France
The D-Day Battlefields
La Cambe German War Cemetery
La Cambe is the largest military cemetery in Normandy and contains the graves of more than 21,000 German soldiers. Like other similar sites in France and Belgium, including those relating to the Great War, this cemetery has a dark, sombre atmosphere when compared with those of the Allied nations. These figures on top of the large grass mound, or ossuary, which acts as a focal point represent grieving parents. Panels around the base of the mound list the names, where known of 296 soldiers who are buried underneath.
Opposite the cemetery entrance is an Information Centre, inaugurated in September 1996, which contains an exhibition aimed to show the personal cost of war to the individual participants, with photographs of both German and Allied war dead and extracts from documents and private letters. There are also quotations from several historical figures including Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King. A Peace Garden started on the same day as the Information Centre opened enables individuals, communities or organisations to sponsor the planting of a tree to Peace, or in memory of personnel of whatever nationality who died during the war. The line of trees, now more than a thousand in number, lines the road to Bayeux.
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This site at La Cambe was originally chosen as a battlefield cemetery by the United States Army Graves Registration Service during WW2, and American and German soldiers, sailors and airmen were buried in two adjacent fields. After Victory in Europe, work began to exhume the American remains and transfer them in accordance with the wishes of the bereaved families. Beginning in 1945, the Americans subsequently transferred two-thirds of their fallen from La Cambe back to the United States, while the remainder were reinterred at the new permanent American Cemetery and Memorial at Colleville-sur-Mer, which overlooks the OMAHA Beach landing site.
Due to the constantly changing front-line and defensive positions during the Battle of Normandy, the Germans who died were scattered over a wide area, many of them buried in isolated field graves - or small battlefield cemeteries. In the years following the war, the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge) sought to establish six main German cemeteries in the Normandy area. A Franco-German Treaty on War Graves was signed in 1954 which allowed the remains of 12,000 German soldiers to be moved to La Cambe from 1,400 locations within the French departments of Calvados and the Orne.
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There is a site plan and cemetery register just inside the entrance building but extensive computer records can be accessed from within the Visitor Centre.
La Cambe was officially inaugurated as a German War Cemetery in September 1961 and since that date, the remains of over 700 German soldiers have been found on battlefields across Normandy, and reinterred here. The majority of the German war dead fell between 6 June and 20 August 1944 and their ages range from 16 to 72. They died attempting to repulse the Allied landings and during the ensuing combat.
Among those buried here are SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann who was the most senior officer present during the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944. The 2nd SS Panzer Division `Das Reich`, then in southern France, had been mobilised following the D-Day Landings and was making its way north when information was received that the French Resistance had captured an SS Officer who was being held nearby. Oradour was sealed off and within a short space of time over 640 inhabitants had been executed. Diekmann maintained the atrocity was in retaliation for the partisan activity but numerous protests followed, including from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, General Gleiniger, the German commander in Limoges, and the Vichy government. An investigation pending court martial was ordered but Diekmann was killed in action in Normandy shortly afterwards along with many of his men who had conducted the massacre.
Also laid to rest here after being found in an unmarked site is SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann, the Tiger tank ace and his crew. They met their deaths on 8 August 1944 and were rediscovered in 1983.
Among those buried here are SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann who was the most senior officer present during the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944. The 2nd SS Panzer Division `Das Reich`, then in southern France, had been mobilised following the D-Day Landings and was making its way north when information was received that the French Resistance had captured an SS Officer who was being held nearby. Oradour was sealed off and within a short space of time over 640 inhabitants had been executed. Diekmann maintained the atrocity was in retaliation for the partisan activity but numerous protests followed, including from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, General Gleiniger, the German commander in Limoges, and the Vichy government. An investigation pending court martial was ordered but Diekmann was killed in action in Normandy shortly afterwards along with many of his men who had conducted the massacre.
Also laid to rest here after being found in an unmarked site is SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann, the Tiger tank ace and his crew. They met their deaths on 8 August 1944 and were rediscovered in 1983.
Above: Looking back to the entrance from the viewing platform at the base of the statues. It`s only after visitors make the short climb to this vantage point that the extent of the site becomes apparent.
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The groups of low stone crosses are symbolic only and do not represent graves. The locations of identified individuals are marked by low-lying stones, with four or more soldiers often buried together. The Germans call this `Comradeship in Death` but the fact that a liberated France was understandably reluctant to donate land to their invader may have contributed to the approach adopted by the German government.
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