On the whole the German armour deployed in Northern France was vastly superior to that of the Allies and easily outgunned their tanks. While the Allies sought to counter the German technological lead on land, sea and air at every single stage of the war, their failure to develop a war-winning battle tank was a glaring omission that even the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, sought to hide from the general public lest it affect morale.
The most common type of panzer in Normandy, totalling 748 tanks, was the PzKpfw IV Ausf H and Ausf J, which went into production in 1943 and 1944 respectively. With frontal armour of 80mm and a 7.5cm KwK 40 L/48 anti-tank gun, this provided the backbone of the German panzer divisions. Its gun had a twenty per cent greater muzzle velocity than that of the American-built M4 Sherman’s 75mm gun, meaning it could punch through 92mm of armour at 500 yards, while the Sherman could only manage 68mm. Normally the Panzer IV was allocated to the 2nd battalion or II Abteilung of a panzer regiment, although there were a number of exceptions. The I Abteilung of the 9th Panzer Division’s Panzer Regiment 33 was equipped with Panzer IVs and both abteilungen of 21st Panzer’s Panzer Regiment 22 were equipped with it.
The PzKpfw V, or Panther, represented the pinnacle of German tank production, mounting the even more powerful 7.5cm KwK 42 L/70 gun that could penetrate 120mm of armour at 1,094 yards. On the Eastern Front it had proved itself superior to the Soviet T-34, though mechanical teething problems initially rendered it unreliable. The main models deployed in Normandy were the Ausf A and Ausf G. Theoretically each I Abteilung of a panzer regiment was equipped with this tank.
While the PzKpfw VI Tiger I was a formidable weapon with 100mm frontal armour and 8.8cm KwK L/56 gun, only three battalions were deployed in Normandy, with about 126 tanks. The Tiger’s technological excellence meant it took twice as long to build as the Panther; however, its gun could easily deal with every single type of Allied tank. The Tiger could tear a Sherman apart, while the latter could not cope with the Tiger’s frontal armour. The American 75mm gun could only penetrate the Tiger at close range and while the British 17-pounder gun was much more effective it was not available in significant numbers. Even those Shermans armed with a 76mm gun had to close to 300 yards. The Allied response to a Tiger was to overwhelm it or sneak up behind it!
The Tiger II, or King Tiger/Royal Tiger, was brand new in June 1944, but only equipped one company, totalling about a dozen tanks, in Normandy. In many ways its high fuel consumption, limited operational range, fragile steering and slow turret traverse nullified its powerful main armament, the 8.8cm KwK43 L/71 and very thick armour.
Another common armoured fighting vehicle in Normandy was the Sturmgeschütz or StuG III assault gun, armed with the 7.5cm StuK40 L/48, and to a lesser extent the StuG IV equipped with the same weapon, which was used to equip the tank destroyer battalions of the panzer divisions and in some cases substituted for the Panzer IV. They also equipped the independent Sturmgeschiütz Brigades, a number of which were deployed throughout France. Lacking a turret, this assault gun was a very good defensive weapon and ultimately ideally suited for the Normandy countryside.
The Jagdpanzer IV, mounting the same gun as the Panther, was intended as a StuG replacement but was never built in sufficient numbers. It appeared in 1944 and began to replace the Marder self-propelled gun in the panzer divisions’ tank destroyer battalions. Only about sixty were deployed in Normandy. Similarly the Jagdpanther, based on the Panther chassis and armed with the 8.8cm Pak 43, were few in number in Normandy, about a dozen at the most.
The main self-propelled anti-tank weapon was the Marder armed with a 7.5cm Pak 40/3, with limited numbers of the Pak 43-armed Hornisse. The principal self-propelled artillery in Normandy comprised the Hummel self-propelled 15cm howitzer based on the Panzer IV chassis, and the Wespe based on the Panzer II, armed with a 10.5cm gun. The Germans also deployed a range of hybrid self-propelled guns based on French tank and ammunition tractor chassis.
The most common Allied tank to fight in Normandy was the American M4 and M4A1 (with cast hull) Sherman. Mechanically reliable, it was handicapped by thin armour and a gun lacking sufficient punch. Its good cross country speed and higher rate of fire could not make up for these two key short comings. Tank crew survival was paramount as tanks could be replaced relatively easily but not experienced crews; the Sherman, however, had a nasty habit of burning when hit and if this happened the crew only had a fifty per cent chance of survival.
