Battle of Caen: The Stalingrad of the Hitler Youth
At 3:00 a.m. on D Day (June 6, 1944) General Witt heard about British landings in the estuary of the Orne. His division was ready. March plans had been carefully prepared for expected action near Caen. But extreme confusion on the upper level of command resulted in contradictory orders and forced the division to spend the entire day in useless and exhaustive marching. One partner of the I. SS Panzer Korps, the 21st Panzer Division, was in action north of Caen on D Day, but the other, the 1st SS Panzer (Body Guard) Division, was still in Belgium, recuperating from bloody combat in Russia. The 12th SS Panzer could not go into action until June 7. Only part of its 25th Regiment commanded by Kurt Meyer reached the Caen area near the previous midnight. While Allied bombers slowed the division's march toward Caen, Meyer's reconnaissance squads discovered around 1:00 a.m. on June 7 that the villages north and northwest of Caen and the airport at Carpiquet were still free of enemy troops. He quickly established headquarters in the Ardenne Abbey, slightly northwest of Caen, and organized his arriving battalions into battle formation. The 3rd British Division meanwhile was moving toward Caen, being held up by the 21st Panzer eight kilometers northeast of the city. General Witt ordered Meyer to prepare for a coordinated attack with the 21st at 12:00 noon in order to ''throw the enemy into the sea.'' At 3:00 a.m. Meyer began to position his battalions five miles north and northwest of Caen. Thus, as dawn broke on June 7, the 25th Regiment was about to experience a dramatic baptism of fire.
Two towers of Ardenne Abbey (note: see Keegan for more details), surrounded by large orchards and high walls, provided an advantageous view of the entire coastal area. Artillery commander Karl Bartling used one tower as an observation post and Meyer used the other to survey the anticipated battle field. While machine gunners and the Flak shot it out with enemy fighter-bombers, the entire area was saturated with naval bombardment from ships in the harbor clearly visible to Meyer. The whole coastal area Was a beehive of activity. British tank units were forming west of Douvres as Meyer and his men waited anxiously for their tanks to arrive. Finally, at 10:00 a.m. a group of fifty Panzer IV reported in. The rest were still on the way and oared not move until the cover of darkness shielded them from air assaults and naval artillery. What followed was typical of the aggressive kind of warfare conducted by the Waffen SS and the kind of discipline which made the SS a feared byword of Allied soldiers. Kurt Meyer recalled the moment vividly:
Now What is that? Did I see right? An enemy tank pushes through the orchard of Contest! Now he stops. The commander opens the turret and surveys the countryside. Is that fellow blind? Has he not noticed that he stands only 200 meters in front of the grenadiers of the II. Battalion and that the cannons are pointed towards him? Apparently not. Leisurely he takes out a cigarette and blinks at the smoke. Not a single shot is fired. The Battalion keeps complete fire discipline.
Aha! Now everything is clear! The tank moves to secure the right flank. From Buron enemy tanks roll towards Authie. My God! What an opportunity. The tanks drive exactly in front of the II. Battalion! The enemy unit offers its unprotected flank. I give the order to all Battalions, artillery and available tanks: Hold your fire! Shoot only when l give the order. The commander of our tank regiment sits in his (armored) command car in the garden of the Abbey. Quickly telephone lines are strung from the observation tower to his tank and thus the movement of the enemy is transferred to every tank. One company stands on the grounds of the Abbey and another lies in ambush south of Franqueville. Hesitantly but steadily the tanks roll into Authie. They drive through the village towards Franqueville.
The enemy commander seems to see nothing except the airport at Carpiquet--the place lies directly in front of him. He can reach it already with his weapons. But he does not see that his destruction lurks in ambush. As soon as his tanks cross the Caen-Bayeux road, they run straight into the waiting Panzer company of the II. Battalion. Only a few meters separate the iron monsters.
We are mesmerized by the developing theater: Wünsche, commander of the Panzer Regiment, relays the movement of the enemy tanks quietly. No one dares to speak loudly.
I think about the divisional attack order and about the axiom of Guderian: 'Hit hard, don't dribble.' But in this situation one had to act immediately. The 26th Regiment was still east of the Orne, and the I. Battalion of Panzer Regiment 12 lay 30 kilometers east of the Orne, completely out of fuel.
The fuel could not be delivered because of air attacks. Decision! As soon as the forward enemy tanks pass through Franqueville, the ll. Battalion and the tank company in ambush attack' When the Battalion reaches Authie, the other battalions attack also. Objective: the coast!
Terrible pressure presses upon us. Now it must happen. The enemy point passes through Franqueville and is about to cross the road. I give the attack signal to Wünsche and hear only his order: 'Attention, Panzer march'! The tension disappears. There is lightning and thunder in Franqueville. The first enemy tank is wrapped in smoke and I see the men jump out. Other tanks blow apart. One Panzer IV suddenly stops, flames shooting out of the turret. The Canadian infantry attempts to reach Authie and to carry the battle further from there. But all for nothing. The grenadiers of the II. Battalion are driven by pride. They are determined to stop the tanks. They want to break into Authie. The grenadiers have barely reached Authie when the II. and I. Battalions attack. The enemy has now been seized deep in the flank. By aggressive attack Franqueville and Authie are captured. Now Contest and Buron must fall. The enemy forces seem to have been completely surprised. Until now neither side has fired a single artillery shell.
The attack goes forward rapidly. Prisoners gather and move back with uplifted hands. The surprise attack of Meyer's 25th Regiment made good progress in the next few hours and the forward units of the 3rd Canadian Division were thrown back pell mell. But the attack could not be maintained. The 2lst Panzer was held up near Epron. To its left the I. Battalion drove to the suburbs of Cambes, where it was halted by Canadian tanks and heavy machine gun fire. Strong artillery support and fighter bomber attacks did the rest. Communications were interrupted. There were not enough Panzer IV to halt the Shermans. All three battalions were soon forced to dig in. Meyer's earlier estimate of the Canadians as "small fish" was now somewhat tempered. The I. Battalion sustained 15 dead, 87 wounded and 10 missing. Losses of the II. were even heavier, including most company chiefs and the commander. The Tank Battalion lost six Panzer IV. But the 27th Canadian Tank Regiment lost 28 Shermans and the 9th Canadian Brigade suffered 245 casualties.
During the night the remaining units of the l2th SS arrived, and its 26th Regiment, led by SS Lt. Colonel Wilhelm Mohnke, attacked across the Caen-Bayeux rail line. The late arrival of the 26th was one reason why Meyer had had to go over to the defensive, since his left flank was endangered by the 6th Canadian Armored Regiment. The latter took Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse in the early morning hours of June 8 and turned left on the Caen-Bayeux road moving towards the Carpiquet airfield. The Canadians had an opportunity to take the airfield, but the attack of the 26th Regiment turned them back. In Putot en Bessin the attack of the 26th Regiment led to the encirclement and destruction of three companies of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and the Canadian Scottish. A subsequent counter attack by the Canadians resulted in the retaking of Putot and heavy casualties for the Germans. In the afternoon of June 8 General Witt ordered a counter attack on Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse by the Panther company of Regiment 12 and the reconnaissance company of the 25th Regiment. The counter attack was mounted at night because of Allied artillery and air cover, bringing about considerable confusion on the Allied side. The town was captured and the field headquarters of the Regina Rifles was surrounded, although the Germans had to surrender Bretteville again shortly thereafter with both sides sustaining heavy losses. Battle lines now began to harden. The Allies failed to take Caen and the Germans failed to throw them into the sea.
The Hitler Youth Division fought well during its first two days of combat. Meyer later said that the attitude and spirit of his grenadiers had made him speechless. "We old soldiers were deeply affected by the events of the day, but not so the young grenadiers. For them the baptism of fire was what they had imagined. But they knew that difficult days and weeks lay ahead. Their morale was genuinely amazing." Young SS commanders had established close relationships with the boys, reinforced by their practice of leading them into battle instead of directing action from behind. Meyer himself led the attack on Bretteville by riding the leading tank (note: or was it motorcycle, as Keegan claims).
Relative stalemate produced two important conferences on June 9. The overall commander of Panzer troops in the West, General Geyr von Schweppenburg, anti-Nazi since before the War, came to Meyer's headquarters at Ardenne Abbey. He interrupted Meyer's enthusiastic situation report, in Which the latter emphasized the crucial importance of immediate military action on a massive scale, by declaring that ' the war can only be won now by political means.'' Von Schweppenburg, however, informed Meyer that a last desperate - if not suicidal attack was planned, involving Panzer Lehr lunging toward Bayeux, 21st Panzer moving out north of Caen and the 12th SS crossing the Caen-Bayeux road. Meanwhile, Allied Generals Montgomery, Dempsey and Bradley held a conference at Port en Bessin which envisaged a concerted effort to envelop Caen, thus providing a diversion for the major American objective which was to capture Cherbourg. Neither plan succeeded immediately, leading to prolonged vicious fighting, with the vastly outnumbered HJ Division fighting a bloody defensive battle lasting a whole month.
