|
World War 2:
German Counteroffensive and the Allied Drive to the Rhine
Battle of the Bulge
Operation Nordwind
Drive to the Rhine
Battle of the Bulge
This was the situation when, on December 16, Hitler
struck back with his long-planned counteroffensive. From the bulge created
in Allied lines it came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. Assisted
by the West Wall, excellent defensive terrain along the frontier, and
the Allied supply problems, the Germans through the fall had succeeded
not only in holding Eisenhower's armies to relatively minor gains; they
had at the same time massed behind the front a strong reserve centered
around 11 panzer divisions. Hitler intended to strike with this force
through the forested Ardennes, cross the Meuse River, and recapture
Antwerp, thereby trapping four Allied armies in the north. Though his
field commanders deemed the plan too ambitious for the available resources,
Hitler would sanction no alterations. After the manner of the German
armies in World War I, he took extraordinary precautions to maintain
secrecy. Only a handful of commanders knew of the plan until a short
while before the target date. Though Allied intelligence early noted
the assembling of strong armored forces near Cologne, most intelligence
officers assumed that these were intended to counterattack once the
First and Ninth armies had crossed the Roer. Fog and snow in the wooded
Eifel region opposite the Ardennes successfully cloaked final moves
to attack positions. A small force of English-speaking Germans in Allied
uniforms early began to infiltrate the lines, later to cause confusion
out of proportion to the size of the group. Then, before dawn on December
16, three German armies totaling 25 divisions struck along 70 miles
of Ardennes front thinly manned by 6 American divisions.
Making the main effort to seize vital roads in the north,
the Sixth Panzer Army under Gen. Sepp Dietrich almost immediately ran
into unyielding resistance from the 2d and 99th divisions of Gerow's
5th Corps. For three crucial days these divisions denied the high ground
of Elsenborn Ridge and control of the roads Dietrich needed. Only an
armored task force called Kampfgruppe Peiper from its commander, Lt.
Col. Joachim Peiper, broke through. Committing terrible atrocities against
civilians and soldiers, including the murder of close to 100 American
prisoners near Malmedy, this force drove more than 15 miles before American
reserves bottled it up and clearing weather enabled fighter bombers
to wreak havoc on its tanks.
Progress was better in the center, where the Fifth Panzer
Army under Gen. Hasso von Manteuffel struck the 8th Corps. Here the
American lines were particularly thin, manned by a division seriously
understrength from hard fighting in the November offensive and by an
inexperienced division only recently arrived from the United States.
Everywhere the Germans broke through but at terrible cost. Rallying
from early surprise, the Americans threw in small units at critical
points to deny the Germans villages, defiles, bridges, and road junctions.
Local commanders committed engineer units, quartermaster troops, and
even cooks and bakers to the firing line. Though the Germans encircled
and captured two thirds of the inexperienced 106th Division in front
of the road center of St.-Vith, the division had held its ground long
enough for the Twelfth Army Group commander, General Bradley, to rush
the 7th Armored Division from a reserve position to hold the town.
The most notable German success occurred south of St.-Vith,
where by nightfall of the second day two panzer corps of the Fifth Panzer
Army had broken into Luxembourg and headed toward the Meuse River by
way of the Belgian road centerof Bastogne. In the meantime, however,
General Eisenhower had alerted the only American divisions immediately
available as theater reserves, the 82d and 101st Airborne divisions
under Maj. Gen. (later Gen.) Matthew B. Ridgway's 18th Airborne Corps.
He ordered the divisions to Bastogne, there to be used as the First
Army commander, General Hodges, directed. Thus, unknown to either adversary,
a race was on for Bastogne.
Eisenhower directed also that Patton call off his offensive
against the West Wall in the Saar and turn to strike the south shoulder
of the German penetration. Here the German Seventh Army under Gen. Erich
Brandenberger, charged with holding the south flank, lacked sizable
armored components and had failed to keep pace with the Fifth Panzer
Army's advance. As the armored penetration deepened, Eisenhower put
all forces north of the bulge under Field Marshal Montgomery, while
Bradley retained command of the forces to the south. Montgomery hurried
troops of his own 30th Corps to reserve positions west of the Meuse
to forestall a German crossing of the river.
As the 82d Airborne Division neared Bastogne, General
Hodges ordered the division and headquarters of the 18th Airborne Corps
to continue northward to help support the north flank of the penetration
west of Elsenborn Ridge. The 101st Airborne Division, arriving later,
was to defend Bastogne. As night came on December 18, the advance guard
of the Fifth Panzer Army's panzer columns approached Bastogne, where
remnants of American units were holding outposts until the airborne
division arrived. By the next morning, American positions were strong
enough to discourage the Germans from assaulting the town immediately.
