THE rapid recovery of the Wehrmacht, the long delay in opening Antwerp and the early approach of winter, which gave such encouragement to Hitler, compelled Eisenhower to reconsider his strategic plans. In Brussels on October 18th he conferred with Bradley and Montgomery. They were agreed that another major effort must be made to reach the Rhine and gain a substantial bridgehead before the winter, but it was now evident that Antwerp would not be open much before the end of November and that any autumn offensive would have to be maintained from Normandy, Le Havre and the Channel ports. Montgomery therefore repeated his familiar arguments that they had not the resources for a general offensive and that they should concentrate on capturing the Ruhr. The essential condition of success was, he said, that there should be no offensive operations south of the Ardennes, except in so far as these could be sustained from Marseille.
Eisenhower did not accept this latter contention, but he agreed that the Ruhr was their primary objective and that the attack on the Saar should not be pressed until the armies north of the Ardennes had reached the Rhine. He agreed further that the capture of the Ruhr was a task for two armies under command of one man. He decided, however, that the armies should be American and that the man should be Bradley. This was a diplomatic decision. If Patton had to be restrained again, it was essential that the restraint should be imposed in the interests of an American, not a British plan, of Bradley, not Montgomery.
The plan which emerged from this conference was that the main drive to the Rhine should be made through the Aachen Gap by the First and Ninth U.S. Armies under Bradley’s direction.{505} Their offensive would begin at the start of November and, once they had crossed the intermediate barrier of the Roer River, First Army would strike east to Cologne and Bonn, while Ninth Army wheeled north to Krefeld. In support of these operations, Second British Army, attacking from the Nijmegen area on or about November 10th, would clear the Reichswald and advance south between the Maas and the Rhine so that the Germans could be squeezed out of the Lower Rhineland by converging thrusts. Thus, it was hoped, the Allies would gain the line of the river on a front of a hundred miles from Arnhem to Bonn. The Rhine would then be crossed by First Army south of Cologne and by Ninth Army north of Düsseldorf, and the Ruhr would be captured by a double enveloping movement.
At Brussels “no date was set for an attack by Patton’s forces. The Third Army, it was agreed, would resume its advance ‘when logistics; permit.’{506} Its operations, Eisenhower’s directive expressly said, would be “subsidiary to” and “so timed as best to assist the main effort in the north.”{507}
Bradley placed a liberal interpretation on these instructions, for, as he told Patton, he believed that “if all the armies...attacked simultaneously, it might well end the war.”{508} Accordingly, the orders which Bradley issued on October 21st provided not for a concentrated offensive north of the Ardennes but for a general advance to the Rhine by his three armies: the First and Ninth to attack on November 5th and the Third five days later.
This was Bradley’s intention when, on October 27th, the Germans launched a strong spoiling attack against an American armoured division which, on loan to Montgomery, was holding the southern sector of the British front east of Eindhoven. Although this attack was contained by the end of the month, it delayed the clearing of the area south of the Maas and prevented Second Army meeting the target date of November 10th for the attack on the Reichswald. It meant also that Montgomery could not immediately return the two American divisions which Bradley had lent him. These divisions were to have been available to First Army at the start of November and without them Hodges did not feel strong enough to begin his offensive.
In these circumstances a Supreme Commander exercising real control over the battle would have intervened to ensure that this setback did not disrupt his plan. He would have ordered Bradley to reinforce Hodges and assist Montgomery so that the primary task, the offensive in the Lower Rhineland, could be carried out as planned. Eisenhower made no such move. Nor did Bradley, for he realised that the necessary strength could be provided for Hodges only at the expense of Patton, and he had always been reluctant to make Third Army assume a subsidiary role. On November 2nd, therefore, finding that Patton was ready to “jump off on twenty-four hours’ notice,” Bradley authorised him to attack as soon as the weather allowed.
Bradley’s eagerness to give Patton his head, and his inclination to rely more on him than on Hodges, reflected both his estimate of the two men and the history of his relations with them. Hodges was a competent but shy man who lived in the shadow of a frustrated past. He had once commanded Third U.S. Army but had been supplanted by Patton when this Army was sent to England for the invasion. Then, on Eisenhower’s initiative, Hodges was appointed Deputy Commander of First Army with the intention that he should take over when Bradley went to 12th Army Group. After the Normandy break-out Hodges was nominally on an equal footing with Patton, but he had never held a field command before and he was eclipsed by Third Army’s brilliant and forceful leader.
