What the 91st Luftlande Division Reported After Losing Its General on D-Day

On June sixth nineteen forty four, a scattered group of American paratroopers from the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division encountered a German staff car racing through the darkness near Picauville in the Cotentin Peninsula. In the firefight that followed, First Lieutenant Malcolm Brannen killed Generalleutnant Wilhelm Falley, the commanding general of the 91st Luftlande Infantry Division, making him the first German general to fall on D-Day. This video tells the full story of what happened to the 91st Division after it lost its leader at the worst possible moment, how its counterattack against the American airborne landings at Sainte Mere Eglise and the Merderet River fell apart without coordination, and how the elite paratroopers of Fallschirmjager Regiment Six under Major Friedrich von der Heydte fought a brilliant defense at Carentan that earned them the nickname the Lions of Carentan. From the Rennes war game that emptied German command posts on the night of the invasion to the frozen forests of the Ardennes where von der Heydte led the last German parachute operation of the war, this is the story of an army that invented decentralized command and then lost it, told through the men who lived and died inside that contradiction. Drawing on firsthand accounts, captured German war diaries, and official military histories, this documentary covers the Battle of Normandy, Operation Overlord, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, and the collapse of the German chain of command in the summer of nineteen forty four.