Posted on 06/11/2007 12:17:14 AM PDT by LibWhacker
FOR Hein Severloh the ‘Longest Day’ meant nine hours constantly machine-gunning American soldiers as they attempted to land on Omaha Beach.
One image still brings tears to his eyes. A young American had run from his landing craft and sought cover behind a concrete block. Severloh, then a young lance-corporal in the German army in Normandy, aimed his rifle at the GI. He fired and hit the enemy square in the forehead. The American’s helmet flew away and rolled into the sea, his chin sank to his chest and he collapsed dead on the beach.
Tormented by the memory, Severloh now weeps at the thought of the unknown soldier’s death.
Severloh was safe in an almost impregnable concrete bunker overlooking the beach. He had an unimpeded view of the oncoming Allied forces. He was the last German soldier firing, and may have accounted for about 3,000 American casualties, almost three-quarters of all the US losses at Omaha. The Americans came to know him as the Beast of Omaha.
He had been saved from the waves of Allied bombing by the poor weather. The US aircrews were worried that if they allowed their bombs to fall too soon they might destroy their own landing ships. As they flew over they lingered before releasing their weapons, meaning the bombs often landed far behind the Nazi bunkers.
The Germans joked that the ‘Amis’ - their slang for the US forces - had merely bombed French cows and farmers rather than the German installations.
Alerted by the bombers, Severloh and the 29 others in his bunker rushed to their firing holes and prepared for the onslaught. Severloh, then just 20, gasped when he saw the ocean. He was confronted by what seemed to be a wall of Allied ships. He said: "My God. How am I going to get out of this mess?"
The veteran explained: "What could I do? I just thought that I was never going to make it to the rear. I thought that I was going to shoot for my very life. It was them or me - that is what I thought."
As the landing ships neared the beach, Severloh listened to the final orders from his commander, Lieutenant Berhard Frerking. They wanted to stop the Americans while they were still in the water and could not move easily. But if he fired too soon - while the soldiers were still some way out in the water - he risked missing them.
Frerking explained: "You must open fire when the enemy is knee-deep in the water and is still unable to run quickly."
Severloh had seen little action before. His previous stint on the Eastern Front had been cut short by tonsillitis. But he was anything but enthusiastic. Severloh said: "I never wanted to be in the war. I never wanted to be in France. I never wanted to be in that bunker firing a machine gun.
"I saw how the water sprayed up where my machine gun bursts landed, and when the small fountains came closer to the GIs, they threw themselves down. Very soon the first bodies were drifting in the waves of the rising tide. In a short time, all the Americans down there were shot."
He fired for nine hours, using up all the 12,000 machine-gun rounds. The sea turned red with the blood from the bodies. When he had no more bullets for the machine-gun, he started firing on the US soldiers with his rifle, firing off another 400 rifle rounds at the terrified GIs.
A leading German historical expert of the Second World War, Helmut Konrad Freiherr von Keusgen, believes Severloh may have accounted for 3,000 of the 4,200 American casualties on the day.
Severloh is less sure about the number, but said: "It was definitely at least 1,000 men, most likely more than 2,000. But I do not know how many men I shot. It was awful. Thinking about it makes me want to throw up. I almost emptied an entire infantry landing craft. The sea was red around it and I could hear an American officer shouting hysterically in a loudspeaker."
Lt-col Stuart Crawford, formerly of the Royal Tank Regiment, and a defence consultant, said it was entirely possible that a single German soldier had killed so many GIs.
He said: "I have fired that machine-gun. I did it as part of my training, and it has an extremely high rate of fire. He was in a position which was almost impervious to the weapons which the Americans could bring to bear on him. The Americans made the mistake of not landing tanks with the first wave of troops, so they had no support or protection."
And look at what they did to Jesus for ruffling the feathers of the Jews.
Not in one continuous sitting. Over the ridge forward to the battlements into the next trench... or retreat back to the last. I am sure total kills you are correct, in one sitting? I would not be so sure.
The craft were destroyed by German surface ships.
Here are a couple of FR threads:
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Operation Tiger - Slapton Sands (4/28/1944)- Apr. 29th, 2003
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-vetscor/902337/posts
The FReeper Foxhole Revisits Operation Tiger - Slapton Sands - May 8th, 2004
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-vetscor/1131798/posts
It was kept secret for decades.
Except for a press release in July, 1944 and an article in Stars and Stripes. You've been relying on the MSM for 'truth'.
I believe more people died in the “practice” run for D Day than on the actual attack
"the toll of the dead and missing stood at 198 sailors and 551 soldiers, a total of 749" for Operation Tiger.
Right...it is one of the reasons I find Monday Morning Quarterbacking so distateful.
War simply is full of things that can be analyzed after the fact, but often are unknown before. People do the best they can in the situation they are in.
Sure, there are acts of gross negligence, but many things in battle characterized that way are not...they are simply mistakes made by normally competent people under pressure or in the fog of war.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=U8QDQ1mMTa0
This is a clip from Saving Private Ryan of the beach landing. The music is Iron Maiden - The Longest Day. It’s a very good video in my opinion, and it’s fan made, as the band never made a video for this song.
