Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

  Your very sincere friend, George R.I.

  Definitely outmaneuvered, Churchill peevishly replied the next day:

  I must defer to Your Majesty's wishes, and indeed commands. It is a great comfort to me to know that they arise from Your Majesty's desire to continue me in your service. Though I regret that I cannot go, I am deeply grateful to Your Majesty for the motives which have guided Your Majesty in respect,

  Your Majesty's humble and devoted servant and subject,

  WINSTON S. CHURCHILL94

  The king did visit the Normandy bridgehead on June 16, ten days after D-Day, while Churchill landed in Normandy on June 12.95

  JUNE 1, P.M.—END OF THE WAR?

  That night Bradley and Patton had dinner at Montgomery's headquarters near Portsmouth with his two commanders, Crerar and Dempsey. The mood became congenial. Finally Montgomery predicted that “if it all goes as planned,” the war would be over by November 1.96

  JUNE 2–3—A LOFTY PERCH

  On June 2 Eisenhower went to his war camp code-named SHARPENER five miles northwest of Portsmouth Harbor. Nearby was Montgomery's headquarters. A mile down a cinder path from Eisenhower's camp stood Southwick House, Ramsay's headquarters. Southwick's lofty hilltop perch was a short distance from the naval might assembled in Portsmouth Harbor—a thousand-ship fleet waiting to be launched. The rest of the OVERLORD armada, a total of nearly seven thousand ships and craft of every type, filled Great Britain's ports on the English Channel and the North Sea and even extended to Wales and Glasgow and Belfast.97

  On June 2 Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay gathered a group of his captains. He proclaimed that it was going to be “the greatest amphibious operation of all time.”98

  JUNE 3—A “D-DAY SURPRISE”

  Eisenhower had already experienced enough last-minute pre-invasion jolts. Then on June 3 at 4:39 p.m. Eastern Time across the Atlantic came this news flash: “Eisenhower's HQ Announces Allied Landing in France!”99

  This message was immediately sent by the CBS, NBC, and ABC networks to over five hundred radio stations. It then spread to stations in Moscow, Cuba, and Chile. In New York at the Polo Grounds, the Giants vs. Pirates baseball game was interrupted for a minute of prayer. At the Belmont Racecourse officials prepared to cancel the remaining races that day.

  Five minutes after this “D-Day” announcement, the Associated Press (AP) issued an urgent retraction. Had the false broadcast been a FORTITUDE deception or a secret Nazi plot to unhinge the invasion? It was discovered that it happened because of a twenty-three-year-old teletype operator's slipup at the AP's London Fleet Street office. While making a practice run of the D-Day release sent by SHAEF, she accidently left her machine switched to the “on” position for a transatlantic linkup and then hit the teletype keys too hard. By the time Eisenhower heard about this false invasion announcement, he was too worn out by other invasion gaffes to respond. What the Germans thought of the announcement remains unknown.100

  JUNE 3–5—THE WEATHER GODS’ DICE ROLL

  When planning any amphibious assault, weather is all important. Eisenhower had personally fixed a June 5 D-Day back in mid-May after a careful consideration of the tides and moon. A successful landing on the Normandy beaches had to satisfy five complex and demanding tidal- and weather-related conditions:

  The landing craft needed to reach the shore at low tide so that the destructive German underwater beach obstacles would be exposed.

  The bombers and naval ships that were to rake the beaches with gunfire needed an hour of daylight before the low tide in order to launch attacks on the German defensive positions.

  A second low tide was necessary before darkness fell to land the Allied second wave of troops.

  The airborne troops needed a late-rising full moon to guide their early-morning night drops that were to precede the beach landings.

  It was essential for the landing craft to have a reasonably smooth sea and good visibility.

