Countdown to D-Day

by Peter Margaritis

  The lunch over, they part. Rommel and his staff return to Fontainebleau. Later, Rommel writes to Lucie:

  Arrived safely yesterday. I’ve found myself a lovely billet in a château which once belonged to Madame de Pompadour. But I won’t be here long. I’m already off on a trip tomorrow—as today’s news announced. It seems that they can tell the British and Americans soon enough that I’m here.

  I lunched with R. today. He seems very pleased, and I think it’s all going well, but I must first get a picture of the situation and see how things are.3

  He does not want her to worry, so he goes back to describing Fontainebleau:

  The old château is a lovely place. The French built very generously and spaciously for their upper classes two centuries ago. We’re absolutely provincial in comparison.

  He has deliberately omitted that he was shocked by von Rundstedt’s feeling of hopelessness. That isn’t going to happen to him. Rommel has resolved that he is going to do his best to negate the lifelessness in OB West by keeping plenty of fire of his own. This he confides to Lucie:

  I’m going to throw myself into this job with everything I’ve got, and I’m going to see it turns out a success.

  The letter finished, he then writes out his schedule for the next day. Tomorrow, he and Gause will be back on the road again to the French coast.

  1Irving wrote that the briefing happened after lunch.

  2Making a point in English was evidently a common habit among the German General Staff officers, especially when they wanted to emphasize their statement.

  3Liddell-Hart’s The Rommel Papers mistakenly dates this letter as December 15.

  Monday, December 20

  Obergruppenführer und Panzergeneral der Waffen-SS Sepp Dietrich, 1 having put in a good two years on the Eastern Front, arrives in Brussels to set up his headquarters for his returning 1st SS Panzer Corps. As such, he will soon have under his command remnants of the 1st SS Panzer Division, limping back from the East, and the new 12th SS Hitlerjugend Panzer Division, currently training in Beverloo, near Antwerp.

  ***

  Generalfeldmarschall Rommel, his mind now made up to totally commit himself to his assignment, today sets off northward with some staff members on a five-day tour of the upper French coast. They are headed for the Somme estuary, and then northeast to the Scheldt.2

  After a 300km drive, they stop for lunch at Tourcoing, the Fifteenth Army Headquarters, where Rommel calls on its commander, GeneralOberst! Hans von Salmuth. After he leaves, one staff member notes:

  Field Marshal Rommel’s view is that our defense forces must be concentrated much closer to the coast. Our reserves are to be brought up forward and thrown into an immediate counterattack. If the British once get a foothold on dry land, they can’t be thrown out again.

  Rommel has established a set routine for his tours: up at the crack of dawn, gather with his officers for a quick breakfast, and then off with one or more staff members to inspect the coast. Perhaps a few snacks will be taken, although he will seldom eat them. Sometimes he returns that same night and sometimes he stays over somewhere, dining with the commanding officers and visiting with the men of the local unit. Naturally, he sits at the head of the table, and usually Admiral Ruge or Alfred Gause sits on his left.

  Rommel makes sure that his dinnertime subjects of conversation vary. Often he tells stories of his exploits, sometimes amusing, sometimes recounting a pivotal point of some campaign, either in this war or the last. Often though, he enjoys reminiscing about North Africa in ‘41. Rommel will sometimes talk about Tobruk, and his eyes light up as he goes into the fine points of his 1942 offensive against the British. He tries to make sure that there is never any trace of boasting in his stories, and he always strives to tell his accounts objectively and honestly. He prides himself on the fact that he does not hesitate to talk about his mistakes, pointing out to his staff that the main purpose of errors was to set a negative example from which to learn.

  Often Gause will take on the roguish job of filling in the details of the general’s tales with some humorous, embarrassing, or all-too-human minutiae of the operations. This task, combined with Gause’s dry wit, supplies delightful color to the boss’s narrative. Add to this the faked anguish—well, maybe not completely—of his staff members who have heard these stories over and over; Rommel’s aide Hammermann complained that this was the fifteenth time he had heard Rommel describe how they captured Tobruk.

