Authors: Anthony G Williams
Herrman searched his memory for a moment before recalling that these comprised very young, very old or unfit soldiers and were essentially static, with no vehicles.
‘The Fifteenth Army which holds the Kanalkueste to the east is stronger as this is felt to be the most vulnerable area. Reinforcing these from the Eastern Front will not be easy. Our current front line is deep inside Russia and, although we have been improving and extending the railway system, it would still take a considerable period of time to move any significant armoured forces back to France.
However, our practice of delivering new armoured vehicles to northern France, and manning them with experienced divisions rotated out of line for rest and retraining, means that we have a core of highly capable and mobile units to buttress the armies.
The problem we have is in identifying the landing place or places and the best means of deploying our defences to counter them.
I will now hand over to General Rommel, who has been touring the north coast and checking the defences.’
Herrman began to pay more attention.
He liked Rommel, a tough, no-nonsense but fair-minded professional, and had urged Hitler to appoint him to this post.
His energetic, hands-on style of leadership was a useful complement to von Rundstedt’s cool, intellectual approach. Rommel had not, this time, had the opportunity to make his mark in North Africa, but instead he had distinguished himself in Greece, which still, so far, represented Germany’s only defeat of a British army.
Rommel swept his gaze around the room, over the impassive Hitler and the core of the general staff.
‘The fixed defences are in place, although we badly need some more radar sets to cover the Channel.
All feasible landing beaches are mined and protected by obstacles to destroy, or at least greatly hinder, landing barges. They are also covered by protected machine-gun posts.
Every mile of the coast is covered by artillery positions, either well camouflaged or heavily protected against counter-battery fire. However, this will not be enough to prevent an invasion. When the Allies come, they will come in great force, with massive air and naval support.
Despite their intensive counter-intelligence activities, we have received reports of special vehicles they have developed to deal with our defences.’
Herrman smiled inwardly.
He doubted that Rommel would be aware of the source of those reports.
‘They have the huge advantage of being able to choose the time and place of their attack.
We do not know if they will take the shortest route to Pas-de-Calais, or will land further west on the coast of
We know that the best time to defeat a landing is immediately, before a beachhead has been established, but we do not have enough forces to ensure that all of these possibilities are adequately covered.
We will need four things in place if we are to defeat them: fighter aircraft to prevent their bombers from disrupting our defences, bombers to attack their landing ships by day, U-boote and S-boote to attack them by night.
And, above all, strong Panzer forces to smash their initial landings before they can establish themselves.’
Von Rundstedt stirred and Rommel paused to look at his superior officer, knowing what was coming.
‘The question is how best to deploy the Panzers.
In my opinion they should be held back in reserve, ready to move forward in great force as soon as we can identify the actual landing place.
If we keep them forwards, close to the beaches, they must necessarily be spread thinly and it will be much more difficult to pull them into large formations at the landing place.’
Rommel nodded respectfully.
‘Normally, I would entirely agree.
Our problem is twofold.
First, it is better to deliver an instant response when the invaders are most vulnerable.
Even a small Panzer unit could wreak havoc on the initial stages of a landing, whereas calling up reserves would inevitably delay a response.
Secondly, our fighter strength is at a premium, given the necessity to counter the American bomber attacks on Germany, and might not be able to protect against the swarms of Allied fighter-bombers we can expect.
We understand that they have been intensively practising ground-attack techniques and this could cause us serious problems in moving our troops from their reserve areas. On balance, I think that deploying them in small units on the coast would provide our best opportunity to defeat the invasion.’
Herrman awaited Hitler’s response with interest.
He had of course provided a comprehensive briefing on what had actually happened on ‘his’ D-day: von Rundstedt had won Hitler’s support then and most of the Panzers had been held back, only to find that they were seriously delayed in setting off because Hitler had insisted that they could only move on his orders and no-one wished to wake him from sleep to obtain permission. Once they did move
,
their progress was severely hampered by fighter-bomber attacks, together with sabotage of roads and railways by the Resistance.
Hitler nodded thoughtfully.
‘It is a difficult decision.
The Panzers’ main strength is in concentrated attack.
I have decided on a compromise. Those Panzer units which are completing training and would normally be heading east soon will be distributed under local control.
However, the units which are re-equipping and training will be held back under von Rundstedt’s command.’
Herrman concealed a grimace.
The need for a clear chain of command, with all defences under one commander, was intellectually recognised by Hitler, but the man was constitutionally incapable of trusting any one man with an important task. Even the organisation of the OKW was confused; it was supposed to be the senior military body, with the OKH – the Army command – subordinated to it, but in practice Hitler treated them as equal. He just had to hope that von Rundstedt responded quickly when Rommel needed those units.
Still, although a bit messy, the solution was better than in his time.
Now it was a question of wait and see.
‘Now,’ Hitler declaimed, leaning forward, his eyes gleaming with the enthusiasm he showed when concocting his often unrealistic strategies, ‘I want further strengthening of the defences. Concentrate first on the harbours – the Allies will need to seize some quickly if they are to continue to supply their force. Then I agree to the focus on the beaches of the Kanalkueste, which I feel is the most likely target this time. I know that Pas-de-Calais would not be such an easy target for them, but our new V-weapons are being launched from there so they will want to neutralise it as soon as possible.’
The meeting went on long into the evening.
The cyclist pedalled slowly along the coast road, the traditional baguette in the front basket announcing his early-morning visit to the baker.
He was not as young as he had been and the slight upward slope caused him to pant for breath.
Near the top he paused to recover, taking out a handkerchief to mop his brow.
He glanced around unobtrusively before setting off again to coast gently down towards the stream.
