Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective

Description

In December 1943, among rising realization that the Allies are planning to invade "Fortress Europe," Field Marshal Rommel was assigned the title of General Inspector for the Atlantic Wall. His mission was to assess their readiness--what he finds disgusts him. The famed Atlantikwall is nothing but a paper tiger, woefully unprepared for the forces being massed across the English Channel. His task--to turn back the Allied invasion--already seems hopeless. General der Artillery Erich Marcks, badly injured in Russia, is the man on the ground in Normandy trying to build up the coastal defenses with woefully inadequate supplies and a shortage of men, and fulfill Rommel's demands. Marcks is convinced the Allies will land in his sector, but no-one higher up the chain of command is interested in what he thinks. Meanwhile Generaloberst Hans von Salmuth, Hitler's pet and a relative novice commander, has been given responsibility for defending Fifteenth Army's coastline--the area that the High Command thinks is most likely to be the Allies' objective. Generalmajor Bayerlien is preparing the elite panzer divisions for what may lie ahead, and Generalmajor Pemsel is struggling to coordinate efforts to prepare Seventh Army, suspecting that if an invasion comes he will be the hub of the German response. All of these local commanders are subject to the whims of Hitler, hundreds of miles away but continually issuing orders increasingly divorced from the reality of the war. Countdown to D-Day takes a journal approach, tracing the daily activities and machinations of the OKH as they try to prepare for the Allied invasion.