(EXPLOSIONS)
It had taken less than 90 days for the Allies to complete the defeat of Hitler's armies in France.
By the end of August 1944, the Germans were in headlong flight to the borders of the Reich.
One man above all could claim to be the architect of the victory -
the commander of the Allied Armies in the field,
General Bernard Law Montgomery.
I have the latest estimates...
To mark his triumph, Monty had commissioned a painter to capture his likeness in victory.
The road to Berlin seemed to open before him
and he was confident a final mighty push would end the war within months.
He was wrong.
The Allied advance was to be threatened by a long and bitter battle.
It would be fought not in the field, but in the conference chamber
for the right to lead the assault on Hitler's Reich.
Mistakes would be made.
Thousands of Allied soldiers would pay for them with their lives.
(RADIO ) This is John McVain in Paris.
Those bells you can hear are the bells of Notre Dame cathedral
and they're ringing a chime of thanksgiving that French troops have entered the city.
American and Free French forces began their final advance into Paris on August 25th, 1944.
Four long years of occupation were over.
(AMERICAN ACCENT) The Germans left were not warriors.
They had been taken out of the buildings where they had worked or slept in
and they were all scared stiff, as well they might be.
American soldiers were half-heartedly trying to protect them.
(NEW SPEAKER) Wonderful, wonderful times.
With the people of Paris all over the boulevards and all over the streets cheering us on.
We were very optimistic that we were going to really clean up this thing
a little sooner than people had expected.
(WOMAN) People started saying, ''The generals say we're going to go home for Christmas.
''The war's about over.''
Four days after the liberation of the city,
the Allied supreme commander, the American General Dwight D Eisenhower,
stood beneath the Arc de Triomphe.
(BAND STRIKES UP)
An American division was cheered along the Champs Elysees.
But one man was conspicuously absent from the celebrations -
the commander of the armies in the field.
General Montgomery had sent a cold telegram to the supreme commander
excusing himself from the party.
Monty and his staff had learned that Eisenhower was to assume personal command
of the Allied armies.
The change of command had been agreed before D-Day.
American soldiers would soon outnumber the British three to one.
But Monty viewed the change as dangerously short-sighted
and instructed his Chief of Staff to tell Eisenhower so.
The forces must operate as one whole with great cohesion.
- And be strong enough to do it quickly. - Yes, sir.
Now, Freddie...
You must tell Ike that this is a whole-time job for one man.
The great victory in north-west France has been won by personal command.
And it is only in this way that future victories will be won.
I'll do what I can, sir,
but I know that General Eisenhower feels most strongly that command ought to be his.
Freddie, to change the system of command now,
after having won such a great victory, would simply prolong the war.
He obviously viewed this with considerable misgiving
because, uh...
..he didn't believe that Eisenhower could do the job as well as he could.
But Eisenhower would not be moved.
As Monty's Chief of Staff had predicted, America was clamouring for an American.
It was to prove a watershed.
Now, as both ground forces and supreme commander,
Eisenhower was free to direct the campaign as he saw fit.
As a British general, I can speak for all the soldiers of the Empire
and can express our high admiration
for the brave fighting qualities of the American armies.
We never want to fight alongside better soldiers.
In his final broadcast as ground forces commander,
Monty spoke warmly of the victory won by the great alliance.
(MONTGOMERY) All that matters is that it was well and truly done by the whole Allied team.
The proper motto for allies should be,
''One for all and all for one.''
But for all the warm words, Eisenhower's senior commanders had very different views
about how the war should be won.
American generals were privately delighted that control of the armies had passed to Eisenhower.
Monty's chief rival, the hero of the break-out from the Allied bridgehead after D-Day,
was General George Patton.
♪ This is the GI Jive, man alive
♪ It starts with the bugler blowin' Reveille over your bed
♪ When you arrive
♪ Jack, that's the GI Jive... ♪
Patton's 3rd Army was racing across eastern France,
advancing more than 50 miles a day.
♪ After you wash and dress
♪ More or less
♪ You go get your breakfast in a beautiful little cafe... ♪
People were scared to death of General Patton. He was very aggressive.
