I have often wondered about the mixed feelings of German soldiers in France after DDay. On the one hand you want to defend your homeland but on the other hand you know happened on the Eastern Front and how the Russians were going to take revenge. It must have been tempting to allow the Allies an easy road so they would take Germany before the Russians. I have seen an American GI say there was a lot of combat between German Units, ones who wanted to surrender and those who were fanatics. I know there were mistakes by Hitler in not releasing reserves but I wonder if other decisions by senior Germans deliberately helped the allies.

There where not a lot of Germans that surrendered when you take into account the numbers that were there. Many of those that did surrender were people that had joined the German army from occupied countries for better conditions. Now I am not saying that there were no Germans that surrendered but the numbers were not as high as they appeared. The German soldiers did stand and fight even if they died doing it, just check their casualty rates.

The german soldiers wouldn't of had a clue how the eastern front was going. The top Generals would of and they could of made decisions to help the allies but a grunt on the ground would of been fighting for his life.

I think if you speak to any ex German soldier that they had a very good idea just what was happening on the Eastern Front, it was was of those places that they did their best to avoid going too. Most the Generals were dedicated Nazi's and would have followed Hitlers instructions to the letter, thats if they wanted to live or their families to live.

After the failed bombing of Hitler they executed thousands of officer suspects so I suppose that got rid of a few free thinkers. When the germans were desperately trying to get to the American lines by crossing a half bombed out bridge, the german artillary were set up in view of the Americans while bombarding the russians. A german soldier reported the Americans did nothing to stop them. But it does seem the germans had to be at the end before really running to the Americans.

I was stationed in the eastern edge of West Germany during the 1980s, and many of the older Germans I talked to remembered the end of the war. They were all watching to the east and west and hoping the Allies got to their area before the Russians did. Must have been some pretty strong feelings for them to still remember them more than 40 years later.

Any claims that the anti-Hitler plotters tried to help the Allied invasion succeed ignores that fact that the plotters, while wanting to get rid of Hitler, wanted to negotiate from a position of strength with the Western Allies after he had been removed, therefore they wanted to act before the Allies broke through the German defences, so helping them succeed was not what they wanted.

It seems, from what you guys are saying, the germans wanted the Americans to arrive before the Russians but weren't prepared to help them do it.

When you are going to get shot for failing to do your duty, you are sort of left between a rock and a hard place.

German morale was reasonably good at Normandy at first albeit there was a pretty terrible bombing raid on Caen and massed tank formations east of the town. Many of the coastal divisions were not German at all but other nationalities recruited to the Wehrmacht. Amongst those morale was perhaps low. My father was at Arromanches and he witnessed German prisoners interrogated then executed on LCH-187.

General orders were given ahead of the landings not to take prisoners. Some weeks later there was an awful slaughter in the Falaise gap as German units found American forces had worked around their western flanks and behind them.