{
 "slug": "metz-1944",
 "title": "Battle of Metz (1944)",
 "status": "draft",
 "era": "WWII and later",
 "date_text": "6–14 September 1944 (the fighting for Metz continued to 13 December 1944)",
 "start": "1944-09-06",
 "end": "1944-09-14",
 "war": "World War II",
 "cdb90_war": "WORLD WAR II (EUROPEAN THEATER)",
 "place": {
  "name": "Metz and the Moselle valley between Thionville and Pont-à-Mousson, Lorraine, France: Dornot, Arnaville, Gravelotte and Amanvillers",
  "lat": 49.12,
  "lon": 6.18,
  "wikidata": "Q1723307"
 },
 "lede": "In September 1944 Patton's XX Corps tried to bounce the Moselle line and take the fortress city of Metz from the march. Bridgeheads at Dornot and Arnaville were won and shelled, and the attack stalled; Metz fell only in November, its last fort in December.",
 "result": "German defensive success in September: XX Corps was halted on the Moselle; Metz fell to a second, set-piece offensive in November",
 "result_cdb90": "attacker loss",
 "belligerents": [
  {
   "role": "attacker",
   "name": "US XX Corps (5th and 90th Infantry Divisions, 7th Armored Division, 3rd Cavalry Group), Third Army",
   "commanders": [
    "Lieutenant-General George S. Patton (Third Army)",
    "Major-General Walton H. Walker (XX Corps)",
    "Major-General McLain (90th Infantry Division)"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": null,
    "low": null,
    "high": null,
    "source": "s2"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": null,
    "low": null,
    "high": null,
    "source": "s2"
   }
  },
  {
   "role": "defender",
   "name": "German First Army (Metz school troops, Division Number 462, 559th Volksgrenadier Division, 48th Division, elements of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division and the 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier Divisions, 106th Panzer Brigade)",
   "commanders": [
    "General Otto von Knobelsdorff (First Army)",
    "Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz (Army Group G, until 21 September)"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": null,
    "low": null,
    "high": null,
    "source": "s2"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": null,
    "low": null,
    "high": null,
    "source": "s2"
   }
  }
 ],
 "sections": {
  "background": "By the end of August 1944 the Allied pursuit across France was held up less by the enemy than by fuel. XX Corps was halted on 31 August: only three of seventeen tanks sent to Verdun got there. A cavalry platoon raided Thionville on 2 September, and Colonel Drury of the 3rd Cavalry Group was captured near Gravelotte. On 5 September Field Order No. 10 gave the corps the Sarre crossings as its first objective and Mainz on the Rhine as its goal.\n\nMetz was in the way, protected by a ring of forts: the corps' own officers spoke of attacking \"20 odd forts\". American intelligence expected at most 38,500 enemy troops and 160 tanks and assault guns, and described the defences as outmoded. In reality the garrison was a mixture: the battered 48th Division, the 559th Volksgrenadier Division, the Metz school troops formed as Division Number 462, elements of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division and the 106th Panzer Brigade. On 5 September OB West put the strength in the Metz–Thionville sector at about four and a half divisions' equivalent.\n\nThe question of whether to hold the city went from Army Group G up to Hitler, who first told the garrison to accept encirclement and on 16 September reversed himself and ordered First Army to hold the shoulders of the Metz salient. The Americans were attempting to take a fortress with a corps that had been stalled for lack of fuel and whose divisions were short of riflemen.",
  "forces": "XX Corps under Major-General Walton Walker had the 5th Infantry Division, 90th Infantry Division, 7th Armored Division and the 3rd Cavalry Group, with the fighter-bombers of XIX Tactical Air Command in support. Its weakness was infantry: on 5 September the 5th Division was short 35 officers and 1,300 riflemen. Its engineers had to bridge a river in the face of fire from both banks. Thirteen artillery battalions and the 84th Smoke Generating Company supported the Arnaville crossing.\n\nGeneral Otto von Knobelsdorff's First Army was a patchwork rather than an army's worth of troops. The 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division and, later, the 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier Divisions counterattacked the bridgeheads, while the Metz school troops and the fortress garrison manned the defences. The forts were the German trump: Forts Sommy and Blaise covered the Dornot bank and American artillery could not suppress them, and batteries in Fort Driant later wrecked the bridging at Arnaville. CDB90 counts 248 German guns in both engagements.",
