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In
November 1943, as the prospect of an Allied landing became increasingly
likely, Hitler decided to strengthen the German forces stationed in the West.
Accordingly, the number of divisions in France, Belgium and the Netherlands was
increased from around thirty in 1942 to nearly sixty by the spring of 1944.
Most
of them were massed behind the coastline extending from Brittany to the
Pas-de-Calais and were placed under the orders of Field-Marshal Rommel, who
commanded Army Group B. |
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The 21st Panzer Division was the only armoured unit to be
stationed near the coast |
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Unlike
most of the general officers, Rommel certainly did not exclude the possibility
of an assault on the coast of Lower Normandy, where he stationed the 91st,
243rd, 352nd, 709th, 711th and 716th
infantry divisions, together with the 6th Parachute Regiment,
the 30th Mobile Brigade and the Buniatchenko
Russian Brigade.
More or less
confident about the worth of these troops, and realizing that he was
almost totally lacking in aviation, Rommel wanted to be sure that he
could rapidly call on armoured divisions to repulse the invasion, as he
was convinced that the ultimate outcome of the battle would be decided
in the first few hours.
He ran into
strong opposition over this issue, however. In the event, only the 21st
Panzer Division, stationed around Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, was anywhere
near the coast and it was in order to seek Hitler’s permission to
station two new armoured units (the 12th SS Hitlerjugend and
the Panzer Lehr) on either side of Veys Bay that he left his
headquarters at La Roche-Guyon to travel to Germany on June 5th
1944.
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