"I've asked Stagg and the rest to prepare a five-day forecast." "The Prime Minister's bringing de Gaulle..." "On the eve of the great assault on Hitler's Europe, the two men who were to direct the Allied armies in the field met for a last informal dinner." "The commander of the land forces, General Montgomery, was every inch the Englishman, the supreme commander, General Eisenhower, an American." "That would at least focus..." "The evening helped to cement the great alliance between the two men and their countries." "Montgomery had accepted a wager." "Eisenhower had bet him L5 that the war would be over by Christmas, within just seven months of D-Day." "(GUNFIRE)" "(EXPLOSIONS)" "But the bright hope with which the Allies began their great crusade was to fade beyond the D-Day beaches." "(SCOTTISH ACCENT) It was a dreadful experience for young boys, most of them barely 20 years old." "Day by day, living on borrowed time." "It was a lottery who was going to be the next casualty." "(ENGLISH ACCENT) I turned to my mate." "I said, "I can't take much more of this."" "He said, "I feel the same way, but we've got to hold it together."" "As Allied soldiers struggled to break the German line, the casualty list lengthened." "Cracks began to appear in the great Atlantic alliance." "(AMERICAN ACCENT) We thought we could do things better than they did, and we were getting a little impatient, waiting for this British break-out." "It wasn't just the alliance between Britain and America that was to be placed under strain." "It was the relationship between Eisenhower and Montgomery." "This is the story of how two very different men and the armies they led struggled to defeat the Germans in the summer of 1944." "(SPEAKS GERMAN)" "(PHONE RINGS)" "The 6th of June was a special day at Field Marshal Rommel's house in Germany." "It was his wife Lucy's 50th birthday." "Rommel wasn't expected back at his headquarters in France for another two days." "But at half past six that morning, he received a call from his Chief of Staff." "(SPEAKS GERMAN)" "The Allies were landing on the coast of Normandy." "The commander of the German forces in the field was still at home, 500 miles away." "(GUNFIRE)" "We kept going in and in and in, and all of a sudden we hear these pings on the steel-hulled landing craft." "A guy said, "The Germans are firing at us." ""We can see them in the distance up on top of the cliff."" "Something landed in the water and concussion hit." "It flipped me over, and I heard somebody yell, "Keep moving." "Keep moving."" "I reached over and grabbed him by the jacket, pulled him out, and just then a mortar shell landed behind me, knocked me flat on my face." "And, er..." "I thought, "What the hell?" "I must be dead."" "There were guys lying on the beach, dead." "Uh..." "Shells hitting it." "Machine-gun fire ripping across it." "An LST off to our right got a dead hit as they were unloading." "These guys were coming down." "Just blew that sucker right out of the water." "A hell of a sight." "Awful." "(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)" "(TRANSLATOR) In the first wave, most of them fell." "We said, "They keep coming, even though they can see how many have already been killed."" "There were 37 men in my landing craft." "When I got up on top of the cliff, there were nine men left." "The commander in chief of the German armies knew nothing of the battle in France." "He was 600 miles away in the Bavarian alps." "No one wanted to wake Adolf Hitler." "No one was sure this was the real invasion." "German intelligence suggested it would come soon, but further up the coast, at Calais." "Hitler had split the command of his forces." "He'd given the direction of his armies in the field to Rommel, but the best German divisions, the armoured reserves, were under his personal command." "They couldn't advance on the Normandy beaches without a direct order from their Fuhrer." "By the time Hitler was awake, the world knew Allied forces were landing on the coast of Normandy." "Fighting had been fiercest on Omaha Beach, but by midday the Americans were beginning to cut a foothold on the coast." "The second assault wave was already landing on the other four Allied beaches." "I can remember talking to a fellow company commander and reckoning that our chances of getting across the beach alive were pretty small." "But, in fact, everything by that time had quietened down and we weren't under fire of any sort." "It was one of those very rare occasions in war when the plan goes absolutely according to plan." "Mostly, the coastal defences had been manned by the weakest