«The D-Day»
by Francesco Riva and Lucas Turks
The democracies full of chatters, as Hitler had defined them, completed an
adventure to the limit of the unbelievable: they organize an invasion that never
in precedence, neither after that moment, employed so many men with an only purpose:
to free Europe. The invasion of Normandy seen with the eyes of the Germans and
the Allies.
The German preparation
On May 18 1944, the Oberbefehlshaber West (Supreme Commander of the Western
Front) General Gerd von Rundtstedt spent the whole day in trepidation. On over
6000 kilometers of Atlantic coast occupied from Germany, beginning from Norway
up to the region of Bordeaux in France, the troops of the Wehrmacht were on the
look out. The German Intelligence Service had communicated in the preceding days
that May 18 would have been the date of the allied attack. The day was ideal for
an invasion: high tide, calm sea, clear sky as in full summer. If the Anglo-Americans
had attacked, the "God of the weather" would have certainly been with them. Von
Rundtstedt as all other generals of the OKH (Ober Kommand Heeres, Supreme Command
of the Army), knew with inexplicable certainty that whatever date the Allies selected,
that day Germany would have fought for its own survival.
The hours slowly passed waiting for a signal from the sea or from the air that
announced the beginning of what would have been known as operation Overlord. Nothing
happened. It arrived the sunset and Von Rundtstedt rather than being happy for
having avoided the danger was deeply angered for the ineffectiveness of the German
information groups in England. The proverbial calm of this professional soldier
disappeared for some minutes changing into a stream in flood that poured curses
and insults towards all components of his staff. Indeed, his restlessness was
justified. Since the beginning of 1944, the Intelligence service of the Third
Reich had released innumerable statements with which, time by time, they designated
as probable places of landing: Norway, Zeland in the Low Countries, the mouths
of the Schelda in Belgium, the region around Brest in Brittany and even neutral
Spain that with its own harbors could guarantee a fast supply of the allied troops.
All alarms had revealed groundless. The only sure thing was that in Great Britain
something big was in preparation. After all, it was impossible not to notice the
monumental moves of troops between United States and the island of Albion. In
3 years, American Armed Forces had grown from a contingent of 170.000 men up to
more than 7.200.000, of whom 60% employed in Europe.
Certainly, the troops could serve for strengthening the bridge-heads created
in Italy that were bogged at the gates of Rome (that would have been freed only
on June 5 1944), but nobody among the high ranks generals believed this hypothesis.
France was the real target. Radio London continually broadcasted messages for
the occupied territory and main part of them was directed to the maquis, the French
partisans. The increase of activity of the forces of clandestine resistance showed
a superior wish of destabilizing the German rear areas in France and what could
be better motivation for similar actions if not an imminent invasion? Yet, two
dark points remained, both important where and when would the invasion have taken
place? Hitler had defined United States and Great Britain two "democracies full
of chatters", but nobody had succeeded in discovering a secret that, instead,
it would not have had to be such. Some people were thinking that it was a bluff
or it was another demonstrative action as that happened in 1942 in proximity of
Dieppe, where some Canadian units were massacred after a rash landing on the French
ground.
Von Rundtstedt was not among the optimists. He was aware of the strength of
the Allies and the weakness of the Germans. He had passed too many years in the
army to not realize that the Wehrmacht in 1944 was simply too weak to fight on
three fronts. In Italy, it could exploit the conformation of the territory for
fighting a trench war that favored the defenders but on the Russian front� The
situation in Russia was unbearable indeed. After the great victories in 1941 and
1942 summer, the Red Army had already taken the upper hand in the first months
of 1943. Thanks to the American material helps and to a spirit of sacrifice unique
in the world, the Russian soldiers had prevented the conquest of Moscow and Leningrad
and then harshly defeated the Germans at Stalingrad. The fall of the Volga's city
showed that the Russians had more strength. Not a military one, but probably a
moral one. The defense of the city, with the fights meter by meter even in the
sewerages and the following winning counterattack, had delineated the directives
of the new war conducted by the Soviet Union. There was no prisoner, each house
had to be considered as the last one. The guerrilla in Bielorussia and Ukraine
made insecure the German supply lines by provoking as many casualties as the first
line. Still in 1943, the Germans had launched a large offensive in the zone of
Kursk, but the reaction of the Russians had provoked a massacre among German armored
forces.
