With just two days remaining until D-Day, Peter Margaritis writes about Generalleutnant Rudolf Stegmann, an officer who battled the US 9th Division with an understrength force on the Cotentin Peninsula.
Rudolf Stegmann was born August 6, 1894, in Nilolaiken, East Prussia (now part of Poland). Enlisting in the army in 1912, he fought with the 141st Infantry Regiment on the Eastern Front. He was allowed to stay in the Reichswehr after the war, and when World War II began, he commanded the 2nd Battalion of the 14th Rifle Regiment, eventually taking command of the entire regiment, as they fought in France, and then the early stages of Barbarossa. He later commanded the 2nd Panzergrenadier Brigade, and then the 36th Panzergrenadier Division, before being wounded in battle on January 10, 1944. Recovering, Stegmann, now a Generalleutnant, travelled to Normandy and took command of the 77th Infantry Division on May 1st. His units, understrength and lacking transport, were made up of unreliable troops: mostly Volksdeutsche, Poles, and Östtruppen. Rommel, concerned about their fighting abilities, moved them to Brittany to defend the port St. Malo and assigned the veteran 352nd Infantry to their area.
When the landings began, Stegmann’s division had to march 130 km to reach the front. Reaching the Merderet River on the Cotentin Peninsula by June 10th, they successfully defended against the American VII Corps. While elements of the VII Corps outflanked them to the south, Stegmann held off the much larger U.S. 90th Infantry Division.
Early on the morning of June 16th, Stegmann requested permission to break out to the south, but 7th Army denied him permission. Stegmann though, on the afternoon of June 17th, began moving his division south anyway in five columns to try and avoid encirclement.
Field Marshal Rommel finally gave him permission to try and break out on the 18th, but Hitler immediately countermanded that, ordering Stegmann instead to retreat northward into the Cherbourg area.
Stegmann ignored this second hold-fast order as well, but the hours wasted over the command confusion gave elements of the U.S. 9th Division time to move more units into that area. One column consisting of the 77th’s divisional artillery and mobile transport did indeed break out of the threatened pocket but was discovered on the road in the open, and the all too vulnerable column was mostly destroyed by concentrated American artillery and mortar fire.
Now alerted to Stegmann’s intentions, the Americans got word to their tactical air assets. As German elements disengaged one by one, they were assaulted from the air. General Stegmann was in the midst of his units, racing about in his camouflaged command car, dodging and hiding from American fighters and tactical bombers, trying feverishly to organise the strafed columns and get them on the move again.
His luck though ran out near Bricquebec when he was spotted once again by Allied aircraft. His command car was strafed by a very-low flying American Typhoon, and the general was riddled by 20mm shells, including one that hit him in the head. He died instantly.
He was buried in the war cemetery in Orglandes, 14 km southwest. Ironically, had he lived, he would have been court-martialed and possibly shot for disobeying the Führer. Killed in action though, he was posthumously promoted to General der Infanterie.
Rudolf Stegmann and his role in the defence of the Atlantic Wall is explored in the new book, Countdown to D-Day, due to be released June 2019.
Follow