ISBN 0-921991-56-8
462 pages

Introduction; photos; charts; tables; diagrams; TOEs; Notes

Appendices: Arrival of Units in Normandy; Unit Histories; Calculations of Armor-Piercing Capabilities; Tooth-to-Tail Ratios; Arrival of Panzer Units in Normandy; Estimated Allied Armor Strength in Normandy; Further Discussion on German Casualties; Comments on a Few Books; German Flak in the West; Christopher A. Lawrence's Comments on John Sloan Brown's Critique of Trevor Dupuy's Calculations of German Combat Efficiency

   Despite an accumulation of books about Normandy spanning more than fifty years, there has been remarkably little published in the way of hard, cold, documented facts about the state of the German forces that faced the invaders. Too many writers, even those who should know better, have fallen into the easy rut of relying on fallible memories, anecdotal evidence, and questionable secondary sources to draw conclusions about the German defenders, conclusions that often inflated both their initial strength and their subsequent casualties to bolster the notion of a crushing Allied victory over a powerful foe in an evenly matched contest. Following his highly regarded Kursk 1943: A Statistical Analysis (co-written with Anders Frankson), Niklas Zetterling has produced an even better book, an iconoclastic jolt to many comfortable assumptions about the Normandy campaign.
   Unlike some historians who seem to believe that the best research involves reading the books of other historians, Zetterling goes straight to the primary source materials: the mountains of documents—carefully preserved in American and German archives—produced by the staffs of the German units involved in the fighting. The author has studied these reports and orders and war diaries to the point where he seems to be inhaling raw data and exhaling streams of information which have been carefully analyzed and thoughtfully organized into chapter-sized bursts.
   During all this aspiration, Zetterling blows in the direction of writers such as Stephen Ambrose, Stephen Badsey, Fritz Bayerlein, John Ellis, L.F. Ellis, Max Hastings, John Keegan, Charles B. MacDonald, and Alwyn Featherson, and relentlessly demolishes generalities, hearsay, and myths with gusts of hard numbers and solid facts.
   These gusts are most prevalent in the first and last of three sections into which the book divides itself. The first section, "Campaign Analysis," comprises an outline of Zetterling's goals, his methodology, and some of the most important factors contributing to the outcome of the campaign. Amounting to little over a hundred pages, the first section contains these chapters:

• Introduction
• The sources available
• German terminology
• German combat unit organization
• Numbers of soldiers employed in Normandy
• The effects of Allied air power
• German tanks employed in Normandy
• German losses in Normandy
• German combat efficiency
• Units movements in and to Normandy
• Conclusions

   After noting the lack of reliable data covering many aspects of the German forces in Normandy, reviewing the available sources, and explaining the basics of German terminology, the author offers some general information on German TOEs and investigates the notion that Waffen-SS formations had priority when panzers were issued to combat formations. His two pages of analysis, including a pair of lengthy charts counting tank deliveries, show that at least in Normandy such priority seems not to have been the case. Zetterling then moves into the area of quantifying German manpower in Normandy, and promptly takes aim at one of the most popular authors of the red-white-and-blue school of military writing:

   It seems that the Allied numerical superiority in Normandy has not been clear to all authors. Indeed some have not even observed it at all. Stephen E. Ambrose has even written:

   Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin relied on overwhelming numbers, and to some extent American-supplied equipment, to fight the Wehrmacht.
   The British and Americans were going to have to rely on their soldiers outfighting Nazi soldiers, because the numbers of troops on the opposing sides were roughly equal.

   This is entirely wrong. When Operation Cobra was launched, the Germans had brought to Normandy about 410,000 men in divisions and non-divisional combat units. If this is multiplied by 1.19 [Zetterling's factor for adding service and support manpower outside German divisions and non-div units] we arrive at approximately 490,000 soldiers. However, until 23 July, casualties amounted to 116,863, while only 10,078 replacements had arrived. This means that no more than 380,000 soldiers remained in Normandy or supported the fighting in Normandy.
   On 25 July there were 812,000 US soldiers and 640,000 British in Normandy. This means that the Allies had a 3.8:1 superiority in manpower. This was better than the superiority enjoyed by the Red Army on the Eastern Front. On 1 June 1944 the Soviets pitted 7.25 million men against 2.62 million Germans.

   When Zetterling turns his attention to airpower, his approach might be a little more controversial, but it is no less supported by hard numbers and solid evidence. His basic thesis is that Allied airpower was far less effective than generally recognized when it came to actually killing troops and destroying tanks.

   The German attack at Mortain is frequently cited as an example to show the effectiveness of the fighter-bombers as tank killers. Actually, this engagement is an example of vastly exaggerated claims. The British 2nd Tactical Air Force claimed to have destroyed or damaged 140 German tanks in the Mortain area from 7-10 August, while the 9th US Air Force claimed 112. This actually exceeded the number of German tanks employed in the operation. In fact, no more than 46 tanks were lost in the operation and of these only nine had been hit by air weapons.

