Jonathan Trigg (1)

This book promises much, and it more than delivers. At its core is an account of the D-Day landings, the days leading up to them, and then the battle to break out from the beachhead, all told from the point of view of German commanders, junior officers and some ordinary foot soldiers.

But there's more. Bracketing that account is an analysis of the disposition of German forces in occupied France, with an examination of their composition and abilities. In order to maintain garrison troops throughout the Greater Reich, Germany put defence of the Atlantic Wall (itself a concept that Germany had proved obsolete when they avoided the Maginot Line in the invasion of France) into the hands of regiments comprised of older troops, medically borderline ones and troops and auxiliaries from the occupied territories in the East. These were reinforced from time to time by a rotation of experienced personnel from the Eastern Front, but again, usually when they were convalescing from wounds.

The equipment of the army in the West - the Westheer - is discussed. I was already well aware that the German army in World War II still used horses extensively for transport. This book makes that clear. But it also points out that the production numbers for tanks, armoured cars, half-tracks and lorries never reached the levels expected; and where these were available, coverage was patchy and tended to favour elite regiments. The book gives due prominence to the ingenuity of some German officers, particularly Major Alfred Becker, who was responsible for producing a range of self-propelled weapons based on French and Czech motorised chassis and Czech, Russian and French guns, combined in bewildering variety.

The strategy of the defence of the French coastal regions was based around the idea that the locally-based troops would be thrown into the battle to hold any invasion force on the beaches until such time as they could be reinforced by heavier and more elite formations rushed into theatre in support, That was the theory. It broke down under the mess of contradictory lines of command, the German belief until well after D-Day that the Normandy landings were a diversion away from the actual landings still to come in the Pas de Calais, and the unexpected onslaught of unprecedented levels of air and naval artillery bombardment that saturated the inland areas from 6th June onwards.

Jonathan Trigg's analysis of both the military situation and the underlying issues with German decision-making is comprehensive, and goes beyond the level of the Oberkommando der Heer (OKH, the military high command) all the way up to the top and Hitler himself. So many of Hitler's decisions were based in his personal ideology, which percolated downwards. Particularly, the idea that individual courage and daring could compensate for inadequate (or completely absent) equipment or an imbalance of forces better than 30 to one in troops (over the whole period of the landings) was pervasive (and still holds excessive popular influence today). In the end, the Wehrmacht lost France because of the resources that the Allies were able to pour into the beachhead.

I found some interesting sidelights in the text. Hitler's insistence that competing subordinates would result in the best answer to any problem emerging through a social Darwinist process of elimination had all sorts of unintended consequences. Trigg talks (in passing) about the freedoms granted to local Nazi administrators in the occupied territories, the Gauleiters. Recounting some of the decisions different Gauleiters took reminded me of their role in the organisation of the Holocaust on the ground in occupied Poland; where one Gauleiter would vigorously arrange for Jews to be cleared from their homes by force, other Gauleiters would arrange for them to be "Germanised" in an administrative process that ticked the boxes Berlin demanded over demonstrating that places had been cleared of Jews. I have often heard people who lost relatives in the Holocaust pondering why Uncle A had been sent to the camps and perished, whilst Uncle B had survived comparatively unscathed at home; this policy was why. Trigg goes further into this process in discussing Nazi policy in occupied France, which gave me an insight into a question I've been pondering for a while now over the fate of ethnic Germans left in Poland at the war's end.

The accepted wisdom is that ethnic Germans were all evacuated in 1945-46 into shattered Germany. And yet, over the years, I have encountered Polish people from Silesia or East Prussia who, even one or two generations on, seem at first sight to be typically "German" in appearance, or who have a fluency in German that you would not expect. But Trigg's analysis of German internal policy suggests to me that individual Gauleiters who were capable of declaring Jews to be German at the stroke of a pen would be just as capable, in the dying days of the Reich, of forcibly suggesting that it might be best if ethnic Germans changed their names and learnt Polish. Not a conclusion I expected to draw from this book, and yet Trigg's analysis led me in this direction.

Having said this, there were things I did not like about this book. Although Jonathan Trigg has a number of books under his belt, he displays a turn of phrase which from time to time lapses into sloppy journalism; combined with poor proof-reading and sub-editing, this made me stumble over the text a few times. There is one translation of a reminiscence which is slightly scrambled by the translator retaining the original German word order. And the maps that such a book demands are a) lacking in number, and b) located for some reason at the back of the book, between the notes and the index.

Nonetheless, we have here are eye-witness accounts of one of the pivotal events in history. The visceral nature of much of what is described makes for salutary reading. It shows what happens to ordinary people when they are thrown into the grinding machine of war. It also shows what happens when a commander puts their personal ideology before practical or strategic considerations. The end result is tragic, and for that reason alone, this book should be more widely read.

I will end with a surprise that this book held for me. In the photographic section, I saw a picture of one Oberleutnant Hans Höller, an Austrian who had served with Rommel in North Africa and who was a company commander in the 21st Panzer Division in Normandy. He presents as a handsome young man, looking resplendent in his best dress uniform, and photographed under studio lighting in more peaceful times.

