John Frankemolle
We forget that when D Day took place, two things had happened
already. The first event was that the German Army had been defeated
in the Field on the Russian Front during the preceding year at both
Stalingrad and worse at Kursk. From then on there was no creditable
way left to win the war and Hitlers only option was to go down
fighting. The second event was that tactical air supremacy was
created over Northern France. This meant that the German forces had
no meaningful air support.
This unit learned all that the hard way when they attempted movement
during daylight and got badly cut.
Yet in spite of that these units or units like them staged a fighting
retreat all the way back to Gernany. It was a remarkable feat in
itself. They also all knew better.
This
Never-Before-Seen WWII Document Offers An Inside Account Of An Elite
Nazi Combat Unit's Collapse
By Corey Adwar
American G.I. John
Frankemolle was guarding a group of captured German soldiers in
Europe during World War II when an intelligence officer handed him an
interrogation of prisoner of war (IPW) report. The officer told
Frankemolle to keep the papers to himself and give it back to him
after reading it — but that was the last time the two ever saw each
other.
Seventy years later,
90-year-old Frankemolle still has that report, which he stored in his
Long Island home alongside photos and mementos from his period of
service with the U.S. Navy Armed Guard. The two-page Special IPW
Report, titled The Odyssey of Goetz Von Berlightngen, is an English
translation of a first-hand account written by an unnamed
Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) staff officer in the presence of
his American interrogators.
Frankemolle believes
he may have one of the last copies of that forgotten document, which
his family agreed to share with Business Insider.
Nazi SS combat troops
were Hitler's most diehard and elite soldiers, still notorious for
their wartime atrocities. But this officer's account reveals that he
and his comrades fought hard — but suffered from waning morale in
the months following the Allies' successful D-Day invasion of the
European mainland on June 6, 1944.
You can find the full
document at the bottom. But here are the highlights of a jarringly
intimate glimpse into the enemy camp during World War II.
Heading to the front
The officer's unit, the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier
Division — named after a spelling variation of
the medieval German knight Götz von Berlichingen —
headed from Thouars, France, to Normandy to fight the Allied forces
landing there. "Everyone was in a good mood and eager to
see action again — happy that the preinvasion spell of uncertainty
and waiting had snapped at last," the German SS officer wrote.
As the motorized
column traveled along French roads, it was ambushed from the air by
an enemy it had never encountered before.
"Something
happened that left us in a daze," the officer wrote. "Spouts
of fire flicked along the column and splashes of dust staccatoed the
road. Everyone was piling out of the vehicles and scuttling for the
neighboring fields. Several vehicles already were in flames."
The startled soldiers
only continued their march after 15 minutes of strafing and bombing.
"The men started drifting back to the column again, pale and
shaky and wondering that they had survived this fiery rain of
bullets. Had that been a sign of things to come? This had been our
first experience with the 'Jabos' (Fighter bombers)."
An hour later a second
and more effective air attack left the French road strewn with
destroyed vehicles and equipment. The officer had this to say:
It dawned on us that
this opponent that had come to the beach of Normandy was of somewhat
different form. The march was called off, and all vehicles that were
left were hidden in the dense bushes or in barns. No one dared show
himself out in the open anymore. Now the men started looking at each
other. The first words passed. This was different from what we
thought it would be like. If things like this happened here, what
would it be like up there at the front? No, this did not look like a
feint attack upon our continent. It had been our first experience
with our new foe — the American.
Declining Morale
The division now
traveled only in darkness and on secondary roads. When the soldiers
reached their assigned sector near the French town of Periers, they
began wondering why the German air force, known as the Luftwaffe,
hadn't appeared, according to the officer's account:
But now the "Jabo"
plague became even more serious. No hour passed during the daytime
without that nerve-frazzling thunder of the strafing fighters
overhead. And whenever we cared to look we could see that smoke
billow from some vehicle, fuel depot or ammunition dump mushrooming
into the sky. The common soldier began to think. What would all this
lead to, and what was being done about it? Where was the Luftwaffe,
and why had it not been committed during the past few days?
Officers lied to
lower-ranking soldiers that the German planes were operating in
adjacent sectors where they were needed even more.
Complaints arose that
the division's fighting capabilities were deteriorating while the
enemy's was strengthening.
"The hope of
driving the Americans back into the [English] Channel had already
given way to a hoping of being able to hold our own against the
invaders," the officer wrote.
Defeat An American
ground advance near Coutances, France, forced the unit to pull back.
The decisive blow came
on July 26, when 2,000 heavy bombers annihilated several German
sectors and the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division ceased to exist in
anything more than name.
Here is the officer's
amazing description of the chaotic retreat:
No human account ever
could describe the hardship, the sacrifice, the misery the men of
this division alone experienced. No one who finished this retreat
still alive will ever forget this Gathsename [place of suffering],
because each village, each road, even each bush seared into his brain
the memories of terrible hours, insufferable misery, of cowardice,
despair and destruction.
The German officer
found a regrouping area away from the destruction. There, he rounded
up stragglers and deserters from other units and forced them to join
the ranks of the beleaguered SS division as replacements for all
those lost.
"And that is the
history of the 17 SS Pz Gren Div GOETZ VON BERLIGHINGEN up to my
capture (1 Nov 44)," concludes the unnamed German officer's
account.
Frankemolle himself
landed on Omaha Beach shortly after the initial invasion waves to
deliver ammunition to the advancing troops. However, he spent most of
his service in Europe as a gunner aboard a supply ship.
He believes the German
SS officer who wrote this account was among the group of prisoners he
guarded for one night, although he was not involved in his capture.
Read the original
document with much more detail below.
John Frankemolle
John Frankemolle
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