Holger Eckhertz [Eckhertz - D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944

This book was not created by me, but by my grandfather, Dieter Eckhertz. In 1944, he held the prestigious role of a military journalist, writing articles and features for German military publications including the magazines Signal and Die Wehrmacht, which were widely read by German troops. Dieter Eckhertz left journalism after the war, but he continued to work on one final project, which was a series of interviews with German soldiers who had fought in Normandy on June 6 th 1944, the day known to the Allies as D Day.

The reason for my grandfathers interest in the German perspective of D Day was simple: shortly before the Normandy landings, he had visited several locations on the Atlantic Wall and interviewed a number of the troops there with a view to writing a feature for Die Wehrmacht magazine. He was fascinated by the enormous preparations being made to defend the Atlantic coast against an invasion launched from England, and by the morale of the troops on the Wall, who were in many cases inexperienced or unfit.

Much later, on the tenth anniversary of D Day in 1954, when many Germans preferred to draw a veil over the events of the war, my grandfather made enormous efforts to track down some of the troops whose units he had visited. He encouraged these men to discuss with him their personal memories of the Atlantic Wall, their frame of mind at the time of the invasion, and their actions during the historic day of June 6 th . His intention was to compile these recollections into a complete book, but the project was still in progress at the time of his death in 1955, and was never completed.

This was the state in which this material eventually came into my hands: as a collection of interviews, notes and verbatim accounts dating from 1954. Some were partial, and some included highly controversial material concerning German forces and French civilians. What comes out of this mix is a highly revealing series of factual accounts by German soldiers who experienced the full might of the Allied onslaught on D Day, especially in the bunkers and 'Resistance Points constructed along the Wall.

I believe that these accounts show a side to the battle that is rarely seen: the motivations of individual German soldiers, their thought processes as the invasion unfolded, and the way they sought to fight back against the Allies in the violent and chaotic hours after the initial landings.

The interviewees did not, of course, think in terms of the Allied code names for the five Normandy invasion beaches (Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword, going in order from West to East) but rather in terms of local places or the official designations of their sectors. Nevertheless, I have organised these accounts under the headings of the Allied beach names, as this is how the landings are generally discussed by historians today. I have selected one account for each of the invasion beaches, from Utah to Sword.

Throughout the book, I have included my grandfathers questions and comments in italics, as they were recorded during the discussions. The speakers, like most German people of their generation, use the words England/English interchangeably with Britain/British.

I should emphasise that this book does not give, and is not intended to give, any strategic overview of the landings or any tactical analysis of the engagements described. It gives a voice to several German soldiers experiences of D Day, purely and simply, and I feel that they speak for themselves. My hope is that this book adds to the global understanding of June 6 th 1944, and in a small way serves as a marker to that conflict and its many repercussions.

Holger Eckhertz, July 2015

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