He kept his forces moving all the time.
♪ Out of your seat into the street
♪ Make with the feet... ♪
And he was right out there and he was a ''kill or be killed'' guy.
We felt we were with a winner, some guy who knew what he was doing,
that he'd figure out how to win that war.
By the end of August, Patton was within striking distance of the defensive wall
that guarded the borders of Hitler's Reich.
I hope to go through the Siegfried Line like shit through a goose.
That is not quotable.
On what do you base your belief that you will go through the Siegfried Line...quickly?
- My natural optimism. - There must be something.
You can't ask men to retreat 300, 400 miles and then ask them to defend anything.
Patton was teasing and arrogant.
Above all, he loved war.
Gentlemen, the perfectly phenomenal advance of the British 21st Army Group
has completely buggered the whole German show.
And as a result of that, the German plan of defence has completely dissipated.
Privately, Patton was less complimentary of the British
and there was one man he loathed above all others -
his chief rival for the newspaper headlines.
Nobody has greater admiration for General Montgomery than I have.
(CAROL MATHER) One knew of this rivalry, very much so.
He'd call Monty a tired little fart and, um...
So there was no love lost between the two of them.
As Patton's army pressed eastwards,
Montgomery's 21st Army Group was advancing north toward the Reich.
On August 25th, the British and Canadians began crossing the River Seine
and, nine days later, liberated Brussels.
The speed of the Allied advance presented Eisenhower with rival plans
for the conquest of Germany - one British-led, the other American.
The American 12th Army Group, the 1st and 3rd Armies,
was driving north-east on a broad front towards the Reich
and the last great obstacle, the River Rhine,
Monty's 21st Army Group, the British and Canadians,
north towards Holland and the industrial heartland of Germany, the Ruhr.
Monty invited Eisenhower to his headquarters to press the case for his northern route.
Ike.
I thought that we should have a meeting alone together in my caravan,
if that's all right with you, Ike.
There are big points of principle we should tackle ourselves and we don't need the staff.
- If you feel it's important, Monty. - I do.
Monty was convinced that the best hope for victory by Christmas
was with a single, all-powerful thrust along his route, to be commanded by him.
Patton's army would be forced to hold its advance at the borders of the Reich.
I want an American army of at least 12 divisions
to advance on the right flank of 21st Army Group.
But if I agree to that, 12 Army Group would only have one army in it.
Public opinion back in the States would object.
Are you going to let public opinion, political and national considerations,
force you to take a military decision that is basically unsound?
You must understand, Monty, this is an election year back home.
If I agree to what you suggest, the public might swing against the President
and perhaps lose him the election. I won't do that.
Eisenhower was determined to press forward on a broad front.
He promised to give priority to Monty's advance north, but Patton would also be given his head.
But his plans were to founder on the beaches of Normandy.
The supplies the Allies needed to advance were still being landed
across beaches 400 miles away.
Until a major port could be captured,
supplies would have to be hauled across France
and there weren't enough to keep both Monty and Patton moving.
The need for gasoline was always acute. We never seemed to have enough.
And we had a hard time getting what we needed up to the front.
Tanks use an awful lot of gasoline.
But Patton was very demanding in his requirements for fuel.
He felt that he could keep going. The Rhine was now the objective.
On September 4th, Monty wrote to Ike urging him to choose a route.
His route.
(MONTGOMERY) I consider we have now reached a stage
where one really powerful and full-blooded thrust towards Berlin is likely to get there
and end the German war.
Time is vital and the decision must be made at once.
If we split our resources, so that neither thrust is full-blooded,
we will prolong the war.
Eisenhower was at his new forward headquarters in Normandy,
400 miles behind the front.
Communications were so bad, it was three days before Monty received a reply to his signal.
(EISENHOWER) While agreeing with your conception of a powerful thrust towards Berlin,
I do not agree it should be initiated at this moment
to the exclusion of all other manoeuvres.
Eisenhower refused to hold Patton.
Ah, come in, Kit.