Hodges was at a further disadvantage vis-à-vis Patton, for he had been Bradley’s deputy, whereas Patton had been Bradley’s superior until the unfortunate occasion in Sicily when Patton slapped the face of a shell-shocked man in hospital. At that time Patton was commanding Seventh U.S. Army, in which Bradley had a corps, and was strongly favoured to lead the American forces in the cross-Channel assault. This appointment fell to Bradley, who was, says Eisenhower, “emotionally stable.” Yet Bradley was forever conscious that Patton was not only his senior in rank, but also his superior in tactical skill and experience. Having great faith in the professional ability of his former chief, Bradley naturally reposed more trust in him than in Hodges. This was particularly the case when there was a possibility of exploitation. Hodges had been brought up with infantry, but Patton had all the dash and drive of the cavalryman who had been converted to armour.
Patton now assured Bradley that he could get to the Saar in three days and “easily breach the West Wall.” With six infantry and three armoured divisions, plus two groups (i.e. brigades) of mechanised cavalry, Third Army numbered approximately a quarter of a million officers and men. Its opponents, the First German Army, had a total strength of only 86,000. Seven of the eight enemy divisions were strung out on a front of 75 miles and the only reserve was the 11th Panzer Division with 69 tanks. While the German formations were necessarily dispersed defensively, Patton, with command of the air and ample mobility on the ground, had the capacity to concentrate overwhelming force at any point he chose. Even on a basis of direct comparison he had an advantage of three to one in men, eight to one in tanks and a “tremendous superiority in the artillery arm.”{509} By means which the records do not reveal, he had built up such substantial stocks of ammunition that his guns could put down treble the fire that was available to the Germans. With these advantages, and with the aid of an initial bombardment by 1,300 Fortresses and Liberators, Patton expected to achieve a quick, decisive break-through which would carry him to the Rhine. His plan was that XII Corps (Eddy) should make the main effort, attacking from the Nancy sector and driving north-cast to the Saar. Starting twenty-four hours later, XX Corps (Walker) was to envelop and capture Metz, thus clearing the way for Patton’s left wing to advance to the Siegfried Line north of the Saar.
Patton decided to launch his offensive on November 8th at the latest, but throughout the three previous days it rained almost incessantly. By the 7th the rivers which ran athwart the front, already flooded by the October rains, were breaking their banks. Within two days “every bridge on the Moselle River, except one at Pont-à-Mousson, was cut, and the Seille River [in the XII Corps sector] had increased in width from two hundred to five hundred feet.”{510} The fields were sodden and movement off the roads, even by tracked vehicles, was almost impossible. On the evening of the 7th Eddy urged Patton to “hold off the attack on account of bad weather and swollen rivers.”{511} Patton asked him to name his successor. Eddy attacked next morning, but his troops went into action in a drenching downpour, with no support from the air until late in the afternoon and then very little.
That day the three infantry divisions of XII Corps, attacking on a thirty-mile front, gained their initial objectives, but their advance was slow and arduous and Eddy had no chance of unleashing his armour. On November 9th in rain and snow two armoured divisions endeavoured to drive through, but soon found that they could not manœuvre across country and that on all possible avenues of exploitation the enemy had established road-blocks in depth. Mud and minefields restricted their progress and gave the enemy time to deploy his mobile reserves and head off the American columns while his infantry fell back to new positions already prepared.
The frustration of Patton’s hope of a quick break-through was not entirely due to the weather. It was also the result of his failure to profit by the lesson of the campaign in Normandy. There in the first attempt to break out, the Americans had attacked all along the line and had succeeded at great cost merely in pushing the Germans back a few miles. Before the second attempt, Montgomery had persuaded Bradley to make a concentrated assault on a very narrow front at St. Lô. The breakthrough which resulted had been brilliantly exploited, but in the exaltation of success neither Bradley nor Patton appear to have remembered that the foundation of their victory was Montgomery’s insistence on concentration.
In Lorraine Balck, the commander of Army Group G, anticipating that Patton would attack on all sectors, had laid his plans accordingly. The forward German positions were some forty miles west of the Siegfried Line, and this cushion of ‘expendable territory’ allowed Balck to pursue a policy of elastic defence, as Ludendorff had done in 1917. The best answer to these tactics was not a co-ordinated advance along the entire front, but a concerted attack on a narrow sector, followed by a deep penetration. Once such a penetration had been made, the American armour could not have been checked by the slender reserves at Balck’s disposal.
