***
The evening of June 1 at Berchtesgaden has been relatively calm. Operations Chief General Alfred Jodl has settled down into his evening routine at his temporary residence named after him, the Jodlhaus. About 2,200 square meters, it is a quaint three-storey square house built into the side of a grassy slope, with a concrete wall in front of the steps leading up to the second level. His superior, Field Marshal Keitel, has his own separate residences in the complex as well, about a hundred meters away. The Keitelhaus is a larger, charming three-storey manor, with an impressive arched entryway, a large overhanging roof, and full balconies around the upper stories. Most of the OKW staff stays at the Strub Barracks on the other side of town.11
Their headquarters are located a few kilometers down the mountain in the Klein Reichskanzlei—the “Little Reich Chancellery.” Since the actual Reichskanzlei was far away in Berlin, the Führer in 1935 decided to create a secondary semi-permanent chancellery just outside Berchtesgaden. So in 1935, he ordered this alternate Reichskanzlei built in Stanggaß, a valley suburb on the northwest edge of Berchtesgaden,. It is only a few miles from the Berghof (although still a good half-hour drive through the town and up the main winding road to get there). Jodl though is seldom there. He spends most of his time either at the Berghof with Hitler, or in his quarters here.
Despite the fact that the Führer’s mountain compound has grown tremendously in size over the last five years, none of the senior military personnel actually stay with him at the Berghof. Top leaders like Göring, Speer, Jodl, Keitel, and Himmler get to have their own residences in the compound. Most of the OKW staff though, work and sleep outside the immediate area, far below the mountain, close to the Klein Reichskanzlei.
Jodl is now sitting at his desk, tired from the day’s activities. It is not that he minds staying at the Jodlhaus. He must admit that the accommodations are fine. Rather, he is just tired of going back and forth all the time. Not just locally up and down the Obersalzberg mountain between his headquarters, the Berghof nearby, and his own quarters, but also periodically between Berlin, Rastenburg, and Berchtesgaden. Staying in the enclosed compound at Rastenburg in East Prussia was like living in a labor camp in the middle of the woods. And working at the Berghof is like operating in a monastery, subject to the whims of a brilliant but somewhat insane abbot. In general, Jodl’s own staff worked out of a train half the time. This included Walther Warlimont, who had his own Section L (Operations) located in its own special railcar car at the Berchtesgaden railway station.
Jodl’s thoughts are interrupted when his aide comes in and hands him a teletype message. Meyer in Fifteenth Army Intelligence has intercepted the first part of the Verlaine code. If one is to believe the report, the invasion now is supposedly not far off. Jodl reads the message with a scowl. To him, it is just more spy cloak-and-dagger crap. And stuff like this by now is not that interesting to him. Anyway, he is pretty sure that after von Rundstedt reads it, he will put all of France on alert, so Jodl decides he does not need to.
He sets the dispatch down on his desk, along with the rest of the day’s message traffic, and forgets about it.
1While actual numbers vary, most sources agree that von Rundstedt commanded anywhere from 58 to 60 actual divisions at this time, not including various detached or independent units.
2The husky Tiger I and Tiger II tanks (PzKw VIa and PzKw VIb) were rare. The deadly PzKw V “Panther” was starting to come off the production lines in increasing numbers. Unfortunately, huge numbers of tanks were needed immediately, and the good ones were going to the Eastern Front. Because of that, older model PzKw IVs and PzKw IIIs were still being produced and put into combat units, such as the 21st Panzer, supplemented by whatever else they could scrounge up, including a few French tanks, which were nearly useless against even a Sherman tank. To increase their survivability, the German engineers had beefed them up with extra armor plating and better radios.
3There were only six rifle battalions, organized into two regiments. Their transport, like that of most of the divisions in the West, was haphazard, utilizing a variety of vehicles, including some vintage Italian trucks. Two battalions moved around on bicycles. The panzer battalion had no tanks at all, but rather 37 assault guns. The anti-tank battalion was two-thirds understrength, only having one company of 12 self-propelled guns, instead of the intended three. The Flak battalion, while it featured a dozen towed 88mm guns, only had four-fifths of its required personnel. An armored recon battalion and a small headquarters unit rounded out the division.
