Read The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe Online
Authors: William I. Hitchcock
And so the postwar era closed off inquiry instead of rais-
ing questions. After so much bloodshed and violence, Europeans and Americans welcomed a period of col- lective amnesia about the realities of war. Fortunately for posterity, the scholarship on the Second World War, and especially on the ways that we remember the war years, is burgeoning. More than half a century later, we now have the evidence, and perhaps the critical distance, to develop a richer, more complex history of the “good war” that incorporates both its glories and its misfortunes. The liberation of Europe will always inspire us, for it contains a multitude of heroic and noble acts, and was at its core an honorable struggle to emancipate millions of people from a vile and barbaric regime. But this book has suggested that when con- sidering the history of Europe’s liberation, we not lose sight of the human costs that this epic contest exacted upon defenseless peoples and ordinary lives. There is surely room enough in our histories of World War II for introspection, for humility, and for an abiding aware- ness of the dreadful ugliness of war.
P
RIMARY SOURCES RELATING to the Second World War are abundant, indeed, overwhelm- ing. In examining government records, memoirs,
private letters, newspapers, and thousands upon thou- sands of stunning photographs, I felt myself extraor- dinarily fortunate to have such archival riches to work with. At times, though, the scope of the sources was so intimidating that I thought back to Lytton Strachey’s depiction of the historian as a small person adrift on a wide sea: “he will row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a lit- tle bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity.” That has been my approach in these pages. In this endeavor, though, I have been guided by more than ocean currents. Many colleagues, friends, students, archivists, and librarians kept me on course, giving me prompt feedback and answering queries with great good humor and sincer- ity. This book would never have been possible with- out them, and I want to offer them a personal word of thanks.
My very first research trip related to this book was to the Fortunoff Video Archive in Sterling Library, Yale
University, where Joanne Rudoff guided me through the invaluable testimonies of witnesses and survivors of Hitler’s war on the Jews. These materials had a pro- found impact on the way I conceptualized the book. I am grateful to the Fortunoff Archive for permission to quote from these sources. The collections in the U.S. National Archives at College Park, Maryland, are so huge that no one could begin to work there without guidance from the excellent staff of archivists; I re- ceived welcome advice early on from Amy Schmidt of the military records branch, as well as from the atten- tive staff in the research room. The staff at the United Nations archives in New York helpfully made available the UNRRA records, which are a gold mine of insights into wartime and postwar European life. Mikhail Mit- sel at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Commit- tee in New York kindly helped me with the JDC papers. Frances O’Donnell, Curator of Archives and Manu- scripts at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library at the Harvard Divinity School, guided me through the Unitarian Service Committee records. Andrea William- son-Hughes of Save the Children forwarded to me a number of useful documents about Save the Children’s relief work in Europe. The staff of the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia was forthcom- ing with materials relating to AFSC’s work in postwar Europe. Natalia Sciarini of the Beinecke Library, Yale
University, facilitated my work in the Kathryn Hulme Papers. Susan Watson at the American Red Cross ar- chives in Lorton, Virginia, provided useful materials. I owe a special thanks to Richard Sommers and his staff at the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; its collection of first-person accounts, memoirs, letters, and divisional histories is invaluable for historians. Temple University’s library staff never once complained about the innumerable interlibrary loan requests I have made over the past three years, and David Murray in particular has been a great stal- wart of historical scholarship at Temple.
In Belgium, I was warmly welcomed by Dr. Dirk Mar- tin and Dr. Chantal Kesteloot of the extraordinary and still rather secret Centre d’Etudes et de Documenta- tion Guerre et Sociétés Contemporaines in Brussels. This institution served as my home during a Fulbright grant in Belgium, and while I was there, Dr. Martin shared with me his deep knowledge of the archives and of Belgium’s wartime history. I am also grateful to the incomparable Margaret Nicholson of the Commission for Educational Exchange in Brussels. Maggie has been introducing Americans to Belgium for many years, and she is perhaps that country’s most passionate advo- cate.
In Caen, France, at the Archives Départementales du Calvados, I was made welcome by the director, M. Louis Le Roc’h Morgère and his helpful staff, who pro- duced all sorts of archival treasures relating to the D- Day landings and the tragic destruction of Caen.