Despite extensive combat experience with the American and British armies in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, by 1944, for a variety of reasons, the Americans had failed to develop a worthy successor to the Sherman, meaning the Allies had to rely on numbers rather than quality. This crucial failure was to be a key factor in the Germans being able to hold on for so long in Normandy.
The Americans developed tank destroyers based on the Sherman that could penetrate at least 80mm of armour at 1,000 yards, notably the M10 Wolverine armed with a 3-inch gun and the M36 armed with a 90mm gun, though these were not available in sufficient quantities. The 3-inch gun was intended to tackle the Tiger, but being only able to penetrate the frontal armour at 50 yards rendered it all but ineffective against this panzer. Similarly, the M18 Hellcat armed with a powerful 76mm was too few in number.
Two thirds of the tanks used by British, Canadian and Polish armoured units in Normandy were Shermans, the rest being mainly British-built Cromwell and Churchill tanks. The Cromwell cruiser tank was numerically and qualitatively the most significant British tank and, along with the Sherman, formed the main strength of the British armoured divisions. However, even armed with a 75mm gun it was inferior to the late model Panzer IVs and the Panther. Although fast, the narrowness of the hull made up-gunning it very difficult. Similarly, the British Churchill infantry tank, though heavily armoured, could not take any gun larger than the 75mm.
The heaviest British weapon, the 17-pounder (76.2mm), could open up 120mm of armour at 500 yards and was either towed or mounted in limited numbers of Shermans designated the Firefly VC. Later it was also mounted in the Valentine chassis, creating the unwieldy Archer self-propelled gun, and in the M10 to create the Achilles; these, though, did not enter service until well after the Normandy campaign. The Sherman Firefly was the only Allied tank capable of taking on the Panther and the Tiger on equal terms, but due to the shortage of guns it was only issued one per troop. The net result of all this was that the Allies’ tanks were in for a severe mauling at the hands of the panzers.
It is vitally important to remember that at the time the Battle for Normandy was far from a foregone conclusion. The Dieppe failure loomed large in everyone’s minds and despite the Allies’ considerable planning and preparation there was a very real fear that D-Day might go the same way. The successful landings in North Africa had been against ill-equipped French forces that were in a state of political disarray, while those on Sicily and the Italian mainland had been against the Italian Army which was largely a spent force. Striking Hitler’s Festung Europa was an entirely different matter, even if the German forces were in some cases second rate, reconstituting or recuperating.
The eastern flank
After the Germans had successfully blunted Montgomery’s initial advances, rather than fight a bloody frontal battle for Caen, he decided 2nd Army would launch its main effort to the west, towards Villers-Bocage and Evrecy, then southeast towards Falaise. He committed two veteran divisions, the 51st (Highland) and 7th Armoured (‘Desert Rats’), for two main flank attacks. The 51st were to attack through the 6th Airborne Division, east of Orne and the 7th Armoured would attack to the southwest.
The 5lst’s attack on 11 June was crushed and two days later the assault petered out. The 7th Armoured Division’s advance was slow, but a hole in the German line between Villers-Bocage and Caumont was detected. Greeted by joyful locals, the advance elements of 7th Armoured entered Villers-Bocage on 13 June. The scene was set for the Villers-Bocage debacle in which the British spearhead
was mauled by a handful of German Tiger tanks and an opportunity to turn the German line thrown away.
Hitler hurried to the HQ in Soissons on 17 June, ironically built to oversee the invasion of Britain, to confer with Rommel and von Rundstedt. His generals wanted their troops withdrawn out of range of the Allied naval guns which were providing devastating fire support against their panzers. Hitler refused, insisting they be concentrated for a counterattack on the junction of the British and American armies.
Fortunately for Hitler, the Allies’ momentum faltered as the weather began to deteriorate and on the 19th a violent storm halted all shipping in the English Channel for three days. The Allies’ military build-up virtually ground to a halt, delaying 20,000 vehicles and 140,000 tons of stores. In the meantime, distracting Hitler’s attention back to the Eastern Front, on 22 June the Russians launched Operation Bagration, which would ultimately smash Army Group Centre in spectacular fashion.