  The tidal and moon-phase requirements were met between June 4 and June 7, but the weather would be the crucial factor in determining the final date. Very few people knew the secret of the date and place. They had a special security classification higher than top secret; the code name chosen was BIGOT. A chosen few were BIGOTed on the ultimate secret of D-Day.101

  But all now hinged on the weather. After midnight on June 3, several of NEPTUNE's tightly scheduled elements were to be set in motion. At 9:30 p.m. Eisenhower and his principal commanders met at Southwick House to hear the latest weather report from Group Captain James M. Stagg, Royal Air Force, Ike's chief meteorologist. The day before, Stagg had told Eisenhower that the weather outlook for a June 5 invasion was “full of menace” and that the weather was probably going to get worse before it improved. Ike opted to wait until the next morning and hear one more weather report before he decided on a postponement.102

  The next morning, June 4, the SHAEF chiefs gathered again at 4:30 a.m. Stagg advised them that the weather would deteriorate over the course of that day. “Do you foresee any change?” inquired Eisenhower. “No” was Stagg's response.103 The other commanders were all against an invasion launch except Montgomery, who was usually overcautious. He was prepared to go in even without a guarantee of air cover. This shocked Air Chief Marshal Tedder who wrote that Monty “amazingly asserted his willingness on the part of the army to take the risk.”104 Later in his memoirs Montgomery admitted his mistake. “It was clear that if we had persisted with the original D-Day of the 5th June, we might have had a disaster.”105

  Eisenhower delayed the invasion for twenty-four hours. The earliest departing naval task force already at sea was able to hold up while the other invasion components remained in port.106

  While waiting for a break from the weather gods, the supreme commander knew that any postponement beyond June 6 would have immeasurable political and strategic outcomes. Ironically, his son John was to graduate from West Point on June 6. Eisenhower's wife, Mamie, would attend while he presided over the day that would largely make or break his future reputation as a great commander.107

  At 9:00 p.m. on June 4, the SHAEF commanders met again. But this time Stagg held out a ray of hope. The meteorologists had detected a lull between two storms. On the morning of Tuesday, June 6, the wind would fall, seas become calmer, and clouds dissipate. “Not great weather, but adequate.”108

  A cheer went up. In this tense and grave atmosphere, the commanders weighed the consequences. A further postponement meant a two-week delay for the right tidal and moon conditions. Though it still remained a big gamble, Eisenhower finally gave the order. “I don't like it, but there it is. Let's go.”109

  The next morning at 3:30 a.m. June 5, Stagg reconfirmed that “no substantial change has taken place.” It was 5:00 a.m. when Eisenhower made the June 6 decision irrevocable: “OK, we’ll go.”110 Eisenhower had made what many believe was the most significant decision of OVERLORD. Landing in bad weather on the Normandy coast caught the Germans off guard and contributed to the success of D-Day.111

  NEPTUNE UNLEASHED

  When Eisenhower gave the final okay, a vast air and sea armada thundered into life. The last successful cross-channel invasion by the Normans in 1066 (though going in the opposite direction) paled in comparison with this modern aggregation of personnel, weaponry, and equipment. From England's ports and air fields, an unparalleled invasion force moved toward France.

  Of the seven thousand Allied ships, 138 were major warships including six battleships (three US); two monitors; twenty-three cruisers (three US, two French, one Polish); eighty-one destroyers (thirty US, two Polish, one French, one Norwegian). Also in the NEPTUNE armada were 221 escort vessels, 287 minesweepers, 805 cargo vessels, 495 light coastal vessels, and over 4,000 landing ships and craft that fell into 46 distinct specialized categories.112

  The flotilla of battleships and cruisers was flanked by the destroyers. These warships passed through two huge troop transport convoys with sixty barrage balloons flying over them. Imm
ediately after was a convoy of landing craft carrying tanks formed in a row of four ships in width and extending five and a half miles in length. Seventy-nine percent of all the vessels were British. After almost four years at war, this was the greatest display of naval military might that the United Kingdom and its empire had mustered.

  From overhead came the unremitting roar produced by the Allied air force of 1,400 troop transports, 11,590 military aircraft of various types, and 3,700 fighters—almost 17,000 aircraft positioning to support the landings.113

  On June 6 Captain Frank Dillon of the US Army Air Force (USAAF) was sent on a reconnaissance mission in his P-51 fighter to determine the height of the waves on the Normandy beaches. By 5:30 a.m. he was flying back at three thousand feet over the English Channel.

