Countdown to D-Day

by Peter Margaritis

  Ruge is then off for Utrecht in Holland to see Vizeadmiral Kleikamp, 1 the commander of all naval forces in Belgium and the Netherlands. Not knowing that the naval headquarters is at the town entrance, Ruge wastes time finding it. He asks a sailor walking down the street with his newlywed wife, but the man is just a visitor. Two Dutchmen plead ignorance as well. When a town citizen also says he does not know where to find the headquarters, Ruge’s suspicions are aroused.

  Finally he gets hold of a city map and finds that the headquarters is right nearby.

  ***

  Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt spends his third day back catching up on paperwork at the Hôtel Georges V. By now, he has developed a general daily schedule. He gets his morning report privately from his chief of staff after breakfast around 10 a.m. Barring any visitors (which he avoids), his next update comes after lunch at 1 p.m., unless he is detained at a nearby restaurant. His third update comes around 4 p.m., followed by tea, and the last around 7:30 that evening. Naturally, any critical issues that come up will be reported at once.

  Interestingly, he spends almost as much time studying reports and maps of the Eastern Front as he does the Western Front. Having led the invasion there in 1941, he now keeps up on the military situation, particularly with Army Group South, his old command. He has been studying the recent near-disaster at Cherkassy and the collapse of the Korsun pocket. Estimates are that one out of three German soldiers in the Eighth Army have been killed or captured. Because he has been keeping up to date on how critical the situation in the East is, he is usually agreeable to donating units from his command, even volunteering them from time to time.

  Today though, most of his attention is on the West. What are the Allies up to? Information from Naval Group West is scant. There are only a few small vessels to carry out intelligence operations, and the enemy’s security forces are far too strong. Daytime air reconnaissance is almost impossible, and the few nightly aircraft that get over the Channel and back find out little. England remains a blank picture, and von Rundstedt these days is usually in the dark when it comes to enemy intentions.

  Well, not quite. Some reports from a few remaining scattered, unreliable agents get through from time to time. Isolated observations that usually do not mean much, except the presence of sizeable military forces. He does know that there are two army groups at present in England, one commanded by the American general, Eisenhower, and the other by Rommel’s old nemesis, Montgomery.

  OB West is certain that there are large numbers of divisions across the Channel, either ready for combat or training vigorously.2 More are coming from the Mediterranean. From time to time, word of a landing exercise will leak through, or occasionally a convoy is spotted just south of England. Through neutral diplomatic channels, it might be learned that certain British or American senior officers are on leave.

  At any rate, none of it means much. And it is just as well. The old Prussian has no spy network of his own, and would not want one anyway; spywork is, in his opinion, skullduggery. He does not believe in subterfuge and undercover work. It is undignified for a soldier, much less a German officer, and almost always unreliable. The distasteful people who do such things are, in his mind, of low moral fiber.

  Still, today he has received an espionage report originating from a contact in Spain warning of possible Allied actions against that country. He discusses this with Blumentritt, and they dismiss the report as a feint. Von Rundstedt has seen a number of reports before that indicated the Allies were preparing to go into Spain or Portugal. Each one had in the end turned out to be just a ruse.

  Personally, the field marshal does not think such a landing will occur. He has a healthy respect for the Spanish army. He knows that they would defend themselves vigorously against any aggressor. Even if the Allies did get a toehold in Spain or somehow persuaded Franco to ally with them (unlikely) and grant access, where would they go from there? The poor Spanish road complex and rail networks would not help them establish much of a base. And the Pyrenees would be a tremendous obstacle to cross into southern France.

  His generals near the border have had several talks with their Spanish counterparts. While the Spaniards would indeed resist a German thrust against them, they do not relish siding with the Allies either. No, Spain will stay neutral. He has told his staff that more than once. “The Allies are not so stupid as to violate Spanish neutrality,” he once said, “and the Spaniards themselves would not allow such a thing to happen. Moreover, a layman can see that it is no easy matter to jump from there over the Pyrenees, the Garônne and the Loire. This could be purchased more cheaply on the Channel, with a secure base in England and a short distance to the Ruhr.”

