Title: D Day Through German Eyes Vol 1
and 2
Author: Holger Eckhertz
ASIN: B00VX372UE
Publisher: DTZ History Publications
Year: 2015
E Book
Pages: 141/168
Photos/Maps: 0
I have made the decision to review Herr Eckhertz’s
two books together as they are of the same theme and presentation. During WW2,
the author’s grandfather, Dieter Eckhertz, was a military journalist for the
German military publications ‘Die Wehrmacht’ and ‘Signal’. In 1944, he was tasked with writing a series
of articles on the Atlantic Wall in the West and, in the process of preparing,
visited many of the units stationed in that region. Following the war, in 1954,
while no longer a reporter, he decided to follow up with individuals from those
units he had visited in order to capture their recollections and experiences of
D-Day now that the passage of time had provided some distance between the
events. The results are testimonials that are still raw, disturbing, enlightening,
brutally honest and at the same time deeply thought provoking. The interviews were never
published until they came into the hands of Dieter’s grandson who has done an
excellent job of presenting them to the modern audience.
Each interview is presented as a series
of questions relating to the interviewees experience primarily on the day of 6
June; thus the narrative is more of a discussion vice a story. Additionally, a
majority of the men interviewed are private soldiers, not senior officers or
Non-commissioned ranks and therefore the reader begins to appreciate these ‘lower
level’ responses and perspectives.
There are a number of themes which I
found very interesting that came out of these interviews as the men looked back
on their experiences. These included a sense that they were defending a ‘United
Europe’, frustration that the Allies were distracting them from the real threat
which was communism, an initial confidence in their ability to hold the line,
shock at the capability of the Allies to bring armour in such large numbers
across the channel and disbelief at the violence of the air and sea assault.
Additionally, the testimonies bring up a
number of other extremely interesting subjects such as the Allies use of phosphorous
weapons and its impact upon the defenders, the Allied ‘flame tank’, the German use
of the ‘Goliath’, the use of foreign workers in the building the Western Wall,
the extensive appearance of Russian and Polish soldiers fighting for the
Germans and what happened to them following capture and the interaction between
the German soldiers and the French population.
Perhaps the most remarkable interview
was with a specialist weapons officer who discussed in detail the development
of a weapon by the Germans that would be categorized today as a FAE (fuel air
explosive). This weapon has enormous destructive power mainly centered upon the
massive shock wave that it generates when detonated. The German system, code
named Taifun (Typhoon) B, was deployed to Normandy and was to be utilized against
the Allied armour concentration at St Lo but was fortunately destroyed by a
random artillery barrage just before it was launched.
