Although the names of many military commanders who feature in this story will be familiar, it seems helpful to offer a brief guide to the chief protagonists on both sides, and their responsibilities.
THE WESTERN ALLIES
General Dwight Eisenhower, as Supreme Commander, directed Anglo-American operations in north-west Europe from SHAEF—Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force—located at Granville in Brittany in September 1944; later moved to Versailles and thence to Rheims. His Chief of Staff was U.S. General Walter Bedell-Smith. His deputy was the British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder. The British General Sir Bernard Montgomery exercised operational control of the Allied armies for D-Day and the Normandy campaign, but surrendered this to Eisenhower on 1 September 1944, with the consolation from Churchill of promotion to field-marshal.
Under SHAEF’s control were the following ground forces:
The U.S. 12th Army Group, led by General Omar Bradley. Under his command were the U.S. First Army (General Courtney Hodges); the U.S. Third Army (General George Patton); and U.S. Ninth Army (General William Simpson). The U.S. Fifteenth Army (General Leonard Gerow) was activated in February 1945. Command of American corps sometimes shifted within the armies. At various periods of the campaign, the following U.S. corps served in one or other of Bradley’s armies: III (Major-General John Millikin, then Major-General James van Fleet from 16 March 1945); V (Major-General Leonard Gerow, then Major-General Clarence Huebner from 16 January 1945); VII (Lieutenant-General J. Lawton Collins); VIII (Major-General Troy Middleton); XII (Major-General Manton Eddy, then Major-General Stafford Le R. Irwin from 20 April 1945); XIII (Major-General Alvan Gillem); XVI (Major-General John Anderson); XVIII Airborne (Lieutenant-General Matthew Ridgway); XIX (Major-General Charles Corlett, then Major-General Raymond McLain from 17 October 1944); XX (Major-General Walton Walker); XXII (Major-General Ernest Harmon); XXIII (Major-General James Van Fleet, then Major-General Hugh Gaffey from 17 March 1945).
The U.S. 6th Army Group in southern France and later southern Germany was commanded by General Jacob Devers. It comprised the U.S. Seventh Army (General Alexander Patch) and First French Army (General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny). For most of the north-west Europe campaign, 6th Army Group—much smaller than 12th—contained five corps: U.S. VI (Major-General Lucian Truscott, then Major-General Edward Brooks from 25 October 1944); XV (Major-General Wade Haislip); XXI (Major-General Frank Milburn), together with the French I (Lieutenant-General Emile Bethouart) and II (Lieutenant-General Goislard de Montsabert).
American corps normally contained three divisions. Each infantry division consisted of three fighting regiments plus support troops. A U.S. infantry regiment of 3,000 men was the equivalent of a British brigade. An American armoured division was normally divided for operational purposes into two “combat commands”—heavy brigades. Among all the combatants, field artillery was integrated into divisions, while heavier guns came under the orders of corps or armies.
The Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group was led by Field-Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, whose chief of staff was Major-General Frederick de Guingand. Under its command was the British Second Army, commanded by General Sir Miles Dempsey. For most of the campaign, Second Army possessed four corps—I, VIII, XII and XXX, led respectively by Lieutenant-General John Crocker, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O’Connor, Lieutenant-General Neil Ritchie and Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks.
First Canadian Army was commanded by Lieutenant-General Harry Crerar, and comprised I Canadian Corps (Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes) and II Canadian Corps (Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds). A Polish armoured division served under Canadian command.
A British or Canadian corps normally comprised two or three divisions, plus specialist troops—engineers, support and logistics personnel. Montgomery’s two army commanders also possessed six independent armoured brigades, which were deployed according to operational requirements. A division—at full strength about 15,000 men, much less for an armoured division—normally fielded three brigades, each composed of three battalions or armoured regiments. The triangular pattern persisted down the hierarchy, so that a battalion comprised three fighting companies, and each company three fighting platoons or tank troops.
Eisenhower also possessed a strategic reserve, First Allied Airborne Army (Lieutenant-General Lewis Brereton), comprising I British (Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning) and XVIII U.S. Airborne Corps (Lieutenant-General Matthew Ridgway). In September 1944, Brereton’s force contained two American and two British divisions. Two more American divisions were added in the spring of 1945, while the British 1st Airborne was removed from the order of battle after Arnhem. Brereton never exercised field command of his formations. These were placed under the orders of local commanders in north-west Europe as operational requirements demanded.
