The Last Prussian

by Messenger, Charles;

  This, and the fact that the messages were transmitted for longer than the usual five or ten minutes, immediately alerted Abwehr suspicions. Within 30 minutes they had informed von Rundstedt’s headquarters and he issued an order for heightened alertness and warned of the likelihood of increased sabotage activities. At 0130 hours, the first reports of parachute landings, on the east side of the Cotentin Peninsula, were received by Ob West (Oberbefehlshaber West – Commander-in-Chief West), and the next stage of alert was ordered. Within two hours it became clear that this was no mere raid. The invasion had begun.

  One of von Rundstedt’s first reactions was to telephone OKW and demand that the Panzer reserves be placed under his command. This produced no reaction on the grounds that Hitler was asleep. Accordingly, at 0425 hours, von Rundstedt sent a written signal stating that if this was a major landing the change of command must be quickly agreed and the Panzer Lehr and 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division be given marching orders.2 There was no immediate reply to this, but, in anticipation, the Flak units of both divisions, which had been detached, were given a warning order to make ready to join their parent formations. By now it was 0530 hours and, under heavy naval bombardment, the Allied landing craft were beginning to approach the beaches. The only immediate mobile reserve which the Germans had was Edgar Feuchtinger’s 21st Panzer Division. He himself could not initially be located when the alert orders were given – it seems that he was dallying with a lady friend in Paris3 – but, even so, the division was ready to move by 0200 hours. Yet, it was not until 0800 hours that the first Panzer battalion began to move north towards Caen to counter the British landings, and it seems that the blame for this must lie partially with Rommel’s chief of staff, Hans Speidel, and with Feuchtinger himself, who apparently did not return to his headquarters until after 0600 hours. Even then, it was only thanks to the one-legged General Erich Marcks, commanding LXXXIV Corps, that the first elements of the division actually made contact with the invaders. He led them in his staff car towards the coast until he came under fire.4 In the meantime, the static divisions on the coast were left to cope as best they could.

  At 1000 hours, Keitel, having spoken to Hitler, telephoned von Rundstedt’s headquarters. The request to have the Panzer reserves placed under his command was firmly rejected. The only concessions made were that he could move the 12th SS Panzer Grenadier Division (Hitler Youth) nearer the coast, but that OKW would control its commitment to battle, and that the Panzer Lehr could remain on immediate stand-by. By now the Allies were ashore on all five beaches and 21st Panzer Division was being committed piecemeal both to tackle the British airborne forces on the River Orne and to counter the advance by the British 3rd Infantry Division towards Caen. To von Rundstedt and Blumentritt it was clear that every hour the Allies were given to consolidate their beachheads, the more difficult it would be to drive them back into the sea. They thus kept up their demands of OKW – ‘What is still possible today – also by using the dull weather – could be too late tomorrow’, as the Ob West war diary noted. Eventually, at 1430 hours, OKW gave way to von Rundstedt’s demands. He was told that he could have not only 12th and 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Divisions and the Panzer Lehr, but also Sepp Dietrich’s I SS Panzer Corps. Dietrich, however, only had two divisions under command, 12th SS, which was already being moved up, and the SS Leibstandarte, which was still refitting in Belgium and would not be ready for action for some time. Nevertheless, at least this made a higher Panzer headquarters available. Accordingly, von Rundstedt put the Panzer Lehr, which was based in the Chartres area, and 21st Panzer under Dietrich’s command, sending 17th SS to assist against the Americans in the west.

  MAP 8. German Dispositions in the West, 6 June 1944.

  That it had taken over twelve hours for OKW to release the Panzer reserves now meant that, as the Ob West war diary put it, the ‘greatest acceleration’ was needed if there was to be any chance of eradicating the beachheads. This was easier said than done, especially since the day was now far gone. Dietrich’s headquarters began its move from the Paris area at 1600 hours, and reached Rouen that night. He hoped to be able to mount a coordinated counter-attack early on the 7th, but this was soon to prove overly optimistic. Air attacks interfered with the move of 12th SS Division, and only one of its regiments had arrived by nightfall. 21st Panzer had found itself committed piecemeal to the support of 716th Infantry Division, which was bearing the brunt of the British and Canadian landings, and the luckless Feuchtinger had little idea of the whereabouts of his units. Part of the reason for this was that he had gone on a visit to Headquarters 716th Division but had failed to take a radio with him. No wonder that an Ob West report criticised him for his failure to use the technical aids available to him for commanding his division.5 As for the Panzer Lehr, Dietrich had no idea of its progress since efforts to establish contact with it through his parent formation, Seventh Army, failed.6 Thus, by the end of the day, the six infantry and one Panzer divisions available to Dollmann to defend almost 200 miles of coast, from the west side of the Cotentin Peninsula to the Seine, were simply not enough to prevent the Allies from landing and consolidating their initial gains. All that they had been able to achieve was to deny the Allies their laid-down ultimate D-Day objectives, including Caen.