On June 11 fighting again centered on Mohnke's 26th Regiment, giving this unit its brief moment of limited victory. The 3rd Canadian Division decided to clear the Mue valley by driving toward higher ground at le Haut du Basq, which was Colonel Mohnke's headquarters. The 6th Canadian Armored Regiment spearheaded the assault, supported by the infantry of the Queen's Own Rifles. They passed through Norrey en Bessin under heavy shelling and reached the open corn fields north of le Mesnil Patry. Leading tanks reached the village under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, when they were attacked by Mohnke's Ill. Battalion, commanded by SS Captain Hans Scapini, from Cristot on their right and the I. Battalion, commanded by SS Major Bernhard Krause, from St. Mauvieu on their left. The Canadians were forced to retreat, leaving behind them 37 burned out tanks, 95 dead officers and men and a large number of wounded and missing. The 6th Canadian Regiment suffered one third of ail their casualties in the European campaign during this encounter with the Hitler Youth at le Mesnil Patry. The 26th Regiment lost only 13 Panthers and had fewer casualties than the Canadians. The Cahadian Infantry Regiment de la Chaudiere and tanks of the Fort Garry Horse were hastily brought in to replace the decimated 6th Armored Regiment, digging in near Bray and Rots. This uninitiated unit soon discovered the fierceness of Hitler Youth resistance. Few of the patrols going into Rots returned. HJ grenadiers "let them walk right up before firing." In the evening of June 11 the highly rated 46th Royal Marine Commando assaulted Rots. The historian of de la Chaudiere, who visited Rots the next day, described what happened:
They fought like lions on both sides, so that the dead lay corpse by corpse. We searched every house, every courtyard to avoid ambush. And here is the confirmation of how ferocious last night's battle must have been. The Commandos lie dead in rows beside the dead SS. Grenades are scattered all over the road and in the porches of nouses. Here we see a Commando and an SS man, literally dead in each other's arms, having slaughtered each other. There, a German and a Canadian tank have engaged each other to destruction, and are still smoldering, and from each blackened turret hangs the charred corpse of a machine gunner. Over here are a group who ran towards a wall for shelter and were shot down before they got there. And then near the church, as the advance guard of C Company and the carriers turn the corner, there are three Germans. Only three. But one of them instantly draws his pistol and hits one of our men. A Bren gunner kills two of the three SS men, but the survivor gets away. Now we understand with what kind of fanatic we have to deal.
A Canadian sergeant described the same sense of shock and anger: "The morale of the men was very low indeed. The battle itself had been so savage, so furious, that every man felt that the 12th SS Panzer had a personal grudge against our tanks. Every one was rather vindictive and silently swearing revenge. Had they met 12th SS Panzer again immediately, they would have been hard to control." But there was another side to the story. At le Mesnil Patry on the evening of the battle, the 12th SS refused to fire on Canadian ambulance drivers picking up their wounded. A German army lieutenant of the 21st Panzer, who had little reason to defend the SS, told one Allied historian of the Caen battle that the Hitler Youth ''fought bitterly for every yard: the help of one comrade for another was so spontaneous and unselfish that it was unequaled and although you yourself have already heard detrimental facts about them, I can speak of experience of a most humane nature."
For the following two weeks a relative lull prevailed, both sides having exhausted themselves, although the artillery duel, naval bombardment and air attacks continued unabated. The records of the I/25 Battalion indicate an average daily loss of one or two deaths and a dozen wounded and missing. By June 23 its combat strength was down to 539 men and officers from a peak of 700 on June l. Since this battalion occupied the quietest section of the front between June 9 and July 7 the losses of the rest of the division must have been correspondingly higher. Most casualties during this time were artillery victims, as was the commander of the division himself. On June 16 Fritz Witt died alongside many of his men while overseeing that the last man of his headquarters staff reached the safety of a bunker' An artillery shell exploded on the edge of the trench. To no one's surprise Kurt Meyer was immediately selected to replace Witt. At thirty-three Meyer was at the time probably the youngest divisional commander in the war and a veteran of every Body Guard campaign from the beginning. As commander of the Body Guard's reconnaissance battalion he had earned the Knight's Cross in the Balkan offensive by such typical daring do as rolling handgrenades under his hesitant men to make them move more aggressively. He was a natural choice for the Hitler Youth Division, as he was soon to demonstrate. Meyer immediately reorganized the command, pulled the division further back and prepared for a desperate attempt to defend what could no longer be defended. The divisional headquarters was moved closer to Verson because Meyer preferred to keep near his men and the excitement of battle. By the time he assumed command the division had lost a ''dangerous number'' of its officers and NCOs. Most company commanders and platoon leaders had become casualties. Battalions had been reduced to the combat strength of two companies. No replacements had yet arrived and none were expected. The "destruction of the division could be counted on," in the words of Meyer. This thinned out division of teenagers was now confronted by three Allied divisions and several tank brigades.
On June 25 the British launched a major offensive against the left wing of the 12th SS and the right wing of Panzer Lehr, with the object of capturing the bridges across the Odon and the Orne Rivers, thus finally beginning the encirclement of Caen. For this ''Epsom'' offensive Montgomery assembled 600 tanks and 60,000 men. Panzer Lehr and the 12th SS together probably had no more than 250 tanks by this time and some 70 88mm. guns to oppose the British forces. They had little air support and no defense against the artillery of three cruisers and one monitor. The 12th SS bore the brunt of the assault. Although it had the advantage of well known terrain, ideal for defense, superiority of Allied men and material made it a desperate situation for the Hitler Youth. But Hitler, as at Stalingrad, gave the Order to ''hold Out until the last cartridge was spent.'' The 49th British Division began the operation at dawn with the objective of reaching Rauray, Vendes and Juvigny. They met unexpectedly tough resistance, especially at Fontenay le Pesnel. They progressed less than a mile by the end of the day, a third of the way from Rauray. The Fontenay sector was defended by SS Captain Hans Scapini's III. Battalion of the 26th Regiment. Its 10th company had already been overrun a week before. On the 21 June when Meyer visited the front lines, the 15th company had fought without its commander, braving murderous fire to retrieve the chief's dead body. The weakened II. Battalion, commanded by the twenty-seven-year-old SS Captain Gerhard Bremer, fought bitterly on June 25 without adequate artillery and tank support. With bazookas in hand the grenadiers assaulted a swarm of enemy tanks. Meyer could not understand "where these young fellows found the strength to survive this thunder of steel and destruction." In the early morning of 26 June the 15th Scottish Division set out from Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse to capture the Odon bridges, thus opening the way for the 1lth Armored Division to run through to the Orne and the elevated ground south of Caen. Rain and mist prevented Allied air activity for the first time since D Day. The soggy ground and fierce resistance retarded progress. Close, confused and suicidal combat occurred at la Gaule, St. Mauvieu, Cheux and le Haut du Basq. These villages ''were entered only with hand to.hand fighting: it took a long time to overcome all the parties which held out to the last in ruined buildings, farmyards and orchards.'' The villages Were reduced to shambles by the dueling artillery, which stalled the progress of the tanks. At Cheux the 46th Brigade (Glasgow Highlanders, lost twelve officers and had nearly 200 casualties. At the end of the first day of ' Epsom,' the Germans still held the high ground between the Mue and the Odon' When Meyer recognized the main thrust of the attack early on, he ordered Max Wünsche's tanks to hold Rauray at all costs. Back at headquarters in Verson he discovered that the Engineers Regiment had been overrun west of St. Mauvieu, and that the three weakened battalions of his 26th Regiment were struggling to resist a fleet of British tanks. He pulled together the reconnaissance company from the 25th and the divisional headquarters company to defend Verson. Pleas to Corps headquarters for support resulted only in the command to "hold the line until the last cartridge is spent" and the promise that the II. SS Corps was on the way to the front. "So," Meyer recalled, "we had no choice, but to sell our lives as dearly as possible."
