When you receive these lines I shall be no more [he wrote to the Führer]…. I did everything within my power to be equal to the situation … Both Rommel and I, and probably all the other commanders here in the west with experience of battle against the Anglo-Americans, with their preponderance of material, foresaw the present developments. We were not listened to. Our appreciations were not dictated by pessimism, but from sober knowledge of the facts. I do not know whether Field Marshal Model, who has been proved in every sphere, will master the situation. From my heart I hope so. Should it not be so, however, and your new weapons … not succeed, then, my Führer, make up your mind to end the war. It is time to put an end to this frightfulness…. I have always admired your greatness … and your iron will … Show yourself now also great enough to put an end to this hopeless struggle….
Hitler had no intention of conceding victory to the Allies, even though the Third Reich that he had boasted would last a millennium was undermined and tottering. On every front he was attempting to stave off defeat. Yet each move the Führer made seemed more desperate than the last.
Model’s appointment as OB West had not helped. Unlike Von Rundstedt or, briefly, Von Kluge, Model did not have the combat genius of Rommel as support. After Rommel was badly wounded by a strafing Allied plane on July 17, no one had been sent to replace him.* Model did not at first appear to feel the need. Confident that he could right the situation, he took on Rommel’s old command as well, becoming not only OB West but also Commander of Army Group B. Despite Model’s expertise, the situation was too grave for any one commander.
At this time Army Group B was battling for survival along a line roughly between the Belgian coast and the Franco-Luxembourg border. From there, south to Switzerland, the remainder of Model’s command—Army Group G under General Blaskowitz—had already been written off. Following the second Allied invasion on August 15, by French and American forces in the Marseilles area, Blaskowitz’ group had hurriedly departed southern France. Under continuous pressure they were now falling back in disarray to the German border.
Along Model’s disintegrating northern front, where Allied armor had torn the 75-mile-wide gap in the line, the route from Belgium into Holland and from there across Germany’s vulnerable northwest frontier lay open and undefended. Allied forces driving into Holland could outflank the Siegfried Line where the massive belt of fortifications extending along Germany’s frontiers from Switzerland terminated at Kleve on the Dutch-German border. By turning this northern tip of Hitler’s Westwall and crossing the Rhine, the Allies could swing into the Ruhr, the industrial heart of the Reich. That maneuver might well bring about the total collapse of Germany.
Twice in seventy-two hours Model appealed desperately to Hitler for reinforcements. The situation of his forces in the undefended gap was chaotic. Order had to be restored and the breach closed. Model’s latest report, which he had sent to Hitler in the early hours of September 4, warned that the crisis was approaching and unless he received a minimum of “twenty-five fresh divisions and an armored reserve of five or six panzer divisions,” the entire front might collapse, thereby opening the “gateway into northwest Germany.”
Model’s greatest concern was the British entry into Antwerp. He did not know whether the huge port, the second-largest in Europe, was captured intact or destroyed by the German garrison. The city of Antwerp itself, lying far inland, was not the crux. To use the port, the Allies needed to control its seaward approach, an inlet 54 miles long and 3 miles wide at its mouth, running into Holland from the North Sea past Walcheren Island and looping alongside the South Beveland peninsula. So long as German guns commanded the Schelde estuary, the port of Antwerp could be denied the Allies.
Unfortunately for Model, apart from antiaircraft batteries and heavy coastal guns on Walcheren Island, he had almost no forces along the northern bank. But on the other side of the Schelde and almost isolated in the Pas de Calais was General Gustav von Zangen’s Fifteenth Army—a force of more than 80,000 men. Though pocketed—the sea lay behind them to the north and west, and Canadians and British were pressing in from the south and east—they nevertheless controlled most of the southern bank of the estuary.
By now, Model believed, British tanks, exploiting the situation, would surely be moving along the northern bank and sweeping it clear. Before long the entire South Beveland peninsula could be in their hands and sealed off from the Dutch mainland at its narrow base north of the Belgian border, barely 18 miles from Antwerp. Next, to open the port, the British would turn on the trapped Fifteenth Army and clear the southern bank. Von Zangen’s forces had to be extricated.
