[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 133 (Tuesday, October 5, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H9315-H9328]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMMENDING VETERANS OF THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE
Mr. STUMP. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the
joint resolution (H.J. Res. 65) commending the World War II veterans
who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and for other purposes, as
amended.
The Clerk read as follows:
H.J. Res. 65
Whereas the battle in the European theater of operations
during World War II known as the Battle of the Bulge was
fought from December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945;
Whereas the Battle of the Bulge was a major German
offensive in the Ardennes forest region of Belgium and
Luxembourg which took Allied forces by surprise and was
intended to split the Allied forces in Europe by breaking
through the Allied lines, crippling the Allied fuel supply
lines, and exacerbating tensions within the alliance;
Whereas 600,000 American troops, joined by 55,000 British
soldiers and other Allied forces, participated in the Battle
of the Bulge, overcoming numerous disadvantages in the early
days of the battle that included fewer numbers, treacherous
terrain, and bitter weather conditions;
Whereas the Battle of the Bulge resulted in 81,000 American
and 1,400 British casualties, of whom approximately 19,000
American and 200 British soldiers were killed, with the
remainder wounded, captured, or listed as missing in action;
Whereas the worst atrocity involving Americans in the
European theater during World War II, known as the Malmedy
Massacre, occurred on December 17, 1944, when 86 unarmed
American prisoners of war were gunned down by elements of the
German 1st SS Panzer Division;
Whereas American, British, and other Allied forces overcame
great odds throughout the battle, including most famously the
action of the 101st Airborne Division in holding back German
forces at the key Belgian crossroads town of Bastogne,
thereby preventing German forces from achieving their main
objective of reaching Antwerp as well as the Meuse River
line;
Whereas the success of American, British, and other Allied
forces in defeating the German attack made possible the
defeat of Nazi Germany four months later in April 1945;
Whereas thousands of United States veterans of the Battle
of the Bulge have traveled to Belgium and Luxembourg in the
years since the battle to honor their fallen comrades who
died during the battle;
Whereas the peoples of Belgium and Luxembourg, symbolizing
their friendship and gratitude toward the American soldiers
who fought to secure their freedom, have graciously hosted
countless veterans groups over the years;
Whereas the city of Bastogne has an annual commemoration of
the battle and its annual Nuts Fair has been expanded to
include commemoration of the legendary one-word reply of
``Nuts'' by Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe of the 101st
Airborne Division when called upon by the opposing German
commander at Bastogne to surrender his forces to much
stronger German forces;
Whereas the Belgian people erected the Mardasson Monument
to honor the Americans who fought in the Battle of the Bulge
as well as to commemorate their sacrifices and service during
World War II;
Whereas the 55th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge in
1999 will be marked by many commemorative events by
Americans, Belgians, and Luxembourgers; and
Whereas the friendship between the United States and both
Belgium and Luxembourg is
[[Page H9316]]
strong today in part because of the Battle of the Bulge: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, That
Congress--
(1) commends the veterans of the United States Army, the
British Army, and military forces of other Allied nations who
fought during World War II in the German Ardennes offensive
known as the Battle of the Bulge;
(2) honors those who gave their lives during that battle;
(3) authorizes the President to issue a proclamation
calling upon the people of the United States to honor the
veterans of the Battle of the Bulge with appropriate
programs, ceremonies, and activities; and
(4) calls upon the President to reaffirm the bonds of
friendship between the United States and both Belgium and
Luxembourg.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from
Arizona (Mr. Stump) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Evans) will
each control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stump).
General Leave
Mr. STUMP. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous material on House Joint Resolution 65.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Arizona?
There was no objection.
Mr. STUMP. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
(Mr. STUMP asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. STUMP. Mr. Speaker, this country is justifiably proud of the role
its armed forces played during World War II. A few minutes ago, we
recognized the relatively few Americans who have been awarded the Medal
of Honor for extraordinary acts of gallantry. However, Americans
performed hundreds of thousands of courageous acts wherever they were
committed to battle during World War II.
The actions of Americans who fought in the Battle of the Bulge are
some of the best examples of everyday tenaciousness and bravery of
American fighting men. Throughout this battle, the largest pitched
battle ever fought by Americans, tens of thousands of Americans and
British troops exhibited great courage and determination. Their heroism
and willingness to endure great hardship resulted in the defeat of a
desperate, powerful and well-trained German army.
It is fitting, Mr. Speaker, that we recall today the service of over
600,000 American combat troops who eventually beat back the last bold
thrust of Hitler's war machine. This resolution commends all veterans
who served or gave their lives during the Battle of the Bulge, and I
urge my colleagues to support it.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. EVANS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.J. Res. 65 and urge the
Members of the House to approve this measure. I also salute the
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), the vice chairman of the
committee, for his leadership on this issue.
This measure, Mr. Speaker, commends those veterans who fought and
died during World War II in the offensive known as the Battle of the
Bulge. It also authorizes the President to issue a proclamation calling
upon the people of the United States to honor the veterans of this
battle with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.
1999 marks the 55th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, a costly
and important victory for the United States. It is fitting that we as a
Nation honor the sacrifices and service of America's veterans who
fought and sacrificed during this battle. H.J. Res. 65, as amended, is
an excellent bill; and I urge my colleagues to support this
legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. STUMP. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), the vice chairman of the
committee and the chief sponsor of this resolution.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good friend,
the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stump), the chairman of our full
committee, for yielding me this time and for being a cosponsor and also
extend my thanks to my good friend, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr.
Evans) as well for cosponsoring and for the bipartisanship that he
brings to the committee.
I also want to thank a number of other Members. There are 42
cosponsors of this resolution, including the gentleman from New York
(Mr. Gilman), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), and several other Members who are deeply
committed to remembering all veterans, but in particular those who
fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
Mr. Speaker, today the House will rightly honor the Americans and
allied forces who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. As the son of a
World War II combat infantryman who fought in the other major theatre
in World War II, he fought in New Guinea, the Philippines, and several
islands in the Pacific, I urge all Members to enthusiastically support
House Joint Resolution 65, which was introduced to recognize the 55th
anniversary of the largest battle in the history of U.S. modern
warfare, the Battle of the Bulge.
H.J. Res. 65, as amended, was marked up in the Committee on Veterans'
Affairs as well as the Committee on International Relations, and,
hopefully, will get the unanimous support of this body.
Let me also thank the veterans of the Battle of the Bulge
Association, an organization that was formed back in 1981. They now
have about 10,000 members. And the idea behind it is to perpetuate the
memory of the sacrifices involved during the battle, to preserve
historical data and sites relating to the battle, and to foster
international peace and good will, and to promote friendship among the
battle survivors as well as their descendants.
I also want to thank Stan Wojtuski, the National Vice President of
Military Affairs for the Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge for his
work on this resolution, and Mrs. Edith Nowels, a constituent of mine
living in Brielle, New Jersey. She has worked very closely in crafting
this resolution, and I am very grateful for that.
I think it is very important to point out that Edith Nowels' brother,
Bud Thorne, was killed in action during the battle, and was awarded the
Medal of Honor along with 17 others who received that highest of medals
for their valor and bravery. There were also 86 servicemen who were
awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for their valor during this
vital battle.
According to the citation presented to his family, Corporal Thorne
single-handedly destroyed a German tank. And in the words of the
citation, ``Displayed heroic initiative and intrepid fighting
qualities, inflicted costly casualties on the enemy and insured the
success of his patrol's mission by the sacrifice of his life.''
I would like to take just a very brief moment, Mr. Speaker, to
provide a brief overview of the battle so that my colleagues will gain
a better understanding as to why this chapter in World War II deserves
special recognition today. One of the most decisive battles in the war
in Europe, the Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, 1944, when the
German Army, in an effort to trap the allied forces in Belgium and
Luxembourg, launched an attack against what were perceived as a weak
line of American and allied troops. Their goal was to submit the allied
forces in Belgium and Luxembourg and race to the coast towards Antwerp.
Adolf Hitler and his generals knew the German Air Force could not
maintain regional air superiority, so they were banking on bad weather
and relatively green and a fatigued American troops, who were greatly
outnumbered. At the outset of the battle, the German troops, forming
three armies, numbered approximately 200,000 versus 83,000 Americans.
Their goal was to capture bridges over the Meuse River in the first 48
hours of the attack and then press on to Antwerp.
At the time of their initial attack, the Germans had more than 13
infantry and 7 panzer divisions, with nearly 1,000 tanks and almost
2,000 larger guns deployed along the front of about 60 miles. Five more
divisions were soon to follow, with at least 450 more tanks. Although
the Americans were caught by surprise, they tenaciously fought back in
those early days of the attack
[[Page H9317]]
in December, holding the line in the north while the Nazis pushed
through in the middle of the bulge towards the Meuse River.
One incident which particularly hardened the Americans and allied
forces as to the intent of the German Army was the Malmedy Massacre.
Eighty-six American POWs were murdered by the Nazis as they moved
towards the capture of the Meuse River. The same German unit which was
responsible for this infamous massacre eventually killed at least 300
American POWs and over 100 unarmed Belgium civilians. News of these
horrific events outraged and further galvanized the will of American
forces to prevail.
Recognizing what they were up against, General Eisenhower transferred
the command of all American troops north of the bulge to British
General Montgomery. Those south of the bulge were under the command of
General Bradley. Meanwhile, the Germans were being slowed down by the
dogged defense of the town at St. Vith by Brigadier General Hasbrouck.
St. Vith was strategically important due to the number of key roads
which met in the town and were essential to the German drive towards
Antwerp.
General Patton's Third Army, under the command of General Bradley,
was proceeding north to cut through the southern flank of the German
bulge in the lines and provide relief to Brigadier General Anthony
McAuliffe, whose refusal to surrender to his German counterparts at
Bastogne on December 22 is forever known in history with that famous
phrase, when he just said back to the Germans, ``Nuts.'' He would not
surrender. He just said nuts to them, and they wondered what that
meant.
{time} 1100
He was not going to give in. As more American reinforcements arrived,
eventually totaling 600,000 troops, they assisted in holding up the
northern and southern flanks of the Nazi advances. Hitler's generals
found that they were running out of fuel and that their hope of seizing
allied fuel supplies was becoming a pipe dream and their race to the
Meuse river slowed down to a crawl. While Adolph Hitler insisted on
pressing with air strikes against advancing allied reinforcements, his
generals knew that they had been beaten, and he eventually authorized
the retreat of his armies at the end of January.
Mr. Speaker, the cost in lives from this engagement is astronomical
and absolutely staggering. The American armies had more than 81,000
casualties; and of these, 19,000 men were killed in action. The British
had 1,400 casualties with 200 killed. Both sides lost as many as 800
tanks each, and the Germans lost 1,000 planes. All told, it was one of
the largest pitched battles in history with more than three times the
number of troops from both the North and the South that engaged in the
Battle of Gettysburg. Three times the size of Gettysburg. In the words
of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and I quote, in addressing
the House of Commons, he said, ``This is undoubtedly the greatest
battle of the war and will I believe be regarded as an ever-famous
American victory.''
Mr. Speaker, I hope all Members will support this resolution. The
veterans of the Battle of the Bulge every year travel to Europe and
reacquaint themselves with those with whom they fought side by side and
those that they liberated. They will be meeting again soon in both
Luxembourg and Belgium. I hope we will go on record supporting their
efforts, their valor and this resolution puts all of us on record in
that regard.
Mr. Speaker, I include a list of Medal of Honor recipients for the
Record, as follows:
Recipients of the Medal of Honor--Ardennes Campaign
Arthur O. Beyer
Melvin E. Biddle
Paul L. Bolden
Richard E. Cowan
Francis S. Currey
Peter J. Dalessondro
Archer T. Gammon
James R. Hendrix
Truman Kimbro
Jose M. Lopez
Vernon McGarity
Curtis F. Shoup
William A. Soderman
Horace M. Thorne
Day G. Turner
Henry G. Turner
Henry F. Warner
Paul J. Wiedorfer
Mr. Speaker, I include the following brochure regarding the Ardennes-
Alsace Campaign for the Record:
Ardennes-Alsace
Introduction
World War II was the largest and most violent armed
conflict in the history of mankind. However, the half century
that now separates us from that conflict has exacted its toll
on our collective knowledge. While World War II continues to
absorb the interest of military scholars and historians, as
well as its veterans, a generation of Americans has grown to
maturity largely unaware of the political, social, and
military implications of a war that, more than any other,
united us as a people with a common purpose.
Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach us,
not only about the profession of arms, but also about
military preparedness, global strategy, and combined
operations in the coalition war against fascism. During the
next several years, the U.S. Army will participate in the
nation's 50th anniversary commemoration of World War II. The
commemoration will include the publication of various
materials to help educate Americans about that war. The works
produced will provide great opportunities to learn about and
renew pride in an Army that fought so magnificently in what
has been called ``the mighty endeavor.''
World War II was waged on land, on sea, and in the air over
several diverse theaters of operation for approximately six
years. The following essay is one of a series of campaign
studies highlighting those struggles that, with their
accompanying suggestions for further reading, are designed to
introduce you to one of the Army's significant military feats
from that war.
This brochure was prepared in the U.S. Army Center of
Military History by Roger Cirillo. I hope this absorbing
account of that period will enhance your appreciation of
American achievements during World War II.
Gordon R. Sullivan,
General, United States Army Chief of Staff.
Ardennes-Alsace
16 December 1944-25 January 1945
In his political testament Mein Kampf (``My Struggle'')
Adolf Hitler wrote, ``Strength lies not in defense but in
attack.'' Throughout World War II, attempts to gain or regain
the initiative had characterized Hitler's influence on
military operations. Thus, when the military situation in
late 1944 looked darkest on the Western Front, an enemy
offensive to redress the balance of the battlefield--and
thereby cripple or delay the Allied advance--should have come
as no surprise.
Hitler's great gamble began during the nights of 13, 14,
and 15 December, when the initial assault force of German
armor, artillery, and infantry gradually staged forward to
attack positions along the Belgian-German-Luxembourg border.