  "course": "**MOSELLE-METZ, 6–12 September (CDB90 engagement 465).** American armour made contact with the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division on 6 September. On 7 September the 23rd Armored Infantry Battalion reached the Moselle at Le Chêne, and on 8 September the 2nd Battalion of the 11th Infantry and the 7th Engineers crossed near Dornot. The bridgehead was only about 300 yards deep and 200 yards wide, under fire from both banks and from Forts Sommy and Blaise, which the artillery could not silence; requested air support did not arrive. The Germans made 36 assaults, and an estimated 600 of them were killed. The 23rd Armored Infantry lost about 200 men in four days; Company K came out with 50 men and no officers. The bridgehead was evacuated on the night of 10–11 September.\n\nFurther south, about 02:00 on 10 September the 10th Infantry crossed between Novéant and Arnaville under smoke from the 84th Smoke Generating Company. The 17th SS and other units attacked it repeatedly, but P-47s and thirteen artillery battalions helped the line hold. The engineers worked under fire; a treadway ford was ready about 11:00 on 11 September and a bridge was finished under fog-smoke at noon on 12 September. A German counterattack at 03:30 on 12 September, by the 17th SS and elements of the 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier Divisions, was repulsed. West of the city the 2nd Infantry's frontal attack stalled at Amanvillers, Vernéville and Gravelotte, and by 9 September it had lost 14 officers and 332 men. The 1st Battalion alone lost 228 men at Amanvillers, and the Metz forts shelled the troops daily.\n\n**METZ, 13–14 September (CDB90 engagement 466).** On 13 September German batteries in Fort Driant destroyed a ferrying raft, damaged the treadway at the ford and broke up the heavy pontoon bridge that was nearly complete. XX Corps also had a critical shortage of artillery ammunition. On 14 September the corps ordered a regrouping for a new manoeuvre: the 7th Armored Division was to attack east, circle Metz from the rear and open the Moselle line north of the city. The 5th Division's attempt to expand the bridgehead was postponed because rain had turned the clay soil impassable to armour. CCB and the 10th Infantry did attack south-east in fog, taking Hill 396, Lorry, Mardigny and Vittonville, and halted only when the 2nd Infantry relieved them.\n\n**After CDB90's coverage.** The 90th Division's attack west of the city, begun on 15 September, made small gains and Walker agreed on 17 September to stop it. German counterattacks at Sillegny and Pournoy cost the 7th Armored and 10th Infantry heavily, attempts to cross the Seille failed on 20–21 September, and on 23 September the 7th Armored left Third Army for the First Army zone. The Americans resumed the assault in November: the outer defences fell about 3 November (Wikipedia), the city was encircled on 19 November as the 377th and 378th Infantry and Task Force Bacon entered, and resistance in Metz officially ended at 14:35 on 22 November. Several forts held out: Verdun, St Privat, St Quentin, Plappeville and Driant fell between 26 November and 8 December and Fort Jeanne d'Arc surrendered on 13 December.",
  "aftermath": "At the end of September XX Corps still held the Arnaville bridgehead but had failed to cross the Seille or to circle Metz, and the 7th Armored Division, its main armoured striking force, had been taken away. The assault was not renewed in force until November. German losses in September are not known.\n\nThe full battle ran from late September to 13 December. For November, Cole's figures give XX Corps' estimate of 14,368 German prisoners, 3,800 killed and 7,904 wounded, and the 95th Division lost 2,189 men to 22 November; Cole thinks the German estimates too low and the American ones too high. Third Army's casualties for the whole Lorraine campaign, 1 September to 18 December, were 55,182, with another 42,088 non-battle casualties.\n\nMetz's reputation has been argued over. Wikipedia reports that the battle delayed Third Army about three months while the Germans withdrew to the Saar, that Blaskowitz thought a direct assault on the fortifications was unnecessary, and that Liddell Hart remarked that the army was little further on two months after crossing the Moselle. Cole credits the November envelopment as well executed, but suggests that it could have ended sooner.",
  "wargaming": "The September fighting is a river-crossing game, best at company or battalion level with a stand per platoon or section. Two small tables cover it: Dornot, where a thin bridgehead sits under fire from two forts, and Arnaville, where the engineers race to put a treadway across before German artillery, directed from Fort Driant, finds it.\n\nThe crux is the engineering clock. The American player must choose between smoke, which hides the crossing but slows it, and fire support, which is limited because the forts are hard to hit, and decide whether to reinforce a failing bridgehead (Dornot) or abandon it and put everything into another (Arnaville). The German player has few troops but good observation and fortress artillery; counterattacks come at set times (03:30 on 12 September, say) and the weather is a variable, since rain made the clay soil impassable on 14 September.\n\nThe interesting what-ifs are about timing: a faster crossing before 17th SS reinforcements arrived, or a fuel supply that let the XX Corps stay close to the retreating Germans in late August. A campaign version could run the three months to December and treat the forts as fixed objectives; the second battle, when the Americans encircled the city, is a different, larger game."
