Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (25 page)

Anyway, Frank. I’m still good and smarter now than I was before. Let’s plan on meeting in Berlin in say another month or two? Shouldn’t be too much longer, do you think?

So until then, wish me well.

Love,

Harold

It’s probably going to be a couple of months longer than one or two before we get to Berlin, but at least we’re on our way. Seven weeks after landing on DDay brought us to the point where we’re now right behind the Jerries who were fighting to keep us tied down in that goddamn peninsula. We expected that some kind of counter-attack would be launched and they didn’t disappoint. When they turned to attack us though, General Bradley saw that the Jerries were pushing in towards Mortain leaving their ass end unprotected against a great big Allied encirclement. We discussed options in light of this development and considered whether we should just put our strength towards knocking out the Krauts right here or if we should concentrate on getting more troops out west to knock out as many of those bastards as we could. Since General Patton was now joining the fray, we went for encircling the bastards right here especially since we knew what the Krauts were planning and saw where the Krauts were going.

Around the very end of July, the Germans who had been sent west to reinforce their Kraut brethren who were trying in vain to keep us boxed in the bocage and off of the open plains, arrived at the western French coast line and then did just what we heard they were going to. They turned east and ran smack dab into the units we had positioned to wipe these bastards out. From the reports of lost Kraut tanks, trucks and artillery, I can only hope we wiped out their whole goddamn army. But further reports showed that was a pie in the sky hope which was way too optimistic. They were battered and on the ropes, but they still weren’t falling down. We did give them hell, though, the sons of bitches.

Caen continued to be one of the major battlefields in Normandy throughout most of July. General Montgomery’s DDay initial objective of taking Caen was unsuccessful though he did finally gain the airfield at Carpiquet. Field Marshal Rommel arranged what little resources he had around Caen and continued to hold off all of General Montgomery’s offensives. General Montgomery unleashed his third attempt to capture the city of Caen, code-named Operation Charnwood, at the beginning of July. It was unsuccessful.

Towards the end of July, Hitler eventually concluded that there would be no additional enemy landings at Pas de Calais and released the Panzer divisions he had been holding there to lend their weight to the fight in Normandy. General Montgomery came up with Operation Goodwood, his fourth and final plan to take the city. Rommel had predicted that another offensive would be undertaken and he prepared his stretched, but increasing, troops accordingly. As Goodwood was launched, General Rommel was strafed by two British bombers who clearly did not know how significant the result of their run was going to be. He was effectively taken out of commanding any further operations, first because of the injuries he sustained in that air attack and second, because he was implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler and was forced by Hitler’s Nazi henchmen to kill himself rather than stand trial for his alleged involvement in the scheme.

Disagreements with Hitler’s military strategies and political goals were the source of much frustration and several high ranking German generals and officers began considering possible alternatives to a Germany ruled by Adolph Hitler. A bomb was placed under a table at Hitler’s headquarters on July 20, 1944 and while it exploded, the leg of a heavy wooden table saved the Führer’s life. He interpreted his survival as proof of his divine right to rule and his military staff now had even less input into Hitler’s military objectives than they did before. Hitler’s orders to his generals became even more desperate and less viable.

Our adversaries are trying desperately to enlarge their foothold in France and our soldiers are fighting to the last man to prevent that. General Rommel issues orders for our troops and our Panzers to shift from one place to another to meet the enemy, each time hoping he will strike a decisive blow but it seems the enemy always knows where we are coming from and where we are going to. When ordered to move out, our troops and tanks are bombed within minutes by an enemy who is too well supplied and too numerous for what we have left here in France. So we move at night. And we fight with a determination to win because under der Führer’s orders, the only other alternative is to die trying.

Now that the Americans have taken the city of Cherbourg with its port, General Rommel sees that they will move south for a swing east towards Paris to eventually reach our West Wall which defends our border. Though I am confident they will never penetrate those defenses, it makes little sense to let them get that far and so again, I see that Herr Field Marshal Rommel is pleading with der Führer for more troops and supplies. Hitler is still apparently convinced that the enemy is planning an invasion in Pas de Calais though General Rommel continues to tell him the real Schwerpunkt of the enemy invasion already took place on the Normandy beaches.

July 2
^nd
was the funeral for General Dollman and there are rumors that his cause of death might have been that he killed himself. General Rommel returned with General von Rundstedt from their meeting with der Führer and neither general seems particularly content. They were told there was to be no deviation from the Sieg oder Todt orders notwithstanding that all of the generals in Normandy were convinced that the only way to save our strength was to conserve it by withdrawing and regrouping. This was forbidden even though four of our Panzer divisions were burning out to the point where they would be useless in future battles according to earlier reports from Panzer Group West before it was destroyed last month. Since its annihilation, God only knows if that figure should actually be higher. Troops, who if not pulled back would be nothing but cannon fodder, were ordered to remain where they are and fight to the last. It seems that der Führer is convinced that we must, at all costs, keep the enemy soldiers hemmed in the bocage terrain where our defensive positions are ideal because, only while trapped in this terrain, his thinking goes, can we hope to defeat them. If we aren’t able to keep the enemy contained in the hedgerows, it’s clear to everyone that we would have an impossible job of overpowering them on the open roads of France. Of course, the devil is in the details and so our German generals are trying to convince der Führer that standing fast doesn’t necessarily lead to victory, at least in Normandy. Der Führer, however, believes that if you give the enemy a centimeter, he will take a meter. And since Hitler is the genius, we fight the war his way.

