D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [244]
On the afternoon of 14 August, Kluge had left La Roche-Guyon. He spent the night at Fifth Panzer Army rear headquarters in the small château of Fontaine l’Abbé, east of Bernay. Soon after dawn on 15 August, Kluge set off westwards into the Falaise pocket for a meeting with the two army commanders, Generals Hausser and Eberbach. Kluge rode in his Kübelwagen, accompanied by his aide, Oberleutnant Tangermann, another officer on a motorbicycle and a signals vehicle.
This small convoy was soon spotted by RAF Typhoons, which swooped into the attack. Their cannon fire destroyed the signals vehicle, seriously wounding its occupants, one of them mortally. The numbers of Allied fighter-bombers overhead made any further movement by road extremely dangerous. Kluge, already in a state of nervous exhaustion, seems to have suffered some sort of breakdown. He was settled in the shade of a tree to rest. One can only speculate about his state of mind, except to say that he found it hard to accept that his name would forever be associated with the collapse of the German armies in the West. Oberleutnant Tangermann even believed that his venture into the Kessel, or encirclement, was to seek death in the face of the enemy.
When General Jodl telephoned that day from East Prussia to speak to Kluge and heard that he had been out of contact since the morning, Hitler’s distrust flared into open suspicion that he was negotiating surrender terms. Jodl ordered Army Group B and General Eberbach to make every effort to establish Kluge’s whereabouts and to report back every hour. At 21.00 hours, a KR-Blitz teleprinter message, the highest priority, arrived from East Prussia. It stated, ‘The Führer has ordered: so long as Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge cannot be found while away from his command post, I entrust Generaloberst Hausser with the leadership of both the Fifth Panzer Army and Panzer Group Eberbach.’
Only after dark was it possible for Kluge and his surviving companions to continue. They finally reached Eberbach’s command post at 22.00 hours. The fifty-mile journey had taken sixteen hours. Generalfeldmarschall Keitel insisted on speaking to Kluge as soon as he heard of his arrival. It seems that OKW believed Kluge’s account of his movements, but Hitler, who had planned to replace Kluge in any case after the failure of the Avranches counter-attack, immediately ordered Generalfeldmarschall Model to fly to France and take over. Model, ‘one of the harshest and most feared army commanders’, was a devoted follower of Hitler, who had awarded him the Knight’s Cross with Diamonds. Rather like Kluge himself before taking command, Model had been convinced that the disaster in Normandy was entirely due to bad leadership.
Leutnant Dankwart Graf von Arnim, a staff officer in Paris, was woken at 04.30 hours on 17 August to be told that Model had arrived. He was to go at once to the headquarters of Oberkommando West at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The first thing he heard was that Model, finding only a drunken army doctor there, went berserk and had him shot on the spot. Arnim was to accompany Model to La Roche-Guyon. There was an early morning mist as they set off up the Seine valley in a convoy, with an escort troop of self-propelled 20 mm flak guns provided on Hitler’s orders. Arnim was seated next to the driver in Model’s armoured staff car. Model reprimanded him severely for wearing a uniform cap instead of a helmet.
When they drove up to the entrance of the château, Arnim spotted the faces of staff officers peering anxiously from windows. Speidel, the chief of staff, met them on the steps. Behind him was Kluge, who had received notice of his dismissal just an hour before by teleprinter. Model, according to Generalleutnant Bayerlein, who was present at the meeting,