Surrender Invites Death: Fighting the Waffen SS in Normandy

257 Pages·2011·2.31 MB·English

by  John A. English

FIGHTING THE WAFFEN SS IN NORMANDY
John A. English
SURRENDER
INVITES
DEATH

SURRENDER
INVITES
DEATH
FIGHTING THE WAFFEN SS IN NORMANDY
JOHN A. ENGLISH
STACKPOLE
BOOKS
Copyright © 2011 by John A. English
Published by
STACKPOLE BOOKS
5067 Ritter Road
Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
www.stackpolebooks.com
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any
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publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books.
Photographs credited to Bundesarchiv are licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license, the text of which can be read online at
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
English, John A. (John Alan)
Surrender invites death : fighting the Waffen SS in Normandy / John A. English.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8117-0763-3
1. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—France—Normandy. 2. World War,
1939–1945—Tank warfare. 3. Waffen-SS. I. Title.
D756.5.N6E55 2011
940.54'21421—dc22
2010034562
For my brother, Lyle English,
and our cousin, Superintendent Cecil Weigum,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Table of Contents
Preface ix
Introduction xi
CHAPTER 1 Who Were the Waffen SS? 1
CHAPTER 2 Perdition on the Eastern Front 19
CHAPTER 3 First Clashes with the Waffen SS
in Normandy 43
CHAPTER 4 Tiger Shock and “Colossal Cracks” 65
CHAPTER 5 A Tough Business 81
CHAPTER 6 Tank Charge to Conserve Infantry 99
CHAPTER 7 Cobra Spring 117
CHAPTER 8 A Murder of Panzers 145
CHAPTER 9 Surrender Invites Death 159
CHAPTER 10 Intractable Enemy 181
Conclusion 197
Appendix A: Characteristics ofWeapons 209
Appendix B: Rank Comparisons 213
Notes 215
Bibliography 229
Index 235
vii

Preface
Beyond the attraction of smart silver-trimmed black uniforms and
trend-setting camouflaged battle smocks, I first became seriously
interested in the Waffen SS as a fighting organization while arranging
and conducting battlefield tours of Normandy for the Canadian Land
Forces Command and Staff College. Since the Canadian Army had
fought the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend during the 1944 bat-
tle for Normandy, I took it upon myself to visit with the 12th SS’s
principal operations officer, Hubert Meyer, in his home in Lev-
erkusen, West Germany, in March 1986. There, through his excellent
series of maps and firsthand knowledge of the Hitlerjugend’s deploy-
ments in Normandy, I was able to gain a better understanding not
only of the operations of the Germans, but those of Canadian forces
as well. Meyer had labored for fourteen years to produce his history
of the division, and we continued to exchange correspondence
regarding the battle of Normandy after our meeting. In my 1991
book, The Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign, I relied heavily
on translated documentation and letters provided by Meyer. He was
also kind enough to send me a personalized copy of his own book
when it was first published in English in 1994.
Meyer’s involvement with the Hilfsorganisation auf Gegenseitigkeit
der Waffen-SS, a Waffen SS veterans association, prevented him from
ix