Talk:Northern France Campaign (1944)

Relation to Battle of Normandy

Before this entry goes any further, it would be wise to ponder just how it's going to sit in with the other related articles, particularly the one on the Battle of Normandy. How are we going to draw a line between Normandy and Northern France, and how are we going to deal with the several matters that cross over from the one conflict to the other? (If, indeed, it's sensible to consider them seperately at all)

It might actually be easier to decide this after writing the text rather than in advance - i.e., simply continue the Normandy entry, and then split it up into two pages when it gets too big.

It might also be worth pondering an Invasion of Western Europe entry, which could summarise events of June 1944 to May 1945 and then link to the various subsiduary battles: Normandy, Northern France, the Channel Ports, the Battle of the Bulge, and so on. Tannin

Yes, the existing Normandy page will need a bit of slicing and dicing. The (US) military tends to be precise about the beginning and ending dates of campaigns - the dates decide logistics, service records, who gets which ribbons, etc, and to them the last day of the "Normandy campaign" is July 24th, even though the popular accounts usually go through to the closing of the Falaise Pocket. If you google for "northern france campaign" and so on, you'll notice that divisional histories and such are extremely conscious of which campaigns they can claim to have participated in.

Ahh. That explains it. Yes, I did Google around, and it seemed a little odd. (I was actually just checking before I made a horrible howler by changing the general in charge from Patton (which I knew was wrong) to Montgomery (which was what I remembered) but I thought I better make sure that the Mongomery to Eisenhower changover hadn't already taken place.) Actually, I don't recall seeing thet phrase "Northern France campaign" used much at all by British historians, they seem to just roll the whole thing from 6th June on to the fall of Paris into one. But for our purposes, I think the split is useful - a single huge article would be too long. Tannin

Originally I thought the campaign division was obvious to everybody, but the writing process has been very educational - I haven't yet found any source material that explains how the US and Commonwealth interacted campaignwise. My working hypothesis is now that the common Allied concepts were "theater" and "operation", and formally-defined "campaign" was purely internal to US. Stan Shebs

I am experimenting a little here, and deliberately chose a shorter campaign as guinea pig. The idea is that this is a finer-grained rendition that accounts for the times in-between the famous battles - the "days of boredom" in between the "moments of terror", as it were. :-) Organizing by campaign is perhaps not as obvious to the average reader, but it has the advantage of accounting for all days of the war. I think you're right that it will need some kind of umbrella article to join the campaigns together. -sts

I agree. I've actually had that same thing in mind for the South Pacific War for some time: single-battle articles on (among others) Pearl Harbor, fall of the Phillipines and barious other parts of SE Asia, then the Battle of the Coral Sea, Midway, Milne Bay, Guadalcanal, Kokoda, Buna/Gona/Sananda, each of them designed to lead onto the next one in a more-or-less continuous narrative, with next battle and previous battle links at the bottom (the same way that it's done for Kings of England or US Presidents)and with a top-level entry to tie them all together. But there aren't enough complete Pacific Theatre articles to do this yet.Tannin

Another thought, to tie into military strategy; there was a whole series of plans that occasionally intersected with reality, and one could have an article or two describing the various plans and then cross-linking to articles about what actually happened. -sts

Yep. That gets tricky though, especially with Montgomery. He was actually quite good at adapting his plans as he went along (Second Alemain is an excellent example), but he had a mania for rewriting history after the battle so that he could pretend he planned the whole thing exactly the way it turned out. And, just to make it harder, sometimes he did plan the whole thing just the way it turned out. We certainly should look at the major invasion plans that didn't take place, but it could get us into pretty deep water if we try that on a tactical level! Tannin

Amen. The cogent summary is sorely needed though; the toplevel article makes it all sound like a triumphant march to victory, and it will be an eye-opener for some readers to hear about the arguing and fingernail-chewing that went on in the high command. Stan Shebs

Nearly Every Continental European war that the English/British have fought has involved a Northern France Campaign so I have moved it to Northern France Campaign (1944) to avoid confusion.

why Northern France? If an article is going to be written which about the campaing in France after the break-out of Normandy, shouldn't in be called the French Campaing? By late summer 1944 the Western Front stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland and had 3 Army Groups. Shouldn't it also cover the U.S. 6th Army Group once control was passed from AFHQ to SHAEF and never went anywhere near North France; Or does it only refer to the British 21st Army Group and the American 12th Army Group?

