Normandy Invasion
Buildup, 1943–44 > Mines at the beach, tanks in reserve
The Germans were not altogether deluded. Hitler himself declared a last-minute premonition of a Normandy landing. By then, however, the dispositions had been made. Rommel, in his brief period of responsibility for the Atlantic Wall, had been able to decuple mine laying, so that by June 5 some four million more mines had been laid on the beaches. He had not, however, been able to position the German tank divisions as he wanted. Rundstedt wished to hold them back from the coast as a reserve. Rommel, warning that Allied aircraft would destroy them as they advanced, wished to place them near the beaches. Hitler, adjudicating in the dispute, worsened the situation by allotting some divisions to Rommel and some to Rundstedt, keeping others under his own command. The rest of Rommel's Army Group B was made up of the infantry divisions of the Seventh Army (under Friedrich Dollmann) in Normandy and Brittany and of the Fifteenth Army (under Hans von Salmuth) in Pas-de-Calais and eastward. The reserve tank forces, given the name Panzer Group West and commanded by Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, came nominally under Rundstedt's direct command.
-
·Introduction
-
·Planning, 1941–43
-
·Buildup, 1943–44
-
·D-Day, June 6, 1944
-
·Stalemate, June–July 1944
-
·Breakout, August 1944
-
·Additional Reading
-
·Overviews
-
·Official histories
-
·Video
-
