Rückzug: The German Retreat from France, 1944

3. Development of the Situation through the Middle of August 1944

31 Chapter 3 Development of the Situation through the Middle of August 1944 1. The Situation through the End of July At the time of the Allied landings there were forty-eight infantry and ten Panzer divisions based in France in the area of responsibility of OB West. The OB West himself, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, did not report to the Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Command , or OKH) but rather to the operations staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command, or OKW). France and the occupied areas in the west were designated OKW theaters of operations. That arrangement, however, did not have any important practical effect on the command channels, because all military command authority converged on Hitler, who in 1938 personally assumed the position of Supreme Commander of the German Wehrmacht and in 1941 further assumed the position of Supreme Commander of the German Army. The primary subordinate headquarters of OB West were Army Group B (Heeresgruppe B), commanding all German forces north of the Loire River, and Army Task Group G (Armeegruppe G), commanding the southern sector. (See Map 1.) In addition, Rundstedt was able to draw on security units under the Military Commander in France, the supreme chief for German military administration in the country. As OB West, Rundstedt was the latter’s superior in all matters relating to the country’s security.1 At the start of the campaign the Military Commander in France was General of Infantry Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel. On July 23, 1944, he was replaced by General of Aviation Karl Kitzinger. Except in the areas of the German army’s direct combat operations, the Military Commander in France was responsible for law and order in the occupied territories. He was supported by a general staff for military matters and an administrative staff for civil concerns. In his 32 Part 1 four (later five) districts,2 he had nineteen security regiments with about one hundred battalions.3 Their combat effectiveness, however , was limited at best because they consisted mostly of older and previously wounded soldiers. The security units also were armed only with light infantry equipment. Quite often the soldiers carried captured weapons. In addition to the army units, OB West had operational control of the Luftwaffe field and parachute divisions stationed in France, plus the units of the Waffen-SS.4 Beyond army command channels, OB West coordinated with the Third Air Fleet under Sperrle and with Navy Group West under Vice Admiral Theodor Krancke. On June 6 only seven German divisions were deployed in Normandy in the sector of Army Group B under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.5 On that day the first wave of Allied forces totaling some eight divisions managed to establish beachheads along the Calvados coast by conducting an air-land-sea three-dimensional operation .6 The impressive efficacy of this combined-arms effort was one of the key factors in the Allies’ favor in the western theater throughout the war. The success of the landing operation was clear by June 11, when all the separate beachheads were finally linked up. With the loss of the battle for the beaches, which earlier had been touted as the decisive battle, the long-dreaded second front had at last become a reality. The war was now a multifront fight. Nevertheless, Hitler resisted accepting the necessary conclusions of the situation. Quite the contrary, the order was to carry on. To accomplish that, the Germans throughout the month of June tried to conduct an “offensive defensive fight.” In the process, Rundstedt came back to the view he had advocated before the landings , in agreement with General of Panzer Troops Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, during the “Panzer Argument” with Rommel. Rundstedt believed that the invasion had to be defeated by a major tank battle that would be fought against the Allies in the country’s interior. Prior to the Allied landings, when the controversy revolved around the deployment of the Panzer units, Hitler had decided on a compromise that was probably the worst solution possible from a military operational perspective. Now Hitler once again failed to make a comprehensive decision on the Panzer divisions, thereby depriving Rundstedt of one important resource in his attempt to solve the problem. Development of the Situation through the Middle of August 33 The Germans could not establish the necessary basic conditions to successfully execute Rundstedt’s plan. That fatal...