In the west the weather had been bad for several days, and it promised to be even worse. The 5:00 A.M. report, prepared by Colonel Professor Walter Stöbe, the Luftwaffe’s chief meteorologist in Paris, predicted increasing cloudiness, high winds and rain. Even now a twenty- to thirty-mile-an-hour wind was blowing in the Channel. To Rommel, it seemed hardly likely that the Allies would dare launch their attack during the next few days.
Even at La Roche-Guyon, during the night, the weather had changed. Almost opposite Rommel’s desk two tall French windows opened out onto a terraced rose garden. It was not much of a rose garden this morning—rose petals, broken branches and twigs were strewn all over. Shortly before dawn a brief summer storm had come out of the English Channel, swept along part of the French coast and then passed on.
Rommel opened the door of his office and stepped out. “Good morning, Lang,” he said, as though he had not seen his aide until that moment. “Are we ready to go?” Together they went down to breakfast.
Outside in the village of La Roche-Guyon the bell in the Church of St. Samson sounded the Angelus. Each note fought for its existence against the wind. It was 6:00 A.M.
4
BETWEEN ROMMEL AND Lang an easy, informal relationship existed. They had been constantly together for months. Lang had joined Rommel in February and hardly a day had passed since without a long inspection trip somewhere. Usually they were on the road by 4:30 A.M., driving at top speed to some distant part of Rommel’s command. One day it would be Holland, another day Belgium, the next day Normandy or Brittany. The determined field marshal had taken advantage of every moment. “I have only one real enemy now,” he had told Lang, “and that is time.” To conquer time Rommel spared neither himself nor his men; it had been that way from the moment he had been sent to France in November 1943.
That fall Von Rundstedt, responsible for the defense of all Western Europe, had asked Hitler for reinforcements. Instead, he got the hardheaded, daring and ambitious Rommel. To the humiliation of the aristocratic sixty-eight-year-old Commander in Chief West, Rommel arrived with a Gummiberfehl, an “elastic directive,” ordering him to inspect the coastal fortifications—Hitler’s much-publicized “Atlantic Wall”—and then to report directly back to the Führer’s headquarters, OKW. The embarrassed and disappointed Von Rundstedt was so upset by the arrival of the younger Rommel—he referred to him as the “Marschall Bubi” (roughly, the “Marshal Laddie”)—that he asked Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of OKW, if Rommel was being considered as his successor. He was told “not to draw any false conclusions,” that with all “Rommel’s capabilities he is not up to that job.”
Shortly after his arrival, Rommel had made a whirlwind inspection of the Atlantic Wall—and what he saw appalled him. In only a few places were the massive concrete and steel fortifications along the coast completed: at the principal ports and river mouths and overlooking the straits, roughly from above Le Havre to Holland. Elsewhere the defenses were in various stages of completion. In some places work had not even begun. True, the Atlantic Wall was a formidable barrier even in its present state. Where it was finished, it fairly bristled with heavy guns. But there were not enough of them to suit Rommel. There was not enough of anything to stop the sort of onslaught that Rommel—always remembering his crushing defeat at the hands of Montgomery in North Africa the year before—knew must surely come. To his critical eye the Atlantic Wall was a farce. Using one of the most descriptive words in any language, he had denounced it as a “figment of Hitler’s Wolkenkuckucksheim [cloud cuckoo land].”
Just two years before, the wall had hardly existed at all.
Up to 1942, victory had seemed so certain to the Führer and his strutting Nazis that there was no need for coastal fortifications. The swastsika flew everywhere. Austria and Czechoslovakia had been picked off before the war even started. Poland had been carved up between Germany and Russia as long ago as 1939. The war was not even a year old when the countries of Western Europe began falling like so many rotten apples. Denmark fell in a day. Norway, infiltrated from within, took a little longer: six weeks. Then that May and June, in just twenty-seven days and without overture of any sort, Hitler’s blitzkrieging troops had plunged into Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France and, as an incredulous world watched, had driven the British into the sea at Dunkirk. After the collapse of France all that remained was England—standing alone. What need had Hitler for a “wall”?