  Wherever he goes, the men flock to him and lay upon him unabashed pride and admiration, bordering upon adoration. He is, after all, there for them. And he is one of their best—He is der legendare Wüstenfuchs.

  ***

  At Hitler’s noontime war conference, he discusses the subject of the new Me-262 jet with Reichsmarschall Göring. He stresses again that he wants this new weapon developed not just as a fighter, but as a fighter-bomber. This is necessary, if they are to turn back the expected enemy invasion in the West.

  He repeats this theme to Göring again when they have lunch a couple hours later. Hitler tells him, “Every month that passes makes it more and more probable that we will get at least one squadron of jet aircraft: the most important thing is that they [i.e., the enemy] get some bombs on top of them just as they try to invade. That will force them to take cover. And even if there is only one such aircraft in the air, they will still have to take cover, and in this way they will waste hour after hour!” He continues. “But after half a day, our reserves will already be on their way. So if we can pin them down on the beaches for just six or eight hours, you can see what that will mean for us.”

  He continues. “There is no doubt at all that the attack in the West will come in the spring… When they attack, then that attack will decide the war. When that attack is beaten off, the story is over. Then we can take forces away again without delay.”

  Clearly, he is imagining a terrible fate for the Allies coming ashore.

  1Fifty-one-year-old Joseph “Sepp” Dietrich, a World War I artilleryman with limited education, nevertheless became one of the early members of the Nazi Party, joining in 1928. Soon thereafter, he took command of Hitler’s special SS bodyguard. Taking on the role of his chauffeur, he went with the leader on many political trips, and as Hitler gained power, Dietrich rose through the SS ranks. When Hitler became chancellor in 1933, Dietrich was given the coveted command of the Führer’s SS bodyguard regiment, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). When the war began, Dietrich’s unit began to see military action, and the SS regiment was expanded into a fully functional SS panzer division. In the summer of 1943, the division became the cadre for the 1st SS Panzer Corps, a ruthless, élite unit that would see action in every theater over the course of the war. In 1946, Dietrich was given a life sentence for his connection to the Malmedy Massacre during the Battle of the Bulge, but was released on parole in late October 1955. Shortly after that though, he was again convicted, this time for his involvement in the SA purge during the Night of the Long Knives back in 1934. Released in February 1958 because of health conditions, he still maintained connections with SS veterans until he died of a heart attack on April 21, 1966.

  2The Scheldt River (Schelde in Dutch, Escaut to the French) flows northeast across western Belgium, past the all-important port of Antwerp, and finally into the North Sea. The Scheldt is also a part of an intricate canal system in that area.

  Tuesday, December 21

  Rommel continues his tour of the Fifteenth Army positions along the Belgian and northern French coast, von Salmuth accompanying him. He is becoming more and more amazed at his findings. Despite all the Nazi propaganda, there is a decided lack of preparation along the shoreline. There is no overall plan of defense, and no central control. Each of the services is at odds with the others, and cooperation is generally lacking in the face of petty jealousies and varied local resentments. Worse than that, no one really seems to care, other than fervently hoping that the enemy does not decide to land in front of them.

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p; There is only one fully ready panzer division, and its presence in the West is subject to any emergency that might rise in the East. Nearly all the infantry units lack any true kind of transport. Air cover is scant, while enemy air power is growing continually. Fewer than two million mines have been laid on the coast, and many have been down for a couple years now, and are considered unreliable.

  The small number of beach obstacles in place are primitive and too few to be really effective. A lot are temporary, and many in or under the water are constantly getting pounded by the waves. Probably only half of them would be effective against armor.

