hat the invasion had begun. He did not get back to his headquarters until the evening—by which time the invaders were well established ashore.
The commander of the army in that part of Normandy was also away—directing an exercise in Brittany. The commander of the panzer corps that lay in reserve had gone on a visit to Belgium. Another key commander is said to have been away spending the night with a girl. Eisenhower’s decision to proceed with the landing despite the rough sea turned out greatly to the Allies advantage.
A strange feature of the weeks that followed was that, although Hitler had correctly guessed the site of the invasion, once it had taken place he became obsessed with the idea that it was only a preliminary to a second and larger landing east of the Seine. Hence he was reluctant to let the reserves be moved from that area to Normandy. The belief in the second landing was due to the Intelligence Staff’s gross overestimate of the number of Allied divisions still available on the other side of the Channel. That was partly due to the British deception plan. But it was also another result of, and testimony to, the way that Britain was ‘watertight’ against spying.
When the initial countermoves broke down, and had obviously failed to prevent the Allies’ continued build up in the bridgehead, Rundstedt and Rommel soon came to realise the hopelessness of trying to hold on to any line so far west.
Relating the sequel, Blumentritt said: In desperation, Field-Marshall von Rundstedt begged Hitler to come to France for a talk. He and Rommel together went to meet Hitler at Soissons on June 17, and tried to make him understand the situation. . . But Hitler insisted that there must be no withdrawal—‘You must stay where you are.’ He would not even agree to allow us any more freedom than before in moving the forces we thought best . . . As he would not modify his orders, the troops had to continue clinging on to their cracking line. There was no plan any longer. We were merely trying, without hope, to comply with Hitler’s order that the line Caen-Avranches must be held at all costs.
Hitler swept aside the field-marshals ‘warnings by assuring them that the new V weapon, the flying bomb, would soon have a decisive effect on the war. The field-marshalls then urged that, if this weapon was so effective, it should be turned against the invasion beaches—or, if that was technically difficult, against the invasion ports in southern England. Hitler insisted that the bombardment must be concentrated on London ‘so as to covert the English to peace.’ But the flying bombs did not produce the effect that Hitler had hoped, while Allied pressure in Normandy increased. When asked one day on the telephone from Hitler’s H.Q.: ‘What shall we do?’ Rundstedt retorted: ‘End the war! What else can you do.’ Hitler’s solution was to sack Rundstedt, and replace him by Kluge, who had been on the Eastern Front.
‘Field-Marshall von Kluge was a robust, aggressive type of soldier’, Blumentritt remarked. ‘At the start he was very cheerful and confident—like all newly appointed commanders . . . Within a few days he became very sober and quiet. Hitler did not like the changing tone of his reports.’
On July 17th Rommel was badly injured when his car crashed after being attacked on the road by Allied planes. Then three days later, on the 20th, came the attempt to kill Hitler at his headquarters in East Prussia. The conspirators’ bomb missed its chief target, but its ‘shock wave’ had terrific repercussions on the battle in the West at the critical moment.
Blumentritt recalled: When the Gestapo investigated the conspiracy . . . they found documents in which Field-Marshall von Kluge’s name was mentioned, so he came under grave suspicion. Then another incident made things worse. Shortly after General Patton’s break-out from Normandy, while the decisive battle at Avranches was in progress, Field-Marshall von Kluge was out of touch with his headquarters for more than twelve hours. The reason was that he had gone up to the front, and there been trapped in a heavy artil