Sobre lo de Normandía:
Had I been able to move the armored divisions which I had behind the coast, I am convinced that the invasion would not have succeeded."
Cita:"If I had been able to move the troops, then my air force would also have been in a position to attack hostile ships."
If he had had his way, Von Rundstedt indicated that the Allies would first of all have sustained prohibitive losses during landing operations. In addition, they would not have been able, "with relative impunity," to bring up battleships close to the coast to act as floating gun batteries.
"That is all a question of air force, air force, and again air force," he commented.
The Normandy invasion would have been "like Dieppe on a big scale"—Von Rundstedt believes—if he had been able to move his armored divisions as he desired. He summarized the situation with the statement:
"We would certainly have been better off if a good many things had been different as regards the distribution of forces."
Von Rundstedt claims that the Atlantic Wall was a "mere bluff," but admitted that the French coast was more heavily fortified from the Scheldt to the Seine. Pictured are German fortifications of the more imposing type.
"The enemy probably knew more about it than we did ourselves," Von Rundstedt said in referring to the so-called Atlantic Wall as a "mere bluff." He confessed that such a wall did exist from the Scheldt to the Seine, "but further than that—one has only to look at it for one's self in Normandy to see what rubbish it was."
According to Von Rundstedt, the wall consisted of a few pillboxes in holes in the sand so far apart that "you needed field glasses to see the next one." The only good thing was the fortresses, such as Cherbourg and Brest, but they were all fortified only toward the sea. He described the wall as "a dreary situation" south of the Gironde toward the Spanish border because "there was really nothing at all there."
All the ballyhoo about the Atlantic Wall was simply propaganda, Von Rundstedt said, but he admitted that people believed it—"at least we believed it." He thinks, however, that it was no mystery to the Allies because their air photography probably revealed the bluff.
Von Rundstedt nevertheless severely criticized the mounting of the coastal guns. They were mounted as on ships, and could fire only out to sea. They were of no use to land forces because they could not fire in all directions
Sobre lo de Caen:
The defensive role played by the armored divisions near Caen during July and August was a great mistake." Von Rundstedt confessed, "but it was done on the orders of higher authority. We wanted to relieve the armored divisions by infantry, but it was impossible in the bulge in front of Caen where they were also under fire from ships' guns. You can't relieve any troops then."
Sobre la lucha en Italia y sus repercusiones sobre el devenir global de la guerra:Von Rundstedt's plan, which was turned down, was to withdraw the armored forces behind the Orne, form up the relieving infantry there, and then take away the tanks from in front and use them as mobile units to attack U.S. forces on the flanks. He was backed up by the senior tank commander, General Beyr von Schweppenburg, but to no avail. The armored divisions were left where they were "on the Führer's own orders."
Sobre las Ardenas 1944:The situation immediately prior to the invasion of June 1944 was not good, Von Rundstedt said. He and his former Chief of Staff, General Blumentritt, recognized at least three basic weaknesses: their inadequate number of troops had to cover enormous stretches of coast line, some divisions as much as 35 to 40 miles; the Atlantic Wall was "anything but a wall, just a bit of cheap bluff"; and there was no counterattack reserve or so-called "Armee centrale," a strategic army under central command to counterattack where the invasion came.
Von Rundstedt, like many other German generals, said he did not control Germany's best troops. He complained that many of his best units were sent to Italy, and he asserted vigorously that it was "madness to continue the war in Italy that way."
After the collapse of Italy, "that frightful 'boot' of a country should have been evacuated. Mussolini should have been left where he was, and we should have held a decent front with a few divisions on the Alpine frontier. They should not have taken away the best divisions front me in the West in order to send them to Italy. That's my private view."
Fuente: Intelligence Bulletin March 1946 . ¿ algún comentario sobre los extractos citados?For a far-reaching operation such as the Ardennes offensive, aimed first at the Maas and possibly still further, the forces were much, much, much too weak. The possibility of driving inland with armored divisions, with no GAF, was purely visionary. Reinforcements and supplies, with their railheads back on the Rhine, took longer and longer to move, and it was impossible to get them up. That offensive was bound to fail. There was no other possibility."