise to provide the northern pincer. American troops began thrusts in the direction of Argentan, another town about 10 miles south east of Falaise to be the southern pincer. As German forces began to become enveloped in the trap, Hitler denied the German general, Field Marshal von Kluge, the authority to retreat. Ignoring Hitler’s orders, Kluge ordered German troops to escape out of the rapidly shrinking pocket and move towards Germany. Canadian troops meanwhile continued to work towards Falaise. After two attempts to secure the town, allied forces entered on August 15 after a week of heavy fighting. The day before, on August 14, Operation Anvil-Dragoon, the invasion of southern France had been launched. The idea was to create a second front in France to further disorient the Germans. On the 15th, the main landings started between the city of Toulon and Monaco after paratroop drops further inland. Some of the paratroops landed accidentally on the German headquarters and attacked it, which prevented coordination of German forces along the landing beaches. By the 17th of August, German High Command ordered the withdrawal of German troops from southern France. Meanwhile in the north of France, allied forces continued to squeeze the retreating enemy and sealed the fate of some 20,000 Germans when the Argentan-Falaise pocket was closed on August 20, 1944. Those troops promptly surrendered leaving the road to Paris, capital of France, open.

On August 19, French resistance fighters in Paris began an uprising against the German occupiers after hearing the sounds of battle coming from the advancing allies. Unwilling to let the uprising be crushed and the possibility of communist resistance seizing the city looming, Eisenhower ordered Free French forces to advance on Paris backed by U.S. troops. On August 24, 1944, Paris France was liberated. The commander of the German garrison, Dietrich von Choltitz, had been ordered by Hitler to burn Paris to the ground but ignored these instructions and declared it an open city allowing the allies to take Paris without a fight.


Victorious allied troops march through the streets of Paris, France in late August, 1944.




Operation Market Garden 1944

After the battle of France had been wrapped up, allied forces reached near the German border and into Belgium by September of 1944. The previous successes of Normandy and southern France faded as German resistance became fierce and determined to defend the “fatherland”. To remedy this, Montgomery decided to try a daring plan to get the allied armies moving again. This plan would result in Operation Market Garden. As the next major obstacle to the allied forces getting into Germany was the Rhine river, Montgomery’s idea was to capture several bridges leading up to and across the river. The attack would utilize 30,000 British and American paratroopers that so far had not seen much action in the war. As the plans were pulled together, one of the airborne army's commanders foreshadowed the coming operation with the words "I think we may be going a bridge too far..." On September 17, 1944, 20,000 allied paratroops took off from bases in Britain and made their way toward the Netherlands and the Rhine River. Their transports and gliders came under heavy flak fire but most made it through the barrage. The paratroops then landed but few were actually dropped in their intended landing areas causing problems in liking up units and navigation. Finally forces became organized and moved towards their objectives. As the main British forces pushed forward towards the landed paratroops, German resistance became so strong that the advance ground to a halt. Airborne units around Arnhem were trapped. For three days, the brave paratroops fought off determined German attacks and finally on September 23, the main allied ground forces reached Arnhem. Unable to cross the Rhine River at this point because of enemy opposition, Montgomery withdrew the Para forces from the other side of the bridge. Operation Market Garden was over.




Battle of the Bulge 1944-1945

Despite Operation Market Garden, the western allies were stalled on the borders of Germany. Unable to go farther because of fierce German resistance and a supply line that ran from Cherbourg France to the frontline hundreds of miles away, Hitler saw a grand opportunity to smash the British and American forces. Mustering the last of Germany's reserves of men, tanks, aircraft, and fuel, Hitler bet it all on the last great offensive to break the allies. He devised a strategy that harked back to the glory of Germany's victory in France at the start of the war after panzers outflanked the French from the Ardennes Forest. His plan was for a powerful thrust to break through the lightly defended American positions around the Ardennes and strike out for the port Antwerp. Not only would this capture a very important port from the western allies, but the attack would also split the American and British, trapping the latter in a huge pocket like the Dunkirk disaster. Although supremely confident of success, Hitler's generals were not. They knew the goal was too far fetched and would stretch Germany's scant recourses beyond what it could do. Nether the less, Hitler ordered the planning of Operation "Watch on the Rhine". In order to carry out the attack, fuel had to be taken from other forces all around Germany and precious manpower moved from the eastern front to the west. Extremely slowly, only moving by night, German units moved towards their starting positions on the German border. The allies knew nothing of the gathering force. Total secrecy of Hitler's plan held.

On December 16, 1944, German artillery opened up all along the border with Belgium and Luxembourg. Soon the thinly spread forward American units were over run and the Battle of the Bulge, as it would later be known, began. The attack was planned to coincide with bad weather in order to keep allied aircraft out of the sky. As the first days of the battle progressed, luck held for Germany. Cloud cover and snow blanketed the ground.