4About 110km southwest of Tours.
5The 19th Panzer would eventually be sent back to Poland in July 1944, and a month later, it would take part in subduing the Warsaw Uprising. In September, still on the Eastern Front, it would try to stabilize the German defensive line near the Vistula. Continually forced to retreat, it finally surrendered to Russian forces at the end of the war in Czechoslovakia.
6Thirty-nine-year-old SS Brigadeführer Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, Assistant Secretary of Propaganda. A strong Nazi supporter and once a famed journalist, Berndt had taken over the central Propaganda Department in 1941 for Goebbels. Berndt knew Rommel quite well. Back as a lieutenant, he had first joined Rommel’s command staff in North Africa and had served as Rommel’s aide-de-camp, a sort of Nazi party representative, keeping Rommel’s diary. Berndt proved himself to be tough, boldly courageous, and when necessary, direct, even with his superiors (which Rommel used to his advantage whenever anything unpleasant needed to be reported to the Führer, especially since Berndt was now also a Party official and a close assistant to Goebbels).
Although he now ran a large part of the Propaganda Department, he had taken back his rank as an SS officer (he had joined in 1934). Thus, if he came to Rommel’s headquarters in his SS uniform, that would have been an unusual sight. A good friend of Rommel who had helped create the field marshal’s image in the media, he was a stout fellow, with wavy hair, and an incurable streak of curiosity that caused him to want to poke into everything he came across. Still, Berndt remained a fiercely loyal Nazi.
In a letter to Lucie on the morning of May 27, Rommel had noted Berndt’s upcoming visit. Evidently, it had been postponed.
7The battery was hit again on June 4 by the 386th Bomb Group.
8This special BBC segment of the news, “Les Français parlent aux Français”, (“The French speak to the French”) first began in July 1940, right after the fall of France. It was transmitted for a variety of communication purposes, many of which were innocuous, such as for congratulations or to celebrate certain personal occasions. Some messages were made up and just sent to confuse the Germans. Many of course, were used to relay coded instructions to the French Underground, either collectively, or most often, to individual local cells. This radio segment continued on the BBC until the end of August 1944.
9Oberst!leutnant Helmuth Meyer, Intelligence Chief (Ic), Fifteenth Army. See May 3 entry.
10OKW passed the information on to the unemotional Colonel Roenne, head of the expert staff at Fremde Heeres West, which evaluated enemy intelligence reports and passed on that information when it was appropriate to lower army echelons. Roenne did nothing.
11A two-year project began in 1936 to build a large military barracks complex in nearby Strub for the 2. Abteilung, 100. Gebirgsjägerregiment. After the war, it was used by the American Army until 1995.
Friday, June 2
It is another lovely day in France, with a slight, cool breeze in the air. Again, no real signs of Allied activity regarding any landing operations. A radio broadcast gives them the gloomy news (although the announcer put a very positive spin on it) that Rome is now nearly in the hands of the Allies. The military situation in Italy is getting even worse, now that the Allies have broken out of their Anzio landing area. It seems likely that Rome will soon fall.
Generalfeldmarschall Rommel, at the request of the Führer, puts out a directive granting fortress commanders greater powers of authority regarding the defen
se of their assigned areas.
That afternoon, Rommel, some of his staff members, and a few local hunters go on a battue1 with the Marquis de Choisy. Treff accompanies them. They all trample around in the woods for a few hours but only manage to scare up a few squirrels. The hunt though, does allow them some splendid views of the placid Seine River valley on this nice day, so the afternoon activity is not completely wasted. They have plenty of opportunities to take in the beautiful scenery, only spoiled by a view far off in the distance of enemy aircraft bombing a bridge crossing.
***
Early this afternoon at the Berghof, Alfred Jodl talks to Hitler about the upcoming invasion in the West. There are some reports of Allied troop movements down into southern England that occurred at the end of May, but analysis is inconclusive. Jodl’s staff has been checking moon phases and tides, with an eye towards Cherbourg. Hitler is told that a favorable time period for invasion exists between the 5th and the 13th of June.