Due to the bad weather the Germans were granted a vital breathing space during which they were able to reorganise their forces and move without Allied air strikes. Some felt that prior to D-Day Schweppenburg overdid night training, but he was in fact exercising great foresight. Allied firepower was greatly curtailing German freedom of movement during daylight hours. The deterioration in the weather would have been an ideal time to launch a counterattack, but the opportunity was lost.
The Allies still had the initiative and if they could maintain it the Germans would remain off balance. Montgomery declared he would tie the panzers down on the eastern flank in the Caen-Caumont sector, destroying them in a series of offensives that would look like an attempted break-out toward Paris, while the Americans mopped up the German forces in the Cotentin Peninsula and took the port of Cherbourg prior to their own break-out attempt.
The Americans knew they were not facing the Germans’ top panzers. What tanks the German forces could muster on their western lank were mainly Czech or French models, such as the French-equipped training unit Panzer Ersatz und Ausbildungs Abteilung 100 and Panzer Abteilung 206, which could scrape together about seventy tanks of indifferent quality. Only Panzerjäger Abteilung 243 was equipped with any notable armour, totalling twenty-four self-propelled guns and assault guns. The main garrison units were the 243rd and 709th Infantry Divisions, which had been reinforced by the 3rd Parachute Division and the 77th Infantry Division moved up from Brittany.
Once the Americans reached Barneville-sur-Mer on the west coast of the Cotentin Peninsula on 18 June they set about pushing north and securing Cherbourg. They opened their attack four days later, the defenders resisted until the 26th before surrendering, although pockets of resistance continued for a further two days. By the end of the month the Americans had captured over 39,000 German prisoners and were now ready to strike southward. Both Panzer Abteilung 100 and 206 ceased to exist.
The week-long British Epsom offensive, west of Caen toward Evrecy and Esquay southwest of the city, launched on 25/26 June was intended as a preemptive strike to tie up German armour reinforcements. Barely a week later, the British and Canadians conducted Operation Charnwood, a frontal attempt on Caen, though they only succeeded in taking the northern half of the city.
By late June there were almost eight panzer divisions between Caen and Caumont on a 20 mile (32km) front facing the British 2nd Army. In particular the 2nd, 12th SS, 21st Panzer, Panzer Lehr and the 716th Infantry Divisions were all tied up in the immediate Caen area. Facing the British were approximately 725 German tanks, while on the American front there were only 140. Caen became the bloody fulcrum of the whole battle; here the cream of Panzergruppe West would be ground down in a series of unrelenting British attacks culminating in Operation Goodwood.
The desperately needed German infantry divisions that should have freed up the panzers for a counterstroke remained north of the Seine. Hitler held them back presumably because he still feared an attack across the Pas de Calais. By the end of June it was evident that von Rundstedt’s ‘crust-cushion-hammer’ tactics had failed despite the slowly increasing number of panzer divisions; tied down in the face of Allied firepower and attacks, the panzers could do little more than fire-fight as the situation developed. To make matters worse, by the beginning of July the unrelenting operational commitment of the panzers was taking its toll, 58 per cent of the Panthers and 42 per cent of the Panzer IVs were in the maintenance depots.
General Dollmann, 7th Army’s commander, died at his field HQ on 28 June; it is unclear if he had a heart attack or committed suicide, but SS-Obergruppenführer Paul Hausser from the II SS Panzer Corps assumed command. SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm ‘Willi’ Bittrich who had fought in Poland and France, subsequently commanding the 2nd SS and 9th SS Panzer Divisions took charge of the II SS Panzer Corps.
At this point Rommel and von Rundstedt drove the 600 miles (960km) to Berchtesgaden to see Hitler. They tried to prevail upon him to permit their forces to withdraw behind the Seine. In addition, Rommel wanted to strengthen the weakened Panzergruppe West and 7th Army with 15th Army’s reserves and those forces tied up with Army Group G, way to the south. To their dismay, Hitler steadfastly refused; instead of heeding the advice of his two highly-experienced generals, he chose to do what he always did when anyone stood up to him.