  Fortunately, the Führer shares his opinion, and has ordered that no action is to be taken that might offend the Spanish. In the meantime though, von Rundstedt orders contingency plans for the occupation of Spain to be updated.

  Just in case…

  1Vizeadmiral Gustav Kleikamp, who took command of naval forces in Belgium and the Netherlands on April 3, 1943. A veteran of World War I, he served in a number of distinctive roles in World War II. He had commanded the obsolete dreadnaught battleship Schleswig-Holstein during the invasion of Norway in 1940, and later served as a transport force commander for the never-executed Operation Sealion.

  Most interestingly though, Kleikamp had taken a big part in forcing future SS terror leader Reinhard Heydrich out of the German Navy. Heydrich, a naval officer at the time, had become quite the womanizer. In late 1930, he undertook an illicit love affair with the daughter of an important shipyard director and friend of the navy’s commander-in-chief, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder. The girl spent several intimate nights with Heydrich and came to believe that he would marry her, especially after she discovered that she was pregnant. When he informed her (callously, by sending her a copy of the engagement announcement) that he had instead become engaged to another woman, one Lina von Osten, she brokenheartedly confessed her affair to her father, who in turn angrily lodged a formal complaint with Admiral Raeder.

  In April 1931, a Court of Honor was convened on the matter. The panel included then Kapitänleutnant Kleikamp and 31-year-old Karl-Jesko von Puttkamer (who would become Hitler’s naval advisor in 1935 and remain so until the end of the war). The proceedings found that although Heydrich was technically exonerated, he had acted improperly as a naval officer. A defiant Heydrich bluntly refused to give up his engagement with Miss von Osten to marry this girl, and his cavalier attitude during the proceedings certainly did not help his case. The matter was finally referred back again to Admiral Raeder, who finally forced Heydrich to resign his naval commission for “conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman.” With Heydrich’s naval career abruptly over and his pension lost, and encouraged by his avid Nazi fiancée, he joined the National Socialist party and vigorously, ruthlessly, turned his attention to its new SS security organization, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). It was a move that would lead him to one of the most infamous roles in the 20th century. He did marry Lina von Osten in December 1931 (after the war, she eventually remarried in 1965, and finally died in 1985). Later, rumors of this infamous scandal included a theory that Heydrich had earlier joined the SS and was actually spying on the Navy for them at the time. Another rumor was that Heydrich was forced to resign from the Navy over homosexual charges. This of course was never proven. Heydrich was assassinated on May 27, 1942 on a Czech country road by partisans. Severely wounded, he died a few days later. A reprisal fell on the small mining village of Lidice, where supposedly a few inhabitants had aided the assassins. On June 10, all 172 males were rounded up and shot, all the women and children sent to a concentration camp, and the village was burned to the ground.

  2Because of successful Allied deceptions, German intelligence grossly overestimated the Allied strength in England. They estimated that the Western Allies had some 80 different-sized divisions and nearly two dozen small brigades across the Channel. Realistically, the Allies only h
ad some two dozen American divisions, a dozen British divisions, three Canadian divisions, and over a dozen brigades. To add to this, senior German army officials at OKH began in 1944 to “pad” enemy estimates to seep some realistic sense into the Führer. It was this image of some five dozen divisions left biding their time in England after the invasion began that would later scare Hitler and OKW into releasing the Fifteenth Army to fight in Normandy.

  Friday, February 25

  Vizeadmiral Ruge, on Rommel’s behalf, is touring up the Northern European coast. Today, the admiral is on the North Holland peninsula, and has a conference at the naval base in Den Helder with Kapitän Stophasius in his headquarters.1 They talk about mines, and how to effectively sabotage harbors to prevent the enemy from using them.

  Then the two of them cross the dike across the Zuider Zee and drive off through Groningen and Nieune-Schas to the town of Leer in Germany.

