t, who was on his staff, said that it was inspired by the general lay-out of the troops in England—with the Americans in the south-west—along with his belief that the Allies would seek to capture a big port as early as possible, and that Cherbourg was the most likely for their purpose. His conclusion was strengthened by observers’ reports of a big invasion exercise in Devon where the troops disembarked on a stretch of flat and open coastline similar to the intended in Normandy.
Rommel, who was in executive charge of the forces on the Channel coast, came round to the same view as Hitler. In the last few months he made feverish efforts to hasten the construction of under-water obstacles, bomb-proof bunkers and minefields, and by June they were much denser than they had been in spring. But fortunately for the Allies, he had neither the time nor the resources to develop the defences in Normandy to the state he desired, or even to the state of that east of the Seine.
Rommel also found himself in disagreement with Rundstedt over the method of meeting an invasion. Rundstedt relied on a plan of delivering a powerful counteroffensive to crush the Allies after they had landed. Rommel considered that this would be too late, in face of Allies’ domination of the air and their capacity to delay the German reserves in concentrating for such a counteroffensive. He felt the best chance lay in defeating the invaders on the coast before they were properly ashore. Rommel’s staff said that ‘he was deeply influenced by the memory of how in Africa he had been nailed down for days on end by an air force not nearly so strong as that he now had to face’.
The actual plan became a compromise between these different ideas—and ‘fell between two stools’. Worse still, Hitler insisted on trying to control the battle from remote Berchtesgaden, and kept a tight hand on the use of reserves.
There was only one panzer division at Rommel’s disposal in Normandy, and he had brought this close up behind Caen. So it was able to check the British there on D-Day. He had begged in vain for a second one to place near St Lo—where it would have been close to the beaches where the Americans landed. On D-Day precious hours were wasted in argument on the German side. The nearest available part of the general reserve was the 1st S.S. Panzer Corps, which lay north-west of Paris, but Rundstedt could not move it without permission from Hitler’s headquarters.
Blumentritt stated: As early as 4 a.m. I telephoned them on behalf of Field-Marshall von Rundstedt and asked for the release of the Corps—to strengthen Rommel’s punch. But Jodl, speaking for Hitler, refused to do so. He doubted whether the landings in Normandy were more than a feint, and was sure that another landing was coming east of Seine. The battle of argument went on all day until 4p.m. when the Corps was at last released for our use.
Two other startling facts about the opening day are that Hitler himself did not hear of the landing until very late in the morning, and that Rommel was off the scene. But for these factors, action might have been more prompt and more forceful.
Hitler like Mr Churchill had a habit of staying up until long after midnight, a habit very exhausting to his staff, who could not sleep late but were often in a sleepy state when they dealt with affairs in the morning. Jodl, reluctant to disturb Hitler’s late morning sleep, took it upon himself to resist Rundstedt’s appeal for the release of the reserves.
They might have been released earlier if Rommel had not been absent from Normandy. For, unlike Rundstedt, he often telephoned Hitler direct and still had more influence with him than any other general. But Rommel had left his headquarters the day before on a trip to Germany. As the high wind and rough sea seemed to make invasion unlikely for the moment he had decided to combine a visit to Hitler, to urge the need for more panzer divisions in Normandy, with a visit to his home near Ulm for his wife’s birthday. Early next morning, before he could drive on to see Hitler, a telephone call told him t