troops in the German army, the very young, the old and the lame." "Allied casualties were much lower than expected, 10,000 dead and wounded." "The battle for the beaches was over in a matter of hours." "Although many books don't venture beyond them," "Operation Overlord, the struggle for the liberation of Europe, was just beginning." "The reports that trickled into Eisenhower's headquarters in England suggested most of Rommel's divisions were still camped 170 miles to the north." "The chief architect of the Overlord plan was General Montgomery, the man who'd beaten Rommel in North Africa the year before." "He'd agreed the priorities for the campaign with General Eisenhower, his supreme commander." "Monty's plan was to unite the two American beaches in the west with the three British and Canadian in the east, then to break out into the rest of France." "If all went to plan, Allied forces would reach the river Seine near Paris on D plus 90, three months after D-Day." "Monty had been confident his soldiers would fight their way ashore, so confident he'd made the capture of Caen, ten miles away, a key D-Day objective." "But the British advance was held three miles short of Caen." "(SHOUTING)" "(GUNFIRE)" "The failure to take the city on D-Day would cast a shadow over the campaign in Normandy." "It was not until half past nine in the evening that Field Marshal Rommel finally reached his headquarters in France." "The Field Marshal was tense." "I remember him punching one gloved fist into another." "I said to him, "Sir, do you think we'll be able to hold them back?"" "He replied, "Lang, I hope we can." ""I've always succeeded up to now."" "The staff at Army Group B were still expecting a second Allied invasion at Calais." "An entire army would be left to guard the beaches to the north." "Rommel had hoped he could counter-attack in the first hours of the invasion, but the armoured reserves he needed had only been released by Hitler that afternoon." "(SPEAKS GERMAN)" "Rommel was determined to throw these Panzer divisions into the battle as soon as they arrived in Normandy." "(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)" "(TRANSLATOR) We were optimistic, especially as our division, the Panzer Lehr, was very well equipped, and we all believed we would be able to make quite an impact." "(GERMAN MARCHING SONG)" "The Panzer divisions held in reserve began taking up positions around Caen in the early hours of June 7th." "The 12th SS, the Hitler Youth Division, would be joined by five more SS Panzer divisions." "This fanatical elite would be at the core of Hitler's forces in Normandy." "The SS were very different soldiers from those the Allies had faced on the beaches." "(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)" "(TRANSLATOR) We only took volunteers, and so you could expect much more of our unit." "Our ability to fight, our moral will to fight, was greater." "Rommel began to concentrate his Panzer divisions in the British sector." "Beyond the city of Caen, open country, tank country, stretched northward towards the river Seine and Paris." "It was here Rommel expected the Allies to attempt a break-out." "The Allied campaign in Normandy would be directed from a spartan collection of tents and caravans just behind the front line." "Although Caen was yet to fall, there was every prospect, Monty told his staff, of checkmating Rommel in just a few days." "More than 160,000 Allied soldiers had already come ashore." "2nd Army is cleaning up centres of resistance around..." "Monty had first outlined the plan for Overlord many weeks before." "It was a clever deception." "The British were to keep pressing forward in the east to draw the Panzer divisions into battle around Caen." "The Americans would then be able to break out through a thin German line in the west." "The 51st must push on..." "The plan had met with Eisenhower's whole-hearted approval, but in the judgement of his staff, it soon started to go wrong." "OK, can you see to this?" "It's clear that the Germans are doing everything they can to hold on to Caen." "I've decided not to risk a lot of casualties butting against it, but 2nd Army must keep up the pressure there, and then make its main effort here, towards Villers-Bocage." "And from there..." "Within a week of D-Day, military intelligence reported a gap in the German line to the west of Caen." "Monty turned to his old 8th Army desert units." "On June 12th, British armour began to push toward the town of Villers-Bocage." "We were told it was what's called close country, but we didn't realise how close it was." "The hedges