on December 20.
After finally realizing this was not just a small spoiling attack, Bradley ordered 10th Armored Division north and sent 7th Armored and 30th Infantry Divisions south. Thus, more than 60,000 fresh troops were moving, while 180,000 more were to be diverted over the next eight days.
The 30th Division struck Peiper’s battle group, grabbed part of Stavelot, and, with the help of powerful blows by fighter-bombers, broke Peiper’s links with the remainder of 6th Panzer Army. By December 19, Peiper, desperately short of fuel, found that the 82nd Airborne Division, plus some tanks, had arrived, turning the balance against him. The remainder of Dietrich’s SS panzer forces were still stuck in the rear, with too few roads—and these interdicted by Allied aircraft—to get forward.
Peiper’s battle group began to retreat on December 24 on foot, abandoning its tanks and other vehicles.
To the south, the U.S. 3rd and 7th Armored Divisions had barred Manteuffel’s advance westward from St. Vith, where a strong German attack finally drove out the Americans with heavy losses. But a huge traffic jam permitted remnants of the 106th and 7th Armored Divisions to get away, and hindered Manteuffel’s advance toward the Meuse.
Two major factors slowed the German advance: mud and shortage of fuel. Only half the artillery could be brought forward due to fuel lack. Foggy weather had favored the Germans on the opening days by keeping Allied aircraft on the ground. But clear skies came back on December 23, and Allied fighters and bombers commenced a terrible pummeling of the German columns.
On December 20 Eisenhower placed Montgomery in charge of all Allied forces north of the Bulge, including the U.S. 1st and 9th Armies. Montgomery brought the British 30th Corps (four divisions) west of the Meuse to guard the bridges.
Gaining command of two American armies was a great coup for Montgomery and a blow to Bradley, not helped when Montgomery arrived at 1st Army headquarters, as one British officer reported, “like Christ come to cleanse the temple.” He made things worse at a press conference where he implied that his personal “handling” of the battle had saved the Americans from collapse, when actually he had done practically nothing. Montgomery also spoke of employing the “whole available power” of the British armies—a palpable lie heightened by the fact that he insisted he must “tidy up” the position first, and did not strike from the north until January 3. All the while 3rd Army was counterattacking toward Bastogne—spearheaded by the 4th Armored Division, following Patton’s order to “drive like hell.”
The 4th Armored, supported by the 26th and 80th Infantry Divisions, collided with the German 5th Parachute Division on the main north-south road. The paratroops had to be driven out of every village and block of woods. However, reconnaissance found there was less opposition on the Neufchateau-Bastogne road leading northeast, and on December 25 Patton shifted the main attack to this line.
In Bastogne the situation remained critical. Repeated German attacks forced the Americans back, but never overwhelmed them. When Luttwitz sent a “white flag” party on December 22 calling on the garrison to surrender, General McAuliffe replied: “Nuts!” Subordinate officers, seeing the baffled looks on the Germans’ faces, translated it as “Go to hell!”
The next day better weather permitted Allied aircraft to drop supplies to the beleaguered troops. On Christmas Day the Germans made an all-out effort, but failed. Meanwhile the 4th Armored Division fought its way into the town at 4:45 P.M. on December 26. The siege was lifted.
A thin finger of Manteuffel’s advance got within four miles of the Meuse, five miles east of Dinant at Celles, on December 24. But that was the high-water mark. The British 30th Corps had moved onto the east bank of the Meuse around Givet and Dinant, and fresh American forces were coming up to help.
Hitler had recognized his hope of capturing Antwerp was an illusion, and had shifted his goal to seizing crossings of the Meuse, releasing the 9th Panzer and 15th Panzergrenadier Divisions from reserve to help Manteuffel clear the approaches to Dinant between Celles and Marche. But the panzers were being severely harassed from the air, and after December 26 none could move during the day.
Meanwhile Lawton Collins’s U.S. 7th Corps was converging on the threat. Collins had the 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions and the 75th and 84th Infantry Divisions, and they slowly gained ground. On Christmas morning they recaptured Celles. The 9th Panzer Division arrived near the village on Christmas evening but could not shake the 2nd Armored Division in front of it.
Sepp Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Army to the north tried to assist Manteuffel, but his panzer divisions made little impression on American defenses that now were strongly reinforced, with swarms of fighter-bombers on momentary call to strike anything moving.
Manteuffel wrote that his reserves were at a standstill for lack of fuel just when they were needed.
Hitler wanted to hold the positions in the Bulge, and insisted that Manteuffel capture Bastogne by cutting Patton’s Neufchateau-Bastogne corridor. But German attacks over three days, beginning December 30, failed.
It was obvious to Manteuffel that he could not hold the Bulge without Bastogne and could do nothing against Collins’s determined advance on the west. He telephoned Jodl and announced he was moving his forces out of the nose of the salient. But Hitler, as usual, forbade any step back. Instead, he ordered another attack on Bastogne.
To demonstrate how determined he was to have Bastogne, Hitler risked what was left of the Luftwaffe to prevent Allied fighter-bombers from intervening in Manteuffel’s efforts. Early on New Year’s Day a thousand Focke-Wulf 190 and Messerschmitt 109 fighters came in at rooftop level over twenty-seven Allied airfields in Holland, Belgium, and northeastern France. The Germans destroyed 156 planes, 36 of them American, most of them on the ground or while trying to take off. These were heavy losses, but the Allies could replace them quickly. The Luftwaffe, however, lost 300 planes and as many irreplaceable pilots, the German air force’s largest single- day loss in the war. It was the Luftwaffe’s death blow.
Having failed to cut the corridor south of Bastogne, Manteuffel now struck from the north astride the Houffalize-Bastogne road, using four depleted and exhausted divisions which, between them, had only fifty-five tanks. The Germans got nowhere, just as Manteuffel had feared. He now pulled the forces off. The threat to Bastogne ended.
At last on January 8, 1945, Hitler agreed to a limited withdrawal from the tip of the Bulge. Inexorably, the retreat continued. By January 28, the German lines were back approximately where they had been when the offensive started.
Among 600,000 Americans eventually involved in the battle of the Bulge, casualties totaled 81,000, of whom 15,000 were captured and 19,000 killed. Among 55,000 British involved, casualties totaled 1,440, of whom 200 were killed. The Germans, employing close to 500,000 men, lost at least 100,000 killed, wounded, or captured. Each side forfeited about 800 tanks, and the Luftwaffe lost a thousand aircraft.
The Americans could make good their losses in short order, the Germans could not replace theirs. All that Adolf Hitler achieved at this terrible cost was to delay the Allied advance in the west by a few weeks. But it actually assured swift success for the Red Army advancing in a renewed drive in the east. In the end, the battle of the Bulge probably speeded up Germany’s collapse.
24 THE LAST DAYS
THE RED ARMY HAD BEEN STALLED ALONG THE VISTULA RIVER IN POLAND SINCE autumn 1944. Its astonishing advances during the summer had come to a standstill because the vastly overextended Russian supply line finally snapped. Red Army commanders held up the final assault on Nazi Germany until the railways behind the front could be repaired and converted to the Russian wider-gauge track.
Once done, the Soviets accumulated abundant supplies along the entire front and reconstituted their armies. By early 1945 they had assembled 225 infantry divisions and twenty-two armored corps between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains. Soviet superiority was eleven to one in infantry, seven to one in tanks, and twenty to one in artillery and aircraft. Most important was the great quantity of American trucks delivered to the Russians by Lend-Lease. Trucks transformed a large part of the Red Army into motorized divisions able to move quickly
