British intelligence underestimated the German defences, which were almost 10 miles (16km) deep, supported by 230 panzers, although other armoured fighting vehicles brought the total for this force to nearly 400. The initial defences, comprising of the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division and 21st Panzer’s inadequate assault gun battalion, were unlikely to hold up the British tanks for any length of time, especially once they had been pulverised by the Allied bomber fleets. A lot rested on the panzergrenadiers of Kampfgruppe von Luck, drawn from 21st Panzer.
To the south, the German gun line on the Bourguébus Ridge included seventy-eight 8.8cm guns, 194 field guns, twelve heavy flak guns and 272 Nebelwerfer rocket launchers. In reality, much of this equipment was spread throughout the entire German defensive zones. Most of the 8.8cm anti-aircraft guns belonged to General Pickert’s III Flak Corps, which was under strict orders from Panzergruppe West to defend the Caen-Falaise road from air attack. Most of his guns were therefore to the south and east of Bourguébus, with air defence a priority.
The anti-aircraft 8.8cm Flak 36, while it could be used in an anti-tank role, was not much better than the 7.5cm anti-tank gun, which German units had plenty of. In addition, its inability to achieve a first-time kill at long range, and its high silhouette, meant that it was very vulnerable in ground combat. The III Flak Corps had three flakkampfgruppen intended to help the ground forces resist enemy tanks; they arrived just in time for Goodwood but were to prove largely useless. They claimed about twenty tank kills for the loss of thirty-five 8.8cm guns and another seventy light Flak guns. This meant that responsibility for holding the ridge rested squarely with the 1st SS and elements of the 21st.
Goodwood opened at 0745 on the 18th and the 1st SS rushed north to join 21st Panzer to halt the British attack on their left lank. About forty-six panzers of I Abteilung, SS-Panzer Regiment 1, were thrown into action against the British in the area of Bourguébus at 1620. Taking up positions on the Bourguébus Ridge, the division inflicted heavy casualties on the British 7th and 11th Armoured Divisions, who received a very nasty surprise with the appearance of the 1st SS.
The British armour had 3,000 yards of open ground to cover before they reached the ridge marked by the villages of Bras, Hubert Folie and Bourguébus itself, all of which were German strongpoints. They got to within a few hundred yards before the Germans opened fire, knocking out four tanks in quick succession, followed by at least another seven to their right. A Squadron of the 3rd Battalion Royal Tank Regiment swiftly lost thirty-four of its fifty-two tanks.
Exhausted by the fighting, the panzers of 1st SS wanted to break off combat on the Bourguébus Ridge, but their request was denied due to the activity of Allied fighter-bombers, presumably on the grounds that if they stayed in close proximity to the British they were at less risk of air attack. Although German losses were high, they achieved the desired effect and the 11th Armoured Division lost 106 of its tanks. West of Cagny, the Guards Armoured Division was also held up, having lost sixty tanks.
On the eastern side of the British corridor General von Obstfelder’s LXXXVI corps was able to deploy a number of anti-tank battalions, including elements of Artillerie-Pak Abteilung 1039 and 1053, which between them could muster twenty-seven 8.8cm Pak 43 and sixteen 7.5cm Pak 40. The British lost a total of 200 tanks on that first day of Goodwood. Just as it was getting dark, Panthers and two captured Shermans from the 1st SS counterattacked after the 2nd Northants Yeomanry tried once more to force the ridge.
Now that the Bourguébus Ridge was such a bloody killing ground, when the panzergrenadiers from 1st SS moved up on the night of 18/19 July they must have been fearful that the Allied bombers would repeat the previous day’s attack. The British brought up artillery on the 19th to cover the advancing tanks. The Northants Yeomanry, however, veered towards Ifs, to the west of Bras, and were driven back toward Caen. At Bras the 1st SS defenders were not so lucky and were ejected at 1900 with the loss of a dozen self-propelled guns and many dead. By 1740 the entire III Abteilung, SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 1 had been destroyed in and around Bras. Although I SS Panzer Corps had been prevented from moving west to fight the Americans it had been at great cost.
Heavy rain and the actions of the 1st SS and 21st Panzer Divisions brought Goodwood to a halt on 20 July. The Churchill, Cromwell, Honey and Sherman tanks of the three British armoured divisions suffered extremely heavy casualties in men and equipment. In just two days the British 2nd Army had lost 413 tanks – some thirty–six per cent of its total tank strength.