were as high as the turret tops." "It was this bocage country of small fields surrounded by high banks, on the top of which were thick hedgerows." "(NEW SPEAKER) Very attractive, except if you're fighting through it, and then there are lots of dead bodies." "On the morning of D plus 7, the 7th Armoured Division, Monty's Desert Rats, reached Villers-Bocage, the western gateway to Caen." "There was no sign of the enemy, and so, at a little before nine o'clock, an armoured column began to advance toward the city." "Under cover, just outside the town, was a small unit of German Tiger tanks." "Their commander was Obersturmfuhrer Michael Wittmann, the most celebrated tank ace in the German army." "(SPEAKS GERMAN)" "Wittmann's tank was equipped with a formidable weapon, the 88-millimetre gun." "You only had to mention to a tank commander, "There's an 88 out there somewhere,"" "and you could put the fear of God into our own people." "I first knocked out two tanks from the right of the column, then one from the left." "I knocked out every tank that came towards me." "The enemy was thrown into total confusion." "(ENGLISH ACCENT) My troop sergeant was leaning over to the driver, and so it missed his head." "I felt the tingling as the shot went between my legs, landed up in the engine." "And then a sheet of flame came over the top." "It was an unwholesome way to die." "If you're injured, you can't get out of a tank turret." "It's too narrow." "And if the turret has traversed at all, so that you're firing that way, it stopped the driver's door from opening and he couldn't get out, so it was frightening." "(WITTMANN) I drove into the town of Villers, and immediately began firing at and destroying everything around me that I could see." "In a devastating ten-minute attack," "Wittmann destroyed 12 tanks and 13 other armoured vehicles, and brought the British advance to a grinding halt." "He'd cruelly demonstrated that Allied tanks, the Sherman and the Cromwell, were no match for a German Tiger." "Monty's desert veterans were forced to withdraw, battered and dispirited." "Monty was concerned about a sickness that seemed to hold Allied tank crews in its grip," "Tiger fever." "I have had to stamp very heavily on reports that began to circulate about the inadequacy of our tanks and equipment as compared with the Germans." "Such reports are likely to cause a lowering of morale and a lack of confidence among the troops." "And on the day the British advance at Villers-Bocage was broken, a report reached Monty from London that would increase the pressure for a rapid break-out from the Allied bridgehead." "London was under attack from Hitler's vengeance weapon, the V-1 flying bomb." "The Germans were launching them from the coast of France." "Most flying bombs that made it through were falling in the south of the city, close to the quarters of the supreme Allied commander." "Night after night, Eisenhower and his staff were driven into their air-raid shelter." "I don't know what's worse..." "The V-1 attacks were making everyone jittery and impatient for a rapid break-out into the rest of France." "But Eisenhower had already begun to lose faith in Monty's strategy." "We thought we were more aggressive than the Brits." "We used to think, "Well, they've been through this for so many years now, so long a time." ""They've taken so many beatings in so many places" ""that they're less..." "less likely to take chances," ""less likely to take risks than we are."" "At the end of June, British officers began preparing their men for a new attack on Caen," "Operation Epsom." "..over the canal here." "We're going to be after..." "The plan was to punch through the German line to the south of Caen." "It was a risky operation." "The front was strongly held by the SS." "But Monty knew Eisenhower was growing more impatient for success every day." "Hello, BBC." "This is Frank Gillard here, recording just outside Tilly during a barrage which is being laid down to prepare the way for an infantry attack..." "British soldiers began to push forward behind the artillery barrage, just as their fathers had done during the First World War." "The Germans had dug in deep, as they, too, had done 30 years before." "And as the barrage lifted, they prepared to meet the British advance." "It's no good saying we weren't." "Anyone says he wasn't scared was a bloody liar." "(NEW SPEAKER) It was a firm principle that no rifleman stopped if his next companion was dropped." "(NEW SPEAKER) You couldn't see where you were going, what you were walking on, and, unfortunately, we trod on lads that had dropped, either