This mustered force, with more than 200,000 men in thirteen
infantry and seven panzer divisions and with nearly 1,000
tanks and almost 2,000 guns, deployed along a front of 60
miles--its operational armor holdings equaling that on the
entire Eastern Front. Five more divisions moved forward in a
second wave, while still others, equipped with at least 450
more tanks, followed in reserve.
On the Allied side the threatened American sector appeared
quiet. The 15 December daily situation report for the VIII
Corps, which lay in the path of two of Hitler's armies,
noted: ``There is nothing to report.'' This illusion would
soon be shattered.
Strategic Setting
In August 1944, while his armies were being destroyed in
Normandy, Hitler secretly put in motion actions to build a
large reserve force, forbidding its use to bolster Germany's
beleaguered defenses. To provide the needed manpower, he
trimmed existing military forces and conscripted youths, the
unfit, and old men previously untouched for military service.
Panzer divisions were rebuilt with the cadre of survivors
from units in Normandy or on the Eastern Front, while newly
created Volksgrenadier (``people's infantry'') divisions were
staffed with veteran commanders and noncommissioned officers
and the new conscripts. By increasing the number of automatic
weapons and the number of supporting assault gun and rocket
battalions in each division, Hitler hoped to make up for
hurried training and the lack of fighting fitness. Despite
the massive Allied air bombardment of Germany and the
constant need to replace destroyed divisions on both the
Eastern and Western Fronts, where heavy fighting continued,
forces were gathered for use in what Hitler was now calling
Operation Wacht am Rhine (``Watch on the Rhine'').
In September Hitler named the post of Antwerp, Belgium, as
the objective. Selecting the Eifel region as a staging area,
Hitler intended to mass twenty-five divisions for an attack
through the thinly held Ardennes Forest area of southern
Belgium and Luxembourg. Once the Meuse River was reached and
crossed, these forces would swing northwest some 60 miles to
envelop the port of Antwerp. The maneuver was designed to
sever the already stretched Allied supply lines in the north
and to encircle and destroy a third of the Allies' ground
forces. If successful, Hitler believed that the offensive
could smash the Allied coalition, or at least greatly cripple
its ground combat capabilities, leaving him free to focus on
the Russians at his back door.
Timing was crucial. Allied air power ruled the skies during
the day, making any open concentrations of German military
strength on the ground extremely risky. Hitler, therefore,
scheduled the offensive to take place when inclement weather
would ground Allied planes, or at least limit their attacks
on his
[[Page H9318]]
advancing columns. Because the requisite forces and supplies
had to be assembled, he postponed the starting date from
November until mid-December. This additional preparation
time, however, did not ease the minds of the few German
generals and staff officers entrusted with planning Wacht am
Rhine.
Both the nominal Commander-in-Chief West Field Marshal Gerd
von Rundstedt and Army Group B commander Field Marshal Walter
Model, who had primary responsibility for Wacht am Rhine,
questioned the scope of the offensive. Both argued for a more
limited attack, to pinch out the American-held salient north
of the Ardennes around Aachen. Borrowing a bridge-players
term, they referred to Hitler's larger objectives as the
grand slam, or big solution, but proposed instead a small
solution more compatible with the limited force being raised.
Rundstedt and Model believed that Hitler's legions were
incapable of conducting a blitzkrieg, or lightning war,
campaign. The twin swords that had dominated the field during
the 1940 drive across France, tanks and air power, no longer
existed in the numbers necessary to strike a decisive blow,
nor was the hastily conscripted infantry, even when led by
experienced officers and sergeants, up to the early war
standards. Supply columns, too, would be prone to
interdiction or breakdown on the Eifel's limited roads. To
Hitler's generals, the grand slam was simply asking for too
much to be done with too little at hand.
The determining factor was the terrain itself. The Ardennes
consists of a series of parallel ridges and valleys generally
running from northeast to southwest, as did its few good
roads in 1944. About a third of the region is coniferous
forest, with swamps and marshes in the northlands and deep
defiles and gorges where numerous rivers and streams cut the
ridges. Dirt secondary roads existed, making north-south
movement possible, with the road centers--Bastogne and
Houffalize in the south, and Malmedy and St. Vith in the
north--crucial for military operations. After the winter's
first freeze, tanks could move cross-country in much of the
central sector. Fall 1944, however, brought the promise of
mud, because of rain, and the advancing days of December, the
promise of snow. Either could limit the quick advance needed
by Wacht am Rhine. Once the Meuse River, west of the
Ardennes, was gained, the wide river itself and cliffs on the
east bank presented a significant obstacle if the bridges
were not captured intact. Since the roads and terrain leading
to Antwerp thereafter were good, the German planners focused
on the initial breakthrough and the run west to the Meuse.
The terrain, which made so little sense as an attack avenue
northwestward, guaranteed the surprise needed.
Previous offensives through the Ardennes in World War I and
early in World War II had followed the major roads
southwestward, and had been made in good weather. The
defenses then had always been light screens, easily pushed
away. In 1940 the weakly opposed German armor needed three
days to traverse the easier terrain in the southern Ardennes
in good weather, on dry roads. For Wacht am Rhine, the
American line had to be broken and crushed immediately to
open paths for the attacking panzers; otherwise, the
offensive might bog down into a series of fights for roads
and the numerous villages on the way to the Meuse.
Precious fuel would be used to deploy tanks to fight
across fields. More importantly, time would be lost giving
the defenders the opportunity to position blocking forces
or to attack enemy flanks. Only surprise, sheer weight of
numbers, and minimal hard fighting could guarantee a
chance at success. If the Americans fought long and well,
the same terrain that guaranteed surprise would become a
trap.
The Ardennes held little fascination for the Allies, either
as a staging area for their own counterattacks or as a weak
spot in their lines. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the
Supreme Allied Commander, had concentrated forces north and
south of the area where the terrain was better suited for
operations into Germany. Field Marshal Sir Bernard L.
Montgomery's 21 Army Group to the north began preparations
for the planned crossing of the Rhine in early 1945. Lt. Gen.
Omar N. Bradley's 12th Army Group to the south and Lt. Gen.
Jacob L. Devers' 6th Army Group in the Alsace region would
also launch attacks and additional Rhine crossings from their
sectors.
Located in the center of Bradley's sector, the Ardennes had
been quiet since mid-September. Referred to as a ``ghost
front,'' one company commander described the sector as a
``nursery and old folk's home. . . .'' The 12th Army Group's
dispositions reflected Bradley's operational plans. Lt. Gen.
William H. Simpson's Ninth Army and most of Lt. Gen. Courtney
H. Hodges' First Army occupied a 40-mile area north of the
Ardennes, concentrating for an attack into the Ruhr
industrial region of Germany. Lt. Gen. George S. Patton,
Jr.'s Third Army was in a 100-mile sector south of the
forest, preparing a thrust into the vital Saar mining region.
In between, the First Army hold 88 miles of the front with
only four divisions, two ``green'' units occupying ground to
gain experience and two veteran units licking wounds and
absorbing replacements; an armored infantry battalion; and
two mechanized cavalry squadrons. Behind this thin screen was
one green armored division, whose two uncommitted combat
commands straddled two separate corps, as well as a cavalry
squadron and an assortment of artillery, engineer, and
service units.
Bradley judged his decision to keep the Ardennes front
thinly occupied to be ``a calculated risk.'' Nor was he alone
in not seeing danger. Probability, not capability, dominated
Allied thinking about the Wehrmacht's next moves on the
Western Front in mid-December 1944. Commanders and
intelligence officers (G-2) at every level--from the Supreme
Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), to the
divisions holding the line--judged that the Germans were too
weak to attempt regaining the initiative by a large-scale
offensive. Despite their awareness that enemy units were
refitting and concentrating across the line, they concluded
exactly what Hitler had intended them to conclude. Knowing
that the Germans were concerned with major threats to both
the Ruhr and the Saar, Eisenhower's G-2 believed that they
probably would use the uncommitted Sixth Panzer Army,
suspected to be in the northern Eifel, to bolster their
weakening northern defenses, or at least to cripple the
impending Allied push toward the Ruhr. Both Hodges' and
Patton's G-2s viewed the enemy as a reflection of their own
operational plans and thus assessed the German buildup as no
more than preparations to counterattack the First and Third
Armies' assaults.
With only enough troops in the Ardennes to hold a series of
strongpoints loosely connected by intermittent patrols, the
Americans extended no ground reconnaissance into the German
sector. Poor weather had masked areas from aerial
photography, and the Germans enforced radio silence and
strict countersecurity measures. Equally important, the
Allies' top secret communications interception and
decryption effort, code-named Ultra, offered clues but no
definitive statement of Hitler's intentions. Yet Wacht am
Rhine's best security was the continued Allied belief that
the Germans would not attack, a belief held up to zero
hour on 16 December--designated by the Germans as Null-tag
(``Zero-Day'').
Battle Plans
Field Marshal Model's attack plan, called Herbstnebel
(``Autumn Fog''), assigned Lt. Gen. Josef ``Sepp'' Dietrich's
Sixth Panzer Army the main effort. Dietrich would attack
Hodges' First Army along the boundary separating Maj. Gen.
Leonard T. Gerow's V Corps in the north from Maj. Gen. Troy
H. Middleton's VIII Corps to the south, brushing aside or
overrunning the V Corps' 99th Infantry Division and a cavalry
squadron of the VIII Corps' 14th Cavalry Group before driving
for the Meuse and Antwerp. South of the Sixth Panzer Army,
Lt. Gen. Hasso von Manteuffel's Fifth Panzer Army would hit
the VIII Corps' 106th Infantry Division and part of its 28th
Infantry Division, tearing open Middleton's thin front and
adding a secondary effort. Farther south, Lt. Gen. Erich
Brandenberger's Seventh Army would attack the remainder of
the 28th as well as the VIII Corps' 4th Infantry Division and
then cover the advance of the panzers as far as the Meuse
River. An airborne drop and infiltration by small teams
disguised in American uniforms were added to create havoc in
the American rear.
North of the Sixth Panzer Army, the six divisions of Lt.
Gen. Gustav von Zangen's Fifteenth Army had a dual role. In
addition to fighting and thereby holding American divisions
in the crucial Aachen sector, Zangen would attack southward
on order after Dietrich's panzers had broken the American
line, a variation of the pincers attack originally preferred
by Hitler's generals.
The Sixth Panzer Army was to attack in two waves. The first
would consist of the LXVII Corps, with the newly organized
272d and 326th Volksgrenadier Divisions, and the I SS Panzer
Corps, with the 1st and 12th SS Panzer, the 12th and 277th
Volksgrenadier, and the 3d Parachute Divisions. The 150th
Special Brigade and a parachute contingent would seize
terrain and bridges ahead of the main body after the two
corps broke through the American defenses. Dietrich planned
to commit his third corps, the II SS Panzer Corps, with the
2d and 9th SS Panzer Divisions, in the second wave. The Sixth
Panzer Army's 1,000-plus artillery pieces and 90 Tiger tanks
made it the strongest force deployed. Although Dietrich's
initial sector frontage was only 23 miles, his assault
concentrated on less than half that ground. Relying on at
least a 6:1 troop superiority at the breakthrough points, he
expected to overwhelm the Americans and reach the Meuse River
by nightfall of the third day.
According to Dietrich's plan, the LXVII Corps would secure
the Sixth Panzer Army's northern flank. By sidestepping
Monschau to seize the poorly roaded, forested hills and
upland moors of the Hohe Venn, the LXVII's two divisions
would block the main roads leading into the breakthrough area
from the north and east. Simultaneously, the I SS Panzer
Corps to the south would use its three infantry divisions to
punch holes in the American line and swing northwesterly to
join the left flank of the LXVII Corps. Together, the five
divisions would form a solid shoulder, behind which the
panzers of the I and II SS Panzer Corps would advance along
the Sixth Panzer Army's routes leading west and northwest.
Three terrain features were critical to Dietrich's panzer
thrust: the Elsenborn ridge, the Losheim Gap, and the Schnee
Eifel ridge. The Elsenborn ridge, a complex series of fingers
and spurs of the southern Hohe Venn, controlled access to two
of the westerly panzer routes; a third passed just to the
[[Page H9319]]
south. The 277th Volksgrenadier Division would attack into
the east defenses of the ridge, and to the south the 12th
SS Panzer Division would debouch from its forest trail
approaches into the hard roads running through and south
of the ridge.
Further to the south the Losheim Gap appears as open
rolling ground between the Elsenborn ridge to the northwest
and the long, heavily wooded Schnee Eifel ridge to the
southeast. Measuring about 5 miles wide at the German border
and narrowing throughout its roughly 14-mile length as it
runs from northeast to southwest, the gap is an unlikely
military avenue, subdivided by lesser ridges, twists, and
hills. Its roads, however, were well built and crucial for
the German advance. Over its two major routes Dietrich
intended to pass most of his armor.
The Sixth Panzer Army shared the Losheim Gap as an avenue
with its southern neighbor, the Fifth Panzer Army. Their
boundary reflected Hitler's obsession with a concentrated
attack to ensure a breakthrough, but the common corridor
added a potential for confusion. The Sixth Panzer Army was to
attack with the 12th Volksgrenadier and the 3d Parachute
Divisions through the northern portion of the gap, while the
Fifth Panzer Army's northern corps, the LXVI, would open its
southern portions. Additionally, the LXVI Corps had to
eliminate the American forces holding the Schnee Eifel on the
southern flank of the gap and seize the crucial road
interchange at St. Vith about 10 miles further west.
Manteuffel wanted part of the 18th Volksgrenadier Division to
push through the southern part of the gap and hook into the
rear of the Schnee Eifel, the remainder of the division to
complete the encirclement to the south of the ridge, and the
62d Volksgrenadier Division to anchor the LXVI's flank with a
drive toward St. Vith.
