Other books by the au thor Hitler’s Le gions se ries Hitler’s Gauls – The His tory of the French Waf fen-SS Hitler’s Flem ish Lions – The His tory of the Flem ish Waf fen-SS Hitler’s Ji hadis – The His tory of the Mus lim Waf fen-SS Hitler’s Vikings – The His tory of the Scan di na vian Waf fen-SS Hast ings 1066 Death on the Don – The De struc tion of Ger many’s Al lies on the East ern Front 1941 – 44 (nom i nated for the Pushkin Prize for Russ ian his tory) The De feat of the Luft waffe – The East ern Front 1941 – 45; Strat egy for Dis as ter Voices of the Flem ish Waf fen-SS: The Last Tes ta ment of the Oost fron ters Voices of the Scan di na vian Waf fen-SS: The Last Tes ta ment of Hitler’s Vikings Page 1 : The At lantik wall of leg end – this is one of four giant 380mm guns of the Bat terie Todt in the ham let of Har ingzelle near Cap Gris Nez – all were ca - pa ble of hit ting the Eng lish coast. (Li brary of Con gress) Page 2 : One of Max Wünsche’s Pan thers knocked out by Cana di ans in Bret - teville l‘Orgueilleuse on 8 June 1944. (Au thor’s col lec tion) First pub lished 2019 Am ber ley Pub lish ing The Hill, Stroud Glouces ter shire, GL5 4EP www. amberley- books. com Copy right © Jonathan Trigg, 2019 The right of Jonathan Trigg to be iden ti fied as the Au thor of this work has been as serted in ac cor dance with the Copy rights, De signs and Patents Act 1988. All rights re served. No part of this book may be reprinted or re pro duced or utilised in any form or by any elec tronic, me chan i cal or other means, now known or here after in vented, in clud ing pho to copy ing and record ing, or in any in for ma tion stor age or re trieval sys tem, with out the per mis sion in writ ing from the Pub lish ers. British Li brary Cat a logu ing in Pub li ca tion Data. A cat a logue record for this book is avail able from the British Li brary. ISBN 9781445689319 (HARD BACK) ISBN 9781445689326 (eBOOK) Type set ting by Aura Tech nol ogy and Soft ware Ser vices, India. Printed in the UK. Con tents Ac knowl edge ments Notes on the text In tro duc tion 1 - Fes tung Eu ropa – ‘Fortress Eu rope’ 2 - Throw Them Back into the Sea! 3 - Hold the Line! 4 - Planes, Ships and Rolling Stock 5 - The Bat tle for Caen 6 - The Bat tle for Saint-Lô 7 - The Dam Bursts 8 - Falaise – the Wes t heer’s Stal in grad 9 - The South Falls 10 - La Belle France Aban doned 11 - Look ing Back Plates Ap pen dix: Waf fen-SS, Ger man Army and com pa ra ble British Army Ranks Bib li og ra phy Notes Maps This book is ded i cated to two very spe cial peo ple; to John An drze jowksi for sav - ing my life, and to Peena for mak ing it worth sav ing. Ac knowl edge ments This book has been pub lished to co in cide with the 75th an niver sary of the D-Day land ings and the sub se quent bat tle for France waged that same sum - mer. It is a truly enor mous sub ject, en com pass ing the largest am phibi ous in va - sion ever un der taken, and an en su ing cam paign that in volved more than two mil lion men and an un fath omable amount of equip ment, sup plies and ma chin - ery. The chal lenge I set my self with this book was to boil this enor mous clash of arms down to the view from the trenches, as it were. As ever, my ed i tor Shaun Bar ring ton has been noth ing but sup port ive in this ef fort and I offer him my thanks for that. I would also like to pay trib ute to those who have gone be fore me; au thors such as Hol ger Eck hertz, Bruce Con nor, Vince Mi lano and Richard Har g reaves, who have done in cred i ble work to tell the story of the hum ble landser , be fore they are all gone. A book with a focus on wit ness tes ti mony wouldn’t be able to be writ ten with out wit nesses, and to the vet er ans who have been so gen er ous with their time and mem o ries, par tic u larly Rudolf von Ribben trop, thank you. One re gret I have had in writ ing this book is not to have in cluded enough about the Al lied land ings in south ern France in Au gust 1944 and the sub se - quent run ning bat tle with Jo hannes Blaskowitz’s army group – for that I apol o - gise, I think it is a seg ment of the Eu ro pean war which is rel a tively un known, and wor thy of much more time and work than has hith erto been de voted to it. Re search ing and writ ing any book can be a soli tary task, and often an ob - ses sion – and this one has proven to be no dif fer ent. End less trips to view archives, in ter view vet er ans, added to hours of tele phone calls, snatched meals and a grumpy de meanour, can put a huge strain on any fam ily, but as ever my own has ex hib ited a deep well of un der stand ing and af fec tion for which I am for ever grate ful; to my amaz ing wife Rachel and our won der ful chil - dren, Maddy, Jack, thank you. Notes on the text The United King dom con tains Scots, Welsh and North ern Irish, but the Ger - mans tended to de scribe every one from our is lands as Eng lish , so I have left it at that. The same goes for the for mer So viet Union, if a vet eran has