Himmler had been very concerned with the German position in the West, and he had done several things to correct that perceived weakness. While all of his best divisions were with General Steiner in Russia, he had been feverishly working on establishing more forces that could be used in emergency situations which he clearly perceived on the near horizon. One of his pet projects in France was a unit he had formed that would later come to be called the 33rd Waffen SS Grenadier Division. Manpower was always an issue, for Halder was sweeping off all the best German troops to build more infantry divisions. But Himmler thought he could find a ready source of fighting men in France, and he knew exactly where he could start.
When the Vichy Regime had taken nominal control after the armistice, and formally signed an accord with Germany, the nation had been torn by conflicting alliances for some time. De Gaulle had fled to claim he represented the real French government in exile, denouncing Vichy rule as traitorous. An underground resistance movement had cropped up in France, but the Vichy regime had created small paramilitary units to counter it called the Milice. In Fedorov’s history, these units had not really been formed until 1942, but the close cooperation of French and Germany had seen them come into being much earlier now.
As his own SS had arisen from such units, Himmler was very interested in this development. He soon had the idea that he might recruit Frenchmen loyal to the Vichy regime, and to Germany, and use them as the building blocks for a stronger military formation. This was what he did, in the early spring of 1942 instead of doing it two years later in 1944, and the result was a mobile unit that he quietly called his “Charlemagne Brigade.” It was manned by 7,000 Frenchmen, with another 5000 good SS men leavening the dough.
Himmler had formed the unit in mid March, and it had been involved with extensive training on battlefield deployment, tactics and also counterinsurgency operations. He had also commandeered transport, and even armored fighting vehicles and armored cars siphoned from the production lines in Germany. His personal authority went very far in that regard, and he could get most everything he wanted without anyone daring to make an objection, at least outside the shadowed halls of OKW itself. Six months later, the Charlemagne Brigade was very well equipped, and it would become feared by friend and foe alike.
For the local Free French underground, it was feared even more than the Gestapo, for the men in the unit had knowledge of the language and culture that made them particularly effective in a counterinsurgency role. In many ways, they were harder on their own citizens than the Germans were, and this unit would remain fanatically loyal to Himmler’s SS, and by extension to Germany, throughout the war.
Their emblem was a divided shield, with a fleurs-de-lys on the left side (dexter) representing France, and an Imperial Eagle on the right side (sinister) representing Germany. The actual unit emblem had the two symbols in reversed positions, until someone pointed out that France was in the west, and its symbol should be on the dexter side of the shield. Together the dual symbolism represented the new combined Franco-German state that Himmler envisioned after the war was won, and he had just created its first official military unit.
Troops had been raised from French prisoners of war, the LVF, or Legion Volontaires Francais. Designated Infanterieregiment 638 by the Germans, it had fought with the 7th Infantry Division near Moscow, and was later returned to France for rehabilitation. Himmler seized upon it as a ready source of loyal, well trained combat veterans to throw into his stew. Another French regiment, La Légion Tricolore, was also incorporated.
All these troops were soon formed into the Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS ‘Charlemagne,’ with two regiments, the 57th and 58th, consisting of two battalions each, and a third two battalion regiment raised from Himmler’s handpicked SS, known as the Sturmregiment, where most of the best equipment was concentrated. A full Assault Pioneer Battalion and a highly motorized Recon Battalion fleshed out the ground troops for the heavy brigade, and they were supported by a Panzerjager Battalion and an Artillery Battalion. The German born Gustav Krukenberg, fluent in French, was given overall command as Brigadeführer, also much earlier than in Fedorov’s history. He coordinated with Colonels Lacroix and Demessine who commanded the two French Regiments.
The signal Himmler had received, and all he secretly had gleaned from those trans-Atlantic cable telephone conversations, led him to firmly believe the information was not a ruse, but real and credible evidence of an imminent Allied invasion operation.
The Allies are finally kindling their torch, he thought. So we must have a ready bucket brigade waiting for them when they come to Spain. This is a perfect opportunity to utilize my new combined Franco-German unit—the ghosts of Charlemagne as they are sometimes called by the locals. I must get it moving at once, but in a way that may not cause undue alarm if the Allied reconnaissance sees the troops on the trains. So I will use my network to let it slip that a new Volunteer French unit is being sent to Tunisia. That would be on the back end of any Allied planning, and nothing they would concern themselves with for these initial landings.
Yes, I will cut orders to have the unit move to Toulon, but at the last minute I will re-route the trains through Montpellier and then along the coast to Barcelona. That is a good port where they could embark for French North Africa, or I could also just continue along the Spanish coast to Valencia, Cartagena, Malaga and then to Gibraltar. The final destination will depend on the outcome of these Allied landings.
So here was a unit raised like the ghosts they were named after, born of men from fallen France in league with their former enemies. It was not even on the radar screen as far as Allied intelligence went. The various battalions had been dispersed all over France, but now Himmler gave orders for them to concentrate in rail yards north of Paris, and begin their journey south. Then he also strongly suggested to Hube that he get his 16th Panzer Division across the border and on the trains to Madrid as soon as possible. When the chief of the SS gives you that kind of advice, you act on it, and even without knowing the real reason for this move, Hube pushed his units along.
Elsewhere in France, the Germans had Dollman’s 7th Army in the south and along the Brittany and Normandy regions. 25th Korps had the 17th Infantry and 6th Panzer rebuilding with new equipment after the disastrous winter campaign in Russia. Three more static divisions fleshed out this Korps, the 333rd, 335th and 709th. The 84th Korps had another three static divisions, the 319th, 320th, and 716th. There were also five Fortress Regiments working on the Atlantic Wall fortifications, the 14th, 19th, 9th, 11th, and 17th.
Farther north, the 15th Army under General Haase had the 81st Korps with three static divisions, the 302nd, 332nd and 711th. The rest of his force was coastal artillery and the 21st Fortress Regiment. 82nd Korps had one mobile infantry division, the 106th, and three more static divisions, the 304th, 306th, and 321st, along with 12th and 21st Fortress Regiments. This force was mainly along the shores closest to England, covering the region from the Siene River at La Havre through Calais, Dunkirk and Ostend. It was supposed to have 10th Panzer Division as a strong mobile reserve, but that unit had been sent to Rommel early, along with the Hermann Goering Brigade.
This meant that in addition to Hube’s 16th Panzer Division now entering Spain, there were another 15 German divisions in France, though only three had the transport assets required to move anywhere efficiently, and all these troops were stretched out along the entire French coast, from Ostend to Bayonne. One other division, the 7th Panzer, was now being withdrawn from Russia for a planned movement to France. If the British had been more flexible, seeing the way TORCH had ballooned to a six division assault at two widely separated locations, they might have also seen that the concentration of all six of these divisions at one point on the coast of France, as Marshall proposed, might have had a very good chance of making a successful landing. But that was not to be—at least not yet.