In Britain, I worked at the Public Record Office at Kew, now grandly renamed the National Archives. Ameri- cans are constantly amazed at the courtesy and unfail- ing assistance by the staff there; the PRO, as I still call it, is one of the wonders of the world, at least for the historian. The staff at the Imperial War Museum in Lon- don helped me seek out permission from the copyright holders of material deposited at the Museum so that I could publish quotations from a variety of documents and diaries. Though in some cases the Museum had lost contact with the families of those who had depos- ited papers there, I did receive many kind responses to my requests, sometimes in very touching personal letters. I should like to thank in particular Mrs. Elsie
M. Astley, Mrs. M. Caines, Jayne and Barry Greenwood, Mary Herbert, Keith and Jane McDougall, Brenda Mor- ris, Mr. Les Roker, and Diana and Peter White.
In Rome, I had particular assistance from Lorenzo Cos- ta, who helped me navigate the Archivio Centrale dello Stato during a rushed three-day sprint through the
records relating to postwar trials. I also want to thank Aldo Patania, of Temple University’s Rome campus, and the Dean of Temple–Rome, Kim Strommen, whose good humor and warm welcome made my trip to Rome unforgettable.
I have at various times imposed upon some exception- ally intelligent, skilled historians for advice and coun- sel. Daniel Cohen, Mark Lawrence, Fred Logevall, Len Smith, and Jeremi Suri offered comments, criticisms, and encouragement. I benefited from my colleague Greg Urwin’s careful reading of some early draft pages, which saved me from a few gaffes. My brother-in-law Jeremy Varon deserves special mention: he constant- ly challenged my ideas with a fierce intelligence that forced me to articulate and defend my theses. I have profited immensely from exchanges and arguments with him. My dear friends and anciens combattants, Paul Kennedy, John Gaddis, and Ann Carter-Drier of Yale University, were once again supportive, amiable, and always hospitable whenever I appeared on their doorsteps.
My literary agent, Susan Rabiner, played an invaluable role throughout the project, especially at the start, as I mulled over various ways to approach this subject. She gave me frank, direct, and wise advice that helped
me enormously in shaping this book. She then found the book a home at Free Press, where I have been awed by the smart, incisive editing skills of Bruce Nichols— with whom I started the book—and Martin Beiser, who did the lion’s share of the final editing. These two are the best in the business, and I count my lucky stars that I had the chance to work with them.
This has been a Temple book from the very start, and it is to my friends at Temple that I owe most. In 2004, an extraordinary person named Susan Herbst, then the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, hired me to come to Temple, and I am eternally grateful to her for her confidence in me and her unflagging friendship. In the Temple history department, three young historians of great promise became friends and trusted confidants during the writing of this book. Kristin Grueser helped me work through mountains of relevant periodicals; Holger Löwendorf combed a number of useful German sources; and David Zierler offered detailed readings of early drafts. To work with students of their caliber is a privilege.
At Temple, I found the things that academics yearn for: smart, hardworking, and fun colleagues who are also dear friends. Richard and Marion Immerman have been warm and welcoming neighbors, as well as wise
counselors, since the day Liz and I moved in across the street. Vlad Zubok’s charm and wisdom are incompa- rable. Beth Bailey read many of these pages and gave me superb advice and gentle cautions, while David Farber’s energy, abundant good humor, and intellec- tual rigor have motivated and inspired me. Drew Isen- berg and Petra Goedde have opened their home with inexhaustible generosity, and over countless dinners, with our various offspring reenacting the Normandy invasion in their basement, I have learned much from these two about scholarship and friendship.
As ever, David and Lee Hitchcock cheered me on during these past few years; they are models for me of how to live a life in which ideas matter. To Liz, Ben, and Emma, who tolerated my long absences from home and my va- cant looks at the dinner table as I rewrote sentences in my head, I can only apologize, thank them, and offer this book with all my heart as a token of my love.
Preface: A Cemetery in Luxembourg
1. John Babcock, Taught to Kill (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2005), 54.
PART I: LIBERATION IN THE WEST
Prologue: D-Day
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N. J.: Doubleday, 1948), 263.
Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, 270. 1: “ Too Wonderfully Beautiful”
Ernie Pyle, Brave Men (New York: Henry Holt, 1944), 256–57.
The excellent if dry official histories are Gordon A. Harrison, Cross- Channel Attack (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1951); Martin Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit (Washington, D.C.:
Office of the Chief of Military History, 1961). The rel- evant British volume is L. F. Ellis, Victory in the West, vol. 1, The Battle of Normandy (London: HMSO, 1962). Journalists with superb access to the leading officials have contributed excellent histories of the landings and subsequent fighting. Chester Wilmot’s The Strug- gle for Europe (New York: Harper, 1952) offers a robust defense of General Montgomery from any criticism, yet remains a superb history of the war’s final year. John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy (London: Cape, 1980) and Max Hastings’s Overlord (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1984) integrate sophisticated analyses of military operations with eyewitness testimony gath- ered from soldiers’ diaries and memoirs, and have de- servedly won wide readerships.