used the term ‘Russ ian’, then I have kept it as such. I have tended to use the Ger man nomen cla ture for their units, e.g. the 352nd In fantry Di vi sion is writ ten as 352. ID , short for 352. In fan terie-Di vi sion , and Ger man ranks are like wise; Cap tain is Haupt mann etc; there is a table of com par a tive ranks as an ap pen dix. Every ef fort has been made to cite sources and con tact copy right hold ers. If there are any omis sions I apol o gise and the pub lish ers will cor rect on reprint. As ever in any such work there are bound to be er rors, they are all my own and I ask the read ers’ for bear ance. In tro duc tion A 53-year-old Texan chain-smoker of av er age height, with a dodgy knee and a love of West ern nov els – es pe cially those by Zane Grey, a part-time den tist- cum au thor – was pac ing up and down the thick car pet of a large room in the Geor gian splen dour of South wick House, some five miles north of Portsmouth on the Eng lish south coast. Out side, rain was lash ing down onto the roof and strong winds were rat tling the black-out shut ters, but in side, the si lence was total. Seated a few feet away from the pac ing man were half a dozen of the most se nior of fi cers in the An glo-Amer i can mil i tary, all of them bar one in full uni form, heavy with their dec o ra tion rib bons; their shoes highly pol ished, their trousers knife-edged. Be hind them was a gag gle of aides and mid dle-rank ing of fi cers – stand ing to one side a tall, thin, low land Scot in the blue of the British Royal Air Force, pa pers and charts gripped in his large, bony hands. Sud denly the pacer – pop u larly known to one and all as ‘Ike’ – stopped, looked up from the car pet to his seated au di ence, and said three words: ‘Okay, let’s go.’ Twenty-four hours later, and about eight hun dred miles away as the crow flies, it was still dark in the Bavar ian Alps. The air was still, the only sound that of jack boots crunch ing on gravel, as the bored sen tries – al most all of whom were im mensely tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed – did their usual rounds of the jum ble of lodges, tea-houses and hol i day vil las. In the chalet-style house at the epi cen tre of the whole smor gas bord of newly built lux ury build ings, all was quiet, the staff hav ing fin ished clear ing up the glasses and table ware from the din ing room and study pan elled in Swiss pine, where just a few hours be fore their mas ter and some of his clos est con fi dants had been sat round an open fire rem i nisc ing about ‘the good old days’. One of the last to leave in the early hours had been Joseph Goebbels, a diminu tive West phalian with a pro nounced limp and holder of the Third Reich’s post of Min is ter for Pro pa ganda. Oddly enough, the pac ing smoker and the dis abled pro pa gan dist were both of mixed Ger man-Dutch her itage, but there, any sim i lar ity ended. The for mer was a mod - est man, one of the great est mil i tary coali tion com man ders the world has ever seen, who would go on to be come the 34th Pres i dent of his coun try, whereas the lat ter was a wom an is ing, vir u lent anti-Semite, who would end up foully mur - der ing his six young chil dren be fore tak ing his own life. This then was how D-Day started for both sides; for the An glo-Amer i cans with a con sid ered de ci sion taken by their se nior mil i tary com man ders – led by the U.S. Gen eral Dwight David Eisen hower – and for the Ger mans with their en - tire lead er ship asleep, obliv i ous, and in the dark. The Ger man Wehrma cht had been in France for four long years by the time the ramps of the Al lied land ing craft came crash ing down into the surf on the morn ing of 6 June 1944, and had some how – in this the fifth year of the war – man aged to find no fewer than fifty-nine di vi sions to man Hitler’s fa bled Fes - tung Eu ropa – ‘Fortress Eu rope’, while still fight ing the Red Army in the depths of the So viet Union and hold ing the An glo-Amer i cans at bay in cen tral Italy. Four years in which to pre pare; to build their de fences, plan their re sponse to an at - tack, prac tise their counter-moves, ob serve and un der stand their enemy – they had even had the ben e fit of win ning the dress re hearsal at Dieppe back in 1942: and yet that sum mer, they failed. In less than twenty-four hours after the first Al lied boots hit French soil, 24,000 British and Amer i can para troop ers were joined ashore by 132,000 of their com rades landed by sea, ac com pa nied by a stag ger ing 20,000 ve hi cles. The land ings were a stun ning suc cess. The Wehrma cht suf fered any where be tween four to nine thou sand ca su al ties on the day it self (the exact fig ure has never been ac cu rately es tab lished), and while the Al lies lost more men – about 10,000 in all, with 4,414 con firmed killed – it was still only a frac tion of the of fi cial pre-as sault es ti mates of 10,000 killed and 30,000 wounded; Pri vate Charles East of the Amer i can 29th Di vi sion (set to hit Omaha Beach) re called a brief ing in the days be fore the at tack, when one of his of fi cers told the as sem bled in fantry men that as they were the first wave it was ex pected that nine out of ten of them would be come ca su al ties on the day. East re mem bered look ing around his com rades on hear ing the news and think ing to him self: ‘You poor bas tards.’ 