ARDENNES

Hitler had ordered his commander in Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, to destroy the city rather than simply surrender it to the Allies when they arrived to liberate it in summer of 1944. But Choltitz negotiated an agreement to refrain from destroying the city and to surrender it in return for the safe withdrawal of his occupying garrison there. The arrangement was an expensive one for the Allies, in fuel, resources, and personnel commitments, and especially time—substantially delaying their progress towards the Rhine and Germany. Out of Paris, Hitler’s armies were feeling the heat of the approaching Russians from the east, Yugoslav partisans in the Balkans, and the American forces moving through Belgium.

In one of several pronounced differences of opinion between General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Allied ground forces commander, Montgomery was a proponent of a narrow frontal assault on Germany to be followed by a concentrated attack on Berlin. Ike, on the other hand, opted for an approach to Germany along an extended front, to let his supply chain catch up and keep pace with his rapidly advancing armies, and to consolidate their positions along the Rhine River. By September, a massive Allied airborne assault on the Dutch towns of Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Eindhoven ended in a chaotic, disastrous mess in which the British First Airborne Division suffered nearly seventy-five percent casualties. In October, the American forces captured Aachen, once a part of Charlemagne’s empire. Advancing through the Hürtgen Forest, they experienced heavy losses as they trudged and rolled over the snow-covered German minefields.

The Allied armoured forces had achieved much success in the Normandy campaign, but were unable to effectively support a three-pronged attack into the follow-up action, which might have enabled them to end the European war in 1944. The Allies got to the Siegfried Line in September, but by then they had been considerably weakened. At that point it was no longer possible to keep them supplied with the food, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, and the maintenance required for their continued advance. And, approaching from the east, the Russians were experiencing similar problems and were also stalled. It was to the great advantage of the Germans, who fully capitalized on it to assemble a large and powerful armoured force with which to push the Allied forces back into the English Channel. It was to be the last great opportunity of the war for the Germans.

Now the Germans faced a monumental challenge in putting together the armoured force they needed. They had to significantly increase German mobilization, contain the Russian advances in Poland, displace many thousands of workers from their falling industrial base to use as replacements for the huge losses they were taking in combat, and perhaps most difficult, they had to somehow find, equip, train and field at least nine complete new panzer divisions and twenty infantry divisions.

With Germany’s basic infrastructure in near total ruin from the massive, continuing Allied combined bombing offensive towards the end of 1944, the Germans were helpless to slow the flow of vital oil from their war reserves. Armaments Minister Albert Speer had worked minor miracles resurrecting the German armoured capability, but Germany’s oil reserves had been reduced by nearly two-thirds by the spring, and the incessant Allied bombing campaign had all but ruined German synthetic oil production. By August, the Red Army had eliminated the important Ploesti oilfields as a precious Romanian source, making it necessary for the German army to transport their tanks by train, putting a further drain on their limited coal supply, rather than on their vitally important oil reserves. Further complicating the situation for the Germans was the ever increasing level of attacks by Allied bombers, as well as by fighters in the ground-attack role, on the German railways. This intensified air activity required the Germans to restrict much of their high-priority rail transport of hardware such as tanks to nighttime.

In what for the Allies was a rather new wrinkle following the D-Day landings at Normandy, the Nazis attempted to retake the initiative and, hopefully, shift the outcome of the war in their favour. They dropped a new form of terror weapon into the mix—the V-1 flying bomb. With it, Hitler hoped to recapture the initiative and possibly alter the entire course of the European war. The British and the Americans called the V-1s “Buzz Bombs” or “Doodlebugs”. The weapons were relatively small, pulse-jet-powered early cruise missiles. They were not very sophisticated devices, incapable of reaching and hitting a specific target with much reliability or accuracy. But by late summer 1944, lifting from their launch sites on the Channel coast of France, the V-1s managed to destroy about 75,000 buildings and kill more than 6,000 people in southern England. They were quickly followed by a far more frightening flying bomb in the form of the massive V-2 rocket. Beginning in September, the supersonic V-2 rockets began falling, silently and without any warning, on London and the south of England, destroying far greater areas than the V-1s and spreading a new kind of terror among the British people. Thankfully, for their sake, these terrible new weapons became operational too late for the Germans to change to course of the war with them.