Surrounding Bastogne, the bulk of the panzer units continued toward
the Meuse, but at critical points they continued to meet small American
delaying detachments that demanded a high price in casualties and time
before the Germans might pass. The panzer divisions still were a long
way from the Meuse when, on December 23, the winter skies cleared, and
waves of Allied fighter bombers roared to the attack.
On Christmas Eve an armored spearhead got within 3 miles
of the Meuse at Celles but there encountered the United States 2d Armored
Division, which had hurried down from the north. In a pitched battle
on Christmas Day, the American armor annihilated one German regiment
and threw back what proved to be the high-water mark of the counteroffensive.
The 2d Armored Division was part of General Collins' 7th Corps which,
along with the 18th Airborne Corps, General Hodges had committed to
hold the north flank of the German bulge. There Dietrich's Sixth Panzer
Army, finally despairing of taking Elsenborn Ridge, had followed the
path of Kampfgruppe Peiper and then tried again to swing northwestward
to get across the Meuse. When continued German attacks at St.-Vith at
last forced the 7th Armored Division to abandon that town on December
21, additional roads were opened to reinforce Dietrich's thrust. Nevertheless,
by December 25 Hodges had formed an unyielding line north of the Ambleve
River with 8 divisions reinforcing the 2 divisions that still held Elsenborn
Ridge. The use here for the first time of a newly developed proximity
fuze for artillery shells that exploded them in the air before contact
materially aided Hodges' defense. At Bastogne, meanwhile, the Germans
had launched an all-out effort to take the town. On December 22, when
German emissaries entered the American perimeter with a surrender ultimatum,
the American commander, Brig. Gen. (later Gen.) Anthony C. McAuliffe,
gave his famous response, "Nuts!"
It was the next day, December 23, that the skies cleared
and waves of cargo planes began to resupply the beleaguered troops in
Bastogne. The fighting all around the perimeter was fierce, but morale
remained high. Then, on the day after Christmas, the 4th Armored Division
of Patton's Third Army, having begun to attack four days earlier, broke
through to Bastogne from the south. Hard fighting "remained before
the narrow corridor into the town could be expanded, and the Germans
continued through Jan. 3, 1945, to try to take Bastogne, but without
success. Having relieved Bastogne, Patton's 3d Corps continued to attack
northeastward from the town toward Houffalize in' the center of the
bulge. Collins' 7th Corps of the First Army began a similar attack toward
Houffalize from the north on January 3. The object was to rejoin the
First and Third armies and to trap any German units still remaining
in the western tip of the bulge. Through intense cold and deep, crippling
drifts of snow the American troops fought slowly toward a juncture.
At last, on January 16, patrols of the two armies linked at Houffalize.
Hitler in the meantime had reluctantly concluded that his bold counteroffensive
had failed. On January 8, he ordered Dietrich's Sixth Panzer Army to
fall back to a line close to the German frontier and the rest of his
forces to evacuate the tip of the bulge. Thus the American pincers which
closed on January 16 failed to trap sizable numbers of German troops.
Meanwhile, the 5th Corps of the First Army and the 12th
Corps of the Third Army had broadened the Allied offensive to the east
and headed toward St.-Vith. At almost the same time, on January 12,
the Russians began a new offensive on the eastern front that ripped
great holes in the German line. On January 22, Hitler ordered the depleted
Sixth Panzer Army to begin moving from the western front to reinforce
the east. By the end of January, the American First and Third armies
had reached the German frontier to reestablish the line that had existed
before Hitler's armies came out of the mists of the Eifel. The net effect
of the counteroffensive was to delay Allied attacks about six weeks
at a cost to the Germans of more than 100,000 casualties, 600 tanks
and assault guns, and about 1,600 planes. The Americans incurred approximately
76,000 casualties.
In launching the counteroffensive, Hitler had counted on surprise and
overwhelming initial strength to pierce the thinly manned American positions
swiftly and gain the Meuse by the third day. He had failed to reckon
on the tenacity of the American troops. Though broken into small, disorganized
units, the Americans had continued to fight with elan and determination.
Hitler had failed to reckon also on the swiftness with which the Allies
could move to counter the early blows. The First Army alone in the first
week of the attack moved 248,000 troops and 48,711 vehicles. In one
day, December 17, 60,000 men were moved into the Ardennes. Speedy American
removal or steadfast defense of major supply depots also hurt the Germans,
for in the effort to maintain secrecy most German supplies had been
held far back behind the Rhine. After the skies cleared, Allied aircraft
scored telling blows on supply convoys treading the icy, winding roads
of the Eifel. Though the Luftwaffe mustered surprising strength (as
many as 600 sorties a day during the first two weeks), the German planes
were overwhelmed by Allied fighter strength. On New Year's Day, in a
major attack, approximately 800 German planes caught Allied aircraft
on the ground on airfields in Belgium and the Netherlands, but even
though they destroyed or damaged 260 planes, the Germans themselves
lost 200. These losses the depleted Luftwaffe could ill afford.
