by J. Lee Ready
This same day, in the sector of Weidinger’s battlegroup, Obersturmbannfuehrer Otto Diekmann might have been thinking about his upcoming court martial for the Oradour massacre as he stepped out of his dug out. But instantly an Allied shell exploded next to him and shrapnel tore away a piece of his head. He was buried with honors. No doubt many were relieved that the Oradour incident could now be laid to rest.
The SS counteroffensive had restored the German line from Carpiquet Airfield through Verson, Eterville, Point 112, Tourmauville, Les Vilains, Gavrus, Le Valtru and Grainville to Tessel-Bretteville. Naturally Meyer, Wuensche, Mohnke, Weidinger, von Treuenfeld, Bremer and Dietrich patted themselves on the back. Surely the entire I and II SS Panzer Corps breathed a sigh of relief. Intelligence provided further good news within a few days: the British had dismissed many of their senior officers. The overall Allied ground commander in Normandy, British Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, consistently claimed that all was going according to plan. If true, why did he sack so many of his subordinates?
The performance of the SS HJ in June 1944 was outstanding, because at times these boys were under assault by five British divisions and four brigades on their western flank, and it is all the more surprising when it is remembered that Meyer fought them with one hand tied behind his back as he had to keep half his panzergrenadiers on his northern flank facing the British 7th Armored and 3rd Infantry Divisions and Canadian 2nd Armored Brigade and 3rd Infantry Division. Even taking into consideration the fact that the SS HJ had been reinforced by elements of four other divisions, its defense against odds of more than ten to one is remarkable.
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Chapter Thirty-five
JULY 1944
By 1 July 1944 Bittrich and Dietrich as the commanders of the two SS corps had to report to Hausser, who was still running Seventh Army, who in turn reported to General von Schweppenburg, then he to Rommel, who reported to von Runstedt. Despite having won a significant victory in Normandy in June 1944, Hitler was displeased, for he did not perceive a victory here, but rather a betrayal for his generals had not shoveled the Allies back into the sea as ordered. So, in one swift move on 2 July Hitler replaced von Runstedt and von Schweppenburg. Hitler had already hounded General Dollman to suicide. Now Rommel feared he was next. Rommel had made some private statements that would not endear him to the Fuehrer, but fortunately for Rommel he no longer had Alfred Berndt, Himmler’s spy, as an aide.
And now Hitler reduced Dietrich’s command to just the 12th SS HJ and 1st SS LAH Panzer Divisions. However, Dietrich’s responsibilities remained the same. He would henceforth report to General von Eberbach, who would oversee three corps: Dietrich’s I SS Panzer, the army’s XLVII Panzer [made up of the Panzer Lehr and 2nd Panzer Divisions] and the army’s LXXXVI that contained the 21st Panzer Division and some beat up infantry units.
As expected, Eberbach was ordered by the Fuehrer to counterattack at once.
Dietrich’s positions protected the northern and western approaches to Caen, beginning just south of Cambes and running westwards to the Carpiquet Airfield thence south to the Odon River and southwestwards along that stream. Meyer had half his infantry under the command of Obersturmbannfuehrer Karl-Heinz Milius facing the north, and the other half under Mohnke defending the airfield. Meyer’s tanks were fed piecemeal to various parts of the line and his divisional artillery was centrally located to support either flank. To strengthen Mohnke Meyer had given him a battery of the divisional flak unit, a Nebelwerfer regiment [borrowed from the army] and the 88mm flak unit that the Luftwaffe had originally put here to defend the airfield from air attack. Meyer had simply commandeered the latter two units using his superior rank.
South of Meyer the front was the responsibility of the SS LAH, but that division was still only represented by Frey’s battlegroup. From Eterville onwards Bittrich’s II SS Panzer Corps held the line with the SS Frundsberg on his right and the SS Hohenstaufen on his left. Standartenfuehrer Friedrich Bock sighted in Bittrich’s artillery. Bittrich still reported to Hausser not to Eberbach.
At 0500 hours on 4 July 1944 the Allies launched a major offensive, beginning with an assault on the defenders of Carpiquet airfield. The panzergrenadiers of Bernhard Krause were hammered into the ground by the fire of over 500 British and Canadian artillery pieces plus heavy shells fired from warships out to sea. Come dawn British and Canadian fighters swooped low to pick off individual vehicles.
