AT WAR
D-Day
The liberation of Europe has lessons for today's war leaders.
LONDON--To launch a large-scale opposed landing across many miles of water is the most hazardous of all military operations. Nothing before or since has ever been mounted on the scale of Operation Overlord, though the U.S. invasion of Iraq after the 9/11 outrage employed more firepower. The D-Day landing that began June 6, 1944, involved three services, airborne and glider troops, submarine landing, undercover agents and saboteurs, and an astonishing array of technological gimmicks.
It was the most carefully planned operation in history, and it had to be. So many things could go wrong. Churchill had learned from the bitter experience of Gallipoli 30 years before how easily a big invasion could be pinned down on a narrow beachhead and never break out of it. That nearly ended his political career. The Dieppe rehearsal showed the risks we were taking and the real possibility of a catastrophe. In Italy, we had had another near-disaster at Anzio.
I recall Field Marshal Montgomery (the battle commander of Overlord, under Gen. Eisenhower as the theater supremo) discoursing on the risks: "People say I always demand an overwhelming numerical superiority. Well, I'd be a fool if I didn't. If the resources are there let's have them. I used to point out: We are up against the world's finest professional army, all of whose senior commanders had had years of recent fighting experience. They didn't come any better than Rommel or Runstedt. I knew they were very resourceful gentlemen. All the German divisional commanders in France were good. We needed everything we had got to beat those people.
"Germans are not beaten until they are dead or in the pen. They are masters of the counterattack. You deal them a massive blow, break right through their lines and, bang, they are suddenly getting you by the throat. You could never take anything for granted with the Germans. I feared a counterattack all along, at the beachhead of course, but long after the break-out. That is why our deception plans were so important. A week after D-Day, they still thought Normandy was a feint, and that the really big show would come in Pas-de-Calais. They were holding a score of divisions there that should have been attacking us all out by that stage. So the deception threw out of gear their entire plan of counterattack. Thank God for it! By the time they realized Normandy was the real thing it was too late to push it back into sea, and I was busy destroying their armor around Caen."
The actual D-Day operation, granted its complexity, went astonishingly well. I once asked Brigadier Lord Lovat, reputed to have been the first soldier ashore, leading his commandos and accompanied by his personal Scots piper, to tell me about it. He said: "A lot of myths have grown up. In the first place, I was not the first man ashore. They had sent in a scratch lot before us, whose very unpleasant mission was to draw down fire on themselves. When the German guns had been pinpointed, we went in, and they made lanes through their lines so that we could pass quickly, and assault the German line of defense at the point of the bayonet--which we did. Our predecessors took a pasting, had heavy casualties, and I felt damned sorry for them. But the tactic was worth it because we were soon a good two miles inside enemy territory, and they never really recovered from this setback. Of course by the end of that first day, the glider troops and paras were doing their work and the German defenses were in some confusion. I knew things were going well but without the deception plan, we would have faced a horrible counterattack at this point."
And was it true, I asked, that he was accompanied by his piper and unarmed except for his stalker's staff? "Oh, I don't know. Don't remember. One is usually accompanied by one's piper in an important action. The pipes cheer your men and demoralize the enemy. So I expect he was there. As for the weapons, I'm not a great one for carrying lots of guns into action. An Officer's pistol is no use at all in my experience--can't hit anything over 20 yards. I'd carry a rifle by choice--the old .303 Enfield was one of the best firearms ever designed. Pretty accurate up to a mile and hardly ever jammed. But heavy. If you're commanding a brigade in a fast-moving situation you've better things to do than engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy."
The history of D-Day, and the fortnight that followed, showed the value of meticulous preparations, rehearsals, elaborate testing of every kind of equipment, and the study of logistics. Having secured the bridgehead, the Allied buildup was so rapid that, within a month, the Germans had palpably lost the battle in the West and with it the war. But that did not mean an early Nazi capitulation. Granted the Allied war aim of unconditional surrender, Hitler would clearly fight on to the end, and that meant we had to destroy his large-scale fighting capacity by breaking up all major units and occupying territory. But how, exactly? Montgomery was all for the rapid thrust by armored divisions deep into Germany, backed by overwhelming air-power. "Berlin by Christmas" was one phrase used. This was a fighting soldier's strategy and one which the Germans, in a similar situation, would certainly have used. Indeed, to some extent it was used by Gen. Patton and his armor. But it was risky. The faster the spearhead moved, the more extended its lines of communication became and the more likely it was that the Germans would be able to mount a devastating lateral attack which might sever the advanced armored units from their tail.
In the end, Eisenhower decided it was too risky and overruled Montgomery's enthusiasm. Instead, a "broad front" strategy was adopted, the Allies advancing slowly, steady and always as a continuous mass, forward units never out of touch with their companions to left or right. This virtually ruled out the possibility of German counterattack breaking right through the front and nipping off a spearhead. It was the safe approach, and typical of Eisenhower's minimum-risk attitude to warfare.
But of course such an approach involved penalties. It allowed the Germans to keep their line, to regroup and reinforce, and to maintain morale. Not until the very last weeks of the war did their front collapse, and individual units begin to surrender freely. Moreover, the political consequences were enormous. Instead of the war ending in autumn or early winter 1944, it lasted until the end of April 1945. Instead of the U.S. and Britain occupying Berlin and most of central Europe, it left these spoils to the Russians. The broad-front policy set the stage for 40 years of Cold War. Indeed, had it not been for the firmness of President Truman in reversing Roosevelt's policy of appeasing Stalin, it is quite possible that Western Europe too might have fallen victim to communism, and that the frontiers of Stalin's empire would only have ended at the English Channel.
These reflections of D-Day and its aftermath remind us that military decisions can never be entirely separated from their political consequences. Geopolitics is like a game of chess: You have to think a dozen moves ahead. This is as true today as in 1944-45. When President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to destroy Saddam Hussein's military power, they took a risk that was abundantly justified both geopolitically and morally. But they paid insufficient attention to the possible political consequences.
Unlike Montgomery in 1944, who never underestimated the German genius for counterattack, and made provision against it, the allies this time did not study and prepare for the peculiar Arab genius for counterattack, which is to carry out prolonged and vicious guerilla warfare, completely disregarding human life, including their own. Moreover they did not study and prepare for the difficulties of meeting this form of counterattack against the political background of a free society at home, reacting nightly to what it sees on TV, and reading highly critical reports from the front written by journalists who have their own opinions and agendas and feel under no obligation to pursue the war (and peace) aims of the allied commanders. Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair are currently suffering from their lack of provision and foresight.
Given patience and determination, all will be well in time: Democracy and the rule of law will grow in the Middle East, and the roots of terrorism will be destroyed. But we are learning, once again, that the lessons history has to teach are inexhaustible and that statesmen should never plunge into the future, as we did in Iraq, without first examining what guidance the past could supply.
Mr. Johnson is the author, most recently, of "Art: A New History" (HarperCollins, 2003).
