I came across this article while Googling stuff on various theories I’ve heard about seeming Wehrmacht inaction during the critical hours of D-Day…
[b]A mystery of World War II:
Did the Germans try to surrender immediately after D-Day?[/b]
by Ken Kreckel
On August 18, 1944, a little over two months after the D-Day landings, a German staff car pulled off the road near Claremont-en-Argonne, France. En route to Fuhrer Headquarters, it would never reach its destination. Field Marshall von Kluge and his aide alighted from the car, heading to a peaceful spot shaded from the heat of the midday French sun. After a pleasant lunch, the Field Marshall handed his aide a personal letter addressed to his brother, and calmly swallowed a cyanide capsule.
The Field Marshall, who had just been relieved as Commander-in-Chief West, was in disgrace. Like his predecessor Rundstedt and subordinate Rommel, he had failed to hold back the growing tide of Allied power breaking out from Normandy. In common with them, he had come to believe the task was impossible. But there was another similarity, one infinitely more important. Although lacking the pugnacity of Rundstedt, who advised the High Command to ‘make peace’, or the moralism of Rommel, who allied himself with the active opposition to Hitler, Kluge too came to believe there was only one way out for Germany, that of making peace with the western Allies.
Unfortunately Hitler suspected as much. Just days before, when the Fuhrer HQ lost contact with the Field Marshall for several hours, Hitler shouted “Kluge must have been involved in the bombing plot and has now sneaked off for secret surrender talks with the enemy”. Why did Hitler jump to this remarkable conclusion? Was it simply a case of his well-known paranoia, stoked by his recent escape from the July 20 plot, or were there more concrete reasons for this statement?
Rommel made no secret of his opinion that the time had come for a political solution to counter the inevitable defeat looming in the West. In a meeting with Hitler as early as June 17, barely a week and half after D-Day, Rommel cautioned that conditions at the front were impossible. On his way to a Fuhrer conference at Berchtesgaden set for June 29, Rommel commented to his superior Rundstedt: “…you and I both believe that this war must be stopped now. I intend to make no bones about it when we see the Fuhrer.” However, at the conference, Hitler refused to let him speak on political matters, eventually dismissing him from the room. As Rommel repeated his attempts to persuade Hitler through memoranda on July 3rd and the 15th, it is clear he had made up his mind. In his own words, “the unequal struggle is approaching its end.”
By mid July Rommel decided on a course of action: “I have given him [Hitler] his last chance. If he does not take it, I will act”. When asked what would happen if Hitler refused, he replied, “Then I’m going to open up the Western Front. Only one thing matters now, the British and Americans must get to Berlin before the Russians do.” General Bayerlein, Rommel’s old desert comrade who commanded the Panzer Lehr division at Normandy, flatly states, “Rommel and Speidel…(intended)…to open independent peace negotiations with the Western Allies. Everything had been prepared and von Kluge and many others won over…”
Indeed they were. Von Kluge endorsed his subordinate’s view. He explored ways to contact the enemy himself, even to the point of speaking with some German nurses who had just been released from American captivity in Cherbourg. Most of Rommel’s subordinates in Army Group B were ready. SS General Sepp Dietrich, an old crony of Hitler’s, stated he would follow Rommel’s orders, even if they contradicted the Fuhrer’s.
Rommel’s intent was clear. Speaking shortly before his forced suicide, in October, 1944, he insisted, “The revolt should not have started in Berlin, but in the West…the expected forcible American and British occupation of Germany would have become an unopposed ‘march-in’.
General Blumentritt, Kluge’s chief of staff, reports: “if it had succeeded, his [Kluge’s] first step would have been to order the discharge of the V1’s against England to be stopped, and that his second step would have been to get in touch with the Allied Commanders.”
It was not to be. Rommel was removed from play by strafing British fighters, severely wounding him on July 17. In a few days, it became clear the July 20 plot had failed. Kluge, however, remained free to act. But did he?
Besides recording Hitler’s suspicions, history is mostly silent on this question. There is, however, one tantalizing clue. In September of ‘44, Keitel, of the Army High Command, related to Blumentritt, that he had “documentary evidence about his [Kluge’s] treasonable activities”. He went on to say they had intercepted a wireless message from an Allied headquarters asking to be put in touch with von Kluge. Was Kluge successful in making contact? While some sources assert the Allied command was aware of this, no record of this message has ever been found. But does this mean it did not exist?
The best reply to this question died with the Field Marshall on that lovely French summer afternoon. Recalled to Germany to answer Hitler’s suspicions, he chose his own way out of the war. With his failure went the chance that the millions killed over the next year might have survived.
[i]Ken Kreckel further explores this mystery in his upcoming book, The Rommel Mission, to be released in 2006.
Photo credits:
Title shot of German delegation at Brest France:
World War II Multimedia Database
http://www.worldwar2database.com/
World War II in Color
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