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By Root 1062 0

Normandy, especially in the British sector on the eastern flank round Caen, would see one of the greatest concentrations of SS panzer divisions since the Battle of Kursk. There would be the 1st SS Panzer-Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler; the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend, which contained the youngest and most fanatical troops of all, and then later, when they were transferred from the eastern front, the 9th SS Panzer-Division Hohenstaufen and the 10th SS Panzer-Division Frundsberg. British armour would also encounter two SS Tiger battalions, with devastating consequences. The American forces to the west would find themselves facing only the 17th SS Panzergrenadier-Division Götz von Berlichingen, the weakest and worst trained of all the Waffen-SS formations in Normandy, and the 2nd SS Panzer-Division Das Reich, which was soon to become even more infamous for its brutality. But the Americans would come up against many more infantry divisions. Of these, General der Fallschirmtruppen Eugen Meindl’s II Paratroop Corps would prove the most formidable.

The commander of LXXXIV Corps, which controlled the Normandy sector, was General der Artillerie Erich Marcks, a highly respected and intelligent leader. Thin and wiry, he had lost one eye in the First World War and a deep scar ran across his nose and cheek. The bespectacled Marcks had also lost a leg earlier in the Second World War. ‘He was of Spartan-like, old Prussian simplicity,’ wrote one of his admiring officers. On one occasion, when whipped cream was served at dinner, he said, ‘I do not wish to see this again as long as our country is starving.’

Marcks was indeed an exception. Since its defeat in 1940, France had been seen as ‘a conqueror’s paradise’, according to Rundstedt’s chief of staff, General Günther Blumentritt. As a posting, the country represented the complete antithesis of the Russian front. In fact unmarried officers on leave from the war in the east tried to obtain passes for Paris instead of spending it in an austere and heavily bombed Berlin. They far preferred the prospect of sitting in the sun outside cafés on the Champs-Elysées, then dining in Maxim’s and going on to nightclubs and cabarets afterwards.

Even the idea of civilians helping the Allies did not seem to disturb them too much. ‘The enemy will certainly be well informed because it is easy to conduct espionage here,’ wrote a technical officer from the 9th Panzer-Division on leave in Paris. ‘There are signposts everywhere and generally relationships between soldiers and the fair sex are very close. I have spent wonderful days here. One really has to have seen and experienced Paris oneself and I’m glad I had the opportunity. You can get everything here in Paris.’

Formations transferred from the eastern front, especially Waffen-SS divisions, believed that the soldiers garrisoned in France had become soft. ‘They had done nothing but live well and send things home,’ commented one general. ‘France is a dangerous country, with its wine, women and pleasant climate.’ The troops of the 319th Infanterie-Division on the Channel Islands were even thought to have gone native from mixing with the essentially English population. They received the nickname of the ‘King’s Own German Grenadiers’. Ordinary soldiers, however, soon called it ‘the Canada Division’, because Hitler’s refusal to redeploy them meant that they were likely to end up in Canadian prisoner of war camps.

Members of the German occupation army in France indeed led an easy life. This had been helped by the correct behaviour demanded by their commanders towards the civilian population. In Normandy, the farmers above all had simply wanted to get on with their lives and their work. It was usually the arrival of SS units or Osttruppen in a neighbourhood during the spring of 1944 which led to outbreaks of drunken violence, with shooting in the streets at night, occasional incidents of rape and frequent examples of robbery and looting.

Many German officers and soldiers had struck up liaisons with young Frenchwomen in the provinces as well