CHAPTER TWO
Defeated in Normandy, the Germans belatedly took measures to put their economy and nation onto a total war footing. Places of entertainment were closed, non-essential activities curtailed and men and women were directed into key industries and into the Wehrmacht. Within the forces, as already mentioned, men were taken from the now largely redundant Kriegsmarine and from the bloated ranks of the Goering’s Luftwaffe. The only units spared were the manpower intensive anti-aircraft commands. Never the less, the resulting regeneration of units was spectacular. Divisions such as the 84th Infantry, who Second Army was to face on the banks of the Rhine, had been reconstituted as a volksgrenadier division, following its virtual destruction at Falaise. Germany’s armoured vehicle production had also reached a peak, despite the best efforts of the Allied bomber offensive. Reconstituted, the best of the formations were sent to the West Wall along with two thirds of the armoured rolling off production lines.
Despite rebuilding the Wehrmacht in a matter of months, this was not the same quality of Army as before, being made up of a high proportion of men who would previously have been regarded as too old, too young or had a physical infirmity that would have excluded them from service. The better ‘divisions’, in many cases, consisted of two regiments (equivalent to a British brigade) each of two infantry battalions with little transport. Artillery was short but this deficiency was made up by significant numbers of mortars and multi-barrel rocket launchers; the nebelwerfer, which was the major cause of allied casualties. German small arms firepower, was however, largely undiminished with a generous allocation of MG 34 and MG 42 Spandaus in infantry units.
Volkssturm
The poorer quality formations were based on the volkssturm; the old and sick men of the German Home Guard, with in some cases their only uniform being an arm band. The commanding officer of 41st Volkssturm Battalion described an event when his unit was sent into battle early in March. Although an extreme case, his story is generally representative of what happened to many battalions such as his.
I had 400 men in my battalion and we were ordered to go into the line in our civilian clothes. I told the local Party Leader that I could not accept the responsibility of leading men into battle without uniforms or training. Just before commitment the unit was given 180 Danish rifles, but there was no ammunition. We also had four machine guns and 100 Panzerfausts. None of the men had received any training in firing a machine gun, and they were all afraid of handling the anti-tank weapon. Although my men were quite ready to help their country, they refused to go into battle without uniforms and without training. What can a volkssturm man do with a rifle without ammunition! The men went home. That was the only thing they could do.
A member of the Hitlerjugend ready with his panzerschrek; a copy of the US Bazooka.
The smaller one shot disposable Panzerfaust easily used by any soldier with a bit of nerve.
The Hitler Youth
The younger soldiers recruited from the Hitlerjugend (HJ) movement, despite their lack of age, were often good and dedicated material. However, in the Ardennes the Volksgrenadier divisions’ HJ recruits had not performed to their potential, as the Normandy veterans and older Volkssturmknew it was ‘all up for Germany’ and encouraged the boys – for that is what they were – to surrender. Consequently, it was decided to keep HJ conscripts, some of whom were boys as young as twelve years of age, in separate units, rarely more than a hundred strong.
By keeping the boys in their own HJ units, with fanatical Nazi leadership, the Nazis were able to exploit the years of indoctrination, along with the innate bravery of youth that makes warfare a young man’s game. Many went willingly, with patriotism and the gullibility of youth; believing Göbels’s propaganda that Hitler’s ‘victory weapons’ and one last push would turn the tide and ultimately deliver victory to the Fatherland. Of all the deceptions perpetrated by the Nazis on the German people, this was possibly the most cynical and evil exploitation of them all.
Youngsters were fooled into believing that their Führer could still win the war for Germany through the employment of new wonder weapons. Thus encouraged they fought on like men. This very young NCO has the Iron Cross.
Even though they had little formal recruit training, during compulsory HJ service they had received, along with Nazi indoctrination, years of military training during routine HJ meetings and camps. This ‘training’, with weapons and ammunition, often re-enacting German victories earlier in the war, laid a solid military foundation. In reality, however, as with the Volksturm, they lacked weapons and equipment but the spirit was willing and HJ units from the Rhineland, were prepared to defend their home towns with whatever they had. Panzerfausts, in particular, proved to be an effective weapon even in the hands of novices, who were often referred to, by the Allies as ‘bazooka boys’.
Fallschirmjäger
With the SS panzer divisions, now deployed to the east to stem the Russian offensive, the Fallschirmjäger alone in the west, retained much of their former quality. The latter provided the backbone of the German defences in the Rhineland and were the major opponents of the British and Canadian forces during VERITABLE and BLOCKBUSTER. Mostly aged under twenty-five, these troops were parachutists in name only, few having been trained to jump but nurtured on the deeds of their forebears at Crete, Cassino, etc. they had an esprit de corps that most of the
Wehrmacht had long since lost. Also, with many of their recruits coming from Luftwaffe stations, they had not tasted the bitter pill of defeat and their tenacity in the fighting in early 1945 may have had a lot to do with the fact that only unconditional German surrender was on the table and they had little choice but to continue resisting.
