On June 6, 1944, exactly 80 years ago, the Allied forces, composed of British, American, Canadian and Australian soldiers, landed on the beaches of Normandy during “D-Day”, in what would be one of the bloodiest battles. and famous people of World War II.
Among the German defenders was Heinrich Severloh, a soldier of barely 20 years old who was on the beach known by the code name of Omaha, on the French coast of Normandy. This soldier would be known as “The Beast of Omaha” after that day he killed about two thousand American soldiers with his MG 42 machine gun.
Born on June 23, 1923 in Metzingen, Germany, Severloh was called up to the Wehrmacht in 1942, serving in various divisions and fronts. He was sent to the Soviet Union, where he was severely punished for expressing opinions critical of the progress of the war. After training as a junior officer in Braunschweig, in June 1944 he was assigned to France, to the 352nd Infantry Division in Normandy, where he would fight in his bloodiest battle.
According to American data and a History Channel documentary, Heinrich Severloh went into action on “D-Day” at 6 in the morning, when the first wave of American soldiers began to disembark. Severloh, from a hillside, would fire his MG 42 machine gun for 9 hours, launching around 12,000 rounds and killing around two thousand American soldiers.
Severloh remembers that the Allied soldiers arrived in waves and, thanks to their elevated and well-fortified position on Omaha Beach, they were easy targets for the machine gun he wielded, a lethal MG42 capable of firing up to 1,300 rounds per minute. According to the German soldier’s own calculations, he fired no less than 12,000 bullets in short bursts. When the barrel of the machine gun overheated and he had to wait for it to cool down, he would grab a rifle and keep shooting.
Even today it is not known for sure how many casualties the Americans suffered on Omaha Beach, although it is estimated that there were between 2,000 and just over 4,000 soldiers, counting dead, wounded and missing.
“There were at least 1,000 men, probably more than 2,000. But I don’t know how many I shot down. It was horrible. Thinking about it makes me want to vomit,” Severloh said in an interview in 2004. In any case, he would be responsible for having caused between 10 and 20% of all the casualties that the allies had on D-Day, which They are estimated at more than 10,000 soldiers.
Severloh added that “I didn’t want to be in this war. I didn’t want to be in France. I didn’t want to shoot a machine gun at young people my age. But there we were, I had to serve in a war that had already been lost and obey my lieutenant’s orders.”
“I remember the first enemy soldier I killed in Normandy; The man came out of the sea and was looking for a place to hide. I aimed at his chest, but the shot went high and hit his forehead. I saw his steel hull rolling toward the shore and then he collapsed. I knew he was dead, I still dream about that boy and I get sick when I think about him. What could I do? It was them or me, that was the only thing he thought about,” he continued.
According to Severloh’s story, after the successful Allied landing in Normandy, in the end only he and two other German soldiers remained in their position when they found themselves flanked by their enemies, so they decided to flee from the bunker where they were. His two companions were killed almost immediately as they retreated and he was taken prisoner a few hours later.
He spent a couple of years in captivity, working in cotton fields in the United States and in road construction in England. He was only able to return to Germany in 1947, after a request from his father, and he never spoke of his experience, except once when he told it to his wife.
Curiously, during the 90’s, Henrich Severloh would befriend several American veterans who participated in the assault on Omaha, such as the American priest David Silva, who was barely 20 years old on June 6, 1944, when he was one of the soldiers who had the mission of crossing the nest of German bullets to take Omaha Beach. While he survived the combat, Silva was wounded three times allegedly by Severloh and his MG 42 machine gun.
Henrich Severloh and David Silva attended the commemoration of the Normandy Landings together in 2005. In a documentary broadcast by the History Channel, they can be seen hugging each other as a sign of peace on the Normandy beach.
Heinrich Severloh, “The Beast of Omaha,” would die in 2006 in a nursing home near Celle, aged 83.
