D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

chief of staff, General Günther Blumentritt. As a posting, the country represented the complete antithesis of the Russian front. In fact unmarried officers on leave from the war in the east tried to obtain passes for Paris instead of spending it in an austere and heavily bombed Berlin. They far preferred the prospect of sitting in the sun outside cafés on the Champs-Elysées, then dining in Maxim’s and going on to nightclubs and cabarets afterwards.
    Even the idea of civilians helping the Allies did not seem to disturb them too much. ‘The enemy will certainly be well informed because it is easy to conduct espionage here,’ wrote a technical officer from the 9th Panzer-Division on leave in Paris. ‘There are signposts everywhere and generally relationships between soldiers and the fair sex are very close. I have spent wonderful days here. One really has to have seen and experienced Paris oneself and I’m glad I had the opportunity. You can get everything here in Paris.’
    Formations transferred from the eastern front, especially Waffen-SS divisions, believed that the soldiers garrisoned in France had become soft. ‘They had done nothing but live well and send things home,’ commented one general. ‘France is a dangerous country, with its wine, women and pleasant climate.’ The troops of the 319th Infanterie-Division on the Channel Islands were even thought to have gone native from mixing with the essentially English population. They received the nickname of the ‘King’s Own German Grenadiers’. Ordinary soldiers, however, soon called it ‘the Canada Division’, because Hitler’s refusal to redeploy them meant that they were likely to end up in Canadian prisoner of war camps.
    Members of the German occupation army in France indeed led an easy life. This had been helped by the correct behaviour demanded by their commanders towards the civilian population. In Normandy, the farmers above all had simply wanted to get on with their lives and their work. It was usually the arrival of SS units or Osttruppen in a neighbourhood during the spring of 1944 which led to outbreaks of drunken violence, with shooting in the streets at night, occasional incidents of rape and frequent examples of robbery and looting.
    Many German officers and soldiers had struck up liaisons with young Frenchwomen in the provinces as well 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