1 Even the British Prime Min is ter, Win ston Churchill, so often dur ing the war the voice of bound less op ti mism, said to his beloved wife Clemen tine the night be fore the land ings: ‘Do you re - alise that by the time you wake up in the morn ing 20,000 men may have been killed?’ He didn’t mean Ger mans. This then was D-Day – a day and a bat tle of such im por tance, of such im - men sity and scale, that its story has been told and re-told in nu mer able times in ink and on cel lu loid. Across those end less pages and reels of film stride the giant fig ures whose ge nius, flaws, and de ci sions – both good and bad – have come to sym bol ise both the day it self and the ten-week cam paign in France that fol lowed; men such as Ike, ‘Monty’, Omar Bradley, and on the other side, Erwin Rom mel the ‘Desert Fox’, Gerd von Rund st edt the old Pruss ian warhorse, and Hitler him self – von Rund st edt’s de spised ‘Bo hemian cor po ral’. This book is not their story. This book is also not a de scrip tion of the bril liance of the Al - lied build-up to D-Day and its mas ter ful ex e cu tion. In stead, this books roots lie, not in the sands of the five beaches them - selves, but in the dunes, trenches and bunkers over look ing them, where less than ten thou sand Wehrma cht sol diers woke up that fate ful morn ing to gasp at the largest naval force ever as sem bled. That ar mada, and the roughly eight Al - lied di vi sions (in clud ing the three air borne) des ig nated as the D-Day as sault units, would be faced at first by just half as many Wehrma cht for ma tions; the 352 ., 709. and 716. In fan terie Di vi sions (IDs) , and the 21. Panz er di vi sion From a Ger man per spec tive, it was the men in these for ma tions, and the ju nior and mid dle-rank ing of fi cers who com manded them, who would de ter mine vic - tory or de feat on D-Day. There after, the men who sur vived D-Day would be re in - forced by sev eral dozen other di vi sions, in clud ing the cream of the Ger man Army in west ern Eu rope. It wasn’t just sol diers ei ther, the men in field-grey and panz er waffe -black were joined by Luft waffe blue, as the famed Ger man fighter arm – the Jagdwaffe – sent great swathes of its vastly ex pe ri enced pilot cadres to France in an at tempt to break the near-to tal Al lied dom i na tion of the skies. Even the Ger man Navy – the Kriegs ma rine – so often the ‘third wheel’ of Hitler’s Wehrma cht, tried to con cen trate some sort of force to land a punch on the lib er a tors. All to no avail. In a cam paign where even Al lied com man ders them selves con ceded Ger man in di vid ual and tac ti cal su pe ri or ity, they were ut terly de - feated, and the Wes t heer (the Ger man nick name for their army in the West) lay smashed and slaugh tered in the bocage of Nor mandy and the fields and val - leys around the me dieval French town of Falaise; and yet on D-Day it self the Ger mans came close – not to de ci sively re puls ing the land ings, the Al lies were too strong and well-pre pared for that – but to ful fill ing many of the fears of the Al lied plan ners by dis rupt ing and sav aging the as sault so badly that the whole ad ven ture would be put in jeop ardy. With that Ger man fail ure, as night fell on 6 June, the en tire focus of the bat tle then be came a race to bring to bear enough men and matériel to de feat the enemy – what mil i tary an a lysts some times call the ‘bat tle of the re in force ments’. On paper, the Ger mans had the huge re - sources of the Wes t heer on hand, and the ben e fit of in ter nal land com mu ni ca - tions and sup ply lines to shift their forces and con cen trate them against the Al - lies. If they could achieve the nec es sary mass, the Ger mans had a chance, al - beit a slim one, but a chance nonethe less, of grind ing the Al lies into a sort of stale mate in north ern France; and then who knows? A ne go ti ated set tle ment per haps? Ex tremely un likely ad mit tedly, but his tory is full of un ex pected twists and turns. Away from the realms of con jec ture, the pri or ity for Nazi Ger many was crys tal clear: hold France. But they failed, the ad van tages they had were worn down by a su pe rior Al lied war ma chine, and then fur ther squan dered by the Ger mans them selves, until their de feat was sim ply a mat ter of when, and not if. How did this hap pen? How did the Ger man war ma chine fail so badly? A hint can per haps be found in one his to rian’s view of the Im pe r ial Ger man Army’s per for mance in World War One: ‘It dis played less a ge nius for war than a gift for im