   Instead, the benefits of the Allied dominance of the air according to Zetterling could be felt most strongly through indirect results such as forcing troops to take cover, limiting road movement to hours of darkness or bad weather, diminishing command and control functions, and reducing the ability of the German command to transfer troops to the front by rail. Even at that, his calculations on German supply stocks, consumption, train requirements, and rail movement are worth noting.

...Had the Germans not used most of the rail capacity to move combat units, the rail net could probably have coped with the supply needs. But in June the number of troop trains exceeded supply trains by a factor of four. A balanced conclusion seems to be that Allied air attacks inflicted sufficient damage on the rail net to seriously curtail large-scale troop movements. But to do the same to supply movements was much more difficult, since it required an almost complete shutdown of the rail net.

   The book continues in this vein through chapters on German tanks, losses, and combat efficiency. As always, every factoid is rigorously footnoted. In that latter chapter in particular Zetterling quotes two pages from Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944 and proceeds to refute it in a thirteen-point outline and a barrage of numbers and statistics from archival documents. Concluding this section of the book, Zetterling sums up the overall state of German forces in Normandy but admits that he cannot offer definitive answers to every question about those forces, that there are no quick solutions to some of the problems, and that much research remains to be done.
   From there he moves into the second section of the book. While the opening section is extremely lively, often provocative, and of considerable value to anyone studying the German ground forces or the campaign in Normandy, the second section is the heart of the book and it is also a treasure for future writers and researchers. In approximately 280 pages Zetterling details almost everything that can be known about the organization and strength of every German combat formation participating in the campaign. These are split into five chapters:

• General headquarters artillery formations
• Miscellaneous general headquarters formations
• General headquarters panzer formations
• Infanterie-Divisionen
• Panzer-Divisionen

   Relying mostly on original documents (plus Tessin, a smattering of divisional histories, and a few secondary sources), Zetterling devotes anywhere from one to ten pages on each unit. While the formats are not precisely identical, these entries generally include an organizational diagram, information on when, where, and how the unit was formed, tables of authorized and actual strength, numbers of men, tanks, and guns on hand for specific dates, statistics on manpower, tank, and artillery losses, figures on replacements, dates of movement, etc. Not only is the information itself of much value, but the footnotes make it easy for other researchers to check every number and further investigate the appropriate documents. Here is an example, albeit one of the shorter entries:

schwere Panzerjaeger-Abteilung 654

   Formed before the outbreak of the war, this battalion took part in the campaign in Poland in 1939, the defeat of Holland, Belgium, and France in 1940 and in Operation Barbarossa. In 1942 it received the new 7.5 cm Pak 40 AT gun and, in 1943, it was equipped with the Ferdinand tank destroyer and was part of the 9. Armee in the battle of Kursk.
   Later it transferred its Ferdinands to schwere Panzer-Jaeger-Abteilung 653. It was intended to have all three companies equipped with the new Jagdpanther tank destroyer. These arrived slowly, however. On 28 April eight were transported by rail to the battalion. These were the only vehicles that arrived for a long time. As late as 11 June 1944 it still had only one partially equipped company with the total number of Jagdpanthers unchanged. It was intended to send the company to Normandy. On 14 June, however, trains with another 17 Jagdpanthers were dispatched to the battalion, even though it is unclear when they arrived. Two days prior to that—12 June 1944—OB West had recommended a company with the eight available Jagdpanthers should be sent to Cherbourg. This recommendation was overcome by events and, on 19 June, its new destination was the Panzer-Lehr-Division. According to Ritgen, the company was attached to the division from 27-29 June. After that, it was under the operational control of Panzergruppe West.
   On 1 July the unit had 25 operational vehicles, indicating the dispatched trains had arrived. However, most of the vehicles were probably still at Mailly-le-Camp.
   The 2./schwere-Panzer-Jaeger-Abteilung 654 seems to have been the first unit to arrive in Normandy, since it was reported to be present within the area of operations of Panzergruppe West with the XLVII Panzer-Korps on 18 July, while the remainder of the battalion was said to be on its way. One further company—3./schwere-Panzer-Jaeger-Abteilung 654—must have arrived somewhat later, since the elements of the battalion at Panzergruppe West reported 21 Jagdpanthers operational, 3 in short-term repair and 1 in long-term repair on 28 July. This makes for a total of 25 vehicles with the unit, a number that coincides exactly with the number dispatched, as indicated above. This means that all dispatched vehicles had arrived with the unit at the front and none had been lost.
   On 1 August it was reported that the battalion had 8 operational Jagdpanzer V's, while 13 were in short-term repair and 3 in long-term repair. Two had been total losses during July as had one Befehlpanzer V. Casualties during July amounted to 11 men. The 1./schwere-Panzer-Jaeger-Abteilung 654 remained at Mailly-le-Camp without any Jagdpanthers.
   The final deliveries of Jagdpanthers to the battalion were 8 vehicles on 31 July and another 8 on 14 August. The latter eight would have been hard-pressed to have been employed in the battle in Normandy, but those dispatched at the end of July may have arrived at the large tank training facility at Mailly-le-Camp, east of Paris. The 1./schwere-Panzer-Jaeger-Abteilung 654 was still there, and it was recommended the company be sent to Normandy on 10 August.