German Counteroffensive (Battle of the Bulge). In December 1944 Adolph Hitler directed an ambitious counteroffensive with the object of regaining the initiative in the west and compelling the Allies to settle for a negotiated peace. Hitler’s generals were opposed to the plan, but the Fuhrer’s will prevailed and the counteroffensive was launched on 16 December by some 30 German divisions against Allied lines in the Ardennes region. Allied defenses there had been thinned to provide troops for the autumn defensive. Hitler’s intention was to drive through Antwerp and cut off and annihilate the British 21st Army Group and the U.S. First and Ninth Armies north of the Ardennes.
Aided by stormy weather which grounded Allied planes and restricted observation, the Germans achieved surprise and made rapid gains at first, but firm resistance by various isolated units provided time for the U.S. First and Ninth Armies to shift against the northern flank of the penetration, for the British to send reserves to secure the line to the Meuse, and for Patton’s Third Army to hit the salient from the south. Denied vital roads and hampered by air attack when the weather cleared, the German attack resulted only in a large bulge in the Allied lines which did not even extend to the Meuse River, the Germans’ first objective. The Americans suffered some 75,000 casualties in the Battle of the Bulge, but the Germans lost 80,000 to l00,000. German strength had been irredeemably impaired. By the end of January 1945, American units had retaken all ground they had lost, and the defeat of Germany was clearly only a matter of time. In the east the Red Army had opened a winter offensive that was to carry, eventually, to and beyond Berlin.
The Ardennes Counteroffensive
As early as the preceding August, Adolf Hitler had been contemplating a counteroffensive to regain the initiative in the west. Over the protests of his generals, who thought the plan too ambitious, he ordered an attack by twenty-five divisions, carefully conserved and secretly assembled, to hit thinly manned U.S. positions in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg, cross the Meuse River, then push on northwestward to Antwerp. In taking Antwerp, Hitler expected to cut off and destroy the British 21st Army Group and the First and Ninth U.S. Armies and thereby turn around the whole course of the war.
Under cover of inclement winter weather, Hitler concentrated his forces in the forests of the Eifel region, opposite the Ardennes. Although in hindsight ULTRA and other Allied sources of intelligence gave some clues of the coming attack, the indicators did not stand out enough from other data to allow Allied intelligence agencies to fore-
Photo:
cast the coming offensive. Before daylight on December 16, the Germans attacked along a sixty-mile front, taking the VIII Corps and the south wing of the V Corps by surprise (See Map 5.) In most places, German gains were rapid; the American divisions were either inexperienced or seriously depleted from earlier fighting, and all were stretched thin. In one instance, two inexperienced regiments of the 106th Infantry Division were forced to surrender in the largest mass surrender of U.S. troops during the course of the war in Europe.
The Germans nevertheless encountered difficulties from the first. Cut off and surrounded, many small U.S. units continued to fight. At the northern shoulder of the penetration, divisions of the V Corps refused to budge from the vicinity of Monschau, thereby denying critical roads to the enemy and limiting the width of the penetration. At St. Vith, American troops held out for six days to block a vital road center. To Bastogne in the southwest, where an armored detachment served as a blocking force, General Eisenhower rushed an airborne division that never relinquished that communications center even though surrounded. Here, Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe delivered a terse reply to a German demand for surrender: “Nuts!”
Denied important roads and hampered by air attacks as the weather cleared, the Germans fell a few miles short of even their first objective, the Meuse River. The result after more than a month of hard fighting that cost the Americans 75,000 casualties and the Germans close to 100,000 was nothing but a big bulge in the lines from which the battle drew its popular name.
Faced with a shortage of infantry replacements during the enemy’s counteroffensive, General Eisenhower offered African-American soldiers in service units an opportunity to volunteer for duty with the infantry. More than 4,500 responded, many taking reductions in grade in order to meet specified requirements. The 6th Army Group formed these men into provisional companies, while the 12th Army Group employed them as an additional platoon in existing rifle companies.
