Hein Severloh

[Spandau]

Avete,

In another post I read about Hein Severloh, a machine gunner at Omaha beach. According to this post,

"during 7 hours of figthing he fired 12.000 rounds of his MG-42 and 400 of his K98.he killed and wounded nearly 2000 GI's"

Wow! If this is true, he alone accounted for over half the American casualties there. If this is accurate, what souces are there about Hein Severloh. Did he survive the war?

Valete,

-Spandau

[Jan-Hendrik]

Yes , he is still alive and lives a few km away from me . But his wife died last autumn , since that his health is going down rapidly ...


Jan-Hendrik

[AAA]

Theres a number of lengthy posts on Hein Severloh on the Axis History Forum, including cool photos of old Hein Severloh back on the scene after 60 odd years after the war ... the credibility of the casualty numbers is also discussed at length. Recommended.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=62104 Hein Severloh " The beast of Omaha "
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=55518 The Beast of Omaha Beach
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=52092 Hein Severloh and WN62 at Omaha Beach

A.

[Spandau]

Avete,

These have been quite informative, but there are still some loose ends. From what I seem to have gathered, there were only 30 German defenders at Omaha? Surely there were more than that! How many were there?

Also, is it assumed that Severloh caused more carnage than all the other German defenders combined? How do they know what casualties he inflicted?

Have any of you read his book?

Valete,

-Spandau

[Imad]

To the best of my knowledge total American casualties on Omaha beach were around 2,000. Somebody please correct me if they know different. I really find it hard to believe that Severloh (an excellent soldier no doubt), actually inflicted almost all the casualties on the Amis on that one single day. It is a common phenomenon for even experienced soldiers in the heat of battle to perceive more casualties than they actually inflicted.
Imad

[Mansal D]

It is in fact a high number, but I think it is agreed that he did have at least close to 2,000 kills. He even states he thought it was 1,000 to 2,000, so he is low balling it.

Only a few German troops stayed behind and with him firing the MG I think it is possible most of the rest could be spotting and feeding MG ammo to him. He went through 12,000 MG rounds and 400 Kar rounds.

Also, I have talked to a 4th Army vet who was on the first wave at Omaha beach and he said an MG took out 50 men in his landing boat alone in a matter of a dozen seconds.

These numbers wouldn't surprise me at all with an MG.

[Imad]

I still take the 2,000 figure with a pinch of salt, although I don't doubt Severloh's sincerity. I am not doubting the number of rounds he fired or the amount of time he stayed in his machine gun nest and no doubt he did inflict heavy casualties, but it's hard to see how someone could actually arrive at an accurate number unless he was counting during the heat of combat!
All the best, Imad

[Fallschirmjager !]

Hi Guys,

An interesting topic. I think Imad made a good point “it's hard to see how someone could actually arrive at an accurate number unless he was counting during the heat of combat!”

12,000 MG 42 rounds and 400 K98 rounds were fired with 2,000 kills. It seems like there is a big discrepancy with the hits and misses in my humble opinion. Maybe it’s just seeing the figures written down.

Thanks

[Mansal D]

I think he could guess pretty well. He can't count exactly the right amount, but he is stating numbers of between 1,000-2,000. That's a large range so it doesn't seem to be counted. I don't think he's trying to represent it as being counted. It is simply an (in my opinion) accurate amount of casualties he inflicted on Omaha beach.

[Doug Nash]

