DZ Season 064 Part 39. End the War in 44 – Only Human – JCH Lee 3 – For the Overlord Supply Build Up Somervell Needed His Best Man.

DZ Season 064 Part 42. End the War in 44 – Only Human – JCH Lee 4 – Lee Always Had Paris.

In 1944/1945 General JCH Lee, was the Supremo of supply in the European Theatre of Operations under both Eisenhower, as the theatre commander, and under the great overlord of American logistics, General Brehon Somervell, who sat directly, alongside the Army commander and the Army Air Force commanders, under General Marshall, the Chief of Staff. There was no more a controversial figure in Eisenhower’s command than General Lee – no, not even George Patton. Stephen Ambrose, in his book Citizen Soldiers, wrote about what is probably Lee’s most villified exploit: Lee's best-known excess came . . . at the height of the supply crisis. Eisenhower had frequently expressed his view that no major headquarters should be located in or near the temptations of a large city, and had specifically reserved the hotels of Paris for the use of combat troops on leave. Lee nevertheless, and without Eisenhower's knowledge, moved his headquarters to Paris. His people requisitioned all the hotels previously occupied by the Germans, and took over schools and other large buildings. More than 8,000 officers and 21,000 men in sos (“the Service of Supply”) descended on the city in less than a week with tens of thousands more to follow. Parisians began to mutter that the U.S. Army demands were in excess of those made by the Germans. Was this a fair comment? It looks to be a pretty cut and dry point of view when you look at what many of the most respected historians wrote about this incident in Part 37 of this series, condemning Lee’s move. Tag words: General JCH Lee; Eisenhower; General Brehon Somervell; General Marshall; George Patton; Stephen Ambrose; Citizen Soldiers; Paris; sos; Service of Supply; Carlo d’Este; Geoffrey Perret; Raoul Nordling; Choltitz; FFI; de Gaulle; Major General Jacques Philippe Leclerc; French 2ndArmoured Division; Koenig; Bedell Smith; Hank H Cox; The General Who Wore Six Stars; President Roosevelt; FDR; Russell Weigley; Rommel; Dominic Graham; Shelford Bidwell; Coalitions, Politicians and Generals; SHAEF; Nigel Hamilton; The Battles of Field Marshal Montgomery; Montgomery; Alan Brooke; Is Paris burning; Bradley; Third Army;

DZ Season 064 Part 41. End the War in 44 – Only Human – JCH Lee 5 – Lee and His Train.

Logistics is the ball and chain of armoured warfare said General Heinz Guderian – and that was definitely a topic that he was qualified to speak on. Tag words: Logistics; General Heinz Guderian; Somervell; John Kennedy Ohl; Supplying the Troops; General Brehon Somervell; ETO; European Theater of Operations; SOS; Service of Supplies; Russell Wegley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; General JCH Lee; General Marshall; Major General James E Chaney; Carlo d’Este; Bolero; Roundup; Hank H Cox; The General Who Wore Six Stars; US Army Air Corps; Larkin; Eisenhower; General Clark; Lord Leathers; Operation Torch; General Jacob Devers;

DZ Season 064 Part 40. 0393 DZ WHOLE End the War in 44 – Only Human – JCH Lee 4 – Lee and The Battle of the Atlantic - Part 40

The formidable Nazi war machine was powerless to stop the build up in Britain of Allied troops shipped from the USA and Canada. But in early 1943 Doenitz was winning the Battle of the Atlantic against that other, essential, component that those troops needed, being transported in very vulnerable slow or just plain vulnerable, fast merchant ships. As Paul Kennedy wrote in his book Engineers of Victory: The increasing flood of U.S. and Canadian troops to Britain was transported by an entirely different method — the great liners of Cunard, which, when stripped inside to the bone, could each carry 15,000 GIs at a speed that even a fleet destroyer couldn't keep up with, let alone a U-boat. But, to repeat an earlier question, what would two to three million fresh soldiers do in the United Kingdom if they lacked food, fuel, and munitions? Tag words: Doenitz; Battle of the Atlantic; Paul Kennedy; Engineers of Victory; Cunard; Hitler; Fortress Europe; John Kennedy Ohl; Supplying the Troops; Somervell; U-Boat campaign; Third Reich; HX 229; SC 122; Operation Bolero; Operation Sledgehammer; Operation Roundup; Operation Overlord; General JCH Lee; WSA; War Shipping Administration; Lord Leathers; full and down; Operation Torch; The Center Task Force; Hank H Cox; The General Who Wore Six Stars; sos; Service of Supplies; C.S. Lewis; Chronological Snobbery; Gulf War; Operation Desert Storm; OPD; War Department General Staff, Operations Division; Victory Program;

