D DAY Through German Eyes 2

by Holger Eckhertz

Well, in the East, they would have been considered quite weak, especially against an enemy expected to use panzers. But there on the French coast, it seemed to me that it was pretty unlikely that the Allies could land with large numbers of panzers. We knew they had landing craft which could bring a panzer onto dry land, because they had used this in Italy. But France was not Italy. They would need thousands upon thousands of panzers to invade France, and how could these possibly be carried across the water from England to all arrive at once? We had no idea of the organisation that the Allies were capable of, you see. Also, on many of the beaches, the sand between high and low tide was completely covered with girders that had Teller mines, which were there to blow the tracks off panzers if any tried to come ashore, and also the Belgian gates. All this made the beach defences seem stronger.

Apart from the uncertainty, we in the infantry had a comfortable life before the invasion came. The local French people were not supposed to come close to the bunkers, but in reality they would come and trade with us, offering food. They had bread, milk, cider, eggs and even fresh meat, which was unavailable to Wehrmacht lower ranks. In return we exchanged things like cigarettes, bootlaces and lamp oil, which the French couldn’t get hold of at all.

We would say, ‘Fill your belly on French ham and cider, because tomorrow you may be transferred to the East, where there is only hard biscuit and snow to eat.’

Did you yourself have any personal dislike of the Americans or the English? I had lost several relatives in the daylight and night bombing of Berlin, and so I was angry about this, yes; I was very bitter. Many of my comrades felt the same way. The frustration for us was that we were not fighting the war against the Western powers, really. Our real war was with the Soviet Union and the threat that we believed they posed to us in the East. Today, of course, we in West Germany all understand that this belief was mistaken, but ten years ago the feeling against the East was very strong. And this added, you see, to our anger against the Americans and the English Empire, because they were diverting our strength, our forces, away from the battles in the Eastern Front.

What a foolish thing that war was, when you think about it. The Americans had so much space in their prairies and mountains, and the English had India and all those places in Africa. And yet they wanted to take France from us, and stop us fighting the Reds. All of us there on that area of sand dunes, me in my concrete panzer, and the PAK gun, and the little two-man bunkers, we all should really have been in the East, fighting the real enemy of Europe over there. But the Western Allies insisted on threatening us in France. That is what we thought at the time.

The light was fully up, and a drizzle was coming down, which damped down all the smoke and dust. I wiped my eyes and tried to look out at the sea through the periscope binocular. And so, at that moment, like thousands of other German soldiers, I saw the number of ships that the Allies were bringing against us. I was staggered at the sight, even though I could only see it dimly. I was absolutely stunned, and also very angry.

Out on the sea . . . well, the horizon was like a solid wall of ships. As if someone had put a steel curtain across the horizon, that’s how many there were.

At times, the sea wind blew the smoke clear, and I could see large numbers of craft on the sea, coming closer. These were boats with high front walls, vertical walls, which I later realised were ramps. Again I had the feeling of a wall of steel coming towards us . . . an absolute wall.

A few seconds later there was a cloud of sand and an American panzer came up over the top of it, onto the dunes. This was a great shock to me, as I didn't think it was possible for the attackers to come off the beach, but I fired on that panzer immediately. It was a Sherman class panzer, which was very high in profile, and made an easy target - especially with the big, white star they had painted on the front. I aimed straight at the star, but my shell bounced off the armour and went off over the beach behind. This Sherman fired on me very quickly, and I imagine that the crew had studied plans or photographs of our positions, because they seemed to know their way around the plateau.

In a few minutes, American infantry began coming up onto the dunes, and the Shermans were shooting away at that machine gun behind the PAK shield. One of the American infantry had a flamethrower, and he got close enough to use it on the PAK. The flames were enormous and they shot out very fast, like a fire hose but full of burning liquid. The whole PAK position was covered in these flames; the burning stuff was dripping off it and making a pool of fire on the sand.

At that moment, something awful took place . . . it was almost like a sign from God that we were doing wrong. A strange, circular wind blew up on the dunes, some kind of small tornado, and it whirled around and it fanned the fires from the burning Sherman and the burning PAK . . . there was chaos all around me in this whirlwind. Ammunition was exploding, men were screaming, both German and American and in Russian too. All the time, the planes were racing over us through the smoke, firing their cannons inland. It was absolute hell on that sand. Absolute hell.

