The Silent Heroes : A Memoir of Holland During WWII by Hans Moederzoon van Kuilenburg

Author:Hans Moederzoon van Kuilenburg [van Kuilenburg, Hans Moederzoon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.
Published: 2013-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

D-Day and Beyond

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt was The Reich’s most distinguished army officer. He and Hitler had never agreed on how to meet the threat of the oncoming Allied forces. Before the Normandy invasion, appealing for reinforcements, Rundstedt had bluntly informed the Führer’s headquarters that the Western Allies, superior in men, equipment and planes, could land anywhere they wanted. Hitler disagreed, and boasted that the almost three thousand mile fortifications along the European coastline, built in part by forced Dutch labor, would make the coast impregnable.

Second in command was the much younger Erwin Rommel, also a field marshal. There were very few things on which von Rundstedt and Rommel saw eye to eye. Rommel believed that Allied landing forces should be stopped at the beaches, while von Rundstedt believed the invaders should be wiped out after they had landed. Their one point of agreement was that the Führer’s over-confidence was appalling.

At one point, while writing this book, I realized it was June 6, 2006, which made it sixty-two years ago to the day that the troops had landed in Normandy, France, not on the Dutch coastline, as was expected for many years. It was a day of great reflection for me.

Through mid-1944, Britain was turned into one huge military base, with nearly three million members of the Allied forces gathered in southern England. Yet the utmost secrecy about the invasion was kept. The German military did not know where the strike would come, other than it would be in France. In fact, they had been fed the wrong information and were encouraged by the Allies to believe the landings would take place at Calais, the shortest distance across the English Channel.

The Germans were so sure the Allies would never risk an amphibious assault from the wide crossing to Normandy, that when the invasion began, they first thought it was a mere diversionary tactic. Another factor in the victory is that in the months before D-Day, Allied air forces dropped a staggering 200,000 tons of bombs on French targets, damaging Germany’s ability to reinforce the beaches.

On June 6, 1944, commencing at 6:30 a.m., 75,000 British and Canadian troops, and 57,000 US troops, landed on Normandy beaches from nearly seven thousand ships and landing craft. Despite Rommel’s brilliant improvisations, and despite suffering severe losses, Allied troops breached the so-called impregnable wall in less than eighteen hours. Impregnable? Humbug. We learned that nothing is virtually impregnable. Thank goodness it was not!

We wanted to hear the real news about D-Day, not the German version. Therefore, my father cut the wallpaper to expose the hollow above the door where our radio was hidden. We had to take a stepladder to listen to the BBC; my father listened first, then mom, or if she could not, as the oldest daughter, I would listen. Sometimes other family members, like my Grandfather Herman came to listen, and perhaps also to get a meal.

In the wake of D-Day, Hitler had no intention of conceding victory to the Allies, even though the Third Reich, which he had boasted would last a millennium, was tottering.

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