Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying (34 page)

World War II was long decided in June 1944, when the Allies deployed a huge armada to land their troops on the beaches of Normandy. Today we know that the only thing that could have scuttled the operation was bad weather. But in 1944, the situation was far less clear. The Allies may have no longer doubted their ability to win the war, but they were uncertain as to whether the leap to the continent would succeed.
Eisenhower even prepared a radio speech for the eventuality that the mission failed. And on the
German side, many people believed that the landing of troops represented a chance for Germany to achieve a stalemate or even win the conflict.
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The surveillance protocols confirm the impression that the majority of soldiers by no means thought the battle had been lost. On the contrary, for many of them, the
Allied invasion represented an opportunity for the Wehrmacht to alter the course of the war. A conversation between
Colonel Hauck and
Colonel Annacker—two commanders of the 362nd Infantry Division, who had been captured in Italy—is typical of the expectations soldiers typically had on the day after the Normandy landing:

A
Captain Gundlach, who had defended his bunker in the small coastal town of
Ouistreham to the very last, shared similar hopes:

In this statement, we can observe the convergence of
faith in final victory and faith in the Führer.

Yet no matter how much energy the Nazi leadership or
German soldiers themselves put into mobilizing their last reserves of confidence, the massive material advantage of Allied troops, and especially their aerial and artillery dominance, crushed any remaining hopes. Soldiers no longer talked about setbacks on the front or battles that had been lost; their entire world collapsed like a house of cards. The path was freed for the sort of fundamental criticism that had previously been lacking—a
Private First Class Hirst even opined, “I’ll do anything I can to end the war and see that Germany is completely defeated”
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—and not just among foot soldiers, but officers as well.

Typical in this regard was a conversation between Majors
Arnold Kuhle and
Sylvester von Saldern, both of whom had fought on the front lines as infantry commanders and had been taken prisoner in June 1944 on the Cotentin Peninsula:

Kuhle and Saldern both reached the sobering conclusion that Germany had no chance against an overpowering enemy. Hitler had not been able to keep his promises, and weapons of retaliation were tactically useless. The two men’s
faith in the Führer and their trust in the German
military leadership collapsed simultaneously. With that, Kuhle and Saldern see no way to continue nurturing hopes for a happy ending. The facts are the facts: the war is lost, and Germany’s collapse is only a question of a few weeks. Two days later Saldern opined: “Let’s hope a German general turns up, who says, as you do: ‘We have lost the war, so the sooner we make an end the better.’ ”
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Most of the POWs brought to England from the battlefields of Normandy drew such broad conclusions. A Major
Hasso Viebig was of the opinion that “a responsible German government would now try to bring the war to an end.” Major
Rudolf Becker responded: “Well, of course they know perfectly well that the war is lost, and that this is the end of National Socialism etc. The only question is: are they fighting for the fatherland or for their self preservation?”
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Becker recalled a speech made in April 1944 in which General
Heinz Guderian urged German troops to turn back the invasion as a means of giving the Führer a chance at concluding a halfway honorable peace. Becker therefore wondered why Guderian, who had seen things so clearly, had not taken action, allowing himself instead to be named army chief of staff.
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Normally officers feel less pressure the higher they rank, but many
generals who had experienced the
battles of attrition in Normandy thought the same way Kuhle or
Becker did. Even the supreme commander of Army Group B, Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel, was convinced by June 1944 that the war was lost and corresponding political consequences should follow.
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On the other hand, some soldiers still vacillated in their interpretation of the situation. Major
Heinz Quittnat, for example, ventured: “My personal opinion is that if we are going to lose the war, it is a crime to continue fighting a day longer. If we have a chance of winning the war, of course, we should continue. But I can’t decide that.”
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Quittnat’s words came shortly after he himself had experienced American troops taking Cherbourg. Previously, he had spent years on the Eastern Front. How could such a person, we are tempted to ask today, feel unable to decide whether or not the war could still be won? In this case, Quittnat was probably trying to shield himself from the logical consequences of what he knew. As though having been caught thinking illicit thoughts, he quickly qualified his statement: “As a good
German of course I hope that we shall win the war.” But doubts were equally quick to reemerge: “On the other hand if we win the war 100%, that would be pretty bad too, with our present regime. I would not remain a regular army officer then, at any rate.”
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An analysis of the standardized questionnaires handed out to all German POWs in the U.S. camp of
Fort Hunt yields an even more precise picture of the end of German hopes for winning the war. In June 1944, half of the 112 German POWs questioned believed Germany would emerge
victorious. By August, it was only 27 of 148, and by September, only 5 of 67.
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Admittedly, the sample size was too small to be representative. But the answers still reveal that the main change of heart came in August 1944, as the Allies broke through German lines in Normandy and surrounded German troops in
Falaise, taking most of them prisoner.

Those who dreamed of a German counteroffensive leading to a victorious comeback had shrunk to a tiny minority.
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A
Captain Barthel still declared on August 19, 1944: “It still won’t be fatal for us if F
RANCE
falls.”
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Such inveterate optimists were usually young officers and, quite often, navy men. Sailors were more likely to be optimistic since they experienced a different and, to a certain extent, “cleaner” war than their army counterparts. They did not have to endure weeks of shelling, witness tens of thousands of their comrades dying, or suffer
through months of privations in a fight for survival. As horrible as naval warfare may have been for many sailors, it could not be compared with the battles of attrition that took place on land.
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After Stalingrad, the successful Allied landing at Normandy, the battles of attrition in the hedgerow country of the
Bocage, and the Wehrmacht’s pell-mell retreat from France represented the second major psychological caesura in
German soldiers’
perception of the war. Never before had so many people been killed in one place in such a short time as in these twelve weeks of 1944. It was the quantitative equivalent of a second Battle of Stalingrad. Moreover, the symbolic import was undeniable. Germany’s victory over France in 1940 had made the Wehrmacht feel like the lords of Europe. Losing France sealed Germany’s total defeat in most soldiers’ eyes.

To a certain extent, the Wehrmacht recovered some of its morale in fall 1944 after fleeing in panic across the German border.
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There, they had at least been able to regroup and form a coherent front, and no longer were tens of thousands of soldiers being taken prisoner. But there was a major difference between a willingness to fight on and
faith in victory. Members of the German armed forces still functioned fairly well as soldiers, but the surveillance protocols make it clear that the stabilization of the front on Germany’s borders did little to improve German soldiers’ expectations for the future. The
Ardennes Offensive also raised only a flicker of hope—and solely among the soldiers who participated in it.
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By August 1944, a qualitative shift in evaluations of the war had taken place. One good example is the reflections of Colonel
Gerhard Wilck, fortress commander in the German city of
Aachen, after being taken prisoner in October 1944:

Wilck talked here of “the people,” but what he meant more specifically was himself, together with his men and the population of Aachen.
Wilck was the first commander ordered by
Hitler to defend a German city. But having been beaten down in a hopeless fight, Wilck no longer saw any way out.