  If Hitler had released the Panzer reserves as soon as von Rundstedt had asked for them, the Allies would have experienced a much harder day on 6 June than they did. The marginal weather and the fact that Allied eyes were initially concentrated on the beaches would have meant that Panzer deployment would have proceeded much more smoothly than it did and they would have probably been able to counter-attack during the afternoon. Yet, there were two Panzer divisions (2nd and 116th) north of the Seine which were under Army Group B’s command. They were certainly closer to Normandy than Panzer Group West and hence could have arrived even earlier. Von Rundstedt, however, refused to move them or any other formation from Fifteenth Army. That he took this course was largely thanks to the elaborate Allied deception plans. Neither he nor OKW were convinced that the Normandy landings were the only ones and still thought that they might be a feint, with the main landing being made in the Pas De Calais. It was about the only point on which the two headquarters agreed and they would maintain this view for some days to come.

  Not until the morning of the 8th was Dietrich able to put in his counter-stroke and then it was but a shadow of what had originally been envisaged. In the meantime, Rommel, who had returned hotfoot from Germany, had decided that I SS Panzer Corps should be subordinated to Panzer Group West rather than Dollmann. Such was the state of radio communications, though, that it was some time before Dietrich was aware of this. The attack itself consisted in the end of little more than one battle group from the Panzer Lehr. The reasons were two-fold. By this time 716th Division had been decimated and both 12th SS and 21st Panzer were forced to deploy increasing amounts of their strength in defence in order to hold the ring against the Allied advance. Also, thanks to effective Allied air interdiction, the Panzer Lehr had been seriously delayed in its move from Chartres, had suffered casualties and was short of fuel.

  By now von Rundstedt was beginning to gain a grasp of the Allied intentions. Captured orders had confirmed that Cherbourg was an initial objective and he and his staff concluded that the enemy would use the port as a base from which to thrust towards Paris. On the 8th, the same day as Dietrich’s counter-attack, von Rundstedt sent Blumentritt to HQ I SS Corps in order to get a better feel for the situation. By chance, Rommel was visiting at the same time. Blumentritt concluded that piecemeal commitment of forces was no answer and that the situation could only be stabilised by making counter-strokes in strength. This meant that large reinforcements of both armour and infantry were needed. Furthermore, as Dietrich made clear, Allied air supremacy was proving decisive and the Luftwaffe must also be strongly reinforced. ‘We have to clear up the situation in Normandy because otherwise there will be far-reaching consequences’, Blumentritt wrote. Another grave
shortfall was that three-quarters of the radios in Panzer Group West were inoperative. On Blumentritt’s return, von Rundstedt demanded further reinforcements of OKW and began to realise that he would have to draw troops from von Salmuth north of the Seine.7 Zimmermann even telephoned Speidel that night to say that von Rundstedt … ‘thinks we’re going to have to strip other fronts recklessly in order to provide further strength’. Jodl, too, had now come round to the same way of thinking, and told Rommel’s headquarters that he no longer believed that the Allies were going to make further landings elsewhere.8

  Rommel, however, was not so convinced and still refused to transfer forces from Fifteenth Army.

  After the war, at Nuremberg in 1946, von Rundstedt was to say that it was at this juncture that he realised that Germany had lost the war.9 Rommel, too, was now even more convinced that an approach had to now be made to the Western Allies. As he wrote to his wife on 13 June: ‘It’s time for politics to come into play, we are expecting the next, perhaps even heavier, blow to fall elsewhere in a few days. The long-husbanded strength of two world powers is coming into action. It will all be decided quickly.’10 Yet, while a British Foreign Office official noted on 8 June that von Rundstedt would not be prepared to listen to any Allied overtures until he had accepted that the invasion had been successful,11 the Field Marshal was certainly not prepared to have any unilateral dealings with the Allies. As he wrote after the war: ‘The soldier is only an instrument of politics.’ All he could do was to bring about a favourable military situation such as to allow the politicians ‘to reappear on the stage’. On the other hand, ‘if the situation has turned out unfavourably, the right moment for politics has passed by in most cases’.12

