On the coast and in concentrations among northwest Europe's interlaced highways and railroads, the Wehrmacht was as ready for invasion as it ever would be. Germans could take comfort in the thought that never, except in the last crushing moments of ultimate defeat, had they had to apologize for the professional performance of their army. Even in retreat it was soldierly, resourceful, self-possessed.
So far as the outside world could tell the Wehrmacht permitted itself none of the frenetic speculation that occupied German civilians. It and the Luftwaffe, which sometimes avoided the...