To the south of the Losheim Gap--Schnee Eifel area, along
the north-south flowing Our River, the Fifth Panzer Army's
major thrusts devolved to its LVIII and XLVII Panzer Corps,
aligned north to south with four of their five divisions in
the assault wave. Each panzer corps had one designated route,
but the Fifth Panzer Army commander did not plan to wait for
infantry to clear them. Manteuffel intended to commit his
armor early rather than in tandem with the infantry,
expecting to break through the extended American line quickly
and expedite his advance to the west. The LVIII's 116th
Panzer and 560th Volksgrenadier Divisions were to penetrate
the area astride the Our River, tying the 106th and 28th
Divisions together, and to capture the three tank-capable
bridges in the sector before driving west to the Meuse. To
the south the XLVII's 2d Panzer and 26th Volksgrenadier
Divisions were to seize crossings on the Our and head toward
the key Bastogne road interchange 19 miles to the west. The
Panzer Lehr Division would follow, adding depth to the corps
attack.
Covering the Fifth Panzer Army's southern flank were the
LXXXV and LXXX Corps of Brandenberger's Seventh Army. The
LXXXV's 5th Parachute and 352d Volksgrenadier Divisions were
to seize crossings on the Our River, and the LXXX's 276th and
212th Volksgrenadier Divisions, feinting toward the city of
Luxembourg, were to draw American strength away from
Manteuffel's main attack. The 276th would attack south of the
confluence of the Our and Sauer Rivers, enveloping the 3-mile
defensive sector held by an American armored infantry
battalion, and to the south the 212th, after crossing at
Echternach, would push back the large concentration of
American artillery in the sector and anchor Army Group B's
southern flank. The Germans had a fairly good idea of the
American forces opposing them. Facing Dietrich's Sixth Panzer
Army was the V Corps' 99th Infantry Division. Newly arrived,
the 99th occupied a series of forward positions along 19
miles of the wooded Belgian-German border, its 395th, 393d,
and 394th Infantry regiments on line from north to south,
with one battalion behind the division's deep right flank
available as a reserve. Gerow, the V Corps commander, was
focused at the time on a planned attack by his 2d Infantry
Division toward the Roer River dams to the north and had
given less attention to the defensive dispositions of the
99th. This small operation had already begun on 13 December,
with the 2d Division passing through the area held by the
99th Division's northernmost regiment. Two battalions of the
395th Infantry joined the action. Slowed by pillboxes and
heavy defenses in the woods, the 2d's attacks were still
ongoing when the enemy offensive begin on the sixteenth.
To the south of the 99th Division the First Army had split
responsibilities for the Elsenborn ridge--Losheim Gap area
between Gerow's V Corps and Middleton's VIII Corps, with the
corps boundary running just north of the village of Losheim.
Middleton's major worry was the Losheim Gap, which
potentially exposed the Schnee Eifel, the latter held by five
battalions of the newly arrived 106th Division. When Bradley
refused his request to withdraw to a shorter, unexposed line,
the VIII Corps commander positioned eight battalions of his
corps artillery to support the forces holding the Losheim
Gap--Schnee Eifel region.
South of the corps boundary the 18th Cavalry Squadron,
belonging to the recently attached 14th Cavalry Group,
outposted the 9,000-yard Losheim Gap. Reinforced by a company
of 3-inch towed tank destroyers, the 18th occupied eight
positions that gave good coverage in fair weather but
could be easily bypassed in the fog or dark. To remedy
this, Middleton had assigned an additional cavalry
squadron to reinforce the gap's thin line under the 14th
group. The cavalry force itself was attached to the 106th
Division, but with the 106th slowly settling into its
positions, a coordinated defense between the two had yet
to be decided. As a result, the reinforcing squadron was
quartered 20 miles to the rear, waiting to be ordered
forward.
South of the Schnee Eifel Middleton's forces followed the
Our River with the 106th Division's 424th infantry and, to
the south, the 28th Division. After suffering more than 6,000
casualties in the Huertgen Forest battles in November, the
28th was resting and training replacements in a 30-mile area
along the Our. Its three regiments--the 112th, 110th, and
109th Infantry--were on line from north to south. Two
battalions of the 100th Infantry held 10 miles of the front
and the division's center while their sister battalion was
kept as part of the division reserve. The 110th had six
company-sized strongpoints manned by infantry and engineers
along the ridge between the Our and Clerf Rivers to the west,
which the troops called ``Skyline Drive.'' Through the center
of this sector ran the crucial road to Bastogne.
South of the 28th Division the sector was held by part of
Combat Command A of the newly arrived 9th Armored Division
and by the 4th Infantry Division, another veteran unit
resting from previous battles. These forces, with the 4th's
northern regiment, the 12th Infantry, positioned as the
southernmost unit in the path of the German offensive, held
the line of the Sauer River covering the approaches to the
city of Luxembourg. Behind this thinly stretched defensive
line of new units and battered veterans, Middleton had few
reserves and even fewer options available for dealing with
enemy threats.
opening attacks, 16-18 december
At 0530 on 16 December the Sixth Panzer Army's artillery
commenced preparation fires. These fires, which ended at
0700, were duplicated in every sector of the three attacking
German armies. At first the American defenders believed the
fires were only a demonstration. Simultaneously, German
infantry moved unseen through the dark and morning fog,
guided by searchlight beams overhead. Yet, despite local
surprise, Dietrich's attack did not achieve the quick
breakthrough planned. The LXVII Corps' attack north and south
of Monschau failed immediately. One division arrived too late
to attack; the other had its assault broken by determined
resistance. The 277th Volksgrenadier Division's infiltrating
attacks followed the preparation fires closely. The Germans
overran some of the 99th Division's forest outposts, but they
were repulsed attempting to cross open fields near their
objectives, the twin villages of Krinkelt-Rocherath. By
nightfall the Americans still contested the woods to the
north and east of the villages. The 99th's southern flank,
however, was in great peril. The 12th Volksgrenadier Division
had successfully cleared the 1st SS Panzer Division's main
assault avenue, taking the village of Losheim in the early
morning and moving on to separate the VIII Corp's cavalry
from its connection with the 99th.
South of the American corps boundary the Germans were more
successful. Poor communications had further strained the
loosely coordinated defense of the 106th Division and the
14th Cavalry Group in the Losheim Gap. The German predawn
preparation fires had targeted road junctions, destroying
most of the pole-mounted communications wire interchanges.
With their major wire command nets silenced, the American
defenders had to rely on radio relay via artillery nets,
which the mountainous terrain made unreliable.
The attack in the Losheim Gap, in fact, was the offensive's
greatest overmatch. The 3d Parachute Division ran up against
only one cavalry troop and a tank destroyer company holding
over half the sector, and its southern neighbors, the two
reinforced regiments of the 18th Volksgrenadier Division, hit
four platoons of cavalry. Although some American positions
had been bypassed in the dark, the attacking Germans had
generally cleared the area by late morning. Poor
communications and general confusion limited defensive fire
support to one armored field artillery battalion. More
importantly, the cavalry's porous front opened the American
rear to German infantry; by dawn some of the defenders'
artillery and support units behind the Schnee Eifel
encountered the enemy. Subsequently, many guns were lost,
while others hastily clogged the roads to find safer ground.
The uncoordinated defense of the 106th Division and 14th
Cavalry Group now led to tragedy. The cavalry commander
quickly realized that his outposts could neither hold nor
survive. After launching one abortive counterattack northward
against 3d Parachute Division elements with his reserve
squadron, he secured permission to withdraw before his road-
bound force was trapped against the wooded heights to his
rear. This opened the V and VII Corps boundary and separated
the cavalry, Middleton's key information source on his
northern flank, from the Schnee Eifel battle. Throughout the
day of 16 December the 3d pushed north, ultimately
overrunning the cavalry's remaining outposts and capturing a
small force of the 99th Division. But all of these scattered
forces fought valiantly so that by dark the Sixth Panzer
Army's route was still clogged
[[Page H9320]]
by units mopping up bypassed Americans and their own supply
and support rains. To the south the 18th Volksgrenadier
Division's attack in the Losheim Gap had slid by the cavalry,
but failed to clear the open ridge behind the Schnee Eifel.
South of the Schnee Eifel the rest of the 18th was unable to
push through the defenders to catch the 106th's units on top
of the Schnee Eifel in a pincer. Further south the 106th's
42th Infantry had blocked the path of the 62d Volksgrenadier
Division across the Our River. By dark the 106th had thus
lost little ground. It had committed its reserve to block the
enemy threat to its south and was expecting Combat Command B,
9th Armored Division, shifting from V Corps reserve, to
conduct a relieving attach via St. Vith toward the Schnee
Eifel. But while the defenders moved to restore their
positions, the 18th, by searchlight and flare, continued to
press south from the gap.
South of the 106th Division, the 28th Division fended off
the Fifth Panzer Army's thrusts. In the north the 112th
Infantry held back the LVIII Panzer Corps' two divisions,
while the 110th Infantry blocked the paths of the XLVII
Panzer Corp's three in the center. The 110th's strong points,
which received some tank reinforcement from the division
reserve, held firm throughout the sixteenth, blocking the
route westward. By dark, although German infantry had crossed
the Our and started infiltrating, American roadblocks still
prevented any armor movement toward Bastogne.
South of the fifth Panzer Army, Brandenberger's Seventh
Army also failed to break through the American line. The 28th
Division's 109th Infantry managed to hold on to its 9-mile
front. Although the LXXXV Corps' two divisions had seized
crossings on the Our and achieved some penetrations between
the regiment's company strong-points, they failed to advance
further. Similarly, the Germans' southernmost attack was held
by the 4th Division's 12th Infantry. The LXXX Corps'
divisions met with heavy resistance, and by nightfall the
Americans still held their positions all along the Seventh
Army front, despite some infiltration between company
strongpoints.
Hitler responded to the first day's reports with unbridled
optimism. Rundstedt, however, was less sanguine. The needed
breakthrough had not been achieved, no major armored units
had been committed, and the key panzer routes were still
blocked. In fact, the first day of battle set the tone for
the entire American defense. In every engagement the
Americans had been outnumbered, in some sectors facing down
tanks and assault guns with only infantry weapons. Darkness,
fog, and intermittent drizzle snow had favored the
infiltrating attackers; but, despite inroads made around the
defenses, the Germans had been forced to attack American
positions frontally to gain access to the vital roads. Time
had been lost and more would be spent to achieve a complete
breakthrough. In that sense, the grand slam was already in
danger.
American senior commanders were puzzled by the situation.
The Germans apparently had attacked along a 60-mile front
with strong forces, including many new units not identified
in the enemy order or battle. Yet no substantial ground had
been lost. With many communications links destroyed by the
bombardment and the relative isolation of most defensive
positions, the generals were presented with a panorama of
numerous small-unit battles without a clear larger
picture.
Nevertheless, command action was forthcoming. By nightfall
of the sixteenth, although response at both the First Army
and 12th Army Group headquarters was guarded, Eisenhower had
personally ordered the 7th Armored Division from the Ninth
Army and the 10th Armored Division from the third Army to
reinforce Middleton's hard-pressed VIII Corps. In addition,
shortly after midnight, Hodges' First Army began moving
forces south from the Aachen sector, while the Third Army
headquarters, on Patton's initiative, began detailed planning
to deal with the German offensive.
Within the battle area the two corps commanders struggled
to respond effectively to the offensive, having only
incomplete and fragmentary reports from the field. Gerow, the
V Corps commander in the north, requested that the 2d
Division's Roer River dams attack be canceled; however,
Hodges, who viewed the German action against the 99th
Division as a spoiling operation, initially refused.
Middleton, the VIII Corps commander in the south, changed his
plans for the 9th Armored division's Combat Command B,
ordering it to reinforce the southern flank of the 106th
Division. The newly promised 7th Armored Division would
assume the CCB's original mission of relieving troops on the
Schnee Eifel via St. Vith. Thereafter, mixed signals between
the VIII Corps and the 106th Division led to disaster.
Whether by poor communications or misunderstanding, Middleton
believed that the 106th was pulling its men off the Schnee
Eifel and withdrawing to a less exposed position; the 106th's
commander believed that Middleton wanted him to hold until
relieved and thus left the two defending regiments in place.
By the early morning hours of 17 December Middleton, whose
troops faced multiple enemy threats, had selected the
dispositions that would foreshadow the entire American
response. Already ordered by Hodges to defend in place, the
VIII Corps commander determined that his defense would focus
on denying the Germans use of the Ardennes roadnet. Using the
forces at hand, he intended to block access to four key road
junctions: St. Vith, Houffalize, Bastogne, and the city of
Luxembourg. If he could stop or slow the German advance west,
he knew that the 12th Army Group would follow with massive
flanking attacks from the north and south.
That same morning Hodges finally agreed to cancel the V
Corps' Roer dams attack. Gerow, in turn, moved the 2d
Division south to strengthen the 99th Division's southern
flank, with reinforcements from the 1st Infantry Division
soon to follow. The First Army commander now realized that
Gerow's V Corps units held the critical northern shoulder of
the enemy penetration and began to reinforce them, trusting
that Middleton's armor reinforcements would restore the
center of the VIII Corps line.
While these shifts took place, the battle raged. During the
night of 16-17 December the Sixth Panzer Army continued to
move armor forward in the hopes of gaining the breakthrough
that the infantry had failed to achieve. The Germans again
mounted attacks near Monschau and again were repulsed.
Meanwhile, south of Monschau, the 12th SS Panzer Division,
committed from muddy logging trails, overwhelmed 99th
Division soldiers still holding out against the 277th and
12th Volksgrenadier Divisions.
Outnumbered and facing superior weapons, many U.S. soldiers
fought to the bitter end, the survivors surrendering only
when their munitions had run out and escape was impossible.
Individual heroism was common. During the Krinkelt battle,
for example, T. Sgt. Vernon McGarity of the 393d Infantry,
99th Division, after being treated for wounds, returned to
lead his squad, rescuing wounded under fire and single-
handedly destroying an advancing enemy machine-gun section.
After two days of fighting, his men were captured after
firing their last bullets. McGarity received the Medal of
Honor for his actions. His was the first of thirty-two such
awards during the Ardennes-Alsace Campaign.
