Panzer had four battalions and ten
tanks. As historian Max Hastings has shown, these figures were by no means
unique; four other SS Panzer Divisions could muster no more than fifty tanks
among them. (Wehrmacht armored divisions typically possessed an organizational
strength of 160 tanks, and approximately 3,000 other vehicles.) The carnage of
the battlefield was truly incredible and sickened many fighter-bomber pilots
over the site. Elsenhower, touring the gap area two days after it closed,
encountered 'scenes that could only be described by Dante.' Perhaps the twisted
allegories of Hieronymous Bosch would have been more fitting a choice, for
Dante, at least, offered hope.
With the conclusion of the battle of
the Falaise gap came the denouement of the battle of Normandy. These Allied
successes did not end the war, which would rage on for another nine months. But
Normandy triggered the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany. Though much has been
written by critics about the remarkable ability of the Wehrmacht to rejuvenate
and reform itself, and about the 'toughening' and 'thickening' of German
resistance in the weeks and months ahead, not enough attention is paid to the
flip side of this:
Where was that strength coming from?
German forces were being hastily transferred from the Russian Front (brightening
the prospects of an eventual Soviet triumph in the East) and from within the
critical bone marrow of the Third Reich itself. Hitler and his minions were
spending capital they did not have. The toughening of the resistance at the
Western Front was the thickening of a crust-a crust that the Allies would slice
through in the fall and winter of 1944-45, exposing the vulnerable Nazi
heartland underneath.
The Legacy of Air Power at Normandy
By the end of the Normandy campaign,
all the elements and relationships for the rest of the tactical air war in
Europe were in place: forward observers and controllers, occasional airborne
controllers, radar strike direction, 'on-call' fighter-bombers, armored column
cover, night intruders, to name just a few. In only thirty-six months, the
Allies had recovered from the disappointment of a Brevity and Battleaxe to
orchestrate an unprecedented invasion and breakout. Normandy was neither the
victory of a single branch of arms, nor the victory of a single nation. Instead,
it is the classic example of complex combined arms, multiservice, coalition war-