  At sunset, Ruge makes it to Sengwarden.2 There he calls on Admiral Förste at the Marineoberkommando Nordsee (headquarters of the Northern Sea Command).3 Förste has just come back from leave in Hamburg. Ruge lays out for his staff plans and sketches of Rommel’s proposed barriers. He discovers that none of these plans have reached here through official channels. Gritting his teeth, Ruge goes over them with the naval officers, until there is no doubt in anyone’s mind what Rommel expects of the navy.

  On the other hand, Förste tells Ruge that he has no real authority up here. Förste merely carries out the will of OKW and is under their direct command.

  Ruge’s tour is not going well.

  ***

  Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt has successfully (at least, in his mind) employed a deception for the last three or four months now. Through OB West, false and misleading deployment information has intentionally been leaked to various diplomatic circles in Paris. The “slipped” information has been designed to indicate that large, well-equipped mobile units are being moved to the south of France to discourage an Allied landing down there. Substantial pains have been taken to convince both German and French civilian personnel that the move is underway.

  Rundstedt had started this rumor on one of his visits to Germany. Officers coming back from leave in the Reich had been instructed to return with new rumors. Exercise grounds and new quarters have been requested and scoped out in the south, and commands down there have been instructed to stand by to create new units.

  Unfortunately, the field marshal knows that the ruse is about up. He senses that, although the Allies might have initially believed this ploy, they are no longer falling for it.

  On a more grisly note, in response to the escalated acts of sabotage in the interior of France, he today issues a harsh order regarding the search and capture of Resistance fighters and details for reprisals; he calls the fighters “terrorists.” In the order, he writes that if in the course of the pursuit innocent civilians are killed, it will be a “deplorable” condition. The fault though, he adds, will be that of the terrorists.

  It is an order that will come back to haunt him after the war.

  1Kapitän Stophasius was the North Holland Naval Commander. Den Helder is located at the tip of the North Holland peninsula, about 100km north of Amsterdam.

  2About 8km north of Wilhelmshaven.

  3Fifty-two-year-old Admiral Erich Förste, who headed the Northern Sea Command. A U-boat veteran of World War I, he served aboard various commands between wars, including torpedo boats and the cruisers Königsberg and Karlsruhe. At the start of World War II, Förste was in command of the battlecruiser Gneisenau, which turned out to be his last sea command before he went through a number of desk assignments. He took over the Northern Sea Command at the beginning of March, 1943 and would finally relinquish the command for captivity some two months after the end of the war.

  Saturday, February 26

  Vizeadmiral Ruge, continuing his tour up the northern European coast, today has a conference with the Deputy Naval Commander, North Sea1 and his chief of staff2 at their headquarters in Buxtehude.3 Ruge is impressed by the large personnel department, complete with “friendly girls” who do not hesitate to give him the Nazi salute.

  The talk is about alert levels, and which naval personnel would report for duty with each. The OKW setup as it now stands dictates that most of the men would first mobilize at specific bases in Germany before reporting to their units in Western Europe. Ruge decides to slant his suggestions by recommending that naval personnel transfer inland to man administrative positions, so that their army counterparts can be freed to man the coast.

  ***

  Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt today reads a few summaries of the Allied bombings of the French transport infrastructure. These first two months of 1944, the enemy has been targeting a larger area of the French railroads than before. So far, they have taken out some 200 locomotives. Of course, the Resistance has done far worse, having put out of action some 500 locomotives in the same period. The field marshal knows that in the next few months, the situation will just get worse, and with little airpower of his own, there is not much that he can do to stop the bombing trend. Since his divisions already have little motor transport of their own, their dependency upon the railroads for their supplies is even more important, thus compounding the problem.

  The French rail system has suffered greatly in the last decade. Even before the war, it struggled because of an economic crisis and a number of scandals. The effective blitzkrieg campaign of 1940 had severely crippled it, and the Germans have been picking at its dwindling resources ever since. Overall, the Reich has removed some 4,000 locomotives from France, including many larger engines. In addition, over one third of the rolling stock has been moved to other areas, and over 20 percent of the French rail personnel have been reassigned to “more important duties,” including OT activities, factories, and a few to military units.

