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Posted on 12/28/2003 5:40:52 AM PST by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 "'Hitler built a fortress around Europe - but he forgot to put a roof on it'. " ~ Franklin D Roosevelt The attack on the Soviet Union on June 22nd 1941 and the unexpectedly strong resistance put up by the Red Army forced the German High Command to transfer increasing numbers of troops away from the Western front, considerably weakening it in the process. When the United States entered the war in December 1941, fears of an Anglo-American landing intensified, and in the same month, Hitler reinforced his system of defence by ordering the construction of the Atlantic Wall. This gigantic project, entrusted to the Todt Organization, was begun in 1942 but had still not been completed by 1944, despite the efforts of Field-Marshal Rommel, who had been made responsible for the entire sector between the Netherlands and the Loire at the end of 1943.  The project involved building 15,000 structures along the entire coast of the North Sea, the English Channel and the Atlantic. This required the labour of 450,000 workers (both voluntary and impressed) and the use of 11 million tonnes of concrete and 1 million tonnes of steel for the reinforcing rods. Despite the image that German propaganda sought to project, the “Wall” was not a continuous obstacle. It could basically be said to be composed of four types of structure: the fortresses, the coastal batteries, the close beach defences and the obstacles erected either on the beaches themselves or inland. Many remains of the Atlantic Wall – more or less well-preserved – can still be seen today along the coast of Normandy.  More than 700,000 men were massed behind the “Wall”. In Lower Normandy, the German Army had the equivalent of between seven and eight divisions. The fortresses Ever since the Anglo-Canadian raid on Dieppe in August 1942, the Germans had been convinced that the Allies would try to capture a port during their next landing attempt, in order to ensure the swift arrival of the men, equipment and supplies they would need. Accordingly, all the major ports along Europe’s western coastline were turned into veritable fortresses (Festungen), bristling with large-calibre guns intended to repulse any invasion fleet. The Seine bay sector was thus framed by the two fortresses of Cherbourg and Le Havre.  The Cherbourg Fortress, commanded by General Karl von Schlieben, extended along a 30-kilometre stretch of sea front on either side of the city, from Jardeheu in the west to Cape Levi in the east. There were no fewer than a dozen heavy batteries here, with a total of more than forty guns of a calibre ranging from 105 to 240 mm. The city and port were dotted with numerous blockhouses, antitank walls and anti-aircraft artillery positions.  Coastal artillery batteries Between the fortresses, the Germans constructed coastal artillery batteries, under the control of either the army or the navy. Spaced several kilometres apart, they were designed to fire out to sea and ward off any invasion fleet. They were equipped with guns (usually with a calibre of betweetn 100 and 155 mm) which were generally grouped in fours or, more rarely, in sixes.  In all, there were more than twenty main batteries along the coasts of the Seine Bay between Le Havre and Cherbourg. Each of these was protected by a defensive perimeter ringed with minefields and a network of barbed wire, with machine-gun, mortar and anti-aircraft gun positions, connected by trenches.  Originally placed in open concrete pits, the guns proved vulnerable to Allied aerial bombardments, which had considerably increased in frequency since 1943. In order to protect them, Rommel ordered them to be placed in thick concrete casemates. This operation was far from complete by the spring of 1944, and as a precaution, some guns were discreetly removed from their emplacements and hidden inland.  On D-Day, the German coastal batteries offered only feeble resistance to the Allied ships, which overcame them without too much difficulty. Close Beach Defences The Widerstandnesten (“nests of resistance”) located within the immediate vicinity of the shore, on cliffs, dunes or sea walls, were lighter structures than the coastal batteries. They were intended to provide close defence of the beaches against assault troops.  They generally comprised one or two casemates housing medium-calibre guns (50, 75 or 88mm), positioned so as to rake the shore, Tobruks (concrete pits embedded in the ground and fitted with a circular lid where an infantryman could be posted) and mortar, machine-gun and anti-aircraft-gun positions, all connected by a network of trenches.  By the spring of 1944, there were no fewer than 200 Widerstandnesten along the coasts of the Seine Bay. There were, for example around fifteen along the six-kilometre stretch of beach between Vierville and Colleville (future Omaha Beach sector).  