pro vi sa tion; meet ing un ex pected chal lenges with lim ited re sources, mak ing the best tac ti cally and op er a tionally of ques tion able strate gies and poli - cies until the ma chine broke down and the men had noth ing more to give.’ 2 As it turned out, this would be an apt de scrip tion for the same army a quar ter of a cen tury later in Nor mandy. The amount of paper pro duced about what be came the Nor mandy cam paign could cover all five land ing beaches, but very lit tle of that valu able work has been writ ten from the Ger man per spec tive, and even less from that of the men who did the fight ing; not the great names, the Rom - mels or the von Rund st edts, but the hum ble Ger man sol dier – the landser – and the NCOs and of fi cers who led him and shared his ra tions, his dan gers and his fears. This story is of Ger man fail ure, seen through Ger man eyes, and pri - mar ily told by the Ger mans who were them selves there that fate ful sum mer. Fes tung Eu ropa – ‘Fortress Eu rope’ In the con clu sion to the har row ing open scene of Steven Spiel berg’s 1998 D-Day film epic, Sav ing Pri vate Ryan , two Amer i can sol diers who have sur vived the car nage on Omaha Beach are con fronted by two enemy sol diers who clam - ber out of their trench, throw away their weapons, thrust their hands into the air and try to sur ren der. The duo are clearly ter ri fied, and pa thet i cally plead for their lives as the Amer i cans bear down on them – what ever they say is to no avail, and both are shot dead in cold blood, be fore their killers stoop down and start ri fling their pock ets for me men tos or any thing of in tel li gence value – prob - a bly both. The actor and star of the film, the Amer i can every man Tom Hanks, looks away, his face a mix ture of re vul sion at what the sol diers have done, and re lief at hav ing sur vived the slaugh ter on the beach. To West ern eyes – so used to the stereo type of Nazi atroc i ties ver sus Al lied fair-play, that scene is shock ing enough, and be comes even more so when what the ex e cuted men say be fore they are shot is trans lated into Eng lish: ‘ Nestřílejte. Já jsem nikoho nez abil. Já jsem Čech. ’ It’s not Ger man, it’s Czech, and trans lates as: ‘Don’t shoot. I haven’t killed any one. I’m Czech.’ Czech? Surely this must be one of those film er rors that end up in a bloop - ers TV pro gramme – noth ing more than an ex tras cast ing mishap. It wasn’t. Spiel berg was de lib er ately high light ing a lit tle-known fact, that a sig nif i cant pro - por tion of the ten thou sand or so men in field-grey de fend ing the beaches that day weren’t na tive Ger mans at all; they were Rus sians, Poles, Geor gians, Turk - men, and yes, Czechs. If he had the time and the ca pa bil ity, it wouldn’t have been a sur prise if Spiel berg had gone on to show that many of the weapons those self-same ‘Ger man’ de fend ers were using mir rored their own mixed na - tion al i ties, being Russ ian, Czech, and even French; the ter ri ble irony of French tank tur rets manned by Pol ish gun ners, fir ing on Al lied in fantry, as those same men sought to begin the lib er a tion of west ern Eu rope, is tragic in deed. So, was this Fortress Eu rope? Was this how the Ger mans were pre pared to op pose the land ings the whole world knew were com ing; with troops who weren’t even Ger man, armed with lit tle but per sonal weapons, man ning half- empty trenches, fac ing the best-equipped, best-trained and most heav ily sup - ported land ing force in his tory? Just over four years be fore, on 10 May 1940, a Wehrma cht fresh from its con quest of Poland, and im bued with the new doc trine of blitzkrieg , had be fud - dled the Al lies by some how get ting its ar mour through the heav ily forested Ar - dennes re gion, and then leap ing over the Meuse River at Sedan to charge to the sea at Abbeville and ef fec tively de feat the com bined armies of France, Britain, Bel gium and the Nether lands as a re sult. The ‘mir a cle of Dunkirk’ saved the ma jor ity of the British Ex pe di tionary Force – ba si cally the bulk of Britain’s Army - but noth ing could be done to save a French Army that had now been at tacked by the Ger mans three times in sev enty years. Out-thought and out-fought, the suc ces sors to the vic to ri ous poilus of the First World War were ham mered into shards, until on 22 June a hum bled French high com mand re - luc tantly signed the Sec ond Armistice (a sur ren der by any other name) at Compiègne. After a brief few months dur ing which Berlin half-heart edly pre pared its Army and Navy to launch an in va sion of main land Britain over the Chan nel – and its air force was com pre hen sively de feated in the Bat tle of Britain – Ger - man eyes turned east to wards the com mu nist So viet Union, its ide o log i cal neme sis, and re mained there pretty much through out 1941–43. Mean while, gar ri son life in oc cu pied France set tled down to the mo not ony of a wait ing game, as the re luc tant con script and fu ture Nobel Prize-win ning au thor Gefre - iter Hein rich Böll noted in a let ter home to his school teacher wife, An nemarie: ‘If just once we could come face to face with the Eng lish it would be some thing dif fer ent from this wait ing, this eter nal wait ing.’ The Bat tle of the At lantic, the war in North Africa and the Mediter ranean, all caused con cern among the ranks of the Ger man armed forces and the pop u - lace at large, but were as noth ing com pared to the meat-grinder in the East, where Nazi Ger many was suf fer ing roughly thirty thou sand fa tal i ties a month dur ing 1943 alone. 1 In fact, so deadly had the east ern fight ing be come that the Ger man High Com mand – the Oberkom mando der Wehrma cht or OKW – cal cu - lated that in true All Quiet on the West ern Front -style, even on an in ac tive sec - tor of the Russ ian front where noth ing worth re port ing was oc cur ring, a stan - dard Ger man in fantry corps was los ing be tween five to ten men killed and fif - teen to twenty-five wounded per day to Red Army snipers, ran dom shelling and air at tack. One con se quence of this sav age at tri tion was that Berlin sought to rest and refit di vi sions burnt out in the fight ing in Rus sia by mov ing them whole sale to lo ca tions in safe zones far away from the Red Army. There, the sur vivors could re cover, eat, drink, take some leave, re ceive fresh drafts of re cruits and new equip ment and pre pare to head back East – and where bet ter to do that but in ‘ la belle France ’? A young en gi neer Ober leut nant posted to Grenadier-Reg i - ment. 736 (GR. 736) of the 716. In fan terie-Di vi sion (ID) near Courselles in Nor - mandy re mem bered: It was said of the troops in France that they ‘lived like Gods’... And you know, when I joined the 716th ... I re alised what a lucky swine I was. The food was ex cel lent, and it was pos si ble to buy vir tu ally any thing you wanted on the black mar ket ... Every morn ing I thought of my brother in com bat in Rus sia and I felt ex tremely guilty. 2 Most of the other Ger man sol diers like wise posted to the West were just as glad not to be serv ing in Rus sia. In many ways I was pleased with the post ing. You see my broth ers and friends had been on the Russ ian front, and they had ter ri ble sto - ries of the con di tions there. Many men re turned with out fin gers or eye lids be cause of frost bite. By con trast, a post ing to France was renowned as a com fort able ride. 3 It wasn’t only the sol diers them selves who were often over joyed to be sent west and not east, it was their fam i lies too: ‘My fam ily were most re lieved that I was sent to France, which we imag ined as a true “land of plenty”.’ 4 Most Ger man sol diers posted to France were ini tially only lucky enough to savour its de lights for a few weeks or months at a time be fore ship ping out back to the war, but that began to change after the Dieppe raid in the sum mer of 1942. On 19 Au gust that year an am phibi ous force of mainly Cana dian troops, backed by the British Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, landed on the shin gle beach at Dieppe in north ern Nor mandy as a kind of ‘test-run’ for D-Day. In barely ten hours of fight ing, over four thou sand Al lied sol diers, sailors and air men were killed, wounded or taken pris oner, and con tro versy over the ef fi - cacy of the as sault has raged ever since, de spite the views of its main plan ner, Vice-Ad mi ral Lord Louis Mount bat ten: ‘I have no doubt that the Bat tle of Nor - mandy was won on the beaches of Dieppe. For every man who died in Dieppe, at least ten more must have been spared in Nor mandy in 1944.’ Many ob servers and his to ri ans – no tably quite a few Cana di ans – have dis - agreed with his analy sis! But what no-one dis agrees about is that in the af ter - math of the bat tle both sides sought to learn lessons from it to pre pare for the ‘next time’, not least se nior Ger man of fi cers such as their mil i tary supremo in the West – the Ober be fehlshaber West or OB West , Gerd von Rund st edt: ‘Just as we are going to eval u ate these ex pe ri ences for the fu ture, so is the as sault - ing force ... per haps even more so as it has gained the ex pe ri ence dearly. He will not do it like this a sec ond time!’ 5 There after, von Rund st edt ha rangued Hitler with un end ing tales of gloom re gard ing the state of the Wes t heer and of the Wehrma cht’s de fences as a whole, and the re sult – fi nally - was a Führer Di rec tive – the writ ten or ders Hitler used to shape the Third Reich’s con duct of the war. These Di rec tives were legally bind ing, were to be fol lowed to the let ter and su per seded any other law – in this case No. 51 of the sev enty-four pro mul gated by Hitler in total. Is - sued on 3 No vem ber 1943, Hitler ad dressed the po ten tial open ing of a sec ond front in the West and warned of ‘ con se quences of stag ger ing pro por tions’ if the Al