The experience of the Panzer Engineer Battalion 12, commanded by SS Captain Max Müller, which was overrun on the first day of the Epsom' assault, was typical of the kind of fatalistic resignation displayed by the Hitler Youth. An anonymous diarist of the Battalion recorded the events of June 26 in the command bunker. Since 2:45 a.m. there had been intermittent artillery bombardment. Communication lines between companies and to the 26th Regiment were cut by 7:00 p.m. An hour later the headquarters came under heavy artillery fire and enemy machine guns were heard nearby. The entire area was enveloped in dust and heavy ground fog, preventing observation of enemy movements. At 9:00 British tanks, armored vehicles and infantry were bypassing the headquarters. Müller then ordered his staff to fan out into the trenches and observation posts and commence firing at the enemy infantry. But British tanks forced them back into the heavily-reinforced redoubt. Three times an enemy tank fired directly into the bunker, killing two men and wounding most of the others. Handgrenades were thrown in but did little damage. "It was a wonder," the diarist wrote. "We sat there nervously but determined to wait for the next attack. The tension got greater and greater. The wounded men were groaning. We could clearly hear the orders and laughter of the enemy."
Suddenly there was noise at the rear entrance. ''Our nerves were at the breaking point. Pistols were quickly pointed at the entrance, but the man who stole his way into the bunker was a German grenadier' He reported two enemy tanks destroyed, grabbed the rest of the grenades and disappeared again." Müller then ordered the unwounded to guard the entrances with knives in hand. 'Every opponent who dared to enter would be dispatched quietly. The wounded grew quieter, avoiding every noise. Some fell asleep, others smoked. After an hour the lonely warrior returned and reported that the bunker was entirely surrounded by enemy tanks and infantry. They could hear them talking and playing with their equipment' When British munitions trucks began to explode, indicating activity of German artillery, their spirits rose somewhat. All went well until 11:00 p.'m' when suddenly voices were heard again' A British soldier approached the entrance. ''Hey boys,' he cried. The wounded woke in panic. The 'Tommy' shot. Then he tore the blanket from the entrance and threw a hand grenade. When it detonated he jumped into the bunker. A knife flashed in his fist. The commander fired--once, twice--the 'Tommy' collapsed." An English voice demanded surrender. The men wavered, but Müller ordered resistance to the last man. One boy lost his nerve and gave himself up. With the aid of the renegade the soldier once more demanded surrender. Handgrenades once more flew into the bunker. The Englishman fired into the bunker with a machine pistol, wounding more men. One grenadier returned the fire and the Englishman dropped his weapon and disappeared. A tank fired a few more shots into the bunker and then all was quiet again. The German prisoner suddenly returned and begged forgiveness.
Hours of tension followed. The last cigar was smoked, the last bottle of Sekt was passed around. No further attack came. All were resigned to confront the last moment of combat. It began to rain and get dark. The commander kept up his words of encouragement. The hour of escape had been set for 12:00 midnight. All got ready, tensely but resolutely. At the chosen moment the commander and the nine-man remnant Of his battalion sneaked out into the darkness. With pistol and compass in hand, Müller led his boys through the British positions to find the German lines towards the south. Again and again they had to stop and tend their wounded comrades. In the blinding rain and darkness, occasionally lighted by British flares, the little group pressed on. For four hours they crawled through the devastated countryside. In the hedgerows they heard English voices. For a moment they rested between two English tank positions, covering themselves with debris. Twenty minutes later they awoke with a start. Tanks were heard nearby' They were German tanks, part of the spearhead of a German counter attack which reached the outskirts of Cheux that night before being forced to retreat once more.
During this night, so eventful for Müller and his boys, the British prepared to resume the offensive. But they met stiff resistance in the Haut du Basq area, where confused fighting continued all day. On the eastern road, however, from Cheux to the Odon bridges progress was rapid. The bridge near Tourmanville was captured intact, opening the way for the 1lth Armored Division to pass over and secure the rising ground beyond, approaching Hill 112. The 12th SS, despite some reinforcements, was forced to fight haphazard, disjointed actions, losing many tanks and men in the process. The 15th Scottish moved east towards Verson which they knew to be 12th SS headquarters. Meyer led his divisional headquarters company to oppose them. They fought a desperate action near Mouen, trying to stop tanks with grenades and anti tank rockets. There was no more artillery support for lack of ammunition. ''For the first time,' Meyer confessed, "I had an empty feeling in my heart and cursed the years of murder. That, which l now experienced, was not war any more, but naked murder. I knew every one of these boys. The oldest of them was barely eighteen years old. These boys had hot yet learned how to live--but God knows they knew how to die! The crushing chains of the tanks ended their young lives. Tears rolled over my face--I began to hate war."
"Panzermeyer's" moment of emotional humanity and regret did not last long. He moved his headquarters to Caen on 28 June. His battered division was practically destroyed. Elements of the SS Body Guard Division (lst SS Panzer) finally arrived at the front, but it was too late to save its Hitler Youth client' Meyer disengaged his division from the battle and prepared for the defense of Caen, once more occupying the sector north and northwest of the ruined city where the battle for Caen had begun three weeks before. The much deserved rest did not last long. On 29 June the II. SS Corps ordered the remnants of the 12th SS tank and reconnaissance battalions to attack and recapture Hill 112, which the British had taken the day before. The plowed-up ground of this plateau was retaken by Max Wünsche's tanks at great cost. The Germans thought they had won a victory without knowing that the British had ordered a temporary holding posture, fearing a massive German counter-attack. Hill 112 became a symbol of the horrendous waste of human lives in the meaningless strategy of tactical but hopeless defense. Hitler repeated the mistake of Stalingrad by ordering that Caen should be held "to the last shot!" Meyer knew that this meant destroying the Hitler Youth Division, but a Hitler order could not be challenged under the circumstances, even if Meyer had been inclined to do so, which he was not. The 26th Regiment had already been reduced to a "small battalion," perhaps not unusual for any division after a few days of combat, but, nevertheless fatal for the HJ. Some 150 to 200 men of its I. Battalion, commanded by SS Major Bernhard Krause, defended the airport at Carpiquet. Some 88mm. guns and other artillery were still available, and a few tanks were dug in at the east end of the airport. The Division as a whole was a mere Battle Group ' in size, although OKW still carried it as a full division. The Stalingrad of the Hitler Youth was about to reach its murderous finale.
As a preliminary to the major Allied assault on Caen the airport was to be captured on July 4. Following heavy shelling by naval guns and artillery, three infantry battalions and tanks of the 8th Canadian Brigade attacked from their base at Marcelet. The village of Carpiquet was entered within an hour, but two successive assaults on the airport buildings were beaten back by fierce resistance' Oh July 5 the lst SS Panzer made a counter attack further south, which forced the Canadians to postpone the capture of the airport until 8 July. Fifty grenadiers of SS Major Krause's I. Battalion held up three Canadian battalions at the west end of the airport. Meyer himself was in Krause's command bunker during the first Canadian attack. Again he was amazed at the resolute, methodical, almost instinctive way the boys fought. Twenty of them were left at the end of the day. All officers fell' But the airport remained in German hands for another four days.
On July 8 the British began the frontal assault on Caen. The 25th Regiment of Meyer's Division was well entrenched in a network of anti tank ditches and weapon pits. A defensive belt, two or three miles deep, made the northern suburban villages "virtually tank-proof." Against this strong defensive position, manned by a single depleted regiment in the center, parts of the SS Body Guard on the left, and the 16th Air Force Ground Division (German) on the right, the British threw three infantry divisions supported by two armored brigades and a number of flail, engineer and flame thrower tanks. They were covered by the naval artillery of one battleship, a monitor and two cruisers. Some 450 bombers struck the defensive positions on the outskirts of Caen. This raid smashed the city at a time when there were only a handful of Germans safely underground in it. The massive artillery barrage was aimed to fall right behind the German lines to hinder the movement of reinforcements, had their been any. But this meant that the infantry had to storm the German positions, which led fierce hand-to-hand fighting in numerous places.
Starting at 4:20 a.m. the 3rd British and 59th Divisions made rapid progress at first, reaching Heronville, Lebisey and the outskirts of la Bijude and Galmanche within an hour. When the second phase of the assault began at 7:30 the progress came to a standstill. '"In the center, the 12th SS Panzer Division fought back hard and parties held out against the 59th in la Bijude and Galmanche. Similar struggles were soon developing in Epron and St. Contest," scene of the original contest between the HJ and the Canadians a month before. "The Canadians" this time "were in Buron by half past eight, but the 12th SS Panzer Division was prepared," having lost none of their resolve, ' to fight to the end in the rubble, and it took most of the day to master them.'' The attacking battalions of the 3rd Canadian Division lost 262 officers and men and its squadron of fifteen tanks was reduced to one. Heavy fighting at Buron delayed progress until 2:30 p.m. when the Canadians finally began to move on Authie and St. Louet. The attack on Cussy and Ardenne Abbey began at 6:30 p.m. Cussy was captured after two hours of hard combat, but Ardenne Abbey, site of Meyer's original headquarters from which he had surveyed his and the HJ's own D Day, was not taken until the next morning. The reason for the delay was a counter attack ordered by Kurt Meyer.