These close defences caused far more losses among Allied troops on June 6th 1944 than the coastal batteries. Beach and inland defences In December 1943, Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel was ordered by Hitler to inspect the Atlantic Wall. In January 1944, he was placed in command of Army Group B, responsible for defending the northeastern coasts of Europe, from the Loire to the Netherlands, i.e. the sector most directly under threat from an Allied invasion. In Rommel’s opinion, the decisive battle would take place on the beaches, so with his customary zeal, he made every effort to plug the gaps he had identified in the Atlantic Wall and gave a fresh impetus to its construction. He ordered the artillery batteries to be protected by casemates, increased the number of close coastal defences and spiked the beaches with obstacles designed to stop any advancing assault barges and blow them up. The dunes were crammed with mines, while defences were also established inland, to counter any attack from the rear by airborne troops.  Minefields A fervent believer in the massive use of mines as part of his defensive system, Rommel had the shores along the Channel and the North Sea crammed with them. By June 1944, between five and six million of them had been buried in the dunes, as well as inland, out of a planned twenty million.  The most common variety, the Teller mine, weighed 9 kilos and contained 5 kilos of TNT. It was triggered when a pressure of approximately 150 kilos was exerted on the detonator, which was located in the centre of the lid. The resulting explosion could destroy a wheeled vehicle or smash the tracks of a tank and immobilize it.  Teller mines, like the one we can see here, fixed to the top of a stake, were also used on beach obstacles, to destroy incoming Allied landing barges. After the war, it took years of work, carried out in particularly hazardous conditions by french volunteers and German prisoners of war, to rid the coast of these deadly weapons. Beach obstacles Field-Marshal Rommel’s strategy consisted in blocking the Allied landing forces on the beaches. In order to achieve this, he decided to cram the coast with vast numbers of obstacles designed to hamper the approach of the assault barges. His fertile imagination dreamed up a whole assortment of devilish traps against which the barges would crash, become impaled, be torn apart or explode, including “Czech hedgehogs”, “nutcrackers”, “Belgian gates” and "tetrahedra”.  The beach exits were also blocked by trenches and antitank walls or “dragon’s teeth”. These obstacles proved more or less effective in the different sectors. As they had been positioned by the Germans to stave off an attack at high tide, the Allies chose to attack at half tide, and this enabled them to escape some of the dangers. However, on certain beaches, such as Omaha and Juno, they were unable to avoid them and consequently sustained heavy losses.  Defence against airborne troops Imagining - not without reason - that the Allied landings would be accompanied by the dropping of airborne troops, Rommel took a series of measures to try and counter this possibility. In order to prevent gliders from landing, he had large stakes planted in the fields - the famous Rommel’s asparagus.These stakes were sometimes linked together by strands of barbed wire nailed to their tops.  In the early months of 1944, large numbers of villagers were requisitioned to help the German troops fell trees, strip them of their branches and plant the famous “Rommel’s Asparagus” – jobs they often performed as slowly as possible, never hesitating to sabotage their work by planting the posts too shallowly in the ground.  He also gave orders for several low-lying inland areas to be flooded, such as the Aure valley and above all the Dives marshes, east of the Orne, and the Douve and Merderet marshes in the Cotentin Peninsula. In the night of June 5th-6th, a number of British and American parachutists did indeed drown in these traps, tangled up in their harnesses and weighed down by their equipment. The German army in Normandy In November 1943, as the prospect of an Allied landing became increasingly likely, Hitler decided to strengthen the German forces stationed in the West. Accordingly, the number of divisions in France, Belgium and the Netherlands was increased from around thirty in 1942 to nearly sixty by the spring of 1944. Most of them were massed behind the coastline extending from Brittany to the Pas-de-Calais and were placed under the orders of Field-Marshal Rommel, who commanded Army Group B.  The 21st Panzer Division was the only armoured unit to be stationed near the coast. Unlike most of the general officers, Rommel certainly did not exclude the possibility of an assault on the coast of Lower Normandy, where he stationed the 91st, 243rd, 352nd, 709th, 711th and 716th infantry divisions, together with the 6th Parachute Regiment, the 30th Mobile Brigade and the Buniatchenko Russian Brigade. More or less confident about the worth of these troops, and realizing that he was almost totally lacking in aviation, Rommel wanted to be sure that he could rapidly call on armoured divisions to repulse the invasion, as he was convinced that the ultimate outcome of the battle would be decided in the first few hours.   