But Hitler didn’t invade England. His generals wanted him to, but Hitler waited, thinking the British would sue for peace. As time passed the situation rapidly changed. With U.S. aid, Britain began staging a slow but sure recovery. Hitler, by now deeply involved in Russia—he attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941—saw that the coast of France was no longer an offensive springboard. It was now a soft spot in his defenses. By the fall of 1941 he began talking to his generals about making Europe an “impregnable fortress.” And in December, after the U.S. had entered the war, the Führer ranted to the world that “a belt of strongpoints and gigantic fortifications runs from Kirkenes [on the Norwegian-Finnish frontier] … to the Pyrenees [on the Franco-Spanish border] … and it is my unshakable decision to make this front impregnable against every enemy.”
It was a wild, impossible boast. Discounting the indentations, this coastline running from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Bay of Biscay in the south stretched almost three thousand miles.
Even directly across from Britain at the narrowest part of the Channel, the fortifications didn’t exist. But Hitler had become obsessed with the fortress concept. Colonel General Franz Halder, then Chief of the German General Staff, well remembers the first time Hitler outlined his fantastic scheme. Halder, who would never forgive Hitler for refusing to invade England, was cool to the whole idea. He ventured the opinion that fortifications “if they were needed” should be constructed “behind the coastline out of range of naval guns,” otherwise troops might be pinned down. Hitler dashed across the room to a table on which there was a large map and for a full five minutes threw an unforgettable tantrum. Pounding the map with his clenched fist he screamed, “Bombs and shells will fall here … here … here … and here … in front of the wall, behind it and on it … but the troops will be safe in the wall! Then they’ll come out and fight!”
Halder said nothing, but he knew, as did the other generals in the High Command, that despite all the Reich’s intoxicating victories the Führer already feared a second front—an invasion.
Still, little work was done on the fortifications. In 1942, as the tide of war began to swing against Hitler, British commandos began raiding the “impregnable” fortress of Europe. Then came the bloodiest commando raid of the war, when more than five thousand heroic Canadians landed at Dieppe. It was a bloody curtain-raiser to the invasion. Allied planners learned just how strongly the Germans had fortified the ports. The Canadians had 3,369 casualties, of which nine hundred were dead. The raid was disastrous, but it shocked Hitler. The Atlantic Wall, he thundered at his generals, must be completed at top speed. Construction was to be rushed “fanatically.”
It was. Thousands of slave laborers worked night and day to build the fortifications. Millions of tons of concrete were poured; so much was used that all over Hitler’s Europe it became impossible to get concrete for anything else. Staggering quantities of steel were ordered, but this commodity was in such short supply that the engineers were forced to do without it. As a result few of the bunkers or blockhouses had swiveling cupolas, which required steel for the turrets, and the arc of fire from the guns was thereby restricted. So great was the demand for materials and equipment that parts of the old French Maginot Line and Germany’s frontier fortifications (the Siegfried Line) were cannibalized for the Atlantic Wall. By the end of 1943, although the wall was far from finished, over half a million men were working on it and the fortifications had become a menacing reality.
Hitler knew that invasion was inevitable, and now he was faced with another great pro
blem: finding the divisions to man his growing defenses. In Russia division after division was being chewed up as the Wehrmacht tried to hold a two-thousand mile front against relentless Soviet attacks. In Italy, knocked out of the war after the invasion of Sicily, thousands of troops were still pinned down. So, by 1944, Hitler was forced to bolster his garrisons in the west with a strange conglomeration of replacements—old men and young boys, the remnants of divisions shattered on the Russian front, impressed “volunteers” from occupied countries (there were units of Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Romanians and Yugoslavs, to mention just a few) and even two Russian divisions composed of men who preferred fighting for the Nazis to remaining in prison camps. Questionable as these troops might prove to be in combat, they filled out the gaps. He still had a hard core of battle-hardened troops and panzers. By D Day, Hitler’s strength in the west would total a formidable sixty divisions.