As it was, however, with every division trying to make a breakthrough, the artillery support was dispersed, and Eddy was able to gain only fifteen miles in eight days. The German line sagged, but did not break, for at no point was it subjected to an overpowering onslaught. Meanwhile, the enveloping attack against Metz, also made on a broad front, was similarly checked by skilful and stubborn defence. Even after a week of heavy fighting, the city was not encircled.
When the Third Army offensive began, Bradley hoped that this would attract to Lorraine German reserves which otherwise might be available to oppose First and Ninth Armies. This hope did not materialise. Knowing that he could afford to fall back to the Siegfried Line in the Saar sector and expecting that the main Allied effort would be made north of the Ardennes, von Rundstedt kept the bulk of his mobile forces concentrated to meet the attack from Aachen. He moved one infantry division south from the Ardennes, but, apart from this and an armoured battlegroup from OKW reserve, Balck had to rely on his own resources. Thus by November 16th, although Patton was still highly optimistic, he had gained no strategic success. But he had consumed vast quantities of ammunition which were soon to be needed by Hodges and Simpson.
In the protracted battle for Aachen First U.S. Army had drawn heavily on its stocks, and, says its Report of Operations, “ammunition became a matter of especial concern during the latter part of October.”{512} By mid-November the position had improved, but neither First nor Ninth Armies was able to build up a reserve adequate to support a prolonged operation. This situation was due partly to the consistent delivery to Patton of his ‘share’ of the available tonnage, regardless of Hodges’s greater need; and partly to the excessive optimism of the late summer which had led to a slackening of production in the United States and of shipments to Europe. The ammunition crisis became so acute that Eisenhower himself broadcast a special appeal to the American people for increased output and more rapid dispatch. The restriction which this crisis imposed on the employment of their artillery made it the more important that Hodges and Simpson should not attack without maximum air support.
The plan was that the offensive should be launched by four divisions of First Army and four of Ninth Army on a 25-mile front between the Hürtgen Forest and Geilenkirchen. On this sector since the middle of September the Americans had eaten away the main fortifications of the Siegfried Line, but had not been able to make a clean breach and, by holding Aachen for a month, the Germans had gained time to build a new line east of that city. This line ran through the dense and hilly Hürtgen Forest into a belt of factories and coal-mines around Stolberg and then across open fields until it rejoined the West Wall proper at Geilenkirchen. Some permanent fortifications were incorporated in this line* and it gained added strength from the forest in the south and the tangled industrial area in the centre. Even in the more open northern sector in front of Ninth Army, the compact stone villages provided readymade strongholds, for many of the houses had ‘pill-box basements’ roofed with concrete and fitted with embrasures.
In this constricted area there was little room for manoeuvre and the possibility of exploitation was further curtailed by a series of minefields, heavily infested with new types of mines which, being mounted in wooden or glass containers, could not be located by the electronic detectors then in use. To locate these mines the Americans had to resort to the hazardous expedient of prodding for them with long-handled pitchforks. Moreover, this was the most strongly defended sector of the entire Western Front. Here Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army had five infantry divisions, backed by two panzer and two panzer grenadier divisions, all much below establishment but heavily supported by artillery and mortars.
Although the strength of the forces and fortifications in this sector was well known to the Americans, Bradley’s plan did not provide for any preliminary diversion, nor even a holding attack, against the long and thinly-garrisoned front facing the Ardennes. He intended to rely on being able to crush the defences east of Aachen with an overwhelming bombardment by aircraft and artillery and to ‘steam-roller’ his way through in what General Marshall was to describe as “a charging offensive.”
The necessity of waiting for good flying weather delayed the start of this offensive for five days. When it was finally launched on November 16th, 2,500 American and British bombers dropped more than 9,400 tons of high explosives on the enemy’s forward positions and reserve areas in the heaviest tactical bombardment ever made. The bombing was accurate and intense, but the Germans were well dug in and, though they were badly shaken, they recovered quickly and came up full of fight.
