Defeat in the West

Milton Shulman

• Publisher: Arcole Publishing
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781789121766
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

THE STORY OF THE COLLAPSE OF THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST AND A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II, AS TOLD FROM THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEWIn 1945, the once mighty Wehrmacht was reduced to a pathetic shadow of its former self as the thousand-year Reich lay in ruins. The war in the West had been lost and its protagonists scattered in prisoner of war camps across Europe.Author Milton Shulman joined the Canadian Army HQ three months before D-Day as a major and was promoted to intelligence officer by war's end. As part of his duties, he made close personal contact with the German Army throughout intelligence operations in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. While still in uniform, he also interviewed many of the captured German generals in the following months and years, including Gerd von Rundstedt, 'Sepp' Dietrich and Kurt Meyer—26 in all. From them, Major Shulman learnt why it was that such a superbly armed body of fighting men suffered such a calamitous defeat.This absorbing book is the result of those interviews. First published in 1947, it was the first account to reveal the truth of what happened in the war: how Hitler and his General Staff planned their campaigns, how the discipline and ignorance of the German military machine served Hitler well and Germany badly—and why victory finally slipped from their hands."The best and most vivid account of the German collapse"—Hugh Trevor Roper, The Sunday Times

BOOK TWO — DEFEAT IN THE WEST

Part IV — THE INVASION

Chapter XIII — THE ATLANTIC WALL AND THE MEN BEHIND IT

With the German failure to capture Moscow late in 1941, a two-front war had become an unpleasant reality. The entry of the United States into the conflict presented the possibility of an invasion of the Continent in the West. No longer was there freedom to take on one foe at a time without danger of a threat from behind. The eyes of the Supreme Command began to shift apprehensively from side to side. They could no longer face resolutely in only one direction.

Hitler looked about him for a man who could provide him with security in the West while his armies were still engaged against the Russians. The choice was obvious. The one general who had been consistently successful in all he had undertaken was the aloof, professional Field Marshal von Rundstedt. But in early 1942 the Marshal was in one of his periodic retirements. His quarrel with the Führer over the recommendation that Army Group South be permitted to withdraw from its advanced winter positions in the Caucasus had brought about von Rundstedt’s resignation. The Field Marshal, however, was not destined to remain unemployed for very long.

Von Rundstedt had never underestimated the potential strength of the British. He had consistently warned the Supreme Command of the danger in the West. Knowing his interest in this theatre and playing upon the old man’s loyalty to duty and the Fatherland, Hitler was able to convince von Rundstedt to take up the marshal’s baton once again. In March 1942 he arrived at St. Germain, France, to take over the post of Commander-in-Chief in the West.

During 1942 Hitler still believed that victory over Russia was within reach. Despite the failure of his efforts to take Moscow, there had been cause for elation in the successful drive of the southern armies to the Don. He concentrated his main resources hoping to capture Stalingrad, only to find that what seemed like victory had suddenly become defeat. With the loss of the Sixth Army under Paulus at Stalingrad, the German forces in the East were forced to retire to the Dnieper River.

Preoccupied with the prospects of victory in Russia in 1942, Hitler paid scant attention to events in France. After Stalingrad the losses in the East had so weakened the Wehrmacht that all possibilities of an offensive policy in the West had to be abandoned. From the early part of 1943 onwards Germany was limited to a policy of strategic defense in Western and Southern Europe.

General Günther Blumentritt, who was appointed to act as von Rundstedt’s Chief-of-Staff late in 1942, has provided an account of some of the problems that faced the Commander-in-Chief West in the months preceding the Allied invasion of the Continent.{73} According to Blumentritt the task of defending Western Europe was complicated by the formidable area involved. Stretching some thousands of kilometres in a vast semi-circle from Norway along the coast of Europe and through the Mediterranean to Greece, the possibilities of invasion zones were innumerable. With complete superiority of air and sea power, the British and Americans could choose the time and place not only for a main attack, but for any amount of feints as well. The German navy could offer little interference to any such operation, while the bringing up of reserves to threatened sectors was already hampered by Allied air power and the damaged state of the continental railways. Thus in the years 1942-43 the forefinger of High Command strategists moved around the map like an uncertain compass needle trying to point the way to the next Allied move.

The first area considered vulnerable to Allied attention was Norway, Denmark and, above all, the North Sea between the Elbe and the Ems. It was thought that landings in these northern regions would take place independent of a cross-Channel assault. Blumentritt said that there was a certain amount of doubt about Sweden’s reliability, and it was feared that she might have been prevailed upon to grant air bases to the Allies.