Ordered to withdraw under the 2d Division's control, the
99th Division, whose ranks had been thinned by nearly 3,000
casualties, pulled back to the northern portion of a
horseshoe-shaped line that blocked two of the I SS Panzer
Corps' routes. Although the line was anchored on the
Elsenborn ridge, fighting raged westward as the Germans
pushed to outflank the extended American defense.
During the night of the seventeenth the Germans unveiled
additional surprises. They attempted to parachute a 1,000-man
force onto the Hohe Venn's high point at Baraque Michel.
Although less than half actually landed in the area, the
scattered drop occupied the attention of critical U.S.
armored and infantry reserves in the north for several days.
A companion special operation, led by the legendary Lt. Col.
Otto Skorzeny, used small teams of English-speaking soldiers
disguised in American uniforms. Neither the drop nor the
operation gained any appreciable military advantage for the
German panzers. The Americans, with their resistance
increasing along the Elsenborn ridge and elsewhere, were
undaunted by such threats to their rear.
Further south, however, along the V and VIII Corps
boundary, the Sixth Panzer Army achieved its breakthrough. In
the Losheim Gap the advanced detachment of the 1st SS Panzer
Division, Kampfgruppe Peiper, moved forward through the
attacking German infantry during the early hours of the
seventeenth. Commanded by Col. Joachim Peiper, the unit would
spearhead the main armored assault heading for the Meuse
River crossings south of Liege at Huy. With over 100 tanks
and approximately 5,000 men, Kampfgruppe Peiper had
instructions to ignore its own flanks, to overrun or bypass
opposition, and to move day and night. Traversing the woods
south of the main panzer route, it entered the town of
Buellingen, about 3 miles behind the American line. After
fueling their tanks on captured stocks, Peiper's men murdered
at least 50 American POWs. Then shortly after noon, they ran
head on into a 7th Armored Division field artillery
observation battery southeast of Malmedy, murdering more than
80 men. Peiper's men eventually killed at least 300 American
prisoners and over 100 unarmed Belgian civilians in a dozen
separate locations. Word of the Malmedy Massacre spread, and
within hours units across the front realized that the Germans
were prosecuting the offensive with a special grimness.
American resistance stiffened.
Following a twisted course along the Ambleve River valley,
Kampfgruppe Peiper had completed barely half of its drive to
the Meuse before encountering a unit from 9th Armored
Division and then being stopped by an engineer squad at the
Stavelot bridge. Unknown to Peiper, his column had passed
within 15 miles of the First Army headquarters and was close
to its huge reserve fuel dumps. But the Peiper advance was
only part of the large jolt to the American command that day.
To the south the 1st SS Panzer Division had also broken
loose, moving just north of St. Vith.
As Kampfgruppe Peiper lunged deep into the First Army's
rear, further south the VIII Corps front was rapidly being
fragmented. The 18th Volksgrenadier Division completed its
southern swing, encircling the two regiments of the 106th
Division on the Schnee Eifel. While a single troop of the
14th Cavalry Group continued to resist the German spearheads,
the 106th's engineers dug in to block the crucial Schoenberg
road 2 miles east of St. Vith, a last ditch defense, hoping
to hold out until the 7th Armored Division arrived.
[[Page H9321]]
St. Vith's road junctions merited the priority Middleton
had assigned them. Although the I SS Panzer Corps had planned
to pass north of the town and the LVIII Panzer Corps to its
south, the crossroad town became more important after the
German failure to make a breakthrough in the north on 16-17
December. There, the successful defense of the Elsenborn
ridge had blocked three of the Sixth Panzer Army's routes,
pushing Dietrich's reserve and supply routes southward and
jamming Manteuffel's Losheim route. South of the Losheim Gap
the American occupation of St. Vith and the Schnee Eifel
represented a double obstacle, which neither Dietrich nor
Manteuffel could afford. With thousands of American soldiers
still holding desperately along the Schnee Eifel and its
western slope village, the Germans found vital roads still
threatened. Further west, the possibility of American
counterattacks from the St. Vith roadnet threatened
Dietrich's narrow panzer flow westward as well as
Manteuffel's own western advance. And from St. Vith, the
Americans could not only choke the projected German supply
arteries but also reinforce the now isolated Schnee Eifel
regiments.
For the 106th Division's men holding the Schnee Eifel, time
was running out. The 7th Armored Division's transfer south
from the Ninth Army had been slowed both by coordination
problems and roads clogged by withdrawing elements. Led by
Combat Command B, the 7th's first elements arrived at St.
Vith in midafternoon of 17 December, with the division taking
command of the local defense immediately. That night both
sides jockeyed in the dark. While the 18th Volksgrenadier
Division tried to make up lost time to mount an attack on the
town from the northeast and east, the 7th, whose units had
closed around St. Vith in fading daylight, established a
northerly facing defensive arc in preparation for its attack
toward the Schnee Eifel the next day.
South of St. Vith the 106th Division's southernmost
regiment, the 424th Infantry, and Combat Command B, 9th
Armored Division, had joined up behind the Our River. From
the high-ground positions there they were able to continue
blocking the 62d Volksgrenadier Division, thereby securing
the southern approaches to St. Vith. But unknown to them, the
28th Division's 112th Infantry was also folding rearward and
eventually joined the 424th and the 7th Armored Division,
completing a defensive perimeter around the town. During the
night of 17 December, with these forces combining, Middleton
and the commanders in St. Vith believed that the VIII Corps'
northern flank would be restored and the 106th trapped
regiments relieve.
On 18 December Middleton's hopes of launching a
counterattack toward the Schnee Eifel faded as elements of
three German divisions converged around St. Vith. Although
situation maps continued to mark the last-known positions of
the 106gh Division's 422d and 423d Infantry on the Schnee
Eifel, the massive weight of German numbers ended any rescue
attempts. Communicating through a tenuous artillery radio
net, both regiments believed that help was on the way and
that their orders were to break out to the high ground
behind the Our River, a distance of between 3 and 4 miles
over difficult enemy-held terrain.
The following day, 19 December, brought tragedy for the
106th Division. The two stranded regiments, now behind the
Schnee Eifel, were pounded by artillery throughout the day as
the Germans drew their circle tighter. With casualties
mounting and ammunition dwindling, the 423d's commander chose
to surrender his regiment to prevent its annihilation. The
422d had some of its troop overrun; others, who were both
segmented and surrounded, surrendered. By 1600 most of the
two regiments and their attached support has thus been
captured. Nevertheless, one battalion-sized group evaded
captivity until the twenty-first, and about 150 soldiers from
the 422d ultimately escaped to safety. The confused nature of
the final battles made specific casualty accounting
impossible, but over 7,000 men were captured.
The tragedy of the Schnee Eifel was soon eclipsed by the
triumph of St. Vith. Every senior German commander saw the
``road octopus''--the omnidirectional junction of six roads
in the town's eastern end--as vital for a massive
breakthrough, freeing up the Sixth Panzer Army's advance. For
the Americans, holding St. Vith would keep the V and VIII
Corps within a reasonable distance of each other; without the
town the enemy's spearheads would widen into a huge salient,
folding back toward Bastogne further south. With intermittent
communications, the St. Vith defenders thus operated with
only one order from Middleton: ``Hold at all costs.''
Despite a ``goose-egg'' position extending 12 miles from
east to west on tactical maps, the St. Vith defense literally
had no depth. Designed to fight on the move in more favorable
terrain, the four combat commands of the 7th and 9th Armored
Divisions found themselves moored to muddy, steep sloped
hills, heavily wooded and laced with mud trails. The first
action defined the defense's pattern. Unengaged commands sent
tanks and halftracks racing laterally across the perimeter to
deal with penetrations and infiltrators, with the engaged
tanks and infantry holding their overextended lines as best
they could. After two days of sporadic attacks, the German
commanders attempted to concentrate forces to crush the
defense. But with clogged roads German preparations for a
coordinated assault encountered continuous delays.
Although the VIII Corps' northern flank had been at least
temporarily anchored at St. Vith, its center was in great
danger. There, the 28th Division's 110th Infantry was being
torn to bits. After failing repeatedly to seize crossing on
the Our, Manteuffel had passed some of the 116th Panzer
Division's armor through the 2d Panzer Division to move up
the Skyline Drive ridgeline and enter its panzer route. Thus
by 17 December the 110th had elements of five divisions bull-
dozing through its strongpoints along the ridge, forcing back
the 28th's northern and southern regiments that were
attempting to maintain a cohesive defense. The 2d entered
Clervaux, in the 110th's center, by a side road and rolled on
westward toward Bastogne; holdouts in Clervaux continued to
fight from within an ancient castle in the town's eastern
end. To the south some survivors of the ridge battle had
fallen back to join engineers defending Wiltz, about 4 miles
to the rear, and the southern approach to Bastogne. Even
though the 110th has suffered over 80 percent casualties, its
stand had delayed the XLVII Panzer Corps for a crucial forty-
eight hours.
The southern shoulder provided VIII Corps' only clear
success. The 4th Division has absorbed the folded back
defenses of the 109th Infantry and the 9th Armored Division's
Combat Command A, thus effectively jamming the Seventh Army's
attack. With the arrival of the 10th Armored Division, a
provisional corps was temporarily formed to block any advance
toward the city of Luxembourg.
The events of 17 December finally demonstrated the gravity
of the German offensive to the Allied command. Eisenhower
committed the theater reserve, the XVIII Airborne Corps, and
ordered three American divisions training in England to move
immediately to north-eastern France. Hodges' First Army moved
the 30th Infantry and 3d Armored Divisions south to extend
the northern shoulder of the penetration to the west.
Although Bradley remained the least concerned, he and Patton
explored moving a three-division corps from the Third Army to
attack the German southern flank.
Allied intelligence now began to discern German strength
objectives with some clarity. The enemy's success apparently
was tied to gaining the Meuse quickly and then turning north;
however, most of the attacking divisions were trapped in
clogged columns, attempting to push through the narrow
Losheim Gap and enter the two panzer routes then open. The
area, still controlled by the VIII Corps, seemed to provide
the key to stabilizing the defensive effort. Somehow the VIII
Corps, whose center had now been destroyed, would have to
slow down the German drive west, giving the Americans time to
strengthen the shoulders north and south of the salient and
to prepare one or more major counterattacks.
Middleton committed his only reserves, Combat Command R of
the 9th Armored Division and seven battalions of corps and
army engineers, positioning the units at critical road
junctions. Teams formed from tank, armored infantry, and
engineer units soon met the 2d Panzer Division's lead
elements. Outgunned in a frontal fight and disadvantaged
by the wide-tracked German tanks' cross-country capability
in the drizzle-soaked fields, Middleton's armored forces
were soon overwhelmed, even though the fighting continued
well into the night. By dawn on the eighteenth no
recognizable line existed as the XLVII Panzer Corps' three
divisions bore down on Bastogne.
Late on 17 December Hodges had requested the commitment of
SHAEF reserves, the 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions.
Promised to Middleton by the morning of the nineteenth, the
VIII Corps commander intended to use them at Houffalize, 17
miles south of St. Vith, and at Bastogne, 10 miles further
south, as a solid block against the German advance to the
Meuse. But until the airborne divisions arrived, the VIII
Corps had to hold its sector with the remnants of its own
forces, mainly engineers, and with an armored combat command
from the 10th Armored Division, which was beginning to enter
the battle for the corps' center.
Middleton's engineer ``barrier line'' in front of Bastogne
slowed the German advance and bought critical time, but the
arrival of Combat Command B, 10th Armored Division, at
Bastogne was crucial. As it moved forward, Middleton
dispatched three armored teams to the north and east during
the night of the eighteenth to cover the road junctions
leading to Bastogne. A key fight took place at Longvilly,
just a few miles east of Bastogne, where the remnants of the
9th Armored Division's Combat Command R and the 10th's Team
Cherry tried to block the Germans. Three enemy divisions
converged there, trapping the CCR force west of the town and
annihilating it and then surrounding Team Cherry. But even as
this occurred, the lead elements of the 101st Airborne
Division passed through Bastogne to defensive positions along
the villages and low hills just to the east of the town.
Joining with the CCB's three armor teams and the two
battalions of engineers from the barrier line, the 101st
formed a crescent-shaped defense, blocking the five roads
entering Bastogne from the north, east, and south.
The enemy responded quickly. The German commanders wanted
to avoid being enmeshed in any costly sieges. So when
Manteuffel saw a hole opening between the American defenses
at St. Vith and Bastogne, he ordered his panzer divisions to
bypass both towns and move immediately toward
[[Page H9322]]
their planned Meuse crossing sites some 30 miles to the
northwest, leaving the infantry to reduce Bastogne's
defenses. Although Middleton had planned to use the 82d
Airborne Division to fill the gap between Bastogne and St.
Vith, Hodges had been forced to divert it northwest of St.
Vith to block the Sixth Panzer Army's advance. Thus only the
few engineers and support troops defending the road junctions
and crossings along the narrow Ourthe River west of Bastogne
lay in the path of Manteuffel's panzers.
command decisions, 19-20 december
Wacht am Rhine's timetable had placed Dietrich's and
Manteuffel's panzers at the Meuse four days after the attack
began. The stubborn American defense made this impossible.
The Sixth Panzer Army, the designated main effort, had been
checked; its attacks to open the Hohe Venn's roads by direct
assault and airborne envelopment had failed, and Kampfgruppe
Peiper's narrow armored spearhead had been isolated. To the
south the Fifth Panzer Army's northern corps had been blocked
at St. Vith; its center corps had advanced nearly 25 miles
into the American center but was still meeting resistance;
and its southern corps had been unable to break the Bastogne
roadblock. The southern flank was in no better straits.
Neither the Seventh Army's feint toward the city of
Luxembourg nor its efforts to cover Manteuffel's flank had
gained much ground. Hitler's key requirement that an
overwhelming force achieve a quick breakthrough had not
occurred. Six divisions had held twenty, and now the American
forces, either on or en route to the battlefield, had
doubled. Nevertheless, the Sixth Panzer Army's II SS Panzer
Corps had yet to be committed, and additional divisions and
armor existed in the German High Command reserve. The
unspoken belief among Hitler's generals now was that with
luck and continued poor weather, the more limited objectives
of their small solution might still be possible.
