Rommel death rumors grow in Normandy
Marshal reported hit by strafing planes
By James McGlincy, United Press staff writer
With U.S. forces in Normandy, France –
New and still-unconfirmed reports circulating in Normandy today said that Marshal Erwin Rommel, field commander of German forces in Normandy, died in a hospital at Bernay near the west coast of Normandy from injuries suffered when his auto was strafed by Allied planes.
The German Transocean News Agency said today that a German High Command official, asked by telephone about the health of Rommel, replied: “He is shaving.” Transocean added that, “This reply speaks for itself.”
Reports of the death of the “Desert Fox,” whose forces are falling back before the Americans thrust down the western shore of the Normandy Peninsula, were relayed hazily by French civilians and German prisoners. They contributed more detail to those rumors which first began to circulate yesterday.
Reported hit in lungs
These details said the bullets of strafing Allied planes wounded Rommel several times in the lungs, and that he struck his head as he was thrown from the car.
London said that BBC correspondent Howard Marshall reported from Normandy that a German senior staff officer told his captors Rommel “may be dead by now” as a result of his wounds.
Stockholm said an unusually cautious attitude by authoritative German sources toward rumors might be correct. A Berlin dispatch to the Stockholm Aftonbladet said rumors of Rommel’s injuries during a motorcar “accident” were “not confirmed” in Berlin.
It appears that a story given out here Saturday quoting a German prisoner of war that Rommel held a staff meeting at Percy as recently as last Wednesday, was untrue.
Nurse story fictitious
There have been rumors that a woman at Canisy nursed Rommel up to the time he died, but the woman appeared today to be an entirely fictitious character.
Although there is some information at Canisy to support the rumor that Rommel may be dead, Monsieur Lejeune, mayor of the town, said he had no knowledge of Rommel having been treated in the German military hospital there before Canisy was captured.
Eugene Morel, a gendarme, said the only information he had was the story started by German soldiers in Canisy about 10 days ago, but Yves Lauzach, an employee in the Saint-Lô post office who had taken refuge in Canisy, reported that a German lieutenant had told him July 26 that Rommel died at Livarot (Calvados) as the result of wounds sustained six days previous when his vehicle was strafed.
Success in Normandy –
Supply problem solution stuns Hitler and aides
Allies’ ‘secret weapon’ landed 14 divisions and supplies on beach in few weeks
By L. S. B. Shapiro, North American Newspaper Alliance
Somewhere in France –
The Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded because Hitler and the German General Staff honestly and sincerely believed it impossible. They had sound military reasons for believing it could never succeed.
The French coast along the narrow part of the channel, from Dunkerque to Dieppe, was too well fortified and too powerfully manned for an amphibious force to seize a lodgment area. So were the port areas of Le Havre, Cherbourg, Saint-Nazaire and Bordeaux.
There was only one other area pertinent to an invasion threat from Britain and this was the sandy strength of beach along the Seine Bay between the Orne River and the Carentan Peninsula. This was not so well fortified and rather indifferently manned, but – of course – a successful landing here was out of the question. This area contained no port even of minor importance.
‘Military fantasy’
Nothing more than a raid could be staged on this treacherous beach, the suggestion that many modern divisions with their immense impedimenta could be landed and supplied over this beach was a military fantasy. The venture would be suicidal.
Thus thought Hitler and his professional staff as represented by keen-minded Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt when they set about insulating Europe from Britain late in 1940.
Their thinking was valid – in 1940. In that year, any British staff officer seriously suggesting a full-scale invasion of the then-completely-unfortified Seine Bay beach would have been retired or committed to an asylum.
Large force landed
Yet in June 1944, the Allies landed a great assault force over the bare breaches of the Seine Bay. before the month’s end, 14 full divisions and their ancillary troops were landed and supplied – so completely that they were able to advance behind a weight of shells and tanks unprecedented in Western European warfare.
And all this was done without the use of a single port of substantial size. An overwhelming proportion of the millions of shells and food boxes and the thousands of tanks and guns were hauled over sandy beaches.
The solution of the supply problem – this was the sober and undramatic secret weapon of the second front, the great surprise by which the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington and London confounded Hitler and his generals.
Crux of problem solved
Supply – the most plebeian of all military duties – turned out to be the most pulsating factor in the great assault; more exciting than grease-painted Commandos, more essential than naval guns and crushing airpower.
Supply was the crux of the problem, the foundation stone on which was built the whole fabulous plan to storm at the heart of Hitler’s Fortress Europe.
Supply over beaches, the insoluble problem of 1940, had become entirely feasible in 1944. The Germans didn’t realize it. They persisted in their 1940 estimate of the problem and were caught victims of a stunning tactical surprise in 1944. This error cost Hitler his last lingering hope of victory or stalemate.
Three other factors
There were three other cardinal factors in the construction of our victory in Normandy. The first was the technical and numerical superiority of Allied weapons, many of them especially designed for carving a bridgehead out of an enemy-held coast.
The second was Gen. Montgomery’s brilliantly-conceived plan for the battle of the beaches and the prompt exploitation of D-Day success.
The third was the poor quality of the German coastal divisions which, combined with the sluggish reaction of Rommel’s command, provided us with unexpected opportunity for quick consolidation and subsequent advance.
Nazis to shoot parachuting fliers
Fear Allied help for slave workers
By Nat A. Barrows
Stockholm, Sweden –
Home front German soldiers, the police, the SS (Elite Guard), and other armed persons have received orders to shoot parachuting Allied airmen on sight, either as they float down to earth or when they reach ground.
This latest edict supplements an earlier order, given shortly after D-Day, when the Germans were afraid that Allied parachutists might be bringing weapons and uprising orders to the two million foreign slave workers inside the Third Reich. This fear of the Nazis of a “Trojan Horse,” which is reportedly causing wholesale massacres on Heinrich Himmler’s orders, is coupled with the growing campaign of hatred against the British and Americans, with emphasis on the Americans (Himmler is now commander-in-chief of the German Army of the Interior).
A French refugee now safely in Sweden tells this correspondent how soldiers and other military guards in Hamburg boast that they are carrying out the nationwide order by shooting everything that drops from Allied planes.
“I got one American today as easy as picking off a balloon,” a German soldier had told this refugee.
All of which means that we cannot underestimate the fanatical hatred which still permeates the average German. As defeat becomes more apparent, the Germans’ diabolical lust for revenge becomes more primitive.