lies should gain a foothold in Con ti nen tal Eu rope. The di rec tive laid the foun - da tion for what be came known to both sides as ‘Fortress Eu rope’ – for the Al - lies a deadly bar rier that threat ened the suc cess of any land ings, and for the Ger mans a de fen sive wall and in fra struc ture of such power that it would ‘throw the enemy back into the sea’. The over all re sult was en vi sioned to be a major strength en ing of Nazi Ger - many’s po si tion in the West, which would en able it to de feat any An glo-Amer i - can land ing. In Hitler’s eyes, such a de feat would wrest the ini tia tive away from Lon don and Wash ing ton and give him at least a year in which to switch his forces east and fi nally crush the Red Army once and for all. As he de clared to his cronies: ‘Once de feated the enemy will never again try to in vade,’ and a vic - tory would allow him to re de ploy his forces to the East, to ‘rev o lu tionise the sit - u a tion there... The whole out come of the war de pends on each man fight ing in the West, and that means the fate of the Reich as well!’ If he could do it, the Nazi dic ta tor would have pulled off one of the great est and most un likely turn arounds in mil i tary for tune in his tory – but there was a moun tain to climb. Every thing that could be wrong with the Ger man mil i tary in the West in 1943 was wrong. Start ing at the top – there wasn’t one. Gerd von Rund st edt was OB West, his sec ond tilt at the role, and from his head quar ters under a school in the Saint Ger main-en-Laye quartier of north west ern Paris, he was ide ally po si - tioned to lead the de fence of Fortress Eu rope against any Al lied land ings – ex - cept that wasn’t his job – in fact it was no-one’s job ex cept per haps Hitler him - self, al though as was his usual modus operandi the dic ta tor pre ferred over lap - ping and con fus ing lay ers of com mand and con trol for his sub or di nates, whilst avoid ing tak ing the spe cific re spon si bil ity him self. It was a style of lead er ship that would hand i cap Berlin’s con duct of the war from its in cep tion to its con clu - sion, and in many ways was a replica of the Wil helmian-sys tem that had con - tributed to Ger many’s de feat in the First World War. That meant when von Rund st edt stud ied the wall maps and or ders of bat tle in his head quar ters, there were huge el e ments he could nei ther con trol, nor in - deed in flu ence much at all. Top ping this list were the Luft waffe and Kriegs ma - rine in the West, closely fol lowed by the in or di nately large Ger man Army in Scan di navia, and, less con tro ver sially, Italy and the Balkans. His reach didn’t even ex tend to all ground forces in France, Bel gium and the Nether lands, as the mil i tary gov er nor ships of Paris and Brus sels were in de pen dent, as were all SS and Gestapo op er a tions. That left him with two Army Groups – Heeres grup - pen B and G – the for mer in north ern France under his fel low gen er alfeld - marschall , Erwin Rom mel, of ‘Desert Fox’ fame, and the lat ter cov er ing south - ern France under Gen er aloberst Jo hannes Blaskowitz. His main strike force was Panzer Group West – Panz er gruppe West – under Gen eral der Panz - ertruppe Leo Geyr von Schwep pen burg, which was jointly – yes, jointly – con - trolled by him and Hitler him self. The con trast with the sim plic ity of the An glo-Amer i can Supreme Head quar - ters Al lied Ex pe di tionary Forces (SHAEF for short) com mand struc ture, with Eisen hower at its pin na cle, is stark, and even more so when con sid ered at an op er a tional level. The Al lies, rightly, saw the com ing cam paign to be one where suc cess re lied heav ily on all three arms op er at ing as one – and given the fail - ure of Ger many’s Op er a tion Sealion to in vade Great Britain in 1940, the Third Reich should have been far more aware of the need for it. Any land ing would have to be seaborne and would re quire sub stan tial naval forces, those same forces would need to be pro tected against air at tack, and last but not least, the forces landed would have to be big enough and pow er ful enough to de feat the op po si tion they met on the beaches and be yond. So, von Rund st edt would be able to con trol some of the Army, and only the Army, and here Di rec tive 51 had two major ef fects on those same troops: firstly, the Ger man Army’s in fantry di vi sions – still the bulk of its man power – were to be re struc tured, sup pos edly to learn the lessons of the Russ ian war as well as pre pare more ef fec tively for a pos si ble land ing, but in re al ity to in crease the paper size of the Army by cre at ing new for ma tions, pri mar ily to man Fortress Eu rope. Sec ondly, it began a marked shift in troop strength from East to West, in clud ing the panz er waffe , Ger many’s rightly famed ar moured branch that would pro vide von Rund st edt with much of his even tual com bat power. There would also be a third major im pact, which would be to re vi talise the hith - erto mori bund pro gramme of for ti fi ca tion build ing along the Eu ro pean At lantic coast started back in 1941. This was not to OB West’s lik ing; ‘We Ger mans do not in dulge in the tired Mag inot spirit,’ as he fa mously stated. The di vi sional re or gan i sa tion of the in fantry arm was a very big deal in deed, given that, de spite the panzer myth, the vast ma jor ity of the Ger man Army was com posed of in fantry foot-slog gers man ning so-called Type M1939 di vi sions. In fact, as late as the be gin ning of 1944 fully 85% of the Army still wasn’t mo - torised. 