Blood and steel. 2 : the Wehrmacht Archive : retreat to the Reich, September to December 1944

167 Pages·2015·1.54 MB·English

by  Graves

Blood and Steel 2: The Wehrmacht Archive:
Retreat to the Reich, September to December 1944
This edition published in 2015 by Frontline Books,
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS
www.frontline-books.com
Copyright © Donald E. Graves, 2015
The right of Donald E. Graves to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN: 978-1-84832-851-8
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-47384-574-9
PRC ISBN: 978-1-47384-575-6
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Contents
List of Plates
Introduction
A Note to the Reader
German Ranks and Their Equivalents
Abbreviations and Acronyms Used in Text and Notes
Chapter 1 Stemming the Flood
Preparing to Defend the Reich, August to November 1944
Goebbels Scrapes the Barrel; Message from Field Marshal Model; The Siegfried Line; Orders to Hold
the Scheldt Estuary; October 1944: Field Marshal Model Exhorts; Creation of the Volkssturm, October
1944; Goebbels Sums Up the General Situation, 27 October 1944; Order of the Day by Field Marshal
Walter Model, 9 November 1944; The Goebbels Grenadiers; The High Command Discusses
Surrender; Major Eberhard Furst von Urach
Chapter 2 Practical and Impractical Measures for Improving Morale on
the Western Front
‘Führer Words’ and Battle Songs; To the Last – Well Almost; Behaviour of Officers; Festung
Walcheren; Battle Creed of 2nd Parachute Division; Special Awards for Snipers; Analysis of Mail; A
Propaganda Company Officer Reports on Morale on the Western Front; Hunger at Dunkirk
Chapter 3 The Individual Soldier’s Experience
Diaries, Letters, Reports and Memoirs
Extracts from the Diary of a German Officer captured by Belgian Partisans; Experience of an Officer
of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division Götz von Berlichingen, June–November 1944; Calais
Calling; A German Account of the Arnhem Battle, September 1944; Life on Walcheren in the Autumn
of 1944; The Thinking Sergeant; Morale of Pilots
Chapter 4 The Home Front
War Comes to a German Family; Diary of a Nazi Girl; A Race-conscious Nazified Girl; Roetgen –
Six Weeks after US Occupation
Chapter 5 Formation and Unit Organization and History
Organization of the 107th Tank Brigade, September 1944; Report on Status of Parachute Divisions
Encountered in France; Hermann Goering Reserve and Training Regiment; Organization and History
of the Flying Bomb Regiment; History of the 279 Magen (Stomach) Battalion; In Memoriam: 3rd
Parachute Division
Chapter 6 Tank and Anti-Tank Weapons and Tactics
Tactics of German Assault Gun Brigades; Assault Gun Tactics; German Tiger Tank Tactics; German
Battlefield Recovery of Armoured Vehicles; Use of the 88mm Pak 43 Anti-Tank Gun; Using the
Panzerfaust as a Flying Mine
Chapter 7 Infantry Tactics and Weapons
Defensive Position of 858th Grenadier Regiment; Employment of Company and Battalion Reserves;
A German Regimental Commander’s Critique, 91st Light Infantry Division; German Night Fighting
Tactics; Enemy Sniping Methods
Chapter 8 Recruiting, Replacements and Training
Manpower in the German Army; The Formation of New German Divisions; Reinforcement Situation
in Italy, Autumn 1944; The Sad Story of Battle Group Gobel; Recruiting and Training of Officers in
the German Army; Training of Officer Candidates; German Recruiting Methods 1944
Chapter 9 Problems
Desertion, Discipline, Transport and Food
Desertion in the German Army; Discipline in 606 Division; German Courts-Martial; The Supply
Transport of a German Division; German Rations and Messing; German Army Rations
Chapter 10 Propaganda
The Watch on the Rhine; Skorpion Tells All; German Counter-Propaganda Measures; The Power of
the Written Word; Don’t Listen, Friends – It’s Treason
Chapter 11 German Assessments of Allied Troops
German Intelligence Notes on the Arnhem Operation; The German High Command Discusses the
