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By Root 1081 0

as in Paris, and for those without a girlfriend there was an army brothel in Bayeux. This had been established in the quiet little town along with an army cinema, a military dental practice and other facilities attached to the Maison de la Wehrmacht. German soldiers in France, especially those quartered amid the rich farmlands of Normandy, availed themselves of another advantage. Those going home on leave went back with wooden boxes packed with meat and dairy produce for families having to survive on ever-diminishing rations. As Allied air attacks against rail communications intensified in the spring of 1944, Norman farmers had found it increasingly difficult to market their produce. Ordinary German soldiers known as ‘Landser’ and NCOs were able to swap their cigarette ration for butter and cheese, which they would then send back to Germany. The only problem was that the air attacks on transport also made the Feldpost less reliable.

One senior NCO spent a night before the invasion in a dugout with his company commander, discussing how people back in Germany would react when it came. He was, however, preoccupied by another problem. ‘I have here more than four kilos of butter,’ he wrote to his wife, Laura, ‘and I very much want to send it to you, if I only get the opportunity.’ He presumably never did, because a few days later he ‘gave his life für Führer, Volk und das Großdeutsche Reich’, according to the standard formula which his company commander used in a letter of condolence to his wife.

One soldier in the 716th Infanterie-Division defending the coast was asked by a French storekeeper how he would react when the invasion came. ‘I will behave like a mussel,’ he replied. Many, however, thought of their patriotic duty. ‘Don’t be too concerned if I am not able to write in the near future or if I am in action,’ a senior NCO with the 2nd Panzer-Division wrote home. ‘I will write to you as often as I can, even if sparks really begin to fly. One cannot rule out the possibility that the great blow against the Fatherland, of which our enemies have been dreaming for so long, will now be struck. You can be sure though that we will stand firm.’

During those first days of June, there were numerous contradictory indications of the expected invasion. According to Rommel’s naval adviser, Konteradmiral Ruge, an imminent attack was discounted because of the weather. German meteorologists, who lacked the information available to the Allies from weather stations in the western Atlantic, believed that conditions would not be right before 10 June. Rommel decided to seize the opportunity to return to Germany for his wife’s birthday and to see Hitler at Berchtesgaden to ask him for two more panzer divisions. He clearly showed great confidence in the forecasts, for he had not forgotten his absence from the Afrika Korps due to illness when Montgomery launched the Battle of Alamein, nineteen months earlier. Generaloberst Friedrich Dollman, the commander-in-chief of the Seventh Army, also decided on the basis of the weather forecasts to hold a command post exercise for divisional commanders in Rennes on 6 June.

Others, however, seemed to sense that something might be happening this time, even after all the false alerts that spring. On 4 June, Obersturmführer Rudolf von Ribbentrop, the son of Hitler’s foreign minister, was returning from a 12th SS Panzer-Division radio exercise when his vehicle was machine-gunned by an Allied fighter. He was visited the next day in hospital by a member of the German embassy in Paris. The diplomat said as he was leaving that, according to the latest report, the invasion was due to start that day.

‘Well, another false alarm,’ said Ribbentrop.

‘The fifth of June is not quite over yet,’ his visitor replied.

In Brittany, an increase in Resistance activity aroused suspicions. North-east of Brest, an airdrop of arms to the local network had landed almost on top of the 353rd Infanterie-Division’s headquarters. ‘Couriers and individual soldiers were waylaid’ and its commander, General Mahlmann, only just survived