Meyer knew that the city of Caen could no longer be held and that it Was likely to become ' the coffin lid of our courageous division.' The l. SS Corps could provide as reinforcements only fifteen tanks. So the pattern of Stalingrad repeated itself. The 3rd British Division attacked the 16th Air Force Ground Division and "seemed to wipe it off the map" within a short time, opening the right flank. Meyer sent a section of tanks and the divisional staff company to fill the gap. This left some four decimated infantry battalions and one depleted battalion of tanks to oppose the 3rd Canadian and 59th British Divisions north of Caen. During the first hour of combat the I/25 Battalion lost almost all of its company commanders. SS Major Johann Waldmüller, now the chief of the l. Battalion, stood in the midst of his men, the very soul of resistance,' according to Meyer. The II. Battalion lost all company commanders and all anti-tank artillery, fighting tanks with bazookas' But the heaviest combat occurred in the area of the III' Battalion, Waldmüller's earlier unit, now fighting for its life at Buron, Authie and the Ardenne Abbey once again. The symbolic Abbey was now used as a field hospital. Massive air attacks prevented the movement of the wounded to the rear. The roads had become ''race tracks of death and destruction.'' General Heinrich Eberbach' commander of the 5th Panzer Army, braved the hail of artillery and bombs to consult With Meyer in his bunker. He recognized the achievements of the 12th SS but could do little to offer assistance. Yet Meyer got the impression that the general would do everything he could to prevent further deaths in the ruins of Caen.''
In the afternoon Gruchy had to be surrendered after bloody fighting, which claimed all but one courier of the 16th company. The boys ''died in their positions..' Remnants of the III. Battalion brought the Canadians to a halt in front of the inevitable Ardenne Abbey. At this point, in the evening hours of July 8, Meyer ' could no longer contain himself. He had to be in the center of the fight to make a decision which in the nature of things would have to disregard Hitler's order. He went to the Abbey himself, driving and running through artillery barrages. The Abbey had been reduced to shambles. The courtyard was strewn with the dead. In )he cellar the wounded commander of the 25th Regiment pictured the desperate situation for him. It was decided to mount a limited counter attack with all available tanks and mortars, in order to allow the evacuation of the wounded during the night' Meyer decided to pull back behind the Orne, but the I. SS Corps refused to go along. Meyer was '.overcome with anger ' when he 'thought of the courageous grenadiers who had fought night and day for four weeks and were how to be sacrificed uselessly. ' So he ignored all orders finally and began the withdrawal' Most of the wounded were moved to the rear, but the III. Battalion was reduced to 100 men and NCOs in the process of covering the evacuation' In the morning hours of July 9 the Division moved south of the city. New headquarters were established at Carcelles as the last security units left the ruins of Caen to the Canadians and the British.
From June 7 until July 9 the Hitler Youth Division lost 4,000 dead and 8,000 wounded and missing. An Allied officer thought that it had "fought with a tenacity and fierceness" such as he had not seen in the entire European campaign. A few days later, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, in conversation with 'Sepp' Dietrich and Kurt Meyer, recognized the unique attitude of the HJ Division: . Your soldiers possess the spirit of the young regiments of Langemarck, but are far better trained and above all led by front experienced officers and NCOs. It is a shame that his faithful youth is being sacrificed in a hopeless cause.'' Erwin Rommel made similar remarks shortly before his death.
But the end was not yet in sight. What followed was attrition, gradually grinding the remaining elements of the division to shreds. New headquarters were established at Potigny north of Falaise. Regimental staffs were withdrawn to hammer new replacements into marching companies, while remaining troops were organized into two Battle Groups. With some 50 remaining tanks the latter played a significant role in spiking three separate British offensives between Caen and Falaise, prolonging the capture of Falaise for a month. A concerted counter-attack at Cintheaux, organized by Kurt Meyer, and isolated victories demonstrated that the Hitler Youth had lost none of its resolute combat elan. When Falaise was finally taken by the Canadians on August 16 a remnant of 60 Hitler youths held out in the ruins of the Ecole Superieure until all but two messengers, chosen by lot, were dead. The rest of the Division helped to keep the pincers of the Falaise Argentan pocket open long enough to allow two decimated German Armies to escape. By September 4, 1944 the fighting strength of the division was enlarged again to 600 men from the 200 who slipped out of the pocket, but the sum and substance of its effectiveness had been destroyed. Eighty percent of the original combat personnel had been annihilated, and similar losses had been sustained by the support troops. The Division lost 80 percent of its tanks, 70 percent of its armored vehicles, 60 percent of its artillery and mortars and 50 percent of the rest of its vehicles.
The Reichsjugendführung made feeble recruiting efforts to rebuild its elite formation. In some areas fifteen-year-olds were drafted to shore up dwindling reserves. Axmann even made plans to establish a separate reserve organization for the Division, but little came of this nonsensical effort. The shock of Caen had been too great. The Division was replenished with air force ground personnel, navy personnel and recuperated veterans from military hospitals. Some new HJ recruits must also have been added. This patched-up division, with little resemblance to its former elite character, was engaged in the Battle of the Bulge and subsequently in Hungary and Austria, but with little noticeable effect.
On 5 May 1945, the ''Baby Division" was withdrawn from futile, last-ditch efforts to defend Vienna, their patron's libidinal battleground a generation before. SS Major General Hugo Kraas, the last commander of the 12th SS Panzer Division, gave his men free reign to follow their natural inclination to escape the clutches of the approaching Russian troops by moving west toward the American lines. Three days later, near the small town of Enns, 6,000 weary and bedraggled survivors of the once proud Hitler Youth Division tried to cross a bridge across the Danube. It had been blocked by other Hitler Youth boys working in tank trap battalions organized by Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach. Someone cried "Russky!" and panic broke loose as all stampeded towards a narrow gap on the bridge. Trucks rammed into the surging mass and killed at least 15 of them, scattering the fleeing hordes along both sides of the river. A single Russian tank "clanked toward the bridge. A Red Army lieutenant stood in the turret, laughing at the sight of 6,000 men frantically scrambling to escape his single gun." Towards the end of the day a faithful remnant of 455 men and one tank marched before Hugo Kraas for the last time. In a final symbolic act of arrogant defiance, the HJ-SS soldiers refused to obey an American order to drape their vehicles in white flags and drove into American captivity "proud and erect."
[Note: Proper footnotes will be added later. Most pictures come from the Bundesarchiv in Germany.]
A Bibliography for the Battle of Caen
Ambrose, Stephen. D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (Simon and Schuster, 1998)
English, John A. The Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign: A Study of Failure in High Command. Westport, Ct.: Praeger Publishers, 1991.
How, J. J. Normandy: The British Breakout. London: _____, 1981.
Keegan, John. Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.
Luther, Craig W. H. Blood and Honor: The History of the 12th SS Panzer Divison "Hitler Youth", 1943-1945. San Jose: Bender Publishing, 1987.
Mabire, Jean. Les jeunes fauves du Führer: La Division SS Hitlerjugend dans la bataille de Normandie. Paris: Fayard, 1976.
McKee, Alexander. Last Round Against Rommel: Battle of the Normandy Beachhead. New York: The New American Library, 1966.
Meyer, Hubert. Kriegsgeschichte der 12. SS-Panzerdivision "Hitlerjugend'." 2 vols. Osnabrück: Munin Verlag, 1982.
Millar, C. J., and R. G. Coyle. "A Mission Orientated Analysis of Operation Goodwood," British Army Review 94 (April 1990): 15-24.
Richardson, T. A. "Normandy 1944," Journal of the Royal Artillery 117 (September 1990): 26-28.
Ritgen, Helmut. Die Geschichte der Panzer-Lehr-Division im Westen 1944-1945. Stuttgart: ____, 1979.
Samuels, Martin. "Operation Goodwood: 'The Caen Carve-Up,'" British Army Review 96 (December 1990): 4-11.
Scarfe, Norman. Assault Division: A History of the 3rd Division from the Invasion of Normandy to the Surrender of Germany. London: _____, 1947.
Stacey, C. P. The Victory Campaign: The Operations in North-West Europe, 1944-1945. Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War: Volume III. Ottawa: The Queen's Printer and Controller of Stationery, 1960.
Weigley, Russell F. "From the Normandy Beaches to the Falaise-Argentan Pocket," Military Review 70 (September 1990): 45-64.
