END NOTES

FRONT MATTER

1

Note–Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Joseph ‘Sepp’ Dietrich was promoted to Oberstgruppenführer und Generaloberst der Waffen-SS on 20 April 1944.

PART I

1		Note–Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Joseph ‘Sepp’ Dietrich was promoted to Oberstgruppenführer und Generaloberst der Waffen-SS on 20 April 1944.
2		See explanatory note following this pair of interviews for background and context of Panzer Lehr’s movement to the Normandy invasion front and activity there.
3		Translator’s note: Generalmajor Fritz Kraemer was a regular army officer attached to the Waffen–SS as Chief of Staff of the I SS-Panzer Korps.
4		Translator’s note: The abbreviation ‘i.G.’, im Generalstab, means that the officer so designated went through special training for general staff duties.
5		Translator’s note: Pemsel was chief of staff of General Dollmann’s 7th Armee.
6		This differs between Ritgen and Perrigault, each including portions the other skips. Also, Ritgen appears to be in error in para 1, referring to enemy airborne troops.
7		In addition to divisional artillery, German infantry regiments had their own light and heavy infantry gun-companies. Panzer Lehr Regimenter 901 and 901’s 9th companies each had four heavy (15 cm) guns.
8		Translator’s note–European Theater of Operations, U. S. Army.
9		FPS Ed: OKH, Oberkommando des Heeres had been the headquarters and staff for the Commander in Chief of the Army until December 1941, when Hitler took direct command of the Army, at which point it was directly subordinated to him. Although, for some purposes, OKH was nominally subordinate to OKW, (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Armed Forces High Command), in general OKH commanded ground forces on the Eastern Front, while OKW was in control of the remaining theatres of the war.
10		FPS Ed: The German SPW half-tracks were only lightly armoured, proof against small arms only. The tops were open, so that the infantry within could observe in all directions. That, however, left the occupants vulnerable to all sorts of projectiles and fragments coming from overhead, whether from aircraft, mortars, aerial-bursts, treebursts, hand grenades or fire from elevated terrain. The Allies made good, and extensive, use of artillery shells with sensitive fuses in the hedgerow country of the French bocage to produce tree-bursts, a problem frequently mentioned in German accounts as producing numerous casualties.
11		FPS Ed: Oberkommando des Heeres, Army High Command.
12		FPS Ed: Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, Oberbefehlshaber West.
13		FPS Ed: General der Panzertruppen Leo, Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg, Panzer Gruppe West.
14		FPS Ed: 12th SS-Panzer-Division ‘Hitler Jugend’.
15		FPS Ed: 17th SS-Panzergrenadier-Division ‘Götz von Berlichingen’.
16		FPS Ed: Ritgen, in his division history (p. 106), remarks that these numbers are probably in excess of reality.
17		FPS Ed: Panther.
18		FPS Ed: armoured elements held at the corps or army level to be attached where needed.
19		FPS Ed: This is an error. The unit referred to, schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 101 ( Tiger), was attached to the I SS-Panzer Korps ‘Leibstandarte’ under Obergruppenführer Dietrich. Following the Normandy fighting its remnants were reconstituted and redesignated as schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 501 in September 1944.
20		FPS Ed: Obergruppenführer.
21		FPS Ed: The division’s Ic officer (3. Generalstabsoffizier) was responsible for knowledge of the enemy situation (Feindlage), counterintelligence (Abwehr) and security (Sicherheit).
22		FPS Ed: German nomenclature classified heavy howitzers of 210 mm or larger as Mörser, such as the 21 cm Mörser 18.
23		FPS Ed: II Fallschirmjäger Korps.
24		FPS Ed: The relief by the newly brought up 276th Infanterie-Division started on 26 June, lasting several nights until the 276th Infanterie Division took command in the former Panzer Lehr sector at noon, 5 July.