DZ Season 064 Part 39. End the War in 44 – Only Human – JCH Lee 3 – For the Overlord Supply Build Up Somervell Needed His Best Man.

To manage the buildup and subsequent supply of the American troops being shipped to Europe for the planned invasion of Hitler’s Festung Europa, Fortress Europe, Hank H Cox, in his biography of General JCH Lee, The General Who Wore Six Stars, wrote: The Allied governments had determined that Germany would be their top priority. After Germany was defeated, they would make Japan their primary focus. But conquering Germany meant it would be necessary to invade Europe, and that would require an amphibious assault across the English Channel. Thus a materiel buildup in Great Britain of vast proportions would be the first essential step to wresting the continent from Germany's grip. To manage a buildup and subsequent supply of that magnitude in Europe, Somervell needed his best man — someone with proven ability that he could trust. Somervell achieved big things because he selected men who knew what they were doing and were determined to get it done. He chose General JCH Lee – did he choose wisely? There were and are many who say that he didn’t. This all plays a big part in why the Allies didn’t win the war in Europe in 1944 – with huge consequences with the voracious Russian bear devouring everything in its path to come out of World War II as a super power that rivalled the United States. Tag words: Hitler; Festung Europa; Fortress Europe; Hank H Cox; General JCH Lee; The General Who Wore Six Stars; Brehon Somervell; General Marshall; Pearl Harbor; General Lesley McNair; John Kennedy Ohl; Supplying the Troops; BOLERO; OVERLORD; European Theater of Operations; ETO; Services of Supply; SOS; Secretary Stimson; Major General Mark Clark; General Eisenhower; GeneralBradley; General Patton; Bedell Smith; Martin Creveld; Supplying War; Logistics; Rommel; Moving Mountains; Lieutenant-General William G Pagonis; Operation Desert Storm; General Homer M Groninger; Colonel Thomas B. Larkin; General James G Harbord; General Pershing;

DZ Season 064 Part 38. End the War in 44 – Only Human – JCH Lee 2 – The Biggest Jerk in the European Theater of Operations

For the most part the popular historians have been even harder on [General JCH Lee than the men who served with him]. Stephen E. Ambrose wrote in Citizen Soldiers that Lee was "the biggest jerk" in the European theater of operations. Hank H Cox, in his biography of Lee, The General Who Wore Six Stars, gave himself the task of answering this key question when he wrote Lee’s biography: The bigger question is whether Lee performed his job well, and that is a matter of some dispute. Indeed it is safe to say that Lee has come down in history to us as one of the most controversial personalities of the great conflict, or perhaps any American conflict.So I have to quote one final peer, a man of the highest rank and importance to the American war effort in Europe, who commented on Lee, in fairly glowing terms. But was he saying what he really thought? Tag words: General JCH Lee; Stephen E. Ambrose; Citizen Soldiers; Hank H Cox; The General Who Wore Six Stars; General Bradley; A Soldier’s Story; Com Z; Communications Zone; Eisenhower;General Marshall; General Brehon Somervell; G-4; G-3; G-2; Kennedy Ohl; Supplying the Troops; Joseph T McNarney; Goldthwaite Dorr; Colonel Henry S Aurand; World War I; Great War; Services of Supply; SOS; Army Service Forces; Lesley J McNair; Henry Arnold; Matthew 6:24; Patterson;