Great thread, @sundancer – and definitely a point that needs to be remembered.

Here’s another.  A huge proportion of the “German” troops who actually fought (at least on this very first day) were not German at all, but conscripts from countries like modern day Ukraine and Belarus.  These are the “East” or “Ost” Battalions you see filling out Infantry Divisions like 709th, 711th, and 716th.

German troops of course fought with formations like the 352nd and the 21st Panzer, and naturally ALL the divisions that engaged in the later battles through the Normandy back country.  Wehrmacht, Waffen SS, Luftwaffe (both in the air and on the ground, in LW Flak Battalions, LW field divisions, etc), even Kriegsmarine in places like Cherbourg and the Channel Ports later on.

And the carnage suffered by the German soldier at the “end game” battles like Operation Cobra and Falaise is pretty horrific.

I won’t get into the whole “playing Waffen SS” angle, others are covering it.  But during my travels in Normandy, plenty of “German sites” were also represented.

The German cemetery at Cambre.

One of the graves there.  It was actually kind of sad to see how many were simply “Ein Deutscher Soldat” or “Zwei Deutscher Soldat” (two men to a gravestone) – far too many of these men are unidentified.

Heading much further inland, we came to the museum and overlook at Falaise / Argentan, where the Normandy Campaign would eventually end in August.  We were very lucky, I was surprised to find that one of the world’s last twelve surviving operational PzKpfw V “Panther” tanks was there “on tour.”  Holy hell, was she a beautiful machine, and perfectly maintained and restored as well.   1:1 scale, baby!