THE SOVIET UNION
Supreme Commander-in-Chief: Marshal Joseph Stalin
Each Soviet “front”—the equivalent of a Western Allied army group—comprised anything from three to ten armies of 100,000 men, up to a million men in all. The “fronts” in 1944–45 are listed here in north–south descending geographical order, from the Baltic to Yugoslavia:
Leningrad Front: Marshal Leonid Govorov
3rd Baltic Front: Colonel-General Ivan Maslennikov (terminated October 1944)
2nd Baltic Front: General Andrei Eremenko then Govorov from February 1945
1st Baltic Front: Marshal I. Kh. Bagramyan (merged into 3rd Belorussian 24 January 1945)
3rd Belorussian Front: General I. Chernyakhovsky, then Marshal Alexandr Vasilevsky from February 1945
2nd Belorussian Front: Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky from September 1944
1st Belorussian Front: Rokossovsky, then Marshal Georgi Zhukov from November 1944
1st Ukrainian Front: Marshal Ivan Konev
4th Ukrainian Front: General I. Ye. Petrov, then General A. I. Yeremenko from March 1945
2nd Ukrainian Front: Marshal Rodion Malinovsky
3rd Ukrainian Front: Marshal Fydor Tolbukhin
The Soviet Union used the same nomenclature for its formations as the Western allies—armies, corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, battalions—but all were much smaller than their Anglo-American counterparts. A Soviet rifle division usually comprised between 3,000 and 7,000 men. Formations were granted the honorific title of “Guards” for distinguished conduct in action. “Shock” and “Tank” armies fulfilled the functions their titles suggest. Elite formations were trained and equipped to a much higher standard than the huge armed rabble which followed the spearheads, of whom little was expected save an ability to occupy ground and absorb enemy fire.
GERMANY
Army Commander-in-Chief: Adolf Hitler
Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW): Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel
Chief of the Operations Staff of OKW: Colonel-General Alfred Jodl
Chief of the General Staff of OKH (Army High Command): Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, then General Hans Krebs from 28 March 1945
Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army: Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler
If this structure sounds ambivalent and confusing, so it was to senior German officers at the time, reflecting rival centres of power within the Nazi military hierarchy. Hitler changed operational commanders so frequently that it would be wearisome to list all incumbents. The following were the principal holders of some major operational posts in the last months of the war:
GERMAN FORCES IN THE WEST
Commander-in-Chief West: Field-Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, then Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring from 10 March 1945
Army Group B (Field-Marshal Walter Model) comprised Fifth Panzer Army (Lieutenant-General Hasso von Manteuffel to March 1945), Seventh Army (General Erich Brandenburger, then from 20 February 1945 General Hans Felber, then from 25 March 1945 General Von Olstfelder) and Fifteenth Army (General von Zangen). Sixth SS Panzer Army (Colonel-General Sepp Dietrich) was also under command until January 1945
Army Group G (Colonel-General Paul Hausser) comprised First Army (General Otto von Knobelsdorff, then General Hermann Foertsch) and Nineteenth Army (General Wiese to 16 February 1945, then Foertsch)
Army Group H (Colonel-General Kurt Student from November 1944 to January 1945, then Colonel-General Johannes von Blaskowitz) comprised First Parachute Army (Student then General Alfred Schlemm) and Twenty-fifth Army (Günther Blumentritt then from March 1945 Philipp Kleffel)
GERMAN FORCES IN ITALY
Army Group C (Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring to March 1945, then General Heinrich von Vietinghoff)
GERMAN FORCES IN THE EAST
Army Group Centre, which became AG North in January 1945 (General Hans Reinhardt to January 1945, then Colonel-General Lothar Rendulic to March 1945, then Walter Weiss to April 1945)
Army Group Vistula, organized in East Prussia in January 1945 (Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler then Colonel-General Gotthard Heinrici)
Army Group North Ukraine, which became AG Centre in January 1945 (General Josef Harpe, then from January 1945 Field-Marshal Ferdinand Schörner)
Army Group South Ukraine, which became AG Ostmark in April 1945 (General Johannes Friessner until December 1944, then General Otto Wohler, then from April 1945 Rendulic)
Army Group E (Colonel-General Alexander Lohr)
Army Group F, until disbanded in March 1945 (Field-Marshal Maximilian von Weichs)
Army Group Kurland (Rendulic in January 1945, von Vietinghoff to March 1945, then Carl Hilpert)
German forces were organized on roughly similar lines to those of the Allies but there was vastly more movement of corps and divisions between commands and fronts. The Waffen SS was responsible organizationally to Heinrich Himmler rather than to the Wehrmacht, but its formations were placed under the orders of local commanders as operational requirements and the whims of Hitler dictated. In this text, SS officers are described by their military, not SS ranks.