American Soldier; What Germans Think of American Soldiers; Enemy Interrogation Report of a
Talkative Allied Soldier; What the Enemy Thinks of Americans
Chapter 12 In Enemy Hands
The Experience of Allied and German Prisoners of War
German Interrogation Methods; Interrogation at Aachen; The Pride of the Wehrmacht
Chapter 13 Humour (Such as it Was)
Sieg Heil by Numbers; Let the People Speak – Quick, Herman, the Scissors; Martinets on the Italian
Front
List of Plates
German prisoners, August 1944. (U.S. Army)
Dolle Dinsdage (‘Mad Tuesday’) was the Dutch term for 5 September 1944
when amazed civilians watched the Wehrmacht’s panic-stricken flight through
their country in a variety of vehicles.
Allied airpower. By the autumn of 1944 the Allied air forces ruled the skies over
western Europe. (U.S. Army)
Map of the Western Front, September 1944. (Canadian Army Historical Section)
‘For Freedom and Life’: German poster extolling the Volkssturm.
Feldmarschall Walter Model (1891–1945). (Author’s collection)
A Volkssturm unit prepares for battle. (U.S. Army)
Map of the Siegfried Line, 1944. (1st Canadian Army Intelligence Summary)
‘Front and Home Front – the Guarantors of Victory’: a German propaganda
poster of the late-war period.
Page from a manual for the Panzerfaust, the hollow-charge weapon that was
deadly at close range to Allied armour (Author’s collection)
German paratrooper, 1944. (Author’s collection)
Destroyed bridge over the Albert Canal, Belgium, 1944. (U.S. Army)
Generaloberst Kurt Student (1891–1978). (Author’s collection)
Flooded polderland, October 1944. (Library and Archives of Canada)
Feldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt.
Canadian armour advances east of the Scheldt, October 1944. (Library and
Archives of Canada)
The first ship to enter Antwerp, November 1944. (Library and Archives of
Canada)
Canadian armour knocked out in Holland. (Author’s collection)
Dead German, Holland 1944. (Author’s collection)
Nijmegen Bridge, 1944. (Library and Archives of Canada) Map of the Northern
Front, October–November 1944. (Canadian Army Historical Section)
German assault gun, 1944. (U.S. Army)
The Sturmgeschütz III Ausf. G. (Drawing by Christopher Johnson)
Typhoon fighter-bombers, 1944. (Library and Archives of Canada)
Introduction
In the summer of 1944 the Third Reich was pummelled by a series of
catastrophes. On 4 June, Allied armies took Rome and two days later landed in
Normandy. On 22 June, the Soviet Union launched Operation BAGRATION
against Army Group Centre and over the next two months followed it with a
series of major offensives that totally or partially destroyed eighty-three German
divisions on the Eastern Front. Germany’s allies, sensing that the tide of war had
shifted against her, began to drop away – in short order, Bulgaria, Rumania and
Finland either negotiated peace with the Soviet Union or switched sides and
Hungary teetered on the brink. On 20 July a conspiracy of army officers
attempted to assassinate Hitler and, although they failed, the event sent shock
waves throughout the Nazi state. Three days later the United States army began
Operation COBRA, the breakout from Normandy, which eventually caused the
nearcollapse of the German forces on that front. On 15 August, the Western
Allies landed in southern France and, on 25 August, Paris was liberated.
Brussels followed on 3 September and Antwerp the following day. The German
retreat from France showed no signs of stopping and threatened to become a
panic-stricken migration. The Dutch would long remember 5 September 1944 as
Dolle Dinsdage (‘Crazy Tuesday’) as long columns of German soldiers, sailors
and airmen, mounted on a bewildering variety of transport piled high with loot
and lady friends, drove through their towns day and night. By the first week of
September, it appeared to many Allied soldiers and Europeans that the war
would soon be over.
During early September, Allied armies came very close to breaking the back
of the Wehrmacht in the west. The problem was that as the American, British