But on September 8th, Monty's plan for a thrust north into Germany was reinforced
by a sudden and terrifying threat.
I was a boy who was just over five years old. My sister, Rosemary, was three.
We lived in this three-bedroomed house in Number One Stavely Road.
It was between quarter to seven and seven o'clock.
My sister was in her bedroom in the front
and I had been playing with wooden blocks in the bath.
The first I knew of it was
the wall between the bathroom and my parents' bedroom completely disappeared
and was a heap of rubble.
The only recollection I have of being in hospital was of Rosemary being brought in on a trolley.
I wasn't aware then that she had been killed.
My mother and father told me
fairly soon afterwards.
How they said it I don't know offhand. Obviously that was very traumatic for them as well.
Number One Stavely Road was the first house in London
to be destroyed by Hitler's vengeance weapon, the V-2 rocket.
The city was already under bombardment,
but this represented an entirely new degree of danger and fear.
An advance into Germany by Monty's northern route
promised to push the rocket beyond the range of London.
Two days after the attack, Eisenhower flew to Brussels
for what he knew would be a difficult encounter.
Monty had become a Field Marshal since their last meeting.
It was a recognition of his service to the Allied cause and a sop to injured pride.
The new Field Marshal was at his most imperious.
It took five days for your latest signal to reach me.
''We must immediately exploit our success
''by promptly crossing the Rhine on a wide front
''and seizing the Saar and the Ruhr.''
Now, it is my duty to give you my opinion on the situation.
It's no good trying to sustain two thrusts.
We must put everything into one selected thrust and give it priority.
All other thrusts must do what they can.
Monty, we must get across the Rhine on a wide front first of all.
- Then concentrate on one thrust. - That's balls, sheer balls, absolute rubbish.
You explicitly said, um, paragraph four, part two of 13889,
which you sent me on the 5th of September, ''I have always given, and still give,
''priority to the Ruhr and the northern route of the advance.''
Not to the exclusion of everything else.
You're bulling forward and getting nowhere. None of our armies is adequately supplied.
Steady, Monty. You can't speak to me like that.
- I'm your boss. - I'm sorry, Ike.
But now Monty pressed his plan for a daring thrust across occupied Holland to the Rhine.
Operation Market Garden.
A carpet of British and American airborne troops would be dropped behind enemy lines
to seize bridges across six major waterways.
British armour would force a corridor 60 miles long through to the great prize,
the crossing of the River Rhine at Arnhem.
Beyond this stretched the Ruhr, the industrial heart of Hitler's war machine.
Monty left with a promise of support.
Eisenhower had often grumbled that he was too cautious.
Operation Market Garden seemed quite out of character.
But Monty was confident the Germans were too weak to hold his advance
and that if he succeeded, Ike would be forced to throw everything into the northern route.
An armada of planes and gliders assembled to ferry the 1st Airborne Army to Holland.
(ENGLISH ACCENT) We were raring to go. The battle had to be won. We thought we'd win it.
(NEW SPEAKER) We knew, sooner or later, we were going to be in action.
It didn't take a big brain to realise that crossing the Rhine was the next big obstacle.
(NEW SPEAKER) We were full of optimism
that this was the Monty masterstroke which was going to win everything.
There was the same euphoria at the headquarters of General Browning,
Commander of the Allied airborne troops.
The British had been given the task of seizing the great prize,
the final bridge at Arnhem.
But there were voices in military intelligence that counselled caution.
(ENGLISH ACCENT) There were all sorts of jokes about whether we should take golf clubs
or shotguns because it was the pheasant season in southern Holland.
This seemed to me to be appalling.
There was no evidence that the Germans would lay down their arms.
On the eve of the operation, members of the Dutch underground began to report
a new and wholly unexpected German presence.
(MORSE SIGNAL BEEPS)
The remnants of two SS Panzer divisions that had escaped from France
were refitting in southern Holland.
(BRIAN URQUHART) They were extremely unlikely to lay down their arms,
having a special relationship with Hitler, and that did seem, to me,
to make it an unbelievably risky operation.
(ENGLISH ACCENT) We had a drumhead service with the padre.