The British normally refer to this action as part of the North West European Campaign of which there are two in World War II 1939-1940 and 1944-1945 (sigh!)

It is arguable if a campaign should be described by country, it is often better to do it by lines, both natural and man made, or by a campaign season. This is because plans are laid to overcome barriers like the Siegfried Line or the Rhine and how to proceed to the next barrier, or lets hunker down for the winter and attack in the spring, rather than "today we are leaving France so we had better have another campaign". In Europe sometimes a natural barrier is the boarder (like the Pyrenees) but in North West Europe the natural barriers are not on the boarders of countries. The alternative of two campaigning seasons, 1944 and 1945, with the Battle of the Bulge in the middle, is probably a better way to divide the fighting on this front than by camaigns by country. Philip Baird Shearer 15:21, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Northern France Campaign" is what the US Army calls it, for the purpose of awarding medals, recording unit histories, etc. As part of that, they bound it by precise dates, even though the fighthing was continuous. As far as I know, no other nation in any other war has given it this exact name, as a proper name (thus we capitalize the "C") so it's unique and doesn't need the "(1944)". If one were to be really precise about all this, Western Front (WWII) would be the overall description while this article would confine itself to the campaign as defined by the US Army, then link down from here down to specific incidents, such as the siege of Metz. Your points are well-made, but you'd have to convince the Army to change its designation. :-) Stan 16:00, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No I don't, because:

any Northern France campaing article is likly to have captials if the author thinks it is THE only Northern France Campaing. I'll give you an example what would you call the campaign of which the Battle of Agincourt was a part? What about when the next time American invade France and capture Paris, what will they call it ;-)
it is done all over the place in Wikipedia, for example with the Army groups mentioned above, the US and British Armies did not call their army groups the American 12th Army Group and the British 21st Army Group the nation prefixes are tagged on in here so that they can be identified in Wikipedia .

If this is to be an article just about the US camapign honours then perhapse it should be moved to a name like US Northern France Campaign, You can then have a whole list of them, but the discussion above is about expanding this article to be much more than just the specific article about a US campaign honour. BTW do US forces get battle honours or just campaign honours? Philip Baird Shearer 16:52, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've had some debates with Phillip on this issue and I think we've reached a compromise. What I propose is that we loosely use the U.S. campaign time periods (especially useful for redirects and tend to break quite well), but we give them neutral names. As an example, I'm currently working on Battle of the Siegfried Line, which is basically the U.S. Rhineland Campaign, but because it's not using the official name, I can both include the actions of the British forces to the north and move the starting and ending dates a little bit (for example, I don't want to break the Lorraine Campaign, so I include it entirely within the Battle of the Siegfried Line).

We just need to come up with suitable names for this and the Central European Campaign (The Southern France Campaign, being conducted by the American 6th Army Group, I think can keep a non neutral name). Oberiko 14:12, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Moving the page

I'm going to move this page to Allied breakout and pursuit from Normandy. I know it's a bit long winded, but it's about the best non-ambigious, country-neutral name I can think of at the moment. Oberiko 03:35, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to revoke that statement. I think most of this page should probably be removed, as Operation Overlord covers most of the Northern France Campaign.

There is a lot of missing information in this article as well as egregious errors. Following is what really happened from somebody who was there.

The Northern France Campaign of World War II began on July 25, 1944, with General Omar Bradley launching Operation COBRA to break out from the Normandy beachhead, and concluded on September 14 with Belgium and most of France liberated from German rule.Operation Cobra was spearheaded by the First Army not General Patton's Third Army which did not enter the Battle for France until early August 1944.