  Allied propaganda was, however, trying to drive a wedge between von Rundstedt and Rommel. A Swiss newspaper article of the time believed that this could be fact, pointing to the supposed differences between their concepts for the defence of the French coastline. Von Rundstedt was supposed to have favoured fixed defences inland, while Rommel wanted the defences on the beaches so as to prevent a landing. The fact that he had failed to do so merely aggravated the supposed schism. Furthermore, their characters were entirely different. While von Rundstedt was typical of ‘that officer caste which made Prussia and later on Germany great’, Rommel was accused of making his career in the Nazi Party. While von Rundstedt was a ‘brilliant organiser’, Rommel was ‘a rough, uninhibited daredevil; a typical Party man, who does not shy away from anybody or anything but who knows how to help himself in difficult situations by an instinct for improvisation’. The conflict was one of tradition versus the ‘German Revolution’.13 Yet, as we have seen, they had made up their differences, at least on the surface, before the invasion began. On the other hand, Speidel noted:

  ‘Rundstedt was an eminent strategist, a master of the rules of war, but in the last few years he had lost with advancing age the creative impulse and the clear sense of responsibility to the nation. Symptoms of his lapse were sarcastic comments or indifference. Of course, he despised Hitler and referred to him in all private conversations, as Hindenburg did, with the nickname “the Bohemian Corporal”. But he seemed to think that the height of wisdom was to make studied representations and write grave situation reports. He left action to others. When Rommel sought to move him to send joint demands to Hitler, Rundstedt exclaimed: “You are young. The people know you and love you. You do it!” It was not only as a general that Rundstedt withdrew into himself. His character, personality and mobility were failing, and at a time when supreme efforts were demanded, Rundstedt remained unknown to the soldier at the front, while Rommel ceaselessly exerted his remarkable powers of leadership on the soldiers personally, sparing himself not at all.’14

  Part of the reason for this was von Rundstedt’s refusal to speak direct to Hitler. By now he also tried to avoid talking to Keitel and Jodl, whom he regarded as ‘yes’ men, preferring to delegate this to Blumentritt.15 Age, too, had indeed made him less active. In any event, with Rommel actually commanding the forces in Normandy, it was best to let him do his job. Even so, the two did see eye to eye over the conduct of the defence in the west and they would shortly jointly represent their point of view face-to-face with Hitler.

  Hitler and OKW were adamant that not an inch of ground in Normandy was to be given to the enemy, but with the air situation and the lack of troops this was impossible to achieve. On 11 June von Rundstedt was forced to warn Keitel that unless the front was stabilised, the situation might ‘force fundamental decisions’, by which it seems clear that he meant a wholesale withdrawal from Normandy to a more defendable line. Alluding to OKW’s tendency to tell Hitler only what they thought he wanted to hear, he wrote: ‘I feel obliged to report things as they are and as I judge them to be … I want this report to be presented to the Führer without any alteration … 16 Cherbourg was already under threat and Hitler was beginning to demand counteraction so as to deny it to the Allies. Yet, with no reinforcements yet available, because of continued fears of another Allied landing, the only way that this could be done was by withdrawing troops from in front of the British Second Army, but in von Rundstedt’s and Rommel’s eyes the long-term threat here was very much greater. Indeed, von Rundstedt had already pointed this out to OKW on 11 June, stating that he believed that the Allies would make their main thrust into the interior of France from between the River Orne and Vire. Lack of troops meant that he could only remain on the defensive for the time being, especially since his Panzer divisions were now committed in the line and hence he had no mobile counter-attack force.

  The heavy hand of Hitler and OKW became more and more apparent. On 11 June, again, von Rundstedt is recorded asking for elements of the SS Leibstandarte to be placed under his command, feeling forced to specify each regiment and battalion that he wanted by name. The day before, he had received the following from Jodl:

  ‘As a consequence of an enemy press report from 7.6. that the Allied soldiers surprised the German defenders in their underpants, the Führer demands a responsible report on the following points:

  1 ) When did Ob West receive the report about the issuing of the B[coded] message through the English terrorist communication centre?