 },
 "images": [
  {
   "file": "File:Map Of Driant.jpg",
   "kind": "map",
   "caption": "Intelligence map of the defences of Fort Driant, south-west of Metz.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Map_Of_Driant.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "thumb": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Map_Of_Driant.jpg/960px-Map_Of_Driant.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail",
   "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Of_Driant.jpg",
   "licence": "Public domain",
   "licence_url": "",
   "artist": "H Andrews",
   "credit": "http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Lorraine/maps/USA-E-Lorraine-XXIII.jpg",
   "width": 1500
  },
  {
   "file": "File:Dornot6.jpg",
   "kind": "photo",
   "caption": "Men of the 11th Infantry Regiment pass through Dornot on 8 September 1944 on their way to the Moselle crossing, with the east-bank hills overlooking the village.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Dornot6.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "artist": "Unknown author Unknown author",
   "credit": "http://tothosewhoserved.org/usa/ss/usass07/pt01ch01.html",
   "width": 600
  },
  {
   "file": "File:USA-Bombing-Fort-Driant-Lorraine-p267.jpg",
   "kind": "photo",
   "caption": "P-47 fighter-bombers of XIX Tactical Air Command bombing Fort Driant.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/USA-Bombing-Fort-Driant-Lorraine-p267.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "licence": "Public domain",
   "licence_url": "",
   "artist": "XIX Tactical Air Command",
   "credit": "https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Lorraine/img/USA-E-Lorraine-p267.jpg",
   "width": 640
  },
  {
   "file": "File:Walton H. Walker (US Army General).jpg",
   "kind": "portrait",
   "caption": "Walton H. Walker, who commanded XX Corps.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Walton_H._Walker_%28US_Army_General%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "artist": "Unknown photographer. Original autograph has become illegible with time. Published on Army Historical Foundation web site and by other organizations.",
   "credit": "Eighth United States Army photo of its commander, Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker. 1950.",
   "width": 500
  },
  {
   "file": "File:EnteringMetz.jpg",
   "kind": "photo",
   "caption": "Men of the 378th Infantry on the outskirts of Metz on 17 November 1944.",
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   "credit": "Image taken from Army.mil",
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  },
  {
   "file": "File:Metz1944-1.jpg",
   "kind": "photo",
   "caption": "US 5th Infantry Division soldiers entering Metz, 18 November 1944.",
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 "sources": [
  {
   "id": "s1",
   "title": "Battle of Metz (Wikipedia)",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Metz",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s2",
   "title": "Hugh M. Cole, The Lorraine Campaign (US Army in World War II, Historical Division, 1950), chapter 3, 'The XX Corps Crossing of the Moselle (6–24 September)'",
   "url": "https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Lorraine/USA-E-Lorraine-3.html",
   "kind": "book"
  },
  {
   "id": "s3",
   "title": "Hugh M. Cole, The Lorraine Campaign, chapter 9, 'The November Battle for Metz (Concluded)'",
   "url": "https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Lorraine/USA-E-Lorraine-9.html",
   "kind": "book"
  },
  {
   "id": "s4",
   "title": "Hugh M. Cole, The Lorraine Campaign, chapter 14, 'Conclusion'",
   "url": "https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Lorraine/USA-E-Lorraine-14.html",
   "kind": "book"
  }
 ],
 "cdb90": [
  465,
  466
 ],
 "order": 211,
 "url": "https://battles.georgewyrd.com/metz-1944/",
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