D-Day: The Beast of Omaha & WN 62 | History Traveler Episode 47

so I'm currently in Normandy at Omaha Beach and in the last video went to resistance nest 60 which anchored down the the far eastern end of Omaha Beach now I'm currently standing in front of Peter stone nest 61 but unfortunately not to be critical if it's somebody's private property they can do what they want but Peter Stanton nest 61 is right behind this trailer [Music] okay so I've moved around to a little bit better angle and here's a better look at veter stone nest 61 okay so 60 is right up here that's where we were on the last video and this one is a little bit closer to the beach now this particular case mate housed one of two 88-millimeter guns on d-day and whole idea with these bunkers and with these resistance nests was to provide overlapping fields of fire so that the whole beach would be covered so right and there you would have had the gun from an 88 millimeter that was covering the entire length of the beach now this particular one there's some other - Brooks machine-gun nest and everything with this particular leader stand nest but it was designed to provide overlapping fire with the resistance nest called veter statin s62 which in recent years has become the subject of quite a bit of controversy so we're gonna go take a look at that now [Music] so I'm here on the approach to Peter son nest 62 and right here at the very top appropriately they have a memorial to the 1st Infantry Division so right out here in front kind of looking at close to the dividing line between fox green and the easy red sectors of Omaha Beach man oh man it's pretty sobering up here they have on the 1st Infantry Division Monument the names of those killed in action here [Music] pretty sobering [Music] okay now just like at V Durst and s60 you can still see the remains of these German trenches that made up veter Stan nest 62 huh just kind of making our way down the hill here now this would have had different machine-gun nests and to Brooks with mortars whenever we get down here we'll see a little bit better look at some of the bunkers so here is a monument to the fifth Engineer special Brigade and again it names the men from this brigade that were killed on d-day and up at the top it says in memoriam to our 80 brave comrades and arms of the 299th combat engineers who gave their lives on the beaches of France and on the continent of Europe in World War 2 lest we forget Wow [Music] getting out one thing interesting about the monument that I just showed is it actually rests on top of this German case-mate so go down here and take a look this about to fall is a case-mate that would have held a seventy six point five millimeter gun and there were two of these up here on V understand s 62 on d-day so the gun is gone now but of course it would have been right here I've heard people ask before why is this not facing out to the beach well if you look this wall right here explains it these different concrete bunkers were designed to provide interlocking fields of fire so they were providing flanking fire for the beach if their front was open to the ocean well that would make it very susceptible to naval gunfire so if we understand nest 61 is about 300 yards to the east of us there's going to be several that are on down the beach and what they're designed to do is provide interlocking fields of fire to cover every inch of the beach while at the same time protecting their guns now if you look up here at the top of this casemate you can see where it took some hits from some naval gunfire and then was put out of action go ahead and jump down in here smell like I said this is where the seventy six point five millimeter gun would have been held you can still see like where the traversing mechanism would have been down here and then if we go back here if I can make my way through all of this water and mud well back here you'd have one room for ammunition and then another room for powder and then we go back out here there's some vegetation now but you can get an idea of the view of the beach that they would have had from this position pretty crazy now on d-day there was a German soldier here by the name of Heinrich severloh and that's where the controversy with this spot comes in later in life severloh wrote a book called wn-62 and in it he talks about how he was a machine gunner right here in this very spot now while he doesn't say anything in the book itself in a later interview he claims that he inflicted a thousand and maybe as much as 2,000 casualties right here on Omaha Beach on d-day that has caused quite a bit of controversy as to whether it's true or not and regardless it earned him the nickname the Beast of Omaha well right in here in this area whether the story is true or not this is where Heinrich several oh and his mg42 on d-day so this is approximately the view that Heinrich severloh would have had on d-day so you can imagine just looking at this field of fire how devastating it must have been for those men of the 1st Infantry Division coming onshore right here against these entrenched defenses [Music] so here is where the controversy comes in with Heinrich severloh if he indeed inflicted one to two thousand casualties by himself on d-day that means that he was responsible for over half of the casualties that were inflicted one man so to me there's only three possibilities one he's telling the truth and he did inflict that many casualties on d-day that seems pretty far out there I reached out to author Alex Kershaw and he kind of agreed that that number seems way way too high the second possibility is that in his later years he was just outright lying and the third possibility is that that was a pretty crazy day and maybe from his point of view it felt like he inflicted that many casualties the third option is the one that seems most plausible to me in his book severloh himself even admits that whenever a machine gun bursts would go out soldiers would instinctively drop so to him maybe it looked like he had actually hit him when in fact he didn't Kershaw says that the number is probably more like 200 which is still a lot but regardless it all happened right here [Music] [Music] so that is the story of Heinrich severloh how many casualties that he actually inflict knots hard to say well we can't say is that in this position on that day it was probably a lot but that's just one of the many tragic stories come off of these beaches from that day we're going to be moving on down the beach and there's so much here to see so much to say that it's impossible to put it all in just a few videos but how we're going to try and capture a little bit of it [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 184,944

Rating: 4.9451566 out of 5

Keywords: history, history travel, history traveler, travel, history underground, wwii, ww2, world war II, world war 2, dday, d-day, omaha beach, normandy, june 6, monteith, medal of honor, wn60, german, german defense, bunker, fox green, fox red, fox, jd huitt, beast of omaha, wn62, heinrich severloh

Id: mP09rRnaS9A

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2020