Late in the afternoon of September 4 at Army Group B’s headquarters southeast of Liege in the village of La Chaude Fontaine, Model issued a series of orders. By radio he commanded Von Zangen to hold the southern bank of the Schelde and reinforce the lesser ports of Dunkirk, Boulogne and Calais, which Hitler had earlier decreed were to be held with “fanatical determination as fortresses.” With the remainder of his troops the hapless Von Zangen was to attack northeast into the avalanche of British armor. It was a desperate measure, yet Model saw no other course. If Von Zangen’s attack was successful, it might isolate the British in Antwerp and cut off Montgomery’s armored spearheads driving north. Even if the attack failed, Von Zangen’s effort might buy time, slowing up the Allied drive long enough for reserves to arrive and hold a new front along the Albert Canal.
Exactly what reinforcements were on the way, Model did not know. As darkness fell he finally received Hitler’s answer to his pleas for new divisions to stabilize the front. It was the terse news of his replacement as Commander in Chief, West, by Field Marshal von Rundstedt. Von Kluge had lasted forty-four days as OB West, Model barely eighteen. Normally temperamental and ambitious, Model reacted calmly on this occasion. He was more aware of his shortcomings as an administrator than his critics believed.* Now he could concentrate on the job he knew best: being a front-line commander, solely in charge of Army Group B. But, among the flurry of frantic orders Model issued on this last day as OB West, one would prove momentous. It concerned the relocation of his II SS Panzer Corps.
The commander of the Corps, fifty-year-old Obergruppen-führer (Lieutenant General) Wilhelm Bittrich, had been out of touch with Model for more than seventy-two hours. His forces, fighting almost continuously since Normandy, had been badly mauled. Bittrich’s tank losses were staggering, his men short on ammunition and fuel. In addition, because of the breakdown of communications, the few orders he had received by radio were already out of date when Bittrich got them. Uncertain of the enemy’s movements and badly in need of direction, Bittrich set out on foot to find Model. He finally located the Field Marshal at Army Group B headquarters near Liège. “I had not seen him since the Russian front in 1941,” Bittrich later recalled. “Monocle in his eye, wearing his usual short leather coat, Model was standing looking at a map and snapping out commands one after the other. There was little time for conversation. Pending official orders, which would follow, I was told to move my Corps headquarters north into Holland.” With all possible speed Bittrich was directed to “supervise the refitting and rehabilitation of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions.” The battered units, Model told him, were to “slowly disengage from the battle and immediately head north.”*
The almost unknown Bittrich could hardly foresee the critical role his 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions would play within the next two weeks. The site Model chose for Bittrich was in a quiet zone, at this point some seventy-five miles behind the front. By a historic fluke, the area included the city of Arnhem.
*Armed Forces High Command
*“Von Rundstedt was hurt by the implication in Hitler’s letter that he had ‘requested* relief,” the late General Blumentritt told me in an interview. “Some of us at Headquarters actually thought he had, but this was not so. Von Rundstedt denied that he had ever asked to be relieved—or that he had ever thought of doing so. He was extremely angry—so an
gry in fact that he swore he would never again take a command under Hitler. I knew he did not mean it for, to Von Rundstedt, military obedience was unconditional and absolute.”
*Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 1939-45, p. 477.
*According to Walter Goerlitz, editor of The Memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel (Chapter 10, p. 347), Von Rundstedt said to Hitler, “My Führer, whatever you may command, I will do my duty to my last breath.” My version of Von Rundstedt’s reaction is based on the recollections of his former chief of staff, Major General Blumentritt. “I said nothing,” Von Rundstedt told him. “If I’d opened my mouth, Hitler would have talked ‘at me’ for three hours.”
*Hitler took advantage of his most senior officer, Von Rundstedt, once again by making him President of the Court of Honor that passed judgment on the officers suspected. Von Rundstedt quietly acceded to the Führer’s request. “If I had not,” he later explained, “I too might have been considered a traitor.” Von Rundstedt’s explanation has never satisfied many of his brother generals, who privately denounced him for bending to Hitler’s request.