  2) What was carried out and when?

  3) When did the subordinate commanding officers receive the alert order?

  4) What level of alert was in force when the first enemy paratroopers and gliders landed?

  5) Which part or staffs of 716, 352, 709, 91 Inf Divs, 6th Para Rgt, 21 Pz Div were surprised and attacked by paratroopers without being ready for combat?

  6) How did the commander of 91 Inf Div do? Was he surprised in his battle headquarters?’17

  This was the type of demand that von Rundstedt, with his attention concentrated on the desperate battle in Normandy, could have well done without, although there is no evidence that he did anything about it. As it was, he had already criticised Feuchtinger, but OKW took no notice of this. They knew that he was a particular favourite of Hitler’s, having officiated at many of the prewar Nuremberg Rallies. Hence Feuchtinger remained in command of his division until early 1945.18 As for the commander of 91st Division, General Wilhelm Falley, he had been ambushed and killed by American paratroopers while on his way back from the Rennes map exercise. This all-pervading and suffocating influence of OKW was another reason for von Rundstedt’s seeming lethargy. As he remarked after the war: ‘I could have stood on my head but I still would not have been able to budge a division if Hitler disagreed with my judgement.’19

  By 14 June, the Americans in the Omaha and Utah beachheads had linked up, captured Carentan and were now preparing to turn west to liberate the Cotentin peninsula. In the eastern sector, both the British and Canadians had made efforts to capture Caen, but had been foiled. This was largely thanks to the fanatical defence by the 12th SS Division (Hitler Youth) and the eventual transfer of 2nd Panzer Division from Fifteenth Army. This arrived just in time to fill a critical gap in the overstretched defences.
The dilemma that now faced von Rundstedt and Rommel was that the only way that they could mount any form of effective counter-stroke to relieve the increasingly heavy pressure was a concentrated attack by armour. Yet, with all their available Panzer divisions now in the line, they could not do this until they were relieved by fresh infantry formations. They repeatedly pointed this out to OKW and pleaded for Hitler to come to France and see the situation for himself. This he eventually agreed to do and met the two Field Marshals at Margival near Soissons on 17 June.

  The site of the meeting was a railway tunnel in and on top of which a collection of concrete bunkers had been constructed as a Führer field headquarters for SEALION. There was just one stool, on which Hitler sat, while von Rundstedt, Rommel and their Chiefs of Staff, Blumentritt and Speidel, stood. Also present were Keitel, Jodl and Schmundt. Hitler had arrived, having flown from Berchtesgaden to Metz and then motored, and, according to Speidel, looked ‘worn and sleepless’.20 His first utterance was that Cherbourg must be held at all costs and he demanded that the garrison be reinforced. As von Rundstedt later commented: ‘Instead of trying to pull the troops out of a hopeless trap, Hitler wanted to send more men into it. Of course we paid no attention to the order.’21 Von Rundstedt then made some introductory remarks and handed the floor to Rommel. He gave a detailed review of the situation and warned Hitler that the fall of Cherbourg was inevitable and the whole Festung (Fortress) concept a waste of manpower. Indeed, while the conference was in progress, there was a telephone message from von Rundstedt’s headquarters stating that the Americans had begun their attack into the Cotentin Peninsula. Rommel then went on to reiterate his belief that the Allied plan was to break out from the Caen-Bayeux area and the Cotentin Peninsula and thrust to Paris, with a subsidiary operation designed to cut off the Breton Peninsula. He warned Hitler of the rate of Allied reinforcement and that there was no prepared defence line on which the German forces could fall back. He then went on to propose a new plan. The Panzer divisions would be relieved and, with reserve formations, assembled on the flanks. A limited withdrawal would then be made to draw the enemy out of range of his supporting naval gunfire, and the armour would strike him in the flank. Once more he demanded more air, armour and naval assets. Furthermore, and in this von Rundstedt strongly supported him, Rommel said that they must have freedom of action in the West in order to fight the battle as they wanted. Hitler took little notice of what Rommel had said and launched into one of his monologues, this time on the V-1 flying bomb offensive against England which had opened four days before. Both Field Marshals asked if the V-weapons could be directed on the Normandy beachhead and the English south coast ports from which the reinforcements for Normandy were setting sail. This was ignored and Hitler launched into another tirade culminating in the boast that Britain would be devastated by V-weapons and jet aircraft.