6 That is to take noth ing away from the M1939 in fantry di vi sions. After all it had been these units, manned by well-trained and well-led vol un teers and con scripts who had con quered most of Eu rope in 1939–40, and al most beaten the So vi ets back in ’41. As such, an M1939 for ma tion was a pretty for mi da ble beast. Each one was meant to have around 17,734 men, or gan ised into three in fantry and one ar tillery reg i ment in a tri-tiered struc ture; so, each reg i ment had three bat tal ions, and each bat tal ion had three com pa nies or bat ter ies, with the in fantry reg i ments also hav ing three other sup port ing units of in te gral heavy and light guns, in fantry can nons, anti-tank guns, mor tars and re con nais - sance troops. There were also bat tal ions of as sault en gi neers – so-called Pi o - niere – spe cially trained to both cre ate their own ob sta cles and de stroy the enemy’s, along with sig nals, sup ply, mil i tary po lice, postal, med ical and vet eri - nary troops – the last being a very im por tant part of the di vi sion given the Ger - mans’ mas sive re liance on horses. Every com pany had no fewer than nine horse-drawn wag ons fer ry ing its equip ment: three one-horse wag ons for the ma chine-guns and mor tars, two four-horse wag ons for am mu ni tion, one for the field-kitchen (the famed Gu lasch-kanone ), a pair of two-horse wag ons for the sol diers’ back-packs, and an other two-horse for ra tions – in all no fewer than twenty-one men of every com pany in the Army had as their main role ei ther dri - ving these wag ons or car ing for the horses that pulled them, in clud ing feed ing each horse their stan dard daily ra tion of ap prox i mately twenty pounds of oats, hay and straw, de pen dent on the horse’s weight. 7 The new struc ture – chris tened rather unimag i na tively the M1944-Type – was an echo of the Army re or gan i sa tion Falken hayn had presided over in late 1914 after the ap palling ca su al ties of the Lange marck of fen sives, when Im pe r - ial Ger many had found it self in much the same po si tion as its suc ces sor state; short of man power and herald ing a down siz ing op er a tion as bring ing more flex i - bil ity than the pre vi ous di vi sional con fig u ra tion, as well as in creas ing fire power with the ad di tion of more ma chine-guns. As with much in the Third Reich in 1944, this was lit tle more than pro pa ganda. The re al ity was that the strength of each di vi sion was al most thirty-per cent lower, re duced to only 12,772 men. This was mainly achieved by dis band ing the third bat tal ion of every rifle reg i - ment and mak ing the ar tillery reg i ment smaller – other sub-units were slimmed down too. Even with these dras tic cuts, Ger many didn’t have the man power to fill the re struc tured di vi sions, so with huge re luc tance the Nazi lead er ship had no op tion but to for mally in cor po rate hated Un ter men sch 8 into their de pleted ranks. This ad mis sion meant each M1944 di vi sion had 1,455 so-called east ern Hiwis 9 on the ra tion-roll, com ple ment ing 11,317 Ger mans. Not that this was achieved in every re or gan ised di vi sion be fore D-Day; 77. ID for ex am ple, formed in Poland in the win ter of 1943, mainly with men from the Würt tem berg towns and cities of Stuttgart, Lud wigs burg and Esslin gen, could only muster 9,095 Ger mans along side its 1,410 Hiwis, to man its sec tor in be tween the Co - tentin Penin sula and Brit tany in the early sum mer of 1944 – al though many of the for mer were vet er ans, hav ing pre vi ously been mem bers of 355. ID , shat - tered on the Russ ian front the pre vi ous year. But al most overnight fol low ing the re struc tur ing, the Ger man Army’s Order of Bat tle (OOB) swelled dra mat i cally, and the Wes t heer went from its 1943 strength of forty-six di vi sions to a far more po tent-sound ing fifty-nine. 10 This was still a very large force, com pris ing as it did a full twenty per cent of the Army’s man power and thirty per cent of its ar mour; 850,000 men and 1,552 panz ers and as sault-guns. The Os theer (Ger - man nick name for their army in the East) was far big ger – there were no fewer than 193 Ger man di vi sions fac ing the Red Army in the East - but the East was al ways the main bat tle zone of the Eu ro pean war, and Berlin po si tioned the ma - jor ity of its forces there