The excellent record established by these volunteers, particularly those serving as platoons, presaged major postwar changes in the traditional approach to employing African-American troops.
Although the counteroffensive had given the Allied command some anxious moments, the gallant stands by isolated units had provided time for the First and Ninth Armies to shift troops against the northern flank of the penetration and for the Third Army to hit the penetration from the south and drive through to beleaguered Bastogne. A rapid shift and change in direction of attack by the Third Army was one of the more noteworthy instances during the war of successful employment of the principle of maneuver.
By the end of January 1945, U.S. units had retaken all lost ground and had thwarted a lesser German attack against the 6th Army Group in Alsace. The Germans had expended irreplaceable reserves, and the end of the war in Europe was in sight.
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Battle of the Bulge 1944/1945
Joachim Peiper’s 1st SS Panzer Division And The Malmedy Massacre
The Russian Campaigns
Much of the hope for an early end to the war rested with the tremendous successes of Soviet armies in the east. Having stopped the invading Germans at the gates of Moscow in late 1941 and at Stalingrad in late 1942, the Russians had made great offensive strides westward in both 1943 and 1944. Only a few days after D-Day in Normandy, the Red Army had launched a massive offensive that by mid-September had reached East Prussia and the gates of the Polish capital of Warsaw. In January 1945, as U.S. troops eliminated the bulge in the Ardennes, the Red Army started a new drive that was to carry to the Oder River, only forty miles from Berlin.
Overall, far greater masses of troops had been employed over the truly vast distances of the German Eastern Front than in the west. Even as late as December 1944, over 3.5 million Germans struggled against the Russians along a 700-mile front compared with fewer than 1 million on the Western Front along a much narrower frontage. Yet the Soviet contribution was less disproportionate than would appear, for the war in the east was a one-front ground war, whereas the Allies in the west were fighting on two ground fronts (Western Europe and Italy) and conducting major campaigns in the air and at sea, as well as making a large commitment in the war against Japan. At the same time, the United States was contributing enormously to the war in Russia through Lend-Lease, almost $11 billion in materials: over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, enough to equip some twenty-odd U.S. armored divisions); 11,400 aircraft; and 1.75 million tons of food. While Russian casualties against the Germans dwarf American and British losses, it should be clear that only the Allies working together won World War II.
The Final Offensive
Soon after the opening of the Soviet January offensive, the Western Allies began a new drive to reach and cross the Rhine, the last barrier to the industrial heart of Germany. Exhausted by the overambitious effort in the Ardennes and forced to shift divisions to oppose the Russians, the Germans had little chance of holding west of the Rhine. Although Field Marshal von Rundstedt wanted to conserve his remaining strength for a defense of the river, Hitler would authorize no withdrawal. Making a strong stand at the Roer River and at places where the West Wall remained intact, the Germans imposed some delay but paid dearly in the process, losing 250,000 troops that could have been used to better advantage on the Rhine.
Falling back behind the river, the Germans had made careful plans to destroy all bridges, but something went amiss at the Ludendorff railroad bridge in the First Army’s sector at Remagen. On March 7 a task force of the 9th Armored Division found the bridge damaged but passable. Displaying initiative and courage, a company of infantry dashed across. Higher commanders acted promptly to reinforce the foothold.
To the south, a division of the Third Army on March 22 made a surprise crossing of the Rhine in assault boats. Beginning late the next day the 21st Army Group and the Ninth U.S. Army staged a full-dress crossing of the lower reaches of the river, complete with an airborne attack rivaling in its dimensions Operation MARKET. The Third Army then made two more assault crossings, and during the last few days of March both the Seventh Army and the First French Army of the 6th Army Group crossed farther upstream. Having expended most of their resources west of the river, the Germans were powerless to defeat any Allied crossing attempt.
As the month of April opened, Allied armies fanned out from the Rhine all along the line with massive columns of armor and motorized infantry. Encircling the Ruhr, the First and Ninth Armies took 325,000 prisoners, totally destroying an entire German army group. Although the Germans managed to rally determined resistance at isolated points, a cohesive defensive line ceased to exist.