The Battle of the Bulge was the greatest pitched battle
on the western front in World War II. A total of 29 German and 33 Allied
divisions (mainly American) participated. The Germans had created a
short-lived bulge in American lines 70 miles wide and 50 miles deep
at its westernmost point. They had paid for it with the loss of priceless
reserves that left the German Army brittle, ready prey for annihilation
once the Allies resumed their offensive in earnest.
Operation Nordwind
In planning for a winter counteroffensive, Hitler at
one point had considered striking not in the Ardennes but in Alsace.
When the Ardennes counteroffensive began to go badly and it became obvious
that Eisenhower was moving divisions from the south into the Ardennes,
he looked again toward Alsace. As the plan was finally determined, the
German First Army was to attack southward from the West Wall through
Bitche and the Wissembourg gap (the latter the site of first German
success in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870), while the Nineteenth Army
launched a subsidiary thrust northward from the bridgehead around Colmar.
The two attacks, under the code name Nordwind, were to link east of
the Saveme gap, trapping that part of the United States Seventh Army
in northern Alsace and recapturing Strasbourg, a city politically important
to the French.
The attacks began just before midnight on December 31,
but this time Allied intelligence had determined what was in the offing.
The thrust from the Colmar bridgehead gained little ground, and the
attack through Bitche was stopped after two days of fighting. But the
main force moving through the Wissembourg gap made such gains that General
Eisenhower seriously contemplated falling back to a stronger line in
the foothills of the Vosges, abandoning Strasbourg. To this the French
commanders and the French government reacted with such vehemence that
Eisenhower reconsidered. By January 25, the Germans had been stopped
with the loss only of the northeastern corner of Alsace as far south
as the Moder River, at the closest point still 12 miles from Strasbourg.
On January 29, the Allied armies in Alsace swung over
to the offensive. A week later, United States and French units linked
in the center of the Colmar pocket. As the Germans began withdrawing
to the east bank of the Rhine, French and United States forces finished
clearing the pocket on February 9. The Seventh Army began a drive just
over a week later to clear northeastern Alsace and at month's end established
a foothold on German soil beyond the Saar River. Though troublesome,
Operation Nordwind had failed either to divert any American troops from
the Ardennes or to forestall the movement of any units earmarked for
that area. The Germans incurred 25,000 casualties; the Americans, 16,000.
Drive to the Rhine
As the First and Third armies eliminated the last of
the bulge in the Ardennes at the end of December, General Bradley wanted
to continue the attack through the Eifel south of the dams on the upper
Roer River, which were still in German hands. Field Marshall Montgomery,
on the other hand, demanded that the main effort continue to be made
in the north and that Bradley's forces be halted to provide strength
there. Though Eisenhower declined to stop Bradley's drive altogether,
he too believed the main effort should continue in the north along the
most direct route to the Ruhr industrial area. Leaving the Ninth Army
under Montgomery's command, he moved divisions from Bradley's First
and Third armies to strengthen the Ninth along the Roer River, northeast
of Aachen, and told Bradley to mount an attack to take the Roer dams
to prevent the Germans from flooding the river.
In the main offensive the Canadian First Army attacked
on February 8 (Operation Veritable) from positions near Nijmegen gained
in the airborne attack in September. While the Canadians drove southeastward
up the west bank of the Rhine, Simpson's Ninth Army on February 12 was
to jump the Roer ( Operation Grenade) and gain the Rhine near Dusseldorf,
and then turn northwestward to link with the Canadians. The Second British
Army meanwhile was to push eastward between the other two armies. As
the Canadians attacked, they ran into the strongest force left to the
Germans in the west. This was Army Group H, organized in the fall under
General Student with the First Parachute and Twenty-fifth armies. They
also encountered mud, age-old enemy of armies, and low-lying ground
flooded by an early thaw. Because the First Army failed to take the
Roer dams until the Germans demolished one dam and flooded the river,
the Ninth Army could not cross the Roer until February 23. Thus the
Germans were able to concentrate additional strength against the Canadians.
Gains were short and casualties high.
On the other hand, the shift of German strength to the
north meant eventual easier going for the Ninth Army. On the eighth
day of attack the army gained the Rhine near Dusseldorf and turned to
meet the Canadians. In 11 days the Ninth Army drove 50 miles with fewer
than 7,300 casualties, while killing approximately 6,000 Germans and
taking 30,000 prisoners. The Canadian First Army had incurred 16,000
casualties. Attacking at the same time as the Ninth Army, a corps of
Hodges' First Army also jumped the Roer. Designed originally to protect
the Ninth Army's flank, the attack was expanded on March 1, and swept
rapidly toward the Rhine against disintegrating resistance. Troops of
the 7th Corps entered Cologne on March 5. Over the protests of his field
commanders, Hitler steadfastly refused to order a strategic withdrawal
behind the Rhine.
