punishment in the past few days, were strung out further west towards Nijmegen.
By the evening of the 11th, I German Corps had been put under such severe pressure from the south and west as to be no longer able to hold the high ground on either side of the Minden Gap. NORTHAG’s main preoccupation was now the defence of the Ruhr and Rhineland and the prevention of a breakthrough on the west bank of the Rhine in the area of Venlo.
In the Central Region the Warsaw Pact invasion had not, it is true, achieved the swift and overwhelming success planned for it. If it had not been completely successful, however, the shortfall so far lay only in the timetable. Allied Command Europe was facing a serious position which was now growing critical.
It was on 13 August that SACEUR made known two decisions which can now be seen, among the many difficult problems before him in those momentous days, to have been truly critical to the outcome of the war in Europe. The first was a final refusal to endorse any of the urgent requests of his subordinate commanders for the release of battlefield nuclear weapons. The second concerned the commitment of reserves.
Speculation would be idle on how long any Warsaw Pact offensive into the Central Region of Europe could have continued under the thunderous threat of national revolt, soon to be looming, as we shall learn, in the Red Army’s rear. What is beyond doubt is that the Allied counter-offensive, shortly to be opened by the forces of the Central Region northwards towards Bremen, was to set up a completely new operational situation for the Pact to face on the land battlefield. To bring this under control was clearly not impossible for the Pact forces. Of the huge military resources available to the Warsaw Pact, relatively little had as yet been lost. But regrouping would be needed on a considerable scale. There was already a growing uncertainty in the rearward political infrastructure, with increasing threats to the security of lines of communication, and a discernible decline in confidence in the reliability of non-Soviet formations. Divisions expected to follow up for the maintenance of offensive momentum were more and more being kept where they were, to safeguard the very lines of communication along which they should have moved. These and other related factors were to combine to render less and less stable the basis on which the operation of containing the Allied counter-offensive and regaining offensive momentum, once this had been lost, would have to rest. A real check to the forward impetus of the invasion of West Germany could not therefore be regarded as only a temporary setback. It was likely, in all the circumstances, to mark the beginning of something much more important.
It was the Supreme Allied Commander’s decision, at a time of great uncertainty, to commit his theatre reserves that made this all-important check possible.
The Allied position in the Central Region at nightfall on 12 August was not very good (see Situation Map). The French command in the south — now the Southern Army Group (SOUTHAG), with II French Corps and II German Corps under command, together with a division’s worth of Austrian troops — was under heavy pressure along the line of the Lech. Here and there it was losing ground. North of the present boundary between SOUTHAG and the Central Army Group (CENTAG), which now ran from Karlsruhe through Bayreuth, with its three corps and some eight divisions, was in a similar situation. It was just holding on to an area whose forward edge ran from west of Kassel to Wurzburg and was hourly expecting attack by fresh formations.
A great blow to CENTAG during the day had been a direct hit from a missile on its Main HQ in the field. The mobile tactical HQ further forward was unharmed, but unhappily the commanding general was in Main HQ at the time and was killed outright. He was replaced by the commander of V US Corps, whose vigorous defence in the Fulda area on CENTAG’s left, the hinge of the whole army group’s position, had been of such vital importance.
The new Commander of the Central Army Group and Commander of the United States Army in Europe was already a familiar figure on television screens on both sides of the Atlantic. It was an appointment as popular with the American public, to whom he had in a few short days of intense exposure become something of a folk hero, as it was in the command he now took over.
To the north of the Central Army Group NORTHAG was deployed in a great bow, with a position running first of all northwards from west of Kassel to within twenty kilometres of Hannover, which was now in enemy hands. Thereafter, the forward edge was much as it had been for the past few days, running south-west along the Teutoburger Wald to Osnabruck, then westwards to the Rhine near Wesel. It was here on the left that most ground in NORTHAG’s sector had been lost, in spite of a determined defence by II British Corps, disposing of one US brigade and some Dutch units in addition to two divisions of its own. West of the Rhine the key Venlo position was still holding. There was no doubt at all that it would soon come under very heavy pressure.
In theatre reserve SACEUR was holding the heavy US division withdrawn in pretty fair shape from V US Corps on the second day of the battle, the second US reinforcement division now less one brigade, two more US divisions married to their prepositioned equipment in the first few days of August, one fairly strong German division, one rather weaker British division, the Canadian Brigade Group of almost divisional strength, and some other troops amounting to about a division all told.
These, adding up in the aggregate to only some seven divisions’ worth, were all nominally under command of the Central Army Group, but with the firm instruction that none must be committed by CENTAG without the Supreme Commander’s authority. They were located largely in Hessen and the Rhineland. Most lay east of the Rhine. The main Rhine bridges, surprisingly enough, were still in service, though only through a major effort on the part of Allied air defence and truly heroic work by army engineers.
Pressure on the Supreme Allied Commander from subordinate commanders to release troops from this reserve had already been considerable, and was now growing. To all requests, however pressing, SACEUR had invariably replied that army groups must manage with whatever local reserves they could find. Inevitably there had followed urgent insistence on the release of battlefield nuclear support, as the only possible way of preventing collapse, if no reserves were to be made available.
The Supreme Commander knew the mind of his Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States. The President would go to almost any lengths to avoid nuclear attack on the cities of the United States. It was not easy to see how this could be avoided once the battlefield nuclear exchange had begun.
Among the European Allies, opinion on the use of battlefield nuclear weapons in this confused and highly dangerous situation was divided. Understandably the Federal Republic was against it. The United Kingdom was in two minds. The Belgians were in favour, the Dutch against. The French reserved absolutely the right to decide their own nuclear policy but undertook not to use any of their considerable nuclear armoury, battlefield or strategic, without prior consultation.
Meanwhile, Warsaw Pact air attack, conventional and chemical, on the home countries of the Allies, begun on 4 August, continued unabated, though with varying intensity. In the Federal Republic and to a lesser extent in the Low Countries it was hardly to be distinguished from tactical interdiction. In France and the UK it was more strategic in character.
French ports, communication complexes and military installations had suffered considerably from it, though not to the same extent as targets in the UK, which were more important to the US war effort and more readily accessible. There had been no bombing of French cities and it seemed probable, for the present at least, that France would not use her strategic nuclear capability unless there were. But the United Kingdom, in spite of the best efforts of its air defences, was taking a pounding as the battle in the Central Region approached a climax.
It was perfectly clear to SACEUR that if there was any possibility at all that the military position could be held back from total disaster without nuclear weapons it was his plain and compelling duty not to press the President for their use. He was also aware that if he did press for nuclear release his request would almost certainly be granted.
SACEUR was alone and on the spot, and he knew it.
Shortly before midnight, Central European time, on Monday 12 August, the President came up on a voice channel. Satellite communications had not yet been fully restored and visual channels were still far from reliable, but it may also have been that the President preferred an exchange by speech alone.
‘Can you do it?’ he asked.
The question was a very simple one but nothing more was necessary.
There was a momentary pause.
‘It all depends,’ the Supreme Commander answered, ‘on what is happening in the Atlantic — and whether the air bridge holds.’
‘The air bridge still seems to be holding,’ was the response. ‘We shall know what has happened in the Atlantic in a very few hours.’
