THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

HITLER'S LAST OFFENSIVE

As Christmas 1944 approached, it seemed that Germany's final collapse could only be a matter of time and continued Allied determination. The Allies had been on the offensive, with varying degrees of success, for so long that the notion of the German High Command having the will, the equipment or the manpower to achieve a new offensive in any strength seemed absurd. To Eisenhower, to Bradley and even to Montgomery, by now perpetually at odds with his American colleagues in arms, the only questions to be answered were where, when and how the assault on the Rhine was to be launched.

They reckoned without the last flush of Adolf Hitler's considerable talent for major strategic vision and tactical bravura. For Hitler, always one to be mindful of historical precedent, had observed that history was repeating itself, and saw in that phenomenon an opportunity. Four years earlier, a plan that had itself seen its origins in a First World War strategy had enabled General Guderian to surprise the French and British armies with a lightning advance to the Meuse through Belgium's Ardennes forests which had, to traditional military eyes, seemed impassable to tanks, and was therefore only lightly defended. Despite that salutary lesson in Blitzkrieg , the Allies had once again made the assumption, Hitler observed, that an offensive through the Ardennes forest was not a practical option for either side. Like General Gamelin in 1940, Bradley had not allowed for the possibility of an armoured thrust. Only four divisions of General Middleton's VIII Corps were holding a front of fully eighty miles.

Because the German armies had now been pushed back almost to Germany, and were in some areas already fighting on German soil, major troop movements and concentrations of armour necessarily took place in Germany. Thus the Allies had now lost the important intelligence advantage of constantly updated information on troop movements that the French and Belgian Resistance had provided. As a result, Hitler was able to assemble the twenty-one divisions for which his plan called without the Allied commanders knowing anything of it from a hostile civilian population. Nonetheless, it has never been explained satisfactorily why Allied intelligence ignored information from captured German soldiers almost two weeks before the German push began which clearly indicated a major build-up.

Although the plan for the Ardennes offensive has often been credited to Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, now reappointed at the age of seventy to be Commander-in-Chief in the West, Rundstedt in fact opposed the whole concept bitterly. The entire plan was the work of Hitler and his immediate staff, prepared in total secrecy without even von Rundstedt's or Model's assistance. The orders to Army Group B for the attack were complete down to the last detail. Attempts by Field-Marshal Model and the youthful General Hasso von Manteuffel, who at 47 had been put in command of the 5th Panzerarmee , to impose alterations met only with limited success, and changed only the times of attack and the sequence of events during the initial assault. The plan itself, declared Hitler, was irrevocable.

The scheme was magnificent in its simplicity, and, had Germany in fact had the equipment, the men and the resources of fuel and supplies that Hitler's plan required for success, it could have succeeded and given Germany a major victory in the West. Nothing less would satisfy the Fuehrer. Three armies were to take part in the offensive: the newly-formed 6th SS Panzerarmee under Colonel-General Sepp Dietrich, the 5th Panzerarmee under Colonel-General Sepp Dietrich, the 5th Panzerarmee commanded by General von Manteuffel, and the 7th Army under General Brandenburger. The 5th and 6th were to push in one massive breakout through the Ardennes forests to the Meuse, and were given by the plan just 48 hours to reach their goal. There they would fan out, Dietrich's 6th crossing the Meuse North of Liege and driving forward to re-capture Antwerp, and von Manteuffel's 5th heading for Namur and Brussels. To the 7th Army fell the task of covering the whole exercise against outside Allied interference from the South. Once the 5th and 6th reached Brussels and Antwerp, the communications and supply lines of the entire Allied 21st Army Group and most of the Allied 12th Army Group could be attacked from two sides and put out of action. More than half of Eisenhower's army would be destroyed.

Fortunately for the Allies, Hitler's fantasising about the manpower, the availability of equipment and the logistics of his armies had reached an advanced stage, and his plan took no account either of the fact that the three German Panzer Divisions of 5th Panzerarmee were already down to about 100 tanks per division, roughly half the divisional strength of the American armoured divisions, nor of their desperate shortage of fuel, despite Albert Speer's Armaments Ministry's considerable success in maintaining production throughout the Allied bomber offensive. Only the four divisions of Sepp Dietrich's 6th Waffen SS Panzerarmee had been brought up to full strength with a total of 640 tanks.

