When informed at around 1000 that an amphibious invasion was underway, Rommel, who had not been alarmed by earlier news of airborne activity, quietly hung up the phone. He summed up his estimation of the situation in these simple terms: "How stupid of me." (1)
Exhausted from overwork, Rommel had returned home to Herrlingen in southern Germany to celebrate his wife Lucie's birthday and meet with Hitler. Though Rommel had briefed his chief of staff, Speidel, on "the measures to be taken in the case of an attack," (2) he was confident that, due to unfavorable weather, an Allied invasion was implausible.
Rommel was not the only commander in absentia. Dollmann, chief of the 7th Army that occupied Normandy, was running the war games in Rennes. Worsening matters for the Germans, the commander of the 91st Luftlande Division was in the process of returning from these same games, and Sepp Dietrich, commander of the First SS Panzer Corps, was in Brussels.
The result was that in a German chain of command that ran upward from Speidel to Rundstedt, who was at his distant headquarters at Saint-Germaφn near Paris, and downward directly to the commanders of the panzer divisions, no front-line general had the authority to make his own decisions, and none knew which of several headquarters was responsible for issuing orders. Order after order was issued, then countermanded.
Compounding the occupiers' lack of preparedness, neither the Luftwaffe nor the German navy was in position to stave off the invasion. Lulled into a false sense of security by the weather, the Luftwaffe grounded most of its planes, and the navy had canceled mine laying operations and its nightly U-boat patrol.
While chaos reigned, Hitler, heavily sedated by barbiturates, was sound asleep at his headquarters in Berchtesgaden a few miles away from the German High Command, OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht). Colonel General Alfred Jodl, OKW Chief of Operations, refused to disturb Hitler and alert him of the invasion. This refusal stemmed from the fact that in recent days, the Fⁿhrer had opined that the enemy would probably stage a feigned attack to draw troops away from the actual invasion site.
While Hitler slept, Rundstedt ordered the two panzer divisions, based outside Paris, to Normandy. But Jodl countermanded Rundstedt's order insisting further clarification of the situation. Inexplicably, the enraged Rundstedt, though authorized to phone the Fⁿhrer directly, did not do so.
When Hitler finally awakened and received a briefing from his adjutants, his initial response to the situation was clearly one of denial. He was reported to have been elated by the news. The arrival of the Allies on the continent made it possible for the German army to attack them directly.
Later in the day, after enjoying his typical vegetarian lunch, Hitler did agree to bring up the two elite panzer divisions of the Strategic Reserves, the 12th SS Hitler Youth, and the Panzer Lehr. Due to all the confusion within the chain of command, it was 1500 before the two divisions received their orders. By then, it was too late.
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1. Cornelius Ryan, "The Longest Day: June 6, 1944," (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), p. 285.
2. John Keegan, Six Armies In Normandy, (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), p. 145. Copyright ⌐1982 by John Keegan. All rights reserved.
