Falaise pocket

• 1. Introduction

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  At the Falaise pocket, forty-eight hours after the guns fell silent, General Dwight D. Eisenhower walked the ground on foot. He later recorded encountering scenes that could only be described by Dante. Pilots flying overhead reported smelling the carnage from hundreds of feet in the air. The battle of the Falaise pocket ran from the 12th to the 21st of August 1944. It was the decisive engagement of the entire Battle of Normandy in the Second World War. German Army Group B, comprising the 7th Army and the Fifth Panzer Army, was encircled by Allied forces near Falaise in Calvados, France. The battle destroyed most of that army group west of the River Seine and opened the way to Paris and the Franco-German border. How a force of that scale came to be trapped in a nine-day cauldron is a story of Allied coordination and a catastrophic German miscalculation. A desperate struggle for a single ridge would decide how many soldiers survived to fight another day.

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• 2. Hitler's Miscalculation

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  On the 7th of August 1944, Adolf Hitler sent a directive to Field Marshal Günther von Kluge ordering an immediate counter-attack between Mortain and Avranches. Kluge had recently replaced Gerd von Rundstedt as commander of Army Group B, and by the 8th of August Le Mans, the former headquarters of the German 7th Army, was already in Allied hands. Hitler's directive called for eight of the nine Panzer divisions in Normandy to join the attack; only four could be made ready in time. German commanders warned that their forces were incapable of an offensive. Their warnings went unheeded.

  Operation Lüttich commenced around Mortain on the 7th of August, led by the 2nd Panzer Division, SS Division Leibstandarte and SS Division Das Reich. The attacking force had only 75 Panzer IVs, 70 Panthers and 32 self-propelled guns at its disposal. The Allies had been forewarned by Ultra signals intercepts. Although the offensive continued until the 13th of August, its threat was extinguished within twenty-four hours. The failed counter-attack left the strongest remaining German units stranded on the western flank, defeated by the US First Army. Bradley said it was "an opportunity that comes to a commander not more than once in a century." He believed his forces were "about to destroy an entire hostile army and go all the way from here to the German border."

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• 3. Closing the Noose

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  On the night of the 7th-the 8th of August, the First Canadian Army launched Operation Totalize. The target was the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, which held a 14-kilometre front north of Falaise. The Canadians used a novel approach: infantry rode Kangaroo armoured personnel carriers guided by electronic aids and illuminants. The 12th SS Panzer was supported by the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion and remnants of the 89th Infantry Division. The advance took a heavy toll on the 4th Canadian Armoured Division and the 1st Polish Armoured Division. Verrières Ridge and Cintheaux fell on the 9th of August, and by the 10th of August Anglo-Canadian forces reached Hill 195 north of Falaise. Canadian commander Guy Simonds then relieved the armoured divisions with infantry divisions, ending the offensive.

  Operation Tractable opened on the 14th of August at 11:42, behind an artillery smokescreen. The 4th Canadian Armoured Division and the 1st Polish Armoured Division crossed the Laison river. Delays at the River Dives gave the Tiger tanks of the schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 102 time to mount a counter-attack. A navigational error compounded the difficulty. The First Canadian Army had marked its own positions with yellow smoke, the same colour strategic bombers used to identify targets. Allied aircraft bombed their own troops, slowing progress further. On the 16th of August, the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division entered Falaise against scattered Waffen SS units. By the 17th of August the town was secure.

  At midday on the 16th of August, Kluge had refused Hitler's order for another counter-attack. Hitler grew suspicious that Kluge intended to surrender to the Allies. On the 17th of August, Hitler sacked Kluge and recalled him to Germany. Kluge then killed himself with potassium cyanide, fearing reprisal for his role in the 20th of July plot against Hitler's life. Field Marshal Walter Model succeeded him. Model's first act was ordering the immediate retreat of the 7th Army and the Fifth Panzer Army. The II SS Panzer Corps held the northern face of the escape route against the British and Canadians. The XLVII Panzer Corps defended the southern face against the Third US Army.

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• 4. Encirclement

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  By the 18th of August, the surviving Germans had been compressed into a rough rectangle six miles deep and seven miles wide. It was densely packed and exposed to constant Allied artillery and air attacks. Military historian Robert Citino observed that the level of destruction concentrated in such a small area was likely unprecedented in the entire war. German command staffs had remained inside the pocket alongside their troops, and their presence allowed units to maintain a degree of cohesion under bombardment. The 1st Polish Armoured Division was divided into three battlegroups and ordered to make a wide sweep south-east to meet American troops at Chambois. Trun fell to the 4th Canadian Armoured Division on the 18th of August.