All the gliders and tug aircraft and para aircraft were all lined up and revving up.
In the early hours of September 17th, the first of more than 30,000 Allied soldiers
began to board aircraft for the largest airborne operation ever launched.
(ENGLISH ACCENT) You was allocated your seats, and then it was rev up and take off
and try not to look frightened, I suppose!
(ENGLISH ACCENT) Seeing this incredible air armada with all the gliders and paratroops
and their planes, et cetera, in an absolute unending stream,
and I don't think it occurred to us that anybody could possibly stop us.
(SMITHSON) The green light comes on, you take your hook and sling that,
cross your hands and out the door you go.
There goes. Hear him shout? Three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
There they go. Every man out. I can see their chutes going down now. Every man clear.
(DUTCH ACCENT) My mother called me to look out of the window.
And it was marvellous.
And there were parachutists coming down.
It was... We were so pleased.
''Now we will be liberated. We are free.''
Just half of the airborne troops were to land on the first day.
There would be two more airlifts before the Allied divisions were at full strength.
The bridges were to be seized before the Germans could destroy them,
but at Arnhem they were up to eight miles from the drop zones - two hours' march.
(SMITHSON) The first couple or three miles,
there was rather excited Dutch to welcome us,
giving you a drink, giving you apples and that sort of thing.
It was about 12 o'clock.
Somebody of the underground people came along over the high street.
And he said, ''Be careful, be careful. The Germans are coming back.
''Go inside.''
It had taken German commanders just hours to reorganise.
(HEAVY BOMBARDMENT)
A small force of British paras was able to secure the northern end of the Arnhem road bridge,
but by the morning of the second day,
German battle groups had begun to press into the town.
My captain said, ''Higgs, come on. We'll have a look, see what's going on.''
We went up and I got as far as the road, looking up to the bridge.
We couldn't get any farther. They pinned us down.
(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)
(TRANSLATOR) After a while, the British employed a smokescreen,
but we could see them because we lay on the ground and were able to look underneath it.
We aimed our guns and opened fire at the smoke.
After it had dispersed, we saw an English soldier with his uniform caught on a fence.
He was hit the moment he tried to climb over it.
Come on. Get food, water, whatever you can grab. Come on.
We won't be here long. Move.
I'm sneaking upstairs with a Sten gun
and this German officer came across the landing at the top, so I shot him.
And he'd got the full SS Panzer regalia on.
Bloody hell! We were only supposed to meet sick, lame and lazy, not these sort of blokes.
By Day 3, attempts to reinforce the paras at the northern end of the bridge had been abandoned.
It was proving almost impossible to direct the battle.
None of the divisions' radios worked.
(ENGLISH ACCENT) I wanted to talk to my company commander. No reply.
I'd no instructions. I didn't know where anyone was.
I didn't know the state of the battle.
Everything depended on the tanks of British 30 Corps punching through to Arnhem,
but by September 19th, the morning of Day 3, they were well behind schedule.
The British had made contact with the American 101st Airborne Division
at Eindhoven on the 18th,
but beyond it the Germans had blown the bridge over the canal at Son.
The following morning, they were across
and pressing towards the pocket held by the American 82nd Airborne.
(ENGLISH ACCENT) It was very much stop-start, stop-start.
And every now and then, a German column got in the road ahead of you
or the road behind you.
Monty had sent members of his personal staff to report on the progress of the British advance.
(CAROL MATHER) This one single road and the Germans counter-attacked.
There was a major melee on this road.
And it was a scene of the utmost confusion.
And then when one got back and saw Monty and described to him what had happened,
he was quite worried by this.
Field Marshal Montgomery was engaged in a very different battle.
Although Eisenhower had promised him all the support he needed,
he'd allowed Patton to launch another offensive in the south.
Monty was furious.
''I consider that, as time is so very important,
''we have got to decide what is necessary to go to Berlin and finish the war.
''It is my opinion that three armies are enough if you select the northern route.''
(EISENHOWER) ''I cannot believe that there is any great difference in our concepts.
''Never have I implied considering an advance into Germany with all armies moving abreast.