The story of the attack which followed is summed up in one sentence from the history of Ninth Army: “The enemy knowing how the attack must come, had only to block it head-on and inflict the maximum casualties.” The German outpost line was lightly held and was quickly overrun at many points on the first day, but after that it became a matter of assaulting each strong-point in turn with little support from armour, because the drenched fields soon became quagmires, and with inadequate support from artillery because of the ammunition shortage. What might have been achieved with the aid of heavier and more concentrated artillery fire was apparent from the experience of the two divisions, one British and one American, which assaulted the intact defences of the Siegfried Line at Geilenkirchen, where Bradley’s front joined Montgomery’s. This attack gained rapid success, for American fire-power was reinforced by British guns which, as the Ninth Army’s historian says, “had ample ammunition to permit artillery support on a far more lavish scale than American supply permitted.”{513}
On the rest of the front, resolute defence, repeated counter-attacks and recurrent rain reduced the battle to infantry slogging of the nastiest kind. Daily gains were measured in yards. By the end of November Ninth Army had reached the Roer River from Jülich to Linnich, but it was another two weeks before First Army had closed up to the river opposite Düren.
Thus, after a bitter month which had taken heavy toll of his infantry, Bradley’s troops were only eight miles deeper into Germany. Before them lay the flooded Roer, on the east bank of which the Wehrmacht was manning a new line. The real strength of this line lay not in its prepared defences, but in the torrential floods which the Germans could release at will from seven dams on the upper reaches of the river. Bradley’s engineers estimated, rightly, that if these dams were blown, the rush of water would sweep away all bridges downstream and make the river impassable for at least a week. Hodges had already made two attempts to capture these dams and the R.A.F. had tried to burst them with its heaviest bombs—all in vain. While the Germans held the headwaters, Bradley dared not send his armies across the Roer. The risk of their being cut off and destroyed was too great, particularly as the Germans had moved Sixth SS Panzer Army west of the Rhine at the end of November and had deployed it to counter any further advance towards Cologne and Düsseldorf.
On November 18th, two days after the start of the offensive from Aachen, Patton completed the isolation of Metz and renewed his attack towards the Saar with increased vigour. Next day, far to the south on the extreme right of the Allied front, where the Germans were holding the rugged line of the Vosges Mountains, the First French Army broke through the Belfort Gap and reached the Upper Rhine and the outskirts of Mulhouse after an advance of 25 miles in one day. The collapse of its southern hinge weakened the entire Vosges Line, the northern wing of which was already under heavy pressure from Seventh U.S. Army. On the 22nd Haislip’s XV Corps forced the Saverne Gap and on the following day, with the 2nd French Armoured Division in the van, swept on almost unopposed to liberate Strasbourg. This brilliant stroke split the German front in two, for it fell at the junction of the First and Nineteenth Armies, and even the intervention of the rebuilt Panzer Lehr Division (released by Hitler from his strategic reserve) could not restore the breach.
The German situation in the Vosges was now extremely critical. Between the Seventh American Army at Strasbourg and the First French Army at Mulhouse the remnants of the Nineteenth German Army were compressed into what became known as the ‘Colmar Pocket.’ The Germans were still holding the main heights of the Vosges, but they were vulnerable to flank attacks from north and south along the Rhine Plain. If this pocket could be cleared, the Allies would be able to establish a strong defensive front along the Upper Rhine and thus set free considerable forces for offensive operations in areas of greater strategic importance. On the day after the fall of Strasbourg, therefore, Hitler gave orders that Nineteenth Army’s bridgehead west of the Rhine must be held at all costs, and, to ensure that it was, gave command of this sector to Heinrich Himmler.
That same day Eisenhower and Bradley—en route to confer with Devers, the commander of 6th Army Group—called at the H.Q. of Third Army. There Patton suggested to them that XV Corps should now turn north from the line Saverne-Strasbourg, instead of south against the Colmar Pocket, and should join his offensive against the Saar. Eisenhower was reluctant to agree to this plan, for he knew the importance of eliminating the pocket and securing the river line from Strasbourg to Basle. Later in the day, however, Eisenhower was assured by Devers that “the German Nineteenth [Army] has ceased to exist as a tactical force,” and that the remnants could easily be dealt with by the French. In the light of this opinion Eisenhower agreed that both corps of Seventh Army should turn north in support of Patton.