The 1st SS, 12th SS and 21st Panzer had effectively hemmed in Goodwood. By this point, the 1st SS had gathered seventy Panzer IVs and Panthers west of Bourguébus at Verrières on the far side of the Caen-Falaise road. Also, a kampfgruppe from 2nd Panzer and the 272nd Infantry Division were also on the ridge, while the 116th Panzer was in the process of moving up behind the 12th SS. When word of the assassination attempt on Hitler on the 20th filtered through to the SS there was a sense of outrage. SS-Hauptsturmführer. Hans Bernhard of the 1st SS summed up their feelings:
We felt it was treason and a great crime. We knew these people had to be enemies of the Reich. Legally this was high treason, which helped our enemies and not us. The generals were too short sighted. They were willing to lose the war in order to get rid of Hitler. Traitors normally get shot in most countries of the world.
Bernhard was also amused by the visits from neighbouring army generals keen to prove their loyalty and the Nazi party salute was enforced on all. Also on the 20th, the 1st SS launched their counterattack from Verrières against Major General C Foulkes’ Canadian 2nd Division, which had been foolish enough to renew the attack on the Bourguébus Ridge under the guise of Operation Atlantic.
The 1st SS remained engaged between the N158 Caen–Falaise and N13 Caen–Lisieux roads and on 25 July took part in the counterattack at Tilly-la-Campagne. The division held the Caen–Falaise highway until the end of the month, by which time it had suffered 1,500 casualties, but, through a combination of new deliveries made in the face of Allied air attack and the maintenance staff pulling out all the stops, 1st SS could field sixty-one Panzer IVs, forty Panthers and twenty-three StuGs. In fact by now all of Peiper’s SS-Panzer Regiment 1 had arrived in Normandy, although some artillery, rocket launcher, flak and reconnaissance units remained behind in Belgium.
Final days
The exhausted 1st SS were pulled out of the line on 4 August and replaced by the 89th Infantry Division. The latter was right in the firing line when Operation Totalise was launched on the 7th. The 89th had only been raised in Germany in January and deployed to Norway for training before arriving in France in late June. Sent to Normandy at the end of July it had just been subordinated to Dietrich’s I SS Panzer Corps on 3 August. Notably, elements of the division were in the Falaise-Bretteville area and moved into the line supported by thirteen Sturmpanzer IVs from Sturmpanzer Abteilung 217.
The 1st SS was withdrawn from the Caen sector and moved southwest toward Avranches, falling prey to Allied fighter-bombers en route. On the night of 5/6 August, the two tank abteilungen, two Panzergrenadier abteilungen, one self-propelled abteilung, one engineer kompanie and the flak kompanie deployed west to take part in the Mortain counterattack. Allied fighter-bombers helped ensure that the 1st SS Panzer Division’s contribution to the Avranches counterattack was stillborn.
The 1st SS Panzer was halted just over a mile (2km) east of Juvigny-le-Terte at about 1300 on 7 August, after RAF Typhoons set about the panzers. It was not until 2200 that the remains of 1st SS, including twenty-five assault guns, were made available to continue the attack. Eberbach’s 5th Panzer Army brought forward elements of the 331st Infantry Divisions to relieve pressure on 1st SS. Although the latter unit was a veteran of the Eastern Front, when it had been withdrawn in March 1944 it left behind all its combat-experienced Officers and men who were distributed to other local units.
It was not until 28 July that the 331st had been ordered to join Panzergruppe West
and it had only arrived on 4 August. A kampfgruppe was assigned to General Adolf Kuntzen’s LXXXI Corps. The 1st SS were in the process of pulling out so they could renew the attack, when the Americans penetrated their left wing up to Hill 307 northeast of Mortain; those units that had withdrawn were required to seal the penetration. Within three days of the Avranches counterattack being launched it was clear that it was a lost cause and the 1st SS were withdrawn to defensive positions around St Barthélemy.
SS-Panzer Regiment 1 by12 August was at Carrouges with just thirty panzers, eleven of which were lost during the fighting the following day. On the 13th, Wisch and his men arrived at Argentan on the Orne, southeast of Falaise. One of SS-Sturmgeschütz Abteilung 1’s last assault guns was lost in the Orne at Putanges south of Falaise.