The First Army Divisions involved in Operation Cobra were the 4th US Infantry Division in the center of the attack and the 9th and 30th

Infantry Divisions on the flanks of the 4th. Because of the nature

of the terrain General Bradley decided to launch the attack with three Infantry divisions rather than with his armored divisions. Backing up the attacking Infantry divisions were the 2nd and 3d Armored Divisions and the 1st Infantry Division which had been motorized for the attack.

The attack was preceded by a massive bombardment by 2 and 4 engine bombers. The ground area to be targeted was marked by fighter bombers dropping bombs. The smoke from those bombs obscured the St.LO - Perrier Road which marked the division between the German defense line and our own front line troops. Succeeding waves of planes dropped bombs on our own troops wounding and killing many of them including Lieutenant General Leslies McNair who was at the front as an observer. General McNair was the highest ranking officer killed in a combat zone in WW II. The 30th and 4th Divisions suffered terrible casualties from the missiles dropped by our own bombers but despite that the 8th Regiment of the 4th Division was able to make a penetration of about 8/10 of a mile which was unheard of in the fighting in the hedgerows. Following that initial break in the German defense, troops of the 4th Division's 22nd Regiment mounted the tanks of the 2nd Armored Division and exploited and widened the breakthrough. The 3d Armored and 1st Infantry also helped to expand the breakthrough and turn it into a breakout.

The German 7th Army in Normandy now realized that their defense line in France was no longer tenable and they began a massive retreat toward the Seine River. Much of the German units were captured in the Falaise pocket but more could have been captured if General Bradley had not been fearful of wounding and killing troops of the British and Canadians advancing from the North.

The race to liberate France was now on. It was so rapid that the Germans could not establish a defense line along the Seine River and the city of Paris was liberated on August 25 by the 2nd French Armored Division and the US 4th Infantry Division of the US First Army. Once Paris was liberated American troops moved northeast to liberate Rheims and cross the Belgian border liberating Bastogne and St. Vith which later became famous place names during the Battle of the Bulge.

I was with the 4th Infantry Division when it crossed the German Border on September 11,1944. Other divisions followed a few days later so I would say that it is accurate to write that the Battle of Northern France ended on Sept. 14, 1944.

For information on the W.W.II battles that immediately preceded it see Battle of Normandy.

After a slow start reminiscent of the previous month's stalemate, the German line finally broke under the assault of the VII an V Corps of the US First Army. and on July 30 the Americans entered the town of Avranches at the bottom end of the Cotentin Peninsula. South and west of Avranches the countryside was open, ideal for tanks. Patton poured the VIII and XV Corps through the narrow passage (Germans still being dug in east of Avranches), corps and division commanders personally directing traffic at times.

The 6th Armored Division went northwest to capture St Malo and Brest, while the 4th Armored Division went south to Rennes and St Nazaire. Initially, this was Patton's sole mission, but on August 3 he made a momentous decision to leave only minimal forces to mop up Brittany and move everything else to the East as quickly as possible.

The German 7th Army counterattacked at the small town of Mortain on the night of August 6 That attack threatened to cut off the 3d Army from the 1st Army but it was repulsed by the 30th Division aided by 4th Division artillery and the 22nd Regiment of the 4th Division plus rocket firing British Typhoon fighter planes. Units of the 3rd Army were already east of Mortain, and continued to press on. By August 16 the 1st Army had closed on Argentan, while the British had captured Falaise just to the North. Although the Germans began frantically withdrawing from the "Falaise Pocket", the Americans and British met on August 19, killing about 6,000 Germans and taking some 50,000 prisoner.

On the same day elements of 3rd Army reached the Seine, and on August 25 Paris was liberated. By August 31 the Meuse River and the Marne River had been crossed. At this point the supply lines were stretched very thin, and the primary limit to progress was fuel for the tanks.

Merge micro-articles?

I think it would be good to merge all the tiny, untended stubs that I just put in the "See also" list into this article, to provide an integrated narrative of the campaign rather than a collection of fragments. — B.Bryant 04:28, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]