25		FPS Ed: According to Ritgen, Die Geschichte der Panzer Lehr Division, p. 147, ‘Initially the troops of the Panzer Lehr Division that were relieved from the front formed the corps reserve {XLVII Panzer Korps}. Effective 5 July the division–minus the elements attached to the 276th Infanterie Division, was the reserve of Heeresgruppe B.’
26		FPS Ed: The six counterattacks referred to were, presumably, local counterattacks during the bitter fighting in which the Panzer Lehr Division successfully defended Tillysur-Seulles.
27		FPS Ed: See extensive note preceding next interview giving details relating to St-Jean-de-Daye attack and placing it in larger context.
28		FPS Ed: Ritgen (p.153) refers to ‘Bataillon Philipps (I./901) as advancing from le Hommet to St. Jean, reporting at 0630 hours its position three kilometres behind enemy lines. It surprised the American artillery positions, cut wire communications, captured the command post of the Third Battalion of Infantry Regiment 39 of the 9th Division, caused great confusion among the enemy and took many prisoners.’
29		29 FPS Ed: 17th SS-Panzergrenadier-Division ‘Götz von Berlichingen.
30		Their three-volume division history, Due Sturmflut und das Ende, by Hans Stöber and Helmut Gunther, is one of the finest and most readable unit histories I have ever studied. Its massive first volume is entirely devoted to the fighting in France, from the Normandy invasion through the retreat to the Seine.
31		Annotations referring to maps absent from the manuscript.
32		Tr. note–I am mystified by Bayerlein’s repeated sarcastic references to the ‘famed’ 5th Fallschirmjäger Division. The 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division was, according to Tessin, only activated in March of 1944. Ritgen, (pp. 155-6) states that it was still in its initial training, had good human material, but soon proved totally unfit for combat due to lack of the simplest technical prerequisites for effective command. Blumenson, in Breakout and Pursuit states (p.140) that it consisted of young troops under inexperienced commanders, that the division had been rated in June as suitable only for defensive mission and that there was debate at various echelons as to whether their training was sufficiently advanced for the unit to be committed in Normandy. Perrigault (p. 263) quotes Oberleutnant Ebner, who commanded the heavy (eighth) company of Panzergrenadier-Lehr-Regiment 902, as saying that none of the so-called Fallschirmjäger had any actual training for air-drop, and that their officers came from Luftwaffe Flak units or ground-personnel on air bases, thus with no infantry training or experience. Whence came Bayerlein’s evident bitterness in referring to what was, apparently, merely another new, partially trained division that was not yet really fit for action remains a question.
33		FPS Ed: Nebelwerfer were rocket launchers, not guns or mortars. Although laying smoke screens and delivering chemicals were among their capabilities, the abstention from use of poison gas in WWII led to the rapid development of high explosive projectiles. The primary mission of the Nebelwerfer batteries rapidly became delivering massive volumes of high explosive rounds with powerful blast effect or of incendiary-oil projectiles. Because the spin-stabilized rocket projectiles for the 15 cm NbWf 41 had the rocket motor in front, the high-explosive payload in the rear, and detonated when the nose struck the ground, the bursting point was elevated above the ground surface, giving a devastatingly effective fragmentation and blast effect. Salvoes from an entire battery of multiple-tube Nebelwerfer bursting over an area in rapid sequence gave waves of high and low pressure that, in the early Russian campaigns, resulted in discovery of many enemy dead with no visible signs of external injuries, their lungs apparently burst by the extreme pressure differential. ‘Smoke guns’ is a singularly poor rendering of Nebelwerfer. The name was taken over from the 10 cm Nebelwerfer 35, which was a true ‘trench mortar’ employed by the Nebeltruppen for laying smoke screens. After 1940 the Nebel-Abteilungen gradually converted from mortars (Werfer) to rocket launchers, such as the six-tube electrically ignited breech-loading rocket launcher, the 15 cm Nebelwerfer 41, which retained the ‘smoke mortar’ designation for reasons of deception. By the time of the Normandy Invasion the Nebelwerfer batteries ranged from the 15 cm six-tube Nebelwerfer 15 cm-41 and five-tube 21 cm Nebelwerfer 42 to the 28/32 cm Nebelwerfer 41 and 30 cm schwere Wurfrahmen 40.
