After landing in Normandy on D-Day and securing and linking up the five landing beaches, the next step for the Allies was to break out of the lodgment and move deeper inland. The city of Caen was an anchor of the German defenses, and something had to be done about it. After the optimistic plan of liberating Caen on D-Day failed, the city and its surroundings turned into the site of a bloody fight of attrition between Anglo-Canadian forces and the German defenders. In the end, the Allied breakout occurred far to the west, when American forces pushed through German lines in Operation Cobra (The Cobra Strikes); but what you might not realize is that Cobra very well might have failed if not for the Commonwealth sacrifice at Caen. The ancient Norman city of Caen is celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of its founding this year; all the more reason for us to write about its hard-won liberation in World War II. This is the first part of our article; the second part will be published soon.
 
Caen’s importance
Caen, was an important target for a good reason. It was the junction for several roads and railways, which the Allies would eventually need for their advance. Additionally, it sits astride the Orne River running south to north across Normandy (more like southwest to northeast at Caen), and the Caen Canal, a waterway running parallel to the Orne between the city and the shore. A pair of bridges (one of which was later renamed Pegasus Bridge) was already captured by British glidermen the night before D-Day (Taking Pegasus Bridge), but the additional crossing opportunities provided by Caen’s bridges were also needed to move significant numbers of troops.

The area directly to the southeast of Caen was also important. While much of Normandy was dominated by bocage, a labyrinth of thick, tall hedgerows that allowed the Germans to set numerous ambushes, here was a large stretch of open flat land. If British armored units could reach this place, they could bring their superior numbers to bear against German tanks in maneuver warfare. And, once the Germans were cleared out, the flat land would allow the construction of airstrips to station more planes near the frontline and provide the ground troops with better air support.

The main problem was that Germany was stationing significant armored forces, held in reserve for a counterattack against a possible Allied landing, near Caen. A total of 8 German armored divisions participated in the battle for Normandy, including the elite units 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (originally formed as Hitler’s personal bodyguard unit), 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich (known for its brutality and war crimes (The Martyr Village of Oradour-sur-Glane), 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend" (recruited from the Hitler Youth and receiving the best training available) and Panzer-Lehr-Division (originally a teaching and demonstration unit). As early as D-Day, German armor meant a constant risk of a major counterattack that could have possibly separated the landing beaches from each other and driven the Allies back into the sea. In fact, one of the lucky breaks the Allies got was that German commanders, following their doctrine, launched multiple small counterattacks in the first days of the invasion, instead of massing forces for a single large push.
 
One German debate underlying their decisions was about the placement of reserve tank forces. In the spring of 1944, Rommel (The Accomplishments and Legacy of the Desert Fox), who had experience with Allied air power in North Africa, wanted all the armor to be divided up into smaller units and placed very close to the shore so they would be immediately available for a counterattack against a potential Allied landing. His reasoning was that if the armor was placed further back inland, it would be decimated by Allied air attacks on the way to the coastline. In contrast, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Rommel’s superior, wanted to hold the tank back, allow the Allies to come deeper inland, and only commit the armored reserve once the main Allied effort was identified. In the end, Hitler imposed a compromise that pleased nobody: some of the tanks were placed near the coast (too few to do much good), and the rest placed in reserve (too few to make a difference once the Allied landings started), the latter under Hitler’s personal control, which meant neither Rommel nor Rundstedt could release them in a timely manner.

Montgomery’s goals
It’s often been said that General Montgomery (Montgomery – Part I), the British officer in charge of all ground forces for the landings, was overly optimistic and wanted to capture Caen on D-Day, followed by a quick breakout on the east by Anglo-Canadian forces. What’s often ignored is that the original plans were drawn up not by Montgomery, but by one Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Edgworth Morgan and his staff.

Montgomery’s own plan regarding Caen is surrounded by debate and controversy to this day. What’s certain is that after the initial attack on Caen failed, he settled on what he called his “master plan.” Commonwealth troops at Caen (in the east) would attack, but rather than trying to break through, they would just keep German armor busy and unable to move to the western half of the frontline, held by U.S. troops. Without the bulk of German armor opposing them, American troops would then capture the Cotentin Peninsula, the port of Cherbourg (The Liberation of Cherbourg), and eventually break out of the lodgment.

Some historians, mainly Americans who seem to like disparage Monty at every turn, frequently assert that he agreed with the original, unrealistic plan, and only changed it when it clearly failed, later lying about it having been the plan all along to save face. This view is largely based on the post-war writings of notable Allied commanders who disliked Montgomery. Most British historians, on the other hand, agree that Montgomery’s plan was never to break out at Caen, but to tie down the panzers. A more balanced view is that Montgomery was hedging his bets: he would break through if he could, but would still achieve something by keeping German tanks busy even if he couldn’t. For what it’s worth, Omar Bradley (Omar Nelson Bradley), one of the few senior officers who had to know the full plan, later wrote:
 
“The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them to their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus, while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen, we [the Americans] were to make our break on the long roundabout road to Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride, this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for while we tramped around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down the Germans. Yet strategically it fitted into a logical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded.“

It must be noted that Montgomery was also working under a pressing political goal, not just military ones. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were clearly growing into superpowers during World War II, and the previously dominant role of the British Empire was becoming precarious. It was deemed important that Britain should produce some spectacular victories “on her own,” without American help, and capturing Caen was to be one such feat. At the same time, however, Britain was scraping the bottom of its pool of manpower, so such victories also had to be achieved without heavy losses. These two contradictory directives put Montgomery in a bind.

The initial push toward Caen on D-Day failed for a number of reasons. The closest landing beach to the city was Sword, but bad weather pushed the tide in quicker and further than expected, reducing the size of the beach and limiting the speed with which troops could be put ashore while causing traffic jams at the beach exits. German resistance managed to further slow down the Allied advance, and the Germans even launched one counterattack that came dangerously close to splitting the beaches. In the end, it was no surprise that the coup de main attempt of the first day failed.
 
The Allies had a backup plan for just such a failure. Operation Wild Oats called for a multi-pronged attack around and into Caen, with a parachute drop to the south of the city, in the area the multiple prongs were to converge. However, the plan fell through when Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, commander-in-chief of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force, vetoed the airborne drop on the grounds that it would be too dangerous for the transport aircraft.

Operation Perch
Quickly realizing that a direct attack would not succeed, Montgomery salvaged the ground component of Operation Wild Oats and turned it into Operation Perch, a pincer movement to surround Caen from both sides. The advance gained some ground but was eventually stopped by dogged German defense in most places – except in one spot. At Caumont, further to the west of Caen, at the area where British and American lines met, several German battlegroups had been destroyed in the fighting since D-Day, creating a temporary gap in German lines on the night of June 9-10. This was an opportunity for British forces to pour through the gap and then turn east, occupying the high ground behind the Panzer Lehr Division, the German unit just to the east of the gap. Once that ground was captured, the German tank division would have to either withdraw or surrender.

Another British attempt to break through was canceled due to a bad storm over the English Channel that damaged the two artificial Mulberry Harbors the Allies used to bring supplies and reinforcements ashore. After these failures, Montgomery shifted his strategy to smaller, slower advances through a series of operations.
 
The second part of our article on the battle for Caen will be published in the near future. Join us on one of our tours visiting Normandy to explore the former battlefields around Caen.