Read Supreme Commander for Free Online Page A

involved, especially Eisenhower, gained experience in amphibious operations that would prove invaluable later in the war.

BOOK TWO
Supreme Commander,
Allied Expeditionary Force

Part I
THE PREPARATION
[
January 1944–June 1944
]

    T HE Western plan to insure German defeat centered on OVERLORD. The British and Americans were putting everything they had into the operation. Because they were holding nothing back, they were engaging in a tremendous gamble. If OVERLORD failed, it would take months to mount another assault, and by then weather on the Continent and on the coast would have deteriorated to the point that an expedition would have been impossible. But neither Eisenhower nor anyone else made any contingency plans about what to do in case the armies did not get ashore on D-Day, in part because they wanted to think positively, in part because if OVERLORD failed there was little else they could do in any case.
    What the Eastern Ally would have done in the event of a disaster befalling the Western Allies is pure conjecture. There was a great fear in the West that the Russians, once they reached their historic borders, would stop their offensive and, possibly, negotiate a peace with the Germans. Stalin might have decided, had OVERLORD failed, that the West was less than serious about the war and made immediately the best peace with Hitler that he could. On the other hand, the Russians might have continued to drive forward into Europe, thus becoming the liberators—and therefore the occupiers—of Denmark, western Germany, the Low Countries, and France.
    The point that stood out in January 1944 was that the Western Allies dared not fail, since the consequences were staggering. They therefore approached the task of making OVERLORD succeed with the gravest seriousness. A successful OVERLORD meant, in practice, getting ashore and staying. There was a good deal of talk at Allied headquarters about getting well inland on D-Day, and an over-all scheme for the campaign in Europe to follow, but in fact all recognized that if a bridgehead could bewon Anglo-American superiority would sooner or later exploit it, and so planners and commanders concentrated on getting ashore. As Eisenhower put it, at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), there was “a very deep conviction, in all circles, that we are approaching a tremendous crisis with stakes incalculable,” 1 and everyone on the staff and in the field now prepared to use all his talents to meet and overcome that crisis.

Part II
THE INVASION
[
June 1944–September 1944
]

    C ERTAINLY it seems that the supreme direction of an Army (and the direction of every whole) must be greatly facilitated if there are only three or four subordinates to command, but the Commander-in-Chief must pay dearly for this convenience in a twofold manner. In the first place, an order loses in rapidity, force, and exactness if the gradation ladder down which it has to descend is long, and this must be the case if there are Corps-Commanders between the Division Leaders and the Chief; secondly, the Chief loses generally in his own proper power and efficiency the wider the spheres of action of his immediate subordinates become. A General commanding 100,000 men in eight Divisions exercises a power which is greater in intensity than if the 100,000 men were divided into only three Corps.… But on the other hand the number of parts must not be too great, otherwise disorder will ensue.… [Thus],
    1. If a whole has too few members it is unwieldy.
    2. If the parts of a whole body are too large, the power of the superior will is thereby weakened.
    Clausewitz,
On War
,    
Book 5, Chapter V    

Part III
THE GERMAN RECOVERY
[
September 1944–December 1944
]

    V ERTICAL bargaining in the upper reaches of the American executive [or in the Allied Expeditionary Force] reflects what might be called the principle of the inverse strength of the chain of command. On the organization chart, the