Invasion 1944 by Lt.-Gen. Hans Speidel

Author:Lt.-Gen. Hans Speidel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

1—The Period from June 9 to August 24

THE MILITARY EVENTS

DURING this six-week period the Germans made every effort to drive the Allies from their bridgeheads into the sea.

The Western Panzer Group, quartered in Paris, commanded by General Baron Geyr von Schweppenburg, was brought up on June 7, at the urgent request of Army Group B. But it was the evening of June 8 before this group was ready to take over the area east of the Orne to the Tilly sector. Troops located on the inner flanks of the Fifteenth and Seventh armies and the I SS Panzer Corps stationed in this area were put under the command of von Schweppenburg. His battle orders were to use all available armored forces to throw the enemy off the mainland. After the failure of the I SS Panzer Corps, General von Schweppenburg took time to prepare a careful counter-offensive for the night of June 10-11.

After these orders had been given at Panzer Group Headquarters, with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army Group present, the Panzer-Lehr Division reported an enemy breakthrough from the west. It was one of those exaggerated reports that inevitably occur in war, but it made countermeasures necessary. Shortly after this report was received, the headquarters staff of the Western Panzer Group was practically wiped out by saturation bombing. Probably signals from the newly installed headquarters shortwave equipment had been picked up and pinpointed by the Allies. The Panzer Group lost its Chief of Staff, General von Dawans, and the IA, its operations officer, as well as other officers. The communications system was put out of commission. Only the Commander-in-Chief, who was slightly wounded, and a few of his staff escaped. It was not until June 26 that he could resume his duties with a new staff, hampered by all the drawbacks of improvisation.

There was no determined counteroffensive on the days following June 11, since the Panzer forces, under steadily increasing pressure from the British armored divisions, were forced to take the defensive. Hitler and the High Command interfered daily with the field commanders and as usual wanted to deal with all the enemy’s operations simultaneously. An avalanche of nervous orders descended from Supreme Headquarters. We were ordered to thwart the enemy attack southwards past Caen, to prevent a push southwards from Bayeux, to hold Cherbourg at all costs, to frustrate the encirclement of the Cotentin peninsula and enemy operations against Brittany. Finally an order came through from the Führer that the bridgehead between the Orne and the Vire was to be “destroyed” section by section. This order even went into details as to the use of a mortar brigade east of the Orne. But all these instructions were to be carried out without the necessary ground reserves and without air or naval support.

While these events were taking place between the Orne and the Vire, where the weight of the Allied attack seemed to be in the Caen-Bayeux area, the Americans sought to strengthen and extend their bridgeheads in the south-east of the Cotentin peninsula.

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