A much decorated Fallschirmjäger NCO and men pose behind a tripod mounted MG42.
Veteran Fallschirmjäger, and persistent thorn in the Allied side, Oberstleutnant von der Hydte left the text of his early 1945 speech to new recruits joining his regiment:
I demand of every soldier the renunciation of all personal wishes. Whoever swears on the Prussian flag has no right to personal possessions! From the moment he enlists in the Fallschirmjäger and comes to my regiment, every soldier enters the new order of humanity and gives up everything he possessed before and which is outside the new order. There is only one law henceforth for him – the law of our unit. He must abjure every weaker facet of his own character, all personal ambition, and every personal desire. From the renunciation of the individual, the true personality of the soldier arises. Every member of the regiment must know what he is fighting for. He must be quite convinced that this struggle is a struggle for the existence of the whole German nation and that no other ending of this battle is possible than that of the victory of German arms. ... He must learn to believe in victory even when at certain moments logical thinking scarcely makes a German victory seem possible. ...Only the soldier who is schooled in philosophy and believes in his political faith implicitly can fight as this war demands that he shall fight. …lack of this faith is the reason why so many German infantry divisions have been destroyed.
In summary, despite the presence of the committed Fallschirmjäger, overall the Wehrmacht, as demonstrated by the Ardennes offensive, was no longer capable of successfully mounting major offensive operations. There were too few first class formations, panzer divisions were largely ‘armoured’ in name only and, of course, the Allies were no longer the bemused armies of 1940 that were so easily overwhelmed by Hitler’s blitzkrieg.
XLVII Panzerkorps
XLVII Panzerkorps was deployed in reserve, well to the east of the German defensive positions on the Rhine, with 15th Panzer Grenadiers in the north and 116th Panzer in the south opposite what was to be the American sector. 116th Windhund Panzer Division was assessed by allied intelligence on 22 March, as having up to seventy tanks, while 15th Panzer Grenadier Division was believed to hold fifteen panzers and twenty to thirty assault guns.
Both formations were veteran, still commanded by professional officers and had as much equipment as any German armoured formation that was still fighting. They had prepared sundry counter-attack plans and had thoroughly rehearsed all of the deployment options.
An SD KFZ 251 armoured half-track bearing the ‘Greyhound’ badge of 116th Panzer Division
Defence on the Rhine
Charged with holding the Rhine, as Hitler’s new C-in-C West, was the stocky, blunt jawed and resolute Feldmarschall Albert Kesselring. He had gained a reputation as a defensive genius fighting delaying actions in Italy on the Gustav and Gothic Lines. Arriving at his new headquarters he reputedly announced to his staff ‘Well gentlemen, I am the new V3’. On the Rhine, the policy ‘Laughing Albert’ had to implement, remained focussed on the defence of the Ruhr, which with the loss of Upper Silesia to the Russians, was the last industrial area, vital to sustain German forces in action. To achieve this, Kesselring had nominally sixty-five divisions but in reality they totalled less than half this number.
Feldmarschall Albert Kesselring.
Despite an acute weapons shortage and the seemingly crippling blows that German industry and communications were receiving from the Allied air forces, Kesselring managed to put together a creditable defence to oppose the expected assault crossing of the Rhine. However, this defence was less strong than Montgomery believed he would encounter; a Leliet which was based on his experience of the bitter fighting west of the Rhine.
General Schlemm’s First Fallschirmjäger Armie remained responsible for the sector opposite 21st Army Group, including the Xanten – Wesel sector. During his post war interrogation Schlemm explained that:
… A parachute drop over the Rhine was considered inevitable, and efforts were made to determine the most probable spot.
Schlemm had a captured Allied report analyzing the parachute drop at Arnhem in September 1944, and from this document, he learnt that Allied views were now against a paratroop landing too far away from the ground troops destined to contact it. By plotting the areas that were topographically suitable for a parachute drop and near the Rhine, Schlemm claims the most likely area seemed to be just east of Wesel. It was in this neighbourhood that he therefore expected the crossing attempt would be made.
Enemy positions identified by Second Army prior to PLUNDER/VARSITY.
Schlemm’s views, however, were not considered sound by his superiors at Army Group H, by Feldmarschall Von Rundstedt or his successor:
...The expected northern crossing was to take place, according to these latter opinions, in the neighbourhood of Emmerich. The assault would be directed north-east and designed to take the Ijssel line in the rear. Since this was to be the big attack, Schlemm was ordered to send a large part of his artillery to the Twenty-Fifth Army who would be faced with this new offensive...
As subsequent events will prove, this was a miscalculation of some significance and Schlemm’s deployment on the Rhine with two corps and an armoured reserve was, as was the case with the Germans pre-D Day dispositions, a compromise. II Fallschirmjäger Korps were deployed in the north, with 6, 7 and 8 Fallschirmjäger Divisions astride the town of Rees. In what was to become the left assault sector of Second British Army, Schlemm had deployed General Straube’s LXXXVI Korps centred on Wesel, with 84th and 180th Divisions under command. While Schlemm’s armoured counter-attack reserve, XLVII Panzerkorps, was located fifteen miles to the north-east of Emmerich.
