Shapiro: Fanatical Nazi resistance below Caen puzzles Allies
British and Canadians stopped cold by fiercest enemy opposition since D-Day
By L. S. B. Shapiro, North American Newspaper Alliance
With British and Canadian forces below Caen, France – (July 27, delayed)
Out of the tortured, rubble-strewn terrain that marks the rolling battlefield between the Orne River and the town of Bourguébus, one dominating fact emerges. It is that the German formations opposing the British and Canadian troops are fighting more effectively now than at any other time since D-Day.
Whether or not this is merely a coincidence, they have retaliated with a new degree of frenzied violence since the attempted coup within Germany. They have, temporarily at least, stopped our advance and there was only one reply when an Allied officer in the line was asked for an explanation.
“Jerry is throwing everything he’s got into this fight,” he said, “and that’s plenty.”
Fighting like madmen
There is no tendency to blame the weather or the artillery fire or the air support or any of the many facets of a modern battle that can be used to concoct an excuse for failure to move forward. The only possible story is that the Germans are fighting like madmen and are using superbly the weapons they have at their disposal.
Sullen, exhausted prisoners coming into our lines can give few clues to explain this development, but several explanations are put forward. One is that, since last Friday, young, fanatical Nazi officers have been promoted to take charge of formations on this front and have imbued their men with or bullied them into new powers of resistance.
Another is that they have a special plea from Hitler to hold on pending the arrival at the front of so-called new victory weapons. A third explanation is that the full extent of the German crisis has been revealed to the troops and they have been exhorted to make the supreme effort to stabilize the front on the theory that retreat means collapse everywhere.
Poles, Russians fight well
Any one or all of these explanations may fit the situation, but none explains the sturdy resistance of Russian, Yugoslav and Polish elements which form probably 20 percent of the German formations.
Whatever form of bribery or compulsion has been practiced on them, they are fighting effectively enough to point up the power of discipline and training upon the peasant mind. They desert when they have the opportunity, but their German noncoms see to it that they have precious little opportunity, and so long as they are in the line, they do their work like automatons.
Whether this is the beginning of unforeseen German strength on this front or a last superhuman effort before they collapse remains a very lively question.