At 5.30 in the morning on December 16th 1944, Hitler's greatest gamble began. With the benefit of fog and cloud which kept the Allied air forces on the ground, twenty-one German divisions attacked the American line between Monschau and Echternach along a 90-mile front, with high morale but minimal fuel. The 6th Panzerarmee launched their assault between Saint Vith and Malmedy in the Northern sector; the 5th under von Manteuffel pushed straight into the Ardennes forests in the direction of Celles and Dinant - the point on the Meuse where the German victory of 1940 had been accomplished. To the South of the 5th Panzerarmee , and North of Trier, General Brandenberger's 7th Army guarded the flank of von Manteuffel's thrust against the expected move Northward by General Patton's US 3rd Army.

A feature of the attack was the activities of the so-called 150th Panzer Brigade, a unit of some 2,000 English-speaking German commandos who knew American service slang and customs. Under Colonel Otto Skortzeny, using captured American Jeeps, and wearing American combat jackets over their German uniforms, the Germans advanced far ahead of the main force, cutting telephone wires, turning signposts, setting up false red minefield indicators and creating as much confusion as possible. Each was under orders, if captured, to tell their captors that thousands of Germans were loose in American uniforms, driving Jeeps. The success of the first group was outstanding - forty Jeeps got through the American lines to commit their sabotage, and all but eight got back again. Those that were captured duly carried out their orders and spread rumours of a vast force of Germans in US uniform - with the result that huge traffic jams developed on the narrow roads through the forest as Jeeps were stopped and checked. Hundreds of American soldiers who failed to prove their American origin by answering check questions correctly were arrested. Many a GI had cause to reflect in the cooler that a little more attention to schoolday lessons about the height of the Empire State Building and the content of the Gettysburg Address might have saved him a lot of bother.

Later groups of Skorzeny's saboteurs were less successful, although one man captured on the 19th launched a fresh rumour of an attempt on Eisenhower's life which caused a rash of extra security precautions that did much to slow the Supreme Commander's progress for days. Since the activities of the 150th Panzer Brigade were entirely contrary to the Geneva Convention, the Americans began summarily to try and shoot the men captured in US uniform, and this ended their incursions. The whole idea had been Hitler's - unbalanced he may have been, but a measure of originality still characterised his military solutions.

Less palatable were the appalling and unnecessary atrocities committed by the leading column of the elite 1st SS Panzer Division, known as "Battle Group Peiper", after its commander SS Standartenfuehrer Peiper. This unit captured the important communications centre of Stavelot (only to lose it again later the same day), but in the meantime discovered a group of civilians, mainly women and children, huddled in a cellar. Despite the fact that there was no evidence whatever of their complicity in any military activity, they were all taken out and shot in cold blood, with exception of one woman and her two children. Unarmed American prisoners were also murdered in contravention of the Geneva Convention.

The "Battle Group Peiper" was the first thrust of the 6th Panzerarmee in the northern sector, which encountered far stronger resistance than it had expected at the hands of the US 99th Infantry Division, the southernmost of General Gerow's V Corps. The men of V Corps held their positions until reinforcements arrived, and prevented Peiper from proceeeding towards his objectives. Incredibly, while Peiper was held up at Stavelot he was within a mile of a vast and lightly guarded US fuel dump containing over 2.5 million gallons of gasoline - but he did not know it was there, and made no attempt to capture fuel which might have transformed the offensive for Hitler. By contrast, von Manteuffel's 5th broke through strongly in the Schnee Eifel sector (just to the South of Dietrich's positions) against the newly arrived US 106th Division and the 14th Cavalry Group. By the following day, the 17th December, the 5th Panzerarmee had surrounded the 106th and forced the surrender of some 7,000 men - the worst reverse suffered by the American Army during the whole of 1944 and 1945 in Europe.

Further South again in von Manteuffel's sector, the 58th and 47th Panzer Corps made strong progress. The 58th crossed the River Our and pushed on towards Houffalize to attempt to secure a bridgehead over the Meuse between Ardenne and Namur. The 47th was to cross the Our and capture Bastogne, a key town positioned at the junction of vital roads. By the night of the 17th December, both Corps were close to their objectives at Houffalize and Bastogne.

Only now did the Allied High Command take the offensive seriously and realise just how vigorously the German High Command was bidding for an eleventh hour victory. The 6th Panzerarmee had come perilously close to the US First Army HQ at Spa, which had been pulled hastily back. By December 18th, the US 7th Armoured Division had been equally hastily moved to counter German pressure on the important road centre of St Vith, but were failing to hold the assault of the 6th Panzerarmee , which was outflanking St Vith on both sides. So hard pressed were they that no help could be detached for the trapped regiments of the 106th Divison at Bastogne. As the German 47th Panzer Corps closed in, combat command and engineer reinforcements from the US 9th Armoured Division reached Bastogne and slowed the German advance. This was crucial, since, on the 19th, the US 101st Airborne Division arrived at Bastogne (after delays caused by being sent to the wrong place), just before the town was bypassed by von Manteuffel's tanks and cut off from all other American forces on the 20th.

