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Code by Verlaine. As Author Ryan spells out in detail, the Germans knew almost to the hour when D-day was coming and fluffed their unparalleled opportunity to mangle the invasion forces. As early as January 1944, wily Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, then chief of German intelligence, had briefed Lieut. Colonel Hellmuth Meyer, intelligence officer and chief of a radio-monitoring unit with the Pas-de-Calais-based Fifteenth Army, on the code message with which the Allies would alert the European underground for the invasion. It consisted of the first two lines of the poem Chanson d'Automne, by the 19th century French poet Paul Verlaine. During a haggard all-night listening session on June 1, one of Meyer's 30-man radio-interception crew heard and taped the first part of the message: "Les sang-lots longs des violons de I'automne [The long sobs of autumn's violins].'' Meyer immediately telephoned Rommel's and Von Rundstedfs headquarters and tele-typed the message to General Alfred Jodl, Hitler's chief of staff at Berchtesgaden. Jodl did nothing, on the assumption that Rundstedt. overall commander in the west, had sounded the alert. Rundstedt did nothing on the assumption that Rommel was alerted. Either Rommel's mind was on the grey suede shoes, or. as Author Ryan argues, his own estimate of Allied intentions led him to discount the warning and leave the front. On the evening of June 5, Meyer caught the second part of the message: "Blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone [Wounding my heart with monotonous languor]." Following this broadcast, Canaris had told Meyer, the invasion would begin within 48 hours. When the excited Meyer burst into the Fifteenth Army chief's bridge game, General Hans von Salmuth ordered his troops alerted, then picked up his hand, telling his fellow players, "I'm too old a bunny to get too excited about this."
Kriegsspiel, Anyone? Monotonous languor seems almost the key to an uncanny series of decisions and events that shackled German strength on Dday. Half a dozen or more top German officers besides Rommel were absent from their coastal commands. Some of these, ironically enough, were taking part in a Kriegsspiel, a war game simulating an enemy landing in Normandy. On the very eve of Dday, the Seventh Army, guarding Normandy, was taken off alert because the weather was bad and all previous Allied landings had taken place in fair weather. The 124 planes of the 26th fighter wing stationed near the coast were pulled back on June 5. The only daylight action of the Luftwaffe on D-day was one two-plane air strike. For twelve hours, Jodl refused to release two Panzer divisions that might have been thrown in, and feared to interrupt Hitler's pill-drugged sleep with news of the invasion until the official Allied communique. Wakened in the forenoon of June 6, Hitler ranted, as always, at his generals, and clung to the illusion that the invasion was another Dieppe-style raid.