Hitler’s belief in the value and capability of those V-weapons, and the need for the launch sites in northern France for their attacks on Britain, coupled with his need to retake the port facilities of Antwerp, and his then-shrinking resources, powerfully influenced the decision to address his final major attack on the Western Allies, instead of on the steadily advancing Soviets. Interestingly, he decided to launch the action through the Ardennes forest in Belgium, taking advantage of the limited American force presence there, and of the often difficult and rather unpredictable weather conditions in that region, which virtually assured a minimum of Allied aerial reconnaissance and air opposition there. In such an attack, Hitler expected to sever the Allied supply lines, shatter their alliance and sufficiently ruin their morale, to alter the course of the war and then force a negotiated settlement. Much of his expectation was based on his low opinion of the American soldier, whom he believed would be utterly terrorized by such a blitzkrieg attack and left incapable of further opposition. On 11 and 12 December he held a final planning conference for the Ardennes offensive: “Gentlemen, before opening the conference I must ask you to read this document carefully and then sign it with your full names.” General Hasso von Manteuffel, General Officer Commanding, 5 Panzer Army: “The date was 3 November 1944, and I had assumed that the conference would be merely a routine meeting of the three army commanders who held the northern sector of the Western Front under Field Marshal Model’s Army Group B. Each officer present had to pledge himself to preserve complete silence concerning the information which Jodl intended to divulge to us: should any officer break the pledge, he must realize that his offence would be punishable by death. I had frequently attended top secret conferences presided over by Hitler at Berchtesgaden or at the ‘Wolf’s Lair’ both before and after 20 July 1944, but this was the first time that I had seen a document such as the one I now signed. It was clear that something most unusual was afoot.

“The German commanders knew the terrain in the Ardennes well. We had advanced across it in 1940 and retreated through it only a few months before. We knew its narrow, twisting roads and the difficulties, not to say dangers, they could cause an attacking force, particularly in winter and in the bad weather conditions which were an essential prerequisite to the opening of our operation. The main roads contained many hairpin bends, and were frequently built into steep hillsides. To get the guns of the artillery and flak units, as well as the pontoons and beams of the bridging engineers around these sharp corners was a lengthy and difficult business. The guns and trailers had to be disconnected and then dragged around the corner by a capstan mechanism, naturally one at a time. Vehicles could not pass one another on these roads.”

General Sepp Dietrich, General Officer Commanding, 6 Panzer Army: “All I had to do was to cross the river, capture Brussels and then go on and take the port of Antwerp. And all this in December, January and February, the worst months of the year; through the Ardennes where snow was waistdeep and there wasn’t room to deploy four tanks abreast, let alone six armoured divisions; when it didn’t get light until eight in the morning and was dark again at four in the afternoon and my tanks can’t fight at night; with divisions that had just been reformed and were composed chiefly of raw untrained recruits; and at Christmas time.”

The operation began in the early morning of 16 December under a heavy fog cover, as eight panzer divisions rolled through the minimal defences of the Allies on the eighty-five-mile front. Initially, the German forces were able to roll up substantial advances through the forest to the complete shock of the Americans there. The large dent the Germans created in the Allied line there led to the operation becoming known as the Battle of the Bulge. American Brigadier-General Anthony McAuliffe, in command of the 101st Airborne Division, arranged for the panzers to receive a hot reception as they rolled on towards the American-occupied town of Bastogne, a strong defence of the town, costing the armoured and infantry forces of the German commander, General Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz, and causing him to issue the following:

“To the U.S.A. commander of the encircled town of Bastogne:

The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armoured units. More German armoured units have crossed the river Our near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.

“There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over, a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.

“If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A.A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours term.

“All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well-known American humanity.—The German Commander

And General McAuliffe’s reply:

“To the German Commander:

NUTS!

The American Commander

(the reply was explained to the German negotiators as the equivalent of ‘Go to hell!’)

This exchange was followed by an order from General Eisenhower to General George Patton to assist the Americans at Bastogne. Patton sent the 37th Tank Battalion under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams, Jr. to spearhead an armoured column to break the German encirclement of Bastogne. In his illustrious military career, Abrams went on to become a four-star general in command of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam War. Today’s American main battle tank is named in his honour.

Another famous American general, Matthew B. Ridgeway: “I remember once standing beside a road leading through a pine wood, down a slope to the road junction of Manhay, where a hot fight was going on. That whole Ardennes fight was a battle for road junctions, because in that wooded country, in the deep snows, armies could not move off the roads. This particular crossroads was one of many that the Germans had to take if they were to keep up the momentum of their offensive, and we were fighting desperately to hold it. I had gone up to this point, which lay not far forward of my command post, to be of what help I could in this critical spot. As I was standing there, a lieutenant, with perhaps a dozen men, came out of the woods from the fighting, headed towards the rear. I stopped him and asked him where he was going and what his mission was. He told me that he and his men had been sent out to develop the strength of the German units that had reached Manhay, and that they had run into some machine-gun fire that was too hot for them, so they had come back.