When not casting its gaze northward, von Rundstedt’s headquarters was keeping an apprehensive eye southwards. “Two or three times during 1943,” said Blumentritt, “our attention was drawn by the Supreme Command to the possible threat of an Allied landing in Spain or Portugal. Information about Spain was obtained through attachés in Madrid and Vichy, and Spanish officers were often guests at the headquarters of the German Nineteenth Army in Southern France. We considered Lisbon, the northwest tip of Spain, the Balearic Isles and the Barcelona area as the most likely landing places.

“It was considered that such landings might be made in conjunction with an attack on the south or west coast of France. Countermeasures were prepared by the Commander-in-Chief West in the shape of an operation ‘Ilona’ In the event of an Allied landing in Spain or Portugal, Ilona would be put into operation if Spain remained neutral or came in on the German side Ten divisions were concerned, and there were two lines of attack, one against the Barcelona area, and the main one, should there be an Allied landing in the west, along the line Valladolid-Salamanca where the decisive battle was expected to take place....However, we never did take this threat to Spain very seriously at von Rundstedt’s headquarters.”

In early 1944 the attention of the Commander-in-Chief West was diverted again. This time to Southern France. Agents’ reports flooded into von Rundstedt warning of imminent landings about to take place in the area of the Rhône delta and near the French-Spanish frontier. It was appreciated that if such an attack did take place, another landing around the mouth of the Gironde was to be anticipated. A pincer movement against Toulouse was to be expected, after which there would be an advance along the Canal du Midi to cut off Spain and join up with the growing Resistance Movement in the south of France.

But as the months passed each appreciation was discarded in turn and replaced by another until by the end of March 1944, it became obvious that the northern coast of France provided the most likely and most profitable results for an invasion attempt of the Continent. According to Blumentritt, Admiral Canaris’s intelligence branch had only six agents in England about this time, but all of them confirmed the fact that an invasion was to be launched from Southern England.{74}

The possibility of Allied landings on the French Channel coast gave Field Marshal von Rundstedt his greatest concern. To deny a foothold to an invading force in this area, unwarranted reliance had been placed upon the Atlantic Wall. This line of fortifications girdling the coast of France was directly under the Commander-in-Chief West but its technical construction had been entrusted to the organization Todt. This latter organization was thoroughly National Socialist in its conception and had been responsible for the building of the Siegfried Line as well. The strongest parts of the Atlantic Wall were in Holland and the Pas de Calais, with relatively strong sectors in Normandy and Brittany. But on the southern coast of France these static defenses hardly existed at all, and faith had to be pinned on earthen fieldworks and the badly-trained divisions available in the region.

All along this coastal line like so many buttresses to a wall, a series of nodal points had been designated as ‘fortresses.’ These places were to have the biggest guns, the most cement and the best troops in France. They were to be defended “until the last drop of blood,” and the fortress commandant was to be personally responsible with his head if this was not carried out. The instructions in regard to the handling of these bastions came straight from Berlin in a series of Führer’s decrees. Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, Le Havre, Cherbourg, Brest, La Rochelle, Gironde, Toulon, were some of over a dozen fortresses that were named, and they punctuated the coastline of France like so many knots in a string.

But what Hitler, in his mania for fortresses, had forgotten, was that while the knots themselves might be strong and not readily broken, the weaker cord between could be easily snapped. Therefore — and changing the metaphor — while the fortresses formidably jutted their blunt jaws menacingly towards the sea, their backsides were vulnerable to a devastating kick. There were neither the men nor the materials to build these zones so that they provided all-round protection against the land as well as the sea. Thus they remained bristling in front and flabby behind.

Von Rundstedt was most unhappy about both the Atlantic Wall and this system of fortresses. “Strategically the value of these fortresses was insignificant,” said the Field Marshal,{75} “because of their inability to defend themselves against a land attack. When the Führer’s instructions for the defense of the fortresses was sent to me, I had the words ‘defend to the last drop of blood’ changed to ‘defend to the last bullet’ before I sent them forward to the troops. We subsequently lost over 120,000 men in these concrete posts when we withdrew from France. I always considered this to be a tragic waste of useful manpower.

“As for the Atlantic Wall itself,” continued von Rundstedt, “it had to be seen to be believed. It had no depth and little surface. It was sheer humbug. At best it might have proved an obstacle for twenty-four hours at any one point, but one day’s intensive assault by a determined force was all that was needed to break any part of this line. Once through the so-called Wall the rest of these fortifications and fortresses facing the sea were of no use at all against an attack from behind. I reported all this to the Führer in October 1943, but it was not favorably received.”

If von Rundstedt was unhappy about the Atlantic Wall itself, he was bitter about the formations available in the West to man it. When he had first arrived in France in 1942 there were only some thirty German divisions in all of France and the Low Countries. As the Russian adventure became more and more costly the threat of a second front in the West became correspondingly greater. Von Rundstedt was thus able to convince the Supreme Command to send him an increasing share of the total resources of the Wehrmacht. By June 1944 von Rundstedt had under command a nominal total of sixty divisions.