''My choice of routes for making the all-out offensive into Germany
''is from the Ruhr to Berlin.''
Monty and Eisenhower were crossing swords over plans for the advance beyond the Rhine.
The 1st Airborne Division was losing its foothold on its banks.
It wasn't until the fifth day of the battle that the last reinforcements were dropped at Arnhem.
The Germans were waiting.
On that jump, we were like an animal. We were ready to bite, to jump, to do anything.
We were not frightened at that moment. You haven't got time to be frightened.
Before we landed, they were shooting to us like ducks.
(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)
(TRANSLATOR) We fired with all the guns we had.
I had set up my machine-gun on a bridge and opened fire straight into the parachutes.
Some of the planes were hit and burst into flames
and some crashed and exploded on the ground.
It had become a grim struggle for survival against an enemy growing in confidence again.
(ENGLISH ACCENT) Adrenaline was flowing and that keeps you going for quite a long time.
That and water.
Every time you got holed up into a defensive position, in a house,
it wasn't long before a tank appeared and levelled its gun
and you moved.
(DAVID SALIK) I could hear them and see them passing by.
And that sound of the...of that ''moo'', it is so unnerving.
(ENGLISH ACCENT) If you can pick them off, take one with you.
That was what the old sweats used to tell you.
During the night you'd hear the clanking and movement of armour
and you'd think, ''Oh, it's 30 Corps.''
And when it gets light, no 30 Corps.
The vanguard of 30 Corps had crossed the last great bridge at Nijmegen
on the evening of the fourth day,
and then stopped, exhausted.
Arnhem was just 12 miles away.
But by the time the tanks had begun to roll again,
the paras clinging to the northern end of the Arnhem bridge had been overwhelmed.
The remnants of the 1st Airborne Division
were pinned into a shrinking pocket to the west of the village of Oosterbeek.
They still held a foothold on the banks of the Rhine,
but they were short of food and ammunition.
(HIGGS) We knew the battle was over and we had to get out.
We decided that we'd go across this high ground,
but the Germans, they knew where we were. They were up there before us.
(CONSTANT FIRE)
They let us have it. I fired the Tommy gun and the next thing I knew I was down on the deck.
Two guys came up and dragged me down a shingly road
and the bullets were hitting the top there, and they got me into a little Dutch house.
The battle for Arnhem was lost.
The British advance had reached the opposite bank of the Rhine, but would go no further.
On the evening of September 25th, the survivors were ferried to safety.
All but the wounded. They were left for the Germans.
(BILL HIGGS) I didn't think I was going to live.
When blood's running out your mouth, you don't think you've got much chance.
Then the Germans came in and captured us.
Monty's judgement had been clouded by the hope that a quick victory was still possible
and, above all, by his determination to win Ike's support for his route into Germany.
Of the 11,000 men who'd landed at Arnhem,
less than a quarter returned.
We got back to the same old Nissen hut that we'd left - what? - a month earlier.
And there were all unoccupied beds.
Of my platoon, only four of us come back.
Out of some - what? - 25, 26 people that went.
Arnhem was a double defeat.
There had been wild rejoicing when, on September 4th, British tanks seized Antwerp.
It was one of Europe's largest ports,
perfectly placed to supply the Allied armies for the final push on Germany.
But the Germans still controlled the approaches to the port, more than 40 miles of coastline.
Eisenhower had made its capture a priority,
but that had been overlooked in the headlong dash to Arnhem.
It would be another two difficult months
before the first essential supplies were landed.
When is the 3rd Army going to start moving again?
As soon as we get supplies.
There's no point in making a slow advance
and we can't make a rapid advance without the stuff.
We could fight for five days and then we'd have to throw rocks.
The 3rd Army's advance had been brought to a halt
by a severe shortage of supplies
and an enemy who'd gained fresh heart at Arnhem.
It is my earnest effort to make sure it isn't static.
That is a poor way of fighting.
The best way to defend is to attack.
The best way to attack is to attack.
Will the Nazis go underground once the Allies reach Germany?
