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Chapter 4 The Normandy Campaign in Close Combat
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While Bradley’s First Army threatens only the Germans in Normandy,
Patton’s Third Army threatens all German forces west of the Seine.
Hitler himself decides to launch a major counterattack against the Third
Army near Mortain, to push Patton’s troops back to Avranches. He
orders von Kluge to send all ten available Panzer divisions in
Normandy on a strike toward the Atlantic to cut off the Allied breakout
and, with luck, perhaps even to destroy the Normandy beachhead.
Unfortunately for the Germans, the Allies intercept and decrypt von
Kluge’s orders, and when the counterattack begins, American troops
stymie it, assisted by Allied air strikes.
Trapped in the Falaise “Pocket”
The German defeat at Mortain leaves the Seventh Army vulnerable to a
counterattack that could encircle it
and finish it off in Normandy once
and for all. After the Third Army takes Le Mans on August 9,
Montgomery orders Patton’s forces to proceed to the north, on the
eastern flank of the battered Panzers at Mortain. On August 13, the
American XV Corps reaches Argentan. Meanwhile, since the Germans
have pulled troops away from Caen for their unsuccessful Mortain
counterattack, more British and Canadian troops are able to move south
from Caen, and the Canadian First Army captures Falaise on August 15.
As the American and Canadian armies converge from the north, south,
and west, virtually all the German troops in Normandy are trapped
between them, in the ever-shrinking Falaise “pocket”
a 24-kilometer–
wide salient along the river Orne. The only hope of escape for the
remnants of the fifty divisions of the Seventh Army is to retreat to the
east. As the Allied armies move in, the retreat becomes a rout, and
within five days the pocket is closed. Strafed by Allied fighters and
hampered by the narrow roads that they have used to their advantage in
the preceding weeks, some 10,000 German soldiers are killed in what
will later be called le Couloir de la Mort, or “Corridor of Death.” An
additional 50,000 Germans are taken prisoner. Perhaps 20,000 manage
to escape across the Seine, alone or in small groups, leaving much of
their equipment, especially vehicles, behind them.
With the closing of the Falaise pocket and the German retreat across the
Seine, the chase is on, and the outcome of the war is no longer in doubt.
The casualty figures for the 77 days of the Battle of Normandy are
staggering: The Germans lose 450,000 men, including 240,000 killed or
wounded. The Allies take 209,672 casualties, with 36,976 killed.
“We must strike like lightning.
When we reach the sea the
American spearheads will be
cut off. . . . we might even be
able to cut off their entire
beachhead. We mustn’t get
bogged down with mopping up
the Americans who have broken
through—their turn will come
later.”
Adolf Hitler, shortly before
launching the ill-fated German
counterattack at Mortain on
August 6, 1944