Eisenhower's actions had also undermined Hitler's
assumption that the Allied response would come too late. When
``Ike'' committed two armored divisions to Middleton on the
first day of fighting and the theater reserve on the next, a
lightning German advance to the Meuse became nearly
impossible. Meeting with his commanders at Verdun on 19
December, Eisenhower, who had received the latest Ultra
intelligence on enemy objectives, outlined his overall
operational response. Hodges' First Army would break the
German advance; along the southern flank of the German
penetration Patton's Third Army would attack north, assuming
control of Middleton's VIII Corps from the First Army; and
Middleton's Bastogne positions would now be the anvil for
Third Army's hammer.
Patton, content that his staff had finalized operational
planning, promised a full corps attack in seventy-two hours,
to begin after a nearly 100-mile move. Devers' 6th Army Group
would take up the slack, relieving two of Patton's corps of
their frontage. In the north Montgomery had already begun
moving the British 30 Corps to backstop the First Army and
assume defensive positions behind the Meuse astride the
crossings from Liege to Namur.
Eisenhower began his Verdun conference saying, ``The
present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for
us and not disaster.'' That opportunity, as his generals
knew, hung not on their own operational plans but on the
soldiers on the battlefield, defending the vital St. Vith and
Bastogne road junctions, holding on to the Elsenborn ridge,
and blocking the approaches to the city of Luxembourg, as
well as on the soldiers in numerous ``blocks'' and positions
unlocated on any command post map. These men knew nothing
of Allied operational plans or even the extent of the
German offensive, but in the next days, on their
shoulders, victory or disaster rested.
One unavoidable decision on overall battlefield
coordination remained. Not one to move a command post to the
rear, General Bradley had kept his 12th Army Group
headquarters in the city of Luxembourg, just south of the
German attack. Maj. Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg's Ninth Air Force
headquarters, which supported Bradley's armies, stayed there
also, unwilling to sever its direct ties with the ground
forces. But three German armies now separated Bradley's
headquarters from both Hodges' First Army and Simpson's Ninth
Army in the north, making it difficult for Bradley to
supervise a defense in the north while coordinating an attack
from the south. Nor would communications for the thousands of
messages and orders needed to control and logistically
support Bradley's two northern armies and Vandenberg's two
northern air commands be guaranteed.
Eisenhower, therefore, divided the battlefield. At noon on
20 December ground command north of the line from Givet on
the Meuse to the high ground roughly 5 miles south of St.
Vith devolved to Montgomery's 21 Army Group, which
temporarily assumed operational control of both the U.S.
Ninth and First Armies. Shifting the ground command raised a
furor, given the strained relations Montgomery had with
senior American commanders. Montgomery had been successful in
attacking and occupying ``ground of his own choosing'' and
then drawing in enemy armored reserves where they could be
destroyed by superior artillery and air power. He now
intended to repeat these tactics, planning to hold his own
counterattacks until the enemy's reserves had been spent or a
decisive advantage gained. The American generals, however,
favored an immediate counteroffensive to first halt and then
turn back the German drive. Equally disconcerting to them was
Montgomery's persistence in debating command and strategy, a
frequent occurrence in all coalitions, but one that by virtue
of his personal approach added to the strains within the
Allied command.
The British 2d Tactical Air Force similarly took control of
the IX and XXIX Tactical Air Commands from Vandenberg's Ninth
Air Force. Because the British air commander, Air Chief
Marshal Sir Arthur ``Maori'' Coningham, had long established
close personal relations with the concerned American air
commanders, the shift of air commands passed uneventfully.
first army battles, 20-27 december
Eisenhower and Montgomery agreed that the First Army would
establish a cohesive defensive line, yielding terrain if
necessary. Montgomery also intended to create a corps-sized
reserve for a counterattack, which he sought to keep from
being committed during the defensive battle. The First Army's
hasty defense had been one of hole-plugging, last stands, and
counterattacks to buy time. Although successful, these
tactics had created organizational havoc within Hodges'
forces as divisional units had been committed piecemeal and
badly jumbled. Complicating the situation even further was
the fact that the First Army still held the north-south
front, north of Monschau to Elsenborn, while fighting
Dietrich's panzers along a nearly east-west axis in the
Ardennes.
Blessed with excellent defensive ground and a limited
lateral roadnet in front of V Corps positions, Gerow had been
able to roll with the German punch and Hodges to feed in
reserves to extend the First Army line westward. Much of the
Sixth Panzer Army's strength was thus tied up in road jams of
long columns of vehicles. But American success was still far
from certain. The V Corps was holding four panzer divisions
along the northern shoulder, an elbow-shaped 25-mile line,
with only parts of four U.S. divisions.
To the west of the V Corps the 30th Infantry Division, now
under Maj. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway's XVIII Airborne Corps,
marched south to block Kampfgruppe Peiper at Malmedy and,
along the Ambleve River, at Stavelot, Stoumont, and La
Gleize. To the south of Peiper the XVIII's other units, the
82d Airborne and 3d Armored Divisions, moved forward to the
area between the Salm and Ourthe Rivers, northwest of St.
Vith, which was still in danger of being isolated. By 20
December the Peiper force was almost out of fuel and
surrounded. During the night of the twenty-third Peiper and
his men destroyed their equipment, abandoned their vehicles,
and walked out to escape capture. Dietrich's spearhead was
broken.
North of St. Vith the I SS Panzer Corps pushed west. Part
of the LVIII Panzer Corps had already bypassed the defenders'
southern flank. Standing in the way of Dietrich's panzers was
a 6-mile line along the Salm River, manned by the 82d
Airborne Division. Throughout the twenty-first German armor
attacked St. Vith's northwestern perimeter and infantry hit
the entire eastern circumference of the line. Although the
afternoon assault was beaten back, the fighting was renewed
after dark. To prevent being trapped from the rear, the 7th
Armored Division began pulling out of its advanced positions
around 2130. The other American units around the town
conformed, folding into a tighter perimeter west of the town.
Ridgway wanted St. Vith's defenders to stay east of the
Salm, but Montgomery ruled otherwise. The 7th Armored
Division, its ammunition and fuel in short supply and perhaps
two-thirds of its tanks destroyed, and the battered elements
of the 9th Armored, 106th, and 28th Divisions could not hold
the extended perimeter in the rolling and wooded terrain.
Meanwhile, Dietrich's second wave of tanks entered the fray.
The II SS Panzer Corps immediately threatened the Salm River
line north and west of St. Vith, as did the LVIII Panzer
Corps circling to the south, adding the 2d SS Panzer Division
to its drive. Ordering the St. Vith defenders to withdraw
through the 82d Airborne Division line to prevent another
Schnee Eifel disaster, Montgomery signaled them that ``they
come back with all honor.''
Mud threatened to trap much of the force, but nature
intervened with a ``Russian High,'' a cold snap and snowstorm
that turned the trails from slurry to hard ground. While the
Germans seemed temporarily powerless to act, the St. Vith
defenders on 23 December, in daylight, withdrew across the
Salm to reform behind the XVIII Airborne Corps front.
Ridgway estimated that the successful withdrawal added at
least 100 tanks and two infantry regiments to his corps.
The St. Vith defense purchased five critical days, but the
situation remained grave. Model's Army Group B now had twelve
full divisions attacking along roughly 25 miles of the
northern shoulder's east-west front. Hodges' army was holding
with thirteen divisions, four of which had suffered heavy
casualties and three of which were forming in reserve.
Montgomery had designated Maj. Gen. J. Lawton ``Lightning
Joe'' Collins' VII Corps as the First Army's counterattack
force, positioning its incoming divisions northwest of
Hodges' open flank, hoping to keep them out of the defensive
battle. He intended both to blunt the enemy's assault and
wear down its divisions by withdrawing the XVIII Airborne
[[Page H9323]]
Corps to a shorter, defendable line, thus knitting together
the First Army's fragmented defense. Above all, before
launching a major counterstroke, Montgomery wanted to cripple
the German panzers with artillery and with constant air
attacks against their lines of supply.
The Russian High that blanketed the battlefield brought the
Allies one tremendous advantage--good flying weather. The
week of inclement weather promised to Hitler by his
meteorologists had run out--and with it the ability to move
in daylight safe from air attack. The Allied air forces rose
to the occasion. Night bombers of the Royal Air Force's
Bomber Command had been attacking those rail yards supporting
the German offensive since 17 December. In the five days of
good weather following the Russian High, American day bombers
entered the interdiction effort. As Allied fighter bombers
patrolled the roads throughout the Ardennes and the Eifel,
the Ninth Air Force's medium bombers attacked targets west of
the Rhine and the Eighth Air Force's heavy bombers hit rail
yards deeper into Germany. Flying an average of 3,000 sorties
daily during good weather, the combined air forces dropped
more than 31,000 tons of bombs during the first ten days of
interdiction attacks.
The effects on the ground battle were dramatic. The
sluggish movement of fuel and vehicles over the Ardennes' few
roads had already slowed German operations. The added strain
on resupply from the bombing and strafing now caused halts up
and down the German line, making coordinated attacks more
difficult. Still, panzer and infantry units continued to
press forward.
From Christmas Eve to the twenty-seventh, battles raged
along the First Army's entire front. The heaviest fighting
swirled around the positions held by Ridgway's XVIII Airborne
Corps and Collins' VII Corps, the latter having been
piecemealed forward to extend the First Army line westward.
While the XVIII Corps battled the Sixth Panzer Army's last
attempts to achieve a northern breakthrough, the VII Corps'
3d Armored and 84th Infantry Divisions held the line's
western end against the LVIII and XLVII Panzer Corps. These
units had become Model's new main effort, swinging wide of
Dietrich's stalled attack, and they now had elements about 5
miles from the Meuse. Upon finding the 2d Panzer Division out
of gas at the German salient's tip, Collins on Christmas Day
sent 2d Armored Division, with heavy air support, to encircle
and destroy the enemy force.
The First Army's desperate defense between the Salm and
Meuse Rivers had stopped the Sixth and Fifth Panzer Armies,
including six panzer divisions. The fierce battles--at places
as Baraque de Fraiture, Manhay, Hotton, and Marche--were
epics of valor and determination. Hitler's drive for Antwerp
was over.
third army battles, 20-27 december
The 20 December boundary shift transferred Middleton's VIII
Corps and its Bastogne garrison to Patton's Third Army, which
was now moving forces from as far away as 10 miles to attack
positions south of the German salient. Bastogne had become an
armed camp with four airborne regiments, seven battalions of
artillery, a self-propelled tank destroyer battalion, and the
surviving tanks, infantry, and engineers from two armored
combat commands--all under the 101st Airborne Division's
command.
Manteuffel had ordered the Panzer Lehr and the 2d Panzer
Divisions to bypass Bastogne and speed toward the Meuse, thus
isolating the defenders. As the 26th Volksgrenadier Division
and the XLVII Paner Corps' artillery closed in for the kill
on 22 December, the corps commander's emissary arrived at the
101st Division's command post, demanding surrender or
threatening annihilation. The acting division commander,
Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe, replied ``Nuts,'' initially
confounding the Germans but not Bastogne's defenders. The
defense held.
For four days bitter fighting raged in a clockwise rotation
around Bastogne's southern and western perimeter, further
constricting the defense within the low hills and patches of
woods surrounding the town. The infantry held ground, with
the armor scurrying to seal penetrations or to support local
counterattacks. Once the overcast weather had broke, the
defenders received both air support and aerial resupply,
making it imperative for Manteuffel to turn some of his
precious armor back to quickly crush the American defense, a
large deadly threat along his southern flank.
Meanwhile, as Bastogne held, Patton's Third Army units
streamed northward. Maj. Gen. John B. Millikin's newly
arrived III Corps headquarters took command of the 4th
Armored and 26th and 80th Infantry Divisions, in a move
quickly discovered and monitored by the Germans' effective
radio intercept units. In response, Brandenberger's Seventh
Army, charged with the crucial flank guard mission in
Hitler's offensive, rushed its lagging infantry divisions
forward to block the expected American counterattack.
Jumping off as promised on 22 December some 12 to 15 miles
south of Bastogne, III Corps divisions achieved neither the
surprise nor momentum that Bradley and Patton had hoped. No
longer a lunge into an exposed flank, the attack became a
frontal assault along a 30-mile front against infantry
holding good defensive terrain. With Bastogne's garrison
totally surrounded, only a quick Third Army breakthrough
could prevent the brilliant holding action there from
becoming a costly disaster. But how long Bastogne's defenders
could hold out was a question mark.
To the east, as Millikin's III Corps moved against
hardening enemy resistance along the Sure River, Maj. Gen.
Manton S. Eddy's XII Corps attacked northward on a front
almost as wide as the III Corps'. Taking control of the 4th
Infantry and 10th Armored Divisions and elements of the 9th
Armored Division, all units of Middleton's former southern
wing, Eddy met greater difficulties in clearing the ridges
southeast of Bastogne. Meanwhile, the 35th and 5th Infantry
Divisions and the 6th Armored Division moved northward to
strengthen the counterattacks. Millikin finally shifted the
main effort to the west, where the 4th Armored Division was
having more success. Following fierce village-by-village
fighting in frigid temperatures, the 4th linked up with
Bastogne's defenders at 1650 on 26 December, lifting the
siege but setting the stage for even heavier fighting for the
Bastogne sector.
nordwind in alsace, 31 december-5 january
By 21 December Hitler had decided on a new offensive, this
time in the Alsace region, in effect selecting one of the
options he had disapproved earlier in favor of Wacht am
Rhine. With the Fifteenth Army's supporting thrust canceled
due to Dietrich's failure to break the northern shoulder, and
with no hope of attaining their original objectives, both
Hitler and Rundstedt agreed that an attack on the southern
Allied front might take advantage of Patton's shift north to
the Ardennes, which Wehrmacht intelligence had identified as
under way. The first operation, called Nordwind
(``Northwind''), targeted the Saverne Gap, 20 miles
northwest of Strasbourg, to split the Seventh Army's XV
and VI Corps and retake the Alsace north of the Marne-
Rhine Canal. If successful, a second operation, called
Zahnartz (``Dentist''), would pursue objectives westward
toward the area between Luneville and Metz and into the
Third Army's southern flank. Lt. Gen. Hans von
Obstfelder's First Army would launch the XIII SS Corps as
the main effort down the Sarre River valley, while to the
southeast four divisions from the XC and LXXXIX Corps
would attack southwesterly down the Low Vosges mountain
range through the old Maginot Line positions near Bitche.
