Beast of Omaha

Is this guy for real? I have seen some mention of him via Google but haven't seen any mention of him in the few history books I searched. Wasn't mentioned in The War special last night either. I suspect this omission is due to not being a very pleasant topic.

Moderator Edit:
For additional discussion on this subject, see http://www.ww2f.com/information-requests/22357-dog-green-sector-ect-germans-reaction.html

 

Which individual are you referring to? The Beast of Omaha? Never heard of him but found this:

Heinrich Severloh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinrich Severloh (born 23 June 1923 in Metzingen (now Eldingen) died 14 January 2006 in Lachendorf, both near Celle) was at the time of the Second World War a soldier in the German 352nd Infantry Division, which was stationed in Normandy in 1944. He rose to notoriety as a machine gunner in an emplacement known as “Widerstandsnest 62”, whose position allegedly allowed him to kill or injure 2000-2500 American soldiers caught whilst landing as part of Operation Overlord, according to his own claims. He was and continues to be known as the “Beast of Omaha Beach” in the media in English speaking countries. His claims that he caused so many casualties are controversial amongst historians.

I can see why it is controversial since the total dead was about 2,500 men. Don't have the number for wounded. Could his tally be correct????

 

Hein Severloh - he was one of the last Germans firing at Omaha Beach. Allegedly he was responsible for nearly 3,000 KIA that day.

 

A few months back i watched a program on the History Channel about Heinrich Severloh, which was called Slaughter at Omaha Beach.



This man is apparently 'credited' with the most kills of any Wehrmacht soldier.

He fired around 12,000 rounds over a 9 hour period on to Omaha Beach and it is said that he killed around 2,500 men. After he ran out of ammo for his MG42 he used his rifle to continue firing at the oncoming enemy.

He only stopped firing and fled his post after his Liuetenant ordered him to do so.

 

Positioned in the right spot with a properly supplied MG42, he could have done a heck of a lot of damage. I saw this when I was watching SPR and imagined what it would have been like to be that machine gunner and would it be possible to cause as much damage as it showed in the movie.

 

At 1200 rounds per minute, i'm sure you could do that much damage with 'Hitlers Buzzsaw'.

 

Yes, and how many spare barrels would you have to take with you?

There's a thing called cyclic rate of fire an practical rate of fire...

 

I wonder how he slept that night after all of those slayings?

 

That's a lousy question. It was all done in the line of duty. Him or them. He was doing his duty, same as everybody else.

 

I don't know why to single him our. There were many Germans killing many Allies that day and many of them were behind the barrel of an MG 42.

What about the guys that had to supply the ammo that the "Beast of Omaha" was actually firing are they any less guilty? We really could go all the way down the line to the justification of the Bomber War but I think you get my point.

Za is right, line of duty, enemy approaching, you can't have remorse. Plus he had probably never been "attacked" before, only advancing, there was no remorse nor a thought that what he was doing was wrong.

 

Im not desputing nor questioning his job. But come on guys, it seems that such a high casualty figure caused by one idividual, in one sitting ( nor matter from what side or country ) holds some serious weight and might have serious drawbacks at least for a short time mentally?


I remember reading interviews of snipers who claimed that they would sometimes see faces of victims when sleeping.

I know that if I was doing a job which involved the deaths of so many in such a short time, I might very well have a hard time falling asleep at least for a couple of days.

 

I agree with Slon on this one.

Doing so much killing for so long, and literally looking into the faces of those you kill. Not defending your Homeland/family but being a part of a conquering army.
No chivalry, no honor, no class.
Duty ? I'm sure he would've been shot if he didn't do it, but there is a mental line you need to decide for yourself, as to how aggressively/joyfully you go about it.

If he survived, he probably worked in a slaughterhouse, with a box-cutter.

A Beast he was.

 

So this man has claims for 2,500 or more dead, but that equals or exceeds the number of dead on that area for the day.

The actual number of dead are spread across a landing beach some four kilometers long, but the effective range of a MG 42 is approx. 1,500 meters.

This is just not adding up. Not at all.

 

seems pretty simple, the carnage was so great before him and granted he was not alone with an mg 42 in his neighborhood. instead of 2500 reality must set in - possibly 250 if that. 2500 is ridiculous.

E ~

 

I disagree with the remorse. It was not a long time. It was a day's work. If you are fighting for your country and your goal is to make the landings fail, then If I kill 1,000 then the job was done. Now, I am sure there is a difference between killing men at 1500 meters than 1 meter. Pretty much like the pilots who bomb cities. If you don't see their faces, then no remorse.

 

Amazing, that's nearly 500 more than some estimates of the total* number of Allied troops killed on D-Day


* US, British, Canadian, and other Allies,

 

The D-Day Museusm in New Orleans actually says he, " may have accounted for about 3,000 American casualties, almost three-quarters of all the US losses at Omaha". I'm not too sure of what the actual numbers were, but I was just curiuous as to why I had never heard of him before. If any of you guys have additional resources, other than the ones already given, that reference this soldier I would appreciate a reply.

 

.. his "dramatic and moving" memoir was published by Heimdal in France ..here's a copy on ebay.fr

WN62 - MEMOIRES A OMAHA BEACH - HEIMDAL en vente sur eBay.fr (fin le 26-Sep-07 16:58:15 Paris)

an article appeared in the Independent newspaper in the UK around the time of the 60th anniversary of D-Day entitled "Still searching for peace: the German who felled more than 2,000 Allied soldiers .."

With Germany represented at commemoration for the first time, Tony Paterson meets the 'Beast of Omaha' Beach'

05 June 2004


He would be a war hero if he were British or American. Yet Hein Severloh is nicknamed the Beast of Omaha Beach for the carnage he inflicted on D-Day. He is reputed to be the German soldier who killed and wounded the most enemy troops in a single day during the whole of the Second World War.