  As bad as anything are the Strandlöwen1—the fortified bunkers with the heavy batteries. Most of the effective ones are along the Pas-de-Calais where the invasion is expected. Because of steel shortages, many are set in stationary concrete bases instead of revolving turrets. So they can only elevate—they cannot traverse, limiting their field of fire.2 And the guns themselves, the spoils of a defeated Europe, represent nearly thirty different calibers and over forty different makes, with a number of them at odd sizes. Fire control is usually crude, and the gun crews are often older men, averaging in their mid-forties. Others are members of the Marinehelfer or Marinehelferinnen, 3 many of them are still completing their training via correspondence courses.

  At the end of the day, the tired field marshal sighs. Clearly, he has his work cut out for him.

  ***

  Today, a German newspaper, the Pariser Zeitung, highlights Rommel’s presence in France and, in particular, the new “alliance” between Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt, the winner of countless campaigns during the war in both the East and the West, and the renowned Desert Fox. The paper reports that this new command “…could attach everlasting glory to their flags in all theaters of war.” The old Prussian is portrayed as a, “guarantee for the security of Fortress Europe against all attempts by the Americans and British to infiltrate.” Rommel, in turn, is described as the man of action who always commands at the front.

  1“Beach lions.”

  2There had been a good deal of construction going on in 1941—43. However, this was primarily limited to the submarine pens at ports like St. Nazaire, and Brest.

  3Naval assistants. See Glossary.

  Wednesday, December 22

  Generalfeldmarschall Rommel, up early, continues his tour of the northern French Coast, riding in a large 2.3-litre Mercedes 230 Cabriolet. Seeing more coastal positions only drives home the seriousness of the situation. The isolated fortified bunkers with their many different calibers of guns present real supply problems. And the plight of these bunkers typifies the condition of the rest of the coastal defenses.

  There are too many different types of weapons, many of them captured. Their ammunition, often no longer manufactured, is hard or impossible to get. Because of this, they cannot be fired in practice.

  Transportation is severely lacking, and any transport that units have been able to appropriate is usually a hodgepodge mixture of old civilian and military vehicles. Many unit commanders lack their own personal vehicle to tour their area of responsibility. They must use more simple means of transportation, such as a bicycle or a horse.

  Rommel is often stunned by the lack of preparation and decides that he will have to spend the rest of the month in a whirlwind of activity. Then he will have to maintain this high level throughout the rest of the winter.

  ***

  Von Rundstedt has enjoyed a comfortable day at the lavish Hôtel Georges V in Paris. Up at 10 a.m., he has spent the hours leisurely, signing a few reports, and receiving one or two visitors. His own command bunker in the suburb of St.-Germain-en-Laye, to the west, is currently being renovated—not that he cares very much, because he usually stays at his nearby villa, a couple hundred yards away, when the weather is nice, and at his Parisian Hôtel near the Eiffel Tower in the coldest part of the winter.

  He will spend the evening with a nice bottle of some vintage brandy and a Zane Gray western that he started a few days ago. The war to him is far away.

  Blumentritt, still in the Hôtel lounge, is worried about the old man’s drinking, which has increased substantially this last year. That in and of itself is not so bad, but the excess alcohol sometimes gives the field marshal a tendency to get a little too frank in any evening conversation with OKW. Some of his staff are worried that some of his more forthright, blunt remarks might get back to the Führer and get him relieved of his command—or even arrested.

  Blumentritt finally goes to his room, still worried.

  Thursday, December 23

  Generalfeldmarschall Rommel is still on his tour of the Fifteenth Army positions on the northern French coast. His staff is hard-pressed to keep up with him, anxious to wrap this inspection trip up. Christmas Eve, after all, is tomorrow.

  Oblivious of the holiday, Rommel spends the entire day visiting the area around Montreuil, about 45km south-southeast of Boulogne-sur-Mer. His inspection of the 125th Reserve Division does not impress him. In the evening, he goes back to Montreuil to spend the night.

