D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

D-Day itself. Hitler loyalists still accuse Rommel’s chief of staff, Generalleutnant Hans Speidel, of diverting panzer divisions from counter-attacking the British. This first ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend of 1944 pretends that Hitler had been awake early on 6 June, and that any delays in deploying the panzer divisions were not his fault. He was certain that Normandy was the site of the invasion from the first moment. But then Speidel, acting in Rommel’s absence, managed all by himself to sabotage the German response. This preposterous version, which attempts to switch the blame from Hitler to ‘treacherous’ officers of the German general staff, is riddled with countless holes and contradictions.
    There was indeed a long-standing conspiracy against Hitler within the army, but nothing was ready by 6 June. So to suggest that Speidel was trying to misdirect the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend and hold back the 2nd and 116th Panzer-Divisions ready for a coup d’état in France at that moment is sheer fantasy. Speidel was, however, a key figure in the plot which produced the unsuccessful bomb explosion in East Prussia over six weeks later.
    There was another level of opposition to Hitler, which did not believe in killing the dictator. This centred on Rommel himself, who wanted to force Hitler to make peace with the western Allies. 43 If he refused, then they would bring him to trial. But the tyrannicides grouped round Generalmajor Henning von Tresckow and Colonel Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg rejected that course as doomed to failure. The SS and the Nazi Party would resist all the way. It would risk a civil war. Only the sudden decapitation of the Nazi regime in a coup d’état would allow them to form an administration which they hoped, with deeply misplaced optimism, that the western Allies might recognize.
    Speidel had known Rommel since the First World War, when they had served together in the same regiment. On Speidel’s appointment as Rommel’s chief of staff, he had been summoned on 1 April to Führer headquarters at the Berghof. Jodl had briefed him on the ‘inflexible mission of defending the coast’, and told him that Rommel was ‘inclined to pessimism’ as a result of the African campaign. His task was to give Rommel encouragement.
    When Speidel reached La Roche-Guyon two weeks later, Rommel spoke with bitterness about his experiences in Africa ‘and above all about Hitler’s constant attempts at deceit’. He added that the war should be ‘finished as quickly as possible’. Speidel then told him about his contacts with Generaloberst Ludwig Beck, a former chief of the army general staff, and the resistance movement in Berlin who were ‘ready and determined to do away with the present regime’. In subsequent discussions, Rommel condemned ‘the excesses of Hitler and the utter lawlessness of the regime’, but he still opposed assassination.
    On 15 May, Rommel attended a secret conference with his old friend General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the military commander of Belgium and northern France. Although a member of the anti-Hitler conspiracy, Stülpnagel was ‘a hardline anti-semite’. If he had not shot himself later, he would probably have faced a war crimes tribunal after the war for his activities on the eastern front and the persecution of Jews in France. The two men discussed ‘measures to be taken immediately for the termination of the war and elimination of the Hitler-regime’. Stülpnagel knew that they could not count on Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt, even though the ‘old Prussian’ was well aware of ‘the catastrophic situation’ and loathed the ‘Bohemian corporal’. Stülpnagel believed that in an uprising, ‘Field Marshal Rommel would be the only person who possessed the undisputed respect of the German people and armed forces, and even the Allies’.
    A series of sympathetic visitors came to La Roche-Guyon, which became an ‘oasis’ for the Resistance. Towards the end of the month, General Eduard Wagner of the OKH 44 briefed Rommel on the preparations of the resistance group within the army. The extreme nationalist writer Ernst Jünger, who was serving on Stülpnagel’s staff in Paris, presented him with his thoughts on the peace which should be made with the Allies. Speidel returned to Germany at the end of May to meet the former foreign minister Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath and Dr Karl Strölin, the mayor of Stuttgart. Both believed