by Mark Zuehlke
Just as MacPhee was preparing to roll off again, another jeep came up behind him, bearing Sherbrooke Fusiliers Adjutant Captain G.W. Cote and Signals Officer Lieutenant T.C. Stevens bound for 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade headquarters. At the wheel of this jeep was Sergeant N.H. Barter.27
As MacPhee started up a slow grade in second gear, a group of soldiers appeared, marching in the opposite direction. Only as he pulled over to let them pass did MacPhee make out the coal scuttle profile of their helmets. Before any of the men in the jeeps could react, they were surrounded and yanked out of the vehicles. In the tense first moments of their capture, Lieutenant Stevens was killed.28
The Germans left the two wounded North Novas lying on their stretchers next to a hedge on the roadside and fortified with a captured bottle of rum. One, Private G.L. Harvie, would be safely recovered in the morning, while the other man succumbed to his wounds during the long night.29
MacPhee and the other Canadians were escorted off into the night. The German patrol had unwittingly pulled off an intelligence coup, for the two Sherbrooke officers had in their possession a full set of Second British Army’s radio procedures, code signs, and orders for operations. German intelligence officers quickly matched this lucrative haul of documents to a set of Canadian operational maps retrieved during the night from a disabled vehicle. Place names on the maps were marked with nicknames, such as Orinoco for the Orne River. “Taken together with the wireless codes,” a German officer later wrote, “we were able to understand much of the enemy’s radio traffic… all that was left was to form special recce units to do radio listening work and so on; and in this way we were repeatedly successful. In effect it was espionage by radio.”30
[ 2 ]
Throw Them into the Sea
THE GERMANS attempting to meet the invasion needed every possible intelligence advantage because they were seriously handicapped by both Allied action and a cumbersome, inherently chaotic command structure. Consequently, while local German divisions and commands, by late evening of June 6, had begun moving to counter the invasion at a tactical level, their actions were not guided by any comprehensive strategic plan. Believing that the inevitable invasion was not yet due and would occur in the Pas de Calais or even farther up the northern coast, Hitler and his staff officers at Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command) refused to accept that this was the invasion. Rather, they remained convinced that the landings in Normandy were a feint made in force to draw divisions—particularly armoured ones—away from Pas de Calais. Once this soaking off of strength had weakened Fifteenth Army’s defences, the Germans believed the Allies planned to land in force, cut off all the troops attempting to throw back the decoy invasion, and destroy them. In one bold stroke, the Allies would assure themselves of ultimate victory by imposing a defeat far exceeding the disaster of Stalingrad.
Although on May 2, 1944, Hitler had intuited from intelligence reports of a major buildup of Allied divisions in southeast England and Wales that an invasion of Normandy and Brittany was possible, OKW staff had remained skeptical. Only the fact that Hitler “kept harping on it and demanded more and more reinforcements for that sector” led to the strengthening of woefully inadequate defences along the Normandy coast.1
Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, heading Army Group B, was responsible for defending Europe’s northwest coast from Holland to the Loire under Commander-in-Chief, West, Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt. The sixty-eight-year-old von Rundstedt’s position had been reduced to titular status by Rommel’s appointment to command of the newly formed Army Group B in January 1944. While Rommel was to keep him informed of his orders for strengthening coastal defences, the old Prussian was under no illusions that he could countermand the younger man. Rommel had Hitler’s ear and reported directly to him through OKW, while von Rundstedt so disdained “that Bohemian corporal” and his toadies at OKW that he refused to talk directly with them. He left this distasteful task to his Chief of Staff, General der Infantrie Günther Blumentritt.2
The most popular war hero in Germany, Rommel was also greatly respected by his Allied adversaries for his leadership during the German Northwest African campaigns. Within the Wehrmacht, however, Rommel was less popular. Although he had won Germany’s highest decoration, the Pour le Mérite, for heroism during the Caporetto offensive in World War I, he spent the majority of the interwar years in obscure postings after being judged lacking in General Staff ability. His outspoken nature and unorthodox military theories, however, served to bring him to Hitler’s attention. Although he refused to join the Nazi Party, Rommel initially respected the ever more popular fascist leader and benefited from the relationship with a reinvigorated career when he was appointed to command the Führer’s personal headquarters.
