through there in 1940. Perhaps the Americans would be equally blind in 1944.
With this decision, made at the nadir of German fortunes in the west, Adolf Hitler set in motion a campaign that was a stunning surprise to Allied commanders, on a scale beyond their imagination. It was to be the greatest battle ever fought by Americans, involving more than a million men, precipitating a supreme crisis, and demonstrating the most telling failure in history of American military intelligence.
Hitler reasoned that a swift and overwhelming strike at Antwerp, a hundred air miles away, would cut off the British and Canadian armies in the Netherlands. This would compel them to surrender, ending Britain’s participation in the war. The U.S. 1st and 9th Armies, also north of the Ardennes, would be trapped as well. The United States, left with half its army in Europe and fearful of Communist hordes sweeping in from the Soviet Union, might conclude a separate peace. Hitler then could turn all his resources against the Russians, and stop their advance. Hitler and the Nazi regime would survive.
It was a desperation move, betting everything on a single throw of the dice. Yet if Adolf Hitler continued on his present course, he and his regime would perish in short order. He had just enough strength left to make one final effort to alter the balance of power.
Hitler had faith that chance could bring fortuitous circumstances. His greatest hero was Frederick the Great of Prussia, who had held on against impossible odds in the Seven Years War 1757–1763 until the empress of Russia died and the coalition against him evaporated. If Hitler could seize Antwerp and destroy four British, Canadian, and American armies, it could happen again.
Hitler was already planning for the offensive on September 1, when he called Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, stiff, formal and seventy years old, to his headquarters and asked him to return as commander in chief west. Rundstedt, as Charles MacDonald wrote, “was to most Germans the paragon of all that was good and right about the German officers corps.” Hitler disliked him intensely, in part because he represented the class and elegance that Hitler lacked, and in part because, in private, he referred to Hitler as “the Corporal,” the Fuehrer’s rank in World War I.
Hitler needed a figurehead around whom Germans could rally, and Rundstedt, true to his soldier’s creed of loyalty, agreed to serve. Hitler didn’t tell Rundstedt what he had in mind. The field marshal was to defend in front of the West Wall as long as possible, then fall back on it. Everything depended on this defense, Hitler stressed. There was insufficient strength to strike offensively.
Having lied to his commander, Hitler ordered his propaganda chief,
Joseph Goebbels, to find somewhere the manpower to create fifteen new divisions with a new name,
On the Allied side, there was no idea whatsoever of a threat through the Ardennes. Troy Middleton’s 8th Corps was covering an eighty-mile stretch, most of the region. Two of his four divisions were raw and new, two recuperating from heavy losses in battles elsewhere. Talking with Middleton, Omar Bradley said: “Even if the German were to bust through all the way to the Meuse, he wouldn’t find a thing in the Ardennes to make it worth his while.”
Eisenhower and Bradley were more concerned with the failure of an offensive Bradley had undertaken to smash through to the Rhine, then swing north and encircle the Ruhr. Patton’s 3rd Army was to drive through the Saar to Frankfurt, while, north of the Ardennes, Courtney Hodges’s 1st Army and the new 9th Army under William Simpson were to thrust eastward from Aachen to Cologne and Bonn. Patton gained Metz on December 13, but was stopped cold at the Siegfried line short of the Saar. In the effort, Patton’s army lost 27,000 men.
The 1st and 9th Armies tried to cross the Roer River and the Hurtgen Forest a few miles to the east of Aachen. Six American divisions were chewed up (35,000 men lost) in bitter close-in attrition battles in and around those dark woodlands in three months beginning September 12.
Meanwhile Jake Devers’s 6th Army Group (U.S. 7th and French 1st Armies) reached Strasbourg and the Rhine on the east by December 15. But across the Rhine lay the Black Forest, no acceptable route to the heart of German power.
The key to Hitler’s plan was to strike at a time when bad weather would endure for a week, keeping Allied aircraft out of the sky for that period. He figured it would take his panzers that long to reach Antwerp.
The major obstacle was the Meuse River, just beyond the Ardennes. The first wave of tanks had to seize bridgeheads over it quickly. Then a second wave of panzers was to strike off for Antwerp, while infantry divisions fanned off north and south to protect the flanks of the salient.
The final plan was for the offensive (code-named
On Dietrich’s left or south, Hasso von Manteuffel’s 5th Panzer Army was to attack through and south of St. Vith, cross the Meuse at Namur, then wheel northwest, bypassing Brussels, and guard Dietrich’s flank.
South of Manteuffel, Erich Brandenberger’s 7th Army, primarily infantry, was to attack on either side of Echternach, move west, and peel off divisions to block movement from the south.
A plan for a converging attack by 15th Army around Aachen had to be dropped, since troops had to be sent east to meet Soviet pressure. Consequently, Hitler could not block the Allies from bringing down reserves from the north.
Nevertheless, if all went well, more than a million Allied troops would be surrounded. But how such a huge army was to be defeated, even if encircled, no one really knew.
Secrecy was mandatory. Hitler prohibited transmission by telephone, telegraph, or radio. The few let in on the plan signed a pledge of secrecy on the pain of death. Rundstedt was not brought into the picture until the late stages.
On October 21, Hitler called in Otto Skorzeny, the officer who had rescued Benito Mussolini from his captors in 1943. Hitler promoted him to SS lieutenant colonel and told him to form a special force to go in advance of the offensive. In the first wave, a company of English-speaking commandos, wearing American field jackets over their German uniforms and riding in American jeeps, was to rush ahead, cut telephone lines, turn signposts to misdirect reserves, and hang red ribbons to imply roads were mined. Second, a panzer brigade of 2,000 men in American dress was to drive through and seize the bridges over the Meuse.
The second wave never materialized. Army command failed to provide the American equipment needed. But the first wave had astonishing success. Forty jeeps got through, and all but eight returned. The few Germans who were captured created the impression that many sabotage bands were roving behind the front. MPs and other soldiers stopped every vehicle, questioning drivers to see if they were German. Traffic tie-ups created chaos, and hundreds of innocent Americans were arrested.
General Bradley himself had to prove his identity three times: “The first time by identifying Springfield as the capital of Illinois (my questioner held out for Chicago); the second time by locating the guard between the center and tackle on a line of scrimmage; the third time by naming the then current spouse of a blonde named Betty Grable. Grable stopped me but the sentry did not. Pleased at having stumped me, he nevertheless passed me on.”
Rundstedt was appalled when he learned of the offensive. “Available forces were far too small for such an extremely ambitious plan,” he said. “No soldier believed that the aim of reaching Antwerp was really practicable.”
If the Germans crossed the Meuse, both flanks would be vulnerable to a major counterstrike. All that would
