Generalleutnant Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben

Sommer 1944 - Landung der Alliierten Truppen in der Normandie

Aus:
John Darrell Sherwood
Utah Beach to Cherbourg
THE FALL OF CHERBOURG

Until 23 June General von Schlieben had commanded only the remnants of the four divisions immediately confronting the advancing American forces. On that day he was appointed commander of the entire Cherbourg Fortress, relieving Generalmajor Robert Sattler, who became his subordinate. The new commander of all the German forces remaining in the Cotentin Peninsula found himself in desperate straits. His desperation is reflected in the fight-to-the-death orders which he issued to his troops and his urgent request for air support and reinforcements by air or sea. The 15th Parachute Regiment was alerted to move from St. Malo to Cherbourg in answer to these requests, but no transport was available when the time for transfer came. Von Schlieben had to make the best of his miscellaneous personnel, his battered units, and his dwindling supply of ammunition. The most dramatic incident of the day occurred in the 39th Infantry zone. Both the 2d and 3d Battalions moved down the ridge in the morning. Their objectives were Octeville and the Cherbourg area lying between the 47th Infantry and the Divette. A captured German reported that General von Schlieben, the commander of the Cherbourg Fortress, was in an underground shelter in St. Sauveur, just beyond Octeville.

For several hours the two battalions were slowed by Nebelwerfer re and direct fire from antiaircraft and 88-mm. guns in the Octeville area, but by mid-afternoon Company E and Company F had reached von Schlieben's shelter. After covering the tunnel entrances with machine-gun fire, a prisoner was sent down to ask for the fort's surrender. When surrender was refused, tank destroyers began to fire directly into two of the tunnel's three entrances and preparations were begun to demolish the stronghold with TNT. After a few rounds the enemy began to pour out. Among the 800 who surrendered were General von Schlieben, Admiral Walter Hennecke, of the Port of Cherbourg, and their staffs. The surrender was made to General Eddy, who demanded that von Schlieben surrender the whole
Cherbourg garrison. The fortress commander refused, however, adding that communications were so bad that he could not ask the others to surrender even if he wanted to. When General Collins offered to provide the means of communication von Schlieben still declined.

The campaign thus ended had cost heavily, despite an unexpectedly easy beginning in the weakly opposed landing on Utah Beach, and it had fallen behind the schedule set in the NEPTUNE Plan. In the fight for its objective VII Corps suffered a total of over 22,000 casualties, including 2,800 killed, 5,700 missing, and 13,500 wounded. [7] The Germans had lost 39,000 captured in addition to an undetermined number of killed and wounded. Cherbourg was captured on D plus 21, and the last enemy were cleared from the peninsula on D plus 2s. The estimated date of capture mentioned in earlier planning had been D plus 8, and this had been changed to D plus 15 only a few days before the invasion as the result of late intelligence and the resultant alteration in the VII Corps plan. Both dates were admittedly optimistic, however, and represented primarily a date of reference for logistical planners in the phasing of material to the port, rather than a schedule for tactical commanders.

From the German point of view, however, the fall of Cherbourg came much sooner than expected and represented a major defeat which foreshadowed the evacuation of France and the loss of the war. Throughout German tactical thinking, both in anticipation of invasion and after the blow struck, the denial to the Allies of the French ports assumed a major place. Hitler and the army believed that the principal Allied asset was overwhelming materiel superiority and that it could be thrown decisively into the conflict only through the possession of a large port. Even after the Cotentin Peninsula was cut, preventing the reinforcement of the Cherbourg Fortress, the German command still anticipated that the port could hold out for at least several weeks, as Brest was to do later. Cherbourg's quick capitulation was taken hard by Hitler, and thereafter in Nazi circles General von Schlieben was held up as the very model of a poor commander.
The conquest of the Cotentin Peninsula did not immediately break German defenses in the west or irrevocably insure a quick Allied victory. A month of hard fighting in the same type of difficult Normandy terrain lay ahead. Until the end of July the enemy continued to contest bitterly nearly every Norman field; he launched strong counterattacks in the hope of containing Allied forces in their narrow beachhead. Nevertheless, the end of June saw the disappearance of the last slim chance the enemy may have had to dislodge the Allied foothold on France, and he was faced with what would become a hopeless battle of attrition in which Allied armies were to build up an irresistible superiority of men and materiel and strike out of Normandy for their sweep through France.