The Fall of the Atlantic Wall
Hitler’s Asleep
According to Ian Kershaw in his 2001 book “Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis”, Hitler had been up until 3 a.m.--he was a notorious night owl--watching newsreels with Joseph Goebbels and Eva Braun at the Berghof, his home in Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps.
As late as 10 a.m., he was still sleeping as the defenses were crumbling on Juno, Sword, Utah, and Gold beaches. His adjutants were hesitant to wake him because many, including the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, felt the Normandy landings were a feint from the real landings that would happen at the Pas-de-Calais.
As a result, there was no German counterattack of any weight along the code-named beaches. On D-Day, only one Panzer division near Sword beach engaged Allied forces. At 16:00, the 21st Panzer Division mounted a counterattack between Sword and Juno and nearly succeeded in reaching the coast. It delivered significant damage and casualties before withdrawing from lack of infantry support. The division lost 70 out of 124 tanks.
According to Steven Ambrose in his book “D-Day June 6, 1944”, Rommel's plans for fighting the D-Day battle were never put into motion for a number of reasons. First, the Germans were completely surprised. Operation Fortitude had fixed German attention on the Pas-de-Calais (Pa-de-Cally). Double agents in England had convinced high command it would be the site of the battle, and, as a result, they had placed the bulk of their panzer divisions north and east of the Seine River, where they were unavailable for a counterattack in Normandy.
Ambrose goes on to detail the extensive confusion of German Wehrmacht leadership. They were without air reconnaissance. Allied airborne troops were dropping here, there, everywhere. French Resistance had torn-up railroad tracks, cut their telephone lines, and sabotaged roads, and bridges. Surprisingly, their army, corps, division, and some regimental commanders were away from the coast at a war game in Rennes.
An interesting story from the World War 2 museum highlights the misfortunes of the German leadership:
“General Wilhelm Falley of the 91st Air-Landing Infantry Division heard the roar of thousands of Allied aircraft engines in the night sky. He turned his car around and raced back to his headquarters near Bernville. As he pulled onto the grounds, however, he ran into a blaze of gunfire from US paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division and became the first German general to die in Normandy.”
So the Germans were all but blind and leaderless. The commander who was missed most was Rommel, who spent the day on the road driving to La Roche-Guyon. He was driving long and winding roads instead of quickly flying his headquarters because they lost control of the air. With the Allies’ 8-1 advantage in aircraft and complete superiority, Rommel dared not fly. Consequently, he would not arrive at his headquarters until late in the day.
The Old Man
According to Ambrose’s well-informed opinion, the only high-command officer who responded correctly to the crisis at hand was Field Marshal Rundstedt. Ambrose called him: the old man who was there for window dressing and was scorned by Hitler and the rest of the senior German high command.
Two hours before the seaborne landings began, Rundstedt ordered the two reserve panzer divisions, the 12th SS Panzer and Panzer Lehr, in Normandy to move immediately toward Caen for a counterattack. He did so on the basis of an intuitive judgment that the airborne landings were on such a large scale that they could not be a mere deception maneuver (as some of his staff argued) and would have to be reinforced from the sea.
The only place such landings could come in lower Normandy was on the Calvados and Cotentin coasts. Rundstedt wanted armor there to meet the attack.
Rundstedt's reasoning was sound, his action decisive, his orders clear. But the panzer divisions were not under his command. They were in reserve. To save precious time, Rundstedt had first ordered them to move out, then requested High Command approval.
To the detriment of the war effort, they did not approve. At 07:30, Rundstedt was informed that the two divisions could not be committed until Hitler gave the order, and Hitler was still sleeping. On this day, we will sleep until noon.
As a result, the two panzer divisions spent the morning waiting. At that point in the day, there was a heavy overcast, and they could have moved freely without serious interference from Allied aircraft. It was late in the afternoon, 16:00, when Hitler, at last, gave his approval.
By then, however, the clouds had broken up, and Allied fighters and bombers roamed the skies over Normandy, smashing anything that moved. The panzers had to crawl into roadside woods and wait under cover for darkness before continuing their march to the sound of the guns. They would not play a pivotal role in pushing the Allies back into the water. Instead, they will be used in defense of Caen and in the hedgerow fighting over the next few weeks.
Episode 1: Panzer Punch Reshapes D-Day
Re-imagine the invasion of Europe through Operation Overlord in Episode 1: Panzer Punch Reshapes D-Day.
We look at the tenuous hold the Allies had on D-Day. And we envision what would have happened if Hitler was awake and released the nine Panzer divisions.
