Ike's Answer

The doughboys in their miserable foxholes, the tankmen warming up their machines, heard the apocalyptic thunder. They said: This is it. The star-shouldered planners, their work done, sat back to wait. They said: Let's hope this is it.

This was the climactic battle of the west. This was Ike Eisenhower's answer to the gloom-mongers who had said there would be nothing big on the western front until the end of winter.

On a 450-mile front from Venlo to Belfort, six Allied armies smashed into the tough outposts of Germany. Suddenly shedding its cloak of secrecy, the U.S. Ninth Army showed up on the left flank of the First Army, attacked toward Cologne behind the heaviest rain of bombs and shells the west had ever seen. The Third Army, whose assault on Metz last fortnight had touched off the winter offensive, probed into Germany below Luxembourg.

The U.S. Seventh Army advanced in the Vosges; the French First Army broke through the Belfort Gap. Still in reserve were the First Canadian Army, and the First Airborne Army, which may now bring off a successful Arnhem operation--at Arnhem or somewhere else.

In the first few days the pace of the advances was not so impressive as the explosive amount of human and material pressure which General Eisenhower had built up. Marseilles was now in full operation, feeding the armies from the south, and the first ships had come into Antwerp while the channel was still being cleared. Eisenhower had prepared for this battle by winning the battle of supply.

The Germans feared a breakthrough most in the north, but they could not bolster the north by leaving the Saar and the upper Rhine uncovered. They could not stand a rupture anywhere, because of the scarcity of reserves and the difficulty of moving them under the merciless Allied bombing.

In Italy, astute Field Marshal Kesselring had fought patient General Sir Harold Alexander almost to a standstill, but Alexander in turn was still pinning down 28 German divisions. In Hungary, the Germans were clinging desperately to Budapest; they had to hold it to shield Austria. It seemed too late and too risky to milk the south to reinforce the west. Least of all could the Germans weaken the line from the Baltic to the Carpathians, for there the Russians were cranking up what may be their heaviest blow of the war.

Germany was going through the fire. If she survived until spring she could claim another victory on the road to sure defeat.

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