Chapter 42: Jun 1944 Allies Land on Normandy on “D” Day

“How was it to be a prisoner of the Americans? Well, even those of us who believed that the Allies could be thrown out of France fell silent when we saw the way the Americans were organised, and the resources they had to work with. Their planes were constantly in the sky. Everything was mechanised, all supplies were carried by truck or train, with seemingly no concern over the amount of fuel used. If a jeep or a truck broke down, it was neglected rather than repaired, and a fresh one was used, still shiny from the factory. Instead of using local food, they ate from tins and cans of food that were made in America. We found this fascinating, and we formed an impression of an unstoppable power that would simply roll over any obstacle. And this is what eventually happened, as we now know, both in France and in Germany.”

― Holger Eckhertz, D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944

The landings on the Normandy coastline surprised the Germans and that was an incredible fact. It was a tribute to the power of “disinformation” keeping the Wehrmacht focused on other more likely places for the assault on fortress Europe.

The entire affair was constantly delayed for one reason or another and it found the rising curtain on a day filled with terrible weather and high waves that relentlessly pounded the heavily fortified beaches.

The training for the landing was intensive and it was a good thing because the Germans, while surprised, reacted quickly and put up stiff resistance despite the overwhelming odds in front of them.

One of the surprising statistics from the battle was the fact that the allies lost twice as many men during the assault as the Germans but when it was all over and done, the Wehrmacht suffered the loss of almost a quarter of a million trained soldiers as prisoners of war of the Americans and the British. I suspect that despite their discipline, the German enlisted personnel considered the opportunity to surrender to the more civilized Western forces was far preferable than the ordeal they would face if captured by the brutal Soviet Army swarming down on the fatherland from the bloody Eastern Front.

The secret of the landing location was a great success and it was a key element to the allies winning the battle and eventually winning the war in Europe. Of course, the poor fellows in that first wave had only a slender chance of survival, but they did their best to get across the open terrain of the beach butchery looking for some sort of cover or concealment but finding none at all.

The bodies littered the sand and the bubbles on the shoreline were pretty pink with the blood of the fallen men. Fortunately, their training instilled in them the absolute truth that to linger on the beach was to invite disaster because the concentration of defensive fire was so thick that survival was unlikely. On that day, all of the elements of the invaders were truly “Marines” as they came from the sea to fight on the land and defeat the enemy. Similar scenes were being played out on the beaches of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, and Iwo Jima.

The operational command of the invasion force under General Eisenhower employed the concepts of Systems Management to insure that all the parts merged together to break out of the beachhead and quickly move to establish a perimeter on the soil of France from which they might begin their slow but sure advance to the very borders of the fatherland and bring the battle to the German army inside their own territory.

It was this reality on the ground that reinforced FDR’s illuminating words that the United States of America would be the “Arsenal” of freedom for civilization and the hope of mankind for everlasting freedom. The beginning quote from a German “Boots on the Ground” defender explains the true “American Dream” was the unity of their people. He had many years of combat reality behind him and he could see that the Thousand Year Reich was doomed to extinction in the face of such economic dominance starting in Detroit and sweeping across the entire contentment with patriotic fever that was seen in the sale of war bonds and the enlistment of millions of ordinary Americans in the cause of freedom.

What had started with the stanch refusal of a proud and battered British Empire to surrender to the Nazi war machine now became a formidable allied cause with American and Canadian and Australian and New Zealander support. Hitler was unable to take the Soviet Union out of the equation and now he had the steamroller of Stalin’s brutal military forces threatening the fatherland from the East.

“D” day looked like a “Bad Day at Black Rock” for the demented Corporal now hiding in the underground bunkers in Berlin. His drug use and dependence on the Occult to foster his resurgence was pie in the sky just like his foolish pinning of his hopes on some new “Super” weapon to destroy his enemies. He had squandered his primary supporters in the craziness of “Operation Barbarossa” failing, just like Napoleon, to even reach the walls of the Kremlin. His best generals and his well-disciplined troops were either dead or headed to oblivion in the wilds of Siberia and forced-labor death camps.

Some of his inner circle began to scheme to make a deal with the western allies before the Soviets entered into actual German territory and took the revenge for the rape and destruction of the Russian motherland. The Russian claim to being the true winners of the “Great Patriotic War” did have some validity in this regard because that threat hung heavy on the minds of the German populace and totally destroyed the morale of the fighting troops remaining under Nazi rule.

The Wehrmacht was skillful in retreating away from the juggernaut of the allied invasion. The discipline that they had instilled in the enlisted ranks allowed them to withdraw in order and they adapted to the change in tactics to delay the allied forces as long as possible to save as many of their soldiers for the final defense of the fatherland.