Severloh, you have been replaced by millions , maybe tens of millions more, who share your bloodlust, but not your conscience/ they are called Islamic Jihadists. As evil as Naziism was, I can’t see as comparable to Islam. Regimes come and go, and National Socialism gripped Germany for less than two decades, whereas “Islam is forever”. They both believed in “tommorow the world” but Islam has positioned itself infinitely better than Naziism ever could to accomplish that objective. There were thousands of Severlohs , count on it. There are probably a few dozen of his kind among the rank and file of Islamic Fundamentalists.
I hope Herr Severloh will come to peace with what he did. He committed no sin. He was a soldier and he did a soldier’s duty, even if his country was in the wrong. I am certain that God and the men he killed will not hold that devotion to duty against him on the Last Day.
Yes, the Nazi state was evil, but no more so than was our “glorious” Soviet ally. Herr Severloh and thousands like him were in many ways just as much victims of Hitler’s foul reign as anyone else. Sometimes I think that the world would have been better had the Nazis won on the Eastern Front...
People sometimes forget that the dead and wounded are not the only casulaties of war. How this guy must have suffered during his 43 years of self-imposed hell!
wow.
I can barely speak. First, thanks for the ping and for educating on the realities of that day.
Second. You had to kill or be killed basically, that’s war.
Third, I am biting my tongue regarding the comments in favor of Monty. I just can’t take it and not expect to get banned. :-)
How long was it before he broke out of his responsible area.....?
Nope, not gonna do it.
Thanks Par for the story. I guess it’s our bad luck that he got tonsilitis and had to leave the eastern front.
"I was aware that some of my comrades had made off, but I had this terrible vision of being confronted in the eye by my officer and so I stayed at my post."
"In the early afternoon, I realised I was the last person still firing. I could see tanks manouvering on the beach and knew that I couldn't hold them alone."
"I heard an order to shouted by Lieutenant Ferking-a fine fellow and, at 32, a veteran-that we should retreat."
"I ran from bomb crater to bomb crater behind our bunker complex. I waited but he never came."
"I visited his grave in Normandy ten years after the war. He took a head shot from one of the Americans as he tried to follow me. I was taken prisoner that night. I don't think I would have survived had I been captured at my post."
"They knew what I had done to their friends. I don't think those first-wave troops would have shown me any mercy."
Some 2,300 Americans died on 'Bloody Omaha' before overwhelming the German defenders.
Mr Severloh was sent as a PoW to America and put to work picking cotton and potatoes before returning to Germany in 1947 to resume his pre-war life in farming.
If they had been launched much closer to the beach, then most of them would have made it to shore.
Herr Severloh (and the moral-relativist turds on this board) can rot in Hell. He could have surrendered, retreated, moved to another area, anything other than what he did. He can also stew a bit more for all eternity in face of the fact that most of the Germans captured on D-day and following days were summarily exeucuted, thanks in part to the ruthlessness of Herr Severloh’s ‘achievments’ at Omaha.
Bet this guy shot at Uncle Al.
I hope he finds his own peace.
Thanks Paul Harvey.
The higher rate of fire of the MG-43 would actually reduce the hit-per-shot ratio.
Scoring one thousand hits on moving targets under those conditions was pretty fair shootin'. Two or three thousand is medal-worthy...if your side wins...and very productive of nightmares.
A little reality check, more Americans died on 911 than at Normandy...
From the Brits' D-Day Museum site:
"The breakdown of US casualties was 1465 dead, 3184 wounded, 1928 missing and 26 captured. Of the total US figure, 2499 casualties were from the US airborne troops (238 of them being deaths). The casualties at Utah Beach were relatively light: 197, including 60 missing. However, the US 1st and 29th Divisions together suffered around 2000 casualties at Omaha Beach."
There was a total of @ 2000 casualties on Omaha. This includes wounded. This guy would have had to be responsible for every single US KIA (ignoring the drownings, artillery/mortars, other German soldiers and Friendly Fire) and even that number wouldn't come close to what is claimed in this article.
I agree with you he exaggerated the number of his kills. I posted this excerpt from an article because I was curious about what happened to this guy after his position was lost and after the war.
Understood. Another freeper suggested that it’s 50-50 that this German put up no fight and created the myth out of guilt.
He was a patriot. What would you have done in his place? Betray your own country?
Of course not. Patriotism is always honorable. As long as his orders are lawful, and his violence is directed strictly at combatants, there is no dishonor in the soldier’s bloody task — even if the country for which he fights is in the wrong. It is the instigators of war who bear the blood of war on their hands — not the soldiers.
Yes, it would have been nice if Herr Severloh and the rest of the German army had simply given up on 6 June 1944. It would also have been nice if Hitler had been accepted into art school in 1907 and skipped the whole “Third Reich” thing. That’s not the way things worked out in either case.
As things did work out, Herr Severloh did what any patriot would do in a war — he killed for his country. I would hope that you would do the same were you to find yourself in his shoes some day.
Well, that's entirely possible as there are no corroborating witnesses. From his own account, everyone else in that unit ran or was killed.
Still, someone must have done a lot of damage from that or a nearby gun for our guys to have nicknamed the anonymous Kraut "the Beast."
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