The immediate result of this decision was that the Germans in the Colmar Pocket were obliged to meet attack from only one flank by an army whose strength was already spent. The Germans retained their bridgehead west of the Rhine and from it, as Eisenhower says, “later exerted a profound and adverse effect on our operations.”{514}
When he decided to reinforce the drive against the Saar front, Eisenhower hoped that a combined offensive by the Third and Seventh Armies would “attract considerable German resources from the northern and central sectors” and might “resolve the impasse at the Roer.”{515} That hope was not fulfilled, for this offensive was directed against the strongest sector of the West Wall and, as the pressure increased, the Germans fell back in fair order to the shelter of their fortifications. No reserves were diverted from the Roer. On the contrary, von Rundstedt was able to insist on the return of Panzer Lehr to reserve. By the start of December, although Patton was hammering at the Siegfried Line, west of Saarbrücken, he knew that he could not amass the resources, particularly the ammunition, to support any large-scale assault before the middle of the month.
On November 20th, when Eisenhower had asked the Combined Chiefs of Staff for a modification of ‘Unconditional Surrender,’ he had declared that there was “no sign of an early collapse of German morale in the west.” On December 4th he wrote to Marshall that the enemy “should be able to maintain a strong defensive front for some time, assisted by weather, floods and muddy ground.” From the Swiss border almost as far as Aachen the Allies were halted before the Siegfried Line, and in the Vosges the Germans still had a foothold on French soil. From the Upper Roer, east of Aachen, to the mouth of the Maas the Allies were held in check by rivers. It seemed now that the virtual stalemate of the late autumn would extend well into the winter.
The overall objective of Eisenhower’s strategy throughout the autumn had been to gain the line of the Rhine or, failing that, to bring the reserves in Germany to battle west of the Rhine and to destroy them there, just as the reserves in France had been brought to battle west of the Seine and destroyed in Normandy. The first move in execution of this strategy, the drive for Brussels and Antwerp, had been completely successful because Patton had been halted on the Meuse while Hodges and Dempsey were advancing into Belgium. All subsequent moves, however, had failed to gain decisive success because none had been made in sufficient strength. In each case frustration had followed from the failure to concentrate on the primary objective. The Moselle offensive had been undertaken at the same time as MARKET GARDEN. The first attack towards the Saar in November had been made at the expense of the drive for Cologne. The second had prevented the clearing of the Colmar Pocket. The net result of these abortive offensives had been to increase Eisenhower’s responsibilities and extend his forces without adding to his security, except in Holland, or gaining any objective which vitally reduced the enemy’s defensive power. The German front and Hitler’s new strategic reserve were still intact.
The extent to which his strategy had been thwarted was not appreciated by Eisenhower, for he assured Marshall that “there can be no question of the value of our present operations...our problem is to continue our attacks as long as the results achieved are so much in our favour, while at the same time preparing for a full-out heavy offensive when weather conditions become favourable.” The wisdom of persisting with the strategy of the past two months was strongly challenged by Montgomery. In a letter to Eisenhower on November 30th, he declared that the Allies had suffered “a strategic reverse.” They had achieved none of the objectives outlined in the SHAEF Directive issued after the Brussels Conference, and had “no hope of doing so.” He argued that they must now have a new plan and must abandon the policy of attacking in so many places at once. He suggested that the concentration necessary for success could be assured only by the appointment of a single commander to control the land battle under Eisenhower’s general direction. The letter ended with a request for a further meeting between Eisenhower, Bradley and himself. No one else need be present, said Montgomery, except Chiefs of Staff “who must not speak.”
It is not surprising that this letter, and especially the final suggestion, should have made Eisenhower “hot under the collar.”{516} He replied with a forthright defence of his policy, denying that there had been any “strategic reverse” and insisting that the Allies could have maintained their offensive in September if they (meaning Montgomery) had established a deeper bridgehead—and thereby a better administrative base—in Normandy in June and July.{517} Eisenhower said he had no intention of curtailing the operations of Devers or Bradley in Eastern France, because they were cleaning up the Allied right flank and providing him with what he called a “capability of concentration.” Eisenhower agreed that there should be another conference, and added that he would bring his Chief of Staff who would be free to speak if he wished.