Following the successful invasion of Poland, Rommel asked Hitler for a Panzer command and was given the 7th Panzer Division, which he commanded during the blitzkreig across France in 1940. Rommel led the division from the front, seeming to instinctively recognize how to exploit enemy weaknesses through rapid and flexible mobile offensive action. In Africa, when he showed the same capability, Hitler and the Nazi propaganda machine lionized him to the point where he became a living symbol of German military prowess. As his stature grew, many Wehrmacht generals dismissed Rommel as a political general, who would have remained in the bottom drawer if not for his Nazi connections. Rommel’s reliance on instinct over military doctrine was a character trait that he and Hitler shared. Both had triumphed at times when the conservative generals on OKW’s staff had predicted failure and this served to draw the two more closely together.3
If Rommel enjoyed a unique relationship with Hitler, he still had no illusions that he enjoyed a free hand in preparing for the invasion. Hitler and OKW insisted on being consulted at every turn, constantly meddling in the disposition of divisions and allocation of resources. As well, Rommel had no authority over Luftlotte 3—the Luftwaffe air arm in the region—nor the naval command, Marine-gruppe West. These reported to and received orders from their respective supreme commanders, who in turn were subordinate to OKW and Hitler. Even the coastal defence construction unit—Organization Todt—reported to Reichsminister for Armament and War Production Albert Speer, who took his direction from the Führer, rather than Rommel. Should Rommel want something from those outside his direct authority he generally had to go cap in hand to Hitler, the Führer’s Chief of Staff, Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, or OKW Operations Chief, Generaloberst Alfred Jodl. Army Group B’s Chief of Staff, Generalleutnant Hans Speidel, rightly declared that a system that effectively denied his superior decisive control over the theatre of operations “led not only to a confused chain of command, but to a command chaos.”4
That chaotic structure had plagued Rommel as he prepared to meet the invasion. The compromises arising from a proliferation of views strongly advanced by high-ranking officers and Nazi politicians had frustrated his strategy. Believing the battle would be decided on the beach, Rommel had declared: “Never in history was there a defence of such an extent with such an obstacle as the sea. The enemy must be annihilated before he reaches our main battlefield… We must stop him in the water, not only delaying him but destroying all his equipment while it is still afloat… The high water line must be the main fighting line.”5
Lacking sufficient manpower, Rommel had been forced to sacrifice a defence in depth in order to pack as many men as possible into fighting positions right up against the coastal beaches. He had also proposed deploying the Panzer divisions close enough to the shore that each could bring its guns and tanks to a specific section before the Allies broke through the largely immobile beach defences. “It is more important to have one Panzer division in the assaulted section on D-Day, than to have three there by D plus 3,” he said.6
Rommel’s plan had immediately drawn stiff opposition from Panzer Group West commander, General der Panzertruppen Leo Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg, another powerful player in the tortuous German comma
nd structure. Formed in late 1943, Panzer Group West was tasked with training Panzer forces in the western theatre and with advising von Rundstedt on Panzer tactics and operational requirements. By early 1944, all Panzer divisions and corps in Western Europe were effectively under von Schweppenburg’s command. In stark contrast to Rommel, the general thought the “Atlantic Wall” was destined to collapse at the first major assault.
Born in 1886, von Schweppenburg was considered a leading tank expert by many Wehrmacht generals. He had commanded his first mobile unit regiment in 1933, led the 3rd Panzer Division into Poland in 1939, and in 1940 taken the helm of XXIV Corps for the invasion of Russia. After two years of fighting on the Eastern Front, he was transferred to command of the LXXXVI Corps in France before heading up Panzer Group West. Having years of Eastern Front combat experience, von Schweppenburg recognized the near impossibility of holding long, exposed front lines in the face of a determined attacker. He also had the unique background of having served from 1933 to 1937 as a military attaché in London and so had a good sense of British army tactics and the psychology of its generals.
