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There were basically two reasons Eisenhower did not plunge on into Germany when his forces first reached the German border in September, 1944. One was that Eisenhower was being very cautious and conservative. He was not a brilliant battlefield general - he got and kept his job because he was an agreeable person who was able to get the Americans and British and Canadians to all pull together. Coalition warfare is traditionally very difficult and the affable Eisenhower was just the man for the job. Eisenhower wanted all his forces closed up to the Rhine before pushing on into the German interior. He worried over the possibility of offensives erupting from any enclaves of Germans left west of the Rhine.

But the main reason was logistics. There were not enough supplies on hand, of all kinds, but particularly ammunition and POL (petroleum, oil and lubricants). It took upward of a hundred thousand gallons of gasoline per day to keep a single armored division moving. The Allies as yet had no real port on the European mainland. The supply crisis could not be eased until the Allies had Antwerp and had its port facilities back in operation. Until that time practically all supplies had to come ashore over the invasion beaches, and be moved forward by truck. The French railroad system was wrecked by pre-invasion bombing. All trucks were taken from whatever unit they were assigned to and used to move supplies forward, but it was not enough. These trucks themselves used a lot of gasoline and were soon wearing out. There was only enough supplies for one big push, and Eisenhower elected to allow Montgomery to try his Operation Market-Garden, an effort to seize major bridges intact over the Maas, Waal and Rhine Rivers in Holland, which would put the Allies north of, outflanking, the German West Wall defensive belt and on the short road to Berlin. Everybody else had to be halted so Montgomery could have all the available supplies to try this plan, which unfortunately, failed. Another aspect of this episode is that while Montgomery was busy promoting Market-Garden, which would put British forces into position to drive to Berlin and "win the war", he was not taking Antwerp. Antwerp was in Montgomery's area, and he did not get around to taking the city until after Market-Garden was done. Antwerp is seventy miles from the sea up the estuary of the Scheldt River, and Montgomery did not get around to clearing the banks of the Scheldt of Germans with their cannons until November, so that supply ships could actually reach Antwerp.

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14y ago
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10y ago

why did eishenhower decide not to continue the drive towards berlin in the spring of 1945

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13y ago

supplies shortage and flank threat

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Q: Why did Eisenhower decide not to continue the drive towards Berlin in the spring of 1945?
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