D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

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, announced that the troops in Normandy ‘were a pack of cowards, that it was much easier to fight the western Allies than the Russians, and that he would see that things changed’.
    Kluge accepted his fate with dignity. Yet he clearly feared not only that he would be made responsible for all that had gone wrong but, in the atmosphere of suspicion, that he might also face trial and execution like the other senior generals involved in the July plot. He sat down to write a long letter to Hitler, which he asked Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich to deliver later. As well as an explanation of the impossibility of the task he had faced, he wrote, ‘I cannot bear the reproach that I have sealed the fate of the West through faulty strategy, and I have no means of defending myself. I draw a conclusion from that, and am dispatching myself where thousands of my comrades already are.’ The letter was respectful and avoided placing any blame on Hitler. No doubt Kluge wished to save his family from the Sippenhaft vengeance of the Nazis.
    He finally argued, like Rommel before him, that with little chance of victory the war should be ended: ‘The German people have borne such untold suffering that it is time to put an end to this frightfulness.’ Although Kluge had finally come to see the terrible folly of this vast conflict, there was still no thought of the suffering they had caused by their invasions. That consideration simply did not register in the German army Weltanschauung , with its fundamental confusion of cause and effect.
    A car and escort were sent to bring Kluge back to Berlin. They stopped for a midday break in the woods of the Argonne, just short of Verdun. It was not far from where General von Stülpnagel had so unsuccessfully shot himself. Kluge gave his aide another letter, this one for his brother, then went off behind some bushes where he swallowed a cyanide pill. After Kluge’s suicide, Hitler ordered another investigation into his ‘mysterious disappearance’ in Normandy, but again no evidence could be found of a meeting with American officers.

    The Falaise pocket was tightening on 16 August, but it was still far from closed as a result of the delay both by the Canadians and by Gerow’s V Corps round Argentan. Gersdorff, the chief of staff of the Seventh Army, was ‘able to drive by car in both directions that day’ through the gap between Trun and Chambois. One German general observed that the pocket, although much smaller, was disturbingly similar in shape to the battered lozenge at Stalingrad.
    The II Panzer Corps was sent into the Forêt de Gouffern north-east of Argentan to defend that corner of the pocket, even though it mustered fewer than forty tanks. The next day, after they were refuelled, the remnants of the two divisions were sent towards Vimoutiers. Oberstgruppenführer Hausser also sent the 2nd SS Panzer-Division Das Reich out of the pocket. He wanted a force ready to counter-attack from the rear when the Allied troops attempted to seal the gap. Army officers, however, suspected that this was purely an attempt to save the Waffen-SS. ‘In other words we were good enough to be left inside the encirclement, ’ was the reaction of General Meindl of II Paratroop Corps when he heard. ‘The SS look after their own.’
    Other panzer groups were moved to either side of the neck of the pocket to help keep it open, but with a greatly increased concentration of Allied fighter-bombers overhead, vehicles had to stay hidden during daylight hours in orchards and woods. Near Trun, a local inhabitant watched a small group of tanks concealed under fruit trees. A soldier emerged from his turret with a violin and played some Viennese waltzes. They seemed to sense that this was the calm before the storm.
     
    As the remains of the German Seventh Army pulled back across the River Orne, the British VIII and XXX Corps advanced rapidly west,