were to be destroyed, as were bridges. The ports, too, were in the last resort to be destroyed if they could not be held. If the ports could be held for between six and ten weeks in the autumn, precious time would have been gained.169
Time was, however, not on Hitler’s side. Learning of the gravity of the Allied capture of Avranches, he ordered — picking up on an operational plan that had been put forward by Kluge — an immediate counter-strike westwards from Mortain, initially intended to take place on 2 August, aimed at retaking Avranches and splitting the advancing American forces under General George S. Patton.170 The counter-offensive, eventually launched on 7 August, proved disastrous. It lasted only a day, could not prevent some of Patton’s troops from sweeping down into Brittany (where stiff defence, however, saw the garrison at Brest hold out until 19 September), and ended with the German forces in disarray but narrowly avoiding even worse calamity.171
On 15 August Hitler refused Kluge’s request to pull back around 100,000 troops threatened with imminent disaster through encirclement near Falaise. When he was unable to reach Kluge that day — the field-marshal had entered the battle-zone itself in the heart of the ‘Falaise pocket’ and his radio had been put out of action by enemy fire — Hitler, well aware of Kluge’s flirtation with the conspiracy against him and of his pessimism about the western front, jumped to the conclusion that he was negotiating a surrender with the western Allies.172 It was, said Hitler, ‘the worst day of his life’.173 He promptly recalled Field-Marshal Model, one of his most trusted generals, from the eastern front, appointed him to take over from Kluge and dispatched him to western front headquarters. Until Model arrived, Kluge had not even been informed by Hitler that he was about to be dismissed. Hitler’s peremptory handwritten note, handed over by Model and ordering Kluge back to Germany, ended with the threateningly ambiguous comment that the field-marshal should contemplate in which direction he wished to go. Model’s arrival was unable to alter the plight of the German troops, but under his command — assisted by tactical errors of the Allied ground-forces commander, General Montgomery — it proved possible to squeeze out at the last minute some 50,000 men from the ever-closing ‘Falaise pocket’ to fight again another day, closer to home. As many again, however, were taken prisoner and a further 10,000 killed.174
Kluge must have reckoned with the near certainty that he would be promptly arrested, expelled from the Wehrmacht, and put before the People’s Court for his connections with the plotters against Hitler.175 On the way back to Germany on 19 August, in the vicinity of Metz, he asked his chauffeur to stop the car for a rest. Depressed, worn out, and in despair, he swallowed a cyanide pill.
The day before, he had written a letter to Hitler. The field-marshal, who (as Hitler knew) had had prior knowledge of the bomb-plot, and who had even the year before Stauffenberg’s attempt shown sympathy for Tresckow and the oppositional group in Army Group Centre, used his dying words to praise Hitler’s leadership. ‘My Fuhrer, I have always admired your greatness,’ he wrote. ‘You have led an honest, an entirely great struggle,’ he continued, with reference to the war in the east. ‘History will testify to that.’ He then appealed to Hitler now to show the necessary greatness to bring to an end a struggle with no prospect of success in order to release the suffering of his people. This dying plea was as far as he would go to distance himself from the dictator’s war leadership. He ended with a final vow of loyalty: ‘I depart from you, my Fuhrer, to whom I was inwardly closer than you perhaps imagined, in the consciousness of having carried out my duty to the very limits.’176
Hitler’s direct reaction to the letter is not known.177 But Kluge’s suicide merely convinced him not only of the field-marshal’s implication in the bomb-plot, but also that he had been trying to surrender his forces in the west to the enemy. Hitler found it difficult to comprehend, as he bitterly reflected. He had promoted Kluge twice, given him the highest honours, made him sizeable donations (including a cheque for RM250,000 tax-free on his sixtieth birthday, and a big supplement to his field-marshal’s salary).178 He was anxious to prevent any news seeping out about Kluge’s alleged attempt to capitulate. It could seriously affect morale; it would certainly bring further contempt on the army. He let the generals know about Kluge’s suicide. But for public consumption the field-marshal’s death — from a heart-attack, it was said — was announced only after his body had lain in the church on his Brandenburg estate for a fortnight. Kluge’s funeral was a quiet affair. Hitler had banned all ceremonials.179
