War policy attacked

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32450, 10 November 1970, Page 25

War policy attacked

DREW MIDDLETON

(By

NEW YORK, Nov. 8. General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s diversion of petrol from General George S. Patton’s United States Third Army to Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group cost the Allies an opportunity to win World War II in September, 1944, according to a distinguished British military theorist.

The book, which has appeared in London, will be published in the United States in March, 1971., Sir Basil Liddell Hart, whose theories on teaming tanks and planes were studied by German generals and later adopted in the blitzkrieg strategy, has been described by Yigal Alton, Israel’s Deputy Premier, as “the captain who teaches generals.” The history, completed before his death in January, draws on the official histories of the Western powers and the memoirs of Allied and German generals. DISPUTE Eisenhower’s strategy after the break-out from the Normandy bridgehead has been bitterly disputed for 25 years. Sir Basil Liddell Hart considers it to have been inflexible and shortsighted. One school holds that Eisenhower’s methodical broad front advance not only delayed victory but also enabled • the Soviet Union, whose troops at the end of 1944 had not reached the borders of Germany, to finish the war in May, 1945, as the master of Berlin and central Germany. He also Charges that the “missed opportunity” not only cost the Allies half a million casualties but also meant that “millions of men and women died by military action and in concentration camps.” He holds the war could have been won in 1944 if Allied power had been concentrated in a, single thrust into Germany under Patton. The counter-argument is that Eisenhower’s strategy, which gave the fullest employment to superior Allied air power, was the surest and most economical. PRESSURE In late August, 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Eisenhower was under pressure from Patton and Montgomery. Each wanted the petrol necessary for an offensive. “Faced with these conflicting arguments, Eisenhower sought an agreeable compromise,” according to Sir Basil Liddell Hart. Under this, Montgomery’s northern thrust through Belgium was given priority and received the bulk of the available supplies and transport at the expense of Patton. Once the British took the

’■ of the New York Times News Service, through N.Z.P.A.)

This criticism of the Western commander’s strategy appears in “History of the Second World War” by the late Captain Sir Basil Liddell Hart.

key port of Antwerp, the Allies were to revert to Eisenhower’s basic plan of an advance to the Rhine on a broad front “None of Eisenhower’s executives liked the compromise” and Patton called it “the most momentous error of the war,” he writes. EQUAL SHARE Patton was again given an equal share of supplies after Antwerp fell on September 4, but in the interval the Germans had begun to reorganise their shattered defences and the Third Army’s Advance was halted on the Moselle River. The writer’s over-all criticism of the strategy was that the broad-front approach, while suitable against a strong and still unbeaten enemy, “was far less suited to the actual situation, where the enemy had already collapsed and the issue depended on exploiting their collapse so deeply and rapidly that they would have no chance to rally.” General Siegfried Westphal, the German Chief of Staff on the Western Front, is cited as corroboration. After the war, Westphal wrote that “until the middle of October the enemy could have broken through at any point he liked with ease, and would then have been able to cross the Rhine and thrust deep into Germany almost unhindered.”