Since the Russians were within forty miles of Berlin and apparently would reach the German capital first—which in any case lay within their already arranged postwar zone of occupation— General Eisenhower decided against sending his troops to join a costly battle for the city. Instead he put the main weight of his offensive behind the U.S. armies moving through central Germany to eliminate a remaining pocket of German industry and to link with the Russians. The 21st Army Group meanwhile sealed off the Netherlands and headed toward the base of the Jutland peninsula, while the 6th Army Group turned southeastward to obviate any effort by the Nazis to make a last-ditch stand in the Alps of southern Germany and Austria.
By mid-April Allied armies in the north and center were building up along the Elbe and Mulde Rivers, an agreed line of contact with the Red Army approaching from the east. First contact came on April 25 near the town of Torgau, followed by wholesale German surrenders all along the front and in Italy.
With Berlin in Soviet hands, Hitler a suicide, and almost every corner of Germany overrun, emissaries of the German government surrendered
on May 7, 1945, at General Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, France. The next day, May 8, was V-E Day, the official date of the end of the war in Europe.
The Situation on V-E Day
As V-E Day came, Allied forces in Western Europe consisted of 4.5 million men, including 9 armies (5 of them American—1 of which, the Fifteenth, saw action only at the last), 23 corps, 91 divisions (61 of them American), 6 tactical air commands (4 American), and 2 strategic air forces (1 American). The Allies had 28,000 combat aircraft, of which 14,845 were American; and they had brought into Western Europe
more than 970,000 vehicles and 18 million tons of supplies. At the same time they were achieving final victory in Italy with 18 divisions (7 of them American).
The German armed forces and the nation were prostrate, beaten to a degree never before seen in modern times. Hardly any organized units of the German Army remained except in Norway, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkans; these would soon capitulate. What remained of the air arm was too demoralized even for a final suicidal effort, and the residue of the German Navy lay helpless in captured northern ports. Through five years of war, the German armed forces had lost over 3 million men killed, 263,000 of them in the west, since D-Day. The United States lost 135,576 dead in Western Europe; while Britain, Canada, France, and other Allies combined incurred after D-Day approximately 60,000 military deaths.
Unlike in World War I, when the United States had come late on the scene and provided only those forces to swing the balance of power to the Allied side, the American contribution to the reconquest of Western Europe had been predominant, not just in manpower but as a true arsenal of democracy. American factories produced for the British almost three times more Lend-Lease materials than for the Russians, including 185,000 vehicles, 12,000 tanks, and enough planes to equip four tactical air forces and for the French all weapons and equipment for 8 divisions and 1 tactical air force plus partial equipment for 3 more divisions.
Although strategic air power had failed to prove the decisive instrument many had expected, it was a major factor in the Allied victory, as was the role of Allied navies; for without control of the sea lanes, there could have been no buildup in Britain and no amphibious assaults. It was nonetheless true that the application of the power of ground armies finally broke the German ability and will to resist.
While the Germans had developed a flying bomb and later a supersonic missile, the weapons with which both sides fought the war were in the main much improved versions of those that had been present in World War I: the motor vehicle, the airplane, the machine gun, indirect- fire artillery, the tank. The difference lay in such accoutrements as improved radio communications and in a new sophistication in terms of mobility and coordination that provided the means for rapid exploitation that both sides in World War I had lacked.
From North Africa to the Elbe, U.S. Army generalship proved remarkably effective. Such field commanders as Bradley, Devers, Clark, Hodges, Patton, Simpson, Patch, and numerous corps and division commanders could stand beside the best that had ever served the nation.
Having helped develop Army doctrine during the years between the two great wars, these same men put the theories to battlefield test with enormous success. Some indication of the magnitude of the responsibilities they carried is apparent from the fact that late in the war General Bradley as commander of the 12th Army Group had under his command 4 field armies, 12 corps, and 48 divisions, more than 1.3 million men, the largest exclusively American field command in U.S. history.