On the 16th, the division was forced to fall back and regrouped on the River Dives. The remains of the 1st SS, consisting of a weary kampfgruppe, broke out from the Gouffern Forest on the afternoon of 20 August, escaping from the Falaise Pocket via the St Lambert-sur-Dive corridor. Although free by the 22nd, the survivors had no operational panzers or artillery.
Chapter 10
Fighting Withdrawal – 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen
Like so many of the panzer divisions, the 9th SS suffered during its move to Normandy from Allied airstrikes, and did not arrive until 28 June, almost three weeks after the Allied invasion commenced. Fending off British attacks on Caen, the division endured heavy casualties and was pulled back into reserve in mid-July.
Returning to the line, the division fought during the bitter battle for Hill 112 and helped beat off Operation Goodwood. In the face of Operation Totalise, the 9th SS conducted a fighting withdrawal and escaped encirclement in the Falaise pocket, helping to keep the escape route open. Eventually it was withdrawn for a refit near the Dutch city of Arnhem, having lost almost half of its manpower.
Combat experience
Under the direction of SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm ‘Willi’ Bittrich, 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen was mainly formed from conscripts, many of them from the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD or Reich Labour Service), in February 1943. Bittrich, an able tank commander, controlled the Deutschland Regiment during the fighting in Poland and France in 1939–40; he then assumed control of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich for just three months in late 1941.
Before the 9th SS had finished its training, it was placed under Sepp Dietrich’s I SS Panzer Corps, along with the remains of the 1st SS and the newly-raised 12th SS Panzergrenadier Division. However, in early 1944, along with the 10th SS, Panzer Lehr and the 349th Infantry Divisions, it became part of the II Panzer Corps under Paul Hausser. At the end of March 1944 the Red Army had surrounded the 1st Panzer Army and II Panzer Corps had been despatched to rescue it.
The 9th SS first saw action at Tarnopol in early 1944, where it took part in rescuing German troops from the Kamenets-Podolskiy pocket. On 9 April it successfully fought its way through to the 6th Panzer Division at Buczacz. Placed into reserve with Army Group North Ukraine, the 9th SS was refitting at Kovel when the Allies landed in Normandy. Hitler immediately ordered the division to join Panzergruppe West. Under Bittrich it was sent to Normandy on 12 June, though it was to have a series of commanders during the Normandy campaign. At the end of June it came under SS-Oberführer Thomas Müller.
SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Meyer (not to be confused with Kurt Meyer of the 12th SS) commanded SS-Panzer Regiment 9. At the beginning of June the regiment mustered forty-eight Panzer IVs, seven of which were in repair and forty StuG III assault guns. The Panther abteilung was at Mailly-le-Camp undergoing training, which was hampered by the slow rate of new tank deliveries. Its full complement of seventy-nine tanks was not received until mid to late June. In addition, the division left SS-Panzerjager Abteilung 9 behind, which meant it had no tank destroyers and had to make do with towed anti-tank guns. However, the artillery regiment was equipped with twelve Wespe and six Hummel self-propelled guns for mobile artillery fire support.
As part of Paul Hausser’s II SS Panzer Corps, the 9th SS moved to Normandy with its sister division, the 10th SS Frundsberg. It took them longer to reach Caen from the French border than it had taken to make the journey from Poland to France. All German reinforcements from the east were delayed by virtue of having to pass through the Chartres gap between the Seine and the Loire, this being vulnerable to air attack and French sabotage.
The division reached the French border on 16 June, but it was another four days before the lead elements were unloaded from their railway carriages between Paris and Nancy. It then deployed south of Aunay-sur-Odon with a total of 18,000 men, 170 panzers, twenty-one self-propelled guns, 287 armoured half-tracks, sixteen armoured cars and 3,670 trucks. This was a formidable array of hardware and the division knew how to employ it to best effect. Initially the 9th SS was deployed south of a line that ran from Falaise to Condé-sur-Noireau, but it then moved north between Caen and Villers-Bocage on a line between Tournay-sur-Odon and Neuilly-le-Malherbe.
