lery 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 abandon most of their heavy arms and equipment in crossing back over the Seine.
Kluge was then sacked. On the way home he was found dead in his car, having swallowed a poison capsule—as his Chief of Staff explained, ‘he believed he would be arrested by the Gestapo as soon as he arrived home’.
It was not only on the German side that stormy recriminations arose within the High Command. Fortunately on the Allied side had no such serious consequences on the issue or to individuals although they left sore feelings that were of ill effect later. The biggest ‘blow up’ behind the scenes occurred over a near break-out by the British a fortnight before the Americans actually burst open the front at Avranches. The British blow, by the Second Army under Dempsey, was struck on the extreme opposite flank, east of Caen. It was the most massive tank attack of the whole campaign, delivered by three armoured divisions closely concentrated. They had been stealthily assembled in the small bridgehead over the Orne, and poured out from it on the morning of July 18, after an immense carpet of bombs had been dropped, for two hours, by two thousand heavy and medium bomber aircraft. The Germans on that sector were stunned, and most of the prisoners taken were so deafened by the roar of explosions that they could not be interrogated until at least twenty-four hours later.
But the defences were deeper than British Intelligence had thought. Rommel expecting such a blow, had hurried their deepening and reinforcement—until, on the eve of the attack, he was himself caught and knocked out by British aircraft, near the aptly named village of Sainte Foye de Montgomery. Moreover the enemy had heard the massive rumble of tanks as the British armour moved eastwards by night for the attack. Dietrich, the German Corps Commander, said that he was able to hear them over four miles away, despite diverting noises, by pressing his ear to the ground—a trick he had learned in Russia.
The brilliant opening prospect faded soon after passing through the forward layer