The Russian front was a kind of hell gate. It continuously asked new soldiers.
The Wehrmacht in 1943 had arrived to have around 3.500.000 men to east by maintaining
a line of continuity that went from Leningrad to the Black Sea, for 2000 Kms.
In the same year, 2.086.000 German soldiers (among dead, wounded, sick and frostbitten
ones) had been knocked out in Soviet Union. The recruited young people were sent
in Russia, while the less weakened among those people, who could not sustain the
fight any longer in the steppes, got a calmer occupation in the back areas, that
were in France! In fact, those who would have had to face the invasion, in many
they cases had even difficulties to have a normal life. There were absurd situations
indeed, as for instance the creation of a division, the 70th infantry that was
entirely composed by men suffering of dyspepsia to whom a special ration had to
be provided in order to avoid deadly cases of dysentery. No resistance would have
been possible for Germany if Hitler, finally, had not realized that to West it
was necessary to manage an amelioration of the troops.
Von Rundtstedt had sent several claims to the OKH since half 1942 but the situation
in Soviet Union was still favorable, the oil wells of the Caucaso were next to
be conquered and the Führer didn't want to hear speeches about the weakness
of a secondary front as French. In 1943, however, the hard defeats in Russia had
also opened Hitler's eyes. In the directive number 51 on November 3 1943, he recognized
as absolute priority the strengthening of the French coastal defenses, in sight
of a possible Anglo-American invasion. At the base of this decision, in contrast
with the preceding behavior of war, Hitler set the absolute necessity to safeguard
the Ruhr, industrial heart of Germany that would have been easily attacked if
France had been freed. To East, the territories that could be surrendered to the
Red Army without an only Russian soldier walked on German land were immense, while
to West the threat was very near. The Allies already conducted nighttime and diurnal
air offensives over all the most important factories. With a threat by land, the
German industrial potential would have been annulled. Since that directive, the
Nazi propaganda started to glorify the so-called "Atlantic Wall" that was "an
immense and insuperable protection of the Fortress Europe."
How much truth was there in the words of Nazi propaganda? Few, saying the truth.
Only the zone of Calais had been heavily strengthened besides the harbors of Cherbourg
in the Cotentin and of Brest in Western France for the rest the Wall had remained
on the paper. In 1942, Albert Speer and his organization Todt had promised 15.000
Blockhauses (fortified bunkers) on the French coast within May 1 1943. One year
after, only a half was indeed available. The Wehrmacht had become famous in the
world for the ability with which the Blitzkrieg, the flash war, had been conducted
in the first months of WW2. Now, with the lack of material, the war of position
seemed the only solution. Just as the Ottoman empire of the Sultans, Hitler's
Germany in his descending parable had discovered to not have a magnificent army
any longer and to have to defense its own territory to not succumb.
The available divisions in France were not only or too much old or too tired
after coming back from the Russian front, but in many cases they were not even
German. At the beginning of the war, Hitler had solemnly proclaimed that "nobody
who had not been German would have brought the weapons in the Wehrmacht." In May-June
1944, on the French coasts, from 15 up to 20% of the soldiers were not born in
Germany. Among these nearly 2/3 were Osttruppen (oriental troops) constituted
by men of the oriental allied or occupied nations. At the moment of maximum German
pressure against the Soviet armed forces, Hitler had thought about creating a
Russian nationalistic army. He had even found the character to command it, Russian
General Vlassov, who after having been imprisoned and having been converted to
the Nazi cause had stayed in Berlin quietly to attend the evolution of the situation.