By the beginning of July, we learned that the enemy now has approximately thirty divisions fighting in France opposing what we estimate to be twenty-five of our own. But most, if not all of our divisions are woefully under strength so just a few days ago, before the enemy attack on the Panzer West Headquarters, our generals in Normandy met to discuss what to do with the city of Caen. After experiencing the air superiority of the enemy, determining by what quantity their soldiers and tanks outnumbered our own and recognizing that it was less than 700 kilometers from here to Germany, General von Schweppenburg wanted to retreat a bit in order, as he said, to create a stronger defense. I’m not sure whether General von Rundstedt agreed or not but I can only surmise he did. And I’m also surmising that someone must have advised der Führer of these defeatist attitudes because both generals have been called back to Berlin.

I later found out that Field Marshal von Rundstedt had pretty much sealed his fate by writing a letter to der Führer advising him to “make peace.” Had this been written by any other old fool, I’m sure heads would have rolled. Hitler must be sick and tired of his whining generals but to save the face of Herr General von Rundstedt, Hitler gave him a promotion and a new medal. He also gave him orders relieving him of his command. Der Führer is apparently replacing him with someone more optimistic about our chances. We are now on pins and needles waiting to see if General Rommel will be accorded the same consequence. Sometimes an unquestioning devotion to our Führer seems like a very good idea.

Now with General von Schweppenburg out of command and General von Rundstedt having just been put into retirement, it was clearly General Rommel who should have been appointed to take over old General von Rundstedt’s job but a new commanding officer arrived with General von Rundstedt’s old title: Supreme Commander in the West. Der Führer gave this promotion to General von Kluge, one of the few remaining generals who is not a member of the Nazi party, although in temperament, I can see no distinction. General von Kluge is someone who looks for scapegoats because clearly der Führer could not be mistaken.

Immediately upon his arrival, and during their first meeting, General von Kluge argued so loudly with General Rommel about how to deal with the enemy here in Normandy that one thing led to another and eventually I heard General Rommel demand an apology and a written withdrawal of General von Kluge’s accusations, which of course was not forthcoming. General von Kluge lambasted General Rommel about the fact that the enemy invaders had not been pushed back into the sea. He came with the very firm idea that General Rommel ought to have been doing better than he was in defending this part of France. General Rommel, while not an excessively proud man, nevertheless has his breaking point and being maligned by someone so new to the battleground, who really had no firsthand knowledge of the perils we faced, was too much for him.

General von Kluge said things such as General Rommel was either a pessimist or a defeatist and that was the reason for our losses. He even went so far as to say General Rommel wasn’t giving battle with 100 % conviction. General Rommel counter argued and then showed our replacement general what the situation was like with actual trips to Division Headquarters, where he spoke with the commanders themselves. General Rommel also took him to the sites of recent battles, where the new commanding general saw the condition of the men and materiel and saw how they had been destroyed and lay useless. General Rommel showed him our defensive positions because he knew that only by seeing for himself with his own two eyes could General von Kluge accurately judge what the true nature of Normandy was after the invasion. By the end of his first inspection and armed now with firsthand knowledge, it was obvious that General von Kluge was moved from his original opinions and more clearly understood the predicament General Rommel was in. He intimated that he had been sent to Normandy to make General Rommel toe the party line but once he had seen that General Rommel had done all, and, in fact, more than what could have been expected under the circumstances, the new general now agreed with Rommel’s assessment that there was no way to hold the Allieds back. And while I never did hear any apology, I can only speculate that one was delivered because not even two weeks later, both generals worked together on a joint missive to der Führer setting forth the current military situation in Normandy.

In this joint letter, they both agreed to tell der Führer what General Rommel had been saying for the last six weeks. They used an example of one German artillery officer, Lattman, who said he needed a minimum of 3,500 tons of supplies per day but was reporting to us that he was not even getting 350 tons since the Allieds controlled the air. General Rommel added that his army had received 6,000 replacement troops to cover a loss of 97,000 troops and that we had received 17 replacement tanks to cover the 225 tanks actually lost. He reported about the enemy air craft which was controlling the skies to a depth of almost 100 miles beyond the front and further reported that our front was soon going to crumble. They said it was necessary for der Führer to understand it was not pessimism or a defeatist attitude that drove them to tell him of the dire situation in Normandy, it was reality. They agreed to tell der Führer that with the enemy’s complete control of the air, there was nothing the ground troops could do to repel the invaders. They said the unimpeded bombing they suffer at the hands of the enemy airplanes causes delays which themselves cause our brave troops to be overpowered. They tried again to make der Führer see that standing fast was doing nothing but annihilating our troops and the scarce equipment and ammunition we still have remaining. General Rommel added that he could not move Panzer divisions from one salient to another because all were currently locked in life and death clashes fighting their own battles and besides, movement in daylight would render them nothing but targets for the enemy bombers and fighters. Our men are calling one particular road by Caen, Jabo-Rennstrecke because it truly is just like a bomber pilot race track. They then asked der Führer to draw the appropriate conclusions from this report and both signed off on the letter.

I have to admit to investigating what I heard General Rommel dictate to his Chief of Staff, General Speidel in this letter to der Führer. I heard General Rommel say to tell him that the war was lost and then heard him say that der Führer should draw the appropriate
political
conclusions as a result of this report. There was conversation about this ending but I couldn’t stay any longer to hear what happened. I know he signed the letter and gave it to General von Kluge to sign and deliver to der Führer. What I was investigating (I wouldn’t call it snooping or eavesdropping, really) was whether the part about drawing the political conclusions was actually included in the letter being sent to der Führer.