Dietrich’s artillery replied with over 200 artillery and flak guns plus the Nebelwerfers, and he felt that surely he was inflicting serious harm on the Allies.
Then the Allied infantry and tanks began to advance: the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Armored Brigade with elements of the British 79th Armored Division. By 0630 hours inside the rubble that had once been Carpiquet village fewer than a hundred panzergrenadiers were left to battle against an onslaught by an entire Canadian battalion reinforced with tanks.
On the southern perimeter of the airfield Krause had three companies of panzergrenadiers and some Mark IV and Panther tanks backed up by six 88s, and they too were attacked by a Canadian battalion supported by tanks, but the Nebelwerfers had already taken their toll on the Canadians and it was not long before Krause’s men stopped the entire assault.
By early afternoon the positions had not changed, though Krause’s three companies on the southern perimeter now also had to contend with British tanks equipped with flamethrowers. The sheer sight of these monsters spitting flame like mythical dragons was often enough to send German infantry scampering, but not this day.
Only at 1400 hours did the surviving defenders of Carpiquet village pull out, and when the Canadians finally advanced through this pile of rubble into an open field they were met head on by tanks and 88s. The Canadians prudently withdrew back into the rubble.
By mid-afternoon the Canadians were withdrawing from the airfield. A brief riposte by Canadian infantry was very brief.
That night Krause’s men were relieved by some of Frey’s SS LAH soldiers commanded by Obersturmbannfuehrer Wilhelm Weidenhaupt.
In the early hours of 5 July Weidenhaupt attacked towards Carpiquet village. Unfortunately his artillery support caused some ‘friendly fire’ casualties, but nonetheless his men kept going in the dark, overrunning a company of Canadians and entering the village. There they dug in amid the rubble.
The fanaticism of the Waffen SS was bringing the Allied commanders to their wits end. Again Montgomery fired some British and Canadian officers. Montgomery wanted to fire General Keller, commander of the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division, but that fellow had friends in high places in Canada and was protected from Monty’s wrath for the time being.
The Germans suspected there was Allied frustration with the SS when the next Allied assault came, because Montgomery now intended to attack Meyer and Frey with four infantry divisions and two armored brigades reinforced by elements of three other divisions and supported by American, Canadian and British artillery, naval gunfire and a massive raid by British heavy bombers followed by waves of fighters. To use a sledgehammer to crack a nut was a compliment indeed, but one that the ordinary SS soldier could do without, no doubt.
At 2000 hours on 7 July in fading dusk the entire Caen area was struck by a massive continuous barrage of Allied artillery and naval gunfire. Unbelievably Caen still retained a large portion of its population, and they suffered far worse than did the trained soldiery. After almost two hours the guns let up, but the soldiers and civilians then heard the rumble of 467 Allied heavy bombers in the night sky. German searchlights were turned on and flak guns opened up immediately. The soldiers prayed that the bombers were headed somewhere else, but no: the bombs screamed down upon them. The explosions were demoralizing as well as fatal. Unknown to those on the ground there were many delayed action bombs among them, thus even after the aircraft had left the scene explosions continued throughout the night. Furthermore, fighter planes arrived to strafe and bomb, using the light of countless blaz
ing fires.
The British had alerted the anti-Nazi French resistance in Caen, which warned thousands of civilians to take cover in solid buildings including the hospital and cathedral, neither of which was hit. However, the civilian death toll was still high.
Undoubtedly many of the Allied troops watching from the distance assumed that there would be no Germans left alive in the Carpiquet-Caen area. But in fact Dietrich’s officers were reporting by radio to him during the night that evidently the artillery barrage and the bombing raid had inflicted fewer than fifty casualties on his corps. However, the SS medical teams were busy with hundreds of civilian wounded.
Of much more concern to Dietrich was the location of the Allied divisions. Where were they? Following the greatest air/artillery barrage ever suffered by a German corps in history, surely the Allies should be storming his forward positions in the dark, but the listening posts were reporting: “Alles ist in Ordnung.” [Everything is in order.]
But at 0420 hours the Germans were hit by another artillery barrage of massive proportions. At last, assumed Dietrich, the enemy was now coming.
Yet the Allies had another surprise for Dietrich. At dawn the artillery ceased fire and over 200 American bombers struck Dietrich’s lines of supply.
Surely now the Allied ground attack would begin, thought Dietrich and his staff, but from the front Milius was reporting only light uncoordinated attacks by British tank/infantry teams (3rd and 59th Infantry Divisions) and the other commanders were reporting no sign of enemy infantry.
Only after the sun was fully up did Frey and Mohnke come under pressure from the enemy (Canadian 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Armored Brigade), but even these attacks were not pressed hard.
Dietrich was not worried about his corps, but he was concerned about his right flank. The 16th Luftwaffe Field Division held that portion of the line, but this division with its high-sounding title was in reality just six battalions of lightly armed air force mechanics. Already they were falling back under pressure from the British 3rd Infantry Division and 33rd Tank Brigade.
Enemy pressure finally increased on Milius, and by mid-morning one of his battalions had fallen back to Epron, another was surrounded in Galmache, and a third was cut off in Buron by a Canadian advance.
Meyer acknowledged that his remaining defenders should fall back firing, and throughout the day they retreated from Carpiquet village, the airfield, Authie and Franqueville, with the Canadians hard on their heels.
But the greatest defeat was on Dietrich’s right flank, where the neighboring Luftwaffe infantry fell back, uncovering the northeast part of the city of Caen, letting in the British.
Around 1730 hours Dietrich ordered eight Panthers to counterattack, but seven were quickly destroyed. Other small-scale counter-attacks also failed. Dietrich knew that his men were being pressed with their backs to the Orne River, a dangerous tactical position, and that Meyer was perfectly correct in urging the withdrawal from Caen to the south bank. However, Dietrich had orders from the Fuehrer himself to hold Caen at all costs, a decision that needless to say made the SS officers furious. Meyer decided on his own initiative to interpret his orders loosely and he ordered a withdrawal to the south bank of the Orne. This south bank neighborhood was theoretically part of Caen. He was probably remembering the favorite phrase of Dietrich from the old days: “Bring my boys back.”
Frey also issued an order for his SS LAH troops to retreat beyond the river, but of these men Weidenhaupt was already wounded and his command was shattered.
As casualty reports started to come in, Dietrich’s staff mentally calculated about 600 SS casualties for the day. More importantly his entire corps was probably down to fewer than forty tanks: Panthers, Mark IVs and Tigers.
Fortunately for Meyer’s career, both General Eberbach and Generalfeldmarschal Rommel approved his withdrawal as a fait accomplit. So now Dietrich sent out orders: for the pioneers to be ready to blow the bridges, for his tanks to try to rescue the trapped SS units, and for Bremer to take his reconnaissance troops and hold back the British on the right flank. Bremer must have smiled, realizing that he and his few hundred men were supposed to accomplish what an entire Luftwaffe division had failed to do. To any other unit these may have seemed to be ‘desperate measures’, but to the Waffen SS veterans of the Russian Front they were ‘routine’.
Throughout the night the Germans retreated, some even walking past dozing Allied infantrymen. A few were trapped and fought on to the end.
Come dawn the Allies advanced, but they now found the roads blocked by rubble (of course, after such a pounding) and as their infantry was unwilling to advance without tank support, the British offensive slowed to the pace of the engineers who were clearing the roads. Their lack of aggressive spirit enabled the rest of Dietrich’s corps to cross the river and blow the bridges.
Dietrich and his men should have felt euphoric, but they were too exhausted. In two days they had inflicted over 3,000 casualties and had knocked out eighty tanks. It is true that on the late afternoon of 9 July the British entered the town center of Caen, but the British had originally planned to take the town on D-Day 6 June! And even now the Germans were still in the southern outskirts. In other words the British were thirty-two days behind schedule.
Ironically Dietrich was now reinforced - the remainder of the SS LAH finally reached the battlefield.
At 0600 hours on 10 July 1944 Frey’s panzergrenadiers of the SS LAH were attacked around Point 112 by elements of the British 43rd Infantry Division. At once Frey called for support. He received forty-one StuGs from his division and thirty Mark IVs and Panthers under Wuensche from the SS HJ. Meanwhile Frey’s panzergrenadiers fell back from their forward positions. This opened the way for more British infantry and tanks to attack the defenders on Frey’s flanks: namely half of Standartenfuehrer Rudolf Sandig’s panzergrenadier regiment of the SS LAH on his right and a battalion of panzergrenadiers from the SS Frundsberg on his left; with the result that they all fell back uncovering Eterville and Maltot.