A diagram from the post operational report showing the German artillery batteries in the VARSITY area.
The divisions directly facing the British assault were 8th Fallschirmjäger and 84th Infantry Division. 7th Fallschirmjäger Division had not been properly located but some of its units were known to be well forward. The former was on the left of II Fallschirmjäger Korps and had lost heavily in the fighting west of the Rhine and when it withdrew across the line in early March, it had an infantry strength of just 900 men. 84th Division, a luckless formation under the command of Generalmajor Fiebig, had been virtually destroyed, for the second time, at the beginning of VERITABLE, and was assessed on 12 March, as having a strength of just 500 infantrymen. However, it was in the process of being reconstituted a when PLUNDER started on the night of 23/24 March. Amongst those who had already arrived to join the beleaguered division were some Volkstrum (German Home Guard), some static Wehrkreis (German military district) troops, including 317 Ersatz Battalion in Wesel and those troops encountered around Bislich and, amongst others, 286th Ear Battalion, made up of soldiers who were deaf or hard of hearing.
One formation that the Allies had little information on was Kampfgruppe Karst . It is not clear whether or not the half-tracks, armoured cars and light armour had been identified before the operation and included in the armoured totals listed in Second Army’s intelligence summaries but what had been missed was that its specific role was anti-airlanding. This was crucial for the two allied airborne divisions of XVIII US Airborne Corps, as it was German tactical doctrine to drive into the heart of an airborne drop, seeking to disrupt the enemy while he was at his most vulnerable, i.e. before he could assemble and receive all of his heavier weapons. Kampfgruppe Karst was located to the east of the River Issel; exactly where Schlem had assessed the Allies would deploy their airborne forces. Even though they were, in the event, just the wrong side of the Issel they were well placed to be in operation against the Allies.
Luftwaffe field troops dug-in to protect 88mm gun deployed in the antitank role.
A German propoganda leaflet designed to undermine Allied morale.
When studying the operation in January 1945, Second British Army Commanders stated that they expected to face up to 58,000 German troops, with 16,000 infantry occupying defensive positions on the river line, within the assault area. It was assumed that while the Germans stood and fought west of the Rhine, they would be bound to be preparing defences to protect the northern flank of the vital Ruhr, which Allied intelligence believed would in due course be occupied by enemy forces withdrawing east of the river. There are no firm numbers but following the German losses during VERITABLE, there can have been fewer than 7,000 infantry of a lower quality than expected dug in on the banks of the Rhine in the crossing area.
Flak was the one weapon system that the Germans had positioned along the Rhine in relative abundance, as they were expecting an airborne operation in support of an assault crossing. Deployed in and around what were to become the VARSITY drop zones, were 114 heavy and 712 light anti-aircraft guns. As we will see, the abundance of flak and its effect on the airborne assault, is an indication of what could have happened on a much larger scale if Hitler had decided against fighting west of the Rhine.
Few elements of the ground defence had been accurately located prior to the assault of 23/24 March. This was because intelligence was limited to air photography, electronic intelligence and artillery sound ranging and without an active SOE network or a resistance organization to pass on ground information, units in buildings and woods were difficult to identify. In addition, the ad hoc nature of the German defence made it difficult for intelligence officers to construct a meaningful picture of the German Order of Battle.
A Royal Engineer post action report on the tactical deployment of the enemy encountered on the Rhine reads:
Enemy ground defences in the area of the proposed crossing were not highly developed. In the main they were directed towards the protection of likely crossing points, larger villages and towns, and there was no continuous defensive line along the river. Defences mainly consisted of field positions defended buildings, all with little wire and few mines. However, where possible the Germans had flooded areas sufficiently well to make them obstacles to armour or at least very difficult going. There was little depth in the German defences.
General Walter Blumentritt.
However, fearing the worst, the Allies were forced to prepare plans for a deliberate assault crossing of the Rhine, based on the fact that troops during an amphibious operation would be extremely vulnerable and that the balance would favour the German defenders. During planning an airborne drop (Operation VARSITY) was considered essential to unhinge German resistance on the Rhine. In addition, they fully appreciated the German ability to mount effective counter-attacks with ad hoc forces and understood that it was a dangerous part of the German operational art. As with the Normandy D Day, the Allies would need to apply superior numbers and an integrated fire plan from ground and from the air. Special equipment and well-prepared troops were needed to ensure that the enemy were overcome. This would provide a springboard for 21st Army Group’s drive into the heart of Germany.
On 21 March, the Germans suffered another blow, when the redoubtable General Schlemm’s headquarters of First Fallschirmjäger Army was located by Allied intelligence and in the resulting air strike, Schlemm was badly wounded. The general called forward to take his place was General Walter Blumentritt who had been von Rundstedt’s chief of staff and following his erstwhile commanders final dismissal, was now available for reemployment.