Containing Epsom
Although the British VIII Corps’ Epsom offensive toward Evrecy south of Caen in late June, against the 12th SS Panzer Division, was a tactical failure, the Orne was crossed, Hill 112 taken and a deep salient driven into the German defences west of Caen. The II SS Panzer Corps was ordered to strike the corridor created by the 15th (Scottish) Division from the southwest. The 9th SS was to attack towards le Valtru and the Cheux bottleneck supported by 2nd SS and Panzer Lehr, while the 10th SS would assault the Odon bridgehead and Hill 112. Elements of the 1st SS, 12th SS and 21st Panzer Divisions were also to be involved in attacking the other lank of the exposed corridor.
At a critical moment before this counterattack the Germans were forced to conduct one of their habitual command reshuffles. Willi Bittrich suddenly found himself directing II Panzer Corps after Hausser succeeded General Dollmann as commander of 7th Army when he dropped dead on 28 June of a suspected heart attack; though his Chief of General Staff, General Max Pemsel, suspected he may have poisoned himself. The senior regimental commander, SS-Standartenführer Thomas Müller, briefly took command of the 9th SS. To make matters worse, Rundstedt and Rommel were en route to see Hitler. On his own, Hausser, with II SS Panzer Corps, organised the counterattack using the 9th SS.
The western flank of the British corridor was the weakest point and the ridge that rose out past Rauray to Cheux offered a sheltered approach for the massing panzers. The division’s SS-Panzergrenadier Regiments 20 and 19 were to be supported by I and II Abteilung of SS-Panzer Regiment 9 respectively. Unfortunately SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 20, sheltering in the woods north of Noyers prior to attacking Cheux, was caught by the RAF.
Late in the afternoon of the 29th, III Abteilung, equipped with armoured half-tracks of SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 20, had assembled for the attack together with Panther tanks from the panzer regiment. Preparing for action, it was not entrenched beneath the trees when about 100 Lancaster bombers struck. A huge pall of dust covered the area and it seemed certain that the battalion had been blown to smithereens; however, only about twenty men were killed and by the evening eighty per cent of the armoured vehicles, having been dug out, were operational again. The bombing also caught the panzer battalion but it pressed on to its assembly area.
The counterattack was scheduled for 29 June at 0700 with the 9th SS on the left of the Odon, but the attacks by the RAF delayed the preparations until 1430. In an additional stroke of bad luck, an officer from 9th SS with the plans for the coming attack was out early, reconnoitring the routes to Cheux, when he was captured.
The first group of SS captured Grainville-sur-Odon and the second group also reached Cheux, but everywhere else the British and Canadians held fast. Several flame-throwing tanks also assisted with the assault on Le Valtru, but although the panzers overran the British infantry, the latter held firm.
The 9th SS, who were used to the weak Russian air force and uncoordinated Russian artillery fire, fou
nd the resilience and firepower of the British forces something of a shock. The attack ground to a halt under a deluge of Allied air strikes, artillery and naval gunfire. Elsewhere, in the face of Allied firepower, the 10th SS got as far as Esquay and Gavrus on the southern edge of the corridor. The rest of the division was strung out along the road through Villers-Bocage.
Walter Harzer, then 1a (or Chief Operations Staff Officer) of the 9th SS, observed:
As it was, our counter-offensive broke down under air attack and artillery fire, particularly the heavy guns of the battleships. They were devastating. When one of those shells dropped near a Panther, the 56-ton tank was blown over on its side, just from the blast. It was these broadsides from the warships, more than the defensive fighting of the enemy’s troops, which halted our division’s Panzer Regiment.
During the fighting against the Epsom salient the 9th SS suffered 1,145 casualties and lost sixteen Panzer IVs, six Panthers and ten StuG IIIs. Over the next few days the division’s StuGs accounted for forty-nine enemy tanks, while its Panzer IVs and Panthers claimed another thirteen.
In July, SS-Brigadeführer Sylvester Stadler took command of the 9th SS, having previously commanded Panzergrenadier Regiment Der Führer of the 2nd SS Panzer Division. It was units of this regiment, under SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Diekmann, which conducted the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane during the division’s march northward to Normandy. Stadler was an experienced Eastern Front veteran, having gained the Knight’s Cross for his part in the capture of Kharkov in 1943. He had then gained the Oak Leaves after his involvement in the massive Battle of Kursk. Thomas Müller, who had been acting commander of the 9th SS, subsequently assumed command of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division for a brief period in September, after SS-Oberführer Eduard Deisenhofer was wounded.
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 16