Montgomery Refused to Close the Falaise Gap — Eisenhower Watched 50,000 Germans Escape in 48 Hours

On August thirteenth, nineteen forty-four, Patton's forces reached Argentan — eleven miles south of Falaise, with the road largely open. He called Bradley. He said he could close the gap. Bradley told him to stop. Between the halted American forces in the south and the struggling Canadian forces in the north was a fifteen-mile gap. Inside the pocket were the bulk of two German armies — the Seventh and the Fifth Panzer. Two hundred and fifty thousand men. Montgomery had told Bradley the Canadians would close the gap in less than forty-eight hours. It took six days. The gap did not close until August nineteenth, when Polish and American forces linked up near Chambois. Between twenty thousand and eighty thousand Germans walked out through that gap. They reformed. They fought again. Some of them were in the Ardennes in December. The halt order came from Bradley. But the boundary Patton was not allowed to cross was Montgomery's. The promise that made waiting seem reasonable was Montgomery's. The choice not to intervene was Eisenhower's. And the Polish First Armored Division on Hill two sixty-two at Mont Ormel, surrounded and outnumbered for two days, eighty dead, holding the last cork in the bottle above the last exit from the pocket — they held it. Not because anyone authorized them to. Because they came from Poland and they were looking down at the German army and they were not going to move. World War Two Demand finds the decisions history glossed over and gives them the weight they deserve. New story every week. #Montgomery #Eisenhower #FalaiseGap #WorldWarII #WW2 #MilitaryHistory #WW2Documentary #ForgottenHistory #Patton #Bradley #WWII #WW2Stories #Normandy #SecondWorldWar #PolishArmored