He is also informed from the Gestapo in Berlin of an intelligence alert coming from Oberst! Oskar Reile, in charge of counter-intelligence in France. The first half of over a hundred key trigger phrases had been transmitted by the BBC to the French Resistance According to his intelligence, D-Day will occur in less than two weeks. When the second halves of the phrases are sent, the invasion should be launched within 48 hours.
The Führer’s concerns today, though, are elsewhere. Listening to the lunchtime briefings and studying the latest combat reports, he concludes that the situation in Italy is getting much worse. Rome is about to fall, and German units are starting to retreat. So he orders the 19th Luftwaffe Field Division, now renamed the 19th Luftwaffe Stürm Division, to relocate from Holland to Italy.2 OKW General Warlimont is furious about this decision and knows that the commanders in the West will be as well.
***
Today, OB West receives two communiqués from OKW. The first, a teletype message, informs them that, since the 21st Panzer Division has recently successfully demonstrated the importance of multi-barrel rocket launchers (the weapons demonstrations on May 30), a thousand captured BM-8 82mm Russian rocket launchers will be shipped from the Replacement Army in Germany to them for that purpose.
The second, a radio message from Keitel under instructions, reminds von Rundstedt that the Führer in January and again in February had issued directives declaring certain islands and fortified port areas to be considered Festungen. As such, their commanding officers are directly answerable to the Führer and receive their orders only from him.
In the early afternoon, OB West issues its noon status report. It states that, despite the temporary period of bad weather approaching from England, there is continued heavy Allied air activity, with several raids around Boulogne.
Later on, von Rundstedt gets a phone call from the Army’s chief operations officer at OKW, Generalmajor Freiherr Treusch Baron von Buttlar-Brandenfels. Although the call is for the field marshal, Blumentritt takes it because the old man hates to get on the phone and avoids it whenever possible.3 They discuss emergency alerts, and in what conditions they are to be sent. The agreed-upon codewords “Imminent danger” (drohend Gefahr) would put all forces upon maximum alert.
Von Buttlar, speaking for Jodl, wants to know why the old man has not already put his forces on a higher state of alert. It seems to OKW that the Anglo-Americans could come at any time, and there are some indications that the invasion will begin soon.
Blumentritt first assures von Buttlar that they are indeed ready for the invasion. He adds that after careful consideration, OB West feels that such an emergency alert would mostly just affect rail transportation, because their military units (he says modestly) are already in a high state of readiness, and do not need much more warning. An emergency alert would immediately force them to mass all of their rolling stock, so that large units, reinforcements, and supplies could be quickly transported into the danger area using pre-arranged plans that had been formulated after exhaustive statistical analysis.
Unfortunately, this in itself would be difficult using their hard-pressed weak rail assets, hit so hard by Allied bombings. Blumentritt (with the old man next to him, prompting at times) cites some statistics to prove his point. They have assembled a few groups of extra railcars, but that would not be enough when the time came.
Von Buttlar feels the situation is not that grim. Blumentritt assures him that it is. If an emergency alarm is declared, the last small reserve that they desperately need to supply the population, the economy, and war production will be gone. That in turn will create new problems. Unemployment and strikes will rise, especially at the defensive supply plants. War production, already crippled by Allied air raids, will grind to a halt. Supplying larger cities with basic necessities will be difficult, angering the population, and at a time when it is most critical to keep them content. So, Blumentritt concludes, the commander-in-chief feels that these threatening conditions should be avoided for as long as possible.
Von Buttler reluctantly agrees, but adds that he will have to talk to Jodl about this.
Blumentritt whispers this to von Rundstedt, who nods. Blumentritt in a deferential tone adds that, on the other hand, they might declare some local alerts, especially in economically inessential areas such as central France, where the Maquis is occasionally active. A local emergency alert could improve their counter-operations against insurgents and restore civil order.
