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

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julianj

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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 a book. 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 onslaught.


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?
 
Another good book from the German point of view you may enjoy:

Invasion! They're Coming!: The German Account of the D-Day Landings and the 80 Days Battle for France (Schiffer Military History)

Speaking of air craft, there's one part in it when they talk about how they would lay a trap for the fighters.
They would lure them in to a kill zone.
I would hate to be the bait. ;)
 
I checked up on the Hurricanes, and yes, they were used during and after the invasion as ground attack planes so the German was correct in identifying them.
 
JulianJ sorry but that book is absolutely dreadful. It is completely fabricated and is viewed with disdain by academia and enthusiasts alike.

None of the soldiers exist, his terminology is wrong and he is even putting wrong units in wrong places.... the internet is awash with people laughing at this book.

Its all made up.
 
Bootie said:
JulianJ sorry but that book is absolutely dreadful. It is completely fabricated and is viewed with disdain by academia and enthusiasts alike.

None of the soldiers exist, his terminology is wrong and he is even putting wrong units in wrong places.... the internet is awash with people laughing at this book.

Its all made up.
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Ow, that was disappointing. But thanks for the heads up.
 
OMG Bootie! I am absolutely mortified. I apologise to FGM members for this inadvertent foolishness.
 
And it's Giles Milton debunking it!!! One of my favourite historians. I suppose I shouldn't be so trusting. It did sound authentic, but then cons always are. I'd better pop out and buy a bridge, to complete my set :cool:
 
Not to worry JulianJ.
It's better to post and find these things out than not to bring up your review.
We can all learn from them.

This happened to me with one of my favorite authors, S.L.A. Marshall.
I brought up how amazing his books are and was told that they were inaccurate, exaggerated and at times fabricated or even he out and out lied.
To say I was embarrassed and a bit disappointed would be an understatement. ;)
But at least if it weren't for the good troops here at the FGM I would have probably never known!

Besides if you hadn't brought up this book I wouldn't have remembered or brought up the book "Invasion They're Coming!" by Paul Carell.
He's an excellent author (at least I believe he is. Ha!) and has several book to his credit dealing with France, Africa and the Russia.
His book "Scorched Earth - The Russian German War 1943-1944" is great read also.
 
LOL... didnt mean to piss on your parade but I stumbled across this book years ago and was like... hmmmm... then I spoke to Giles and a few other authors about it and they all debunked ... except Rob Kershaw who I think read a bit and though it might be a little bit true... LOL
 
Gunner said:
Not to worry JulianJ.
It's better to post and find these things out than not to bring up your review.
We can all learn from them.

This happened to me with one of my favorite authors, S.L.A. Marshall.
I brought up how amazing his books are and was told that they were inaccurate, exaggerated and at times fabricated or even he out and out lied.
To say I was embarrassed and a bit disappointed would be an understatement. ;)
But at least if it weren't for the good troops here at the FGM I would have probably never known!

Besides if you hadn't brought up this book I wouldn't have remembered or brought up the book "Invasion They're Coming!" by Paul Carell.
He's an excellent author (at least I believe he is. Ha!) and has several book to his credit dealing with France, Africa and the Russia.
His book "Scorched Earth - The Russian German War 1943-1944" is great read also.
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Paul Carell, while he writes very well, is quite dodgy as well ...

Paul Carell (born Paul Karl Schmidt) was an Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the Allgemeine-SS (General SS) in Nazi Germany. He worked as the chief press spokesman for Joachim von Ribbentrop's Foreign Ministry, where he formulated propaganda for the foreign press. In this capacity during World War II, he maintained close ties with the Wehrmacht (German Army). After the war, he became a successful author, mostly of revisionist books that romanticized and whitewashed the Wehrmacht's role in World War II.
 
Hmmm, didn't seem to be romanticized or whitewashed.
It just seemed like a good read about the strategic and tactical situations of the German army in Normandy.
Perhaps the next book I read of his I will have my eye's a little more open.

