15 October 1943 Part 7

15 October 1943 Marcks objects to naval control of coastal artillery in battle

Top secret. Corps to Seventh Army. Subject: provisional instructions for firing against naval targets, Part 1, Guidelines for the Employment of Army Coastal Artillery, 25 July, forwarded 4 August. Existing corps artillery organization, command arrangements and good cooperation with naval commanders Normandy and Channel Islands create practically no difficulty in defence preparation or tactical battle command. Nevertheless:

The fight against a landing is one indivisible action. From appearance of the enemy fleet to counterattack against landed troops, command must remain in one hand. The guiding artillery principle is to engage, with the mass of artillery, whichever enemy elements most threaten our infantry. Preserving infantry combat power is decisive; coastal combat differs in this respect from no other combat. Only the commander who sees the entire sector and commands all troops can identify the greatest threat: primarily coastal-group/infantry-regiment commander, then coastal-sector/divisional commander. Unified battle command, including artillery, belongs to them. Alleged technical reasons must not override unity of command.

The guidelines and Commander-in-Chief West’s supplementary order make unified tactical command impossible, contrary to all previous principles. Coastal defence aims to destroy the enemy at sea. The responsible divisional commander depends principally on artillery, but the new arrangement removes his influence over all artillery: all static coastal guns can fire seaward and therefore come under the naval commander or artillery-sector commanders for fighting on the water. This is intolerable; rigid application weakens defence precisely at the decisive moment.

Known Anglo-American attack methods underline this. Transports and heavy ships remain as far as possible outside coastal-artillery range; chiefly landing craft, in varying numbers and density, present themselves. These are no longer naval targets requiring specialist coastal-artillery gunnery: any rapid-firing artillery can engage them. Which approaching groups to attack must be decided by the responsible coastal-sector/subsector commander, not naval commander or his artillery representatives. At the critical moment just before landing, he must decide whether coastal artillery fires at heavy ships or landing craft. The decision depends on how much naval gunfire assists the landing, the landing site’s defensive strength, fortifications, armament and reserve positioning. Naval commanders cannot judge these as the coastal-sector commander can. It is contradictory to allow the artillery-sector commander, usually an army officer, this decision while denying it to the coastal-sector commander.

The arrangement appears attractive because it assigns all events on the water to the navy. Naturally the navy controls coastal artillery for protection of German shipping, technical gunnery training, harbour barrages, mines and other obstacles. These, however, are peacetime-in-sector preparations, not the battle for the coast. The naval commander’s sector is too large for him to direct even his naval batteries, much less all artillery. So far the navy has conducted neither combined live firing of all seaward artillery nor all-weapons firing, and troops have received no tactical instructions from it. Army and corps have provided the preparations, experience and orders for the coastal foreground battle.

The present regulation goes beyond Directive 40 and creates confusion among middle commanders and troops instead of clarity. In actual battle, paragraph 50 will always require breaking the current command structure. Tactical command will lie with the army, as the army already undertakes decisive artillery battle preparations. Revise the guidelines on that basis. Signed Marcks; certified by Oberleutnant Albanbrenner [signature spelling uncertain].

T-314 Roll 1604, T314_R1604_English_Translation.docx. 15 October 1943 | Source PDF pages 1057–1059. Selected island-related text; document or report date governs placement.