The Hitlerjugend was still holding off the Canadians and Poles on the northern shoulder of the kessel. Behind it, chaos reigned, with huge truck convoys trying to move eastwards under relentless Allied air attack and causing massive traffic jams. The Waffen-SS divisions fared better than most, and the vast majority of their support elements managed to escape eastwards before the pocket was sealed on 20 August. Elements of 23 German divisions were in the kessel. Command and control was breaking down; the frontline was being held only by small determined groups of men formed into ad hoc kampfgruppen. The Allied pincers were closing in, and late on 18 August a corridor only a few kilometres wide remained open. Hitler now tried to pretend that a new front should be established on the Seine. All that the German commanders in the pocket were worried about was getting out alive.

Holding the Falaise corridor

Hausser ordered II SS Panzer Corps and Das Reich, which were now outside the kessel, to hold open a corridor for the remainder of the troops trapped inside. During the afternoon of 19 August, escape orders were issued at an impromptu conference in a quarry. Hausser, Meyer, Teddy Wisch of the Leibstandarte and the three senior army officers left in the kessel worked out the plan.

The last remaining tanks were put at the head of columns and the breakout began. The now wounded Meyer himself led one column, riding in the turret of a Panzer IV, accompanied by his chief of staff, SS-Sturmbannführer Hubert Meyer. Eventually, the Hitlerjugend command group was forced to make its way on foot through the night until it reached German lines.

During the early hours of 20 August, Das Reich scraped together its last 20 tanks to launch a final attack to keep the escape route open. All day the Waffen-SS men battled to keep the Polish 1st Armoured Division at bay, thereby allowing the trapped Hitlerjugend and Leibstandarte kampfgruppen to reach safety. Inside one of their armoured halftracks was the badly wounded Hausser, who had lost an eye during an artillery strike. It took the Allies two days to clean up the remnants of resistance inside the Kessel, taking 50,000 prisoners and finding 10,000 dead Germans in the carnage. More than 3000 vehicles had been left behind, including 187 tanks, 252 artillery pieces, 157 light armoured vehicles, 1778 trucks and 669 staff cars.

The capture of Kurt Meyer

All the Waffen-SS panzer regiments were crippled during the Falaise battles. Few got away with more than 20 tanks, and Bittrich's corps reported on 21 August that it had no operational tanks at all. More importantly, many vehicles under repair had to be abandoned in the pocket, meaning no replacement tanks could be returned to action. Far more damage was done during the retreat across France to the German border in the last week of August and first two weeks of September. Allied air attacks and ambushes by French and Belgian resistance fighters inflicted more losses on the German convoys.

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