By the end of the first day, German units had moved as far as 30 miles into American lines and yet the allied leadership was still unaware of just how large the enemy attack was. Even Eisenhower believed that this was a small offensive designed to gain better defensive ground. Only the bravery of isolated allied units prevented the Germans from going still deeper as they fought many delaying skirmishes to hold off the enemy. Despite such courage, the U.S. troops were still fighting at a huge disadvantage numerically not to mention the huge amount of confusion among allied units as to what was happening. Much of this came from German soldiers that spoke perfect English and were wearing allied uniforms. Wandering behind the allied front lines, they spread misinformation, turned road signs around, cut communications, and sent units the opposite way they were trying to go. As time went on, however, these German infiltrators were caught because of their very slight German accent. Many were shot as spies.

The battle continued to become ever more ferocious as U.S. forces began to reinforce the Ardennes. On December 17, SS troops (Hitler’s elite army) slaughtered over 100 unarmed American prisoners. A few escaped into a nearby wood but most did not survive. The next day, German panzers were advancing into the Belgian town of Stavelot when they encountered a supply depot with 50,000 gallons of fuel. After filling up the tanks, they moved on and found the largest allied fuel depot in Europe with 2.5 million gallons of gasoline. Unsure of how much fuel the depot contained or how heavily guarded it was, the German commander chose to bypass it. In fact, only a few dozen Americans were keeping watch on it. Soon Eisenhower realized that the town of Bastogne was to be the focal point of the German attacks as it was at a major crossroads. He ordered allied forces into the town and they arrived just a few hours before the German advance. Soon the town was surrounded and the Americans trapped inside. The Americans began to take heavy bombardment and for several days grimly held on. Nearly out of ammunition, food, and fuel, they would soon be forced to surrender if no aid came. Eisenhower ordered George Patton to relieve the city despite the fact that his army was 125 miles from Bastogne. Yet in one day, the relief force covered more than half the distance. Desperately, the very first units to arrive on the outskirts of the town were thrown forward to break through. Vicious fighting took place but they still couldn’t break into the beleaguered town. Then on December 23, the bad weather that had held for several weeks broke. Allied aircraft could fly. More than 5000 aircraft took to the air and bombed and strafed German forces that were out in the open. Hitler unleashed fighter aircraft he had stocked up but they were so heavily out numbered that they could do nothing to allied air power. More that 250 German fighters were shot down. Soon hundreds of planes began dropping supplies to the defenders of Bastogne and the day after Christmas, Patton’s troops broke through the German defenders and saved the Americans in Bastogne. A few weak attacks by the Germans were quickly repelled and soon the enemy was on the retreat. By the end of January 1945, the Germans were back in their old positions from where they had begun the Battle of the Bulge except with one major difference. The Germans suffered more than 100,000 casualties, lost 800 tanks, and most of what remained of the Luftwaffe was gone. With the last of Germany’s reserves of manpower, fuel, tanks, and aircraft wiped out, the final defeat of Nazi Germany was only a matter of time.




Over the Rhine River

The plan for entering Germany was made more difficult by the fact that the Rhine River would have to be crossed. Running from Switzerland to the North Sea, the Rhine guarded the entire western front of Germany. The first parts of the operation began in February to clear the west side of the Rhine and there was little opposition. Then in early March, American troops discovered a bridge that German engineers had failed to destroy. Allied forces began to pour across under heavy fire from the other bank and even a few German aircraft attempted to strafe and bomb the bridge. On March 17, the bridge collapsed from German attacks and the stress of heavy equipment constantly moving across it but a major foothold had been established. Soon more troops were moving across the Rhine in landing craft and more of the east bank was secured. By the end of March the entire east side of the river was secured and the western allies could begin their attacks into the heart of Germany.

Allied forces to the north moved through the Netherlands and encircled the Ruhr, taking out most of Germany’s remaining industrial capability. American troops to the south pushed into Bavaria in southern Germany and moved into Austria. By this time German troops were surrendering in droves and everyone realized the war would soon be over.

With the Soviets advancing from the east and the American, British, and Canadians from the west, there was very little resistance left in Nazi Germany. Only a few pockets of fanatical resistance were left. By early May, the war in Europe was essentially over and Hitler committed suicide. His successor, Admiral Doenitz, attempted to move German refugees away from the Russians and into American and British controlled areas where he knew they would be treated well and escape Russian vengeance and anger over the war. After only two weeks as chancellor, Doenitz could no longer hold off signing the surrender documents and on May 7, the war in Europe was over.




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