While Severloh no doubt killed many US soldiers at Omaha Beach that day, I feel that I have to weigh in and say "baloney!" to the claim that he may have killed as many as 2,000 men that day. He may have killed and wounded hundreds, but the higher claim is just not believable.
Here's some reasons why -
First, he was firing an MG-42. While it had a phenomenal firing rate of 1500 rounds per minute, in practise that was totally unfeasible. The sustained rate of fire was more like 120 rounds per minute. Reasons for that include need to change belts frequently and overheating of the barrel which lead to inaccurate fire and increase in stoppages.
Second, the MG-42 was notoriously inaccurate. While the first 8 - 10 rounds would probably land in the target area, the rest, if you kept holding the trigger, would most likely stray off target as the gun bucked from the continued recoil. Since most of the targets he was firing at from the bluffs above the beach were perhaps 200 - 500 yards from his position, dispersion of shot would have spaced out the impact of the rounds. Still deadly, but not deadly accurate. (and if he was using a tripod, though a more stable platform, it still had a very limited traverse - good if your target stayed in the narrow band, but not good if your target moved around). So perhaps for every two dozen rounds or so, he may have hit someone. I don't know the exact number of rounds it took to hit someone, but even using today's MGs, you have to fire a lot of rounds in order to hit someone at that distace. Even from a tank, which is about the most steady platform there is.
Third, related to two above, in order to "kill" 2,000 men, he would have had to fire anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 rounds, and that's being extremely conservative. Probably would have needed twice that many to achieve such a kill rate.
And fourth, finally, even if he needed only 10,000 - 12,000 rounds, as one person indicated, that would be about 30 - 40 ammunition cans, each one capable of holding 300 rounds. 30 - 40 cans - for those of you who don't know, that's a helluva lot of ammo to have to haul around and it is doubtful whether Severloh's platoon had that much on hand. And that's for the conservative estimate! If Severloh fired 20 - 30,000 rounds to achieve that kill ratio (which is probably more believable), then double the number of cans he would have had to empty. I don't think an infantry company HAD that much ammo in its basic load. Severloh wouldn't have been able to move because he would have been nearly buried in empty ammo cans & spent metallic belts, not to mention a mountain of spent brass.
So bottom line, I doubt Severloh's story - no doubt he killed and wounded lots of guys on that crowded beach, but 2,000 strains credulity. Of the men that died that day on Omaha, they died from a variety of causes - machine gun fire, rifle fire, MP-40 fire, land mines, mortar fire, artillery fire and friendly fire. But the thought that one lone German "Beast" could inflict so much death and destruction, though a fanciful (if morbid) preposition, is just pure baloney.
By the way, I am a recently retired US Army officer with 28 years of active service in three conflicts who served in tanks, armored cavalry and airborne units. I have fired just about every machinegun in the US inventory and have launched tens of thousands of rounds of machinegun fire downrange at a variety of targets (including humans) at different distances. I have also fired a few thousand rounds through both MG-34s and MG-42s, so my observations are based on actual experience, not conjecture.

[Imad]

Doug thanks for clarifying the issue. I think a lot of us at the forum were simply undecided about the matter. I had my doubts about the figure but mine was more of a "gut feeling" than anything else. I think you broke it down quite nicely.

[Richard Hargreaves]

From memory, I can't recall him making the 2,000 claim in his memoirs; he does say he fired 8,000 rounds in five hours, and describes the scene at Omaha thus:

"For the first time I realised how many dead had been washed up on the beach below by the high waves and rising tide in our sector. On a stretch of beach about 300m long and several metres wide lay hundreds upon hundreds of lifeless bodies of American soldiers, in places several on top of each other. The wounded moved slowly in the blood-soaked water, most of them crawled, to the edge of the beach were there was an embankment about one and half metres high, to find shelter behind it. I could only see about 50 to 60 GIs, who occasionally ducked and ran around on their own."

[Doug Nash]

That's sounds more plausible. Yet despite his and his Kameraden's best efforts, the Yanks still got off the beach and seized all of the German positions. We lost more killed and wounded that single day than we have in over 4 years in Iraq. Imagine that scale of sacrifice today!

[Troy Tempest]

Hi Doug, speaking of how tolls from WWII would be viewed today, I watch the Newshour with Jim Lehrer each day, and when I see the photos of fatalities at the end of the show, it makes me think about WWII/Korea/Vietnam, and what effect such a thing would have had back then. I'm obviously too young to have been around during WWII and Korea, but I was old enough to know about Vietnam. Did US television have The Newshour thing with showing fatality lists on tv? Did they show photos like The Newshour, or just names?

[Doug Nash]

I don't remember lists of names w/ pictures of our troops KIA in Vietnam being broadcast on PBS or the major networks when I was growing up in the 60s - heck, we were losing 300 KIA A WEEK in Vietnam at one point in the war so it would have taken hours to list them all. I think we had 4,000 to 5,000 KIA between Feb and Apr 1968 alone. Some things never change - a single death is a tragedy, while hundreds or thousands is a statistic.
Regards,
Doug