You bet, soldier. Six feet under.
For all the bluster, Patton was going nowhere.
The American armies crept towards the Rhine that autumn,
held by a determined enemy who'd fallen back on carefully prepared defences.
On October 14th, the supreme commander celebrated his 54th birthday.
General Eisenhower.
The American generals Patton and Bradley joined him. Montgomery was absent.
He could think of nothing to celebrate.
After the failure at Arnhem and Antwerp,
he was forced to watch as Eisenhower pressed ahead on a front 200 miles long.
Nowhere were the Allied armies strong enough to achieve a breakthrough.
The great victory in France was already a distant memory.
(CAROL MATHER) There was no concerted plan from the centre.
And so it was a very unsatisfactory period, rather an unhappy period.
Monty was very unhappy about it.
We've been bulling ahead on all fronts.
We have wasted our superiority.
No Allied thrust towards the Rhine, let alone across it,
can be mounted for months to come.
The Allies have suffered a strategic reverse.
On November 28th, Eisenhower visited Monty's forward headquarters in Belgium
for what would be another difficult conference.
There must be a new plan and this one must not fail.
We must get away from the doctrine of making so many attacks on different places
that nowhere is the attack strong enough to achieve a decisive result.
Monty never really seemed to treat Ike as his commander.
He seemed to treat him as kind of a political figure
with whom he could argue, contest a point of view, disagree.
Yeah, perhaps.
But Brad must continue to command the 12th Army Group.
(HANSEN) It was as though teacher had come to teach us.
Eisenhower was not to be moved.
The Allied advance would continue on a broad front.
''The American plan for winning the war is quite dreadful.
''It will not succeed and the war will go on.''
If Monty seemed arrogant and remote,
it was because he believed that by pushing everywhere,
Eisenhower risked failing to break through anywhere.
(MONTGOMERY) I hope the American public will realise
that, owing to the handling of the campaign in Western Europe,
the German war will now go on during 1945.
The experience of war is that you pay dearly for mistakes.
No one knows that better than we British.
On December 16th, 1944,
a German storm burst along 50 miles of the Allied front.
Three German armies pushed through the forests of the Ardennes on the Belgian border.
The blow fell on a thinly stretched line,
held by divisions that were either tired or untested.
We were out looking for targets for the artillery.
Jeez. All of a sudden, we saw a lot of tanks.
And they were German tanks.
And, uh...
So we got the...
We tried to get the artillery on the line!
And they weren't answering because they'd been overrun.
We finally wound up with thousands of Americans...
..with their hands up like this.
It had seemed impossible the summer before, but the Germans had rebuilt.
It was a full-blooded counter-attack,
a single, all-powerful thrust.
It was the same strategy Monty was proposing for the conquest of the Reich.
Hitler had ordered his armies to strike through the Ardennes forests to the River Meuse
and then on to the port of Antwerp.
If successful, it would split the Allied front.
OK...
The commander of the American 12th Army Group, General Bradley, was with Ike
when news of the German breakthrough reached him.
(CHESTER HANSEN) They didn't think the German had that much left in him.
We thought we were on the road to the end of the war.
And suddenly he turned around and had the initiative.
General Bradley, who almost never used profanity of any kind,
said, ''Where in the world did that sonofabitch get all of that stuff?''
Eisenhower was forced to throw the only reserves he had into the battle -
the veteran American airborne divisions.
Many of the men did not have winter clothing.
We were very cold and we huddled together,
50 to 60 men in one of these trucks.
The small market town of Bastogne stood before the German advance.
On the morning of December 19th,
the 101st Airborne Division began to take up positions around the town.
(RICHARD BOWEN) I could see, in the distance, figures coming from the north.
It was men, women and children.
Well, when they got to our roadblock, our men had stopped them
and at the same time the Germans came up behind them and started to fire at 'em.
The airborne troops had made it just in time.
Bastogne was under siege.
The Germans had driven a wedge more than 30 miles deep in the American line.
(HEAVY FIRE)
The headquarters of the Army Group commander, General Bradley,
was on the southern side of the bulge, two of his three armies to the north.
