Edgar Feuchtinger, commanding the 21st Panzer Division stationed directly behind the beaches, had gone to Paris with his girlfriend, a Brazilian stripper formerly employed in Hamburg. His subordinates could not contact him by telephone, and they lacked the authority to make the weighty decision on their own whether to attack landing beaches. Unable to contact their boss, they finally agreed in the late afternoon to enter battle without him.

The attack kicked off at 1600 -- much later than the plan called for. The British blunted the east wing of the attack at Bieville claiming 10 enemy tanks destroyed. The west wing broke through the patchy defense and reached the coast at 2000 hours splitting Juno and Sword Beaches. But an hour later the Germans decided to withdraw when the 6th Airlanding Brigade passed overhead and landed behind them, potentially cutting them off. By that point Feuchtinger and his girlfriend had arrived and closeted themselves in an estate outside Caen; the general told his subordinates to carry on, and he did the same. Feuchtinger would receive the Knight’s Cross for his response to the invasion, but later be arrested for corruption, pardoned, returned to the front only to desert to the British. After the war, he took up a post in the West German Defense Ministry, became a KGB agent, and died of a “heart attack” while meeting his handler.