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

[JulianJ]

 

 

This is a slightly-dramatised audiobook by a German WW2 'journalist' = writer for Signal, etc.

 

A fascinating story:

 

Eckhertz went to write a puff piece about the Normandy fortifications in 1944, but it was never published. After the war (1950s) he searched out people from the units he had visited, including finding one guy he'd actually talked to, and got their memories of D Day, and sometimes their other war service.

He intended to publish a book but unfortunately died. His grandson found the papers recently and edited them and published them in book form. This is the 6 hours audiobook interviewing 5 German soldiers who fought on D-Day and it mentions some of the previous article as well.

 

Worth the listen – didn't seem that long

 

I found this absolutely fascinating and vivid. Unlike some memoirs written decades after the events, this seems very accurate to me. The Germans had been taught vehicle and aircraft recognition very well, so their observations are really good “I identified the attacking Jabos as Thunderbolts. I was surprised that they were silver, and not painted with camouflage. Every aircraft had black-and-white stripes on the wings.”

 

The Funnies

 

The Funnies get mentioned quite a bit, because these were a complete surprise and amazement to the Germans, and we get a good idea of how effective they were – one of the Germans thinks that the DDs was a kind of tank/submarine which rose out of the water onto the beach (obviously with its skirts up swimming he didn't notice it, lots of things were going on at the time :-)). AVREs, Flails, crocodiles – terrifyingly effective, and several mentions of Sherman DDs.

 

Chapter 4 (the Engineer Officer in charge of Goliaths), and Chapter 5 (the gun command officer at the Merville Battery – I think he's in Casemate 4 which held out the best) were the most interesting, although the whole thing is worth listening to.

Incidentally the Merville officer says they were expecting 21cm guns, and were a bit ashamed of the stop-gap ex-Czech 100mm they had. Most accounts say the allied intel was 150mm ish, so clearly if they had the artillery the battery was designed for, it could have made a nasty dent in Sword Beach.

I've tried not to give any spoilers.

Warning: some of this is very grim and grisly. I've always thought of the Merville attack as a tremendous piece of Para elan and tactics under adverse circumstances, but it seems quite different from the perspective of the poor Germans trapped in a bunker unable to respond to the attack.

One question: one of the soldiers talks about being strafed by aircraft “of the Hurricane type”. That's the only thing I wondered about, as Hurris had been withdrawn as fighters, could these be IID or IVD ground attack aircraft with 40mm cannon?

Edited April 11, 2021 by JulianJ

[Erwin]

5 hours ago, JulianJ said:

one of the soldiers talks about being strafed by aircraft “of the Hurricane type”. That's the only thing I wondered about, as Hurris had been withdrawn as fighters, could these be IID or IVD ground attack aircraft with 40mm cannon?

Maybe mixed up with Typhoon?

[JulianJ]

Possibly, but the German recognition is so good - "We felt safe behind our minefield, then this clanking thing came into view - it was a Sherman with a girder attachment that held a rotating drum with chains. It started to beat in front of it with huge detonations of mines which didn't affect it, although some chains flew off sometimes." 

The Hurricane is the only bit that I wondered about in the whole thing. Although the Germans haven't seen C47s before they realise they are paratroop transports, while they probably do know what a Hurricane looks like. 

[JulianJ]

A bit of googling brought up some images of Hurris with invasion stripes and the info that Hurricane fighter-bombers were used in Europe up till the end of 44.

http://www.aviation-history.com/hawker/hurrcane.html

[JulianJ]

I am sorry to report that @Bootie informed me that the book is a complete fraud and hoax. He pointed me to this twitter thread, by no less than Giles Milton (one of my favourite historians): 

 

[John Kettler]

JulianJ,

Have the book and read it with keen interest. Frankly, I found it terrifying going in both directions (the shattering Aliied firepower, as described by its targets), and that was before I read about the super weapon. As it happens, I'm familiar with much of what's said there regarding the weapon and its nature. If you search out a book by Renato Vesco with the two word title Intercept ___, you will find considerable discussion, from cited formerly classified C.I.O.S. (Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee) (sample here) and B.I.O.S. (British Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee) reports (sample here), on a dizzying array of German scientific and military R &D. The Germans made a deep study of the so-called coal damp/coal mine explosion and related matters. This became the basis for what we would cal the German FAE (Fuel Air Explosives) program. The claim is made in the D Day book that an early application of the powdered coal and oxygen weapon was in destroying the Maxim Gorky battery at Sevastopol. Here is some material specifically addressing what I just said about German FAE weaponry. The piece at the link specifically talks about pumping coal dust into the Maxim Gorky Battery.