At 3:00 a.m. on D Day (June 6, 1944) General Witt heard about British landings in the estuary of the Orne. His division was ready. March plans had been carefully prepared for expected action near Caen. But extreme confusion on the upper level of command resulted in contradictory orders and forced the division to spend the entire day in useless and exhaustive marching. One partner of the I. SS Panzer Korps, the 21st Panzer Division, was in action north of Caen on D Day, but the other, the 1st SS Panzer (Body Guard) Division, was still in Belgium, recuperating from bloody combat in Russia. The 12th SS Panzer could not go into action until June 7. Only part of its 25th Regiment commanded by Kurt Meyer reached the Caen area near the previous midnight. While Allied bombers slowed the division's march toward Caen, Meyer's reconnaissance squads discovered around 1:00 a.m. on June 7 that the villages north and northwest of Caen and the airport at Carpiquet were still free of enemy troops. He quickly established headquarters in the Ardenne Abbey, slightly northwest of Caen, and organized his arriving battalions into battle formation. The 3rd British Division meanwhile was moving toward Caen, being held up by the 21st Panzer eight kilometers northeast of the city. General Witt ordered Meyer to prepare for a coordinated attack with the 21st at 12:00 noon in order to ''throw the enemy into the sea.'' At 3:00 a.m. Meyer began to position his battalions five miles north and northwest of Caen. Thus, as dawn broke on June 7, the 25th Regiment was about to experience a dramatic baptism of fire.
Two towers of Ardenne Abbey (note: see Keegan for more details), surrounded by large orchards and high walls, provided an advantageous view of the entire coastal area. Artillery commander Karl Bartling used one tower as an observation post and Meyer used the other to survey the anticipated battle field. While machine gunners and the Flak shot it out with enemy fighter-bombers, the entire area was saturated with naval bombardment from ships in the harbor clearly visible to Meyer. The whole coastal area Was a beehive of activity. British tank units were forming west of Douvres as Meyer and his men waited anxiously for their tanks to arrive. Finally, at 10:00 a.m. a group of fifty Panzer IV reported in. The rest were still on the way and oared not move until the cover of darkness shielded them from air assaults and naval artillery. What followed was typical of the aggressive kind of warfare conducted by the Waffen SS and the kind of discipline which made the SS a feared byword of Allied soldiers. Kurt Meyer recalled the moment vividly:
Now What is that? Did I see right? An enemy tank pushes through the orchard of Contest! Now he stops. The commander opens the turret and surveys the countryside. Is that fellow blind? Has he not noticed that he stands only 200 meters in front of the grenadiers of the II. Battalion and that the cannons are pointed towards him? Apparently not. Leisurely he takes out a cigarette and blinks at the smoke. Not a single shot is fired. The Battalion keeps complete fire discipline.
Aha! Now everything is clear! The tank moves to secure the right flank. From Buron enemy tanks roll towards Authie. My God! What an opportunity. The tanks drive exactly in front of the II. Battalion! The enemy unit offers its unprotected flank. I give the order to all Battalions, artillery and available tanks: Hold your fire! Shoot only when l give the order. The commander of our tank regiment sits in his (armored) command car in the garden of the Abbey. Quickly telephone lines are strung from the observation tower to his tank and thus the movement of the enemy is transferred to every tank. One company stands on the grounds of the Abbey and another lies in ambush south of Franqueville. Hesitantly but steadily the tanks roll into Authie. They drive through the village towards Franqueville.
The enemy commander seems to see nothing except the airport at Carpiquet--the place lies directly in front of him. He can reach it already with his weapons. But he does not see that his destruction lurks in ambush. As soon as his tanks cross the Caen-Bayeux road, they run straight into the waiting Panzer company of the II. Battalion. Only a few meters separate the iron monsters.
We are mesmerized by the developing theater: Wünsche, commander of the Panzer Regiment, relays the movement of the enemy tanks quietly. No one dares to speak loudly.
I think about the divisional attack order and about the axiom of Guderian: 'Hit hard, don't dribble.' But in this situation one had to act immediately. The 26th Regiment was still east of the Orne, and the I. Battalion of Panzer Regiment 12 lay 30 kilometers east of the Orne, completely out of fuel.
The fuel could not be delivered because of air attacks. Decision! As soon as the forward enemy tanks pass through Franqueville, the ll. Battalion and the tank company in ambush attack' When the Battalion reaches Authie, the other battalions attack also. Objective: the coast!
Terrible pressure presses upon us. Now it must happen. The enemy point passes through Franqueville and is about to cross the road. I give the attack signal to Wünsche and hear only his order: 'Attention, Panzer march'! The tension disappears. There is lightning and thunder in Franqueville. The first enemy tank is wrapped in smoke and I see the men jump out. Other tanks blow apart. One Panzer IV suddenly stops, flames shooting out of the turret. The Canadian infantry attempts to reach Authie and to carry the battle further from there. But all for nothing. The grenadiers of the II. Battalion are driven by pride. They are determined to stop the tanks. They want to break into Authie. The grenadiers have barely reached Authie when the II. and I. Battalions attack. The enemy has now been seized deep in the flank. By aggressive attack Franqueville and Authie are captured. Now Contest and Buron must fall. The enemy forces seem to have been completely surprised. Until now neither side has fired a single artillery shell.
The attack goes forward rapidly. Prisoners gather and move back with uplifted hands. The surprise attack of Meyer's 25th Regiment made good progress in the next few hours and the forward units of the 3rd Canadian Division were thrown back pell mell. But the attack could not be maintained. The 2lst Panzer was held up near Epron. To its left the I. Battalion drove to the suburbs of Cambes, where it was halted by Canadian tanks and heavy machine gun fire. Strong artillery support and fighter bomber attacks did the rest. Communications were interrupted. There were not enough Panzer IV to halt the Shermans. All three battalions were soon forced to dig in. Meyer's earlier estimate of the Canadians as "small fish" was now somewhat tempered. The I. Battalion sustained 15 dead, 87 wounded and 10 missing. Losses of the II. were even heavier, including most company chiefs and the commander. The Tank Battalion lost six Panzer IV. But the 27th Canadian Tank Regiment lost 28 Shermans and the 9th Canadian Brigade suffered 245 casualties.
During the night the remaining units of the l2th SS arrived, and its 26th Regiment, led by SS Lt. Colonel Wilhelm Mohnke, attacked across the Caen-Bayeux rail line. The late arrival of the 26th was one reason why Meyer had had to go over to the defensive, since his left flank was endangered by the 6th Canadian Armored Regiment. The latter took Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse in the early morning hours of June 8 and turned left on the Caen-Bayeux road moving towards the Carpiquet airfield. The Canadians had an opportunity to take the airfield, but the attack of the 26th Regiment turned them back. In Putot en Bessin the attack of the 26th Regiment led to the encirclement and destruction of three companies of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and the Canadian Scottish. A subsequent counter attack by the Canadians resulted in the retaking of Putot and heavy casualties for the Germans. In the afternoon of June 8 General Witt ordered a counter attack on Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse by the Panther company of Regiment 12 and the reconnaissance company of the 25th Regiment. The counter attack was mounted at night because of Allied artillery and air cover, bringing about considerable confusion on the Allied side. The town was captured and the field headquarters of the Regina Rifles was surrounded, although the Germans had to surrender Bretteville again shortly thereafter with both sides sustaining heavy losses. Battle lines now began to harden. The Allies failed to take Caen and the Germans failed to throw them into the sea.
The Hitler Youth Division fought well during its first two days of combat. Meyer later said that the attitude and spirit of his grenadiers had made him speechless. "We old soldiers were deeply affected by the events of the day, but not so the young grenadiers. For them the baptism of fire was what they had imagined. But they knew that difficult days and weeks lay ahead. Their morale was genuinely amazing." Young SS commanders had established close relationships with the boys, reinforced by their practice of leading them into battle instead of directing action from behind. Meyer himself led the attack on Bretteville by riding the leading tank (note: or was it motorcycle, as Keegan claims).
Relative stalemate produced two important conferences on June 9. The overall commander of Panzer troops in the West, General Geyr von Schweppenburg, anti-Nazi since before the War, came to Meyer's headquarters at Ardenne Abbey. He interrupted Meyer's enthusiastic situation report, in Which the latter emphasized the crucial importance of immediate military action on a massive scale, by declaring that ' the war can only be won now by political means.'' Von Schweppenburg, however, informed Meyer that a last desperate - if not suicidal attack was planned, involving Panzer Lehr lunging toward Bayeux, 21st Panzer moving out north of Caen and the 12th SS crossing the Caen-Bayeux road. Meanwhile, Allied Generals Montgomery, Dempsey and Bradley held a conference at Port en Bessin which envisaged a concerted effort to envelop Caen, thus providing a diversion for the major American objective which was to capture Cherbourg. Neither plan succeeded immediately, leading to prolonged vicious fighting, with the vastly outnumbered HJ Division fighting a bloody defensive battle lasting a whole month.