Thanks for the info. (y)
 
Gunner said:
Hmmm, didn't seem to be romanticized or whitewashed.
It just seemed like a good read about the strategic and tactical situations of the German army in Normandy.
Perhaps the next book I read of his I will have my eye's a little more open.

Thanks for the info. (y)
Click to expand...

His Eastern Front books are more problematic and the one about German POW's -- he also wrote one about Rommel and the Afrika Korps.

Career before and during World War II​

Paul Karl Schmidt became a member of the Nazi Party in 1931 and a member of the SS in 1938. He graduated from university in 1934, and became an assistant at the Institute of Psychology of the Universität Kiel in Germany. He held several positions in the Nazi Student Association.

In the SS, Schmidt was promoted to the rank of Obersturmbannführer in 1940. During the same year, he became the chief press spokesman for foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. In this position, he was responsible for the German Foreign Ministry's news and press division.

Schmidt chaired the daily press conferences of the ministry, and was thus one of the most important and influential propagandists for Nazism during World War II. Recent studies confirm that his influence was at least on the same level as that of Otto Dietrich (Reichspressechef of Adolf Hitler) and of Hans Fritzsche (Pressechef of the Reichspropagandaministerium). Schmidt was also responsible[clarification needed] for the German propaganda magazine Signal, which was published in several languages to tell the German side of the story in neutral and occupied countries during the war.

Schmidt justified the Holocaust through his propaganda efforts. In May 1944, he gave advice on how to justify the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews, to counter the potential accusation of mass murder:

The planned undertaking (against the Jews of Budapest) will create significant attention, and lead to a strong reaction because of its scope. Those who are against us will scream and talk of a hunt on humans, and will try to use terror propaganda to increase feelings against us in neutral states. I would therefore like to suggest whether it would not be possible to prevent these things by creating reasons and events justifying the undertaking, e.g. finding explosives in Jewish association buildings and Synagogues, plans for sabotage attacks, for a coup d’etat, attacks on policemen, smuggling of currency in significant amounts to destroy the fabric of the Hungarian currency. The final piece of this should be a particularly heinous case, which can then be used to justify the dragnet.[2]
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Schmidt was arrested on 6 May 1945 and interned for 30 months. It was left open for a long time whether he would appear as one of those indicted, or as a witness for the prosecution, during the war crimes trials. During the Ministries Trial, part of the Nuremberg Trials, he finally appeared as a witness for the prosecution, and portrayed himself as a fighter for democratic freedom of the press.[3]

Post-war​

After World War II, Schmidt became a writer. Aided by the network of 'old comrades' working in the publishing industry, he was able to secure assignments. Starting in the 1950s, he wrote for the popular magazine Kristall. He first used the pseudonym Paul Karell, and later Paul Carell.

He worked as a freelance author under various noms de plume for newspapers such as Die Welt and Die Zeit (as P. C. Holm, among others). He also wrote for the magazines Norddeutsche Rundschau and Der Spiegel, and published some accounts of war stories for Der Landser, a West German pulp magazine featuring stories predominantly set during World War II. He was seen as an influential adviser to the German Axel Springer AG, where he wrote speeches for Axel Springer.

From 1965 to 1971 the Office of the State Prosecutor of Verden in Germany investigated him for murder. But the investigation, which some claim should have clarified his role in the genocide of Hungarian Jews, ended without an indictment. Schmidt never had to face a trial for his activities during the war.[4]

In 1992 Carell claimed that even after the Battle of Stalingrad there was a possibility for Germany to win the war. In his view, it was primarily the command of Adolf Hitler that led to the defeat. The leadership of the Wehrmacht and very competent commanders such as Erich von Manstein could have achieved victory if not for Hitler's interference. Carell also claimed that the invasion of the Soviet Union was a preemptive attack to forestall an invasion of Germany by the Red Army.

Paul Carell - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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