These commanders consistently displayed a steady devotion to the principles of war. Despite sometimes seemingly insurmountable obstacles of weather, terrain, and enemy concentration, they were generally able to achieve the mass, mobility, and firepower to avoid a stalemate, maintaining the principles of the objective and the offensive and exploiting the principle of maneuver to the fullest. On many occasions they achieved surprise, most notably in the amphibious assaults and at the Rhine. They were themselves taken by surprise twice, in central Tunisia and in the Ardennes; yet in both cases they recovered quickly. Economy of force was particularly evident in Italy, and simplicity was nowhere better demonstrated than in the Normandy landings, despite a complexity inherent in the size and diversity of the invasion forces. From the first, unity of command abided in every campaign, not just at the tactical level but also in the combined staff system that afforded the U.S. and Britain a unity of command and purpose never approached on the Axis side.
William Schuchert’s Ordeal
FROZEN legs, captivity during war, and a hunger-driven scramble to gather scattered pieces of bread on the ground are just some of the mental snapshots that William Schuchert still holds from his days as a young Soldier during World War II.
Because of medical problems caused by prolonged exposure to sub-zero temperatures in foxholes, Schuchert’s legs were amputated below the knees six years ago. Today, the 85-year-old resident of Middletown, N.J., uses a cane and artificial limbs to maneuver.
As a young Soldier in Europe in 1944, Schuchert had already seen the Army medics twice to treat his frozen limbs. He was scheduled to see the medics a third time, but a significant event that day spoiled his plans.
Seeking to neutralize the advancing Allied forces, Adolph Hitler launched a major offensive thrust that came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. As a member of the 28th Infantry Division, Schuchert and his fellow Soldiers were in the direct path of the surprise German assault that began at 5:30 a.m., Dec. 16, 1944.
Instead of seeing Army medics, Schuchert became a prisoner of war.
“We were one of the first ones they hit,” he remembered. “They hit us, bypassed us and we were surrounded by all of the Germans. Our captain decided that it was better to surrender than to die.”
Schuchert remembered the dire warning to Army prisoners from their captors. “The Germans used to tell us, ‘If one escapes, we’re going to shoot you all.'”
Originally from West Mifflin, Pa., southeast of Pittsburgh, Schuchert was drafted into the Army when he was 18 years old. His outfit, the 28th Infantry Division, was nicknamed the “Bloody Bucket” division because of the division’s red, keystone-shaped insignia. It was also the Army division in the movie “When Trumpets Fade,” about the battle in the Huertgen Forest.
Schuchert recounted his experiences recently after watching a theatrical play with a World War II-era theme staged at Brookdale Community College at Lincroft, N.J. This year is the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the storming of beaches by Allied forces in Normandy, France, to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi occupation.
Even before he was captured on the first day of the Battle of the Bulge, Schuchert had a variety of harrowing experiences when his division was deployed to the Huertgen Forest, located along the border between Belgium and Germany.
“The Germans used to shell us just about the time we were eating,” he recalled with a laugh. “Just to make it so that we didn’t get a warm meal.”
Typically, there were about six men in each foxhole, which was covered with tree branches to protect the Soldiers from shrapnel and debris. “At night it would get about 30 to 40 degrees below zero,” he said. “I had my feet frozen twice.”
Because enemy shelling could be constant for six or seven days at a time, Soldiers were reluctant to leave their foxholes. Schuchert remembered that they would take turns leaving their shelter to fill the canteens of those who stayed in the foxhole.
“I went out one day to the usual place where we got water and saw three dead Germans in the water,” Schuchert said.
“I went down further and found a place to fill up the canteens. I came back and was only about 20 feet away from the foxhole when the Germans started shelling. The shrapnel broke the wooden stock of my rifle in half and blew the top off my canteen.”