dead or wounded." "When you get a man that's had a leg blown off... and he crawls back in the corn in case the Germans counter-attack, and his dead body was found a fortnight afterwards..." "I mean, what a death that man must have had." "Casualties were desperately high on both sides." "The British slogged forward just five miles in three days." "But the German line held." "By the end of June, more than 60,000 Allied soldiers were listed as dead or wounded." "Normandy was becoming a killing ground." "We, of course, the poor, wretched people on the ground had no idea of the great Monty plan." "Every day, a battalion from each brigade would launch an attack to capture another couple of hedgerows." "They would probably lose something like 200 to 300 men in the process." "And it all seemed to us on the ground totally pointless." "Why did we have to spend all these lives capturing the hedgerow in front?" "This is Larry LeSueur speaking from the Normandy battlefront." "It's warm and humid in Normandy this morning, and the sun is trying valiantly to break through the impenetrable clouds." "The war is going slowly." "Recently it resembles the trench warfare of a quarter century ago - the Germans hard on one side of the hedge-enclosed field, and the open space in front gives them a field of fire for 100 yards or more." "The battle was being fought in perfect defensive country that sheltered the Germans from the full weight of the Allied assault." "The hedgerow was deadly in combat." "It's like playing hide-and-go-seek when you're a kid." "They can hide on you, but we can't find them." "Tanks would come along, and there were dead soldiers in their paths between the hedgerows." "The tanks would just come along and roll over half a body or one part or another of a body." "It was a terrible sight." "There was this awful stench of battle." "Quite apart from the human casualties, Germans, British, people killed in the battle, there were these dead horses, dead cattle, lying around and beginning, after a day or so, because it was June, hot weather, stinking to high heaven." "I turned to my mate." "I said, "I can't take much more of this."" "He said, "I feel the same way, but we've got..." "we've got to hold it together."" "But that's...that's the way you get." "You know, you're...you're scared that the next time it's going to be you." "Because every time they send over a salvo, they get somebody." "War does things to you, makes you so hard, you feel you lose your emotions." "I'd see guys with their legs blown off, or chest wounds, head wounds..." "Ted getting killed." "My brother getting killed." "And I've said to myself, "Why didn't I cry?"" "The pattern of the grim struggle in the bocage was not being set by the Allies, but by the enemy." "Mein Fuhrer." "On the last day of the Epsom offensive," "Field Marshal Rommel visited his Fuhrer to discuss the progress of the battle in Normandy." "(SPEAKS GERMAN)" "Rommel wanted to win Hitler's permission for a new, more flexible front." "Hitler would hear nothing of it." "The German line would stay precisely where it was." "More than a million men were locked in a battle of attrition along a front just 50 miles long." "The battle seemed close to stalemate." "If Rommel was having problems with his supreme commander, so, too, was Montgomery." "Eisenhower made a rare visit to Monty's headquarters on July 2nd." "Although there was the usual outward show of warmth, Eisenhower was far from satisfied." "He thought he'd been promised a British break-out." "Nor did it help that Monty showed little respect for his supreme commander's judgement." "General Montgomery's sense of humour... (ENGLISH ACCENT) He liked Eisenhower." "No one could fail not to like him." "He was an easy fellow." "But from Monty's point of view, he wasn't a proper soldier." "Eisenhower had not been in action before." "He hadn't the experience." "I've called him Rommel." "He's quite something, isn't he?" "The strategy, Monty explained, was the same." "The British were drawing the best of Rommel's soldiers into battle around Caen so the Americans could break out further west." "I've asked Major Reynolds to take us over..." "But Montgomery was becoming a victim of the expectations he'd created." "Eisenhower wanted the Allies to press forward along the entire front." "He wanted Monty to break through at Caen." "Gentlemen, please be seated." "General Montgomery was very precise in everything that he did." "He was a legend." "And, uh...somewhat intimidating." "At the table, he dominated much of the conversation." "We were a little deferential to Monty at