The Atlantic Wall was a system of fortifications built by Nazi Germany which extended along the Atlantic coast of Western Europe, from Norway to the Spanish border. Not a wall in the true sense of the word, the Atlantic Wall was rather a series of German batteries built at strategic locations which were intended to thwart any potential amphibious invasions by destroying them while still at sea and to allow Germany to defend the coast of Europe with as few men as possible. The German fortifications at Longues-sur-Mer are a classic example of the pattern that was used for the Atlantic Wall. Longues-sur-Mer In general, the batteries which made up the Atlantic Wall followed a particular pattern. Along the shoreline a large command post or control bunker was built for the purposes of observation along the beach. At Longues-sur-Mer, the control bunker had two levels -- an upper observation deck and a lower level which housed the map room, radio room, officers' room, and range-finder room. The range finder was used to calculate the distances from the guns to the enemy targets and messages from the officers in the control bunker were relayed to the soldiers in the casemates by field telephone.  Four casemates were built inland, behind the control bunker; in the case of Longues-sur-Mer, the casemates were placed 300 meters behind the control bunker. Each casemate was 15m long, 10m wide, and 6m high; the walls were 6'6" thick and incorporated 600 cubic meters of concrete and four tons of steel reinforcement. Each casement also housed a large gun. The types and sizes of these guns varied from location to location, but at Longues, the guns were 152-mm German naval guns with a barrel 8m long, a firing range of approximately 13 miles, a firing rate of six 45kg. shells per minute, and a weight of 20 tons each.  The Atlantic Wall was considered to be nearly impenetrable by Hitler, since his fortifications were located on the tops of cliffs in practically impregnable locations. However, many factors contributed to their inability to successfully defend the European coastline. The Wall was never actually completed and construction at some of the bunkers was rather hasty. Often the personnel assigned to the the bunkers was second-rate, as Germany was fighting in the east as well as the west. It was not unusual to find gunners who were over the age of 40.  The battery at Longues-sur-Mer was defeated in June 1944 through a combined effort of both the British and the french. It has been preserved to this day as a Memorial of the war and the men who fought. The craters from the shelling, which at the time of the attack were 7m deep and 20m across, have never been filled and also serve as a testament to the violence and the magnitude of the conflict.  The batteries at Ouistreham, known as "Le Grand Bunker," and at Merville, are also examples of Atlantic Wall Fortifications which can found in Normandy today, though they are a little off of the typical tourist path.  Le Grande Bunker  Merville      |
| Atlantic Wall Conclusion All in all the landings and the airborne drops that preceded them were successful, if unexpectedly challenging in some places and easier in others. The overall result was that the Allies had breached Hitler’s ‘Atlantic Wall’ and won themselves a foothold on Europe. Rommel’s fears of an Allied thrust through too-thin coastal defenses seemed to have come true. With some defenders along the coasts already overrun on D-Day, and others holding on until their ammunition ran out, the first line of defense - the beach - was compromised. While Rommel rushed back from his abbreviated leave in Germany, his divisions were throwing their reserves up to the line at “crisis points (where an Allied breakthrough seemed imminent). But the marching columns were attacked again and again by whole swarms of fighter-bombers. Soon all the reserves had been committed, the front began to crumble at many points and by the afternoon it was clear that the Allied landing had succeeded. According to German Lieutenant General Fritz Bayerlein, commander of the Panzer Lehr Division stationed some 100 miles south-southeast of Sword Beach, “On the evening of 6th June, therefore, the situation did not look very encouraging.” The I Panzer Corps, which included the 12 SS Panzer and Panzer Lehr Divisions, was finally released late in the day on 6 June.(44) Once his division and other armored units, also previously held inland, were redeployed they were met by devastating air attacks, which scattered their formations and slowed their advance toward the coast. Indeed, the layered combination of obstacles in the water, on the beaches and inland presented the Allied with many challenges, and cost the invaders dearly in lives, equipment, and time. However, static defenses, regardless of strength, seemed at this point in time to be dated – remnants of the Great War. The Germans had made this painfully clear to the French when they used maneuver to marginalize the value of the Maginot Line in 1940. Without mobile units and reserves to fill the gaps that would eventually develop in these static lines, such defenses were useless, and served only to stave off inevitable defeat. Rommel seemed to know this, and strove for a cooperative defense, built not only of concrete and barbed wire, mines and welded steel obstacles, but also panzers, mobilized infantry, artillery, rockets, and air forces. Severely limited by time, the Desert Fox was given neither the material nor manpower support he requested, and in retrospect, sorely needed. Contradicting his own order that the invasion would be fought off by forces under one, on-site commander; Hitler