Under such perilous conditions, the Soldiers quickly developed tight personal bonds. “A lot of us were roughly the same age,” Schuchert said. “It didn’t take long, because you’re fighting alongside each other, to become close friends.”
During the time that Schuchert was a prisoner of war, which lasted about four or five months, his most vivid memory was the relentless hunger among prisoners.
“We were hardly getting anything to eat,” he said. “Maybe soup one day or bread.”
Intense hunger at times drove men to steal food. “If you put something on the (prisoner barracks) stove and turned your back, it would be gone,” he said. “I had that happen to me one time.”
Schuchert spoke nonchalantly about such incidents, noting that many Americans today have never known constant, unyielding hunger.
“I figured that whoever took it (food) probably felt he was justified to get something to eat because he was starving or close to it,” he said.
Schuchert remembers one time when he, himself, kept a sharp eye for an opportunity to supplement the meager rations of a prisoner.
One day the Germans gave each prisoner a fistful of bread before herding the captives onto a train. At one point, American and British aircraft strafed the train, sparking a mad scramble among prisoners to get off the train.
“Eventually, we got the train doors open,” Schuchert remembered. In the ensuing chaos to bolt from the train, he noticed that the ground was littered with pieces of bread that the Germans had given the prisoners that morning.
He swept down to collect and eat as much bread as he could. “So I ate pretty good that day,” Schuchert said.
As his days as a prisoner of war slipped by, Schuchert’s morale would rise at times when sporadic clues suggested that he might live long enough to savor life outside the confines of guard towers and barbed wire.
“We used to try to get as much news as we could from the Germans,” he said. “Some of them would leak to the Soldiers that things weren’t going well for them. That made me think that I would eventually get out of there.
“When I was in England, it seemed that all the bombing was coming from Germany and here it was going the other way. That gave you a good feeling.”
With the relentless push by the Allies into Germany, it was just a matter of time before the Germans who captured Schuchert and his fellow Soldiers realized that the war was lost.
“They made an arrangement to turn us back over to the Americans,” Schuchert said. “That was one of the happiest days of my life.”
Even after the war ended and Schuchert returned to the United States, he continued to have problems with his feet from chronic exposure in frigid foxholes.
“I used to always go to the foot doctor maybe every couple of months,” he said. “Eventually, when I got to be 79 it got pretty bad. They took both my legs off below the knees and now I’m walking on artificial legs.”
After Army life, Schuchert returned to Pennsylvania and obtained a college degree from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
Schuchert has grappled with the typical bumps and grinds of life over the years, yet his war experiences gave him an enduring perspective.
“When things looked bad, all I had to do was think back to the Battle of the Bulge, smile, and say, ‘Nothing is as bad as that.'”
Third Army G2 Predicts Battle of the Bulge, 9 December 1944
By Ruth QuinnNovember 27, 2013
Colonel Oscar W. Koch, G2 for General George Patton during World War II.
By December of 1944, it appeared that Hitler had been all but defeated. In fact, from the Allied perspective, Germany’s continuation of the war at that point made no sense at all. The Third Army had crossed into Germany and had its sights on Frankfurt. An Allied offensive was planned for late December, right before Christmas. Allied commanders and their intelligence staffs were optimistic, if not downright confident, that the end of World War II was within reach.
But the Third Army G2, Colonel (later Brigadier General) Oscar Koch, was deeply concerned. Despite the advances of three Allied army groups along the Siegfried Line, there was a large force of German strategic and tactical troops being held in reserve in the north. These troops included armor and mechanized infantry units, paratroopers, and brutal Schutzstaffel, or SS troops. Why were they not being called on to at least slow down the Allied advance? What was the purpose of holding them in reserves? The evidence pointed to a massive German build-up in preparation for a large scale attack.
