In this chapter from The History of the Second World War by B.H. Liddel Hart, I have tried to highlight something which is not very well known about General Montgomery’s attack on July 18 to capture the city of Caen, in Normandy near the French coast. The attack which had started with a heavy tank assault preceded by a two hour pounding by two thousand Allied medium and heavy bombers, failed, and Monty denied, that it was ever his intention to launch a breakout from here, it was a feint, or was it?
The D-Day landings occurred on June 6 and from that time till July 31 when the Americans eventually broke out, west of General Montgomery’s position on the beach-head, two months had elapsed.
Also an assassination attempt took place on Hitler life on July 20 while the Allied armies were bogged down in the Normandy beach area.
“Before its launching, the invasion of Normandy looked a most hazardous venture. The Allied troops had to disembark on a coast that the enemy had occupied during four years, with ample time to fortify it, cover it with obstacles and sow it with mines. For the defence, the Germans had fifty-eight divisions in the West, and ten of these were panzer divisions that might swiftly deliver a counterstroke. The Allies’ power to bring into action the large forces now assembled in England was limited by the fact that they had to cross the sea, and by the number of landing crafts available. They could disembark only six divisions in the first seaborne lift, together with three airborne, and a week would pass before they could double the number ashore.
So there was cause to feel anxious about the chances of storming what Hitler called the ‘Atlantic Wall’ – an awesome name – and about the risks of being thrown back in the sea. Yet, in the event, the first footholds were soon expanded into a large bridgehead, eighty miles wide. The enemy never managed to deliver any dangerous counterstroke before the Allied forces broke out from the bridgehead. The break-out was made in the way and at the place that Field-Marshall Montgomery had originally planned. The whole German position in France then quickly collapsed.
Looking back, the course of the invasion appears wonderfully easy and sure. But appearances are deceptive. It was an operation that eventually ‘went according to plan’, but not according to timetable. At the outset the margin between success and failure was narrow. The ultimate triumph has obscured the fact that the allies were in great danger at the outset, and had a very narrow shave.
The common idea that the invasion had a smooth and sure run was fostered by Montgomery’s subsequent emphasis that ‘the battle was fought exactly as planned before the invasion’, and the fact that the Allied armies reached the Seine within ninety days—the line shown on the forecast map, produced in April, as the line to be gained by ‘D + 90’. It was Monty’s way to talk as if any operation he had conducted had always proceeded exactly as he intended, with the certainty and precision of a machine—or of divine providence. That characteristic has often obscured his adaptability to circumstances, and thus ironically, deprived him of the credit due to him for his combination of flexibility with determination in generalship.
In the original plan, Caen was to be captured the first day of the landing, June 6. The start was good and the coastal defences were overcome by 9 a.m. But Montgomery’s account has covered up the fact that the advance inland to Caen did not start till the afternoon. That was due partly to a paralysing traffic jam on the beaches but also to the excessive caution of the commanders on the spot—at a time when there was hardly anything to stop them. When they eventually pushed on towards Caen, the keypoint of the invasion area, a panzer division—the only one in the whole invasion area of Normandy—arrived on the scene and produced a check. A second panzer division came up the next day. More than a month passed before Caen was at last secured and cleared, after much heavy fighting. Montgomery’s original intention, also, was tha