November 30, 2024

80th Anniversary of German Offensive

By WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

Eighty years ago this month, the German Army launched its last major offensive on the Western Front of Europe. The attack began on 16 December 1944 at 0530 in a manner similar to those of the First World War: with a massive artillery barrage along an eighty-mile line. There followed, however, an assault led by the 6th Panzer Army. The swift-moving column quickly opened a large salient. In Chapter 17 of Triumph and Tragedy, the final volume of his memoirs, Winston Churchill described the events known as the Battle of the Bulge.

A heavy blow now impended. Within six days a crisis burst upon us. TheAllied decision to strike hard from Aachen in the north as well as through Alsace in the south had left our centre very weak. In the Ardennes sector a single corps, the VIIIth American, of four divisions, held a front of seventy-five miles. The risk was foreseen and deliberately accepted, but the consequences were grave and might have been graver. By a remarkable feat the enemy gathered about seventy divisions on their Western Front, of which fifteen were armoured. Many were under strength and needed rest and re-equipment, but one formation, the Sixth Panzer Army, was known to be strong and in good fettle. This potential spearhead had been carefully watched while it lay in reserve east of Aachen. When the fighting on that front died down in early December it vanished for a while from the ken of our Intelligence, and bad flying weather hindered our efforts to trace it. [Allied Supreme Commander] Eisenhower suspected that something was afoot, though its scope and violence came as a surprise.

The Germans had indeed a major plan. [Field Marshal von] Rundstedt assembled two Panzer armies, the Fifth and Sixth, and the Seventh Army, a total of ten Panzer and fourteen infantry divisions. This great force, led by its armour, was intended to break through our weak centre in the Ardennes to the river Meuse, swing north and north-west, cut the Allied line in two, seize the port of Antwerp, and sever the life-line of our northern armies. This bold bid was planned by Hitler, who would brook no changes in it on the part of his doubting generals. In its support the remnants of the German Air Force were assembled for a final effort, while paratroops, saboteurs, and agents in Allied uniforms were all given parts to play.

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The attack began on December 16 under a heavy artillery barrage. At its northern flank the Sixth Panzer Army ran into the right of the First U.S. Army in the act of advancing towards the Roer dams. After a swaying battle the enemy were held. Farther south the Germans broke through on a narrow front, but the determined defence of St. Vith, where the 7th U.S. Armoured Division specially distinguished itself, hindered them for several critical days. The Sixth Panzer Army launched a new spearhead to strike west and then northwards at the Meuse above Liége. The Fifth Panzer Army meanwhile drove through the centre of the VIIIth U.S. Corps, by-passed St. Vith and Bastogne, and penetrated deeply to Marche and towards the Meuse at Dinant.

Although the time and weight of the attack surprised the Allied High Command its importance and purpose were quickly recognised. They resolved to strengthen the “shoulders” of the breakthrough, hold the Meuse crossings both east and south of Namur, and mass mobile troops to crush the salient from north and south. Eisenhower acted speedily. He stopped all Allied attacks in progress and brought up four American divisions from reserve, and six more from the south. Two airborne divisions, one of them the 6th British, came from England. North of the salient the British XXXth Corps, of four divisions, which had just come out of the line on the river Roer, was concentrated between Liége and Louvain behind the American First and Ninth Armies. These latter threw in all their reserves to extend a defensive flank westwards from Malmedy.

By severing the front of [U.S.] General Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group the Germans had made it impossible for him to exercise effective command from his headquarters in Luxembourg over his two armies north of the bulge. General Eisenhower therefore very wisely placed [British Field Marshal] Montgomery in temporary command of all Allied troops in the north, while Bradley retained the Third U.S. Army [commanded by General Patton] and was charged with holding and counter-attacking the enemy from the south. Corresponding arrangements were made for the tactical air forces….

Three of our reinforcing divisions lined the Meuse south of Namur. Bradley concentrated a corps at Arlon and sent the American 101st Airborne Division to secure the important road junctions at Bastogne. The German armour swung north of Bastogne and sought to break their way north-westwards, leaving their infantry to capture the town. The 101st, with some armoured units, were isolated, and for a week beat off all attacks.

The wheel of the Fifth and Sixth Panzer Armies produced bitter fighting around Marche, which lasted till December 26. By then the Germans were exhausted, although at one time they were only four miles from the Meuse and had penetrated over sixty miles. Bad weather and low ground fogs had kept our air forces out of the first week of the battle, but on December 23 flying conditions got better and they intervened with tremendous effect. Heavy bombers attacked railways and centres of movement behind the enemy lines, and tactical air forces played havoc in his forward areas, starving him of reinforcements, fuel, food, and ammunition. Strategic raids on German refineries helped to deny him petrol and slacken the advance.

Baulked of their foremost objective, the Meuse, the Panzers turned savagely on Bastogne. The American 101st Division had been reinforced on December 26 by part of the 4th U.S. Armoured Division, and though vastly outnumbered held the town grimly for another week. Before the end of December the German High Command must have realised, however unwillingly, that the battle was lost, for Patton’s counter-offensive from Arlon, which Started on the 22nd, was steadily if slowly progressing over the snow-choked countryside towards Houffalize. The enemy made one last bid, this time in the air. On January 1 they made a violent low-level surprise attack on all our forward airfields. Our losses were heavy, though promptly replaced, but the Luftwaffe lost more than they could afford in their final massed attack of the war….

From the north two American corps, with the XXXth British on their western flank, pressed down upon the enemy. On January 7 [1945] they crossed the Laroche-Vielsalm road, an important escape route for the Germans. Struggling through snowstorms, the two wings of the Allied attack slowly drew closer, until they met at Houffalize on January 16. The Germans were forced steadily eastwards and harassed continually from the air, until by the end of the month they were back behind their frontier, with nothing to show for their supreme effort except ruinous losses of material and casualties amounting to a hundred and twenty thousand men….

This was the enemy’s final offensive of the war. At the time it caused us no little anxiety. Our own advance had to be postponed, but we benefited in the end. The Germans could not replace their losses, and our subsequent battles on the Rhine, though severe, were undoubtedly eased. The German High Command, and even Hitler, must have been disillusioned. Taken by surprise, Eisenhower and his commanders acted swiftly, but they will agree that the major credit lies elsewhere. In Montgomery’s words, “The Battle of the Ardennes was won primarily by the staunch fighting qualities of the American soldier.”