Disaster at D-Day

The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944

Peter Tsouras

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781473877498
• Subtopic: German History

The editor of Hitler Triumphant combines history and fiction to craft an alternative history of the Normandy landings on D-Day.
It is June, 1944. The Allied armies are poised for the full-scale invasion of Fortress Europe. Across the Channel, the vaunted Wehrmacht lies waiting for the signs of invasion, ready for the final battle . . .
What happens next is well-known to any student of modern history. The outcome could easily have been very different, as Peter Tsouras shows in this masterful and devastating account in which plans, missions, and landings go horribly wrong.
Tsouras firmly bases his narrative on facts but introduces minor adjustments at the opening of the campaign—the repositioning of a unit, bad weather and misjudged orders—and examines their effect as they gather momentum and impact on all subsequent events. Without deviating from the genuine possibilities of the situation, he presents a scenario that keeps the reader guessing and changes the course of history.
Praise for Disaster at D-Day
"A brilliant and interesting book. The author has pulled off a great feat of imagination and research." — Military Illustrated
"This should find a place on the shelves of anyone with an interest in the period and would be invaluable background reading in preparation for a battlefield tour of Normandy." — The British Army Review

CHAPTER 1

The Chess Pieces Fill the Board

The Armies

In year of invasion 1066, the English waited nervously all Summer for Duke William of Normandy’s invasion fleet to find that necessary but elusive combination of calm seas and fair winds to carry it to England. Almost nine hundred years later, the German conquerors of Western Europe were waiting with equal nervousness for the invasion fleet manned by the British and their Canadian and American cousins to leap upon them through that same rare combination of benign seas and winds. If the settings had a certain reverse similiarity, the fighting men were much the same from one age to another. But now they drove Tigers and Shermans and carried Garands, MG-42s and the Sten and were to fight as Desert Rats, Leibstandarte, The Big Red One, Das Reich, Screaming Eagles, Red Devils, Stonewallers, and Leek Mich am Arsch.

By late 1943 the compass of the war was swinging to the long-promised and often-postponed Allied assault on Hitler’s Fortress Europe. For the Allies, the decision to invade into the teeth of Hitler’s vaunted Atlantic Wall defences had been fixed. American resolve, made confident by numbers and resources, finally had overcome British attempts to delay the awful moment. For the British, it had not been a lack of courage but experience of bitter defeats at the hands of the Wehrmacht and knowledge that resources were limited. They had but one army to risk. After five years of war, no Army replacements could be obtained without devouring the substance of the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy.

The Germans

The Germans had also exhausted their resources in the West. The Luftwaffe (Air Force) and Kriegsmarine (Navy) had been broken by the superior production capabilities and manpower of the Allies. The Luftwaffe no longer dared conduct even reconnaissance flights over the British Isles, and the Kriegsmarine’s major weapon, the submarine, had lost the Battle of the Atlantic. The once mighty Luftwaffe, increasingly shorn of operational units, transferred more and more idled ground personnel to Luftwaffe Field Divisions, infantry by my other name, and not very good infantry, under Army operational control. At the opposite end of the scale, Luftwaffe resources had been poured into creating more Fallschirmjäger (Parachute) divisions, elite formations of high spirit and skill, equipped even more lavishly than the Waffen SS by Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring’s vanity.

As the prospect of the ultimate decisive battle approached, both the Germans and the Allies began to build-up their forces along both sides of the English Channel. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Supreme Commander West (Oberbefehlshaber West – OB West), had made his case in November 1943, that significant reinforcements were vital if Germany was to have a chance to defeat the coming invasion. For two years his command had served as a comfortable billet in the sweet plenty of La Belle France and as a replacement pool for the ravenous Eastern Front. Hitler accepted the logic, and reinforcements irregularly started moving West. Coastal defence divisions of over-and-underaged men, the partially unfit, and pressed Soviet prisoners of war (Ostruppen) had become a large part of von Rundstedt’s command. In the new year of 1944, veteran infantry divisions began arriving. All too often they were burnt-out husks from the Eastern Front, to be rebuilt around their veteran cadres with new conscripts. Such a formation was the 352nd Infantry Division commanded by Generalleutnant (Lieutenant General) Dietrich Kraiss. His veterans, employing that unique German talent for reconstitution, quickly transformed a large draft of Saxon eighteen-year-olds from the Hanover area into a tough, cohesive division.

The arrival of the striking power of the German ground forces, the panzer divisions of the Army and the Waffen SS, was the real proof of Hitler’s determination to defend his western conquests. Among them were the greatest of Germany’s armoured formations. Pride of place was claimed by the 1st SS Panzer Division ‘Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler’ originally built from Hitler’s SS bodyguard regiment. Deadly, ferocious, and utterly ruthless, Leibstandarte was also the mother of unparalleled warriors, sent as cadres for many new divisions. The 2nd SS Panzer Division ‘Das Reich’ was twin brother to Leibstandarte, both destined to fight in I SS Panzer Corps commanded by SS Gruppenführer (Lieutenant General) Sepp Dietrich. A long-time crony of Hitler since their days in Munich, Dietrich was a veteran of the Freikorps and a veritable Mars. The other major SS formation scheduled for the West was SS Gruppenführer Paul Hausser’s II SS Panzer Corps with 9th SS Panzer Division ‘Hohenstauffen’ and the 10th SS Panzer Division ‘Frundsberg’.

