D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944

by Holger Eckhertz

me, but by my grandfather, Dieter Eckhertz. In 1944, he held the prestigious role of a military journalist,

The designs of the Tobruks varied, but most types I saw had a concrete box about three metres square and two metres high, dug in below ground level; the cupola was a circular opening with a concrete rim for mounting the gun.

Did you have any indication or suspicion that the invasion was imminent on that day?

None German soldier that day at Normandie had any.

I was seen briefly by a medic who gave me a ‘soldier’s cocktail,’ which was a mix of morphine and amphetamine against the pain and exhaustion.

There also came into the woods a unit of SS infantry. This was a platoon of about twenty youths who were extremely young, about seventeen, and they had been cut off from their commanders by a Jabo attack on a road to the south. They were very heavily armed, with MG34 and MP40, and these weapons looked out of place alongside their boyish faces.

The first time I heard the phrase ‘D Day’ was also after the war ended, of course; during the war, we Germans referred to it as ‘The Invasion of France’ or ‘The Normandy Attack.’

He was quite a short man, but had a very powerful presence,

Rommel

What was the mood among your unit in the days and weeks before the invasion?

The sea was completely covered with this huge collection of vessels.

After the initial burst of energy and determination that I felt when the attack started, I began to feel pity for these troops, because they kept arriving in landing craft. The craft would deposit them in the shallows, and they would walk towards us through the water in the same way as the first set of troops. We fired at them in the same way, causing the same deaths and injuries. My loader was moved by this, and he shook his head, saying that the Americans should not sacrifice their men in this way.

Somme in the First War. At the Somme, it is said that some German machine gunners shouted at the advancing British to save themselves and retreat.

Americans who had taken advantage of the shingle ridge found it impossible to move out of them, as we fired on them as soon as they emerged. At the same time, the tide was coming in fully, so there was less and less space available on the sand for men to find cover at all. This meant that the soldiers arriving behind them had less potential space to take cover, and so the intensive killing began again. We used our machine gun again from this point on.

On a wider scale, now that we have time to look back and reflect on it, it seems to me that the whole situation in Normandy was really the fault of our regime in the Reich for involving the Americans in the European war at all. What I mean is that I remember after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the American declaration of war was purely against Japan, not against their ally Germany. This made sense, of course – Germany did not bomb Pearl Harbour. We all said at the time, ‘This is good, the Americans will not be involved in our war, they will keep their distance from the English in Europe.’ But then, I think it was the next day or forty-eight hours later, Adolf Hitler took everyone by surprise when he went on the radio and declared war on the USA! Why he did such an insane thing, I cannot begin to understand, even today. But that act made the Normandy invasion inevitable, because the English and Canadians could never have invaded alone, and we in the Reich could have focussed our efforts purely on the war against Russia. If we could imagine how our lives would have been if Hitler had not done that – well, the destinies of so many people would have developed in completely different ways and forms.

‘They may come at any time,’ he says to me, with a wink. ‘With their finances, their gold and oil, they have the luxury of using England as a harbour for their ships and weapons.’

‘With their finances, their gold and oil, they have the luxury of using England as a harbour for their ships and weapons.’

Our military rations were basic, but these were amply supplemented by produce from local farmers and retailers, who had no compunction about trading food with us in exchange for cigarettes, gasoline and even leather for boot-soles,

When I read today about the French Resistance, I am impressed at their tenacity, but if the readers of such books could see the trading that went on between us and the local French, they might form a different view of life in France at that time. Well, but this is perhaps a case of history being written by victors.

We saw the British as an outdated Imperial force, organised by freemasons, who sought to turn the clock back one hundred years to the days when their word was the law around the world.

The Vichy government had three consistent points in its propaganda regarding the threats to the French people: these were De Gaulle, freemasonry and communism.

As for the American state, we perceived that as controlled by the forces of international finance and banking, who wished to abolish national governments and have the world run by banks and corporations.

Ironically, we had a large contingent of Russian troops with us on the Atlantic wall, who were defectors now serving in the German forces,

‘United Europe’ was a universal slogan. We should remember that both the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS had huge recruitment campaigns in all the countries under Reich control, with the emphasis that people from all the countries of Europe should unite under arms and defend European unification.