through out. How ever, notwith stand ing that the Russ ian front was Berlin’s top pri or ity, the fact re mains that the Ger mans had no fewer than four armies in France and the Benelux coun tries, and more troops fur ther north in Scan di navia – eigh teen di vi sions more in fact. Eigh teen di vi sions in Nor way and Den mark? In Nor way this meant that there was one Ger man sol dier sta tioned there for every eight cit i zens (plus one Ger man civil ian ad min is tra tor for every 3,700 lo cals – the cor re spond ing fig ure in France was one for every fif teen thou sand!), and that the oc cu py ing forces in peace ful Den mark were al most ten times as strong as the King dom’s en tire pre-war army. What were they there for? Was this a case of Hit ler ian id iocy, or was there any rea son able basis for this seem ingly in - ex plic a ble sit u a tion? Di rec tive 51 pro vides part of the an swer. Hitler be lieved that the Al lies might well land in Scan di navia! In deed, he stated in his di rec - tions to the Kriegs ma rine, and in deed all three branches of the Wehrma cht, that ‘...it might be called upon to re pulse si mul ta ne ous enemy land ings in Nor - way and Den mark.’ In a doc u ment barely the length of one side of A4 paper he men tions Nor way twice and Den mark no fewer than four teen times – it is quite sim ply stag ger ing, and from a Ger man per spec tive a truly crim i nal dis per sion of fight ing power. Or was it more nu anced than that? Hitler had al ways seen the war through the prism of a strug gle for oth er wise sparse nat ural re sources; be that food, min er als, or most im por tant of all – oil. The Reich had some of the first, not enough of the sec ond, and tiny amounts of the last. In Hitler’s view, there fore, the war ma chine he needed for global con - quest had to safe guard two sup ply lines for it self above all; iron ore from neu - tral Swe den and oil from Ru ma nia’s Ploiesti fields. Pro tect ing the for mer had been the dri ver for the in va sion of Nor way in the first place, and when the British had fol lowed up their abortive ex pe di tion there back in 1940 with the suc cess ful Lo foten raid in ’41, 11 it was enough to give the Nazi dic ta tor night - mares in the small hours. Cor re spond ingly, a sur prise (and it would be a big sur prise to every one, not least Wash ing ton) Al lied as sault in the Balkans ca pa - ble of cut ting off the flow of Ru man ian oil, was a threat Hitler thought he couldn’t ig nore – es pe cially when Tito’s grow ing Par ti san army in Yu goslavia could pro vide any land ing force with a ready-made wel com ing party; hence the twenty-one Ger man di vi sions in Greece and the Balkans. Taken at face value, it would seem that the Wehrma cht had sig nif i cant forces hun dreds of miles away from the an tic i pated main the atre of com bat, al beit for some un der stand able rea sons – what was clearly miss ing was ac cu rate in tel li gence to en able the Nazi high com mand to con cen trate those forces in the most likely land ing areas. This, Berlin never achieved. The war waged by Nazi Ger many be tween 1939 and 1945, de spite all the myths of Teu tonic ef fi ciency, was jaw-drop - pingly sloppy in so very many ways, but when it came to mil i tary in tel li gence it sur passed it self. While the Al lies di verted sig nif i cant re sources into every form of in tel li gence gath er ing; sig nals (SIG INT), com mu ni ca tions (COMINT), and human (HUMINT), ex em pli fied by the ge nius of the Bletch ley Park Ultra pro - gramme, Moscow’s mas terly use of maskirovka, and the Al lies’ Op er a tion For ti - tude de cep tion plans, Hitler opted to sub ject the Third Reich’s in tel li gence ef - fort to the full force of his de fault in ter nal ‘di vide and rule’ pol icy by al low ing the SS to es tab lish and build its own in tel li gence or gan i sa tion to rival the Wehrma - cht’s ex ist ing struc ture – the Ab wehr . Formed in 1920, in con tra dic tion to the stric tures laid down by the Ver sailles Treaty, the Berlin-head quar tered Ab wehr grew in size and im por tance over the suc ceed ing two decades, but never man - aged to match the power and ex per tise of its peers to east and west. Its prob - lems started at the top with its boss – Vizead mi ral Wil helm Ca naris. An em i - nently cul tured man, Ca naris was flu ent in six lan guages and a keen eques - trian. At first a pro-Nazi – he was one of the first se nior in di vid u als in the mil i - tary to ad vo cate that Ger man Jews should wear the yel low Star of David on their clothes – he be came con vinced Ger many would lose the war and delved deeply into anti-Hit ler ian con spir acy. Eng lish his to rian Hugh Trevor-Roper de - scribed Ca naris as ‘more in ter ested in anti-Nazi in trigue than in his of fi cial du - ties’, 12 with his ‘neg li gent rule’ lead ing to an Ab wehr that was in his es ti ma tion ‘rot ten with cor rup tion, no to ri ously in ef fi cient, [and] po lit i ca