From Leibstandarte volunteers, sown like dragons’ teeth, the new 12th SS Panzer Division was raised, filled with enthusiastic, fit, and indoctrinated teenagers from the Hitler Youth organization, hence its honorific of ‘Hitlerjugend’. Trained to a strange high pitch of soldierly skill, comradeship, Nazi idealism, and brutality, the enlisted men averaged only seventeen-and-a-half years old. Also newly raised was the only panzergrenadier division in the West, the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Götz von Berchlingen’, bearing the name of the grizzled German knight who defied his emperor’s new taxes with the defiant taunt, ‘Leek mich am Arsch!’, in other words the 17th SS Panzergrenadier ‘Kiss My Ass!’ Division.

The Army’s panzer might was represented with its two best-equipped divisions: 2nd Panzer Division and the Panzer Lehr Division, the latter raised originally from the panzer arm’s demonstration regiments. The command of Panzer Lehr had fallen to one of the stars of the Afrika Korps, Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein. Another veteran of North Africa, the surrendered 21st Panzer Division, was reconstituted around a core of convalescent veterans of that gallant unit.

The Allies

The Allies were also gathering their armies. The British had kept a number of divisions at home as a garrison for the beleaguered island in case of invasion. If they had seen combat, such as the 3rd Division had, it had been four years before in the short campaign that ended at Dunkirk. Any combat experience lad dissipated with time and the endless drafts taken to form new units. The Canadian 3rd Division had a special injury to brood over while it trained. Their sister division, the Canadian 2nd, had been decimated at Dieppe in 1942, in the Allies’ experiment to test the feasibility of seizing a great port to support an invasion.

Most of the American divisions quickly arriving in Britain in the early months of 1944 were similarly inexperienced in combat. The first division to land was the National Guard 29th Infantry Division, ‘The Blue and Gray Division’, from Virginia and Maryland. Its 116th Infantry Regiment was descended from Thomas Jackson’s immortal Stonewall Brigade. These ‘Stonewallers’ from small central Virginia towns were the first to practice amphibious operations at the seaside training centre at Slapton Sands in Devon.

All of this untested metal was to be tipped with six tempered veteran British and American divisions transferred from the Mediterranean Theatre. The 8th Army sent four of its most experienced and effective units. The most famous were the Desert Rats of the 7th Armoured Division, the Red Devils of the 1st Airborne Division, and the 50th (Northumbrian) Division, ‘our old friends’, as Rommel was to say to Bayerlein later. The 51st (Highland) Division had a more bitter relationship with Rommel. Descended from one of the finest divisions in the First War, the 51st had been cut off from the British Expeditionary Force’s retreat to Dunkirk and been forced to capitulate after a desperate struggle at the port of St. Valery. Their conqueror had been a rising general with an uncanny gift for armoured warfare, Erwin Rommel. The 51st Division was raised again from its second line of battalions and served with the 8th Army from Alamein onwards, extracting some payment for St. Valery. These Highland Scots were of a nation of grimly natural fighters and had bided their time in their stoic Presbyterian way for four years to put paid to the whole score.

Joining the British divisions was the pride of the U.S. Army: the Big Red One of the 1st Infantry Division and the ‘Hell on Wheels’ 2nd Armored Division, the first American armoured division to be raised and the one Patton had trained himself. Both had been blooded and honoured in North Africa and Sicily. The British 50th and U.S. 1st Divisions had been selected for the invasion due to their successes in amphibious operations, a cause of bitterness among the troops who felt they had done enough when others had done nothing.

Aside from the infantry and armoured divisions, the Allies massed two full airborne corps for the invasion, the British I and the American XVIII. The Red Devils of the 1st Airborne Division had won a considerable reputation in North Africa and Sicily as had the American 82nd Airborne Division under commanders like Major Generals Robert ‘Roy’ Urquart and Matthew Ridgway. Each veteran division was joined by an eager but inexperienced twin: the British 6th Airborne with flying Pegasus on its division flash and the American ‘Screaming Eagles’ of the 101st Airborne.

The Commanders

Rommel

Hitler and the Allies instinctively chose to command in the great battle two champions whose fates had already intertwined: Generalfeldmarshal (Field Marshal) Erwin Rommel, ‘The Desert Fox’ and General Bernard Montgomery. ‘Monty’. Rommel with his small Afrika Korps had come closer than any man in history to severing the jugular of the British Empire. His first command in the invasion of France in 1940 had seen him carve out a reputation in command of the 7th Panzer ‘Ghost’ Division as a master of modern armoured warfare. In North Africa he was to make the world his audience, and the British soldier one of his greatest admirers for his brilliance no less than his chivalry. So thoroughly had he won the moral ascendancy over the enemy that British commanders were driven to forbid the common use of the term ‘a Rommel’ used to describe any action particularly and imaginatively well-done. Even Churchill had recognized the difference when he said to the House on 27 January 1942, with El Alamein still unwon: ‘We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.’