the beginning." "But...we were getting a little impatient, waiting for this British break-out." "And he's even been prepared to put L5 on it." "British soldiers had tried and failed to take Caen three times." "Monty believed it would take a blow of overwhelming force to crack German resistance." "But there was one theatre of combat in which the Germans could be beaten." "Allied aircraft roamed the skies above the battlefield almost unchallenged." "It was the Jabos, the Allied fighter bombers, that German soldiers feared above all." "(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)" "(TRANSLATOR) Often you couldn't advance more than 200 metres in an hour." "You were constantly having to take cover." "That was very depressing." "We'd really believed that our fighter planes would arrive, and that would sort them out." "Allied aircraft were proving the greatest threat to German operations." "Rommel was struggling to direct his forces in the field." "My staff and I have repeatedly experienced the total command the enemy has of the air." "The movement of our troops is almost completely paralysed, and it is very difficult to get essential supplies and ammunition up to them." "More worrying still for the Germans, the Allies seemed to know where to direct their fire." "In the first week of the battle, Allied aircraft destroyed the headquarters of a Panzer group." "Almost the entire staff was wiped out." "Rommel had visited the headquarters just a few hours before the attack." "It was more than a coincidence." "The Allies knew the whereabouts not just of this Panzer group, but of all the German divisions in France." "Thousands of German signals were being intercepted by a network of listening stations in Britain." "The signals were sent to the government's code-breakers at Bletchley Park." "They offered an insight into German intentions and a long list of targets for Allied aircraft." "On the night of July 7th," "German forces around Caen were hit with all the power Monty could muster." "450 heavy bombers were used for the first time to support the Allied advance." "The attack was pressed home without respite." "After two days of fierce fighting," "British and Canadian soldiers captured the ruins of a once beautiful city." "(ENGLISH ACCENT) It looked like a city that had been...murdered, massacred." "(SCOTTISH ACCENT) You couldn't recognise anything." "Buildings were blown to bits." "Even the French people themselves would never have known it." "(CANADIAN ACCENT) The most memory I have was the smell...of dust... and death." "Eisenhower expected to see Montgomery break out at last, and a week later, 750 British tanks began to roll out of the new Caen bridgehead." "But from the first, there was confusion about just what the attack was supposed to achieve." "Eisenhower had written to Montgomery expressing confidence in the new advance," "Operation Goodwood." "It would, he was sure, be a decisive plunge into the vitals of the enemy." "Monty saw it in an altogether different way." "Monty's plan was to attack the German Panzer divisions on the outskirts of the city, and to keep them fighting long enough for the Americans to break out at St Lo in the west." "But to ensure support for the operation, he'd raised not just the expectations of Eisenhower, but of his own men as well." "We were all very excited when we were told that we were going to go down to the plains of Caen, because for the first time we'd be out of this awful hedging and that sort of stuff." "We thought it might be the end of the campaign." "(NEW SPEAKER) It was a very beautiful day." "The early morning was...exquisite weather." "Very, very clear." "And, of course, it was exciting." "This was a great adventure." "And certainly we thought at the time that this was going to be a big break-out." "I have just authorised the following communique, gentlemen." ""Early this morning, British and Canadian troops of the 2nd Army" ""attacked and broke through into the area east of the Orne and south-east of Caen."" "Progress on the first morning was good." "The newspapers were full of Monty's victory." "..total success." "Well..." "But his optimism was to prove sorely misplaced." "(BOMBARDMENT)" "The British were expected." "Rommel had deployed his armour and artillery in carefully camouflaged positions, a defensive zone ten miles deep." "The leading tanks had caught it pretty badly." "One was very conscious of British tanks bursting into flames." "Being brewed up." "That's what we called it." "(NEW SPEAKER) I could see three tanks ahead of me." "I pulled my troop into a dip." "I got up onto the