spread control out among several officers in the theater: Rommel, von Rundstedt, his stooge in Goering, and others, and kept some of the most essential units under his own control. Had Rommel been given the support and freedom he requested, the outcome may well have been different. His four belts of underwater obstacles were unfinished at the time of the invasion, and yet still cost the Allies lives and time. Hundreds of troops were killed when their gliders broke up while landing in fields planted with “Rommel asparagus.” German troops did in many places fight to the last man, or at least in the case of Cherbourg, destroy anything and everything of worth to the Allies before being captured or surrendering. Omaha was nearly lost due to a mistake in Allied intelligence; the Americans were totally unaware that an extra German division moved up to the coast just days before the invasion. While the cities of Caen and St. Lo were not both taken until mid-July, well behind the schedule the Allies had hoped for, and the port at Cherbourg was almost completely destroyed by the Germans before it was finally captured, the Allied invasion slowly achieved its objectives. The German line was slowly pushed back. Rommel, ever energetic and dedicated, tried to stem the enemy advance, pleading with Berlin to send more units into the region. Sitting idle in southern France were four panzer divisions, which were finally sent north in July and August, long after they were most needed. Rommel’s plans were sound and without a doubt slowed the Allied advance into Europe by weeks. Along with material and manpower shortages, the Germans lacked what Hans Speidel, Rommel’s Chief of Staff, called the “uncanny precision in the co-operation between Allied land forces and their air and naval support.” At the highest level, “Hitler, unable to compromise politically or in his propaganda, devoid of any sober clarity of thought, ordered his troops to hold their ground, and it was the soldier at the front who paid the price. All these factors combined to produce a great deficit between Marshal Rommel’s plans and the reality forced on him by time and material constraints and organizational ineptitude; these ensured the German loss of Normandy, and eventually the war. |
Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt was born December 12, 1875 in Aschersleben, Prussia. Rundstedt had never considered any vocation but that of a Prussian soldier even though he was said to have shown some early talent in drawing, music and especially acting. Gerd von Rundstedt began his active military service at age sixteen on March 22, 1892. The date was very significant because they gave him a permanent place on the ladder of advancement relative to all other career officers. After ten years of service, mostly as a battalion and regimental adjutant, Rundstedt passed the qualifying examination for the War Academy in Berlin. That year, he was promoted to senior lieutenant and married Louise von Goetz, the daughter of a retired major.
An officer in the army from 1893, Rundstedt rose during World War I to become chief of staff of an army corps. He remained in the army after the war and was active in Germany’s secret rearmament. He retired in 1938 as senior field commander, but returned to command an army group in the Polish campaign at the outbreak of World War II. Later, on the Western Front, he took part in the plan that defeated France in 1940. However, Rundstedt was partly to blame for the order to halt the German armor. This order allowed the British to escape from Dunkirk. Gerd von Rundstedt commanded the German southern wing during the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. When the Germans were forced to retreat, Rundstedt was dismissed. Returning to duty in July 1942, Rundstedt was named commander in chief in Western Europe and fortified France against an expected Allied invasion.
In September he launched the Battle of the Bulge, which further delayed Allied Victory. In the face of imminent defeat, Rundstedt retired in March 1945. Captured by U.S. troops in May 1945, he was tried by the British for war crimes but released in May 1949 due to ill health. Gerd von Rundstedt died in Hannover, on February 24, 1953.
Theoretically, the German chain of command was a good example of order. Adolf Hitler served as the supreme commander of the Wehrmacht. Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel led the High Command (OKW), which ran the war everywhere except the Soviet Union. Navy Group West and the Third Air Fleet managed Germany’s naval and air forces in Western Europe, while a ground force of about 58 divisions came under the Oberbefehlshaber West (OB West), headed by Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. .
At the start of 1944, Nazi Germany’s fundamental problem was that she had conquered more land than she could defend. Hitler insisted on defending every inch of his newly conquered soil. To carry out these orders, the Wehrmacht relied in improvisations, such as the conscription of foreign troops, school-age German youths and old men. The Wehrmacht also changed its doctrinal strategy from a highly mobile Blitzkrieg equipped with light, fast tanks and hard-marching infantry, to an all-but-immobile one, featuring heavy, slow tanks and dug-in infantry.