Ronald J. Drez, Voices of D-Day: The Story of the Al- lied Invasion, As Told By Those Who Were There (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994). Other such cut-and-paste collections, which offer snippets from interviews, letters, and diaries without much analysis or context, include Jonathan Bastable, Voices from D-Day (Newton Abbot, U.K.: David & Charles, 2004); John C. McManus, The Americans at D-Day: The American Experience at the Normandy Invasion (New York: Forge, 2004); Robin Neillands, D-Day: Voices from Normandy (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring
Press, 2004); David Stafford, Ten Days to D-Day: Citi- zens and Soldiers on the Eve of the Invasion (New York: Little, Brown, 2004).
Jean- Claude Valla, La France sous les bombes américaines, 1942–1945 (Paris: Librarie Nationale, 2001), 11. Similar figures are given in Eddy Florentin, Quand les alliés bombardaient la France, 1940–1945 (Paris: Perrin, 1997).
Examples of local and firsthand accounts are Ed- ouard Tribouillard, Caen après la bataille: la survie dans les ruines (Rennes: Ouest-France, 1993); Hélène Dufau, Le tragique été Normand (The tragic Norman summer) (Paris: La Nouvelle France, 1946); Maurice Lantier, Saint-Lô au bûcher (Saint-Lô on the pyre) (Saint-Lô: Société d’archéologie et d’histoire de la Manche, 1969); Joseph Poirier, Le martyre de Caen (Le Mans, 1945); Philippe Huet, Les rescapés du Jour-J: les civils dans l’enfer (The survivors of D-Day: Civilians in hell) (Paris: Albin Michel, 2004 ed.); J.-P. Lafontaine, Mémoire de ma ville: Condé-sur-Noireau, ville martyre (n.d.). In the rich two-volume collection of firsthand testimonies gathered and published by René Herval in 1947, the testimonials about the experiences of specific war-scarred towns bear revealing titles: “ The Terrors of a Small Village,” “Exodus from Saint-Lô,” “ Valognes
Devastated,” “ The Agony of Granville,” “ The Double Agony of Vire,” “ The Suffering of Argentan,” and, sim- ply, “Falaise is No More.” René Herval, Bataille de Nor- mandie: Récits de Témoins, 2 vols. (Paris: Editions de Notre Temps, 1947). An early take on the liberation in Normandy, more a survey of data than an interpreta- tion, is Marcel Baudot, Libération de la Normandie (Paris: Hachette, 1974). New, more analytical scholar- ship on the liberation can be found in H. R. Kedward and Nancy Wood, eds., The Liberation of France: Im- age and Event (Berg: Oxford, 1995); Henri Amouroux, Joies et Douleurs du Peuple Libéré: La Grande Histoire des Français sous l’Occupation (Paris: Laffont, 1988); Olivier Wieviorka, Histoire du débarquement en Nor- mandie: Des origines à la liberation de Paris, 1944–45 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2007); and the excellent study by Hilary Footitt, War and Liberation in France: Living with the Liberators (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Imperial War Museum [hereafter IWM] 99/16/1, Cor- poral L. F. Roker, 1st Battalion, Highland Light Infantry; IWM 99/16/1, Ivor Astley, 236 Antitank Battery, 59th An- titank Regiment, 43rd Wessex Infantry Division, Tank Alert (Elms Court, U.K.: Arthur Stockwell, 1999); IWM 99/61/1, Combat Diary of Major Edward McCosh Elliot, 2nd Battalion, Glasgow Highlanders; and IWM 03/28/1,
Major Maurice Herbert Cooke, officer commanding B Company, 8th Battalion, Royal Scots. For similar views expressed by American GIs in Normandy and France in general, see Peter Schrijvers, The Crash of Ruin: Ameri- can Combat Soldiers in Europe in World War II (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 124–31.
A. J. Liebling, Mollie and Other War Pieces (New York: Ballantine, 1964), 213.
Public Record Office [hereafter PRO], WO 219/3727, “Preliminary Report on Recce of British Beachhead,” Lt. Col. D. R. Ellias, June 9–12, 1944.
Stephen Ambrose makes the same assumption: Normans had “quite accommodated themselves to the German occupation,” he claimed; there was “no food shortage,” and local wine cellars were brimming. Am- brose was unfamiliar, apparently, with French sourc- es about life in wartime Normandy. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 50–51.