The repulse of the Dieppe raid, von Schweppenburg believed, had lulled Germany’s high command into believing an invasion could be met on the beaches and destroyed before it got established ashore. This theory was partially based on an assumption that the German martial spirit was greater than that of the British, Americans, or Canadians who would have to win the beach. Had not Dieppe proven this superiority? its proponents asked disingenuously. But von Schweppenburg countered that Dieppe had not been an invasion, so such an assumption was “irresponsible.” Taken “together with Rommel’s misguided doctrine on coastal defence,” the Panzer general said, “this idea was fundamentally responsible for the grotesque defense situation, which was contrary to all experiences of strategy and recent war developments.”
Von Schweppenburg grudgingly conceded that “Rommel was an able and experienced tactician, although entirely lacking in strategic conceptions.” This inability to think strategically, von Schweppenburg maintained, had led Rommel to the ludicrous conclusion that his only option was to defend the entire coastline. But how could eight hundred miles of coast be defended? Given “the formidable enemy air superiority and the number, caliber, and effectiveness of the naval guns of the combined Anglo-American battle fleets, a landing… could not be prevented and would succeed in any case. The only solution,” von Schweppenburg concluded, “would be to utilize the only German superiority—that of speedier and more flexible leadership which employed mobile reserves. High-quality Panzer units should be held in reserve to crush an enemy penetration inland.”7
The Panzer Group West commander easily won the support of Generaloberst Heinz Guderian, the old Panzer master strategist who was Hitler’s advisor on Panzer tactics, but neither man could convince either the Führer or Rommel that the “Atlantic Wall” strategy was doomed to failure. Hitler was determined that not a yard of European territory should be yielded, so Rommel’s plan found the sympathetic ear of the man who ultimately mattered most in the German command chain. After hearing the arguments of Rommel and the Panzer generals, Hitler offered a compromise that satisfied nobody. He split control of the Panzers between Rommel and von Schweppenburg, giving the latter his mobile armoured reserve in the form of just four divisions—1st SS Panzer, 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer, Panzer Lehr, and 17th SS Panzer Grenadier. Except for these units, “one Panzer division after another was marched to the front and required to dig in 10 to 20 kilometres behind the coastline.”8
CONSEQUENTLY, ON JUNE 6 the Germans had in place neither a strong tactical nor strategic reserve.9 In Normandy, the armoured unit dug in closest to the beaches was the 21st Panzer Division, which found itself facing a night drop by 6th British Airborne Division on the eastern shore of the River Orne and the westerly British-Canadian landings. Its commander, Generalleutnant Edgar Feuchtinger, had dithered between moving on his own authority to stamp out the airborne troops or seeking instruction from up the chain of command. This was partly due to his own lack of resolve, but also a standing order that no offensive action by Panzers was to be taken without Army Group B authorization, to avoid such divisions becoming engaged in a piecemeal fashion. The command chaos Generalleutnant Speidel had warned of proved itself, as hour after hour passed with nobody at either Army Group B or Seventh Army headquarters assuming overall control of the German response.
“If Rommel had been with us instead of in Germany, he would have disregarded all orders and taken action—of that we were convinced,” Major Hans von Luck, commander of the 21st Panzer Division’s 125th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, later wrote.10 With the Germans firmly believing that the invasion was still sometime off, however, Rommel had departed on June 5 to celebrate his wife’s birthday at their home near Ulm and then to try convincing Hitler to bolster the number of Panzer divisions in Normandy.11
From their respective headquarters, Speidel and Blumentritt sought authorization from OKW to release the Panzers, only to be told that such an order must come personally from Hitler. But Hitler slept until 0900 hours on June 6 and nobody had the temerity to interrupt his slumber, so it was not until 1030 that orders from OKW placed the 21st Panzer Division under area commander General der Artillerie Erich Marcks of the LXXXIV Corps. Marcks, who had worked with Guderian during the interwar years developing blitzkrieg tactics, immediately ordered the division to attack west of the Orne in an attempt to break through to either Sword or Juno beaches and roll the invasion up by destroying the beachheads.12
Hours passed as the division’s officers struggled to manoeuvre their units into position for the planned counterattack. Once it got underway, the division did succeed in driving into the gap between 3rd British Infantry Division and the Canadians, but too small a force had been committed and the attack crumbled.
