What I Watched: The thirteenth episode of Crusade in Europe, a documentary series adapted from Dwight Eisenhower’s book of the same name. The adaptation was done by Fred Feldkamp, and narrated by Westbrook van Voorhes and Maurice Joyce. This episode aired at 9:00 PM on ABC on July 28, 1949, and is available on DVD and Amazon Prime.
What Happened: Eisenhower and his fellow SHAEF commanders come up with their famous plan: landing on the Normandy Coast and then breaking out of Nazi encirclement, at which point they would move east towards Germany (02:10). Van Voorhes stresses the importance of capturing the Ruhr, the heart of the “Nazi war machine.”
The Nazis fill the Channel with aquatic mines. Meanwhile, Allied troops mass in England, numbering almost three million. This also, naturally, involves a massing of tanks and other vehicles, including experimental equipment like a tank equipped with heavy rollers up front to remove obstacles and the bazooka. We get extensive footage of training manouevres, including hand-to-hand combat and one unfortunate fellow lying on barbed wire so his companions can walk on his body.
In April, heavy air attacks begin on French and German railroad, wrecking the Axis supply lines. Once again, there are several striking overhead shots of explosions blossoming like flowers. The planned date for invasion was mid-June, but poor weather conditions raised doubts among planners. Eisenhower meets with the troops, and struggles to get soldiers to talk to him.
At the end of May 1944, the equipment is loaded onto the battleships, which itself is a massive operation involving a convoy of trucks heading down closed roads. As the weather turns poor, Eisenhower decides the attack has to be postponed. But a sudden window of clear weather provides an opportunity to attack. Eisenhower again repeats his belief in trust between military command and the rank-and-file. Finally, the planes take off, and Eisenhower has nothing to do but wait for the news of what happens on the beaches of Normandy.
What I Thought: The midpoint of a season is usually when my interest begins to flag, and boy is that ever the case here. This is a completely inessential episode of Crusade in Europe, serving as a procedural interlude in between the battles that the audience is really interested in. “Preparation for Invasion” feels like the third paragraph of an acknowledgements section, a proclamation of thanks of interest to no one who is not mentioned in it. The film footage, normally a source of excitement even when the narration flag, here consists mostly of corny and clearly staged training footage instead of the immediacy of battle.
The lack of action allows Feldkamp to repeat some of the documentary’s main thematic messages. So we hear twice about Ike’s attempts to connect with the troops, and the importance of trust between different levels of the military. We hear again about the importance of production, with both Allies and Axis described as proliferate manufacturers more than anything else. This is driven home by the van Voorhes’ narration about the abundant Ruhr Valley, and the long shots of Allied vehicles gathered in great number. I’ve talked about these ideas at length in previous write-ups, so I’m going to just note their re-appearance and make this an abbreviated entry.
I did want to note the episode’s vague reference to Churchill becoming “more optimistic”, which masks a much deeper history of disagreement. The idea of a cross-channel assault on northern France had been floated almost as soon as America entered the war. Eisenhower and other American decision-makers such as Roosevelt and Marshall had wanted this attack to be the first order of business, striking directly at Hitler instead of taking the long way around. Indeed, at one point this was agreed-upon policy. Churchill, on the other hand, had been vehemently opposed to this strategy, instead proposing the plan to attack North Africa and then Italy — what actually happened.
The decision to tackle the Mediterranean first was ultimately made because of political reasons — it was the only attack that was feasible to make before the end of 1942, which happened to be an election year in America. But it proved to be the right one, allowing American troops to gain experience while the Germans suffered major losses in Russia and Italy. Two years later, the drama repeated itself, with Eisenhower and Churchill taking the same positions despite circumstances having greatly changed. This time, the American perspective won out, and the attack was of course successful.
This is all a fascinating chapter in the history of the war, but you barely get a hint of it from Crusade in Europe. Its vision of the Allies as stoic and united friends papers over the tremendous amount of disagreement and sometimes outright disliked that happened at all levels of the Allied forces. But of course, 1949 was no time to embarrass Britain, still a staunch US ally, so Crusade naturally de-emphasized these debates, even when they would have made Eisenhower look better. Even hagiography has its limits.
Coming up next: We finally get a break from Crusade with… Howdy Doody? Why is it always Howdy Doody?
The Eternal Couch Potato 