Heinrich Severloh: The Beast of Omaha
On D-Day June 6, 1944, thousands of allied troops would be dropped onto the beaches of Normandy, France. This was the beginning of the invasion of western Europe and the attempt to overthrow its German occupation but one beach, in particular, would stand out from the rest mainly due to the sheer amount of casualties inflicted there. In this story, we look at Heinrich Severloh, a German defender of Omaha Beach who has been given the nickname the Beast of Omaha.
Heinrich Severloh was born into a farming family in northern Germany. At the age of 19, he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in July 1942. He would initially serve in the 19th Light Artillery Replacement Division before being transferred to the 321st Artillery Regiment, he would train for a few months and following that was sent to the Eastern Front.
He like many other soldiers stationed there didn’t enjoy himself which led to him making some dissenting remarks which resulted in physical punishment by his superiors. The punishment itself left him with permanent health issues and he was sent to hospital for a period of six months following this he returned to the family farm to help his parents but his stay at home wouldn’t last long and he was sent for NCO training and eventually to Normandy in northern France.
Severloh’s unit formed a part of the Atlantic Wall defenses which was set up to prevent or push back any possible Allied invasion. The wall itself stretched from the coast of Norway all the way down to the border of France and Spain but the Atlantic Wall wasn’t one long concrete wall, rather it was a series of interconnecting defenses such as bunkers, artillery pieces, machine guns, mines, and numerous other beach defenses.
Severloh and his comrades were positioned at a place called Widerstandsnest 62 or WN 62. This was a resistance location that had a number of larger caliber weapons as well as machine guns. It was situated a couple of hundred meters back from a beach which the Allies would give the code name Omaha Beach. It was also much higher than the beach and allowed for a perfect field of view over any troops landing there.
On the morning of D-Day June 6, 1944, Severloh would wake up to the site of thousands of Allied ships off the coast of Normandy. He would sit through a barrage of fire from those ships and once that stopped he took up position in a foxhole with an MG 42 machine gun.
Numerous landing craft were then approaching Omaha Beach, he and his fellow soldiers were ordered to wait until the Allied troops were knee-deep in the water before opening fire. As the landing craft dropped their ramps and the soldiers made their way into the water, Severloh and the rest of the German defenders would open fire, the U.S. troops stood no chance at that point.
Severloh’s MG 42 had the capacity to fire 1200 rounds a minute and finding cover on the beach was difficult. As Severloh fired more and more U.S. troops began landing on the beach but he continued to fight towards them, only stopping when reloading to change out the barrel or to let the weapon cool down. When he wasn’t firing the MG 42, he would pick up a Kar 98 rifle and continue his defense.
As the hours passed, Severloh would fire thousands of rounds from his machine gun but despite this, the U.S. troops just kept coming and they were getting closer and closer to WN 62. At one point Severloh was forced to use anti-aircraft ammunition which contained tracer rounds, this caused his position to come under bombardment which forced him and his comrades into a bunker to seek shelter.
Once Severloh returned from the shelling he noticed his machine gun out of action. He was then ordered by his commanding officer to retreat. Severloh would be captured the next day by Allied troops. He was sent to the U.S. and into a POW camp in Boston. After the war ended he was sent to England in 1946 still in captivity. He assisted in the reconstruction of the country. He would finally return to Germany in 1947.
In his later years, he would write a book called WN 62: A German Soldier s Memories of the Defence of Omaha Beach, Normandy, June 6, 1944. Following that, during an interview, he claimed to have fired around 13,000 rounds from his MG 42 as well as 400 rounds from a Kar 98 rifle, he believed that he inflicted anywhere between 1,000 to 2,000 casualties himself.
He would eventually pass away in 2006. Many have disputed Severloh’s numbers Omaha Beach is about 10 kilometers or 6 miles in length and on D-Day had numerous other resistance nests and defensive positions along it. Further to that U.S. casualties on the beach are estimated anywhere between 1900 and 3000 which would make Severloh’s claim even more extraordinary. Nonetheless, it is certainly believed that from his position with that MG 42 he would have inflicted many many casualties.