I had seen this picture before. Some twenty years ago, we were trying to find sheltered housing accommodation for my partner's mother. In the course of this, we were invited to look around a sheltered housing complex in Birmingham, and were shown around one lady's flat. She had a picture on her wall of a handsome, young German officer - whether a brother or a departed husband I cannot now say. But I can now say that this was a picture of Hans Höller, because that same picture is in this book. That gave me a wholly unexpected level of personal involvement with this book (my own father was in Italy in June 1944, and so my engagement with the D-Day landings was never, until now, very direct). How strange that a book can deliver such a connection, eighty years after the event.… (més)

I don't know if it is just me getting older but the once glorious, righteous, black and white world has given way to 256 shades of grey (no, not that kind!)

Sorry Germans but I must mention The War.

When I lived in Amsterdam I knew this old guy called David. He was Dutch and he served in the Waffen SS during the war. The largest regiment in the Waffen SS was composed of Dutch volunteers. No-one wants to talk about that, understandably so. One time David and I were in a hot tub on a rooftop in Amsterdam with two very rich American women. One of them asked David if he was in Amsterdam during the war. When he replied that he was, she said, assuming that he was with the Allies, "that must have been terrible". Without missing a beat David said, "You have no idea".

Well, there were many regiments in the Waffen SS composed of non-German volunteers and this book is about them.

What I never knew was how these regiments came into being. Sure, some of those volunteers were gung ho fascists, no escaping that, including English men too! But that is not the main story here.

Russia invaded Finland at dawn on the 30th November 1939 (see this:http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/winter_war_1939.htm). The Russians expected a walkover but were surprised to get the shit kicked out of them for quite a while. The effect of this on Scandinavia as a whole was electrifying.

They all expected to be next in line and were in fear of being subsumed into the Communist Empire. Apart from the Finns no-one was fighting back. Thousands of young men were keen to fight the Russian menace and it was only the Germans who were willing to take them on. So, many patriotic young Scandinavians signed up with the Germans to fight the Russians.

Things did not exactly turn out as the young "Vikings" expected. Instead of fighting in Finland almost all of them ended up on the Russian Front up to their assholes in mud, snow, blood and guts.

This book details their battles and indeed their history in this war.The book does not judge them or glorify them, it highlights their bravery, their courage and the conditions they fought under. It is detailed and horrific as all histories of war must be. It does not detail atrocities though it does admit that they happened but they were mainly perpetrated by Germans and Russians.

These guys were mainly at the front and not engaging in "mopping up" operations which were generally carried out by "special" troops.

Most of them signed up for a fixed period and so in the middle of say the battle for Leningrad, while they and the Germans were dying of cold and hunger, once their time was served they went home, unlike the Germans who were conscripted and stayed and died.

When it was all over, the few that survived went home to uncertainty. The Finns honoured their war survivors and looked after them. The Swedes just did not want to talk about it. The Danes executed some and imprisoned many. The Norwegians the same.

Those that survived the war but were taken by the Russians, of all races were worked to death in the Gulags only a few thousand ever came back and some as many as fifteen years later.

This is a quote from a Norwegian veteran:

"We, the Norwegian and other foreign volunteers, did not fight for Hitler or his regime, but alongside his country. Just as Britons didn’t fight for Stalin but alongside the Soviet Union, it’s a sad truth but in war you can’t pick your allies. If people are really interested in what actually happened then they should find out for themselves. They will see that it was not so easy at the time to choose a course of action, but it was then that a choice had to be made."

If you have a fixed view about the war it is an interesting read.… (més)

In de Tweede Wereldoorlog vochten 38 nationaliteiten mee met de Waffen-SS, de beruchte paramilitaire tak van de Duitse nazipartij NSDAP. Maar niemand leverde meer vrijwilligers dan Vlaanderen. Niet minder dan 23.000 Vlamingen dienden eerst in het SS-Legioen Vlaanderen, vanaf 1943 de SS-Stormbrigade Langemarck. Hun lot werd vaak bezegeld aan het oostfront.
Jonathan Trigg, vermaard militair historicus en voormalig Brits legerkapitein, vertelt meeslepend over de werving van deze zogenaamde Germaanse vrijwilligers, de moordende vrieskou die ze moesten trotseren in Rusland, de schaarse overwinningen, maar vooral over de bloederige nederlagen van de Vlaamse Waffen-SS'ers en finaal hun veroordelingen na de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
De militaire geschiedenis van deze Vlaamse collaborateurs werd nooit zo deskundig en gedetailleerd beschreven.… (més)

One of the best English-language treatments of the all-but-forgotten Axis allies who fought in Russia. It paints a good picture of the courage and efforts of the out-manned and decidedly under-gunned Romanians, Italians and Hungarians facing the Red onslaught and the many miscalculations, mistakes (both strategic and tactical) and scapegoating by the Germans who blamed their defeat on their erstwhile allies when in fact the blame lies on their shoulders almost entirely.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Eastern Front in WWII.… (més)