tank and tapped the chap on the shoulder." "He fell." "He was dead." "They were three Canadian tanks." "All the crews were dead there." "On one ridge there were over 40 British tanks knocked out." "They were knocking them out as if it was a shooting range." "The news that 400 tanks had been destroyed in the operation was greeted with disbelief by the staff at Supreme Allied Headquarters in England." "Montgomery was forced to call off the Goodwood attack after only three days." "Senior members of Eisenhower's staff began to openly discuss who would replace him." "I'm telling you, no." "And doctors were concerned about Eisenhower's blood pressure." "Ike hasn't been feeling so hot." "The slowness of the battle." "The desire to be more active in it himself." "His inward, but generally unspoken, criticism of Monty." "All these pump up his system." "It ain't good." "Eisenhower began to grumble to the one man with the authority to remove Montgomery." "The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, visited Montgomery on the day after Goodwood ended." "There were whispers that Churchill was there to sack him, but Monty was as confident as ever." "He convinced Churchill that a break-out was only days away." "While the two men were together, news reached them of an extraordinary event in the east that offered hope of a total German collapse." "On July 20th, a bomb had exploded at Hitler's headquarters on the Eastern front." "(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)" "(TRANSLATOR) German High Command announced that there had been an assassination attempt on Hitler's life at the Wolf's Lair, Rastenburg, and that Hitler was dead." "I was relieved." "Truly relieved." "Two hours later there was another call telling us that Hitler was alive and just slightly injured." "If only I could have crawled into a hole somewhere." "It was one of the worst messages I could imagine." "The attempt on Hitler's life had been made by some of his most senior army officers." "In its wake, everyone was desperate to prove their loyalty to their Fuhrer." "His purge of the army was to claim the lives of some of Germany's most capable soldiers, among them Field Marshal Rommel, who was forced to take his own life." "Rommel was replaced in France by Field Marshal von Kluge, a tough veteran of the Eastern front." "By the end of July, von Kluge had begun to share Rommel's view that resistance for every foot of France was too costly." "But it was dangerous now to question Hitler's judgement." "Von Kluge's failure to press the case for a new defensive line would have huge consequences for the German army in France." "Five days after the attempt on Hitler's life, the Americans launched Operation Cobra." "It was the great push in the west that Monty had been promising for so long." "3,000 aircraft were to lay a carpet of high explosives in a corridor just five miles wide." "We actually got out of the foxhole and stood there and looked up, and they just kept coming over and over and over." "Every plane in the United States Air Force." "The full weight of the American blow fell on a line defended by barely 50 tanks, 1,700 men." "(SPEAKS GERMAN)" "The first reports of the bombing began to arrive at the headquarters of the Panzer Lehr Division at a little after nine o'clock." "I knew this must be the opening of the American attack and that I must contact my forward positions." "By half past nine I had no radio contact left with anybody in the division." "My anti-aircraft batteries had barely begun to fire when they were silenced." "The American 1st Army pressed forward along the corridor blasted in the German line." "(GUNFIRE)" "(TRANSLATOR) Suddenly, much to my surprise," "I noticed Americans were walking past us." "They were totally carefree." "They'd broken through because our Panzer grenadiers just weren't there any more, and our tanks were completely buried in the mud." "By the first week of August, the American 3rd Army under General Patton was galloping unchecked across France." "American forces entered Avranches on July 30th and turned west into Brittany." "Then Patton's 3rd Army swung to the east, where the British were pressing toward the town of Falaise." "The Germans were just helter-skelter to the rear." "They were surrendering right and left." "Everybody never expected a... a catastrophe of that size happening." "The German soldier was being ground down by the full weight of the Allied war machine." "(SPEAKS GERMAN)" "(TRANSLATOR) We made jokes that we had to fetch our shells by bicycle or in a rucksack." "We were able to fire three shots, and that