A two-division panzer reserve would be held to reinforce
success, which Hitler believed would be in the Sarre River
sector. Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler's Army Group
Oberrhein, virtually an independent field army reporting
only to Hitler, was to pin the southern flank of the
Seventh Army with holding attacks. The new offensive was
planned for the thirty-first, New Year's Eve. However, its
target, the U.S. Seventh Army, was neither unready nor
unwarned.
Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch's Seventh Army, part of Devers'
6th Army Group, which also included the French First Army,
had been among the theater's unsung heroes. After conducting
assault landings on the coast of southern France in August
1944, the small army had chased a significantly larger force
northward; but, much to the chagrin of his commanders, Patch
had been ordered not to cross the Rhine, even though his
divisions were among the first Allied units to reach its
banks. In November the Seventh Army had been the Western
Front's leading Allied ground gainer. Yet, when Patton's
Third Army found its offensive foundering, Patch, again
following orders, had sent a corps northward to attack the
Siegfried Line's southern flank, an operational lever
designed to assist Patton's attack.
On 19 December, at the Verdun conference, the 6th Army
Group was again relegated to a supporting role. Eisenhower
ordered Devers to assume the front of two of Patton's corps
that were moving to the Ardennes, and then on the twenty-
sixth he added insult to injury by telling the 6th Army Group
commander to give up his Rhine gains by withdrawing to the
Vosges foothills. The switch to the defense also scrapped
Devers' planned attacks to reduce the Colmar Pocket, the
German foothold stretching 50 miles along the Rhine's western
banks south of Strasbourg. Held in check by two corps of
General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny's French First Army, this
area was the only German bridgehead in Devers' sector. But by
Christmas Eisenhower saw a greater threat than the Colmar
Pocket opening on his southern front.
Allied intelligence had confirmed that a new enemy
offensive in the Alsace region was imminent. Eisenhower
wanted the Seventh Army to meet it by withdrawing to
shortened lines to create reserves, essentially ceding
northern Alsace back to the Germans, including the city of
Strasbourg. Not surprisingly, Devers, Patch, and de Lattre
objected strongly to the order. In the end, rather than
withdraw, Devers shifted forces to create a reserve to
backstop the key enemy attack avenues leading into his front
and ordered the preparation of three intermediate withwrawal
lines forward of the defensive line designated by Eisenhower.
By New Year's Eve, with two U.S. divisions withdrawn from
the Seventh Army and placed in theater reserve, the 6th Army
Group's front resembled the weakened defense that had
encouraged the German Ardennes offensive. Patch's six
divisons covered a 126-mile front, much of it along poor
defensive ground. Feeling that the Saree River valley just
north of the Low Vosges would bear the brunt of any attack,
Patch assigned Maj. Gen. Wade Haislip's XV Corps a 35-mile
sector between Sarreguemines and
[[Page H9324]]
Bitche, with the 103d, 44th, and 100th Infantry Divisions
holding from northwest to southeast, backed by the
experienced French 2d Armored Division. Maj. Gen. Edward H.
Brooks' VI Corps took up the balance of Patch's front from
the Low Vosges southeast to Lauterbourg on the Rhine and then
southward toward Strasbourg. Brooks' corps had the veteran
45th and 79th Infantry Divsions and the 14th Armored Division
in reserve. Patch inserted Task Force Hudelson, a two-
squadron cavalry force, reinforced with infantry from the
uncommitted 14th Armored Division at the boundary joining the
two American corps.
The deployment of three additional units--Task Force Linden
(42d Infantry Division), Task Force Harris (63d Infantry
Division), and Task Force Herren (70th Infantry Division)--
demonstrated how far Devers and Patch would go to avoid
yielding ground. Formed from the infantry regiments of three
arriving divisions and led by their respective assistant
division commanders, these units went straight to the Seventh
Army front minus their still to arrive artillery, engineer,
and support units that comprised a complete division. By
late December Patch had given the bulk of Task Force
Harris to Haislip's XV Corps and the other two to Brooks,
who placed them along the Rhine between Lauterbourg and
Strasbourg.
Despite knowledge of the impending Alsace offensive, the
exact location and objectives were unclear. Troop buildups
near Saarbruecken, east of the Rhine, and within the Colmar
Pocket pointed to possible thrusts either southwestward down
the Sarre River valley or northward from the Colmar region,
predictions made by the Seventh Army's G-2 that proved to be
remarkably accurate.
On New Year's Eve Patch told his corps commanders that the
Germans would launch their major offensive early the next
day. Actually, first combat began shortly before midnight all
along the XV Corps front and along both the southeastern and
southwestern approaches from Bitche toward the Low Vosges.
The XIII SS Corps' two reinforced units, the 17th SS
Panzergrenadier and 36th Volksgrenadier Divisions, attacked
the 44th and 100th Division, whose prepared defense in depth
included a regiment from Task Force Harris. The Germans made
narrow inroads against the 44th's line near Rimling during
fighting characterized by constant American counterattacks
supported by French armor and Allied air attacks during clear
weather. After four days of vicious fighting the XIII SS
Corps' initial offensive had stalled.
The XC and LXXXIX Corps attacked near Bitche with four
infantry divisions abreast. Advancing through the Low Vosges,
they gained surprise by forgoing artillery preparations and
by taking advantage of fog and thick forests to infiltrate
Task Force Hudelson. As in the Losheim Gap, the defending
mechanized cavalry held only a thin line of strongpoints;
lateral mobility through the rough snowladen mountain roads
was limited. The light mechanized forces were soon overrun or
bypassed and isolated by the 559th, 257th, 361st, and 256th
Volksgrenadier Divisions. The Germans gained about 10 miles
during Nordwind's first four days, heading directly for the
Saverne Gap that linked the XV and VI Corps.
Both American corps commanders responded quickly to the
threat. Haislip's XV Corps plugged the northwestern exits to
the Low Vosges with Task Force Harris, units of the 14th
Armored and 100th Divisions, and a regiment from the 36th
Infantry Division, which Eisenhower had released from theater
reserve. Brooks' VI Corps did the same, stripping its
Lauterbourg and Rhine fronts and throwing in Task Force
Herren, combat engineers converted to infantry, and units of
the 45th and 75th Infantry Divisions to plug holes or block
routes out of the Low Vosges.
While units fought for twisted roads and mountain villages
in subfreezing temperatures, Obstfelder's First Army
committed the 6th SS Mountain Division to restart the advance
on the Saverne Gap. In response, Patch shifted the 103d
Infantry Division eastward from the XV Corps' northwestern
wing to hold the southeastern shoulder of the Vosges defense.
By 5 January the SS troopers managed to bull their way to the
town of Wingen-sur-Moder, about 10 miles short of Saverne,
but there they were stopped. With the Vosges' key terrain and
passes still under American control and the German advance
held in two salients, Nordwind had failed.
Meanwhile, the original SHAEF withdrawal plan, especially
the abandonment of Strasbourg, had created an Allied crisis
in confidence. Supporting Devers' decision not to withdraw,
the Free French government of General Charles de Gaulle
enlisted British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's support
to amend Eisenhower's orders. Fortunately, Patch's successful
defense temporarily shelved the SHAEF withdrawal plan, but
Alsace was not to be spared further German attacks. Hitler's
armored reserve and Himmler's Army Group Oberrhein had not
yet entered the battle.
erasing the bulge
North of the Alsace region the Allied commanders were
concerned with reducing the enemy's Ardennes salient, now
called the ``Bulge.'' From the beginning of Wacht am Rhein
they had envisioned large-scale counterattacks. The decisions
as to where and how the attacks would be launched, however,
underscored their different perspectives. The theoretical
solution was to attack the salient at its base. Patton had in
fact planned to have the Third Army's right flank corps, the
XII, attack further eastward toward Bitburg, Germany, along
what he referred to as the ``honeymoon trail.'' Bradley,
however, as the commander responsible for the southern
attack, wanted to cover the shortest distance to relieve
Hodges' beleaguered First Army units. Overruling Patton, he
designated Houffalize, midway between Bastogne and St. Vith,
as a primary objective. Middleton's reinforced VIII Corps,
the westernmost force, would drive on Houffalize; the middle
force, Millikin's III Corps, would remain on Middleton's
right flank heading for St. Vith; and Eddy's XII Corps would
serve as an eastern hinge. Bradley's choice made the best use
of the existing roads; sending Millikin's IIII Corps along
advantageous terrain corridors avoided the favorable
defensive ground on the successive ridges east of Bastogne.
Once linked with the First Army, the 12th Army Group's
boundary would revert to its original northern line. Only
then would Bradley send the First and Third Armies east into
the Eifel toward Pruem and Bitburg in Germany. Bradley
further solidified his plan by committing newly arriving
reinforcements--the 11th Armored, 17th Airborne, and 87th
Infantry Divisions--to the west of Bastogne for Middleton's
VIII corps.
Montgomery had eyed Houffalize earlier, viewing the
approaches to the town from the northwest as excellent for a
corps-sized attack. His own extended defensive line on the
northern shoulder of the bulge and the piecemeal entry of
Collins' VII Corps into battle further west did not shake his
original concept. Much like Bradley, he saw an interim
solution as best. Concerned that American infantry losses in
Gerow's V Corps had not been replaced, and with the same
terrain and roadnet considerations that had jammed the German
assault westward, Montgomery ruled out a direct attack to the
south at the base of the bulge. As December waned,
Rundstedt's remaining armored reserves were centered near St.
Vith, and the roadnet there offered inadequate avenues to
channel the four U.S. armored divisions into an attack.
Unwilling to weaken his western flank now that his reserve
had been committed, Montgomery seemed more prone to let the
VII Corps attack from its present positions northwest of St.
Vith. Eisenhower raised the issue of committing the British
30 Corps. But having deactivated units to rebuild the corps
for use in his projected Rhineland offensive, Montgomery
agreed to move it across the Meuse to assume Collins' vacated
front, a transfer that would not be completely accomplished
until 2 January. From there, the 30 Corps would conduct
limited supporting attacks. Although Hodges, as First Army
commander, would select the precise counterattack axis, he
knew Montgomery's repeated preference for the VII Corps to
conduct the main effort and also Bradley's preference for a
quick linkup at Houffalize. Hodges' decision was thus
predictable. The VII Corps would constitute the First Army's
main effort, aimed at Houffalize. Ridgway's XVIII Airborne
Corps would cover the VII's northeastern flank, and, like
Millikin's III Corps, its advance would be pointed at St.
Vith. The Germans would thus be attacked head on.
Timing the counterstrokes also raised difficulties. The
American generals wanted the First Army to attack
immediately, claiming the Germans had reached their high-
water mark. Montgomery demurred, citing intelligence
predictions of an imminent offensive by the II SS Panzer
Corps--an assault he welcomed as it fit his concept of
weakening enemy armor further rather than conducting costly
attacks. Contrary to Montgomery's tactics, Eisenhower
preferred that the First Army attack immediately to prevent
the Germans from withdrawing their panzers and shifting them
southward.
Patton's renewed attacks in late December caused the Third
Army to learn firsthand how difficult the First Army battles
had been. In the Third Army sector the relief of Bastogne had
not changed the intensity of combat. As Manteuffel received
panzer reinforcements, he threw them into the Bastogne
salient before it could be widened and extended northward
toward the First Army. Patton's Third Army now encountered
panzers and divisions in numbers comparable to those that had
been pressing against the northern shoulder for the previous
10 days. In the week after Bastogne's relief the number of
German divisions facing the Third Army jumped from three to
nine around Bastogne and from four to five in the III and XII
Corps sector of the front.
The fighting during the 9-mile American drive from Bastogne
to Houffalize became a series of bitter attacks and
counterattacks in worsening weather. Patton quickly added the
17th Airborne, the 87th and 35th Infantry, and the 11th and
6th Armored Divisions to his attacking line, which stretched
25 miles from the Ourthe River to the Clerf. While the III
Corps continued its grim attacks northeastward against the
forested ridges of the Wiltz valley leading toward
German escape routes eastward out of the salient, VIII
Corps forces added some width to the Bastogne salient but
gained no ground northward before New Year's Day. Both
sides reinforced the sector with every available gun. In a
nearly week-long artillery duel Patton's renewed attacks
collided with Manteuffel's final efforts to eradicate the
Bastogne bridgehead.
During the same week German attacks continued along the
First Army line near the Elsenborn ridge and in the center of
the
[[Page H9325]]
XVIII Airborne Corps line before a general quiet descended
upon the northern front. In many areas the fields, forests,
and roads were now covered with waist-high snowdrifts,
further impeding the movement of both fighting men and their
resupply vehicles.
Climaxing Wacht am Rhein's efforts, the Luftwaffe launched
its one great appearance of the campaign during the early
morning hours of New Year's Day. Over 1,000 aircraft took off
before dawn to attack Allied airfields in Holland and
Belgium, with the objective of eliminating the terrible
scourge that the Allied air forces would again become once
the skies cleared over the entire battle area. The Germans
destroyed roughly 300 Allied machines, but their loss of more
than 230 pilots was a major blow to the Luftwaffe, whose lack
of trained aviators was even more critical than their fuel
shortages.
Casualties mounted, bringing on a manpower shortage in both
camps. Although the Germans continued to commit fresh
divisions until late December, the Americans, with only three
uncommitted divisions in theater, were forced to realign
their entire front. Many units moved from one combat to
another without rest or reinforcement. December's battles had
cost the Americans more than 41,000 casualties, and with
infantry replacements already critically short, antiaircraft
and service units had to be stripped to provide riflemen for
the line. Black soldiers were offered the opportunity to
fight within black platoons assigned to many white
battalions, a major break from previous Army policy.