Before this meeting there was a further exchange in which each assured the other that more had been read into his letter than had been intended and each expressed anxiety lest any disagreement about the campaign should upset their close relationship. The strength of that relationship lay in their mutual frankness and, to use Montgomery’s own phrase, in Eisenhower’s “kindly forbearance.”{518} However blunt the language of their wartime letters, they were written on the ‘Dear Ike— Dear Monty’ basis throughout and their expressions of friendship were invariable and sincere. Some of Montgomery’s letters and signals during these trying months might well have been regarded as insubordination by a superior who was less understanding. Eisenhower knew, however, that, although Montgomery would always press his case in the strongest terms down to the moment of decision, once the decision was firm he would carry out his orders to the letter and would never seek to gain his own way by intrigue. It was these personal qualities that Eisenhower valued and respected.
The meeting Montgomery had asked for was held on December 7th at Maastricht. There the plans and intentions of the Brussels Conference were reaffirmed. The lower Rhineland was to be cleared by converging offensives from the Roer and the Reichswald as soon as Bradley had captured the Roer dams. The target date was January 12th. Montgomery proposed that until then the Allies should husband their resources and undertake no large-scale offensive operations. Eisenhower argued, however, that they “could not afford to sit still and do nothing, while the German perfected his defences and the training of his troops.” “My basic decision,” he says, “was to continue the offensive to the extreme limit of our ability.”{519} Accordingly, he authorised Patton to make one more effort to capture the Saar before Christmas.
On the way to Maastricht for this meeting Eisenhower drove through the Ardennes and noticed how thinly held this sector was. For miles behind the front he saw little sign of American troops, transport or installations. He had already questioned Bradley about the vulnerability of this sector where there were only four divisions on a front of seventy-five miles, and he now raised the matter again, though not in Montgomery’s presence. Bradley replied that he could not make himself absolutely secure in the Ardennes without weakening his offensive concentrations on the Roer and in the Saar, and that if the Germans were to attack in the Ardennes they could be promptly counter-attacked from either flank and would be stopped before they reached the Meuse. He had taken the precaution, he said, of not placing in this area any supply installations of major importance.
None of the commanders who met at Maastricht that day believed that the Germans would attempt any large-scale counter-offensive. They feared that the enemy might be able to maintain a strong defensive front so long as the weather—the worst for fifty years—prevented the Allies from making full use of their air power and armour. They were disturbed by the revival of the enemy’s morale and the capacity he had so far shown to find replacements for the infantry which, according to Allied estimates, were being destroyed at the rate of five or six divisions a week. The evidence of the past month, however, was that von Rundstedt’s infantry resources were fast becoming exhausted, for rebuilt divisions had been appearing in the line with meagre equipment and only six weeks’ training.
The problem of most concern to Eisenhower was his failure to compel the Germans to commit their new strategic reserves of armour. It was now known that the four divisions of Sixth SS Panzer Army had been re-equipped east of the Rhine and that another four, if not five, armoured divisions had also been withdrawn for refitting. On the other hand, the only panzer formation which had been engaged since it was rebuilt, Panzer Lehr, had “proved lamentably short of training and underequipped with untested equipment.”{520} There was no reason to believe that other refitted divisions were in better shape and in this case it was most unlikely that von Rundstedt would employ them prematurely. And the Field-Marshal, it seemed, was now in full command. The conduct of operations since his return in September had been so efficient and successful that the Allied Intelligence assumed von Rundstedt was no longer obliged to listen to ‘intuitions from afar.”
At the start of December the great unanswered question was: How and where would von Rundstedt use Sixth SS Panzer Army? At Montgomery’s H.Q. Williams, the chief Intelligence officer, had addressed himself to this question on December 3rd. His conclusion was:
Von Rundstedt is unlikely to risk his strategic reserve until the Allies advance over the Roer...or until the Allies offer the enemy opportunity to take them off balance so that an abrupt counterstroke could put paid to future Allied prospects for the winter. This latter is unlikely for it demands five elements not readily to be found together: First, vital ground, and there is nowhere obvious for him to go which would hurt us deeply. The bruited drive on Antwerp— a ‘dash for the wire’ as of old—is just not within his potential. Secondly, he needs bad weather else our air superiority will disrupt his assembly; yet this very weather would clog his own intent. Third, he must find us tired and unbalanced. Fourth, he needs adequate fuel stocks....Lastly, he needs more infantry and of better quality in better terrain and weather....It seems more probable, then, if von Rundstedt continues to conduct operations unimpeded, that he will wait to smash our bridgeheads over the Roer, then hold his hand. He is sixty-nine.