Jean Quellien, Opinions et comportements poli- tiques dans le Calvados sous l’occupation allemande (1940–1944) (Caen: Université de Caen Basse-Nor-
mandie, 2001), 13, 390. The following paragraphs draw heavily from this outstanding local study. Professor Quellien has devoted over two decades to the analysis of Calvados under occupation, and the results of his research have been published in dozens of books and articles.
Quellien, Opinions et comportements, 264–72.
Quellien, Opinions et comportements, 338–47.
Archives départementales du Calvados [hereafter ADC], M 12127, Prefect Michel Cacaud, March 4, 1944; and report of May 6, 1944, on the impact of defensive preparations on the economy.
Quellien, Opinions et comportements, 389–417.
ADC, M 12127, report of May 6, 1944; Bernard Gar- nier and Jean Quellien, Les victimes civiles du Calva- dos dans la bataille de Normandie (Caen: Université de Caen, 1995), 21–28.
Estimates of civilian deaths in Normandy have var- ied over the years, but recent research has settled on the following figures: Calvados, 8,140; Orne, 2,200; Manche, 3,800; Eure and Seine-Maritime, 5,750. See Christophe Prime, “Les bombardements du Jour J et
de la bataille de Normandie,” in Bernard Garnier et al., Les populations civiles face au débarquement et à la bataille de Normandie (Caen: Université de Caen, 2005), 31–47, and Garnier and Quellien, Les victimes civiles, 13–20.
Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt, The Bomber Command War Diaries (London: Viking, 1985), 523.
Garnier and Quellien, Les victimes civiles, 35; Wes- ley Frank Craven and James Lee Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 3, Europe: From Argument to V-E Day (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 190.
In addition to primary sources and memoirs avail- able in the ADC, there are extensive published materi- als relating to the fate of Caen in the battle of Norman- dy, mostly gathered by the staff of the departmental archives of Calvados and of the University of Caen. These texts faithfully reproduce dozens of personal testimonies. See the four-part series published by the archives, L’Été 1944: Les normands dans la battaile (Caen: Conseil général du Calvados, 1997–2000); and Cahiers de mémoire: Vivre et survivre pendant la Ba- taille de Normandie (Caen: Conseil général du Calva- dos, 1994). There is also bountiful primary source doc-
Hastings, Overlord, 111–22.
Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces, 198.
Testimony of Bernard Goupil, in Michel Boivin, Gé- rard Bourdin, and Jean Quellien, Villes normandes sous les bombes, juin 1944 (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 1994), 87–102.
Poirier, Le martyre de Caen.
Hastings, Overlord, 129–51.
IWM 94/10/1, Mrs. Collette Day, typescript memoir.
Cahiers des mémoire, testimony of Mlle. Cécile Da- bosville, 151–56. They were finally transported by the Canadians to Creully. For details, see the two-part re- port by P. Faudet in Liberté de Normandie, July 24 and August 5–6, 1945, “La verité sur les caverns de Fleury- sur- Orne.”
Hastings, Overlord, 222.
Middlebrook and Everitt, Bomber Command War Diaries, 539.
IWM 87/35/1, D. Cooper; IWM 90/20/1, Captain W.
Caines, 4th Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment, 43rd Wessex Infantry; IWM 90/6/1, J. Y. White, Gunner, Roy- al Artillery.
PRO, WO 219/3727, “Reconnaissance Report on Caen,” Capt. E. G. de Pury, June 12, 1944.
ADC, I J 16/7, Journal des Bénédictines de Caen, juin-septembre 1944, Abbaye Notre-Dame de Bon- Sauveur.
IWM 87/35/1, D. Cooper.
IWM 91/13/1, Major A. J. Forrest, 335 Battery, 107 Regiment, Royal Artillery.
IWM 95/19/1, Sgt. R. T. Greenwood, 9th Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment.
ADC, 20 W 5, inventory of damage.
IWM 87/44/1, K. W. Morris, 4th Armoured Brigade.
IWM 90/20/1, Capt. W. G. Caines, 4th Battalion, Dor- setshire Regiment, 43rd Wessex Infantry Division.
IWM 78/68/1, Lt. William A. Greene.
IWM 98/16/1, A. G. Herbert, 4th Battalion, Somer- set Light Infantry.
IWM 87/44/1, K. W. Morris, 4th Armoured Brigade.
IWM 91/13/1, Major A. J. Forrest, 335 Battery, 107 Regiment, Royal Artillery.
Roscoe C. Blunt, Foot Soldier: A Combat Infan- tryman’s War in Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2002), 41.
IWM 87/44/1, K. W. Morris, 4th Armoured Brigade; IWM 95/19/1, Sgt. R. T. Greenwood, 9th Battalion, Roy- al Tank Regiment.
