Sunday, January 10, 2010

Montgomery on Bradley's November offensive

Per Monty:
"I met with Bradley at MAASTRICH yesterday, November 16, 1944. He explained the American strategy in Western Europe. They intend to line up on the Rhine from the Swiss Border to to Dusseldorf... he said he expected to achieve this by January 1, 1945. After a a pause to bring up the Air Force and supplies they will cross the Rhine on a broad front in the direction of MUNICH and BERLIN."

"I stated that if we went on pursuing this policy of 'stretch' we would nowhere be strong enough to bring such pressure to bear on the enemy, that we could smash through to the selected objectives. These tactics give the Germans exactly what they want, i.e. time. The Germans are bound to bring divisions from the Russian front and elsewhere... but all arguments were useless.

At present there are 17 American divisions south of the Ardennes, and 18 north of the Ardennes. I failed to discover from Bradley any system of switching strength across to the area where initial success offered promising prospects."

Per Bradley:
Montgomery wanted to know our estimate as to when we would reach the Rhine. I would hazard a guess that we can reach the Rhine at Cologne by December 15th, and in vicinity of Frankfurt at the same time.

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