  I saw the nose of the ships coming in to make the invasion…. I saw this armada…there were battleships, cruisers, destroyers and assault craft all lined up…. I looked, and I looked and there was no end. Big ships leading the way. Ships and ships and ships as far as I can see…. I can only say the view was awesome.114

  OVERLORD was poised to strike. What were the chances of success for the Allied invasion? To find out, we need to examine the state of the German preparations to repel OVERLORD.

  “It's really sad to see these children's faces in grey uniforms.”

  —Heinrich Boll, NCO, 348th Infantry Division

  BIRTH OF THE ATLANTIC WALL

  In June 1940 the surrender of France made Nazi Germany the virtual masters of Western Europe. From the perspective of Herman Goring and the other German officers standing on the cliffs at Calais with Dover in sight across the narrow English Channel, Hitler had won the war.

  Most Europeans and Americans agreed with one notable exception—Winston Churchill. Unwilling to negotiate an armistice during the summer and fall of 1940, the United Kingdom suffered through the Battle of Britain from the air, and the threat of a German amphibious invasion that in the end was indefinitely postponed by Hitler.

  The British began retaliating with pinprick air raids, small parties of naval raiders, and support for resistance movements across occupied Europe. Only at the end of 1941 did Hitler begin seriously devoting attention to building Atlantic coastal defenses.

  In March 1942, the Germans began planning how to defeat any Allied invasion of Western Europe. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt was appointed commander in chief in the West. He had been a staff officer in France during World War I. In 1939 Rundstedt commanded an army group for the invasion of Poland. He then led major forces in the attacks on France (1940) and Russia (1941). Dismissed for retreating in Russia, the führer gave him command of forces for the defense of the Netherlands, Belgium, and the occupied regions of northern France.

  Fig. 5.1. Gerd von Rundstedt. (Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy Stock Photo)

  On March 28, 1942, British Combined Operations Command under the command of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten launched on a highly successful large-scale raid against the Nazi naval base at St. Nazaire, France, on the Loire River. British ships and troops inflicted extensive damage on it. On August 19, a division-sized Allied raid on the port of Dieppe included heavy naval and air support. It was overwhelmingly defeated by the local German defenders. These and other raids convinced the German high command on the value of building extensive defensive works particularly around the major seaports that would be key logistic points for supporting a major Allied invasion.

  On September 29, 1942, Hitler convened a major conference to consider Germany's defense of Western Europe. It resulted in the order for the immediate construction of the Atlantic Wall, a barrier of concrete stretching from Norway to Spain defended by 300,000 troops. Hitler also envisioned the building of fifteen thousand permanent defensive positions, many of which he would design himself. These fortifications were to be built by the German agency for military works, Organization Todt. The heaviest construction was concentrated along the narrowest part of the English Channel, around Pas-de-Calais. For two years, 225,000 men worked around-the-clock using more than a million tons of steel and over twenty million cubic yards of concrete. Hitler ordered that this West Wall be finished by March 1, 1943.1

  On October 25, 1943, Rundstedt issued a comprehensive report on the state of the West Wall defenses from his headquarters in the West at St. Germain, just outside Paris. He pulled no punches. The fortifications were half-completed and lacked defensive depth. The Germans in Western Europe lacked an effective mobile reserve to launch counterattacks. The forces looked strong around the major ports, but were weak to nonexistent elsewhere.

  Hitler studied this report carefully and on November 3, 1943, ordered a massive shake-up of the defensive programs. More troops, labor battalions, and weapons were to be deployed to defeat the menace of an Anglo-American invasion. In addition, Hitler ordered Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to take command of the most threatened coastal areas in France and provide the spark to complete the building of the West Wall.