On the day that Kluge had temporarily been out of contact, 15 August, the Allies undertook ‘Operation Dragoon’, the landing of troops on the French Mediterranean coast.180 Quickly capturing Marseilles and Toulon, they pushed northwards, forcing Hitler reluctantly to agree to the withdrawal to the north of almost all his forces in southern France in the attempt to build a cohesive front along the upper Marne and Saone stretching to the Swiss border.181 The end of the German occupation of France was now in sight. Though it would take several more weeks to complete, the symbolic moment arrived when, prompted by strikes, a popular uprising, and attacks by the French Resistance against the German occupiers, and by the eventual readiness of the German Commander, General Dietrich von Choltitz to surrender (despite orders from Hitler to reduce Paris to rubble if it could not be held),182 the Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, gave a French division the honour of liberating the French capital on 24 August. The liberation was celebrated by enormous crowds two days later as they cheered the triumphal march down the Champs-Elysees of General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French.183 Bitter recriminations within the country against those French citizens who had collaborated with the occupiers were only momentarily held back in the joyous scenes.
By now, the western Allies had over 2 million men on the Continent.184 Advancing into Belgium, they liberated Brussels on 3 September and next day captured the important port of Antwerp before the harbour installations could be destroyed. Only Cherbourg, of the major channel ports, had up to this point been in Allied hands, and supplies through that route were seriously hampered by the level of destruction. Antwerp was vital to the assault on Germany. But it was as late as 27 November before the Scheldt estuary was secured and before the approaches to the harbour were fully cleared of mines.185 In the interim, the Allied drive towards the German borders suffered a major setback with the serious losses suffered, especially by British troops, in ten days of bitter fighting in the combined airborne and land operation — ‘Market Garden’ — launched on 17 September, to seize the river crossings at Grave, Nijmegen, and Arnhem.186 Beyond supply problems, battle fatigue, and replacing the men lost, the Allied advance was stalling because of the stiff German defence, aided by shortened supply lines, redeployment of the men extricated from the Falaise Pocket, and reinforcements drawn from the east.187 In the west, it was plain, despite the dramatic Allied successes since D-Day, the war was far from over.
In the east, following the Red Army’s big summer offensive, the German network of alliances with Balkan countries started to unravel in August much as Hitler had feared. On 2 August, Turkey announced that it was breaking off relations with Germany. Economically, it meant the loss of chrome supplies.188 Militarily, it was clear that Turkey would at some point join the Allies.189 Three days later, on 5 August, Hitler, accompanied by Ribbentrop, Keitel, and Guderian, received Marshal Antonescu at the Wolf’s Lair in a vain attempt to shore up the alliance with Romania.190 The talks proceeded civilly enough. But Romania had already made peace soundings with the Allies. And forces were gathering in Bucharest aimed at toppling Antonescu and taking Romania out of a war for which the country, following its severe battlefield losses at Stalingrad and in the Crimea, had long lost heart.191 On 20 August, when the Soviets attacked Army Group South Ukraine, Romanian units deserted
Bulgaria, a country which since 1941 had played a careful diplomatic hand, was now hopelessly exposed. Soviet troops crossed its borders on 8 September (the USSR having declared war three days earlier), and on the same day Bulgaria rapidly switched sides and declared war on Germany.194 The German control over the entire Balkan region now held by the most slender of threads. The collapse of Romania and Bulgaria, followed by rapid Soviet occupation, meant the urgent withdrawal of German troops from Greece was imperative. This began in September. In mid-October British airborne troops were able to occupy Athens. By that time, Tito’s partisan army was on the verge of entry into Belgrade.195 German troops were meanwhile engaged in the brutal