  On the 19th of August, after capturing Champeaux, the Polish battlegroups converged on Chambois. Reinforced by the 4th Canadian Armoured Division, the Poles secured the town. By evening, they had linked up with the US 90th Division and the French 2nd Armoured Division. Canadian forces completed the encirclement that same day. Wilhelm Bittrich ordered the 2nd SS Panzer Division to strike from German-held Vimoutiers to the east, coordinating with a breakout from within the pocket. The 2nd SS Panzer re-established communication and allowed several thousand troops to escape over the following day. An armoured column of the 2nd Panzer Division broke through Canadian lines at St. Lambert. It kept a road open for six hours until nightfall, allowing many more soldiers to slip through.

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• 5. The Stand on Hill 262

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  Polish troops moved northeast from Chambois on the night of the 19th of August and seized part of Hill 262. This was the Mont Ormel ridge, a commanding position at the mouth of the pocket. From that height they could direct artillery fire onto the retreating German columns below. Paul Hausser, the 7th Army commander, ordered the Polish positions to be eliminated. On the morning of the 20th of August, Model sent the 2nd SS Panzer Division and the 9th SS Panzer Division to attack from outside the pocket. Their orders were to strike toward the Polish positions on the ridge. Around midday, units of the 10th SS Panzer, the 12th SS Panzer and the 116th Panzer Division broke through the Polish lines. A corridor opened. By mid-afternoon, approximately 10,000 German troops had passed out of the pocket through the gap. Allied air and artillery attacks turned the escape route into a gauntlet of fire and death.

  German attacks resumed on the morning of the 21st of August, but the Poles retained their foothold on the ridge. At about 11:00, SS troops launched a final assault on the positions of the 9th Battalion. It was defeated at close quarters. Soon after midday, the Canadian Grenadier Guards reached Mont Ormel. By late afternoon, the remnants of the 2nd and 9th SS Panzer Divisions had begun retreating to the Seine. Polish casualties at Mont Ormel totalled 351 killed and wounded, with eleven tanks lost. German losses in the assaults on the ridge were estimated at 500 killed and 1,000 taken prisoner, most from the 12th SS-Panzer Division. Scores of Tiger, Panther and Panzer IV tanks were destroyed or abandoned, along with many artillery pieces.

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• 6. Reckoning

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  On the evening of the 21st of August 1944, tanks of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division linked with Polish forces at Coudehard. The 2nd and 3rd Canadian Infantry Divisions secured St. Lambert and the northern passage to Chambois. The Falaise pocket was sealed. By the 22nd of August, all German soldiers west of the Allied lines were dead or in captivity. Between 20,000 and 50,000 Germans in all managed to escape, minus most of their heavy equipment. The final stages were among the most harrowing of the campaign. Retreating troops were forced to cross the Dives River, its waters choked with the corpses of soldiers and horses.

  Historians estimate that between 80,000 and 100,000 German troops were caught in the encirclement. Of those, 10,000-15,000 were killed and 40,000-50,000 were taken prisoner. The 12th SS-Panzer Division Hitlerjugend had begun with 20,540 soldiers. By the 22nd of August 1944, it had lost around 8,000, along with most of its tanks and vehicles. Post-battle investigators estimated the Germans left around 500 tanks and assault guns inside the pocket, with little equipment making it across the Seine. The Canadians took nearly 5,500 casualties, including 1,470 killed and 177 captured. The 1st Polish Armoured Division listed 1,441 casualties, of whom 466 were killed. Across the wider Battle of Normandy, more than forty German divisions were destroyed. The campaign cost Germany an estimated 450,000 men, including 240,000 killed or wounded. Allied ground forces suffered 209,672 casualties, among them 36,976 killed and 19,221 missing.

  The Liberation of Paris followed on the 25th of August. On the 30th of August the last German units retreated across the Seine, completing Operation Overlord. Allied commanders disputed whether the pocket could have been closed more tightly. Bradley had halted Patton at Argentan on the 13th of August, and American officers believed this allowed too many Germans to escape. Chester Wilmot wrote that Montgomery had failed to reinforce Guy Simonds. He added that the Canadian drive on Trun and Chambois was not as vigorous and venturesome as the situation demanded. Max Hastings argued that Montgomery should have brought veteran British divisions to the lead after what he considered a poor Canadian performance in Totalize. Bradley himself wrote that he preferred "a solid shoulder at Argentan to the possibility of a broken neck at Falaise." Those who escaped were reorganised and rearmed in time to slow the Allied advance into eastern France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

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