  He does some in-depth analysis that evening. It is obvious that an overall defensive plan against an invasion is needed. To his way of thinking, the most effective thing to do is clearly to just mass everybody—infantry, artillery, staff members, cooks, bottle washers—everybody—into a bristling fortification zone, shielded by mines, obstacles, natural barriers, and anything else that will stop or slow down an advancing enemy. This fortified zone will have to be at least 4.5km wide all along the coastline. The mobile forces that he will somehow have to create and organize will lie in wait just behind them, so that the panzers can charge up to the landing site at a moment’s notice and enter the fray.

  Since the French road network near the ocean is already well-developed, further construction might allow this short, rapid type of advance to be possible in the short run, even with the enemy control of the air. The critical point, he concludes, is that the panzers must coordinate their fight with the infantry and be right alongside them, and not roaming around the rear lines in massive formations, maneuvering, where air interdiction could pulverize and neutralize the vehicles.

  He knows what air power can do to rear areas from personal experience; unfortunately, mostly on the receiving end. He suffered such attacks in North Africa. There had been days when the Afrika Korps was pounded again and again by Allied aircraft. He himself had many times, with bombs falling around him, had to jump into a foxhole or bunker, or leap out of his vehicle into a ditch. How he himself has not been killed or wounded by now is in his mind (as well as in those of his men) nothing short of a miracle. And now the enemy has a much greater number of aircraft to throw against them.

  Yes, it would be hell trying to move around behind the lines. And naval gunfire support near the beachhead would triple the problem. No, the best place for his men was to be dug in right there at the very front, mixing it up with the enemy as they struggled to make it ashore and set up their lines.

  He and his staff have already begun designing a plan to put this defensive strategy into effect. The problems in getting the massive amount of supplies for this ambitious undertaking will be great.

  Of course, it could in the end turn out to be academic. If von Rundstedt cannot be convinced that he is right, his plans might all come to naught. Unless, of course, Rommel can get the Führer to support him...

  Friday, December 24

  Rommel’s inspection party completes its tour of the Fifteenth Army positions. Starting out early in the morning from Montreuil, they begin by inspecting a strong defensive position being constructed by two Waffen SS companies.1 Then they are off to examine a V-1 launching site carved out of a chalk cliff. Launch ramps would be rolled out to fire the missiles.

  Word has leaked out that Rommel is in the area, because a number of drills are being performed as he comes through—exercises that most likely would not have occurred on Christmas Eve if he had not been inspecting. One engineering unit though, unpertu
rbed, has already started celebrating the holidays when he arrives, and the lady auxiliaries there take the opportunity to get the field marshal’s autograph.

  Around noontime, he attends a conference at the headquarters of the 82nd Corps.2 Its area of responsibility covers the coastline from the Somme estuary to the Belgian border. He finds the conference enlightening.

  At 2 p.m., the inspection group finally heads back to their headquarters, passing through Amiens and at length, Paris. As they drive into to the capital, the weather becomes foggy and they get lost. Tired, Rommel and his staff finally roll into Fontainebleau at 7 p.m.

  They have a quick, simple dinner, and then go into a main hall to join in the Christmas celebration initiated by the security force. In addition, all members of staff join in to celebrate Admiral Ruge’s birthday, his 50th.

  One of the topics discussed during the party is today’s news. The Allies have announced that Eisenhower has been promoted to the post of Supreme Commander in Europe. Rommel instructs his staff to update the man’s profile immediately.

  He then takes time off from the party to call home and wish his family happy holidays. He is especially tender to Manfred, wishing him a heartfelt happy birthday. The boy will tomorrow turn fifteen.

  They also discuss his immediate future with the military. Manfred now tells him that he has been assigned to the Luftwaffe as an auxiliary. He reports January 6 to an anti-aircraft battery around Stuttgart. Manfred seems happy about it.

  After the phone call, the field marshal spends some more time celebrating with his staff, then retires. He has a busy day lined up for the holiday: Christmas morning with his staff, starting his report, and then going out to spend some time with his troops. After all, he is still Rommel.