The big mistakes that explain why Hitler’s troops could not stop the Normandy landings

But chaos broke out when the Nazi commander ordered the defenders to open fire. “It was the first time he shot live people. and with my machine gun I shot, I shot, I shot! For every American I saw fall, a thousand more arrived!” said Franz Rachmann, another machine gunner. Karl Wegner, a 19-year-old young man with only three weeks of basic training, began to eliminate enemies in the eastern sector: “My mind rationalized it; this was war. Still, it left a bitter taste in my mouth. But It was not the time to think about good or evilonly in survival.”

After two hours of fierce fighting, the German defenses were holding out, but ammunition was beginning to run low and the machine gun barrels were overheating. Corporal Hein Severloh claimed that during D-Day he fired 13,500 rounds with his MG 42 and more than 400 with two other rifles. An astonishing amount that earned him the title of “the beast of Omaha” and that, however, was not enough to contain the largest amphibious operation in history. A veteran sergeant had already predicted it a few days earlier: “We have enough ammunition to stop the first, the second, the third, the fourth and perhaps even the fifth wave of tommies. But later, They’ll kick the door down and all will be lost.”

These soldiers of the 352. Infantry-Divisionone of four Wehrmacht formations deployed in Normandy before D-Day, came close to forcing an American withdrawal that could have dramatically altered Operation Overlord. But far from what the legendary stories dictate, it was not a veteran division or full of the latest in heavy weapons: it lacked commanders and, although it had been formed from the remains of worn out units on the Russian frontthe common soldiers were generally recruits of 17 and 18 years old.

They were fulfilling their part of the quarterback’s risky plan Erwin Rommelwho was at his home in Germany celebrating his wife’s birthday, to thwart the Allied landing: garrison the defenses of the Atlantic Wall with a thin shell of infantry and resist attacks on the beaches and their surroundings. But the second part, counterattack with mobile reinforcements and throw the enemies back into the sea, was never achieved.

He exposes the keys to this failure brilliantly and with an overwhelming pace. Jonathan Triggrenowned author on World War II and former British Army officer, in D-Day. The Battle of Normandy seen by the Germans (Past & Present). A book that tries to answer the question of how the Wehrmacht lost France in the eyes of the Nazi soldiers, sailors and airmen, whose war experiences from the front lines shock with every page turn. A different and illuminating vision, as it already did with Stalingrad, of one of the decisive moments of the war.

Poor defenses, few troops

The investigator details in detail the commander’s failed counterattack maneuvers Dietrich Kraiss and the colonel Hermann von Oppeln-Bronikovski. The first, a tough and practical man, opted for the conservative option and sent the KG Meyeran armored assault group, to the northeast to shore up a flank that was unimportant and ended up overwhelmed by the British. The second, an Olympic medalist in command of the 21. Panzer-Divisionhad the best opportunity to advance and create a wedge between Juno and Sword —in fact, some of his grenadiers reached the sea line—but his regiment was annihilated around Caen.

Although the narrative of the Nazi defeat in France has been dominated by the overwhelming material superiority of the Allies, their air supremacy, and the disastrous interference in military decision-making by Hitler and his favorite generals, Trigg also emphasizes that the German middle ranks at regimental and divisional levels failed to do what they had supposedly been trained to do: “Thinking at a higher level and fulfill the intention of his superior commander.

The historian also demolishes the myth around the fearsome Atlantic Wallwhich was nothing more than propaganda, an “illusion”, as he himself confessed Gerd von Rundstedtsupreme commander of the Wehrmacht in the West: the reality of “Fortress Europe” showed hastily constructed earthen bunkers with wood-lined trenches, turrets from captured French tanks and already obsolete Czech machine guns.

As if that were not enough, the Nazi war weapon was made up of older troops, not suitable —to the 709. ID It was called “the paunchy army”— and with a surprising ethnic variety: Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Russians…A picture that clashed with Hitler’s irrefutable principle that only Germans would be allowed to carry weapons. Most moved by bicycle or horseon which they depended “in a way not very different from that of an army of the Middle Ages,” summarizes Trigg, who states: “The Normandy campaign and the battle of France would be in part a fight of the truck against the horse.”

Aspects that swell a revealing volume in many ways, but in which his desire for human experiences undoubtedly stands out. It is difficult to highlight just one, but this reflection by First Corporal Henrik Naube is chilling: “When I thought about the beach, the piles of corpses down there (…) I thought that the enemy would kill us regardless of the Geneva Convention or any of that.We would have shown them mercy “If the roles had been reversed, if we were the attackers?”