"A German view of the Normandy campaign" Topic

Robert Kershaw's book "It never snows in September" gives a great account of Market Garden from the German point of view. Is there and equivalent book giving the German view of the Normandy campaign as it progressed? All I've read to date has been from the Allied viewpoint.

This is pretty good…."D-Day Through German Eyes."

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Invasion They're Coming.

Mike Bunkermesiter Creek
Bunker Talk blog

This is pretty good…."D-Day Through German Eyes."

I read that book, and the follow-up "book 2".

I will say I enjoyed them, and found them interesting. To a degree. But I was left wondering if I was reading real accounts or propaganda.

Since I read them I have discovered there is much controversy of the veracity of those books. If you read the comments / reviews on Amazon, you will see a substantial number that throw shade at these books.

Key issues:
- There is no verification that the supposed original interviews ever took place. Or even that the supposed original interviewer actually existed and performed the type of work the author claims (the books assert they are post-war composites of wartime interviews by a German writer).
- The personalities in the book(s) don't seem to ever know what units they are with, what positions they are defending, etc. In almost every other veteran's account I have ever read, the vet's unit (platoon, company, battalion, regiment, division…) are always top-of-mind -- they are essentially part of the soldier's personal identity. And in other first-hand accounts I have seen of German troops in or around Normandy, they all seem to know the exact name/number of the sites they manned.
- The personalities in the book(s) never seem to know the guys around them very well. In almost every other first-hand account I've read, combat vets know their squad mates and platoon mates very well, and these individuals make up the dominant part of their stories. Vets talk about the people they fought with, not the expressions on the faces of their adversaries.
- The actions described in the books don't seem to correspond well with the known actions of allies. Some critiques (I have not checked into this) assert that places and actions are attributed to wrong forces (ie: British troops where there were no Brits in action, or SS troops where there were no SS troops in action).

I have ridden through such controversies in the past. For example the whole discrediting of Guy Sajer's book "The Forgotten Soldier" eventually turned out to be wrong, and that book is once again (and properly) held up as a valid first-hand account. So I will not say that these books are frauds. But I will suggest that they might well be. So you might want to take that into account if you are considering buying them.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I've read "D-day through German eyes", and thanks for the comments on it. I am more interested in the longer campaign though, not 6th June specifically.

If you like d-day through german eyes then sven hassell's works are also fantastic.
Or maybe that should be fanciful.
Bring on the dancing bears.

Try "Two Sides of the Beach" by Edmund Blandford. While not strictly from the German point of view, it compares both sides' experiences of the same events.

Tbh, I dont think there are any in the format of InsiS, outside of "Paul Carell" propaganda pieces. There are the usual snippets of various Generals memoirs, esp Von Lucks "panzer commander", Von Mellenthins "panzer battles" (albeit more about Alsace), and if you can stomach it, Kurt Meyers "Grenadiers".

There are odd snippets of personal accounts in various books, again, all the usual suspects, Keegan, Hastings, Neillands, D'Este et al

Hi

'The Germans in Normandy' by Richard Hargreaves

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Cheers Paul

Go straight to the horses mouth:
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Pretty well every memoir that I've read from the German side has been about as reliable as Sven Hassel. The latter isn't any more dishonest than the rest of them. He's just more amusing and on less of a mission to hide what went on.

The giveaway is the organ interlude. This is a staple of the fraudulent memoir. In the midst of battle, with bombs and Wagnerian artillery thundering in the background, the cultured German officer goes into a battered church, steps up to the organ and plays Bach deeply, deeply movingly. As he finishes, he looks around and is surprised to see himself surrounded by locals. They've all come out of hiding, like the woodland creatures in Bambi, to listen, entranced, to the beautiful German music. Many are in tears, weeping quietly as they remember the happier times in which they last heard those notes.

Then battle resumes and the barbaric, philistine Russians, British, or Americans carry on pounding the city with their bombers and artillery, thuggishly smashing down the elegant and cultured civilisation established by the Aryans and which the latter took up arms only to protect. The only organ ever associated with the Russians is the Stalin Organ.

You'd need a heart of stone not to laugh.

There's one of these episodes in Hans Schäufler, there's an eerily similar one in von Luck, there are several clones in Sven Hassel and there's even one in Jack Higgins' The Eagle Has Landed (as Higgins isn't his name, he wasn't a German officer and the whole thing is made up, TEHL is arguably a constructive German WW2 memoir by another name).

It's like in American war movies of a certain vintage there was always a guy in the squad who played the harmonica. I've met one person in my entire life who played the harmonica. The difference is you weren't sold American war movies as fact.

The giveaway is the organ interlude. This is a staple of the fraudulent memoir. In the midst of battle, with bombs and Wagnerian artillery thundering in the background, the cultured German officer goes into a battered church, steps up to the organ and plays Bach deeply, deeply movingly. s…………….
There's one of these episodes in Hans Schäufler, there's an eerily similar one in von Luck, there are several clones in Sven Hassel

It appears in the weekly newsreels. Die Deutsche Wochenschau 723 for July 7th 1944 shows a German soldier playing the organ in a wrecked Normandy church.
From 12m 45s here link

David Isby has a series:

Fighting the Invasion
Fighting in Normandy
Fighting the Breakout

I have the second of these. It's mostly reports from commanders, post-war interviews, and I think some personal recollections by German commanders. These can be a bit dry, and are not front-line soldiers' stories. But they do reflect what the German commanders were thinking, from division-level up.

Mark

@ mkenny

Thanks, I love it: "During his rest break, a German soldier plays the organ in a church damaged by British artillery fire". Is it Bach? It usually is but I can't tell.

It's actual vintage Nazi propaganda repackaged as fact years later, David Irving style.

The giveaway is the organ interlude.

That is a truly insightful analysis, 4th Cuir. Talk about time-on-target!

Is it Bach? It usually is but I can't tell.

Can't say as I know the piece, but it sounds to me more like Schubert or Handel. Just sayin' …

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Two good (non-romanticized) sources for German tactical experiences:

Normandy -
"The History of the 12. SS-Panzerdivision Hitlerjugend", by Hubert Meyer.

Eastern Front -
"The History of the Panzerkorps Grossdeutschland", by Helmuth Spaeter.

B

Thanks all. A brilliant analysis, 4th Cuirassier, I'll need to back to von Luck to remind myself of it (though I feel a little dirty when I do read it).

Von Luck sets his made-up organ interlude somewhere in Normandy whereas Schäufler's is on the Baltic Front. I don't recall where Hassel's are but it would have to be a country in which village churches had organs, which excludes Russia where most of his fantasies are set.

Von Luck's memoirs are a hoot. As well as a chaste visit to a brothel, where he didn't partake (riiiiiiiiiight), he also visits a concentration camp and notices nothing amiss. He unfailingly forms lifelong friendships with the occupied citizenry, and he has a lovely civilised dinner with captured British soldiers in the Siwa oasis. All just comrades following their orders, see? Ve are ze same, Tommy, you and I.

Then you read Johnny Johnson's memoirs in which he describes the vomitoria in the captured Luftwaffe bases. What a civilised lot the allies so thoughtlessly defeated!

Maybe it's from all that model paint. Studies have claimed that inhaling its fumes at a young age permanently damages cerebral tissue and can interfere with normal cognitive and emotional development.