On June 11 fighting again centered on Mohnke's 26th Regiment, giving this unit its brief moment of limited victory. The 3rd Canadian Division decided to clear the Mue valley by driving toward higher ground at le Haut du Basq, which was Colonel Mohnke's headquarters. The 6th Canadian Armored Regiment spearheaded the assault, supported by the infantry of the Queen's Own Rifles. They passed through Norrey en Bessin under heavy shelling and reached the open corn fields north of le Mesnil Patry. Leading tanks reached the village under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, when they were attacked by Mohnke's Ill. Battalion, commanded by SS Captain Hans Scapini, from Cristot on their right and the I. Battalion, commanded by SS Major Bernhard Krause, from St. Mauvieu on their left. The Canadians were forced to retreat, leaving behind them 37 burned out tanks, 95 dead officers and men and a large number of wounded and missing. The 6th Canadian Regiment suffered one third of ail their casualties in the European campaign during this encounter with the Hitler Youth at le Mesnil Patry. The 26th Regiment lost only 13 Panthers and had fewer casualties than the Canadians. The Cahadian Infantry Regiment de la Chaudiere and tanks of the Fort Garry Horse were hastily brought in to replace the decimated 6th Armored Regiment, digging in near Bray and Rots. This uninitiated unit soon discovered the fierceness of Hitler Youth resistance. Few of the patrols going into Rots returned. HJ grenadiers "let them walk right up before firing." In the evening of June 11 the highly rated 46th Royal Marine Commando assaulted Rots. The historian of de la Chaudiere, who visited Rots the next day, described what happened:
They fought like lions on both sides, so that the dead lay corpse by corpse. We searched every house, every courtyard to avoid ambush. And here is the confirmation of how ferocious last night's battle must have been. The Commandos lie dead in rows beside the dead SS. Grenades are scattered all over the road and in the porches of nouses. Here we see a Commando and an SS man, literally dead in each other's arms, having slaughtered each other. There, a German and a Canadian tank have engaged each other to destruction, and are still smoldering, and from each blackened turret hangs the charred corpse of a machine gunner. Over here are a group who ran towards a wall for shelter and were shot down before they got there. And then near the church, as the advance guard of C Company and the carriers turn the corner, there are three Germans. Only three. But one of them instantly draws his pistol and hits one of our men. A Bren gunner kills two of the three SS men, but the survivor gets away. Now we understand with what kind of fanatic we have to deal.
A Canadian sergeant described the same sense of shock and anger: "The morale of the men was very low indeed. The battle itself had been so savage, so furious, that every man felt that the 12th SS Panzer had a personal grudge against our tanks. Every one was rather vindictive and silently swearing revenge. Had they met 12th SS Panzer again immediately, they would have been hard to control." But there was another side to the story. At le Mesnil Patry on the evening of the battle, the 12th SS refused to fire on Canadian ambulance drivers picking up their wounded. A German army lieutenant of the 21st Panzer, who had little reason to defend the SS, told one Allied historian of the Caen battle that the Hitler Youth ''fought bitterly for every yard: the help of one comrade for another was so spontaneous and unselfish that it was unequaled and although you yourself have already heard detrimental facts about them, I can speak of experience of a most humane nature."
For the following two weeks a relative lull prevailed, both sides having exhausted themselves, although the artillery duel, naval bombardment and air attacks continued unabated. The records of the I/25 Battalion indicate an average daily loss of one or two deaths and a dozen wounded and missing. By June 23 its combat strength was down to 539 men and officers from a peak of 700 on June l. Since this battalion occupied the quietest section of the front between June 9 and July 7 the losses of the rest of the division must have been correspondingly higher. Most casualties during this time were artillery victims, as was the commander of the division himself. On June 16 Fritz Witt died alongside many of his men while overseeing that the last man of his headquarters staff reached the safety of a bunker' An artillery shell exploded on the edge of the trench. To no one's surprise Kurt Meyer was immediately selected to replace Witt. At thirty-three Meyer was at the time probably the youngest divisional commander in the war and a veteran of every Body Guard campaign from the beginning. As commander of the Body Guard's reconnaissance battalion he had earned the Knight's Cross in the Balkan offensive by such typical daring do as rolling handgrenades under his hesitant men to make them move more aggressively. He was a natural choice for the Hitler Youth Division, as he was soon to demonstrate. Meyer immediately reorganized the command, pulled the division further back and prepared for a desperate attempt to defend what could no longer be defended. The divisional headquarters was moved closer to Verson because Meyer preferred to keep near his men and the excitement of battle. By the time he assumed command the division had lost a ''dangerous number'' of its officers and NCOs. Most company commanders and platoon leaders had become casualties. Battalions had been reduced to the combat strength of two companies. No replacements had yet arrived and none were expected. The "destruction of the division could be counted on," in the words of Meyer. This thinned out division of teenagers was now confronted by three Allied divisions and several tank brigades.
On June 25 the British launched a major offensive against the left wing of the 12th SS and the right wing of Panzer Lehr, with the object of capturing the bridges across the Odon and the Orne Rivers, thus finally beginning the encirclement of Caen. For this ''Epsom'' offensive Montgomery assembled 600 tanks and 60,000 men. Panzer Lehr and the 12th SS together probably had no more than 250 tanks by this time and some 70 88mm. guns to oppose the British forces. They had little air support and no defense against the artillery of three cruisers and one monitor. The 12th SS bore the brunt of the assault. Although it had the advantage of well known terrain, ideal for defense, superiority of Allied men and material made it a desperate situation for the Hitler Youth. But Hitler, as at Stalingrad, gave the Order to ''hold Out until the last cartridge was spent.'' The 49th British Division began the operation at dawn with the objective of reaching Rauray, Vendes and Juvigny. They met unexpectedly tough resistance, especially at Fontenay le Pesnel. They progressed less than a mile by the end of the day, a third of the way from Rauray. The Fontenay sector was defended by SS Captain Hans Scapini's III. Battalion of the 26th Regiment. Its 10th company had already been overrun a week before. On the 21 June when Meyer visited the front lines, the 15th company had fought without its commander, braving murderous fire to retrieve the chief's dead body. The weakened II. Battalion, commanded by the twenty-seven-year-old SS Captain Gerhard Bremer, fought bitterly on June 25 without adequate artillery and tank support. With bazookas in hand the grenadiers assaulted a swarm of enemy tanks. Meyer could not understand "where these young fellows found the strength to survive this thunder of steel and destruction." In the early morning of 26 June the 15th Scottish Division set out from Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse to capture the Odon bridges, thus opening the way for the 1lth Armored Division to run through to the Orne and the elevated ground south of Caen. Rain and mist prevented Allied air activity for the first time since D Day. The soggy ground and fierce resistance retarded progress. Close, confused and suicidal combat occurred at la Gaule, St. Mauvieu, Cheux and le Haut du Basq. These villages ''were entered only with hand to.hand fighting: it took a long time to overcome all the parties which held out to the last in ruined buildings, farmyards and orchards.'' The villages Were reduced to shambles by the dueling artillery, which stalled the progress of the tanks. At Cheux the 46th Brigade (Glasgow Highlanders, lost twelve officers and had nearly 200 casualties. At the end of the first day of ' Epsom,' the Germans still held the high ground between the Mue and the Odon' When Meyer recognized the main thrust of the attack early on, he ordered Max Wünsche's tanks to hold Rauray at all costs. Back at headquarters in Verson he discovered that the Engineers Regiment had been overrun west of St. Mauvieu, and that the three weakened battalions of his 26th Regiment were struggling to resist a fleet of British tanks. He pulled together the reconnaissance company from the 25th and the divisional headquarters company to defend Verson. Pleas to Corps headquarters for support resulted only in the command to "hold the line until the last cartridge is spent" and the promise that the II. SS Corps was on the way to the front. "So," Meyer recalled, "we had no choice, but to sell our lives as dearly as possible."
