Operation Charnwood - Analysis

Analysis

Military historian Antony Beevor calls Operation Charnwood a partial success, because although much of Caen was taken, the British and Canadians failed to secure enough ground to expand the Allied build-up; the bulk of the First Canadian Army was still waiting in the United Kingdom for transfer to Normandy. Carlo D'Este states that unquestionably Charnwood did improve Second Army's position but with the high ground to the south of the city in German hands, Caen itself was useless. He writes that the capture of the city was too little too late, and a hollow victory. Chester Wilmot supports this view to some extent, stating that in order for Montgomery to have maintained a credible threat to German-occupied Paris, Caen's southern suburbs with their factories and communications network would have been a more significant prize. Historians John Buckley and Terry Copp note that by the time the city was captured, the Germans—weakened by the battles of late June and early July—had already established defensive positions on the high ground to the south of the Orne; positions that blocked the way to the open terrain of the Falaise plain. Copp, in a later work, notes how the British Second Army won an important operational victory during Charnwood; a position expanded on by the Society for Army Historical Research who consider the attacks to have succeeded both tactically and operationally. In Charnwood's aftermath, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed his concern that a breakout was now unlikely; it seemed as though the Germans would be able to keep the Allies penned up in Normandy. Montgomery did not subscribe to his chief's pessimism; in his opinion, the tenacity of the German defence was no barometer of its longevity. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was apparently of the same mind; he mentioned to Lieutenant-Colonel Caesar von Hofacker that the front-line in France could only be held for another three weeks. Hofacker was a member of the German resistance and linked with the Hitler assassination plot and according to historian Simon Trew, Rommel's comment led to the plot's timetable being decided.

The serious losses sustained in maintaining a static defence during June led to fractures in the German high command. On 1 July, Panzer Group West commander Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg had been replaced by Heinrich Eberbach, following disagreements with Hitler over how the campaign should be conducted. The Commander in Chief of Oberbefehlshaber West (OB West), Gerd von Rundstedt, soon followed. That evening, in a telephone conversation with Oberkommando der Wehrmacht head Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, von Rundstedt advised "Make peace, you fools." Taken to task over his endorsement of von Schweppenburg's recommendation for a withdrawal, he replied "If you doubt what we're doing, get up here and take over this shambles yourself". The following morning, informed that perhaps his health was "no longer up to the task", von Rundstedt resigned and was succeeded as OB West by Günther von Kluge. The costly battles in and around Caen and Saint-Lô convinced both Eberbach and von Kluge that their predecessors had been correct. The Germans had suffered heavily, leading Hitler to order Army Group B to temporarily abandon all major counterattacks and go over to the defensive until more reinforcements could arrive to bolster the front.

Trew contends that the capture of northern Caen had a psychological impact on the French population, convincing them the Allies were there to stay and that the liberation of France could not be far off. By Operation Charnwood's conclusion, Allied losses since 6 June had amounted to over 30,000 men, excluding those who had been evacuated due to sickness or those suffering from battle exhaustion. Buckley believes Charnwood to have been a good idea but one that proved better in concept than in execution, influenced as it was by the mounting political pressure on 21st Army Group to produce results. In contrast, Copp states that the broad-based assault plan across the entire front worked, preventing the Germans bringing to bear superior firepower on any one formation. He suggests that Charnwood should have produced a rapid breakthrough but concedes that the battle was one of the most difficult of the campaign. Buckley singles out poor cooperation between armoured and infantry units as one of the reasons for such high Allied losses; he is critical of the habit of tanks standing off from German positions and directing the infantry onto the objective like artillery, instead of moving forward to give close support. He further notes that from the German perspective, the Anglo-Canadian forces apparently lacked the desire or ability to press home their advantages, citing Kurt Meyer's opinion that during the battle the Allies allowed the opportunity of destroying his 12th SS Panzer Division to elude them. Buckley comments on the defensive power of the British and Canadian formations. The German practice of conducting immediate local counterattacks to retake lost ground cost them many of their best troops, losses they could ill-afford. He illustrates this with a typical action during which the Germans lost 13 tanks to British self-propelled anti-tank guns.