Dietrich ordered a counterattack by a battalion of panzergrenadiers from the SS LAH accompanied by a few Tigers from the 102nd SS Heavy Panzer Detachment. They approached Maltot, knocking out at least nine British tanks, and recaptured the village by early afternoon.
Fortunately for the SS a British attempt to retake Maltot was shattered when British fighter planes strafed the advancing British. Come dusk both sides collapsed in utter exhaustion.
Yet Frey was not finished and he ordered his men to retake Eterville. The combat lasted all night, but by dawn he had regained Eterville, and the SS Frundsberg gained some ground too. However, later that day the SS Frundsberg failed to take all of Point 112, despite being accompanied by Tigers. When the casualty reports came in many were saddened to see that Hauptsturmfuehrer Karl Keck, the Swiss commander of a panzergrenadier company, had been killed. He was decorated posthumously.
Nonetheless by day’s end this new British offensive had come to a bloody halt. Once again the SS had proven as formidable in defense as they had in the offense of their Blitzkrieg campaigns of 1940. The reality was chilling for the Allies - battlegroups of three SS divisions had repelled a major offensive by the British 43rd Infantry Division and 4th Armored and 31st Tank Brigades and elements of the 11th Armored, 79th Armored and 15th Infantry Divisions, inflicting on the British about 2,000 infantry casualties and knocking out forty-three tanks in just two days, despite the British having a preponderance of artillery and complete control of the air! As for the SS: they had not even needed their reserves. Moreover the relief of the SS HJ, planned for 11 July, went ahead as agreed, though Meyer did leave behind his artillery and a battalion of panzergrenadiers to aid the SS LAH.
On 12 July came another Allied offensive. Frey’s panzergrenadiers were attacked in the Louvighny-Maltot-Eterville area, and this time the British were reinforced by a brigade of the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division. With the SS HJ’s artillery to call upon as well as his own, Brigadefuehre
r Teddi Wisch, commanding the SS LAH, sent devastating barrages on top of the advancing Allied infantry. Over the next two days the struggle continued, but neither side could advance, while the SS LAH prepared to pull out, being relieved by the army’s 272nd Infantry Division.
Finally all of Dietrich’s corps was withdrawn behind the lines, except for the SS HJ’s artillery and flak gunners who remained in action.
The SS HJ had lost about 3,300 of its teenagers in Normandy, perhaps a third of its combat echelon. Equipment losses were much higher.
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During July in Bosnia the 13th SS Handschar Mountain Division recuperated from its enormous losses the previous month, and soon was declared well enough to attack the Titoists near Tuzla. They quickly overran an airstrip where the partisans had been receiving Allied cargo planes.
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Meanwhile the Soviet offensive into Poland and Lithuania was steamrolling over thousands of German defenders. Kowel fell on July 6 and Vilnius on the 13th. The 3rd SS Totenkopf Panzer Division fought frantically in the Grodno area. In a desperate attempt to slow down the Red Army the Germans sent police into action. The 11th SS Police Regiment was hurt, the 26th SS Police Regiment was badly crippled and the 9th SS Police Regiment was totally destroyed.
The Lithuanian Siauliai militia was mobilized and thousands of them were placed into the new Fatherland Defense Force, a high sounding title to encourage Lithuanian morale.
As Byelorussia was all but overrun Himmler took advantage of the fact to create a new unit. Using the six battalion Byelorussian Security Corps of Standartenfuehrer Hans Siegling as the keystone, he established the SS Siegling Police Brigade, adding to it Byelorussian schumas and the local police [Ordnungsdienst] from the Byelorussian districts of Minsk, Glebocki-Lida, Slusk, Baranovitchi, Wileika, Slonim and Pripyet. One of the ordinary policemen was Anton Sawoniuk, who had willingly participated in the shooting of Jews at Domachevo. Siegling also brought some Russians into the unit. Though designated police, the brigade was in fact a formation of light infantry, horse cavalry and artillery.