“I relieved him of his command there on the spot. I told him that he was a disgrace to his country and his uniform and that I was ashamed of him, and I knew the members of his patrol were equally ashamed. Then I asked if any other member of the patrol was willing to lead it back into the fight. A sergeant stepped up and said he would lead it and see to it that it carried out its mission.

“Another incident occurred which I remember with regret. In the fierce fighting, the town [Manhay] changed hands several times. The Germans had brought up some flat trajectory guns, and they started shelling our little group. Fragments whizzed everywhere. One struck an artillery observer, who was standing by me, in the leg, and another punctured the [fuel] tank of his jeep. As this shell exploded an infantry sergeant standing nearby became hysterical. He threw himself into the ditch by the side of the road, crying and raving. I walked over and tried to talk to him, trying to help him get hold of himself. But it had no effect. He was just crouched there in the ditch, cringing in utter terror. So I called my jeep driver, Sergeant Farmer, and told him to take his carbine and march this man back to the nearest M.P., and if he started to escape to shoot him without hesitation. He was an object of abject cowardice, and the sight of him would have a terrible effect on any American soldier who might see him. That’s the sort of thing you see sometimes. It is an appalling thing to witness—to see a man break completely like that—in battle. It is worse than watching a death—for you are seeing something more important than the body die. You are witnessing the death of a man’s spirit, of his pride, of all that gives meaning and purpose to life.”

Many more important combat actions were to follow, and by 26 December, momentum and the initiative had changed over to the Americans. The lengthy period of fog and poor weather conditions had finally lifted on Christmas eve, allowing Allied aircraft, including tank-destroying Hawker Typhoons of the R.A.F., to hit and quickly wreck many German tanks and other armoured vehicles. The Germans mounted another major armoured assault on Bastogne, but without success. It was then clear to General Manteuffel that the great German counter-offensive the Americans referred to as the Battle of the Bulge, had failed and a full-scale German retreat followed with the Americans in hot pursuit.

American losses in the Battle of the Bulge were 10,276 killed, 47,493 wounded, and 23,218 missing. British losses in the action included 200 killed of a total of 1,400 casualties. On the German side, the casualties amounted to approximately 100,000 killed, wounded, or missing. The fighting in the Ardennes in late 1944 and early 1945 was among the most savage and intense of the entire war. The aggression of the German forces had been whipped up to great intensity early in the offensive when a rumour began circulating among them that the British and American armies were about to turn over their German prisoners to the Russians. The Germans fighting in the Ardennes attacked their Allied opposition thereafter with a new level of ferocity. Some of the actions led to several of the German commanders being tried for war crimes committed during the Ardennes offensive.

In the Allied pursuit of the German forces retreating from the Ardennes, American armoured and infantry units were advancing on them from the south while the British forces came after them from the north. In a panicky move to try holding off the rapidly advancing Russians towards Poland, the Germans sent much of their remaining tank forces there, leaving few armoured reserves to cope with the Allies pursuing the large force out of Belgium towards Germany. The last of the German troops from the Ardennes were across the Rhine into Germany by 22 March.

As the Russians were closing in on Berlin in the spring of 1945, Fritz-Rudolf Averdieck was a radio operator / sergeant in Armoured Grenadier Regiment 90 of the German Army. He was a crew member of a Schützenpanzerwagen or SPW, a light armoured vehicle with half-tracks. It was also used as a troop carrier, was open at the top and mounted a machine-gun. It was used during operations as a command centre by his commander. It was a command-communications and fighting vehicle. The wireless operator sat beside the driver, with the commander behind him on the carrier. Averdieck: “In early 1945, the last barrier before Berlin was the Seelow Heights near the Oder River. After incurring heavy casualties in our numerous attacks which failed to throw the Soviet bridgehead back over the Oder, the great Soviet offensive began on 16 April. The superior strength of the enemy overwhelmed our battle-weary troops, and reached the Seelow Heights. Our weakened regiment counter-attacked, but was unable to regain the old front lines. Nevertheless, we strengthened and held a position on the Heights the night of 19 April. But the continuous Soviet heavy artillery and mortar fire took a heavy toll, tearing large rents in our lines. One thing was clear from the sound of the ongoing battles. The enemy had already passed us to the north and south on its march to Berlin.”