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."
Rommel was not responsible for what you suggest here. The man who conceived of the blitzkreig tactic was Heinz Wilhelm Guderian. Probably the least well known, but certainly still highly studied military tactitians of all time. His strategies were developed before the war and were directly responsible for the length of it.
I think hitler had actually tasked him to come up with a strategy to defeat the trench warfare defense. Lookup “Achtung Panzer” for more information. Note, his works also included air support along with the armor and combined arms.
And if I was in his shoes, coming off the Eastern front I'd have probably swam the Channel at the first chance considering Hitler's leadership and what he had done to Germany. In June '44 Severloh knew Stalin had over 1,200 divisions crossing into Poland versus the few dozen (actual) German divisions. The only thing slowing the Red Army down was the supply lines.
The Normandy Wehrmacht divisions had many E front re-assignees like Severloh so it was well known there was no way in Hell the Red Army could be stopped. They were not patriots they were ideologues who were committed to fascism and so they fought on. Imo they should all have died with Hitler, particularly the 'patriotic' zealots. The POW camps in France did a good job of it after the war where over a million German POWs met their end in a similar fashion to what Germany did to millions of Russian POWs 4 years earlier.
...and Monty was the delightful soul behind the frolick known as Operation Market Garden that killed far too many allied troops, instead of giving Patton what he needed. Funny how things never change. In the vein of political correctness they deferred to Monty, had they supported Patton instead, the war would gave been over much sooner, and we never would have had the cold war nighmare of a divided Germany.
Well, we saw how successful the airborne portion of D-Day went...unlikely it would have been any better if there had been more airborne and lesst beach landings
Your heart is full of rancor. I pity you.
I know about the failed bomb plots and the one that almost killed Hilter. I was thinking more like a division or so just wipe out him and his headquarters to be assured of success. It’s easy for me to write that...Hitler had so many under his hypnotic anger filled spell.
Because it sank, some general made the decision to launch the tanks way out and they went under in strong swells and on top of that rocket fire from ships which was supposed to land on the beachs and create craters for the men to hide in fell short into the sea
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