Despite the shortage of replacements, both Patton's Third
Army and Hodges' First Army attacked on 3 January. Collins'
VII Corps in the north advanced toward the high ground
northwest of Houffalize, with two armored divisions in the
lead. Meeting stiff opposition from the LXVI Corps, VII Corps
infantry soon replaced the tanks as difficult terrain, icy
roads, and a tenacious defense using mines, obstacles,
antitank ambushes, and armored counterattacks took their
toll. The XVIII Airborne Corps moved its right flank south to
cover Collins' advance, and in the far west the British 30
Corps pushed eastward. Under intense pressure Hitler's forces
pulled back to a new line, based on the Ourthe River and
Houffalize, with the bulk of the SS panzer divisions
withdrawing from the battlefield. Poor weather restricted
Allied flyers to intermittent close support for only three
days in the nearly two weeks that VII Corps units fought
their way toward their juncture with the Third Army.
South of the Bulge the Third Army intensified its attacks
northward to meet the First Army. Still counting on
Middleton's VIII Corps to break through, Patton sent
Millikin's III Corps northeastward, hoping to enter the
roadnet and follow the terrain corridors to link up with
Ridgway's XVIII Airborne Corps attacking St. Vith. Despite
having less than fifty-five tanks operational, the I SS
Panzer Corps counterattacked the III Corps' 6th Armored
Division in ferocious tank fights unseen since the fall
campaign in Lorraine. While the III Corps' 90th Division
infantrymen broke through to the heights overlooking the
Wiltz valley, the VIII Corps to the west struggled against a
determined force fighting a textbook withdrawal. By 15
January Noville, the scene of the original northern point of
the Bastogne perimeter, was retaken. Five miles from
Houffalize, resistance disappeared. Ordered to escape, the
remaining Germans withdrew, and on the sixteenth the Third
Army's 11th Armored Division linked up with the First Army's
2d Armored Division at Houffalize.
The next day, 17 January, control of the First Army
reverted to Bradley's 12th Army Group. Almost immediately
Bradley began what he had referred to in planning as a
``hurry-up'' offensive, another full-blooded drive claiming
the Rhine as its ultimate objective while erasing the Bulge
en route. On the twenty-third Ridgway's XVIII Airborne Corps,
now the First Army's main effort, and the 7th Armored
Division took St. Vith. This action was the last act of the
campaign for the First Army. Hodges' men, looking out across
the Losheim Gap at the Schnee Eifel and hills beyond, now
prepared for new battles.
In the Third Army sector Eddy's XII Corps leapt the Sure
River on 18 January and pushed north, hoping to revive
Patton's plan for a deep envelopment of the German escape
routes back across the Belgian-Luxembourg-German borders.
Intending to pinch the escape routes via the German tactical
bridges on the Our River, the 5th Division crossed the Sauer
at night, its main body pushing northward to clear the long
Skyline Drive ridge, where the 28th Division had faced the
first assaults. By the campaign's official end on the twenty-
fifth the V, XVIII, VIII, III, and XII Corps had a total of
nine divisions holding most of the old front, although the
original line east of the Our River had yet to be restored.
Nordwind Revisited, 5-25 January
In early 1945, as Operation Wacht am Rhein in the Ardennes
started to collapse, Operation Nordwind in the Alsace was
revived. On 5 January, after Nordwind's main effort had
failed, Himmler's Army Group Oberrheim finally began its
supporting thrusts against the southern flank of Brooks' VI
Corps, with the XIV SS Corps launching a cross-Rhine attack
north of Strasbourg. Two days later, south of the city, the
Nineteenth Army launched Operation Sonnenwende (``Winter
Solstice''), attacking north, astride the Rhone-Rhine Canal
on the northern edge of the German-held Colmar Pocket. These
actions opened a three-week battle, whose ferocity rivaled
the Ardennes fighting in viciousness if not in scope and
threatened the survival of the VI Corps.
Sonnenwende sparked a new crisis for the 6th Army Group,
which had too few divisions to defend every threatened area.
With Brooks' VI Corps now engaged on both flanks, along the
Rhine at Gambsheim and to the northeast along the Low Vosges
mountain exits, Devers transferred responsibility for
Strasbourg to the French First Army, and de Lattre stretched
his forces to cover both the city and the Belfort Gap 75
miles to the south.
But the real danger was just northeast of Strasbourg.
There, the XIV SS Corps had punched out a 10-miles bridgehead
around the town of Gambsheim, brushing off small
counterattacks from Task Force Linden. Patch's Seventh Army,
reinforced with the newly arrived 12th Armored Division,
tried to drive the Germans from the Gambsheim area, a region
laced with canals, streams, and lesser watercourses. To the
south de Lattre's 3d Algerian Division defended Strasbourg,
while the rest of the French First Army kept the Colmar
Pocket tightly ringed. But the fate of Strasbourg and the
northern Alsace hinged on the ability of the American VI
Corps to secure its besieged flanks.
Having driven several wedges into the Seventh Army, the
Germans launched another attack on 7 January. The German
XXXIX Panzer Corps, with the 21st Panzer and the 25th
Panzergrenadier Divisions, attacked the greatly weakened VI
Corps center between the Vosges and Lauterbourg. Quickly
gaining ground to the edge of the Haguenau Forest 20 miles
north of Strasbourg, the German offensive rolled along the
same routes used during the successful attacks of August 1870
under Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. Moltke's successors,
however, made no breakthrough. In the two Alsatian towns of
Hatten and Rittershoffen, Patch and Brooks threw in the
Seventh Army's last reserve, the 14th Armored Division.
Assisted by a mixture of other combat, combat support, and
service troops, the division halted the Germans.
While the VI Corps fought for its life in the Haguenau
Forest, the enemy renewed attacks on both flanks. During an
intense battle between units of the 45th Division and the 6th
SS Mountain Division in the Low Vosges, the Germans
surrounded an American battalion that had refused to give
ground. After a week's fighting by units attempting its
relief, only two soldiers managed to escape to friendly
lines.
Although gaining ground, the enemy had achieved no clear-
cut success. Hitler nevertheless committed his last reserves
on 16 January, including the 10th SS Panzer and the 7th
Parachute Divisions. These forces finally steamrolled a path
along the Rhine's west bank toward the XIV SS Corps'
Gambsheim bridgehead, over-running one of the green 12th
Armored Division's infantry battalions at Herrlisheim and
destroying one of its tank battalions nearby. This final
foray led Brooks to order a withdrawal on the twenty-first,
one that took the Germans by surprise and was completed
before the enemy could press his advantage.
Forming a new line along the Zorn, Moder, and Rothback
Rivers north of the Marne-Rhine Canal, the VI Corps commander
aligned his units into a cohesive defense with his badly
damaged but still game armored divisions in reserve.
Launching attacks during the night of 24-25 January, the
Germans found their slight penetrations eliminated by
vigorous counterattacks. Ceasing their assaults permanently,
they might have found irony in the Seventh Army's latest
acquisition from SHAEF reserves--the ``Battling Bastards of
Bastogne,'' the 101st Airborne Division, which arrived on the
Alsace front only to find the battle over.
Even before Nordwind had ended, the 6th Army Group
commander was preparing to eliminate the Colmar Pocket in
southern Alsace. Five French divisions and two American, the
3d Infantry and the rebuilt 28th Division, held eight German
infantry divisions and an armored brigade in a rich farming
area laced with rivers, streams, and a major canal but devoid
of significant hills or ridges. Devers wanted to reduce this
frozen, snow-covered pocket before thaws converted the
ploughed ground to a quagmire. General de Lattre's French
First Army would write finis to the Germans in the Colmar
Pocket, but it would be a truly Allied attack.
To draw the German reserves southward, plans called for
four divisions from the French I Corps to start the assault.
This initial foray would set the stage for the French II
Corps to launch the main effort in the north. The defending
Nineteenth Army's eight divisions were low on equipment but
well provided with artillery munitions, small arms, and
mines, and fleshed out with whatever manpower and materiel
that Himmler, the overall commander, could scrounge from the
German interior. Bad weather, compartmentalized terrain, and
fear of Himmler's SS secret police strengthened the German
defense.
On 20 January, in the south, Lt. Gen. Emile Bethouart's
French I Corps began its attack in a driving snowstorm.
Although its gains were limited by armored-infantry
counterattacks, the corps drew the Nineteenth Army's armor
southward, along with the arriving 2d Mountain Division. Two
days later, in the north, Maj. Gen. Amie de
[[Page H9326]]
Goislard de Monsabert's French II Corps commenced its attack,
led by the U.S. 3d Division. Reinforced by one of the 63d
Infantry Division's regiments, the 3d advanced over the first
of several watercourses and cleared the Colmar Forest. It met
resistance on the Ill River but continued to fight its way
forward through enemy counterattacks, subsequently crossing
the Colmar Canal and opening an avenue for the French 5th
Armored Division. The Allies pushed further eastward in
deepening snow and worsening weather, with the 28th and 75th
Divisions from the Ardennes following. On the twenty-fifth
Maj. Gen. Frank W. Milburn's XXI Corps joined the line.
Assuming control of the 3d, 28th, and 75th Divisions, the
12th Armored Division, which was shifted from reserves, and
the French 5th Armored Division, the corps launched the final
thrust to the Vauban Canal and Rhone-Rhine Canal bridges at
Neuf-Brisach. Although the campaign was officially over on 25
January, the American and French troops did not completely
clear the Colmar Pocket until 9 February. However, its
successful reduction marked the end of both the German
presence on French territory and the Nineteenth Army. And
with the fighting finally concluded in the Ardennes and
Alsace, the Allies now readied their forces for the final
offensive into Germany.
analysis
Hitler's last offensives--in December 1944 in the Ardennes
region of Belgium and Luxembourg, and in January 1945 in the
Alsace region of France--marked the beginning of the end for
the Third Reich. With these final attacks, Hitler had hoped
to destroy a large portion of the Allied ground force and to
break up the Allied coalition. Neither objective came close
to being achieved. Although perhaps the Allies' victory in
the spring of 1945 was inevitable, no doubt exists that the
costs incurred by the Germans in manpower, equipment,
supplies, and morale during the Ardennes-Alsace battles were
instrumental in bringing about a more rapid end to the war in
Europe. Eisenhower had always believed that the German Army
on the Western Front had to be destroyed west of the Rhine
River to make a final offensive into Germany possible. When
added to the tremendous contributions of the Soviet Army,
which had been fighting the majority of Germany's armed
forces since 1941, the Ardennes-Alsace victory set the stage
for Germany's rapid collapse.
With little hope of staving off defeat, Germany gambled
everything on achieving a surprise operational decision on
the Western Front. In contrast, the Allied coalition pursued
a more conservative strategy. Since the Normandy invasion
Eisenhower's armies had neither the combat power necessary to
mount decisive operations in more than one sector nor the
reserves; more importantly, their logistical capability was
insufficient to fully exploit any major successes. The
resulting broadfront Allied advance steadily wore away the
German defenses; but, as in the case of the Ardennes and
Alsace fronts, the Allied lines had many weak points that
could be exploited by a desperate opponent. Moreover, once
Hitler's attacking legions had been stopped, the Allies
lacked the combat power to overwhelm the German divisions
defending their recently acquiring gains. In the Ardennes,
terrain and worsening weather aided the Germans in holding
off Allied counterattacks for an entire month, ultimately
allowing them to withdraw a sizable portion of their initial
assault force with perhaps one-third of their committed
armor.
The battle in the Alsace appeared to be less dramatic than
in the Ardennes, but was no less an Allied victory. Hitler
spent his last reserves in Alsace--and with them the ability
to regain the initiative anywhere. Like the Normandy
Campaign, the Ardennes-Alsace struggle provided the necessary
attrition for the mobile operations that would end the war.
The carefully husbanded enemy reserves that the Allies
expected to meet in their final offensive into Germany had
been destroyed in December and January.
Some thirty-two U.S. divisions fought in the Ardennes,
where the daily battle strength of U.S. Army forces averaged
twenty-six divisions and 610,000 men. Alsace added eleven
more divisions to the honors list, with an average battle
strength of 230,000. Additionally, separate divisional
elements as well as divisions arriving in sector at the end
of the campaign granted participation credit to three more
divisions. But the cost of victory was staggering. The final
tally for the Ardennes alone totaled 41.315 casualties in
December to bring the offensive to a halt and an additional
39,672 casualties in January to retake lost ground. The SHAFE
casualty estimate presented to Eisenhower in February 1945
listed casualties for the First Army at 39,957; for the Third
Army at 35,525; and for the British 30 Corps, which helped at
the end, at 1,408. Defeating Hitler's final offensive in the
Alsace was also costly; the Seventh Army recorded its January
battle losses at 11,609. Sickness and cold weather also
ravaged the fighting lines, with the First, Third, and
Seventh Armies having cold injury hospital admissions of more
than 17,000 during the entire campaign. No official German
losses for the Ardennes have been computed, but they have
been estimated at between 81,000 and 103,000. A recently
published German scholarly source gave the following German
casualty totals: Ardennes--67,200; Alsace (not including
Colmar Pocket)--22,932. Most of the figures cited do not
differentiate between permanent losses (killed and missing),
wounded, and non-battle casualties.
Analysts of coalition warfare and Allied generalship may
find much to criticize in the Ardennes-Alsace Campaign. Often
common-place disputes over command and strategy were
encouraged and overblown by newspaper coverage, which
reflected national biases. Predictably, Montgomery inspired
much American ire both in revisiting command and strategy
issues, which had been debated since Normandy, and in
pursuing methodical defensive-offensive tactics. Devers and
de Lattre, too, strained coalition amity during their
successful retention of liberated French terrain. But in both
cases the Allied command structure weathered the storm, and
Eisenhower retained a unified command. Preservation of a unit
Allied command was perhaps his greatest achievement. In the
enemy camp the differences between Hilter and his generals
over the objectives of the Ardennes offensive were marked,
while the uncoordinated efforts of Obstfelder's First Army
and Himmler's Army Group Oberrhein for the Alsace offensive
were appaling.