Not all these divisions would be up to full strength, but Hitler was still relying on his Atlantic Wall; that would make the difference. Yet men like Rommel who had been fighting—and losing—on other fronts were shocked when they saw the fortifications. Rommel had not been in France since 1941. And he, like many other German generals, believing in Hitler’s propaganda, had thought that the defenses were almost completed.
His scathing denunciation of the “wall” came as no surprise to Von Rundstedt at OB West. He heartily concurred; indeed, it was probably the only time that he completely agreed with Rommel on anything. The wise old Von Rundstedt had never believed in fixed defenses. He had masterminded the successful outflanking of the Maginot Line in 1940 that had led to the collapse of France. To him Hitler’s Atlantic Wall was nothing more than an “enormous bluff … more for the German people than for the enemy … and the enemy, through his agents, knows more about it than we do.” It would “temporarily obstruct” the Allied attack, but it would not stop it. Nothing, Von Rundstedt was convinced, could prevent the initial landings from being successful. His plan to defeat the invasion was to hold the great mass of his troops back from the coast and to attack after the Allied troops had landed. That would be the moment to strike, he believed—when the enemy was still weak, without adequate supply lines and struggling to organize in isolated bridgeheads.
With this theory Rommel disagreed completely. He was positive that there was only one way to smash the attack: meet it head on. There would be no time to bring up reinforcements from the rear; he was certain that they would be destroyed by incessant air attacks or the massive weight of naval or artillery bombardment. Everything, in his view, from troops to panzer divisions, had to be held ready at the coast or just behind it. His aide well remembered a day when Rommel had summed up his strategy. They had stood on a deserted beach, and Rommel, a short, stocky figure in a heavy greatcoat with an old muffler around his throat, had stalked up and down waving his “informal” marshal’s baton, a two-foot-long silver-topped black suck with a red, black and white tassel. He had pointed to the sands with his baton and said, “The war will be won or lost on the beaches. We’ll have only one chance to stop the enemy and that’s while he’s in the water … struggling to get ashore. Reserves will never get up to the point of attack and it’s foolish even to consider them. The Hauptkampflinie [main line of resistance] will be here … everything we have must be on the coast. Believe me, Lang, the first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive … for the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day.”
Hitler had approved Rommel’s plan in general, and from then on Von Rundstedt had become merely a figurehead. Rommel executed Von Rundstedt’s orders only if they agreed with his own ideas. To get his way he would frequently use a single but powerful argument. “The Führer,” Rommel would remark, “gave quite explicit orders to me.” He never said this directly to the dignified Von Rundstedt, but rather to OB West’s chief of staff, Major General Blumentritt.
With Hitler’s backing and Von Rundstedt’s reluctant acceptance (“That Bohemian corporal, Hitler,” snapped the Commander in Chief West, “usually decides against himself.”) the determined Rommel had set out to overhaul completely the existing anti-invasion plans.
In a few short months Rommel’s ruthless drive had changed the whole picture. On every beach where he considered a landing possible he had ordered his soldiers, working with local conscripted labor battalions, to erect barriers of crude anti-invasion obstacles. These obstacles—jagged triangles of steel, saw-toothed gatelike structures of iron, metal-tipped wooden stakes and concrete cones—were planted just below high- and low-tide water marks. Strapped to them were deadly mines. Where there were not enough mines, shells had been used, their noses pointing ominously out to sea. A touch would cause them to explode instantly.
Rommel’s strange inventions (he had designed most of them himself) were both simple and deadly. Their object was to impale and destroy troop-filled landing craft or to obstruct them long enough for shore batteries to zero in. Either way, he reasoned, the enemy soldiers would be decimated long before they reached the beaches. More than half a million of these lethal underwater obstacles now stretched along the coastline.