Nevertheless, there were continued rumours of a great offensive designed to recapture Antwerp, and during the next fortnight the information reaching Allied Intelligence indicated that something special was afoot. A captured document revealed that Hitler himself had ordered “the formation of a special unit for employment on reconnaissance and special tasks on the Western Front.” The personnel, it said, would be volunteers “fully trained in single combat” and must have “knowledge of the English language and also the American dialect.” For these special troops all units were to send in any “captured U.S. clothing, equipment, weapons and vehicles.” Commenting on this order, First U.S. Army Intelligence said “it obviously presages special operations for sabotage, attacks on Command Posts and other vital installations by infiltrated and parachuted specialists.”
By December 10th American Intelligence was aware that five German divisions had left Holland for destinations unknown; that the H.Q. of Fifteenth German Army had moved from Holland to the Roer sector where it was reported to have relieved Fifth Panzer Army; that this Army’s new H.Q. was alleged to.be at Coblenz; that between Coblenz and the Luxemburg frontier there were three of the refitted panzer divisions; and that several new Volksgrenadier divisions had arrived in the Eifel, the German end of the Ardennes.
All these straws in the wind gave portent of a coming storm but there was no evidence that Sixth SS Panzer Army was moving from the Cologne Plain into the Eifel, and Allied Intelligence continued to believe that the storm would not break until the Americans had crossed the Roer River. Von Rundstedt, they argued, was too good a soldier and too wise a man to cast away his strategic reserve in a gamble which was bound to fail. This was the basic miscalculation.{521} Allied Intelligence made the mistake of assuming that since the attack would be a military failure, therefore it would not be tried. But German strategy was no longer governed by purely military considerations. The decision lay not with the Field-Marshal but with the Führer.
At the end of October when Hitler’s Ardennes plan was presented to von Rundstedt and Model, they replied that the “forces available were much too weak for such far-reaching objectives.”{522} They agreed that there should be an offensive in the West, but suggested that it should be designed merely to ‘pinch out’ the Aachen Salient and to restore the Siegfried Line in this, the only sector where it had been breached. The most that could be achieved, they said, was to drive the Allies back from the Roer to the Meuse and capture Liége, the main American supply base. This proposal, which Model called the ‘small solution,’ was promptly rejected by Hitler. Such an operation, he believed, would merely postpone the day of reckoning; it would not compel the Western Powers to come to terms.
The plan which von Rundstedt and Model were eventually obliged to accept provided for an offensive in mid-December by three armies on a 75-mile front between Monschau and Echternach. The main effort was to be made in the northern Ardennes by Sixth SS Panzer Army (Dietrich) which was to cross the Meuse at Huy and Andenne and strike north-west for Antwerp. In the central Ardennes Fifth Panzer Army (Manteuffel) was to make a complementary thrust through Namur and Dinant to Brussels, while Seventh Army (Brandenberger) ran out a line of infantry divisions to cover the southern flank from Luxemburg to Givet.
This plan was delivered to von Rundstedt complete to the last detail —even to the timing of the artillery bombardment—and endorsed in the Führer’s own handwriting ‘not to be altered.’ Hitler gave strict instructions about the axes of advance and expressly declared that Dietrich was not to attack Liége. This city was to be by-passed to the south and crossings over the Meuse were to be secured for Dietrich by a special panzer brigade under command of Skorzeny, the man who had rescued Mussolini from captivity in 1943 and had carried out many desperate missions for the Führer. Skorzeny’s force, wearing American uniforms and travelling in American tanks and vehicles, was to take the lead as soon as Dietrich had gained a break-through and, acting as a ‘Trojan Horse,’ was to rush on and seize the Meuse bridges between Liége and Namur. Meantime, sabotage parties, similarly disguised, were to infiltrate through the American lines and spread confusion in rear areas.
Ignoring the advice of his field commanders, who tried to make him realise the practical limitations of his power, Hitler planned to support his main offensive with three subsidiary operations:
On D plus three, an attack from the Lower Roer to retake Maastricht and prevent the movement of American reserves from the Aachen Salient;
On D plus ten, an attack from Northern Holland to recapture Breda and pin down the British;
On D plus fifteen (or earlier if the forces were ready), a double attack from the Saar and from the Colmar Pocket to reconquer Northern Alsace and exploit the opportunity which would arise when the Americans transferred divisions from this area to the Ardennes.