I recently spoke to another German veteran who mentioned that he was surprised that the Allies had brought no horses with them for the invasion. Yes, that was a surprise to us. We commented on it. If that had been a German army, even in 1944, there would have been a lot of horses and wagons there, in the supply element, because of the lack of fuel and trucks. In fact, one of our men stupidly asked one of the American guards, ‘But where are your horses?’ The Americans just laughed at this and gave him a cigarette.

The new American troops coming onto the beach ran right past me. Some of them looked scared, but most of them looked very eager to get into France . . . I remember that very clearly. Those troops wanted to attack and conquer France. They were very highly motivated.

What did this doctor tell you about the fate of the Russians in Normandy? I shall tell you something strange and worrying now, Herr Eckhertz, although you may not believe what I say. The Englishman told me, after we had been drinking, that he knew what happened. He said that when the Allies invaded Normandy, there were representatives from the Soviet Union among them. Yes, it’s true. Among the American and English troops, there were commissars from the Red Army, who were there specifically to search for the Russian defector troops. And when these Russian defectors were taken prisoner, they were immediately separated off and handed over to the Russian commissars, right there on the beaches. They were put on ships from Normandy and sent back to Russia via the Baltic, back to the Soviet Union. And when they got back, they were all immediately shot as traitors. There was no Geneva Convention for them. The Americans and English didn’t want them executed in France, because it would have been hard to explain after the war. So they handed them over to their deaths. Do you believe this is true? If it is not true, then where are the Russians from Normandy? There must have been ten thousand of them or more, some of us figured out. Did they all just disappear? Where are their graves? Well . . . talking to you has given me a lot to think about. You have brought home to me some new dimensions of the tragedy of Normandy . . . what you said about the Children’s House, and the fa...

The simple fact was that we in the fighter groups could not live up to the expectations that people had for us. We could not live up to the image or the legend of the Luftwaffe as it had been from 1939 to about 1942, which was when the very large bombing raids started over the Reich. Let me explain the problems for you, as you are evidently interested. The basic issue was that the command echelons of the Luftwaffe could not supply us with enough aircraft, spares, fuel and fresh pilots to be an effective force, compared to the colossal resources of the Allied air fleets. To keep a fighter aircraft in service, you need a great deal of spare parts, oil, coolant, lubricants and so on, and all of these were in short supply in 1944. It was quite common for a fighter to be waiting in its hangar, fully armed, pilot ready, fuelled, but unable to take off because coolant could not be found for the engine. Or, when the coolant arrived, the special air filters could not be replaced, and so on, with endless combinations of things that were missing or could not be repaired. This meant that units took off below strength, meaning that yet more planes were lost when they ran up against the big Allied formations.

As for the pilots, we simply did not have enough good quality, fresh pilots to replace those lost in the air. You cannot just take any fellow and press him into service as a pilot, and an experienced pilot cannot be made to fly combat missions around the clock – the mind and body cannot cope with that. The end result of all this was that our units were under strength and each individual man was badly over-stretched, with all the mental stress that is a result. So each Luftwaffe pilot, living in his chateau with his polished boots and so on, was under the surface a somewhat tormented individual.

My view during the war was that we were engaged in a conflict which was ideological in origin, the conflict between our German National Socialism, which had finally unified Europe after all its centuries of conflict, and the vested interests of International Socialism, represented by the Bolsheviks. I took a great interest in these political matters, you see.

There’s a river inlet with docks near there, and I went over it at maximum speed, which was over 600 kmh. The coast itself just leapt up at

me at that speed, and from that height I could then see a massive line of ships out at sea, about three kilometres from the shore. This just happened like that, in the blink of an eye . . . my canopy glass was just full of these ships. I was astonished at this sight. I wondered if I was hallucinating, or if this was a delirium of some kind. I had never seen such an assembly of ships, and I’m sure nobody will ever see such a thing again, perhaps not in human history. The sea was absolutely solid with metal, that is no exaggeration.

I must be one of very few Germans who saw that from the air.