Still, Rommel, the perfectionist, was not satisfied. In the sands, in bluffs, in gullies and pathways leading off the beaches, he ordered mines laid—all varieties, from the large pancake type, capable of blowing off a tank’s tracks, to the small S mine which when stepped on bounded into the air and exploded level with a man’s midriff. Over five million of these mines now infested the coast. Before the attack came, Rommel hoped to have another six million planted. Eventually he hoped to girdle the invasion coast with sixty million mines.*
Overlooking the coastline, back of this jungle of mines and obstacles, Rommel’s troops waited in pillboxes, concrete bunkers and communication trenches, all surrounded by layers of barbed wire. From these positions every piece of artillery that the field marshal had been able to lay hands on looked down on sands and sea, already sighted in to give overlapping fields of fire. Some guns were actually in positions on the seashore itself. These were hidden in concrete emplacements beneath innocent-looking seashide homes, their barrels aimed not toward the sea but directly down the beaches, so as to fire at point-blank range along the waves of assaulting troops.
Rommel took advantage of every new technique or development. Where he was short of guns, he positioned batteries of rocket launchers or multiple mortar throwers. At one place he even had miniature robot tanks called “Goliaths.” These devices, capable of carrying more than half a ton of explosives, could be guided by remote control from the fortifications down onto the beaches and detonated among troops or landing craft.
About all that was missing from Rommel’s medieval arsenal of weapons were crucibles of molten lead to pour down on the attackers—and in a way he had the modern equivalent: automatic flame throwers. At some places along the front, webs of piping ran out from concealed kerosene tanks to the grassy approaches leading off the beaches. At the press of a button, advancing troops would be instantly swallowed by flame.
Nor had Rommel forgotten the threat of parachutists or glider-borne infantry. Behind the fortifications low-lying areas had been flooded, and into every open field within seven or eight miles of the coast heavy stakes had been driven and booby-trapped. Trip wires were strung between these posts. When touched, they would immediately set off mines or shells.
Rommel had organized a bloody welcome for the Allied troops. Never in the history of modern warfare had a more powerful or deadly array of defenses been prepared for an invading force. Yet Rommel was not content. He wanted more pillboxes, more beach obstacles, more mines, more guns and troops. Most of all he wanted the massive panzer divisions which were lying in reserve far from the coast. He had won memorable battles with panzers in the North African deserts. Now, at this crucial moment, neither he nor Rundstedt could move these armored formations without Hitler’s consent. The Führer insisted on holding them under his personal authority. Rommel needed at least five panze
r divisions at the coast, ready to counterattack within the first few hours of the Allied assault. There was only one way to get them—he would see Hitler. Rommel had often told Lang, “The last man who sees Hitler wins the game.” On this leaden morning in La Roche-Guyon, as he prepared to leave for Germany and the long drive home, Rommel was more determined than ever to win the game.
*Rommel was fascinated by mines as a defensive weapon. On one inspection trip with the field marshal, Major General Alfred Cause (Rommel’s chief of staff before Major General Dr. Hans Speidel) pointed to several acres of wild spring flowers and said, “Isn’t that a wonderful sight?” Rommel nodded and said, “You might make a note, Gause—that area will take about one thousand mines.” And on yet another occasion when they were en route to Paris, Gause suggested that they visit the famous porcelain china works at Sèvres. Gause was surprised when Rommel agreed. But Rommel was not interested in the works of an he was shown. He walked quickly through the display rooms and, turning to Gause, said, “Find out if they can make waterproof casings for my sea mines.”
5
AT FIFTEENTH ARMY headquarters near the Belgian border, 125 miles away, one man was glad to see the morning of June 4 arrive. Lieutenant Colonel Hellmuth Meyer sat in his office, haggard and bleary-eyed. He had not really had a good night’s sleep since June 1. But the night that had just passed had been the worst yet; he would never forget it.
Meyer had a frustrating, nerve-racking job. Besides being the Fifteenth Army’s intelligence officer, he also headed up the only counterintelligence team on the invasion front. The heart of his setup was a thirty-man radio interception crew who worked in shifts around the clock in a concrete bunker crammed full of the most delicate radio equipment. Their job was to listen, nothing more. But each man was an expert who spoke three languages fluently, and there was hardly a word, hardly a single stutter of Morse code whispering through the ether from Allied sources that they did not hear.