Four thousand, one hundred and eighty-four Americans were shot in front of his bunker WN 62, above Omaha Beach on 6 June 1944. Hein Severloh was responsible for at least half of those deaths. He fired his machine gun at advancing GIs, almost without a break, for nine hours. The heat from the gun barrels he had to keep changing set the grass on fire around his bunker as American bodies bobbed and floated towards him on a flood tide stained pink with their blood.

Today his victims lie buried in the vast American cemetery above Omaha Beach that President George Bush will visit this weekend. They account for nearly a quarter of the 9,368 white stone crosses and Stars of David that cover the graveyard.

Hein Severloh was a raw 20-year-old Wehrmacht private on D-Day, and the invasion was his first real taste of action. He is now a frail and bespectacled pensioner of 81, who lives in a timbered farmhouse in the village of Metzingen near Hamburg. He speaks with a lisp, the result of a stroke he suffered years ago.

Last week, he nervously slapped his thigh in an attempt to fight back his tears as his mind went back to that day of slaughter. He wept as he said: "What should I have done? I thought I would never get out of there alive. I thought I am fighting for my life; it's them or me, that's what I thought."

This weekend, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder will become the first post-war German leader to attend D-Day anniversary celebrations. Opinion polls show more than 70 per cent of Germans are glad he is going. The German Chancellor said the decision to invite him to the D-Day celebrations "shows that the postwar period is over and done for good". On D-Day, he was two months old.But that day is all too real for Hein Severloh. He is plagued by a recurring nightmare, not from when he was mowing down Americans 600 yards away on Omaha Beach. "At that distance, the enemy look like ants," he said. It happened when he reached for his rifle during a lull in the fighting.

A young GI who had survived the onslaught in the sea was running up the beach. Mr Severloh took aim and fired. The round smashed into the GI's forehead and sent his helmet spinning. The soldier slumped dead on the sand. Mr Severloh still remembers the man's contorted expression. "It was only then I realised I had been killing people all the time," he said, "I still dream of that soldier now. I feel sick when I think about it."

For Hein Severloh, the war began and ended that day. His bunker was knocked out by a grenade which killed his commanding officer. He was taken prisoner by the Americans and sent to the United States five days later. He spent three years as a prisoner-of-war.

By 1959, his story had become well known in the United States. The Americans called him the Beast of Omaha Beach. Mr Severloh was too ashamed to tell his four children about his experiences, yet he was desperate to meet Americans who had survived. Eventually, he found David Silva, a GI wounded three times on Omaha Beach. When the men met in Germany in the 1960s they hugged each other for five minutes. "He never asked me to forgive him, but I have done so all the same," Mr Silva says today. "It is important for him." Franz Gockel served with Hein Severloh at bunker WN 62. Yet in many ways he has been luckier. For the 78-year-old veteran, the country he once occupied has become a second home. Every summer, he and his wife Hedwig rent a cottage in the Normandy village of Colleville-sur-Mer, barely a quarter of a mile from the former killing fields on Omaha Beach.

Tomorrow, Franz Gockel will be among the handful of German veterans who will meet Chancellor Schröder and President Jacques Chirac at D-Day celebrations in Caen castle. "I am glad Schröder is attending," he said. "For me and my former comrades, it demonstrates the terrible experiences of the Second World War are now behind us and that we are now finally on the way to build a new Europe."

On D-Day, Gockel was just 18. He was ordered to his gun emplacement at one in the morning on 6 June, hearing gunfire to the west as the Allies were parachuted in at the start of the invasion. As dawn broke, his crew was horrified to see the sea in front of them thick with warships, troop ships and landing craft. "We knew we had no hope of fighting off such a force," he said.

The shelling lasted for five hours. Franz Gockel cowered under the heavy wooden platform that served as a mount for his machinegun and prayed. "We could do nothing against the shells. I just kept shouting out, 'Hail Mary Mother of God, please save me'. Somehow, it helped."

As the Americans began to pour out of their landing craft, the young soldier stood to his Polish-made machinegun and opened fire. Six hundred yards away across the sand, the bodies began to slump in the water. "I didn't know how many I was killing until the corpses started being washed up the beach on the tide," he said.

Then his gun was knocked out in a grenade attack that left him with only a few cuts. Then he poked his head over the edge of a slit trench and felt a massive blow to his left hand. "I saw three of my fingers dangling from their tendons," he said. " But for me it was a million-dollar shot; I was out of the battle." Franz Gockel was evacuated with other wounded Germans. Back in action in November 1944, he was captured by the Americans in eastern France.

Today, a tall obelisk commemorating the American dead stands above the grassed-over remains of bunker WN 62. There is nothing to remind the millions of visitors to the site, of the Germans who were killed there. Last year, Franz Gockel erected a small wooden cross outside his bunker in memory of the 18 men of his 25-strong unit who died in action. Less than a week later, it was vandalised.

Chancellor Schröder said the D-Day anniversary "means that for us Germans the Second World War is finally over." But the German survivors of D-Day know the war, and all the guilt, will end only when they are dead.

 

< . He is plagued by a recurring nightmare, not from when he was mowing down Americans 600 yards away on Omaha Beach. "At that distance, the enemy look like ants," >

How would you begin to count up casualties at that distance.....under fire. 2500?

 

A discussion of the dutch forum that I wanna bring over here.

No it's old but what do you guys think about this one? I mean 3000 victims is a bit over the top for me. 300 would be more accurate or even 1000 would mean sense to me.