These were arrayed in exterior and interior lines, with the intention of eventually drawing any attackers into the city for house-to-house fighting and heavy casualties. Two infantry divisions and one parachute division with associated elements, including ample artillery and machine guns, defended a formidable network of bunkers, pillboxes, emplacements, and trenches, all placed for mutual support. Paratroop General Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke, a wily veteran who had served under General Erwin Rommel in North Africa, commanded the 40,000-man garrison in Brest, which Adolf Hitler had declared a fortress to be defended to the last bullet. The Germans knew this as well, however, and had done a great deal to fortify and garrison the most important harbors in Brittany-especially Brest.Ī GI runs for cover from enemy fire on Brest perimeter. Securing another port, hopefully intact, would do a great deal to reduce the supply bottleneck still running through the Normandy beaches, and hopefully fuel Patton’s tanks. Although General “Lightning” Joe Collins’s VII Corps had captured Cherbourg a month earlier, the Germans had so thoroughly demolished the port that months would pass before it was again operational. Their primary objective was to capture the peninsula’s several important harbor facilities. The success of Operation COBRA was followed in short order by the penetration of American mobile forces into Brittany. With all of these dramatic events taking place, few noticed that one of the war’s bloodiest and most important operations was taking place far to the west, at the French port city of Brest-few, that is, except for the men who fought there in the sweltering summer days of August-September 1944. Patton would drive across France to the German border, leading to the liberation of Paris. In its aftermath, Allied forces would partially encircle and almost completely destroy German forces in Normandy and American tanks under General George S. Operation COBRA, the American breakout from Normandy at the end of July 1944, completely changed the dynamics of the fighting in western Europe.
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