HTTP/1.1 302 Found Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 12:54:24 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.34 (Unix) mod_perl/1.29 mod_ssl/2.8.25 OpenSSL/0.9.8a Location: /cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=%2Fvolume05%2Fcommander%2F39%3Fv%3D05%3Bm%3Dcommander%3Bp%3D39 Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked, chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Set-Cookie: session=38.103.63.17.310681210337664590; path=/ The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
The Johns Hopkins University Press
The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower

Contents

volume 5 : commander
Eisenhower as Commander:Single Thrust Versus Broad Front Dwight Eisenhower had to face and decide upon many issues in his capacity as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, but none aroused more controversy than the Anglo-American advance through France and into Germany. A major reason for this was the drama inherent in the clash of two powerful personalities; another was the assumption that the nature of the advance made an enormous difference in the outcome of the campaign. Bernard Montgomery, 21st Army Group commander, contended at the time and after the war that had Eisenhower given him all of SHAEF's resources and unleashed his forces for a dash to Berlin, he could have ended the war in the fall of 1944. Then Britain, spared the hardships and sacrifices of the winter of 1944-45, could have recovered from victory and returned to her role as a great power. Eisenhower, however, decided upon a more cautious broad-front campaign utilizing all SHAEF's armies in a general advance, which, according to Montgomery, led to stalemate in October, the German counteroffensive in December, and a seven-month delay in the final victory. The issue of the single thrust versus the broad front demands attention not only for what it reveals about the personalities of the protagonists and the strategic implications involved, but also because it provides a good case study of Eisenhower as a soldier. All the pressures that came to bear on him whenever he made a decision—logistics, politics, the enemy's capabilities, the personalities of his commanders, the wishes of his superiors, terrain, weather, and so on—can be seen in this issue. One of the most obvious aspects of the controversy was that Eisenhower and Montgomery seldom understood each other. This was not a result of the command relationship, for Eisenhower communicated easily with Montgomery's counterpart, Omar Bradley, the 12th Army Group commander, in