The progressive disaster of the Wehrmacht in Russia, had made highly insecure
to use those nationalistic troops on the Russian ground. As you can see, fidelity
to the German flag was not the better quality of the Osttruppen. Yet, Hitler trusted
them enough to transport them on the western front. To these "forced" soldiers,
the Volksdeutschen were added. They were soldiers born in Poland, Curland, Czechoslovakia
and in the Baltic nations who in the ancient past had some German ancestors. It
was granted them a provisional German citizenship for ten years and as reward
for the honor offered to them, they could fight for Germany� The historian G.A.
Harrison affirms that in 1944 in France there were soldiers of 26 different nationalities
who fought with the German uniform. Among them there were also divisions of voluntary
Nazis from France (The "Legion") and Spain (division "Azul") who would have been
known as the cruelest members of the SS units.
Hitler, although already with the mind darkened from the paranoia and from
the megalomania, realized that such a strange mixture of men would have never
fought with success against the Allied Army. It was so that these too battered
troops were integrated with special trained men of the SS (Schutzstaffeln, Protection
Squads) and of Fallschirmjaeger (paratroopers) commanded by General
Kurt Student. The resulted mixture of elderly soldier disenchanted from the
war and of fanatical young people (many of which born among 1925 and 1928) was
lead by one among the most famous Reich's General: Erwin Rommel. Excellent tactical
commander, as he had already shown in Africa, he was officially to the orders
of von Rundtstedt, but he really acted with full autonomy. His name had to also
serve as deterrent. How would the Allies have forced the Atlantic Wall if its
commander was the mythical general of the Afrika Korp? However, Rommel was, perhaps,
even less optimist than von Rundtstedt. He knew that the whole burden of the defense
would have weighed on the Wehrmacht, because either the Luftwaffe either the Kriegsmarine
were practically nonexistent. The German Navy was composed by few torpedo-boats
denominated by the Allies E-Boat (where E stands for Enemy, while the Germans
called them S-bootes, Schnellbootes, fast ships) perfect for the corsair war but
not for preventing an invasion (note: the small boats, despite their dimensions,
were the only ones to sink some allied ships during the D-Day). The formidable
"pocket" battleships that had been the scarecrow of the Royal Navy in the first
months of war were unusable: the Scharnhorst had been sunk in 1943, the Gneisenau
was half-destroyed in the port of Gdynia and the dangerous Tirpitz was forced
to remain hidden in the Kaatfjord, in Norway, where the shelter had been transformed
in a jail under the continuous threat of the British bombers. The Luftwaffe was
only the shadow of itself. On the western front in March 1944 there were only
497 airplanes ready to fly. Of 1000 Me 262 promised by Speer and Göring there
were none.
The Group of Armies B that was commanded by Rommel had a front that went from
Denmark to Spain and, evidently, an impossible assignment to dispatch. The general
tried, for the whole time that was assigned to him, to improve the static defenses.
He let build the Blockhauses with cement taken from the destructions caused from
the allied bombardments. He let place from 2 up to the 5 millions of mines along
the coasts. He also invented ways of defense against the landing boats as "the
Czech hedgehogs" that were rails joined as palings. In this huge effort, a serious
contradiction because of his plot against Hitler that would have forced Rommel
to the suicide. He, as soldier, continued to defend the war begun by the Führer,
but as German and man had understood that the survival of his own country depended
on the death of his head. Other Generals of the western front had the same opinion
and they actively participated in the attack and the attempt of coup d'etat: Speidel,
Geyr, von Falkenhausen, von Stülpnagel, but not von Rundtstedt. Maybe, the
mutual hate between Hitler and Rommel was greater than Hitler's one for other
Generals, but as soldier educated with the traditional military principles, Rommel
didn't conceive the possibility of insubordination and of open disobedience against
the head of the state, whoever was. However, such matters would have resulted
important only after the Allied landing.
It can be affirmed with enough sureness that the preparation of the German
armed forces in June 1944 was the maximum that could be gotten under the conditions
in which the commanders had to work. Nevertheless, the defenses were scarce and
the probabilities of success of the Allies were high. And yet, on the sea everything
was silent!
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