7. Eisenhower As Ground-Forces Commander: The British Viewpoint

MUCH TO THE APPREHENSION of British Chiefs of Staff (COS) and disappointment of British public, September 1, 1944, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, officially took command of ground operations in France. Many in Britain perceived step as a demotion for Britain's iconic soldier, General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, commanding general of British 21st Army Group, who had commanded ground forces since invasion of Normandy June 6, 1944, and continued to command main avenue of approach to Ruhr and Berlin. The Chief of Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, and Montgomery believed that Eisenhower prolonged war by failing to concentrate against a single avenue of approach into Germany. By December 1944, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill concluded that Eisenhower needed a deputy supreme commander who would control ground operations for him. Ironically, German counteroffensive in Ardennes made it politically impossible for Churchill to replace Eisenhower's deputy supreme commander, Air Marshal Sir Arthur W. Tedder, with Field Marshal Sir Harold R. G. L. Alexander. Having mortgaged their future to Grand Alliance, British concluded that price for their strategic partnership with United States was a succession of American military blunders. By temperament and experience, Eisenhower was virtually a staff officer. He had heard no shots fired in anger until November 1942. Eisenhower (Ike to his close associates) had been graduated in West Point Class of 1915, class the stars fell on so-named because 57 of its 164 graduates became general officers. According to closest student of Eisenhower's interwar career, Matthew F. Holland, Eisenhower's assignment to command army heavy tank school that had been established Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, cost him his chance at combat in World War I. Yet it helped him graduate first in his class from Command and General Staff School in 1926, where all tactical problems were drawn from Battle of Gettysburg which Eisenhower was an expert. During interwar period Eisenhower obtained a political education, working in Washington for assistant secretary of war and three chiefs of staff of army. After serving under General Douglas MacArthur for seven consecutive years in Washington and Philippines, Eisenhower returned to United States in January 1940 and briefly commanded a battalion. His reputation as one of top staff officers in army led to his selection as chief of staff to a division, a corps, and, finally, an army. During Louisiana Maneuvers of September 1941, Colonel Eisenhower earned national press attention and a promotion to brigadier general for his role in Third Army's victory over second Army.1 Immediately after Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of army, summoned Eisenhower to War Plans Division, where he so impressed Marshall that six months later he sent Eisenhower to London to command European theater of operations, coordinating American buildup for planned 1943 cross-channel invasion. Eisenhower benefited from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's insistent support of Operation Torch, November 1942 invasion of Northwest Africa. Eisenhower commanded that campaign through Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) with an integrated Anglo-American staff that he made to work in tandem through personal example. Eisenhower's AFHQ went to supervise Allied landings in Sicily and Italian mainland. Few people in Washington or London in mid-1943 would have picked Eisenhower for command of Operation Overlord, campaign against Germany in northwestern Europe. Churchill promised Brooke job three times, but at First Quebec Conference of August 1943 Roosevelt asserted an American claim to supreme command based eventual predominance of American manpower. …

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