Chafing to get into the fight in force, Patton had managed
to continue limited offensives in the Eifel that took Trier (March 1)
and pushed 15 miles inside the German border. On March 3, the Third
Army began a major attack to gain the Rhine north of Coblenz (Koblenz)
and link with the First Army along the Ahr River south of Remagen.
As a combat command of the First Army's 9th Armored
Division approached Remagen on the afternoon of March 7, the men were
astonished to see the Ludendorff railroad bridge across the Rhine still
standing. Confused by overlapping command channels and by the recent
transfer of the general who had been in over-all charge, the Germans
at the bridge .had delayed too long in demolishing it. As a United States
platoon rushed toward the bridge, the Germans set off demolition charges,
but they failed to do more than damage it. In the face of small-arms
fire from the east bank, the American riflemen charged across the bridge.
In a • matter of minutes the Allies had a bridgehead beyond the
Rhine. Though General Eisenhower had intended no crossing in the Remagen
area, he acted quickly to exploit the coup. Three days after the first
crossing, the First Army had 1 armored and 3 infantry divisions across
the river. Denuding other parts of the Rhine front, the Germans launched
savage attacks against the bridgehead, but to no avail. Though the Luftwaffe
tried time after time to destroy the bridge from the air, it stood until
March 17. Weakened by hits from long-range artillery, the Ludendorff
bridge collapsed that day, but by then engineers had spanned the river
in other places.
Patton's Third Army meanwhile had pierced the Eifel
with swift armored thrusts that trapped thousands of Germans and cleared
the entire region north of the Moselle by March 11. Patton turned then
to jump the Moselle and assist Patch's Seventh Army in sweeping the
Saar and the Palatinate. This was accomplished by March 25 at a cost
to the Germans of 100,000 prisoners. In the entire battle of the Rhineland,
the Germans lost more than 250,000 men. Even before the Saar region
was clear, Patton launched a surprise thrust across the Rhine. Shortly
before midnight on March 22, the 5th Division sneaked across near Oppenheim
against only scattered small-arms fire. Before daylight of March 23,
6 infantry battalions were on the east bank at a cost of only 28 casualties.
With the clearing of the Saar and the Palatinate, Allied
armies held the west bank of the Rhine from Arnhem to the Swiss border.
Except for fortifications on the east bank from Karlsruhe to Switzerland,
the West Wall lay behind. Gone too were the days of painfully slow advances
through mud, ice, and snow. And through it all the mammoth aerial campaign
continued, turning German cities to rubble. In one day in March, Allied
planes flew 11,000 sorties. Though on the German side jet-propelled
fighters at last began to take to the skies in impressive numbers, they
were too late to change the course of the war. By the end of March,
after dropping a record 245,000 tons of bombs during the month, Allied
strategic bombers were almost out of targets. The German units that
managed to escape to the east bank of the Rhine made an impressive array
on paper, but in reality they equaled only about 26 complete divisions.
General Eisenhower's forces meanwhile had increased to 85 divisions,
5 of them airborne and 23 of them armored. His total command now numbered
4,000,000 men.
On March 10, soon after loss of the Remagen bridge;
Hitler relieved Field Marshal von Rundstedt as commander in chief in
the west. In his place he installed Field Marshal Albert Kesselring,
former German commander in Italy. But it would take more than a new
commander to bring any order out of the chaos that now enveloped the
German armies in the west. Army Group G in the south was weakest of
all. Army Group B in the center, preoccupied with the Remagen bridgehead,
was in no position to stop a major attack to break out of the bridgehead.
Only Army Group H in the north with the First Parachute and Twenty-fifth
armies had any real strength left. Committed to protect the vital Ruhr
industrial area, even this group was thinly spread.
In contrast to American commanders, Field Marshal Montgomery
left nothing to chance in his preparations to put his Twenty-first Army
Group across the Rhine (Operation Plunder). Air attacks to isolate the
battlefield began two weeks before the target date for the crossing,
and the First Allied Airborne Army was assigned to drop 2 airborne divisions
in support of the operation. A smoke screen 50 miles long covered the
preparations. Behind heavy artillery fires the British Second Army started
crossing the Rhine between Xanten and Rees soon after nightfall on March
23. Before daylight the next morning, the Ninth Army also began to cross
the river south of Wesel. The Ninth Army in particular met limited opposition.
The army's casualties for the first day were 41 killed, 450 wounded,
and 7 missing, surprisingly low for an attack against a defended river
line. The airborne divisions-1 United States and 1 British-began landing
in midmorning of March 24, and by nightfall both were in contact with
British ground troops. By the end of the day the two Allied armies had
established a firm bridgehead as deep as 6 miles in places.
|
|
