Before the Invasion

At the highest level, the mood amongst Hitler and his generals shortly before the invasion was one of confidence. The Fiihrer could hardly wait for the landings since he was completely convinced of a forthcoming victory of German arms, whilst Rommel above all gave a very optimistic impression. In his view he had done everything humanly possible in the right place to prepare a warm reception for the Allies.

A week before the landing at the latest, it must have been absolutely clear to SHAEF that they would achieve strategic surprise, for there were no indications at all that the enemy had changed his long standing idea of a main thrust aimed at the Pas de Calais. Even if the Germans were to learn the true Allied intentions now, it would be far too late for them to undertake any significant regroupings.

The question still remained as to whether the British and Americans could also achieve tactical surprise on the day of the invasion. At one moment it seemed they would not, when an error of potentially huge proportions occurred at Supreme Headquarters. WTen Eisenhower postponed the landing from June 5 to 6 due to bad weather, SHAEF ordered all ships already at sea back to the nearest harbor. One convoy of 135 vessels however failed to receive the order, and steamed on alone towards the Normandy coast. The Allies did not succeed in contacting and stopping the convoy until it was 25 nautical miles (46km) south of the Isle of Wight. Luckily for the invasion forces the Germans failed to suspect anything. Sea and air reconnaissance in the Normandy area had been suspended due to the bad weather, a quite understandable step, for after several weeks of the most favorable weather conditions, the Allies would certainly not want to land now, in weather fit for neither man nor beast. At least so thought many senior officers in C-in-C West’s area, and turned their minds to other things: they went to play war games in Rennes, took a few days’ holiday or visited their French lady friends.

However, the weather forecast of the meteorologist at C-in-C West for June 5 was not so negative as this behavior might suggest. After a front of bad weather, went the report, periods of better weather could be expected on the following day. Strangely enough, this forecast was exactly the same as that of the Allies.

There had however already been much clearer signs of an impending invasion: in the middle of May, the German Security Service in France had reported that the “Secret Army” had gone to the highest state of alert and that consequently an invasion could be expected between the 20th of the month and June 10. On the first day of the same month, the Naval Intelligence Service noticed a further indicator of the approaching attack: the Allies had already changed the key code settings for their radio traffic after only 30 days, something which they normally only did after three months. They were also clearly trying to knock out by bombing all of the defenders’ radio monitoring posts along the coast. Finally, on June 1 and 3 the German authorities received, quite openly, the clearest indication of all that the invasion was imminent: the BBC had been repeatedly broadcasting to the Resistance movements the first part of a stanza from one of Verlaine’s poems which ran: “Les sanglots longs des violons de I’automne.” If this was to be followed by the second part, the German Secret Service knew that the landing would follow within 48 hours. The British prompdy broadcast the second part: “blessent mon coeur d’une langueur monotone,” at 21:15, June 5. A short while earlier the C-in-C West had given the following evaluation of the situation: “There are no definite signs that the invasion is imminent,” since the result of Allied air attacks on the coastal fortifications certainly could not have come up to enemy expectations. Naval Group West expressed the same conclusion a day earlier, on June 4: the Allies, as they thought, had only enough landing craft for just over 10 divisions. They would therefore need more time to assemble the shipping capacity for the 20 divisions estimated as necessary by the Germans.

On the basis of these judgements, the C-in-C West still took no concrete steps against a possible landing on the evening of June 5. In any case, the BBC had sent out many such alert messages in the past, without the expected invasion happening. The officers at C-in-C West simply assumed that this latest message was the signal for the start of widespread acts of sabotage.

The situation began to change however shortly after midnight when airborne landings were reported on the Orne and the Cotentin peninsula. LXXXIV Army Corps in Normandy now initiated Alert State II (highest alert): they were shortly followed by Fifteenth Army. Naval Group West and Luftflotte 3 also followed suit. Even now the High Command in the west did not think they were facing a major landing, and therefore deemed sea reconnaissance by surface vessels as unnecessary. The weather conditions and tides were hardly favorable anyway.

When a few ships were sighted off Port-en-Bessin towards 03:00 on the morning of June 6, Adm. Krancke nevertheless ordered sea reconnaissance by surface vessels. An hour and a half later the first torpedo boats put out from Le Havre.

Around 06:45 the situation seemed to have calmed down a little, when the Chief of Staff of Seventh Army reported that, contrary to earlier estimations, there was no evidence of any seaborne landing. At that moment in fact the coastal fortifications were already under fire from Allied warships. Nevertheless, the Seventh Army Headquarters, according to the Chief of Staff, were quite capable of handling the situation without any assistance.

At that very moment, landing craft were approaching the coast under the cover of naval and aerial bombardment. The invasion had begun and the Allies had succeeded in achieving complete tactical surprise.