The experience of the Panzer Engineer Battalion 12, commanded by SS Captain Max Müller, which was overrun on the first day of the Epsom' assault, was typical of the kind of fatalistic resignation displayed by the Hitler Youth. An anonymous diarist of the Battalion recorded the events of June 26 in the command bunker. Since 2:45 a.m. there had been intermittent artillery bombardment. Communication lines between companies and to the 26th Regiment were cut by 7:00 p.m. An hour later the headquarters came under heavy artillery fire and enemy machine guns were heard nearby. The entire area was enveloped in dust and heavy ground fog, preventing observation of enemy movements. At 9:00 British tanks, armored vehicles and infantry were bypassing the headquarters. Müller then ordered his staff to fan out into the trenches and observation posts and commence firing at the enemy infantry. But British tanks forced them back into the heavily-reinforced redoubt. Three times an enemy tank fired directly into the bunker, killing two men and wounding most of the others. Handgrenades were thrown in but did little damage. "It was a wonder," the diarist wrote. "We sat there nervously but determined to wait for the next attack. The tension got greater and greater. The wounded men were groaning. We could clearly hear the orders and laughter of the enemy."
Suddenly there was noise at the rear entrance. ''Our nerves were at the breaking point. Pistols were quickly pointed at the entrance, but the man who stole his way into the bunker was a German grenadier' He reported two enemy tanks destroyed, grabbed the rest of the grenades and disappeared again." Müller then ordered the unwounded to guard the entrances with knives in hand. 'Every opponent who dared to enter would be dispatched quietly. The wounded grew quieter, avoiding every noise. Some fell asleep, others smoked. After an hour the lonely warrior returned and reported that the bunker was entirely surrounded by enemy tanks and infantry. They could hear them talking and playing with their equipment' When British munitions trucks began to explode, indicating activity of German artillery, their spirits rose somewhat. All went well until 11:00 p.'m' when suddenly voices were heard again' A British soldier approached the entrance. ''Hey boys,' he cried. The wounded woke in panic. The 'Tommy' shot. Then he tore the blanket from the entrance and threw a hand grenade. When it detonated he jumped into the bunker. A knife flashed in his fist. The commander fired--once, twice--the 'Tommy' collapsed." An English voice demanded surrender. The men wavered, but Müller ordered resistance to the last man. One boy lost his nerve and gave himself up. With the aid of the renegade the soldier once more demanded surrender. Handgrenades once more flew into the bunker. The Englishman fired into the bunker with a machine pistol, wounding more men. One grenadier returned the fire and the Englishman dropped his weapon and disappeared. A tank fired a few more shots into the bunker and then all was quiet again. The German prisoner suddenly returned and begged forgiveness.
Hours of tension followed. The last cigar was smoked, the last bottle of Sekt was passed around. No further attack came. All were resigned to confront the last moment of combat. It began to rain and get dark. The commander kept up his words of encouragement. The hour of escape had been set for 12:00 midnight. All got ready, tensely but resolutely. At the chosen moment the commander and the nine-man remnant Of his battalion sneaked out into the darkness. With pistol and compass in hand, Müller led his boys through the British positions to find the German lines towards the south. Again and again they had to stop and tend their wounded comrades. In the blinding rain and darkness, occasionally lighted by British flares, the little group pressed on. For four hours they crawled through the devastated countryside. In the hedgerows they heard English voices. For a moment they rested between two English tank positions, covering themselves with debris. Twenty minutes later they awoke with a start. Tanks were heard nearby' They were German tanks, part of the spearhead of a German counter attack which reached the outskirts of Cheux that night before being forced to retreat once more.
During this night, so eventful for Müller and his boys, the British prepared to resume the offensive. But they met stiff resistance in the Haut du Basq area, where confused fighting continued all day. On the eastern road, however, from Cheux to the Odon bridges progress was rapid. The bridge near Tourmanville was captured intact, opening the way for the 1lth Armored Division to pass over and secure the rising ground beyond, approaching Hill 112. The 12th SS, despite some reinforcements, was forced to fight haphazard, disjointed actions, losing many tanks and men in the process. The 15th Scottish moved east towards Verson which they knew to be 12th SS headquarters. Meyer led his divisional headquarters company to oppose them. They fought a desperate action near Mouen, trying to stop tanks with grenades and anti tank rockets. There was no more artillery support for lack of ammunition. ''For the first time,' Meyer confessed, "I had an empty feeling in my heart and cursed the years of murder. That, which l now experienced, was not war any more, but naked murder. I knew every one of these boys. The oldest of them was barely eighteen years old. These boys had hot yet learned how to live--but God knows they knew how to die! The crushing chains of the tanks ended their young lives. Tears rolled over my face--I began to hate war."
"Panzermeyer's" moment of emotional humanity and regret did not last long. He moved his headquarters to Caen on 28 June. His battered division was practically destroyed. Elements of the SS Body Guard Division (lst SS Panzer) finally arrived at the front, but it was too late to save its Hitler Youth client' Meyer disengaged his division from the battle and prepared for the defense of Caen, once more occupying the sector north and northwest of the ruined city where the battle for Caen had begun three weeks before. The much deserved rest did not last long. On 29 June the II. SS Corps ordered the remnants of the 12th SS tank and reconnaissance battalions to attack and recapture Hill 112, which the British had taken the day before. The plowed-up ground of this plateau was retaken by Max Wünsche's tanks at great cost. The Germans thought they had won a victory without knowing that the British had ordered a temporary holding posture, fearing a massive German counter-attack. Hill 112 became a symbol of the horrendous waste of human lives in the meaningless strategy of tactical but hopeless defense. Hitler repeated the mistake of Stalingrad by ordering that Caen should be held "to the last shot!" Meyer knew that this meant destroying the Hitler Youth Division, but a Hitler order could not be challenged under the circumstances, even if Meyer had been inclined to do so, which he was not. The 26th Regiment had already been reduced to a "small battalion," perhaps not unusual for any division after a few days of combat, but, nevertheless fatal for the HJ. Some 150 to 200 men of its I. Battalion, commanded by SS Major Bernhard Krause, defended the airport at Carpiquet. Some 88mm. guns and other artillery were still available, and a few tanks were dug in at the east end of the airport. The Division as a whole was a mere Battle Group ' in size, although OKW still carried it as a full division. The Stalingrad of the Hitler Youth was about to reach its murderous finale.
As a preliminary to the major Allied assault on Caen the airport was to be captured on July 4. Following heavy shelling by naval guns and artillery, three infantry battalions and tanks of the 8th Canadian Brigade attacked from their base at Marcelet. The village of Carpiquet was entered within an hour, but two successive assaults on the airport buildings were beaten back by fierce resistance' Oh July 5 the lst SS Panzer made a counter attack further south, which forced the Canadians to postpone the capture of the airport until 8 July. Fifty grenadiers of SS Major Krause's I. Battalion held up three Canadian battalions at the west end of the airport. Meyer himself was in Krause's command bunker during the first Canadian attack. Again he was amazed at the resolute, methodical, almost instinctive way the boys fought. Twenty of them were left at the end of the day. All officers fell' But the airport remained in German hands for another four days.
On July 8 the British began the frontal assault on Caen. The 25th Regiment of Meyer's Division was well entrenched in a network of anti tank ditches and weapon pits. A defensive belt, two or three miles deep, made the northern suburban villages "virtually tank-proof." Against this strong defensive position, manned by a single depleted regiment in the center, parts of the SS Body Guard on the left, and the 16th Air Force Ground Division (German) on the right, the British threw three infantry divisions supported by two armored brigades and a number of flail, engineer and flame thrower tanks. They were covered by the naval artillery of one battleship, a monitor and two cruisers. Some 450 bombers struck the defensive positions on the outskirts of Caen. This raid smashed the city at a time when there were only a handful of Germans safely underground in it. The massive artillery barrage was aimed to fall right behind the German lines to hinder the movement of reinforcements, had their been any. But this meant that the infantry had to storm the German positions, which led fierce hand-to-hand fighting in numerous places.
Starting at 4:20 a.m. the 3rd British and 59th Divisions made rapid progress at first, reaching Heronville, Lebisey and the outskirts of la Bijude and Galmanche within an hour. When the second phase of the assault began at 7:30 the progress came to a standstill. '"In the center, the 12th SS Panzer Division fought back hard and parties held out against the 59th in la Bijude and Galmanche. Similar struggles were soon developing in Epron and St. Contest," scene of the original contest between the HJ and the Canadians a month before. "The Canadians" this time "were in Buron by half past eight, but the 12th SS Panzer Division was prepared," having lost none of their resolve, ' to fight to the end in the rubble, and it took most of the day to master them.'' The attacking battalions of the 3rd Canadian Division lost 262 officers and men and its squadron of fifteen tanks was reduced to one. Heavy fighting at Buron delayed progress until 2:30 p.m. when the Canadians finally began to move on Authie and St. Louet. The attack on Cussy and Ardenne Abbey began at 6:30 p.m. Cussy was captured after two hours of hard combat, but Ardenne Abbey, site of Meyer's original headquarters from which he had surveyed his and the HJ's own D Day, was not taken until the next morning. The reason for the delay was a counter attack ordered by Kurt Meyer.
