er’s order that the line Caen-Avranches must be held at all costs.
Hitler swept aside the field-marshals ‘warnings by assuring them that the new V weapon, the flying bomb, would soon have a decisive effect on the war. The field-marshalls then urged that, if this weapon was so effective, it should be turned against the invasion beaches—or, if that was technically difficult, against the invasion ports in southern England. Hitler insisted that the bombardment must be concentrated on London ‘so as to covert the English to peace.’ But the flying bombs did not produce the effect that Hitler had hoped, while Allied pressure in Normandy increased. When asked one day on the telephone from Hitler’s H.Q.: ‘What shall we do?’ Rundstedt retorted: ‘End the war! What else can you do.’ Hitler’s solution was to sack Rundstedt, and replace him by Kluge, who had been on the Eastern Front.
‘Field-Marshall von Kluge was a robust, aggressive type of soldier’, Blumentritt remarked. ‘At the start he was very cheerful and confident—like all newly appointed commanders . . . Within a few days he became very sober and quiet. Hitler did not like the changing tone of his reports.’
On July 17th Rommel was badly injured when his car crashed after being attacked on the road by Allied planes. Then three days later, on the 20th, came the attempt to kill Hitler at his headquarters in East Prussia. The conspirators’ bomb missed its chief target, but its ‘shock wave’ had terrific repercussions on the battle in the West at the critical moment.
Blumentritt recalled: When the Gestapo investigated the conspiracy . . . they found documents in which Field-Marshall von Kluge’s name was mentioned, so he came under grave suspicion. Then another incident made things worse. Shortly after General Patton’s break-out from Normandy, while the decisive battle at Avranches was in progress, Field-Marshall von Kluge was out of touch with his headquarters for more than twelve hours. The reason was that he had gone up to the front, and there been trapped in a heavy artillery bombardment . . . Meantime, we had been suffering ‘bombardment’ from the rear. For the Field-Marshall’s prolonged ‘absence’ excited Hitler’s suspicion immediately, in view of the documents that had been found. . . Hitler suspected that the Field-Marshall’s purpose in going right up to the front was to get in touch with the Allies and negotiate surrender. The Field-Marshall’s eventual return did not calm Hitler. From this date onward the orders which Hitler sent him were worded in a brusque and even insulting language. The Field-Marshall became very worried. He feared that he would be arrested at any moment—and at the same time realized more and more that he could not prove his loyalty by any battlefield success.
All this had a very bad effect on any chance that remained of preventing the Allies from breaking out. In the days of crisis Field-Marshall von Kluge gave only part of his attention to what was happening at the front. He was looking back over his shoulder anxiously—towards Hitler’s headquarters. He was not the only general who was in that state of worry for conspiracy in the plot against Hitler. Fear permeated and paralysed the higher commands in the weeks and months that followed.
On July 25, the U.S. First Army launched a fresh offensive, ‘Cobra’, while the recently landed Patton’s Third Army was ready to follow it up. The last German reserves had been thrown in to stop the British. On the 31st the American spearhead burst through the front at Avranches. Pouring through the gap, Patton’s tanks quickly flooded the open country beyond. On Hitler’s orders the remnants of the panzer forces were scrapped together, and used in a desperate effort to cut the bottleneck at Avranches. The effort failed—whereat Hitler caustically said: ‘It only failed because Kluge didn’t want to succeed.’ All that remained of the German armies now tried to escape from the trap in which they had been kept by Hitler’s ban on any timely withdrawal. A large part was trapped in the ‘Falaise Pocket’, and the survivors had to aband