Koch had been studying the German buildup in the north for months. He had confirmed the identities and locations of multiple armor and infantry units. He had compiled information on large enemy ammunition and gasoline dumps, mines, and unassembled enemy artillery pieces. All of these were added to his map in the G2 section. From the air reconnaissance section, Koch knew of enemy tanks being loaded onto trains in Frankfurt and heading west. Of fifteen known tank divisions in the western part of Germany, only five were in contact with Allied forces. The status of the others: unknown.
Koch stepped up the night photo reconnaissance missions, specifically requesting railroad marshalling yards and important highway intersections deep behind enemy lines as targets of interest. Photo interpreters could study the images, trace the progress of several hundred trains a day, and estimate the size of units being transferred. The air reconnaissance teams reported unprecedented rail activity on several separate days in November. An enemy prisoner of war provided more disturbing evidence when he told of a secret order sending captured Allied uniforms and all qualified English-speaking personnel to Osnabruck for training in reconnaissance, sabotage, and espionage.
Koch knew that the purpose of intelligence was to assist the commander in accomplishing his mission and to protect the command from surprise. He also knew that General Patton was planning to have the Third Army move east in a few days. An attack by German forces to the west, just north of the Moselle, would be out of his commander’s zone of advance, but it would pose a serious threat to the Third Army’s flank. General Patton had all of these details of enemy capability estimates that the G2 shop had been collecting and documenting in official reports for weeks. What was different at a December 9, 1944 special briefing was the composite analysis of what those details might mean.
Koch laid out the possibility of an enemy counteroffensive, with all of the known enemy combat strength. He told Patton that in such a scenario, the enemy was favored, and why. He provided terrain analysis and a review of friendly strength: the United States had three infantry and two armored divisions available for immediate employment in the general area. This still left the enemy with a two-to-one advantage, not to mention the psychological advantage of a successful diversionary attack, if Koch was right.
Koch’s briefing was met with a brief silence, then discussion. Patton stood and told the group, “We’ll be in a position to meet whatever happens.” Plans for the Allied offensive on Frankfurt would continue, but limited outline planning would begin at once to meet the threat to the north. Patton wanted to be ready, but didn’t want to be distracted from his objective.
History would prove Koch correct. One week after his correct interpretation of the intelligence, the Germans launched the Ardennes Offensive, later known as the Battle of the Bulge. Patton, who had had a week to think about how to react to just such a scenario, was able to turn his army and hit the German southern flank hard, effectively thwarting the German’s assault. However, historians would often recount the conflict as an intelligence failure. Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Omar Bradley both wrote of how they were surprised by the strength of the German force and by the fact that Hitler would use those reserves in an offensive maneuver.
This should have come as no surprise. The intelligence that Koch used to predict the battle was available to these other commands. The difference lay in the analysis and interpretation of the available intelligence. Because of Koch’s willingness to warn his commander of the enemy’s possible intent rather than just his capability, and because of the deep trust that Patton had in his G2, the commander was able to prepare in advance and react quickly. Underscoring this critical element in the commander-G2 relationship, Patton called upon Koch again in the midst of the crisis, asking, “Should Bastogne be held?” Koch responded simply, “From an intelligence viewpoint, yes.” Once again, the commander heeded his G2’s advice.
Koch summarized the outcome in his book, G2: Intelligence for Patton: “Certainly there was an intelligence failure preceding the Battle of the Bulge. But it was not the total blindness to the enemy buildup which is indicated in prevailing accounts of that historic clash. ‘Intelligence failure’ connotes a breakdown in the intelligence service’s collection techniques. The Allied failure leading to the tragedy of the Bulge was in evaluation and application of the intelligence information at hand.” Koch used an All-Source Intelligence approach to providing actionable intelligence to his commander, while relying on command support built on mutual respect and trust. It was a combination that led Patton to once state, “I ought to know what I’m doing, I have the best damned intelligence officer in any United States command.”
Brigadier Oscar Koch died in 1970 and was inducted into the MI Hall of Fame in 1993. Koch Barracks, in Fort Huachuca’s Prosser Village, was named for him the same year.
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Joachim Peiper’s 1st SS Panzer Division And The Malmedy Massacre