http://myth3.bravesites.com/german-atom-bomb-and-wmds-part-2



 

[John Kettler]

JulianJ,

Didn't think the book made the Germans look at all good. The Goliath unit's near total ineffectiveness being an excellent case in point. The German strongpoint built from a reinforced barn is another example. Who, in a super high air threat environment, makes a strongpoint with near zero overhead protection? But it did provide the only combat report I've ever seen of a Stielgranate armed PaK 36 in action. Shall take a look at the refutations, but, from the standpoint of a former professional military analyst and someone familiar with German secret weapons far beyond what's covered in the usual books, my view is that the book isn't some whole cloth fabrication. Rather, there is a great deal of solid material present, but most people don't know the tech involved, and that includes military writers. What I read was an account by someone whose then job was to present a certain image of the troops in the field, and the original writer several times says what he observed in his initial interviews but dared not submit for publication. The story of the secret weapon fits with other material I came across independently, and it makes eminently good sense for someone involved in such a project to   ask the writer to stay quiet about it until his death, at which point he would no longer be vulnerable to reprisals or being snatched up by the Allies (minus USSR) or USSR and other Eastern Bloc entities. You can see the same thing happening with people who worked on any number of high security programs. Typically, people talk about such things not at all, only in the most veiled terms, or if something has been really troubling their consciences, on their deathbeds. The objection was raised that veterans don't typically talk about what they've seen, but Frontsoldaten and other books show that's not the case when a veteran is writing contemporaneously or talking to fellow soldiers, veterans, loved ones and such--or writing a war memoir. Frontsoldaten and Combat: Pacific War have both shown me that even in letters home soldiers would write the most horrific things, sometimes with a "Don't show this to Mom, Dad" request. The German ones I've read were so horrifying I'm amazed they ever got past the censor, and the descriptions of things like the full details of the Marines dealing with Japanese infantry in spider holes are enough to make you lose your lunch--and dinner. Burgett, in his second book, The Road To Hell, paints an unflinching picture of what he saw, experienced and did. Am not at all sure I wish to sign up for the enormous area of effect for the secret weapon, but I know for sure that even a modest strike of this nature would've been devastating, for the assembly area is packed full of fully unbuttoned tanks, munitions, gasoline, trucks, jeeps and hordes of men. Strike that with FAE, and you'd see destruction that, in terms of target coverage, not even carpet bombing could achieve. There'd be a spectacular initial blast and then a chain reaction of endless secondary explosions and fire. Equipment losses would've been immense, but the real unit killer would've been the personnel losses of highly trained tank crews and support personnel. An armored unit in the assembly area is the very definition of a soft target, however odd that sounds.

Regards,

John Kettler

[LukeFF]

On 4/11/2021 at 1:35 PM, JulianJ said:

A bit of googling brought up some images of Hurris with invasion stripes and the info that Hurricane fighter-bombers were used in Europe up till the end of 44.

http://www.aviation-history.com/hawker/hurrcane.html

In the Balkans but surely not in Northwest Europe - of that I am certain. Hurricanes with invasion stripes were liaison planes. 

Edited May 24, 2021 by LukeFF

[JulianJ]

@John Kettler Thanks for the information.  As you can see I found the book, in its audio version, very convincing. I think I know enough about WW2 to spot obvious fakes. So if it was made up, presumably by mixing up fiction with bits taken from existing German accounts then that would account for its verisimilitude. 

Apart from the Goliaths, which fitted in with other accounts: great idea, but didn't work too well in actuality, there wasn't anything in the audio book about secret weapons?  Maybe that was missed out? I will check out your links.

@LukeFF Yes, that makes sense - the hurris would be too vulnerable in a high air threat environment but could still operate around the med.

[John Kettler]

JulianJ,

You're most welcome. Can't comment about the audio version, since have never heard it and only read the book, which I highly recommend you read, especially if nothing was said in the audio about a German secret weapon.

Regards,

John Kettler