Lacking friends at court, Rundstedt’s days as C-in-C West were numbered. On 3 July Hitler accepted von Rundstedt’s offer to stand down on health grounds and on the same day the hapless Schweppenburg was removed as commander of Panzergruppe West. Rundstedt held Hitler’s Chief of Staff, Field Marshal Keitel, partly responsible for this state of affairs; indeed Rundstedt was contemptuous of Keitel’s skills as a military coordinator. Removing two such senior generals at a critical moment seemed madness and can have done little to reassure Rommel of his future.
At the beginning of July Panzergruppe West’s Chief of Staff informed Rommel: ‘The morale of the troops is good, but one can’t beat the materiel of the enemy with courage alone’. They were outnumbered four to one in tanks in the British sector; in the American sector it was worse, eight to one.
Günther von Kluge was summoned from the Eastern Front to replace von Rundstedt, but he was no more able to stabilise the situation than his predecessor. He did not last long following the failure of the Mortain counter-offensive in mid-August; summoned to Berlin he shot himself. Walter Model was then recalled from the Eastern Front to oversee the final defeat in Normandy.
General Heinrich Eberbach was appointed in Schweppenburg’s place. He had commanded Panzer Regiment 35 within the 4th Panzer Division and fought well in Poland, Belgium, France and Russia. At Baranovitch he had gone to the aid of the 3rd Panzer Division and, despite securing victory, for a short time faced charges of disobeying orders. Whilst on the Eastern Front Eberbach had been wounded a number of times and suffered with continuing kidney problems; nonetheless, in August 1943 he was promoted to General der Panzertruppen. By December he was recuperating in Germany, but had then returned to Russia.
In Normandy one of Eberbach’s first actions was to see the newly-appointed von Kluge and then Rommel to get appraised of the current situation facing Army Group B, Panzergruppe West and 7th Army. The fighting had so far cost the Germans 87,000 casualties, as well as 417 irreplaceable panzers and assault guns. Afterwards he visited the 12th SS Panzer Division defending Caen on 7 July and ordered elements of the 21st Panzer Division to support the beleaguered 16th Luftwaffe Field Division.
By the first week of July, elements of the 2nd SS Panzer Division were making their presence felt on the American front, supporting elements of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, which had been their since early June. By mid-July the 1st SS, 21st Panzer and Panzer Lehr Panzer Divisions had been withdrawn into reserve, but Montgomery’s Operation Goodwood prevented everything except Panzer Lehr from shifting west.
In the meantime, the American Army fought to broaden its bridgehead. Twelve divisions were committed to a series of frontal assaults, culminating in the capture of S
t Lô on the 18th, despite dogged resistance from Panzer Lehr and II Parachute Corps. By then the Americans had suffered over 62,000 casualties struggling through the bocage. Hausser though was forced to keep his two armoured divisions committed and was unable to withdraw his panzers into reserve.
Shortly afterwards Eberbach demonstrated his tactical and strategic abilities with Panzergruppe West by thwarting Montgomery’s Operation Goodwood, launched east of Caen on the 18th. Three British armoured divisions were stopped dead in their tracks, quite literally. The Germans inflicted 5,500 casualties and destroyed over 400 tanks for the loss of over 100 panzers.
Then, to compound the Germans’ woes after losing Dollmann, Rundstedt and Schweppenburg, they lost Rommel on 17 July when he was wounded after RAF Typhoons strafed his car on the open road. Rommel was hospitalised with serious head injuries and returned home in August. Implicated in the 20 July Bomb Plot against Hitler, Rommel poisoned himself on 14 October and was buried with full military honours. One can only speculate how things would have progressed in Normandy if he had stayed in charge.
By the 20th Eberbach’s command was suffering a serious manpower drain, the Panzergruppe to date had suffered 40,000 casualties but only received 2,300 replacements. Four days later the Americans commenced Operation Cobra on the Germans weak western lank.
The break-out
General Günther Blumentritt, Chief of Staff OB West, later recalled:
Although most of the German high command regarded the British as more dangerous, which resulted in the concentration of more troops and good panzer divisions near Caen, there was a decided shift in opinion as the battles in Normandy progressed. Panzer Lehr Division was actually shifted to the American front, and there is no doubt that other divisions would have been shifted to oppose the Americans had they not been tied down by continued British pressure and the overall lack of reserves. We recognised all along that Montgomery was more methodical than most commanders, and we admired the quick deft stroke which cut the Cherbourg peninsula and the speedy regrouping of American forces following the fall of Cherbourg itself.
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 4