Honest History: A Book Review of Holger Eckhertz’s ‘D-Day through German Eyes’

Holger Eckhertz’s book ‘D-Day through German Eyes’ is a refreshing read for anyone interested in the Second World War and/or the Third Reich. Usually when you read such works – for example Richard Evans’ ‘The Third Reich at War’, Ian Kershaw’s ‘The End’ and Max Hastings’ ‘Inferno’ – then you are told the story of the Allied invasion of German-controlled Europe from the perspective of Allies and not infrequently from the position of Allied Triumphalism.

The assumption is that Allies outfoxed the Germans left, right and centre on D-Day is a story as old as the hills, but – as with the legend that both Hitler and the German military were not serious let alone able to successfully invade the British Isles in 1940-1941 that has been debunked in detail by Robert Forczyk in his ‘We March Against England’ – this just isn’t true.

Holger Eckhertz’s book provides a valuable counter-blast to this Allied Triumphalism by bringing out the voices of the German soldiers who ultimately fought the Allies on the beaches of Normandy. In so doing he completes the work that his grandfather – a well-known military correspondent for Wehrmacht who had completed interviews with some of the soldiers on the Atlantic Wall in Normandy - started shortly before D-Day and then re-interviewed German veterans from the same units in the late 1940s and early 1950s before his untimely death in 1954.

In ‘D Day through German Eyes’ the accounts from the soldiers fighting for – not against – the Third Reich are refreshingly candid and free the usual hysteria about the ‘evils of Nazism’. Even when the veterans of the Wehrmacht are describing the horrific deaths and injuries soldiers suffered.

We also see the human side to the Third Reich with one soldier talking about his distress at the fact that allied naval shelling literally set fire to a herd of cows near Utah beach on D Day.

Another - a German machine gunner at Omaha beach - testified that he and the troops that manned his ‘Resistance Point’ were sick at the way that American generals sent their troops up in wave after wave to simply get mown down by German machine guns.

Yet another talks about how German machine gunners on Sword beach – after dealing with the initial waves – desperately shouted for British troops to retreat because they didn’t want to slaughter any more of their kin using their MG-42 machine guns.

Testimony like this simply doesn’t make it into mainstream – or even academic – histories of the Second World War and the Third Reich, because to introduce it would in the first instance suggest that the Allied leaders were often incompetent or borderline psychopathic. In ordering their troops into meat grinder battles with little to no plan other than to use sheer weight of numbers to make a breakthrough. This revisionist tendency is supported by recent academic works – such as those of John Mosier - on the Second World War and the many myths that were created by Allied and Soviet propaganda during and after the conflict.

Nor does the fact – mentioned by several interviewees – that the German soldiers and French civilians were actually very cordial and friendly with each other. Indeed the French civilians often voluntarily helped the German soldiers out by supplementing their rations with fresh produce like milk in exchange for boiled sweets.

Now some might be tempted to dismiss ‘D-Day through German Eyes’ as a whitewash of the Wehrmacht’s war effort. Some of the interviewees are quite clear that they ‘formed an impression of an unstoppable machine [the US military] that would roll over whoever got in its way.’ They also offer a balanced judgement of the events at Omaha beach. Where they assert that German forces were close to repulsing the assault of the US 1st Infantry Division but the arrival of tanks on the beaches – which the Germans had no real answer to – and the use of naval gunfire as artillery support was simply too much.

That the interviewees are honest we know because they openly admit that they saw evidence of Wehrmacht soldiers committing atrocities against Allied paratroopers – i.e., shooting them out of hand in large numbers and leaving them where they fell – and do not attempt to deny or minimize this fact.

The other details that come out in the course of ‘D-Day through German Eyes’ is that the troops serving on the Atlantic wall itself – in the ‘Static Infantry Divisions’ - were veteran German soldiers; who had been wounded in other theatres of war such as Sicily and the Russian front and were then deployed by the Reich to these areas, because they required less physical mobility. Many of the others were Red Army prisoners of war who had volunteered to serve in Ostruppen units. While a lot of those soldiers serving in the ‘inner areas’ are recorded to be inexperienced young teenagers (i.e., 14-16) with experienced older NCOs.

Not exactly the image of German soldiers portrayed in Hollywood films such as ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Inglorious Bastards’ and ‘Fury’ now is it?

That’s because Holger Eckhertz’s ‘D-Day through German Eyes’ is an honest work of history and not the comfortable re-telling of hoary old myths about ‘evil Nazis’ and the ‘virtuous Allies’.