*Rommel, who was also suspected by Hitler of being involved in the assassination attempt, died three months later. While convalescing at his home, Hitler gave him a choice: stand trial for treason or commit suicide. On October 14, Rommel swallowed cyanide, and Hitler announced that the Reich’s most popular field marshal had “died of wounds sustained on the battlefield.”
*Twice Model informed Hitler of his inability to command both OB West and Army Group B. “We rarely saw him,” OB West’s Chief of Staff Blumentritt recalled. “Model hated paper work and spent most of his time in the field.” Lieutenant General Bodo Zimmermann, OB West’s operations chief, wrote after the war (OCMH MS 308, pp. 153-154) that though Model “was a thoroughly capable soldier,” he often “demanded too much and that too quickly,” hence “losing sight of what was practically possible.” He had a tendency to “dissipate his forces,” added Zimmermann, and “staff work suffered under his too-frequent absences and erratic, inconsistent demands.”
*Understandably perhaps, German records of this period are vague and often inexplicable. Commands were issued, never received, re-sent, countermanded or changed. Considerable confusion exists about Model’s order. According to Army Group B’s war diary, movement orders for the 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions were sent on the night of September 3. If so, they were never received. Also, it is recorded that Bittrich received his instructions forty-eight hours later to supervise the regrouping and rehabilitation of not only the 9th but the 2nd and 116th Panzer units. Curiously, the 10th is not mentioned. I can find no evidence that either the 2nd or 116th ever reached the Arnhem area. (It appears they continued fighting at the front.) According to Bittrich’s own papers and logs, he received Model’s orders orally on September 4 and duly directed only the 9th and 10th to proceed north. Both units, according to their commanders, began slowly withdrawing on September 5-6.
THE HEADLONG RETRET of the Germans out of Holland was slowing, although few of the jubilant Dutch realized it as yet. From the Belgian border north to Arnhem, roads were still choked, but there was a difference in the movement. From his post in the Provincial Building above the Arnhem bridge, Charles Labouchère saw no letup in the flood of vehicles, troops and Nazi sympathizers streaming across the bridge. But a few blocks north of Labouchère’s location, Gerhardus Gysbers, a seller of antique books, saw a change take place. German troops entering Arnhem from the west were not moving on. The compound of the Willems Barracks next to Gysbers’ home and the streets in the immediate vicinity were filling with horse-drawn vehicles and disheveled soldiers. Gysbers noted Luftwaffe battalions, antiaircraft personnel, Dutch SS and elderly men of the 719th Coastal Division. It was clear to Arnhem’s resistance chief, Pieter Kruyff, that this was no temporary halt. These troops were not heading back into Germany. They were slowly regrouping; some horse-drawn units of the 719th were starting to move south. Kruyff’s chief of intelligence for the Arnhem region, thirty-three-year-old Henri Knap, unobtrusively cycling through the area, spotted the subtle change, too. He was puzzled. He wondered if the optimistic broadcasts from London were false. If so, they were cruel deceptions. Everywhere he saw the Dutch rejoicing. Everyone knew that Montgomery’s troops had taken Antwerp. Surely Holland would be liberated within hours. Knap could see the Germans were reorganizing. While they still had little strength, he knew that if the British did not come soon that strength would grow.
In Nijmegen, eleven miles to the south, German military police were closing off roads leading to the German frontier. Elias Broekkamp, a wine importer, saw some troops moving north toward Arnhem, but the majority were being funneled back and traffic was being broken up, processed and fanned out. As in Arnhem, the casual spectator seemed unaware of the difference. Broekkamp observed Dutch civilians laughing and jeering at what they believed to be the Germans’ bewildering predicament.
In fact the predicament was growing much less. Nijmegen was turning into a troop staging area, once more in the firm control of German military.
Farther south, in Eindhoven, barely ten miles from the Belgian border, the retreat had all but stopped. In the straggling convoys moving north there were now more Nazi civilians than troops. Frans Kortie, who had seen the Germans dismantling antiaircraft guns on the roofs of the Philips factories, noted a new development. In a railway siding near the station he watched a train pulling flatcars into position. On the cars were heavy antiaircraft guns. Kortie experienced a feeling of dread.
