Microsoft Close Combat manual Trapped in the Falaise Pocket

Chapter 4 The Normandy Campaign in Close Combat 87

While Bradley’s First Army threatens only the Germans in Normandy, Patton’s Third Army threatens all German forces west of the Seine. Hitler himself decides to launch a major counterattack against the Third Army near Mortain, to push Patton’s troops back to Avranches. He orders von Kluge to send all ten available Panzer divisions in Normandy on a strike toward the Atlantic to cut off the Allied breakout and, with luck, perhaps even to destroy the Normandy beachhead. Unfortunately for the Germans, the Allies intercept and decrypt von Kluge’s orders, and when the counterattack begins, American troops stymie it, assisted by Allied air strikes.

Trapped in the Falaise “Pocket”

The German defeat at Mortain leaves the Seventh Army vulnerable to a counterattack that could encircle it and finish it off in Normandy once and for all. After the Third Army takes Le Mans on August 9, Montgomery orders Patton’s forces to proceed to the north, on the eastern flank of the battered Panzers at Mortain. On August 13, the American XV Corps reaches Argentan. Meanwhile, since the Germans have pulled troops away from Caen for their unsuccessful Mortain counterattack, more British and Canadian troops are able to move south from Caen, and the Canadian First Army captures Falaise on August 15.

As the American and Canadian armies converge from the north, south, and west, virtually all the German troops in Normandy are trapped between them, in the ever-shrinking Falaise “pocket” a 24-kilometer– wide salient along the river Orne. The only hope of escape for the remnants of the fifty divisions of the Seventh Army is to retreat to the east. As the Allied armies move in, the retreat becomes a rout, and within five days the pocket is closed. Strafed by Allied fighters and hampered by the narrow roads that they have used to their advantage in the preceding weeks, some 10,000 German soldiers are killed in what will later be called le Couloir de la Mort, or “Corridor of Death.” An additional 50,000 Germans are taken prisoner. Perhaps 20,000 manage to escape across the Seine, alone or in small groups, leaving much of their equipment, especially vehicles, behind them.

With the closing of the Falaise pocket and the German retreat across the Seine, the chase is on, and the outcome of the war is no longer in doubt. The casualty figures for the 77 days of the Battle of Normandy are staggering: The Germans lose 450,000 men, including 240,000 killed or wounded. The Allies take 209,672 casualties, with 36,976 killed.

“We must strike like lightning. When we reach the sea the American spearheads will be cut off. . . . we might even be able to cut off their entire beachhead. We mustn’t get bogged down with mopping up the Americans who have broken through—their turn will come later.”

Adolf Hitler, shortly before launching the ill-fated German counterattack at Mortain on August 6, 1944