34		Tr. note- See note above at question 125, ETHINT 66 regarding significant place that the capture of St. Lô held in American plans.
35		Tr. Note: Bearing in mind Major Hechler’s repeated comments in his notes to the various interview with General Bayerlein, that the General had a tendency to include material he thought the Americans would like to read and ‘that, after the war, the best way to get ahead in life was to ingratiate himself with the Americans’, I offer the following figures for comparison: Excerpt from a Tagesbefehl der Heeresgruppe Mitte for 5 August 1941, ‘With the destruction of the Russian divisions cut off near Smolensk the three-week battle at the Dnjepr and Düna and around Smolensk founds its conclusion in a brilliant new victory for German weapons and German devotion to duty. 309,000 prisoners were brought in and 3,205 tanks, 3,000 guns and 341 aircraft were captured or destroyed.’ (quoted in Emde, Die Nebelwerfer, p.46. Ziemke quotes a similar figure of ‘over 300,000’ for the Smolensk pocket. (Ziemke and Bauer, p. 32). Similarly instructive comparisons might be made with a number of other battles on the Eastern Front. Ziemke and Bauer state that the Germans captured 665,000 prisoners when the Kiev Pocket was closed on 16 Sept 1941.(Ziemke and Bauer, Moscow to Stalingrad p 34. Hinze (Der Zusammenbruch der Heeresgruppe Mitte, p. 274) says that about 300,000 men were lost in the collapse of the German Heeresgruppe Mitte, of which about 130,000 of which were captured, shot or otherwise killed at the time of capture by the Russians in 1944.
36		FPS Ed: Tessy-sur-Vire.
37		FPS Ed: Nebelwerfer. See earlier note. Emphatically not ‘smoke guns’.
38		FPS Ed: Heeresgrupe B.
39		FPS Ed: iG = im Generalstab, trained as a general staff officer.
40		FPS Ed: The German term, Pakfront, refers to a carefully positioned and emplaced group of antitank guns (Pak) with infantry protection under unified fire-control, frequently in conjunction with carefully placed mine fields to channel the movement of approaching armour.
41		FPS Ed: Nebelwerfer.
42		FPS Ed: Nebelwerfer.
43		Tr. note: Schützenpanzerwagen. Lightly armoured half-track troop-carriers, open on top.
44		Tr. note: The Panzerfaust was a recoil-less disposable light-weight one-man antitank weapon firing a large hollow-charge grenade. Later models increased the range from 30 to 100 meters, the armour penetration from 140 mm at 30° to 200 mm at 30°. A portion of the gases from the propellant charge in the disposable firing tube vented to the rear to eliminate recoil. These made conspicuous the position of the operator and created a danger zone behind the weapon.

PART II

1		Though frequently referred to as 6th SS-Panzer Armee before its official designation as such, Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Armee was not officially designated 6th SS-Panzer Armee until it became officially a part of the Waffen-SS in April 1945 with its move to Hungary.
2		Ritgen
3		Sometimes incorrectly referred to as Armeegruppe Lüttwitz. An Armeeabteilung consists of two or more Korps, but less than an Armee. An Armeegruppe consists of two or more Armeen, but less than a Heeresgruppe.
4		Tr note: Date appears to be given as ‘2.XX.45’. Since German practice is to give day-month-year that does not make sense as written and I am hesitant to twist it into American reading of month-day-year and call it Feb 20 45.

PART III

1

Publisher’s note: for reasons of clarity it has been decided to reproduce the original pages from report A-970 showing pictorial symbols accompanying the maps, as well as translating the text within this book. For such a complex series of maps and appendices it was deemed better to offer the reader more rather than less information.