  Erwin Rommel was an officer in World War I. He taught tactics at the Infantry School in Dresden where he wrote a notable book on infantry tactics. Rommel was the commander of the Führer Headquarters for the invasion of Poland. In 1940 he commanded the Seventh Panzer Division on its dash to the English Channel during the invasion of France. From 1941 to 1942 he led the Afrika Korps. His first success in North Africa was seizing Tobruk, which led to his promotion to field marshal. Rommel then launched a further offensive to take the strategic Suez Canal but was first checked and later decisively beaten at El Alamein by General Montgomery. After the Allied TORCH invasion, the Afrika Korps was increasingly plagued by supply shortages, and in March 1943 while Rommel was on sick leave in Germany, he ineffectively sought to gain priority status for supplying his forces. The Afrika Korps was then turned over to the command of General Arnim, was trapped between the Allied armies in Tunisia, and forced to surrender in May 1943.2

  Fig. 5.2. Erwin Rommel. (Pictorial Press Ltd./Alamy Stock Photo)

  COMMAND STRUCTURE FROM HELL

  Hitler, Rundstedt, and Rommel all believed that victory in the West depended on throwing an Allied invasion back into the sea at all costs. But there was strong disagreement on the strategy for achieving it.

  If the Allied OVERLORD command structure showed deficiencies during the Normandy campaign, the German chain of command in Western Europe (see chart 2) was a recipe for disaster. On December 30, Hitler accepted Rundstedt's proposal that integrated Rommel and his Army Group B into the German command. Rommel, though nominally subordinate to Rundstedt, became responsible for Holland, Belgium, and northern France south to the Loire River. He was given the command of the troops in the Netherlands, the Fifteenth Army defending Pas-de-Calais, and the Seventh Army defending Normandy and Brittany. But Hitler also appointed Rommel as inspector general of defense in the West, reporting directly to him. This reduced Rundstedt's overall authority.

  Though not a big fan of the Desert Fox, Rundstedt was pleased to get reinforcements from Hitler, so he played along and offered the junior field marshal his full cooperation. Rommel respected the Prussian Rundstedt and tried not to overstep his authority. They both had to contend with a command system that Hitler had fouled up beyond belief. Within weeks of his appointment senior German officers began asking, “Who really is in command?”

  After 1941 Hitler had dropped his role as the nominal commander in chief of the German armed forces and became its actual supreme commander. He determined the overall strategy on every front. The führer daily supervised the execution of plans and sometimes even tactical operations. These orders were handed down through the armed forces high command (OKW) under General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of staff, and Colonel General Alfred Jodl, chief of operations.

  Rundstedt had no control over the Luftwaffe or the navy in the OB West area. He could ask Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle, commander of the Third Air Fleet, for his cooperation, but Sperrle took his orders only from Hermann Goering, the commander in chief of the Luftwaffe.
They might ignore Rundstedt's requests. The same was true for the German Naval Group West. Both the air force and navy acted as independent, not integrated commands. Even the military governors of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands who followed OB West in tactical matters followed OKW dictates on administrative matters and internal affairs. The SS forces took orders from Reichfuehrer Heinrich Himmler, and the Todt construction organization worked directly for Albert Speer.

  The principle of divide and rule worked well for Hitler in the political sphere, but this extreme fragmentation of command proved disastrous for German military effectiveness. For example, on the tactical level the naval coastal guns remained under naval command until the moment the Allies landed, but then command of the coastal batteries reverted to the army. The German command structure became a formula for defeat even before the Allied Normandy armada sailed.3

  “WHO IS ON FIRST?”

  It comes as no surprise that the German high command was equally divided on the strategy for meeting and defeating an Allied invasion.

  Rundstedt envisioned a classic counterattack once the exact location of the invasion was clarified. He wanted a strong, mobile panzer reserve centrally placed to launch a rapid, vigorous assault that would drive the invaders back into the sea before their bridgehead could be reinforced. Rundstedt's strategic vision rested on defense in depth, a swift panzer counterattack, and the utter collapse of the Allied invasion.4

  Rommel previously had firsthand experience in North Africa with the devastating effectiveness of Allied air and naval campaigns. He saw little possibility of rapidly moving panzer reserves to meet the landing forces without sustaining significant casualties. “British and American superiority in the air alone has again and again been so effective that all movement of major formations has been rendered completely impossible,” Rommel wrote.5