History or hoax? "D-Day Through German Eyes"

[Stephen Tashi]

There is at least one article online disputing the historical veracity of the popular book "D-Day Through German Eyes"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...rians-claim-German-Eyes-book-fabrication.html (Of course, the Daily Mail might perpetuate its own hoaxes.)

Has there been subsequent confirmation that the journalist who supposedly wrote the original material existed? - or that the people who were supposedly interviewed existed and were present at D-Day?

I've listened to audiobook versions of books 1 & 2 that are available online. (The audio books don't claim to be recordings of interviews, they are people reading the text of the book.) From that (and only that) examination, I favor the theory that the books are a hoax.

My thinking goes this way: The interviews cover many curious aspects of military technology and "less well known" aspects of battles. An author who had a collection of thousands of interviews could select a subset that spanned these topics. However, an author who collected, say, 30 or 40 interviews would be very lucky to find such a range of material. The book presents itself as the work of a single journalist working in the postware Germany of the 1950's. I think it unlikely that he had the resources to collect thousands of interviews.

 

[jedishrfu]

However, if true, living in the time might give you more insight into what was going on.

Hoaxes are not uncommon in works such as this. I know of a few books that I read in my youth that I thoroughly enjoyed but that turned out to be massive hoaxes. One was the author T Lobsang Rampa, a reincarnated Tibetan monk who described his time living in Tibet and training to be a spiritual leader.

The author claimed to be the reincarnation and discovered it when he hit his head while working. The suspicion was that he had read Heinrich Harrer's account of his time in Tibet, did further research and imagined what it would be like to be a student in a Tibetan monastery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobsang_Rampa

The other was the popular works was The Teaching of Don Juan by Carlos Castenada. This author claimed to have found a Yaqui spiritualist named Don Juan who taught him about Yaqui beliefs and introduced him to peyote meditation. Apparently, he used these stories as a basis for his thesis in anthropology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda

In the end though not even time will reveal whether the books are true accounts or total hoaxes. I ascribed to a Chinese notion that beautiful words can't describe reality and so they must be false (aka if its too good to be true then its too good to be true)

 

[Vanadium 50]

The author claimed to be the reincarnation and discovered it when he hit his head while working.

That's taking the term "ghostwriting" literally!

 

[ZapperZ]

"... and we were the ones who built all of it!"

The pyramids, Stonehenge, Easter Island statues, Nazca lines, ... through the eyes of intelligent, outer being aliens.

Zz.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

Have any of the responders ever railed against off-topic posts?

 

[Mondayman]

I have read multiple threads on WW2 sites that question the veracity of such books being published today. There are many e-books coming out claiming to be first-hand accounts of German's fighting in Normandy. They are blatantly hoaxes in my opinion. The level of detail and gore and knowledge of equipment in the writing does not sound right coming from a 90+ year old veteran.

Most (real) biographies of war I read do not have the explicit details, sometimes because the author chooses not to include it, but usually because their memories have long since gone. This is true of accounts written only twenty-thirty years after the war. I don't imagine it's any better 75 years later.

 

[BWV]

Guy Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier is another controversial account, although some later investigation supported the author was an actual German soldier on the EF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forgotten_Soldier

 

[Mondayman]

Whether it is true or not, The Forgotten Soldier is an excellent read. I could not put it down.

 

[BWV]

Whether it is true or not, The Forgotten Soldier is an excellent read. I could not put it down.

You might find this interesting, historian Douglas Nash tracked down Sajer and validated its authenticity:

http://www.custermen.net/sajer/sajer3.htm

I liked it as well, but it is notable for its lack of any German atrocities from the main German army (i.e. not just the SS) against civilians or POWs which were widespread in the East. But a veteran who wanted to honor his comrades understandably may exclude these bits

 

[Mondayman]

I have read few if any post-war German accounts of frontline soldiers that include anything about atrocities. For example, I have the entire series of war diaries written about the Grossdeutchland Division (in which Sajer served), the 2nd SS Das Reich division, and the 1st SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler division, probably some of the most elite of all German units during the entire war. The SS divisions were particularly notorious for their atrocities. In these diaries, no mention is made of any kind of shooting prisoners out of hand or killing of civilians and destruction of property. In one book, Comrades to the End, written by former commander Otto Weidinger, he actually argues that the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre was NOT the fault of the Germans at all, and that the soldiers responsible for the burning of the church and the civilians inside were actually Alsatians!

Now, if you read about the SD and Einsatzgruppen, you will find more unapologetic Nazis speaking truthfully about their roles in the mass killings. This has been my experience anyways.

 

[jedishrfu]

To even speak of those attrocities as a German soldier could get you an SS visit and reassignment to oblivion. Also soldiers tend not to report such things unless they are truly horrific. Consider the MyLai massacre, no one spoke about until one soldier who was out of the army and even then they were greeted as traitors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

One Lt said, while he felt it was wrong, there is no illegal order in the military if you fail to follow it you could be executed.

Lawrence La Croix, a squad leader in Charlie Company in Mỹ Lai, stated in 2010: "A lot of people talk about Mỹ Lai, and they say, 'Well, you know, yeah, but you can't follow an illegal order.' Trust me. There is no such thing. Not in the military. If I go into a combat situation and I tell them, 'No, I'm not going. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to follow that order', well, they'd put me up against the wall and shoot me."[103]

 

[Stephen Tashi]

Most (real) biographies of war I read do not have the explicit details, sometimes because the author chooses not to include it, but usually because their memories have long since gone. This is true of accounts written only twenty-thirty years after the war. I don't imagine it's any better 75 years later.

In the case of "D-Day Through German Eyes", the interviews were supposedly conducted in 1950's, so that's 5 to 15 years after WW2.

There is criticism of the books for being pro-Nazi propaganda. However, the unapologetic outlooks expressed in some of the interviews are believable when we consider believable reports of German attitudes in the 1950's as "Mid-Century Journey" by William Shirer.

I assume a careful hoaxer would research military technology and take pains to be accurate. There are two technolgies mentioned in the books that surpise me, but my guess is that they might have existed. One item is a German anti-tank projectile that was put over the end of the barrel of an anti-tank gun and fired by firing a shell from the gun The other item is reports that rockets fired by the Allies in the beach bombardment had payloads that behaved like napalm.

 

[Mondayman]

After looking at it I think it could be real. But I know for sure there have been e-books coming out on Amazon recently that pose as authentic, but are surely written by some fan boy.

 

[Mondayman]

One item is a German anti-tank projectile that was put over the end of the barrel of an anti-tank gun and fired by firing a shell from the gun

I don't know the name, but I know for sure the Germans had anti-tank projectiles that attached to the end of anti-tank guns. It was essentially an over-sized grenade fired from an anti-tank gun. One can be seen in Episode 3 "Carentan" of Band of Brothers, when Carwood Lipton gets injured.

 

[BWV]

There was the panzerfaust, but that was a man carried one-shot anti tank rocket. Later in the war they had the Panzerschreck which was a copy of the bazooka. Anti-tank gun typically refers to a direct fire cannon like this

 

[gmax137]

I read "I Flew for the Führer" by Heinz Knoke a few years ago, found it interesting.