Far more disheartening for observant Dutch was the discovery that reinforcements were coming in from Germany. In Tilburg, Eindhoven, Helmond and Weert, people saw contingents of fresh troops arrive by train. Unloaded quickly and formed up, they set out for the Dutch-Belgian border. They were not regular Wehr-macht soldiers. They were seasoned, well-equipped and disciplined, and their distinctive helmets and camouflaged smocks instantly identified them as veteran German paratroopers.
BY LATE AFTERNOON of September 5 Colonel General Kurt Student’s first paratroop formations were digging in at points along the north side of Belgium’s Albert Canal. Their haste was almost frantic. Student, on his arrival at noon, had discovered that Model’s “new German line” was strictly the 80-foot-wide water barrier itself. Defense positions had not been prepared. There were no strong points, trenches or fortifications. And, to make matters worse for the defenders, Student noted, “almost everywhere the southern bank dominated the northern side.” Even the bridges over the canal were still standing. Only now were engineers placing demolition charges. In all the confusion no one apparently had ordered the crossings destroyed.
Nevertheless, Student’s timetable was well planned. The “blitz move” of his airborne forces was a spectacular success. “Considering that these paratroopers were rushed in from all over Germany, from Güstrow in Mecklenburg to Bitsch in Lothringen,” he later recalled, “and arms and equipment, brought in from still other parts of Germany, were waiting for them at the railheads, the speed of the move was remarkable.” Student could only admire “the astonishing precision of the general staff and the entire German organization.” Lieutenant General Karl Sievers’ 719th Coastal Division had made good time, too. Student was heartened to see their columns heading for positions north of Antwerp “clattering down the roads to the front, their transports and artillery pulled by heavy draft horses.”* Hour by hour, his hastily formed First Parachute Army was arriving. Also, by extraordinary good fortune, help had come from a most unexpected source.
The headlong retreat from Belgium into Holland had been slowed and then virtually stopped by the doggedness and ingenuity of one man: Lieutenant General Kurt Chill. Because his 85th Infantry Division was almost totally destroyed, Chill had been ordered to save whatever remained and move back into Germany. But the strong-willed general, watching the near-panic on the roads and prompted by Model’s Order of the Day, decided to disregard orders. Chill concluded that the only way t
o avert catastrophe was to organize a line along the Albert Canal. He welded what remained of his 85th Division with the remnants of two others and quickly dispersed these men to strategic points on the northern bank of the canal. Next, he turned his attention to the bridges and set up “reception centers” at their northern exits. In twenty-four hours Chill succeeded in netting thousands of servicemen from nearly every branch of the German armed forces. It was a “crazy-quilt mob,”* including Luftwaffe mechanics, military-government personnel, naval coastal units and soldiers from a dozen different divisions, but these stragglers, armed at best with rifles, were already on the canal when Student arrived.
Student called Chill’s virtuoso performance in halting the near-rout “miraculous.” With remarkable speed he had established a defense line of sorts, helping to buy a little time for all of Student’s forces to arrive. This would still take several days. Even with the boost from Chill, Student’s patchwork First Parachute Army might total at best 18,000-20,000 men, plus some artillery, antiaircraft guns and twenty-five tanks—hardly the equivalent of an American division. And racing toward this scanty force—so thin that Student could not even man the 75-mile Antwerp-Maastricht gap, let alone close it—were the awesome armored forces of the British Second Army and part of the U.S. First Army. Student was outgunned and outnumbered; about all that stood between him and disaster was the Albert Canal itself.
At what point along it would the enemy attack? Student’s line was vulnerable everywhere, but some areas were more critical than others. He was particularly concerned about the sector north of Antwerp, where the weak 719th Coastal Division was only now taking up position. Was there still time to take advantage of the 80-foot-wide water barrier and turn it into a major defense line that would delay the Allies long enough for additional reinforcements to reach the canal? This was Student’s greatest hope.