Meyer knew that the city of Caen could no longer be held and that it Was likely to become ' the coffin lid of our courageous division.' The l. SS Corps could provide as reinforcements only fifteen tanks. So the pattern of Stalingrad repeated itself. The 3rd British Division attacked the 16th Air Force Ground Division and "seemed to wipe it off the map" within a short time, opening the right flank. Meyer sent a section of tanks and the divisional staff company to fill the gap. This left some four decimated infantry battalions and one depleted battalion of tanks to oppose the 3rd Canadian and 59th British Divisions north of Caen. During the first hour of combat the I/25 Battalion lost almost all of its company commanders. SS Major Johann Waldmüller, now the chief of the l. Battalion, stood in the midst of his men, the very soul of resistance,' according to Meyer. The II. Battalion lost all company commanders and all anti-tank artillery, fighting tanks with bazookas' But the heaviest combat occurred in the area of the III' Battalion, Waldmüller's earlier unit, now fighting for its life at Buron, Authie and the Ardenne Abbey once again. The symbolic Abbey was now used as a field hospital. Massive air attacks prevented the movement of the wounded to the rear. The roads had become ''race tracks of death and destruction.'' General Heinrich Eberbach' commander of the 5th Panzer Army, braved the hail of artillery and bombs to consult With Meyer in his bunker. He recognized the achievements of the 12th SS but could do little to offer assistance. Yet Meyer got the impression that the general would do everything he could to prevent further deaths in the ruins of Caen.''
In the afternoon Gruchy had to be surrendered after bloody fighting, which claimed all but one courier of the 16th company. The boys ''died in their positions..' Remnants of the III. Battalion brought the Canadians to a halt in front of the inevitable Ardenne Abbey. At this point, in the evening hours of July 8, Meyer ' could no longer contain himself. He had to be in the center of the fight to make a decision which in the nature of things would have to disregard Hitler's order. He went to the Abbey himself, driving and running through artillery barrages. The Abbey had been reduced to shambles. The courtyard was strewn with the dead. In )he cellar the wounded commander of the 25th Regiment pictured the desperate situation for him. It was decided to mount a limited counter attack with all available tanks and mortars, in order to allow the evacuation of the wounded during the night' Meyer decided to pull back behind the Orne, but the I. SS Corps refused to go along. Meyer was '.overcome with anger ' when he 'thought of the courageous grenadiers who had fought night and day for four weeks and were how to be sacrificed uselessly. ' So he ignored all orders finally and began the withdrawal' Most of the wounded were moved to the rear, but the III. Battalion was reduced to 100 men and NCOs in the process of covering the evacuation' In the morning hours of July 9 the Division moved south of the city. New headquarters were established at Carcelles as the last security units left the ruins of Caen to the Canadians and the British.
From June 7 until July 9 the Hitler Youth Division lost 4,000 dead and 8,000 wounded and missing. An Allied officer thought that it had "fought with a tenacity and fierceness" such as he had not seen in the entire European campaign. A few days later, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, in conversation with 'Sepp' Dietrich and Kurt Meyer, recognized the unique attitude of the HJ Division: . Your soldiers possess the spirit of the young regiments of Langemarck, but are far better trained and above all led by front experienced officers and NCOs. It is a shame that his faithful youth is being sacrificed in a hopeless cause.'' Erwin Rommel made similar remarks shortly before his death.
But the end was not yet in sight. What followed was attrition, gradually grinding the remaining elements of the division to shreds. New headquarters were established at Potigny north of Falaise. Regimental staffs were withdrawn to hammer new replacements into marching companies, while remaining troops were organized into two Battle Groups. With some 50 remaining tanks the latter played a significant role in spiking three separate British offensives between Caen and Falaise, prolonging the capture of Falaise for a month. A concerted counter-attack at Cintheaux, organized by Kurt Meyer, and isolated victories demonstrated that the Hitler Youth had lost none of its resolute combat elan. When Falaise was finally taken by the Canadians on August 16 a remnant of 60 Hitler youths held out in the ruins of the Ecole Superieure until all but two messengers, chosen by lot, were dead. The rest of the Division helped to keep the pincers of the Falaise Argentan pocket open long enough to allow two decimated German Armies to escape. By September 4, 1944 the fighting strength of the division was enlarged again to 600 men from the 200 who slipped out of the pocket, but the sum and substance of its effectiveness had been destroyed. Eighty percent of the original combat personnel had been annihilated, and similar losses had been sustained by the support troops. The Division lost 80 percent of its tanks, 70 percent of its armored vehicles, 60 percent of its artillery and mortars and 50 percent of the rest of its vehicles.
The Reichsjugendführung made feeble recruiting efforts to rebuild its elite formation. In some areas fifteen-year-olds were drafted to shore up dwindling reserves. Axmann even made plans to establish a separate reserve organization for the Division, but little came of this nonsensical effort. The shock of Caen had been too great. The Division was replenished with air force ground personnel, navy personnel and recuperated veterans from military hospitals. Some new HJ recruits must also have been added. This patched-up division, with little resemblance to its former elite character, was engaged in the Battle of the Bulge and subsequently in Hungary and Austria, but with little noticeable effect.
On 5 May 1945, the ''Baby Division" was withdrawn from futile, last-ditch efforts to defend Vienna, their patron's libidinal battleground a generation before. SS Major General Hugo Kraas, the last commander of the 12th SS Panzer Division, gave his men free reign to follow their natural inclination to escape the clutches of the approaching Russian troops by moving west toward the American lines. Three days later, near the small town of Enns, 6,000 weary and bedraggled survivors of the once proud Hitler Youth Division tried to cross a bridge across the Danube. It had been blocked by other Hitler Youth boys working in tank trap battalions organized by Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach. Someone cried "Russky!" and panic broke loose as all stampeded towards a narrow gap on the bridge. Trucks rammed into the surging mass and killed at least 15 of them, scattering the fleeing hordes along both sides of the river. A single Russian tank "clanked toward the bridge. A Red Army lieutenant stood in the turret, laughing at the sight of 6,000 men frantically scrambling to escape his single gun." Towards the end of the day a faithful remnant of 455 men and one tank marched before Hugo Kraas for the last time. In a final symbolic act of arrogant defiance, the HJ-SS soldiers refused to obey an American order to drape their vehicles in white flags and drove into American captivity "proud and erect."
[Note: Proper footnotes will be added later. Most pictures come from the Bundesarchiv in Germany.]
A Bibliography for the Battle of Caen
Ambrose, Stephen. D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (Simon and Schuster, 1998)
English, John A. The Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign: A Study of Failure in High Command. Westport, Ct.: Praeger Publishers, 1991.
How, J. J. Normandy: The British Breakout. London: _____, 1981.
Keegan, John. Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.
Luther, Craig W. H. Blood and Honor: The History of the 12th SS Panzer Divison "Hitler Youth", 1943-1945. San Jose: Bender Publishing, 1987.
Mabire, Jean. Les jeunes fauves du Führer: La Division SS Hitlerjugend dans la bataille de Normandie. Paris: Fayard, 1976.
McKee, Alexander. Last Round Against Rommel: Battle of the Normandy Beachhead. New York: The New American Library, 1966.
Meyer, Hubert. Kriegsgeschichte der 12. SS-Panzerdivision "Hitlerjugend'." 2 vols. Osnabrück: Munin Verlag, 1982.
Millar, C. J., and R. G. Coyle. "A Mission Orientated Analysis of Operation Goodwood," British Army Review 94 (April 1990): 15-24.
Richardson, T. A. "Normandy 1944," Journal of the Royal Artillery 117 (September 1990): 26-28.
Ritgen, Helmut. Die Geschichte der Panzer-Lehr-Division im Westen 1944-1945. Stuttgart: ____, 1979.
Samuels, Martin. "Operation Goodwood: 'The Caen Carve-Up,'" British Army Review 96 (December 1990): 4-11.
Scarfe, Norman. Assault Division: A History of the 3rd Division from the Invasion of Normandy to the Surrender of Germany. London: _____, 1947.
Stacey, C. P. The Victory Campaign: The Operations in North-West Europe, 1944-1945. Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War: Volume III. Ottawa: The Queen's Printer and Controller of Stationery, 1960.
Weigley, Russell F. "From the Normandy Beaches to the Falaise-Argentan Pocket," Military Review 70 (September 1990): 45-64.
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