From D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge (June–December 1944)

Abstract

As long as Nazi Germany was unbeaten, everything was still possible. New wonder weapons could turn everything around. The fierce German resistance in June 1944 to the Allied landings in Normandy seemed for a moment to offer hope. Arriba’s first issue after D-Day carried the headline: ‘Violent German reaction against the forces disembarked in Western Europe,’ followed by two subheadings: ‘German resistance grows stronger with every hour,’ and ‘All paratrooper units have been annihilated, except in the sector of the Carentan road.’ A photograph showed ‘the first Allied prisoners’: British troops under German guard. Manuel Aznar, Arriba’s correspondent on the German front in Normandy, wrote in the same issue: ‘It can be said that there was no strategic surprise. If there was any tactical surprise, it was apparently very limited.’ A few lines later, Aznar changed his tune. Forced to consider that the Luftwaffe over Normandy was almost nowhere to be seen, and that Germany’s much vaunted secret weapons were equally absent from the battle, Aznar wrote:

Everything is a mystery. But the greatest mystery is in aviation. For months and months it has been said that Germany was holding back its powerful air force reserves, and that they would not be used until the moment of the decisive battle. Throughout D-Day, these reserves have not been seen in action. So what should be said in reference to the new weapons? Do they exist? Is it power of that kind, or is it rather the fabulous courage of the German soldier that is the weapon with which the battle will be won? Facing the Allies is the most perfect war machine that the world has ever known, the army with the finest technical equipment of any that ever fought.¹