Montgomery

Montgomery was to change all that and not by forbidding his men to respect a gallant enemy. Montgomery chose to reestablish the British soldier’s faith in himself and his commanders. A thorough professional, he had distinguished himself by commanding the 3rd Division in a demanding rearguard action in the retreat to Dunkirk. He also possessed the uncanny sense of instilling a sense of trust in him, he turned around the 8th Army, defeated Rommel at El Alamein and chased him across North Africa. His successes in concluding the North African campaign, and in Sicily and southern Italy made him the darling of the British people and their army. After years of shameful defeats, he embodied victory.

The Commanders’ Appraisal of the Situation

With an eerie coincidence, both Rommel and Montgomery submitted their first appraisals of the strategic requirements of their new commands to their political masters on 31 December 1943. Both men brought a fresh approach and a master’s touch and both rejected the bases of existing plans and assumptions. Rommel had just finished an exhaustive inspection of the fortifications of the so-called Atlantic Wall that ran from Holland to the Bay of Biscay. Rommel’s report read:

We can hardly expect a counter-attack by the few reserves we have behind the coast at the moment, with no self-propelled guns and an inadequate quantity of anti-tank weapons, to succeed in destroying the powerful force which the enemy will land. We know from experience that the British soldier is quick to consolidate his gains and then holds on tenaciously with excellent support from his superior air arm and naval guns, the observers for which direct the fire from the front line.

With the coastline held as thinly as it is at present, the enemy will probably succeed in creating bridgeheads at several different points and in achieving a major penetration in our coastal defences. Once this has happened it will only be by the rapid intervention of our operational reserves that he will be thrown back into the sea. This requires that these forces should be held very close behind the coast defences.¹

These observations were based on his personal observations of the crippling effectiveness on German operations of overwhelming Allied air power.

Montgomery had just reviewed the plans prepared in London for the invasion at Churchill’s personal request. His report read:

My first impression is that the present plan is impracticable. From a purely Army point of view the following points are essential:

∘ The initial landings must be made on the widest possible front,

∘ One British army to land on a front of two, or possibly, three corps.

One American army similarly.

∘ The air battle must be won before the operation is launched. We must then aim at success in the land battle by the spread and violence of our operations.²

Advantages and Disadvantages?

Both men were allotted similar roles under a theatre commander. Montgomery was appointed commander of the 21st Army Group which would conduct the Allied invasion. He would personally command the British 2nd Army under Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey and the American 1st Army under Lieutenant General Omar Bradley. Two later armies would follow his army group, and a separate American army group would be formed. His superior was General Dwight Eisenhower who commanded all Allied forces in the European Theatre of Operations and would have overall command of all ground, air, and sea forces in the invasion. Rommel was given command of Army Group B consisting of the 7th and 15th Armies, on a front from Holland to the Loire River. Two other armies in southern France (1st and 19th) were formed into Army Group G. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Eisenhower’s counterpart, had overall command of all German forces in the West. Neither Montgomery or Rommel would have direct command over the theatre naval and air forces.

The remarkable similarities in their situations ceased at this point. Montgomery worked within one the most cooperative and efficient alliances in history and within a chain of command that functioned rationally. Although he had professional disagreements, some of them bitter, with his peers and colleagues, the system consistently supported his efforts to plan and prepare for the invasion. He was given the widest latitude and initiative. Rommel, on the other hand, worked within a system that had been both morally and professionally distorted by the evil genius of Adolf Hitler. His chain of command theoretically ran from the German High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – OKW) through von Rundstedt at OB West to himself at Army Group B. The reality was that the unity of command of his army group was badly compromised. He could not move a single division without Hitler’s, express permission. Hitler involved himself in every detail and muddied the concept of operations to meet the invasion. Rommel did not even control most of the panzer divisions held in reserve to counterattack the landing. That was the domain of the Commander of Panzer Forces West, General Geyr von Schweppenburg, who reported to von Rundstedt.

The great issue that the Germans were not able to resolve before the invasion was the concept and timing of the counterattacks that would drive the invasion into the sea....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Maps
• Tables
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: The Chess Pieces Fill the Board
• Chapter 2: The Airborne Assaults 6 June
• Chapter 3: The American Landings 6 June
• Chapter 4: The British Landings 6 June
• Chapter 5: Operation ROYAL OAK 7 June
• Chapter 6: Operation SPANNER 8 to 11 June
• Chapter 7: Unternehmen ROSSBACH 12 to 13 June
• Chapter 8: Starting Over and Operation TALISMAN 14 to 26 June
• Chapter 9: Vae Victis? And Unternehmen TEUTOBURGER WALD 27 to 30 June
• Postscript
• Appendix A: Division Strengths
• Appendix B: Allied Order of Battle
• Appendix C: Omaha Beach