***
Late in the afternoon 84th Corps commander Erich Marcks is standing on a long, sandy bluff near Arromanches-les-Bains, a small coastal hamlet about midway between the Vire and the Orne estuaries. Tomorrow, he will inspect parts of the 914th around Brévands. Now though, he is overlooking the English Channel with a few of his staff officers, including his aide, Hauptmann Jobel. As he feels a breeze coming in off the Channel, he leans on his good leg and gazes intently out over the water, lost in thought. He is probably visualizing enemy ships, laden with troops and tanks, anchored offshore, while swarms of enemy bombers at varying altitudes, protected by groups of enemy fighters circling overhead, buzz towards where he is standing at the moment.
He continues his gaze out over the choppy waters. His gut feeling, that has served him so well in the past, now tells him that von Rundstedt is wrong about Calais being the invasion target. Nor is it the Somme estuary as Rommel has proposed. And though the skies are starting to get cloudy, they would nevertheless make a good screen for a surprise landing—that is of course, if the weather does not get too bad, and if the Allies have enough men and the right equipment. Of those latter points, Marcks has little doubt.
His idea of a landing along a western shoreline is further evidenced by the recent enemy air raids that have targeted all those east–west bridges along the main rivers and railroads of Northern France and Belgium. The Allies are trying to isolate western France from the rest of Europe. And though there was intensive enemy air reconnaissance throughout the Calais and Normandy area all last month, the air activity along his coastal sector is now ominously quiet; too quiet.
Still staring intently out over the water, he slowly comments, more to himself than to anyone present, “If I know the British…” He glances over at his aide as his cane points out to sea. “If I know the British, they’ll go to church next Sunday for one last time, and come Monday…” He pauses and adds, “After Tuesday, they won’t have another chance for the tides until June 28–29.”
Marcks stares out over the water again. Yes, something is up. He can sense it.
He turns again to look at his aide. “Army Group B says they’re not going to come yet, and that when they do come, it’ll be up at Calais. So I think we’ll be welcoming them on Monday, right here,” he concludes, poking his cane in the sand.
He turns back to look out at the Channel. He fervently hopes that he is wrong, but that hunch in his mind and that accursed ache in his stump somehow tell him that he is not.4
1From the French word meaning “beaten.” A type of hunt where herde
rs beat the brush in front of the hunters (bird hunting) or towards them (ground hunting).
2In Italy, the 19th would become a part of the 14th Panzer Corps and constantly fight rear-guard battles on the Frieda Line against several larger American units, before finally falling back on Livorno. At the end of July, depleted, it would be disbanded and sent back to Europe. In Denmark, it would became the cadre from which the 19th Volksgrenadier Division would be formed.
3Von Rundstedt avoided phone calls, especially making them, mainly because he was hard of hearing, but also because he was impatient. The right party had to be found and put on the line, and even then connections were often weak and full of static. Anyway, by now, von Rundstedt had become quite vexed with the High Command, and his attitudes towards their dictums had become decidedly lackadaisical.
4Marcks of course was right on the money. Monday would be June 5, the original planned day for the invasion. Of course, the general had no knowledge at that time that a storm would hit the coast that day, delaying the invasion by 24 hours.
Saturday, June 3
Morning at La Roche-Guyon. The weather in France is still fairly nice, although the skies are much cloudier, it is cooler, and the wind has picked up a bit. At the château, the normal, day-to-day administration of the army group continues. Rommel is in his study as usual, going over the new reports. The latest Luftwaffe meteorological forecast predicts a storm coming in. That is good news for him. It looks like his trip home is on.
He scans the incoming message traffic. A group of enemy bombers the night before hit one of their radio jamming stations near Dieppe. Another group bombed four of his coastal batteries in the Pas-de-Calais.
Included in the dispatches are three significant reports, all of them disconcerting. The first is a communications intelligence summary. Army operational centers all over England have gone on radio silence. Rommel briefly feels a slight chill go through him. In the desert, radio silence usually meant that the enemy was getting ready to attack. Here in Western Europe though, after all the waiting he has done, this development could mean anything. Besides, in the last few months, a few of these periods of radio silence have come and gone. This one, like the others, probably, hopefully, is not significant. Still, he had better not take any chances—not this late in the game.
Countdown to D-Day Page 73