The Nazi and Soviet powers had been partners between August 1939 and June 1941. In order to return to that situation, Hitler had to convince Stalin that the Wehrmacht was still a threat to the Red Army. In order to do this, Hitler had to strip his Western Front and hence, push back the forthcoming invasion to the sea. For this reason, Hitler declared “I can no longer justify the further weakening of the West in favor of other threaters of war. I have therefore decided to strengthen the defenses in the West…”
But Hitler’s problems were not his priorities, it was his shortages. There was a shortage of ships, planes, men, guns and tanks. Germany was far more over-extended than she had been in World War I. Hitler’s spiritual mentor, Frederick the Great, had warned Hitler, “he who defends everything, defends nothing.” “It was the human and material wastage of the war on the Eastern Front that forced Hitler to ignore Frederick’s warning and adopt a policy on the Western Front of fixed fortifications.”
In March 1942, Hitler laid the down the basic principle in Directive No. 40. Adolf Hitler ordered that the Atlantic coast defenses should be so organized, and the troops so deployed, that any invasion attempt be crushed before the landing or shortly thereafter.
In August of 1942, he ordered that fortress construction in France proceed with Fanatismus (fanatic energy). Hitler ordered a “continuous belt of interlocking emanating from bombproof concrete structures.” An American historian, Gordon Harrison commented “Hitler was not then, and never would be, convinced that defense could not be made invulnerable if enough concrete and resolution could be poured into it.”
In September, a three-hour conference was held with Goering, Reich Minister Albert Speer, Rundstedt, Gen. Guenther Blumenstedt (chief of staff), and others in order for Hitler to reiterate his orders. He wanted to prepare the strongest possible fortifications along the Atlantic Wall. “They must be built, he said, on the assumption that the Anglo-Americans would enjoy air and naval supremacy. Only concrete could stand up to the crushing weight of bombs and shells.” Hitler wanted 15,000 concrete strong points to be occupied by 300,000 men. Since no portion of the wall was safe, the whole would have to walled up. Hitler wanted the fortifications to be complete by May 1, 1943.
The end of 1943 accomplished almost none of it, but the policy had been set and the commitment made. Rundstedt disagreed strongly with Hitler’s idea of fixed fortifications. He argued that the Germans should hold their armored units far from the coast –out of range from Allied naval gunfire, and capable of mounting a genuine counteroffensive. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt said of the Atlantic Wall:
“The strength of the defenses was absurdly overrated. The “Atlantic Wall” was an illusion, conjured up by propaganda –to deceive the German people as well as the Allies. It used to make me angry to read the stories about its impregnable defenses. It was nonsense to describe it as a “wall.” Hitler himself never came to visit it, and see what it really was. For that matter, the only time he came to the Channel coast in the whole war was back in 1940, when he paid a visit on one occupation to Cap Griz Nez.
Still, shortages of men, armor and fuel made that questionable. Hitler planned to anticipate the landing, keep what armor was available for the West near there, and use it for counterattacks while the Atlantic Wall held off the invaders. Tanks were to seal off any penetration; tanks could drive the lightly armed first wave of invaders back into the sea, if the fortifications were indeed strong enough to hold back Allies and restrain them from establishing momentum. “The trick was to pick the place to make the fortifications that strong.”
The most logical place for the invasion to take place was the Pas-de-Calais for two reasons: the English Channel is the narrowest between Dover and Calais and the straight line from London to the Rhine-Ruhr and on to Berlin runs London-Dover-Calais-Belgium. Hence, the area around Calais became by far, the most fortified portion of the Kanalkueste (Channel coast). (
In 1944, it became the location with the greatest concentration of German armor in the West.
“It was there that the Atlantic Wall came closer to what German Propaganda claimed it was, an impregnable fortress.”
Hitler spent much time inspecting maps showing German installations along the Atlantic Wall. He demanded reports involving the building progress, thickness of the concrete used, kind of concrete used, system used to put in steel reinforcements, etc. But after ordering the construction of the greatest fortification in history, he never bothered to inspect any part of it. After he left Paris in triumph in 1940, Adolf Hitler did not return to French soil again until mid-June 1944.
Although Gerd von Rundstedt was nominally the commander in chief in the West, he had no direct control over the anti-aircraft units and parachute troops. Solely Goering and his Luftwaffe controlled these operations. The SS divisions stationed throughout occupied France reported to Reichfuhrer Himmler. This arrangement ruined von Rundstedt’s ability to maneuver fighting units effectively under the stress of invasion battles, when mobility was paramount. This resulted in a defense so badly fragmented that effective control was impossible. Von Rundstedt complained endlessly and bitterly to Hitler about this fragmentation of authority. This was useless, because Hitler had created the dilemma. “Fear of allowing any army commander to acquire sufficient power over the movement of troops that might be used against him compelled Hitler to defeat the enemy.”
