HITLER'S PLAN, the one marked “not to be altered,” was designed to create a wedge in Allied defenses and thereby allow German forces to break through Allied lines, cross the Meuse River, and march to Antwerp. Two tank armies would form the point of a spear, with the Sixth Panzer Army under the command of General Sepp Dietrich on the right, or north, and General Hasso von Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army on the left, or south.
Dietrich’s goal was to funnel into Belgium through the five-mile-wide Losheim Gap, then hurry down five major roads to reach the Meuse River near the town of Liège and turn northwest for Antwerp.
Manteuffel was directed to sweep to the Meuse through southern Belgium and Luxembourg, shielding Dietrich’s flank against attack from the Americans.
If successful, the campaign would separate Montgomery’s 21st Army Group in the north from the Americans in the south. These massive German armies would attack across a front that was one hundred miles wide. The armies in front numbered two hundred thousand men, with two thousand artillery pieces and almost one thousand tanks and assault guns. These would try to take on not only the Allied armies but also the Ardennes, one of the most rugged terrains north of the Alps.
Map legend is here.
Hitler had been consumed for weeks by the minutest details of the plans—from providing at least three blankets to each shock trooper, those who would lead the attack, to banishing Alsatian troops from frontline units as security risks. (They were mustered from a conquered area of France.) Hitler ordered Heinrich Himmler, supreme commander of the Home Army, to round up two thousand horses to increase mobility.
The German army depended on horsepower to do much of its pulling and carrying. Only one-fifth of the German army was mechanized. Here, camouflaged supply wagons head to the front.
Beginning in early December, a thousand trains had hauled the AUTUMN MIST legions across the Rhine, where they disembarked at night between Trier and München-Gladbach, then marched in darkness toward the front. Security remained paramount. No open fires were allowed, to minimize detection. Any officer initiated into the plan took multiple secrecy oaths and then was forbidden to travel by airplane, lest he be shot down and captured. Agents for the Gestapo, Germany’s secret police, sniffed for leaks.
Maps remained sealed until the last moment. To forestall deserters, only on the final night would shock troops move into their assault trenches. Low-flying planes buzzing overhead provided “noise curtains” to conceal ground engine sounds. The attack, originally scheduled for late November and then postponed until December 10, had been delayed again for nearly a week to stockpile more fuel and permit further positioning. Null Tag—Zero Day—now was fixed for Saturday, December 16, the date celebrated as the birthday of that most exquisite German, the composer Ludwig van Beethoven.