At the same time as 21st Panzer Division’s counterattack was falling apart, help in the form of leading elements of the 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer Division began arriving. Also ordered to concentrate against the Normandy beaches was the Panzer Lehr Division and the general command of I SS Panzer Corps with its inherent corps troops—all to come under direct authority of Seventh Army Commander Generaloberst Friedrich Dollman.13 Once this force massed around Caen, Dollman intended to attack the enemy by driving a three-division-strong wedge into the gap between the forces advancing out of Sword and Juno beaches. The attack would be directed at the section of coastline directly west of Lion-sur-Mer, where the last truly organized elements of 716th Infantry Division were isolated but still holding the ground between this village and Luc-sur-Mer on the Canadian left flank. Operational command for the attack would rest with Obergruppenführer Josef (Sepp) Dietrich, who headed up I SS Panzer Corps.14*
Dietrich’s corps was comprised of two SS divisions, the 12th and the 1st SS Panzer Division. As the latter division was encamped in Belgium east of Antwerp, it was too far away to join the planned counteroffensive. Dietrich would have to rely on the three Panzer divisions in the vicinity, two of which had never previously served under his command and were regular army rather than SS formations.
Born in 1892, this illegitimate son of a peasant girl had won the Iron Cross, 1st Class during World War I while serving as a sergeant major. He likely would have led an obscure working-class life except
* Canadian Army, German Army, and SS rank equivalencies are explained and compared in Appendix C.
for memberships during the interwar years in Germany’s burgeoning Fascist movements. First he served in the SA—the Brown Shirts—under Ernst Röhm, before switching allegiance to Hitler’s Nazi Party after the two organizations broke apart in 1933. Hitler rewarded Dietrich’s loyalty by putting him in charge of recruiting the leader’s SS bodyguard unit. When the rift between the SA and the Nazis deepened the following year, Dietrich was a pivotal figure in the June 30, 1934 Night of the Long Knives, during which Röhm, the SA leadership, and many others who opposed Hitler’s ascendancy were brutally
slaughtered.
Impressed by Dietrich’s “cunning, energetic, and brutal” nature, Hitler continued to promote the man as the SS matured from a paramilitary organization into one with a formal military arm. In 1938, the bodyguard force, known as the Leibstandarte, was transformed into motorized infantry and later expanded into a Panzer division. Both formations were under his command. One of his principal staff officers, Rudolf Lehmann, recognized that Dietrich “was no strategic genius… His forte did not lie in formulating a complete tactical evaluation. But he had an extraordinary sense of growing crisis and for finding the favourable moment for action.”15
Finding that kind of opportunity for the planned counterattack would prove difficult. Dietrich wanted to await the arrival of Panzer Lehr—still moving towards the Normandy coast from its assembly point at Nogent le Rotrou, ninety-five miles southwest of Caen. He also wanted to tee up as much air support as possible, both to strike against the enemy troops and to protect his advancing units from the punishing fighter-bomber and strafing attacks they had endured throughout the march to the coast.
By 0400 hours on June 7, having hurried back from Germany, Rommel was briefed by Seventh Army’s Chief of Staff Generalleutnant Max Pemsel on the status of the three I SS Corps Panzer divisions. They had, he learned, “been brought into the assembly areas and had been ordered to begin the counterattack without any other considerations and with all available forces.”16 With Panzer Lehr still far off in the distance and its commander reporting that his first fighting units could not possibly reach Caen until the morning of June 8, this was clearly not the case. For its part, 21st Panzer Division was badly scattered and disorganized after its botched solo counterattack into the gap between Juno and Sword. Various elements of this division were still tangling with the paratroops west of the Orne and its 192nd Panzer Grenadier Battalion had become entangled in running night battles with the Canadian battalions on 3 CID’s left flank. Whether significant elements of this division would be able to reorganize by morning to participate in the counterattack was unclear.