Hitler dominated every detail of the preparations for the defense of the French coast. “The Atlantic Wall was a great monument to the military bungling and stupidity of Adolf Hitler.” At a time when such supplies where desperately needed elsewhere, the construction of the fortifications required 17.3 million cubic yards of concrete and 1.2 million metric tons of steel in only two years. The iron would have been put to better use by the armament factories.
Although von Rundstedt and Rommel respected each other, the two men could not agree on how to defend the inevitable invasion. Rommel felt that the only way to fend off the Allies was to fight the invasion on the beaches, and deny the Allies a foothold anywhere. Rundstedt opted for permitting the Allies to gain beachhead from which they could not escape easily. He proposed to mass the panzers behind the invasion front so they could launch a counterattack against the invaders once the Germans knew the disposition of all the enemy forces. The panzers would push the Allies back into the sea, as Rundstedt saw it. Gerd von Rundstedt sought to re-create the conditions in Dunkirk four ears prior, when the British army had faced total destruction. Because he controlled all troop movements and made all decisions, it was left to Hitler to decide between the defenses. As in his typical style, Hitler refused to fully support either plan. He gave each man a little of what he wanted.
The end result was that neither defense could function properly because the defenses were spread out too thin. “Hitler arbitrated and arranged a compromise, telling Rommel to defeat the landings on the beaches with the help of some armored forces held nearby and let von Rundstedt retain a diluted central reserve for the main punch if the enemy was not checked on the shoreline.”
Whichever man was right, Hitler made sure that neither had the sufficient number of troops and materials to effectively conduct the defense he proposed. Hitler’s inability to make a decision in favor of one defense or the other ensures the Allied victory.When the invasion began with assaults by parachute and glider forces, Rundstedt sprung immediately into action. One of his first orders was to mobilize two powerful panzer divisions that were held in reserve by Hitler though the OKW.
The two divisions were the Panzer Lehr Division, stationed southwest of Paris, and the 12th SS Hitlerjugend Panzer Division, stationed in western France. Gerd von Rundstedt ordered the divisions to move towards Caen, under the command of Rommel’s Army Group B. Rommel was not found in his headquarters at the time. Only minutes after having received a call confirming the invasion, von Rundstedt received another call. This one was from OKW, with reference to the mobilization of the two divisions advancing towards Caen.
The field marshal was harshly reprimanded for having assumed control of the panzer divisions without prior approval from Hitler. He was then informed that the two divisions had been ordered to halt their advance and to remain stationed until Hitler gave further instructions. Field Marshal von Rundstedt’s operations officer describes what happened in the next moments:
Throughout the morning and the early afternoon I, the Chief of Staff, General Blumentritt, and Rundstedt himself repeatedly telephoned the OKW, in order to find out what Hitler had decided in the matter of these two divisions. Apparently he was asleep, and no one dared wake him. It was not until his usual conference, between three and four o’clock that afternoon, that Hitler decided to allow the commitment of the divisions. They were immediately ordered to resume their advance.
But by then it was too late. During the morning, and until 1100 hours, a hazy fog had covered Normandy. This would have provided the divisions with some protection from air attack and have permitted rapid movement. Now the haze had dissipated, and the whole area through which the divisions must march was being intensively patrolled by the Allied air forces. No road movement by day was possible in view of this air umbrella, which reached from Normandy to the Paris area.
When the two panzer divisions resumed their advance, the immediately came under violent attack by Allied fighters and bombers, suffering both heavy casualties in mean and tanks before they were to reach the actual battle ground. The minister of armaments, Albert Speer gave a description of what he found at Hitler’s headquarters on the morning of the D-Day invasion:
One June 6, I was at the Berghof about ten o’clock in the morning when one of Hitler’s military adjutants told me that the invasion had begun early that morning. “Has the Fuehrer been awakened?” I asked. He shook his head. “No, he receives the news after he has eaten breakfast.”
“The twofold disappointment over the failure to throw the Allies back into the Sea and the inability to bring about a decisive turn in military fortunes through retaliatory measures produced an extraordinary fluctuation and instability in the state of public opinion.”
Overall, the situation was regarded as grave, as certain disillusionment set in. By late August, German forces in France were defeated and they had been forced back to the West Wall. In December of 1944, the German launched their final counterattack, the Battle of the Bulge. This attack failed. The Allied landing of troops from the Italy to southern France drove the German forces deep into Germany. Under attack form all sides, their major cities having been devastated by aerial bombardment and with Hitler’s suicide on April 30, Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945.
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