Sabataging The 2nd Panzer 'Das Reich' Division Just Prior To and After D-Day

Das Reich was delayed going to Normandy by a handful of lightly armed but committed Allied opponents

Delaying 'Das Reich': By using French teenagers to drain axle oil from German transport rail cars and replacing it with corrosive carborundum (which destroyed the axles immediately when used), the British Operative Tony Brooks managed to force the Germans to ride their tanks over the roads to Normandy. The Panzers did not do well with long distance travel, using fuel and causing damage to the tanks (and it also destroyed the roads they were on).

This SS Panzer Division participated in massacres of civilians in France. They also murdered Jews in Eastern Europe. They were like the SS tank crews in Fury (I had mixed feelings about that film, but it did not pull punches on how the SS were).

Other British and American Operatives and Commandos, working with the French Resistance, systematically set traps, fallen trees, and other impediments to delay this Panzer Division from reaching the Normandy beachheads. It worked. These tanks were delayed and that delay undoubtably saved many Allied forces lives.

Adolph Otto Diekmann

SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Adolph Diekmann ordered the massacre of 642 French civilians (including 254 women and 207 children) at the town of Oradour-sur-Glane in southern France on 10 June 1944. On 29 June 1944, while fighting on the Normandy front, he was killed in action.

EBL: Unfortunately we have sabotage like this in the West now and Fury

Telegraph: Women of the French Resistance

AoSHQ: Morning Report 09.20.19