The night had been disturbed by the rumbling roar of powerful engines and he was anxious to discover what this portended.
Over the stream was a small open copse.
Something bulky, hard-edged and metallic gleamed among the trees.
A soldier, assault rifle slung casually over a shoulder, suddenly stepped out into the road and demanded his papers in appalling French.
The cyclist was well-prepared; a local farmer, he had permission to live in the area.
The German checked the papers, passed them back and waved him on.
The cyclist pedalled steadily home, planning the message he would need to smuggle to his comrade who held the radio transmitter.
He had recognised the uniform insignia, and was sure that the Allies would be very interested to learn of the presence of a Waffen-SS Panzer unit on the
Geoffrey Taylor accepted another slice of cake and settled back in the armchair.
‘How is central London faring these days?’
‘Pretty well, Mary.
I think the Luftwaffe’s attention is elsewhere.
These new ‘buzz-bombs’ are the biggest nuisance, but our new Typhoon jets can easily catch and destroy them.’
‘All well at
Geoffrey had been seconded to liaise with ETOUSA, the European Theatre of Operations USA.
‘You can feel the excitement.
New faces all the time and a real buzz about the place. About a hundred and fifty thousand troops a month are arriving now; they’re packing them into high-speed liners to avoid the U-boats, twelve thousand at a time.
Half of southern England must be under canvas by now.’
‘Do you get to listen to any Londoners?’ Mary asked, ‘what are they saying now?’
‘Oh, there’s a lot of talk.
They all know there’s going to be an invasion, of course.
They’ve noticed that a lot of commuter train services have been stopped so they can be switched to military transportation.
Some people have relatives on the coast and are grumbling because they can’t get to them; the coastline has been virtually sealed off to civilians, in view of all the training exercises as well as troop build-ups. Basically, the people are just holding their collective breath, waiting for the day.’
‘No problems, with all those American troops about?’
Geoffrey grimaced.
‘Some. Unfortunately, all the money and fine presents they bring are dazzling some of the London ladies and their menfolk aren’t too happy about it. The sooner the invasion happens, the better for Anglo-American relations.
Still, it’s interesting to hear so much unfamiliar music around London. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman,
Artie
Shaw – it’s almost like being in the USA!’
Despite the years of preparation, Harold Johnson felt a frisson of excitement as he entered the Georgian building of Southwick House near Portsmouth, the base for Operation Neptune: the naval operation for crossing the Channel.
He hoped briefly that the Germans didn’t know about this one; it was one of the few places that Don had forgotten about, and by the time he remembered it had been used in this role before, the planners were well ensconced and unwilling to move.
It was now the HQ for the Supreme Allied Command and accordingly surrounded by massed batteries of AA guns as well as nearby night and day fighter squadrons on permanent alert.
He slipped into the back of the room being used for the briefing, his role as usual to listen and report back to Don, to check for anything which might sound alarm bells.
The audience was full of fairly senior officers of all branches and several nationalities.
Harold judged that they were staff officers belonging to various units, there to hear about the overall grand plan so they could begin to fill in the details of their own units’ part in the action.
The speaker, a young and brisk naval intelligence officer of surprisingly high rank, first ran through all of the material gathered
prewar
: the maps and photos used to prepare models and the huge D-day wall map behind him.
This information had been kept up-to-date by aerial reconnaissance and a steady trickle of information from the French Resistance movement, aided by Fighting French agents flown in at night, in hazardous operations.
More recently, coastal defences and beach conditions had been plotted by frogmen making secretive visits all round the coastline.
‘The Germans will be well aware we’re coming but, I sincerely hope, they still don’t know where, let alone when.’
No-one laughed: this was too serious.
‘There is a good case for heading straight for the Pas-de-Calais.
It’s by far the shortest crossing so it maximises the chance of achieving surprise and minimises the exposure of the ships to attack.
Unfortunately, it’s also probably the most heavily defended stretch of coastline in the world.
We have accordingly decided on
The landings will be distributed over a wide front, with sectors allocated to the British, Americans, Canadians and the Fighting French.
We have preferred dates, depending on the moon and the times of the tides, but will reserve final judgment until we can check the weather.
We have ships and aircraft out in the Atlantic doing nothing but providing us with weather reports. Ideally, we would like to capture a port as quickly as possible and use that to land most of the troops and supplies.
This would be particularly convenient in the case of Cherbourg, as American troops could land there directly from the USA.
Unfortunately, our intelligence appreciation has revealed that the major ports are so heavily defended that they will take a considerable time to subdue, and by that time they will probably have had all of their dock facilities destroyed anyway.
So we will have to rely on beach landings.
We did consider building special floating harbours which could be sunk in position, but again this idea was rejected as too cumbersome and inflexible.
Instead, we will be relying on direct beach landings, sinking blockships offshore to protect from the worst of the weather and constructing piers to speed offloading from those ships not designed for beaching.
We have calculated that we have a sufficient margin of shipping not just to deliver the initial assault, but also to keep the supplies coming.’
The officer paused to sip from a glass of water. ‘Of course, the Germans have been busy preparing a warm reception.
We know that they have installed mines and beach obstacles on a liberal scale anywhere they think we might land, as well as covering the beaches with strong points, backed up by both fixed and mobile artillery and, we now hear, some Panzer units distributed along the coast.
They have also flooded as many as possible of the low-lying drained areas, particularly the river valleys around Caen and the
This will not only make conventional landings very difficult in those areas, but also hazardous for our paratroops
who
would be at risk of drowning on landing.
Despite this, these flooded areas have a key part to play in our plan, as you will hear.’