The Ardennes-Alsace battlefield proved to be no general's
playground, but rather a place where firepower and bravery
meant more than plans or brilliant maneuver. Allied and
German generals both consistently came up short in bringing
their plans to satisfactory fruition. That American soldiers
fought and won some of the most critical battles of World War
II in the Ardennes and the Alsace is now an indisputable
fact.
U.S. Divisions in the Ardennes-Alsace Campaign
1st Infantry Division, 2d Infantry Division, 3d Infantry
Division, 4th Infantry Division, 5th Infantry Division, 9th
Infantry Division, 26th Infantry Division, 28th Infantry
Division, 30th Infantry Division, 35th Infantry Division,
36th Infantry Division, 42d Infantry Division, 44th Infantry
Division, 45th Infantry Division, 63d Infantry Division,*
70th Infantry Division, 75th Infantry Division, 76th Infantry
Division, 78th Infantry Division, 79th Infantry Division,
80th Infantry Division, 83d Infantry Division, 84th Infantry
Division, 87th Infantry Division, 90th Infantry Division,
94th Infantry Division, 95th Infantry Division, 99th Infantry
Division, 100th Infantry Division, 103d Infantry Division,
106th Infantry Division.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Elements only
2d Armored Division, 3d Armored Division, 4th Armored
Division, 5th Armored Division, 6th Armored Division, 7th
Armored Division, 8th Armored Division, 9th Armored Division,
10th Armored Division, 11th Armored Division, Armored
Division, 12th Armored Division, 14th Armored Division.
17th Airborne Division, 82d Airborne Division, 101st
Airborne Division.
Ardennes-Alsace 1944-1945
Further Readings
A number of official histories provide carefully documented
accounts of operations during the Ardennes-Alsace Campaign.
U.S. Army operations are covered in Hugh M. Cole, The
Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge (1965); Charles B. MacDonald,
The Last Offensive (1973); and Jeffrey J. Clarke and Robert
Ross Smith, Riviera to the Rhine (1991), three volumes in the
United States Army in World War II series. Air operations are
detailed in Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds., Europe:
Argument to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945 (1951), the
third volume in the Army Air Forces in World War II series,
and the British perspective and operations are covered in L.
F. Ellis, Victory in the West: the Defeat of Germany (1968).
Among the large number of books that describe the fighting in
the Ardennes are Gerald Astor, A Blood-Dimmed Tide (1992),
John S. D. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods (1969), Charles B.
MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets (1985), S. L. A. Marshall, The
Eight Days of Bastogne (1946), Jean Paul Pallud, Battle of
the Bulge Then and Now (1984), Danny S. Parker, Battle of the
Bulge (1991), and Robert F. Phillips, To Save Bastogne
(1983). At the small-unit level Charles MacDonald's Company
Commander (1947) is still the standard classic. Fighting in
the Alsace region has been sparsely covered, but Keith E.
Bonn's When the Odds Were Even (1994) is valuable.
Mr. EVANS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Mississippi (Mr. Shows).
Mr. SHOWS. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to address my colleagues and the
American people about a moment in American history that stands out in
my family as one of the most crucial there ever was. It is one of those
moments in our history where the larger story of the American
experience becomes intertwined with the personal legacy of an American
family.
The Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, 1944, and ended on
January 25, 1945. This enemy offensive was staged to split our forces
in half and cripple our supply lines. Of course there were 600,000
American troops participating in the Battle of the Bulge, as we have
heard awhile ago. 810,000 Americans were casualties, of whom 19,000
were killed; 33,400 were wounded; and there were 2,000 who were either
captured or listed as missing.
[[Page H9327]]
One of these 2,000, I want to talk about this morning. My father,
Clifford Shows, was one of those captured as a prisoner of war. Today
in Mosselle, Mississippi, my father is a veteran. He stands tall when
the national anthem is played, enjoys his family and neighbors, and
lives out a most American life. It is hard for me to talk about it.
We must remember the actions of my father and the thousands of others
who fought then that we might be free now. This year is the 55th
anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. Let us pause, let us remember,
and let us be thankful. Please support H.J. Res. 65.
Mr. EVANS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. Reyes).
Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.J. Res. 65 which commends our
World War II veterans who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. This is a
great bill because it honors the determination and the courage of these
veterans in stopping the last great Nazi counteroffensive of World War
II.
History tells us that the fighting in Belgium sealed the victory for
the allies in Europe. Without this victory, many additional months of
fighting would have been necessary before Nazi Germany's surrender. Our
troops overcame superior numbers of Nazi troops and harsh weather to
repel and turn back this last great offensive of World War II.
Victory, however, came at a terrible price, with about 81,000
American casualties, 19,000 of which were killed. Each and every
veteran of the Battle of the Bulge witnessed the horrors of war. One of
those was my own father-in-law, Victor Gaytan, who today is a disabled
veteran who lives with the wounds he suffered defending our freedom
against that threat in Belgium that winter.
Today, my wife and I are honored to have him live with us. Yes, at 79
he walks a little slower, moves at times hesitantly and with great
pain; but when you look into his eyes, there is no doubt about his role
in saving our country and our way of life. He is a hero to us and was
one of those great Americans that courageously turned back the last
desperate attempt of the Nazis to stop Allied momentum toward Germany.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that we can never sufficiently express our
gratitude to these veterans, America's greatest generation. But this
legislation is a proper and fitting way to honor them and their service
to their country. With this legislation, we honor these American
soldiers and we ensure that future generations of Americans remember
the price of freedom in Europe and around the world during World War
II. I strongly support this legislation and urge the House to
unanimously pass this great bill.
Mr. STUMP. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Smith).
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, just to point out during
markup, and this was extraordinary, at least four Members came forward
to speak as the gentleman from Texas just pointed out, his father-in-
law, the gentleman from Mississippi, his dad, and so many others. Few
battles have touched more people than the Battle of the Bulge. The
gentleman from Arizona's uncle also fought. He is a combat veteran
himself, but his uncle fought at the Battle of the Bulge, was there.
And Joe McNulty, one of our key staffers on the majority side, he
just came up and whispered to me that his father got the purple heart,
was wounded in both legs. There are few battles that have touched more
people and few battles that have done more to save freedom and liberty
than the Battle of the Bulge. It is amazing how many people in this
Chamber have relatives and close relatives and perhaps themselves
actually fought in that very, very famous battle.
Mr. EVANS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Wisconsin (Mr. Barrett).
Mr. BARRETT of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
Illinois (Mr. Evans) for yielding me this time. I rise in support of
House Joint Resolution 65. I want to pay special tribute to a man who
was killed in that fight, Bob Kuehn of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Bob
Kuehn was raised in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. After graduating from high
school, he attended St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, where he
was a member of the ROTC program. He graduated in June of 1944 and
later that month was married to Gertrude Kuehn of Sturgeon Bay.
They traveled to Camp Fannin in Tyler, Texas; but he was called into
Patton's Third Army, and he was killed December 17, 1944, leaving a 23-
year-old widow back in Wisconsin. That widow was my mother.
Fortunately, my mother was able to move on and attended school at the
University of Wisconsin where she met my father, who also fought in
World War II and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service.
My father, of course, was fortunate to meet my mother, and my two
sisters and I are fortunate enough to have them as parents. But Bob
Kuehn has never been forgotten. I pay tribute to him and the thousands
of other Americans who gave their lives to protect our freedoms.
Mr. EVANS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Traficant).
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Speaker, it is fitting that we pay tribute to
those who gave of their lives and served at the Battle of the Bulge and
to every soldier, every man and woman who participated in the Great War
to protect our freedoms, protect the independence of this Nation, and
to promote freedom and democracy in the world. I did not plan to speak
on this resolution, but I do so now in honor of all of those who have
served, to remind this Congress that the grave sacrifices they made to
win the war, we may be losing the peace.
Last week, they celebrated 50 years of communism in China, parades,
tanks, missiles, floats, parties. What bothers me is with a $70 billion
trade surplus they enjoy from Uncle Sam, they paid for that parade last
week with our cash. Ronald Reagan's great fight was to make sure that
communism did not spread, and, by God, I am not so sure we are living
up to the great task and challenge and the example set by those who
fought in the Battle of the Bulge; I am not so sure we are passively
turning our back and taking for granted our great freedoms that they
protected. I think we better look at it. They won the war. Let us not
lose the peace. I am proud to support this resolution. I commend the
authors.
Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.J. Res.
65, a resolution commending our veterans of the Battle of the Bulge. I
urge my colleagues to join in supporting this worthwhile measure.
This year marks the 55th anniversary of the German Ardennes offensive
of December 1944, more commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge. In
the weeks leading up to the Christmas of 1944, it appeared to the
Western Allies that victory over the German army was near at hand. Many
thought that one final push was all that was needed to force a total
collapse of German resistance on the Western front.
What the Allied commanders were not aware of was the fact that the
German dictator was planning one final, desperate offensive through the
Ardennes Forest, in the hopes of splitting the Allied lines.
The German attack came as a total surprise, and achieved initial
success. Poor weather prevented Allied air superiority from being
brought to bear, and the German Panzers took full advantage of the
respite. Yet, in the end, their offensive failed.
The offensive failed because American soldiers shook off their
initial shock and fought with a stubborn tenacity to prevent a German
breakthrough. The Allied lines gave way, hence the ``Bulge''
description, but refused to break. After several days, the weather
cleared, and the overwhelming Allied advantage in tactical air power
was finally brought to bear in a concentrated counterattack.
The resolution honors those courageous veterans who fought in the
Battle of the Bulge, resulting in a tenacious defense, under horrible
conditions, against an enemy with superior armored forces. Their
success in halting the German Ardennes offensive preserved the Allied
lines, and helped to maintain the offensive pressure on Germany.
The efforts of our veterans in the Battle of the Bulge, like those of
all Americans who fought against tyranny in World War II, deserve our
recognition and respect. Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to join in
supporting this measure, which memorializes the significant
contributions of the veterans of the Bulge to the ultimate victory of
freedom over tyranny during the Second World War.
Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Joint
Resolution 65
[[Page H9328]]
which commends United States Veterans for their heroism in the Battle
of the Bulge during World War II. The resolution also reaffirms our
bonds of friendship with our Allies we stood together with during that
noble cause.
I commend the bill's sponsor, Mr. Smith of New Jersey, and the
Chairman and Ranking Members of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Mr.
Stump and Mr. Evans for their support. I am proud to be a cosponsor of
this resolution.
I would like to take this time to pay tribute in particular to two of
the 600,000 American troops who served in the German Ardennes
offensive, known as the Battle of the Bulge. These two heroes who
risked their lives to defend our freedom come from my home state of
Connecticut.
One is Bob Dwyer of Vernon, Connecticut. After serving his country in
World War II, he now continues to serve his nation in peacetime by
working for the Veterans' Coalition in Connecticut. Mr. Dwyer plays a
central role in this group which provides crucial services and
assistance for veterans and advocates on their behalf.
Another hero is Gerald Twomey of Norwich, Connecticut. Mr. Twomey
served in a World War II reconnaissance unit that had already fought in
North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy before he made his way to this
momentous battle. In an interview with Bob Hamilton of the New London
Day last year, Mr. Twomey described his service in Africa and Italy as
difficult but nothing like the organized resistance he and his comrades
met in Ardennes. ``That was brutal,'' said Twomey. ``It was very, very
cold weather, a lot of snow. It was tough. They kept bringing over
replacements, and they were knocking them off as fast as they could
bring them over . . . It was much worse than North Africa, much
worse.''
Anyone who has studied the accounts of this battle is struck by the
resilience and courage of our troops at the Battle of the Bulge. Their
bravery withstood Hitler's last ditch offensive to prevent the Allies
from closing in on Berlin. A passage from the book Citizen Soldiers by
Stephen Ambrose serves as a testament to the courage of American
fighting men in recovering from a withering German attack and summoning
the strength to respond:
From the Supreme Commander down to the lowliest private,
men pulled up their socks and went forth to do their duty. It
simplifies, but not much, to say that here, there,
everywhere, from top to bottom, the men of the U.S. Army in
northwest Europe shook themselves and made this a defining
moment in their own lives, and the history of the Army. They
didn't like retreating, they didn't like getting kicked
around, and as individuals, squads, and companies as well as
at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, they
decided they were going to make the enemy pay.
Mr. Speaker, I have nothing more to add except to once again thank
these American heroes on behalf of my constituents in Connecticut and
citizens across this nation.
Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my colleagues in
paying tribute to the courageous Americans who fought during World War
II, especially those who fought at the Battle of the Bulge.
The Battle of the Bulge, as you and my colleagues know, Mr. Speaker,
was a major German offensive in the Ardennes forest region of Belgium
and Luxembourg that was fought from December 16, 1944 to January 25,
1945. Over 600,000 American troops participated in the Battle of the
Bulge, sustaining 81,000 casualties.
I am proud of my many family members and constituents who served this
country in the last world war. In so doing, I especially think about my
cousin John Henry Woodson, Jr., who not only fought in World War II but
was actually left for dead behind enemy lines. He was reported as
missing in action for almost three weeks, before he found his way back
to the American troops. Although he was fortunate to be among those who
returned home, that terrible experience and others during the war left
an indelible memory and mark on the rest of his life.
John served the Virgin Islands Community exceptionally for many
years, first at the Department of Health and later as a public school
science teacher and principal. He is remembered by the Virgin Islands
through the Junior High School, on St. Croix, which bears his name.
Today, as we remember those veterans who fought at the Battle of the
Bulge for their service and sacrifice, I lovingly remember my cousin
Johnny, and the other Virgin Islanders who also served there.
Mr. EVANS. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. STUMP. Mr. Speaker, once again I would like to thank the
gentleman from Illinois, the ranking member of the committee, for all
of his assistance on this bill, as well as the gentleman from New
Jersey who brought the bill to us in the committee.
Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back
the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sununu). The question is on the motion
offered by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stump) that the House
suspend the rules and pass the joint resolution, House Joint Resolution
65, as amended.
The question was taken.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and
nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be
postponed.
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