The French gave you information about Allied panzer positions? Absolutely, yes. I know this for a fact. Remember, please, that the French were in two minds about the invasion at first: would it succeed, or would it fail? In the first days and weeks, it was by no means certain that the landings were a permanent lodgement, or that they would develop into a full invasion even if they were. Everyone remembered the peculiar attack on Dieppe, when the Canadians invaded but then left after a few hours. Was this going to be a repeat of that, but on a bigger scale? So, because of this uncertainty, many of the French in the Allied zone put their bets on both horses, if you see what I mean, and they played up to the Allied invaders while secretly passing information to us.

I swear to you that in one of these dreadful meadows, I saw a line of our Hitler Youth boys, the lads who were sixteen or seventeen, that had been stupidly sent to fight with the Waffen SS. They were all dead, these boys, lined up as if on parade, all shot one after the other. What the devil was the explanation for that act, I do not know. And we were shown all this deliberately, you realise, in order to have an effect on us. We were all crushed by the sights, and we remained virtually silent for days afterwards. This is why I call the events at Falaise and Argentan a massacre.

In the earlier part of the war, you know, such men would have been treated harshly for their symptoms, but by 1943-44 we were so short of manpower that he was transferred to the Atlantic Wall, which was a kindness at first. I can think of other examples, other stories that I heard, and I’m sure this situation was common. Of course, France was a good place to send such unfortunate men. The life in France was without combat, and they could recuperate to some extent while still serving in the forces. But we all knew that an invasion would come, sooner or later.

You expected an invasion in June 1944? Personally, yes, I did. We were told by our officers that an attempt at invading France by sea might be made at any time, and logically this had to be in the summer because of the rough seas in the fall and winter. My comrades and I would often sit at night in our barracks in April and May that year and say, ‘Will they come tomorrow? When will they come? When?’

What was in your mind during the night? I was very apprehensive. I had been in action before, in Tunisia, where I received a head injury from a shell burst, and I dreaded being in action again. To be frank, some men excel in combat, and others manage to somehow struggle through, and I was in the latter group. By the way, I did not really understand the political ideals of the Hitler regime, but still I was convinced that I was in France to do my duty as a soldier and to protect Germany from attack.

Oh, my God, this was at first light on the 6th, when we could make out the sea more clearly, and also the light rain stopped falling. I remember that the sky was overcast above the sea in front of us, but a bit brighter over to the East. When the light came up, some of our men at the end of our trench shouted to the rest to come and see what was happening. When I looked over the trench at that side, onto the sea to the East, I can tell you that my throat went dry, painfully dry, and my hands began to shake. I was not the only person to be affected in this way; one of the very young lads began to retch as if he was going to be sick. It was the effect of pure fear, to be honest with you, but it passed.

In the middle of all this confusion, the thought came to me that those Mustang aircraft were very handsome machines. They were polished metal, and the metal caught the light from the East as they flew off. I was envious that the Allies had such superb machines. We could see on their wings the American star, and one of our young lads shouted out that these planes had flown across the ocean from America. We cursed him for being so stupid, but it shows you how simple-minded some of our troops were, that they could think this was possible.

I was wrong about everything. I know today, ten years later, that everything I believed during the war was a mistake. I understand today that we Germans were not in France to protect the people, we were there only to exploit and persecute them. We should never have been in France, or Russia, Italy, any of those places. The things that we did were appalling . . . everything was wrong. Why would those Americans hate us so much? Why would they cut our throats and break our necks like animals, in the road, without a word? Well, because they knew the truth of what we were doing, that is why.

That’s an interesting point . . . you, as a skilled German panzer man in summer 1944, how long did you think the war was going to last? My God, a long time! We knew about the Reich ‘Wonder Weapons,’ but even so, we suspected that the Americans especially, with all their scientists, would have wonder weapons of their own. Among my comrades, most of us in 1944 felt that the whole war would continue until 1950 or some time such as that. We expected to be defending Europe on both sides, East and West, for at least another five years.

My Feldwebel cursed. He said this smoke was a marker flare, fired by one of the enemy tanks to mark our position. This meant that they had called for an air attack on us. He leaned out of the hatch and shouted to the infantry to extinguish the blue flare, but they were slow to respond, and other blue shells or flares burst close to us then. So this was how the Shermans did battle! They fired smoke shells to mark us out for the air force to attack.