Battle of Saint-Lô

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Front line shortly before the battle

The Battle of Saint-Lô took place from July 3 to 20, 1944 as part of the Allied Operation Overlord in the Saint-Lô area . The battle gave the Allies a decisive breakthrough through the German lines in through the Bocage landscape dominated region of Saint-Lô and carried along with the subsequent Operation Cobra and the Battle for Caen significantly to the final securing of the Allied bridgehead in Normandy at .

course

Major military operations as part of Operation Overlord
The destroyed Saint-Lô with the train station in the foreground

According to the Allies, Saint-Lô was a key position for the Germans and a transport hub for the relocation of German troops, which is why the city was attacked by around 2,000 bombers the night after the landing, from June 6th to 7th . The attempt to warn the population beforehand and to ask them to leave the city failed, as the leaflets dropped were carried away from the city by the wind. In addition to the direct damage, the bombardment caused extensive fires and destroyed around 95% of the city, over 1,000 of the roughly 12,000 inhabitants were killed. The German occupation holed up in the ruins.

The area in the bocage , which was severely divided by hedges and ramparts , offered the German defenders considerable advantages and hindered the advance of the Allied troops, so that it was not until June 29 that the ground offensive on the city by parts of the XIX. US Corps began. Since the German resistance turned out to be stronger than expected after the heavy bombing, the battle for the Allies was more lossy than expected. Only the XIX. US Corps lost nearly 11,000 men in the capture. Eventually the Allies surrounded the city. The actual battle for the city did not begin until July 15, 1944, and the street fighting lasted until the end of July.

Deployed troops

On the Allied side, the attack on Saint-Lô by troops of the XIX. Corps (General Corlett) of the 1st US Army . The main attack was carried out by the 29th Division under General Gerhardt, supported by the 30th Division and the 35th Division. In addition, parts of the V Corps were still in action, taking on the task of taking a strategic height outside Saint-Lô.

On the German side, the units of the II. Parachute Corps under General Eugen Meindl were located around Saint-Lô : the 3rd Parachute Division under Richard Schimpf and the 352nd Infantry Division under Dietrich Kraiss , the three, which had been greatly weakened from previous battles Combat groups formed from parts of the 353rd Infantry Division and the 266th Infantry Division were subordinate to them. According to American data, the Germans had two batteries of 10.5 cm howitzers and 8.8 cm cannons , as well as one battery of 15 cm howitzers and smoke launchers available as artillery . Armored units were not used.

literature

  • Nigel De Lee: Battle for St-Lo (Battle Zone Normandy). Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2004, ISBN 0-7509-3018-7 .
  • Didier Lodieu: Dying for Saint-Lo: Hedgerow Hell, July 1944 . Histoire & Collections, 2007, ISBN 2-35250-035-4 .
  • Joseph Balkoski: Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Infantry Division in Normandy . Stackpole Books, 1999, ISBN 0-8117-2682-7 .
  • Glover S. Johns: The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo . Stackpole Books, 2002, ISBN 0-8117-2604-5 .
  • Tony Hall (Ed.): Operation "Overlord". Motorbuch Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-613-02407-1 . (Comprehensive work by international authors on the aspects of Operation Overlord . The book is structured by subject).
  • Janusz Piekałkiewicz : Invasion. France 1944. Munich 1979. (The book describes the events of the operation in detail, is well illustrated and has correspondence, original reports, press reports ...).
  • Percy E. Schramm (Ed.): War Diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht 1944–1945. Part 1, ISBN 3-7637-5933-6 . (Annotated edition of the war diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, consisting of a total of eight volumes, one of which deals with the situation on the Western Front in 1944).
  • Anthony Hall: Operation Overlord. D-Day Day by Day. New Line Books, 2005, ISBN 1-84013-592-1 . (Diary of the planning, preparation and implementation of Operation Overlord, but only until about fifteen days after D-Day).
  • Robin Niellands: The Battle of Normandy - 1944. Weidenfeld & Nicholson military, 2002, ISBN 0-304-35837-1 . (Nielland's book on the Battle of Normandy deals with various aspects of Operation Overlord with many quotes as background).
  • Max Hastings: Overlord. Touchstone, Reprint 1985, ISBN 0-671-55435-2 .

Web links

Commons : Operation Overlord # After D-Day  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

swell

  1. ↑ The information about the exact period varies. In “The Battle of Normandy 1944”, Robin Neillands names July 3rd as the beginning and July 18th 1944 as the end.
  2. ↑ army.mil
  3. ↑ army.mil
  4. ↑ Information about the end of the fighting varies. The American side considered the city taken on the evening of July 18th. On July 20, the 29th Division transferred the security to the 35th. Other sources put the end of the fighting on July 24th.
  5. ↑ army.mil