Word: kluge
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Range of Destruction. Ike Eisenhower had moved to France and become a field commander again in order to be in at the kill. His tank-infantry teams, swinging in from behind, had brought Field Marshal Günther von Kluge's Seventh Army (20 to 40 divisions of the Reich's best troops) into range of destruction...
...late, Kluge, blinded by lack of air power, had learned what he was up against. In full daylight retreat, spread out on the roads, his troops had been chopped, torn, disorganized by an air assault that had no counterpart in all warfare...
They had shot a column over the Loire below Nantes (threatening a thrust toward Bordeaux). They had taken Angers in a drive that seemed aimed at Tours (the central supply base of World War I's A.E.F.). These threatened whatever help Kluge hoped to get from the south. They were bewildering feints, as well...
When the Americans reached Alençon, Field Marshal von Kluge recognized the mistake he had made. After Omar Bradley broke into Brittany (TIME, Aug. 7), Kluge had a choice to make. He could have brought his Fifteenth Army down from Flanders and his Nineteenth Army up from southern France and drawn the Seventh Army back so that the three could form a new front along the Seine and the Loire. But this would have involved leaving the Pas-de-Calais and Belgian robomb coasts and southern France open to attack...
...Kluge took a bolder course. He left the Seventh Army to hold the British and Canadians in Normandy. He counted on the Americans spending time to mop up Brittany while he was scraping together reserves to seal off the Brittany peninsula. But he had underestimated U.S. speed and daring. Leaving mopping-up to wait, the Americans had already taken Le Mans and were swinging north against the Seventh Army's rear when Kluge's reinforcements began to arrive over his battered roads. Underrating the American threat, Kluge threw his reinforcements into an attempt to push his dangling flank...