On the 19th December, General Bradley ordered the 10th Armoured Division to move North to reinforce the American line against the advancing Panzers . This brought 60,000 more US troops into the endangered area; a further 180,000 would be moved up over the next eight days. The US 30th Division was sent to Malmedy from rest positions near Aachen, and was then moved further West to push SS Standartenfuehrer Peiper's Battle Group out of Stavelot with the help of fighter-bomber attacks. Peiper was now himself cut off from the rest of the 6th Panzerarmee , and was running desperately short of fuel. By the 24th he had no gasoline at all, and his Group abandoned their tanks and walked back through the forest.

Further South, von Manteuffel had forced the US defending troops out of St Vith, and was pressing hard against the US 7th Armoured and 106th Divisions, which were obliged to retreat to safer positions. The Allied line was now burst wide open, and Eisenhower decided that rapid action was needed. In a major change of the command structure, he put Montgomery in charge of all land forces North of the breach, and Bradley in command of those South of it. Montgomery insisted of having Major-General J. Lawton Collins, commander of the US 7th Corps, for the task of commanding the two armoured and two infantry divisions that were to be given the task of stopping von Manteuffel reaching the Meuse. To "Lightning Joe" Collins were given the 2nd and 3rd Armoured Divisions and the 75th and 84th Infantry Divisions. His orders were to mount a counterattack.

South of the breach, General Bradley gave General Patton the formidable task of wheeling and repositioning two Corps (III and XII) from the Saar front to the counterattack to relieve Bastogne, where the position was, and remained for days, critical. The commander at Bastogne was Brigadier-General McAuliffe, who earned his place in history not only with his inspirational leadership of the defenders of the town, but also by his one-word answer to General Luttwitz' offer of surrender terms. McAuliffe instructed his staff officer to tell the German white flag party "Nuts!". The Germans, with Teutonic thoroughness, queried the meaning of this answer. The young American officer thought for a moment then offered the translation "Go to Hell!". The Germans went, although their final destination is unrecorded.

December 23rd at last brought a break in the unremitting low cloud and bad weather of the previous week, and the Allied Air Forces were unleashed in earnest, flying 2,000 sorties on the 23rd, and a total of 15,000 over the next three days. More American reinforcements were moved up to the Southern side of the German bulge, and von Rundstedt renewed his requests to Hitler that the whole offensive should be called off. Once more, Hitler refused. By the 24th, Christmas Eve, the defenders of Bastogne were nearer than ever before to being defeated, but still they held on with great heroism. On Christmas Day, the German tanks made an all-out effort to break into the town, but, remarkably, General McAuliffe's defenders still held out. At 4.45pm on the 26th, their persistence and bravery was at last rewarded. The US 4th Armoured Division under Major-General Gaffey broke through and made contact with the beleaguered and exhausted garrison of Bastogne.

By the 24th, Patton's advance from the South was pushing back the German 7th Army, and was coming closer to von Manteuffel's flank as the 5th Panzerarmee continued its push for the Meuse despite heightened Allied opposition. Hitler had now released from reserve the 9th Panzer and 15th Panzergrenadier Divisions to reinforce von Manteuffel's army, but General Collins' relentless push was too strong even for the reinforced Panzer force, and on Christmas Day, he re-took Celles, just five miles from the Meuse. This marked the turning point of the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler's dream was to come no coser to the Meuse than this.

By the 26th December, the 5th Panzerarmee was beginning to retreat, and von Manteuffel was fuming at the fact that only now was he given the reinforcements he needed - but without the fuel to use them. The Battle of the Bulge was over, and Germany's last great offensive had failed. The losses had been serious on both sides, but whereas the Allies could replace arms and equipment destroyed, the Germans could not. All told, the Americans lost 76,890 killed and wounded, the Germans 81,834. Over 700 US tanks were destroyed to 324 German, over 590 aircraft to just 320 German. However, it should be remembered that these losses were approximately equal as proportions of the total of each type of equipment employed in the battle by each side.

Incredibly, Hitler now began to fantasise about a great offensive to destroy the Allies in Alsace and Lorraine, apparently oblivious to the tremendous Soviet build-up on the Vistula which heralded Stalin's final push to destroy the Reich and dominate Eastern Europe. His Generals were in despair. It was now clear that Germany as they knew it had but months to live.