was it." "We were always under orders to save ammunition." "(TRANSLATOR) Some days there was nothing to eat." "They'd announce that there would be a meal, and we might get a bit of bread and some soup." "Then the field kitchen would be hit, and there'd be nothing again." "By the middle of July, the German army in Normandy had suffered 100,000 casualties." "Those that survived faced a stark new reality." "(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)" "(TRANSLATOR) We felt that we were in a fortress." "Fortress Germany." "Greater Germany." "We thought as long as the front in the east holds, we have to hold on in the west to protect our families at home." "(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)" "(TRANSLATOR) If you looked at the broad picture, it was impossible to win." "But we couldn't think like that." "We were there to defend." "Duty." "Honour." "Obedience." "Comradeship." "And that was it." "There wasn't a German general in France who now believed the Allied advance could be held in Normandy." "But no one dared to tell Hitler so." "On August 3rd, Hitler instructed von Kluge to launch a counter-attack to split the advancing Allied armies." "There would be no turning back." "To the protests of his generals, von Kluge could only answer," ""It is the Fuhrer's order. "" "(SPEAKS GERMAN)" "The orders were given for a German counter-attack on August 7th." "The same orders were intercepted and read by the code-breakers at Bletchley Park." "The Allies were waiting." "The Germans had prayed for bad weather." "Their prayers went unanswered." "Allied fighter bombers began to swarm above the advancing Panzer divisions." "Hitler's insistence on a counter-attack presented Monty with an extraordinary opportunity." "The remnants of two German armies, 100,000 men, risked being trapped at Falaise in the jaws of the advancing British and American armies." "Field Marshal von Kluge decided to issue orders for a retreat before it was too late." "Hitler was furious, and von Kluge was relieved of his command." "But the retreat went ahead." "It had become a race against time." "Actually witnessing it was awesome." "Long Toms. 8-inch howitzers." "105-millimetre howitzers." "155-millimetre howitzers." "All pouring death and destruction onto this German 7th Army trying to escape the noose that's been drawn around their necks." "It was such an indescribable mess." "It's something that...that one could never, ever dream of, let alone witness." "It was the final act in the unforgiving battle of attrition that had swept through the wheat fields and hedgerows of Normandy." "The battle had been won by the overwhelming weight of Allied war materials, artillery and armour, above all, Allied aircraft." "There were roads absolutely choked with dead and dying." "The ground, you couldn't walk over without stepping on a dead horse or a dead man or some piece of arm or a leg." "It was the most hideous sight that one could imagine." "Some of the sights we'd seen, one couldn't help feeling sorry for what had to be inflicted on them." "The German army was disintegrating." "We were quite clear that we'd won the tournament." "It was just going to be a question of time." "Field Marshal von Kluge didn't witness the final destruction of the armies he'd commanded." "He'd been summoned home in disgrace." "But von Kluge didn't reach Berlin." "By August 21st, it was all over." "More than 40 German divisions had been destroyed in Normandy, 450,000 men." "Half of them had been killed or wounded." "Montgomery was the architect of the victory in Normandy." "But Monty's unflinching confidence in himself and his strategy had won him few friends." "As the final prisoners were being rounded up in the Falaise pocket," "Eisenhower announced that he would be taking over command of the Allied armies in France." "Ike said the change was long planned, but Monty wrote bitterly in his diary that Eisenhower was stepping in to scoop the credit for a victory he'd won." "(JAUNTY MUSIC: "ALOUETTE")" "The long weeks of attrition had cost the Allies 200,000 casualties, but they were over." "Monty had predicted before D-Day that his strategy for Overlord would take the Allies to the Seine near Paris by D plus 90." "The first American troops reached the river nine days ahead of his schedule." "♪ Et la tete!" "♪ Et le bec" "♪ Et le bec!" "♪ Et la bouche!" "♪" "Eisenhower thought he'd win his bet." "The war would be over by Christmas." "♪ Oh, alouette... ♪" "He couldn't have been more wrong." "♪ Alouette, je te plumerai" "♪ Alouette!" "♪ Alouette!" "♪ Alouette!" "♪ Alouette!" "♪ Alouette... ♪"