A major success would have a huge impact on morale at home, and affect attitudes towards Germany abroad.298 Hitler, in Goebbels’s judgement, was like a man revived.299 The prospect of a new offensive, and of regaining the initiative, had evidently worked on him like a drug.
In preparation for the offensive, Hitler had left Berlin on the evening of 10 December and moved his headquarters to Ziegenberg, not far from Bad Nauheim, close to the western front. Bunkers and barracks had been constructed in a woodland area by the Organisation Todt earlier in the war. Rundstedt and his staff were quartered in a stately residence nearby.303
In two groups, on the day of his arrival, 11 December, and again the following day, Hitler spoke to his military commanders at the ‘Adlerhorst’ (‘Eagle’s Eyrie’), as the new headquarters were called, to brief them on the coming offensive. After a lengthy preamble giving his own account of the background to the war, he outlined his thinking behind the offensive. Psychological considerations, as always, were paramount for Hitler. War could only be endured as long as there was hope of victory. It was necessary, therefore, to destroy this hope through offensive action. A defensive strategy could not achieve this goal. It had to be followed by successful attack. ‘I have striven, therefore, from the beginning to conduct the war wherever possible offensively,’ he stated. ‘Wars are finally decided through the recognition by one side or the other that the war as such can no longer be won. To get the enemy to realize this is therefore the most important task.’304 If forced back on to the defensive, it was all the more important to convince the enemy that victory was not in sight. Hitler came to another unalterable premiss of his conduct of the war. ‘It is also important to strengthen these psychological factors in letting no moment pass without making plain to the enemy that whatever he does he can never reckon with capitulation, never, never. That is the decisive point.’305 He referred, almost inevitably, to the reversal of Frederick the Great’s fortunes in the Seven Years War. Here, he had reached another constant in his thinking: the will of the heroic leader, which alone made triumph out of adversity possible when all around him despaired of success.
This brought him to the fragility (he thought) of the coalition he was facing. A few months earlier, he had castigated those who had plotted to bring him down for their naivety in presuming that it was possible to split the Allies.306 Now his view was that the Alliance comprised such heterogeneous elements with conflicting goals and interests diverging ‘by the hour’ that ‘if a few really heavy blows were inflicted, it could happen any moment that this artificially sustained common front could suddenly collapse with a huge clap of thunder’.307 The tensions between the Soviet and western Allies had, indeed, become more apparent during the second half of 1944. But Hitler was certainly rational enough to know that his own destruction, and that of the regime he headed, provided sufficient common ground to hold the coalition together until Germany’s defeat. He knew, too, that neither the western Allies nor — despite what Oshima had told him — the Soviets would look for peace with Germany while they were militarily so totally in the ascendancy.
As the supreme propagandist of old, he could always summon up absolute conviction when addressing an audience and needing to persuade them that what he was proposing was the only alternative on offer. It had proved his greatest strength since the early 1920s. The hints of pessimism — or greater realism — to Below and others in the weeks before the Ardennes offensive, even though only momentary slips of his guard, suggest, however, that Hitler was well aware of the size of the gamble in the Ardennes. He had to take it because, indeed, from his perspective, there was no alternative way out. If the long-shot were to come off, he reasoned, and a serious defeat were to be inflicted on the western powers while new German weaponry started to come into operation and before the expected Soviet winter offensive could begin, then new options could open up. At any rate, the only alternative to the gamble, as he saw it, was to fight for every inch of German soil in a rearguard struggle certain ultimately to end not just in defeat but in Germany’s total destruction — and his own. The gamble had to be taken.
‘Operation Autumn Mist’ — the Ardennes offensive — began in the early morning of 16 December. All possible reserves had been mustered. Around 200,000 German troops backed by 600 tanks were launched against a front comprising around 80,000 American soldiers with 400 tanks.308 The weather was perfect for the German attack, with heavy cloud hindering enemy aircraft. The American forces were taken by surprise. Sepp Dietrich’s SS Panzer Army soon encountered strong defence on the north of the front and could make only slow progress. Manteuffel’s 5th Panzer Army broke through in the south, however, and pressed forward in a deep cut of some sixty-five miles to within a few miles of the river Meuse, laying siege to the town of Bastogne, an important communications point. But aware that American troops were on their way to break the encirclement, Brigadier- General Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the trapped 101st Airborne Division, could offer a straightforward one- word answer to surrender demands: ‘Nuts!’309 Bastogne held out, tying down three German divisions in the process before eventually being relieved by General Patton’s 3rd US Army.
Manteuffel’s advance had meanwhile slowed, handicapped by difficult terrain, bad weather, broken bridges, and fuel shortages as well as increasingly stiff American resistance. On 24 December, the weather lifted, exposing the German troops to relentless air attacks by some 5,000 Allied aircraft. Troop movements could now only take place at night. Supply lines and German airfields were heavily bombed. German fighters suffered serious losses. Once Patton had broken through the German front to relieve Bastogne on 26 December, Manteuffel had to give up any hopes of advancing further. ‘Operation Autumn Mist’ had failed.310
Hitler was still not prepared, however, to bow to the inevitable. As a diversion, he ordered a subsidiary offensive in the north of Alsace (‘Operation North Wind’). The aim was to cut off and destroy the American forces in the north-eastern corner of Alsace, enabling Manteuffel to continue the main offensive in the Ardennes.311 Once more Hitler addressed the commanders of the operation. And once more he laid the stress on pyschological motivation — the all-or-nothing nature of the struggle for Germany’s existence. The problem Germany faced, he began, had to be solved, and would be solved — either to Germany’s advantage, or by bringing the country’s ‘annihilation
The rest of his address comprised the usual parade of historical parallels of the triumph of will over adversity — inevitably again including Frederick the Great — and, as always, an optimistic assessment of the chances of military success. As so often, he emphasized the importance of time, of striking without waiting for supposedly optimal conditions, and the dangers of waiting, seeing the moment pass, and conditions deteriorate. Again, he ruled out the impossibility of Germany fighting indefinitely a defensive war. For strategic and psychological reasons it was essential to return to the offensive, and to seize the initiative. The operation would be decisive, he claimed. Its success would automatically remove the threat to the southern part of the Ardennes offensive, and with that the Wehrmacht would have forced the enemy out of a half of the western front. ‘Then we’ll want to have a further look,’ he added.314
One slip of the tongue seemed to reveal, however, his realization that the ambitious aim he had placed in the Ardennes offensive could no longer be attained; that he knew he could no longer force the Allies off the Continent; and that, therefore, defensive operations would have to continue in the west as in the east. He spoke at one point of ‘the unshakeable
‘North Wind’ began on New Year’s Day. It was Hitler’s last offensive — and his least effective. German troops were able to advance no more than about twenty kilometres, making a few minor gains and causing Eisenhower to pull back forces in the Strasbourg area for a time. But the offensive was too weak to have much effect. It proved possible to halt it without the Americans having to withdraw troops from the Ardennes. ‘North Wind’ had proved to be little more than a momentary stiff breeze.316
Even more devastating was the death-blow to the Luftwaffe, imparted on 1 January, the same day that