David Kenyon Webster, Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper’s Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Random House, 2002), 48.
IWM 78/35/1, Madame A. de Vigneral. Even the of- ficial history acknowledges widespread looting by sol- diers. In Ouistreham, the 207th Civil Affairs Detachment noted on June 12: “Looting by troops pretty general. British prestige has fallen here today.” F. S. V. Donni- son, Civil Affairs and Military Government: Northwest Europe, 1944–1946 (London: HMSO, 1961), 74.
IWM 91/13/1, Major A. J. Forrest, 335 Battery, 107 Regiment, Royal Artillery.
IWM, 98/16/1 A. G. Herbert, 4th Battalion, Somer- set Light Infantry; IWM P 182 Major G. Ritchie; IWM 99/61/1 Edward McCosh Elliot, 2nd Battalion, Glasgow Highlanders.
PRO, WO 219/3728, Civil Affairs report, August 30, 1944.
ADC, Liberté de Normandie, September 24–25, 1944, R.-N. Sauvage, “La grande pitié de la basse-normandie monumentale.”
Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government: Northwest Europe, 101.
“Civil Affairs Agreement—France,” in Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government: Northwest Eu- rope, 472–76. Also see PRO, WO 219/3727, “Report on Recce of Second Army area,” June 19, 1944, on appoint- ment of Coulet and brief visit of de Gaulle to Bayeux on June 14. François Coulet (1906–84) was an early ad- herent to de Gaulle’s London-based Free French move- ment, and had been named as de Gaulle’s delegate in liberated Corsica in September 1943—the first French territory outside of Africa to be liberated. Since Novem-
ber 1943 he had been preparing for the takeover of po- litical control in France. Although determined to assert France’s sovereignty, he proved an able go-between with the Allied armies in liberation France; he went on to a long postwar career as a diplomat. See François Coulet, Vertu des temps difficiles (Paris: Plon, 1967).
“Report of Service with 82nd Airborne,” June 15, 1944, in Coles and Weinberg, Soldiers Become Gover- nors, 723.
Historical Division Interviews with Major James H. Litton, surgeon, and Major Harry Tousley, 298th Gen- eral Hospital, July 23 and July 29, 1944, NARA, RG 498, European Theater of Operations, Historical Division, Administrative File, Cherbourg Notes, box 115.
Report on CA Detachment A1A1, Cherbourg, Lt. Col. Frank O. Howley commanding, in Coles and Weinberg, Soldiers Become Governors, 730–38. The French au- thorities in Calvados endorsed this positive appraisal of the Allied role, and singled out the 209 CA detachment in Caen for its “admirable sensitivity” and support in reviving the distraught city. ADC, 21 W 16, Prefecture du Calvados, Section Militaire de Liaison, January 31, 1945. For a more detailed look at Cherbourg in this pe- riod, see Footitt, War and Liberation, 66–94.
Report on CA Detachment A1A1, Cherbourg, Lt. Col. Frank O. Howley commanding, in Coles and Weinberg, Soldiers Become Governors, 732.
On “les tondues,” or the sheared women, see Alain Brossat, Les Tondues: un carnaval moche (Paris: Man- ya, 1992); for estimate of numbers of shearings, see the pioneering study by Fabrice Virgili, Shorn Women: Gender and Punishment in Liberation France (Oxford, U.K.: Berg, 2002), 52.
Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military His- tory, 1966), 633; Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Sup- port of the Armies, vol. 2, September 1944–May 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military Histo- ry, 1959), 134–48. The Red Ball Express ran from August until November; it was joined by the White Ball route from Le Havre and Rouen to forward areas, and the Red Lion route from Bayeux to Brussels. Edna Greene Med- ford, “’Keep ‘em Rolling’: African American Participa- tion in the Red Ball Express,” Negro History Bulletin, December 1993.
ADC, 21 W 15/2, le Commissaire de Police, Trouville- sur-Mer, à M. le Prefet du Calvados, December 16, 1944; ADC, 21 W 16, Report of Chef d’Escadron Coulin,
Gendarmerie Nationale, January 16, 1945; ADC, 21 W 16, Commissioner of Police in Vire to the Prefect of Cal- vados, February 3, 1945; passage on Mézidon cited in Françoise Dutour, The Liberation of Calvados (Caen: Calvados County Council, 1994), 138; ADC, 21 W 16, Re- port of Chef d’Escadron Coulin, Gendarmerie Nation- ale, Commandant la Compagnie du Calvados, March 19, 1945; ADC, 9 W 45, le Prefet du Calvados au Com- missaire regional de la République à Rouen, March 24, 1945.