We should remember that both the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS had huge recruitment campaigns in all the countries under Reich control, with the emphasis that people from all the countries of Europe should unite under arms and defend European unification.

If we look at the Waffen SS, we see these very effective non-German units from all over Europe: the French, the famous Belgian-Walloon people under Leon Degrelle, the Dutch, Norwegians, the Croat Muslims with t...

One question I have received differing answers to: did you in the local German forces expect an attack or an invasion at that time, or was it a surprise, a lightning bolt and so on?

The scale of the June 6th landings when they actually happened was beyond what we had imagined possible.

the St Nazaire atrocity in which they massacred a large number of unarmed German officers and French civilians. Incidentally, this is one point in which I have not changed my thinking since the war. The St Nazaire raid was a deliberate massacre by the British.

bunkers, Tobruk emplacements and Resistance Points.

I was astonished at the number of craft; I would not like to estimate how many, but I recall that the foremost was possibly a few kilometres from the low tide obstacles, while the furthest were literally on the horizon. These craft included destroyer-type warships, tugs, and numerous low vessels which seemed to be invasion barges. There was a great variety of other boats. I was struck speechless at this sight, which I had never imagined possible. The sheer volume of craft was what amazed me. Even as I stared, more ships came into view, endlessly filling the sea. I remember, if I may be honest, that I began to tremble, and I broke out in a sweat.

Juno Beach: The Goliath Engineer

new types of anti-tank ditch, which had an angled floor inside the ditch and could be armed with explosives or incendiaries when a vehicle fell into it, and new anti-tank ramps made of curved concrete shapes.

Goliath was a small vehicle about the size of a wheelbarrow or similar. It had a petrol engine and ran on tracks like a small tank. Its body was packed with explosives equivalent to a Stuka-type bomb, and it was operated by wires which trailed from behind it, connected to a control unit held by a soldier. The operator would start its engine and control its speed and direction through the wires, sending it close to a target and then detonating it remotely. Although it was designed for offensive purposes, it was felt that it could be used in defence also, for example by sending it out from bunkers against formations of tanks or assemblies of troops, where a bomb of that size would cause a very destructive blast wave.

The bunker was accessed by a tunnel shielded by a concrete casing; this casing was camouflaged with foliage and stones to make it seem part of the seafront. The concealment of the whole Goliath bunker was extremely effective. The bunker itself was a concrete circle with a domed roof, at the lower end of the tunnel, and because we had surrounded it with our painted ‘rocks’ it was impossible to see from the beach side.

In the Goliath bunker, we had no radio set or telephone, and had no understanding of what was in progress elsewhere.

time we trusted the state message that an attack on France was an attack on a united Europe and on the Reich itself.

To be frank, though, when you are in a bunker in the dark, waiting for a possible attack, your thoughts are focussed on immediate concerns.

These were Polish, Ukrainian or Baltic men who had been enlisted or had volunteered for the Wehrmacht, and wore the same uniforms as the German troops, serving under the same officers. We must remember that at this stage in the war, the German armed forces were a kaleidoscope of European nationalities and languages. This to some extent bolstered the idea of the ‘United Europe.’

could see large formations of Allied bombers moving south. There were also numbers of planes towing what appeared to be gliders. All these aircraft had conspicuous black and white stripes on their wings, and it was obvious that there were no Luftwaffe planes in the sky, not a single one to be seen.

You have told me very explicitly about your experience on June 6th. I am grateful for the candour you have shown in describing these events. These events should not be forgotten; that is my main concern. The experience of the soldiers on all sides is recorded quite rarely, other than in commercial cinema films and so on, which are a mockery of what we experienced. I hope that my experiences can be kept on record, and I fervently hope that none of our children’s generation will have to experience what we on all sides experienced in Normandy. That is my most fervent wish. ***

Above all, there was no sign of our forces fighting back on sea or in the air.

We were constantly taking refuge under trees or in ditches as these aircraft, apparently without any opposition, roved across the inland landscape.