According to the Field Marshal only a few of these divisions could be considered first class. No more than fifteen of these sixty formations had either the equipment or the personnel to warrant their being classed as a division. Aside from the panzer and parachute divisions, which were still being sent the fittest troops and the most modern weapons, the bulk of the infantry divisions were miserable skeletons of fighting units. Sitting deep in their bunkers in the Atlantic Wall, they were equipped with a hodgepodge of foreign artillery, relied on horses and bicycles for their mobility, and were formed chiefly of personnel from older age groups and convalescents from the Russian front.

France had been turned into a vast training-center, where divisions destroyed on other sectors could come for rest, refitting and reorganization. Thus, many of these divisions were more real on paper than they were on the ground. “Often I would be informed that a new division was to arrive in France,” said von Rundstedt,{76} “direct from Russia or Norway or Central Germany. When it finally made its appearance in the West it would consist, in all, of a divisional commander, a medical officer and five bakers.”

To reform these shattered divisions which had left the bulk of their German personnel in Russian graves or Russian prisoner-of-war camps, the Supreme Command drafted so-called volunteers from amongst the peoples of the countries they occupied. There not being enough able-bodied Germans still capable of keeping a war machine and an industrial machine going at the same time, the infantry divisions in France were largely rebuilt by utilizing the huge reserve of non-Germanic manpower in Europe. Using this foreign element chiefly for supply and administrative duties, the infantry divisions in the West were liberally sprinkled with Poles, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Romanians, Czechs, Dutchmen, Alsatians, to mention but a few. These non-Germans usually made up at least ten per cent of a division’s strength and in some divisions comprised about twenty-five per cent of the formation’s personnel.

But the largest group of foreigners found in the Wehrmacht in the West were Russians. So many prisoners had been taken in the early victories in Russia, that it was decided in 1942 to make use of these troops rather than continue to feed them or exterminate them. Realizing that it might be dangerous to inject so large a foreign element into normal German divisions, the Supreme Command decided to form these Russian troops into separate units of their own which would be officered by Germans. With the aid of a Russian general, Vlassov, this huge recruiting drive was begun.

It might be of interest to make a chronological diversion at this point in order to describe the methods by which such Eastern or Ost battalions were formed. The experiences of an Armenian who deserted from 812 Armenian Battalion in Holland provide a typical example of what happened to thousands of his countrymen.{77} Having been captured on 12 November 1941, he was thrown into a German prison cage, where he suffered the kind of treatment made famous by the camps of Belsen and Buchenwald. For fifteen days he was forced to march towards the rear areas, living on a handful of wheat each day as his ration. Prisoners who dropped out of the line to steal potatoes from the fields en route were shot. In a camp near Minsk they were given verminous quarters, no blankets, and drinking water was obtained by scooping snow into a can and waiting for it to melt. Twenty to thirty men died every night due to the combination of hours of hauling wood, generous lashings with leather whips, and bad food.

Suddenly, in early 1942, there was a revolutionary change. Barracks were cleaned, men were deloused and food became more abundant. For six weeks they were forced to take exercise so that they could get their strength back. This was a gradual and slow process since by this time most of them were so weak and sick they could hardly walk. In May 1942 they were sent to a new camp in Poland where they discovered they were now part of four Armenian battalions which were being formed and trained to fight in the German army. Supplied with a mixture of German and Russian weapons, each battalion contained about a thousand men. All company commanders were German, but junior officers were Russian, usually of the émigré White Russian variety. Early in 1943 two of these Armenian battalions were sent to the West and the other two to the East.

By June 1944 over 75,000 of these Russian troops were stationed in France, chiefly employed in rear area duties. But some of the Eastern battalions were given operational rôles, usually as units in the normal German infantry divisions. Their fighting value to the Germans proved negligible, while the administrative problems they raised were staggering. The following order issued by 276 Infantry Division in Normandy gives some indication of the difficulties that plagued German staffs.

“Infantry Regiment 987, Personnel Branch. — Regimental H.Q., 9 Aug. ‘44.

“Subject: Pay books for volunteers in German units.

“In order to issue paybooks to volunteers in German units a nominal roll of such volunteers, separated according to their nationality, will be handed in to Regimental Headquarters by 11 Aug. 44.

The paybooks will be issued in eight different forms, i.e.:

(i) For Russians, Ukrainians and Wh...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• MAPS
• PREFACE
• BOOK ONE - THE ROAD TO DEFEAT
• BOOK TWO - DEFEAT IN THE WEST
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER
• APPENDIX A - SENIOR OFFICERS INTERVIEWED BY THE AUTHOR
• APPENDIX B - BIBLIOGRAPHY