  Small wonder that the French rail system suffers acutely everywhere. Not only must it deal with this shrinkage, but it has now been given the hopelessly huge task of supplying the occupying forces under a strange German-French management setup that is incompetent at best.

  To partially offset these problems, von Rundstedt had ordered a very precise, tightly adhered-to priority system be set up for the railroads in early January. The new system is now fully functional. Time will reveal its effectiveness, but it had better work—because if it does not, his men will be unable to get the supplies that they will need to subsist, let alone fight the enemy.

  1Fifty-one-year-old Konteradmiral Siegfried Engel. He also carries the title of Admiral der Nordsee, which oversees Schiffsstamm, Marinelehr (naval training), and Marineersatz (naval replacement) units. Engel would be taken captive by the British in 1945.

  2Kapitän zur See Maximilian Glaser.

  3About 20km west-southwest of Hamburg, and 160km east of FÖrste’s main North Sea headquarters at Sengwarden.

  Sunday, February 27

  Generalfeldmarschall Rommel is in the middle of a ten-day leave at home. He and his wife privately discuss at length the recent behavior of his chief of staff, who had recently stayed with them.1 Lucie tells him that Gause had been totally out of line, admonishing Aldinger for being late. Rommel agrees, although he is not too sure what all the fuss is about. Plus (she points out), Gause is so negative about everything. Granted, he lost his house and his savings back on August 23, but he is so down about it. And about the war, his health…

  Rommel points out that he was wounded a few times in North Africa, and she nods her head. Still, he does carry on about it.

  Lucie then starts in about Gause’s wife. She tells him that the woman’s stay has about driven her crazy. His wife is also quite negative about the war and life, and Lucie does not like how she has a couple times spoken out indirectly against the Führer. Again, Rommel is at a loss and just listens to his wife’s complaints.

  Perhaps, he reasons, she is on the right track. Maybe things will be better if Gause goes to another command. Lucie is firmly of
this mind and tells him so. Well, it might be time anyway. Rommel will have to think about that.

  ***

  Today, Vizeadmiral Ruge is touring the Heligoland Bight. He will stay with the coastal commander there and plans on writing a report about the defenses in that area.

  ***

  It is evening. The Führer is at the Berghof, having returned on the 23rd. Today he has been studying the Russian northern offensive. Rorkhov was taken yesterday. Army Group Center’s situation is rapidly deteriorating. Something will have to be done soon. And he will need even more units to brace for the upcoming Russian spring offensive.

  As a direct corollary of this, he has all but decided that his ally Hungary must be occupied.

  The decision has been a long time in coming. He had courted Hungary in the late 1930s and promised restoration of a good part of its kingdom, lost at the end of World War I. The Hungarian government had been caught in a dilemma. Fearful of a treacherous backstabbing by a Balkan neighbor and intimidated by this new, powerful Germany, they had been coerced into supporting the Axis and had allowed German troops to cross through their territory to set up for the invasion of Poland. As a reward, Hungary had received slices of the southern and eastern portions of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939.

  Over the next few years, Hungary had followed Germany like a scared young adolescent too afraid of the bully to tell him no. The Hungarians have been fearful of being overrun by those powerful panzer formations and terror-stricken at the thought of occupation by the fearful SS. Worse, Germany could conspire with Hungary’s adversaries, those accursed Romanians to the east, to carve up her territory. So reluctantly, Hungary has been forced to participate in the invasions of Yugoslavia and Russia.

  Admiral Horthy, the country’s prince-regent, 2 (who Hitler is sure privately dislikes the Nazis), has at times tried to minimize his country’s military effort. Hitler had first expressed his outrage at this “lack of enthusiasm” with Horthy in his field headquarters in September, 1941. Horthy had replied that Hungary was saving the bulk of her strength for the upcoming struggle in the Balkans.