Bradley was struggling to direct the American defence.
Monty felt that the whole of his command, the 21st Airborne Group, was threatened
and that the route to Antwerp for the Germans was wide open.
The situation must be regarded as, uh, an opportunity for us, not disaster.
On December 19th, Eisenhower summoned his senior American commanders
to a conference at Verdun.
There will be only cheerful faces at this conference.
I want you to take command of this move, George, under Brad's supervision, of course,
making a strong counter-attack with at least six divisions.
- When can you start moving? - As soon as you're through.
- When can you attack? - Morning of December 21st. Three divisions.
Don't be fatuous, George.
If you try to go that early, you won't have three full divisions and you'll go piecemeal.
I can do it, Ike. And I will.
I don't know that everyone believed Patton at the time.
It was quite a manoeuvre to pull a whole army out that was engaged in a battlefront,
disengage, pull it back, put it on the road and speed it north.
The Kraut's got his head in a meat grinder right now
and I've got the handle!
Patton's divisions would have to swing north along icy roads
to strike at the German advance.
Eisenhower had turned to his most capable American commander to bail him out
in the south of the bulge.
I want the fly boys to really pump that up, soften it.
To the north, he was forced to turn to the one man he least wanted to approach.
Montgomery met the commanders of the American 1st and 9th Armies
on the day after the Verdun conference.
Eisenhower asked him to give firm leadership to all American forces north of the bulge.
Monty had been arguing for a single land commander in the north for months.
He'd got his way at last. At least for as long as the crisis lasted.
We, of course, didn't like it.
I wouldn't say there was animosity between the British and American forces,
but a sense of competitiveness between the two.
And the thought of putting American forces under British command did not appeal to us.
All that mattered to the ordinary American soldier was the grim battle against the weather
and a relentless enemy.
Casualties among the airborne troops at Bastogne were high,
as they'd been at Arnhem, three months before.
(LATIN SERVICE)
On December 23rd, the cloud that had shrouded the battlefield for days lifted.
The full weight of Allied air power fell on the German advance.
And, by Christmas, the tanks of Patton's 3rd Army were striking at the German advance.
The crisis in the field had passed.
The crisis in command had not.
(MONTGOMERY) I put this matter to you again as I am so anxious not to have another failure.
As American forces turned to the offensive,
Eisenhower received a letter from Field Marshal Montgomery.
I am absolutely convinced that the key to success lies in all available offensive power
being assigned to the northern line of advance, and a sound set-up for command -
one man directing and controlling the whole tactical battle on the northern thrust.
Eisenhower's staff were furious.
The counter-attack was still being pressed.
But Monty seemed prepared to use the discomfort of an ally
to force both himself and his route to Berlin on the supreme commander.
Montgomery's Chief of Staff returned with Eisenhower's reply on New Year's Eve.
I've just come back from SHAEF.
And I've seen Ike.
And it's on the cards that you might have to go.
Ah.
Who will take my place? Who?
Alexander.
What shall I do, Freddie?
I've drafted this signal for you.
If Monty wasn't prepared to accept Eisenhower's direction, he would be replaced.
''Dear Ike, have seen Freddie
''and understand you are worried about many considerations in these difficult days.
''I have given you my frank views because I have felt you like this.
''Whatever your decision may be...''
It was the end of the matter. The defeat of Hitler's Reich was in American hands. Eisenhower's.
''Your devoted subordinate.''
And it would stay there.
Monty had been slow to grasp the new reality.
There couldn't be a British-led thrust to Berlin.
The final victory in the West would belong, first and foremost, to America.
As the German armies were squeezed from the bulge,
they left behind them a battlefield littered with frozen bodies.
80,000 American soldiers were killed, wounded or captured,
and more than 100,000 Germans were casualties of the fighting.
The Battle of the Bulge marked the disastrous end to four months of failure.
On the eve of another year at war,
Field Marshal Montgomery found time to open the betting book he kept at his headquarters.
The Allied generals had exchanged wagers on the course of the war.
Eisenhower had bet it would be over by Christmas.
He'd lost.