D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

Some Soviet Hiwi volunteers with the German forces proved fanatically loyal. A member of the 272nd Infantry Division wrote that they ‘had a really good relationship with them’. They also proved extremely effective at looting food for their German comrades. And ‘Panzer’ Meyer of the 12th SS Division had a cossack orderly who seems to have been devoted to him.

51

Altogether 130,000 men were drafted into the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS from Alsace, Lorraine and areas of southern Belgium. They were classified as ‘Volksdeutsche’, but reluctant Francophones described themselves as ‘malgre-nous’, or ‘despite ourselves’.

52

The US Army carried out a careful examination of their German prisoners. A report recorded that their average age was twenty-eight, their average height was 5 foot 5? inches, and that their average weight was just under 150 pounds. The shortest were those born between 1919 and 1921, the ‘starvation years’ in Germany.

53

A lateral bomb run would mean approaching the narrowest side of the target area. This required them to attack in a very restricted formation. It also exposed their aircraft to flak along the length of the German front.

54

Stalin’s government was extremely sensitive on this issue. The Soviet ambassador in Washington, DC, made an official complaint after stories about former Red Army soldiers fighting for the Germans were filed by Associated Press and United Press correspondents in Normandy.

55

Three days later, on 28 July, the Germans became aware from some captured documents that the Third US Army had already moved to France, but the staff running Plan Fortitude had prepared for such a detail leaking out. Through their agents, they had topped up the dummy invasion force with a new Army Group headquarters and the so-called ‘Fourteenth US Army’.

56

Patton and even Bradley became convinced that the Germans had transferred two panzer divisions before Cobra started. German sources show that this is not the case.

57

Montgomery’s personal liaison officer with the First US Army observed later that ‘the drawing off of German panzers and the launch of Cobra put an end to the attempts, mainly by Tedder, to get Churchill and Ike to replace Monty’.

58

The identity of this officer is not certain. It might have been Generalleutnant Dietrich Kraiss, the commander of the 352nd Infanterie-Division, although his death is recorded several days later on 2 August.

59

Hitler, who had approved his appointment, was unaware that Gersdorff had been ready to kill him with a suicide bomb on 21 March 1943 in Berlin.

60

Ramcke systematically destroyed the city later by fire and with explosives. ‘It was entirely wiped out!’ he boasted to General von Choltitz later in British captivity. He claimed that he was following the example of Admiral Nelson burning Toulon in 1793.

61

The sole hint that the Germans might be planning something came on 2 August through Ultra. The signal said only that 2nd Panzer-Division had carried out ‘withdrawal movements’ on the fiercely contested sector south of Vire and the 1st SS Panzer-Division’s position was unchanged.

62

Observers from the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend and the medical officer of the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion were convinced that five Tigers had been knocked out. The other two may well have been knocked out by the 144th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps.