Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (1874 - 1965) The Second World War
Volume V Closing The Ring How Nazi Germany Was Isolated And Assailed On All Sides BOOK II Teheran To Rome
CHAPTER XXXIV
ROME
May 11-June 9
... The scale of the Russian struggle far exceeded the operations with which my account has hitherto been concerned, and formed of course the foundation upon which the British and American Armies approached the climax of the war.
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The situation of Hitler’s armies at the end of May was forlorn. His two hundred divisions on the Eastern Front could not hope to withstand the Russian flood when it was again released. Everywhere he was faced with imminent disaster. Now was the time for him to decide how to regroup his forces, where they should withdraw and where hold. But instead his orders were for them all to stand and fight it out. There was to be no withdrawal, anywhere. The German armies were thus condemned to be broken on all three fronts.
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CHAPTER XXXV
ON THE EVE
...The amount of paraphernalia sounded staggering, and reminded me of Admiral Andrew Cunningham’s story of dental chairs being landed at Algiers in the first flight of Operation “Torch”. I was told, for example, that two thousand officers and clerks were being taken across the sea to keep records, and I was given the following statement, which showed that twenty days after the landing -
D + 20-there would be one vehicle ashore for every 4.77 men.
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I may add however that I still consider that the proportion of transport vehicles to fighting men in the early phase of the cross-Channel invasion was too high and that the operation suffered both in risk and execution from this fact.
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...and on May 2 I made a personal appeal by letter to General Eisenhower.
2 May 44
Please provide from your vast masses of transport the few vehicles required for the Leclerc division, which may give real significance to French re-entry into France. Let me remind you of the figures of Anzio-viz., 125,000 men with 23,000 vehicles, all so painfully landed to carry them, and they only got twelve miles.
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