Battle of the Bulge

Background

By the autumn of 1944 the Allied pursuit across France had run out of fuel and momentum on the German frontier, and the American armies were grinding forward at heavy cost in the Hürtgen Forest and Lorraine. On 16 September Hitler outlined an offensive of his own: a blow through the Ardennes between Monschau and Wasserbillig to reach the Meuse between Liège and Dinant and then seize Antwerp. Taking the port would split the British and Canadians in the north from the Americans, wreck the Allied supply system and, Hitler hoped, force a negotiated settlement in the West. Rundstedt and Model thought Antwerp far beyond the forces available and argued for a smaller encirclement east of the Meuse; Hitler refused.

The Ardennes was chosen for the reasons it had been in 1940. Its forests hid assembly areas from the air; its roads funnelled through a few junctions such as St. Vith and Bastogne; and the Americans treated it as a quiet sector in which to rest battered divisions and break in new ones. The plan depended on surprise, on speed in the first two days, and on weather bad enough to ground Allied aircraft.

Surprise was achieved. Radio silence, night movement and deception hid the build-up; Ultra decrypts gave hints, but Allied intelligence read the evidence as preparation for a defensive counterstroke. At 05:30 on 16 December the German guns opened along the whole front from the Monschau forest to the Sauer.

The armies

Army Group B (Model), under Rundstedt's OB West, attacked with three armies. In the north Sepp Dietrich's Sixth Panzer Army had the main effort and the shortest road to the Meuse, with I SS Panzer Corps (1st and 12th SS Panzer Divisions) to exploit. In the centre Manteuffel's Fifth Panzer Army sent XLVII and LVIII Panzer Corps across the Our and LXVI Corps round the Schnee Eifel. Brandenberger's Seventh Army, with only thirty assault guns according to Cole, was to cover the southern flank. Much of the infantry was Volksgrenadier divisions: new, under strength, short of training and transport. The armour included Panthers and the Tiger IIs of the 501st SS heavy tank battalion, but fuel was the real limit: Cole says there was enough in the theatre, just not where it was needed.

The Americans began with about 229,000 men in the sector. Middleton's VIII Corps held the centre and south with the 106th Infantry Division, newly arrived and untried, the 28th and 4th Infantry Divisions, still rebuilding after the Hürtgen, and part of the 9th Armored Division. Gerow's V Corps in the north had the inexperienced 99th and the veteran 2nd Infantry Division. American strength lay in artillery, motor transport, the ability to shift whole divisions overnight, and an air force waiting for clear skies. By mid-January some 700,000 Americans were engaged.

The battle

The breakthrough, 16–19 December. The northern shoulder held. Sixth Panzer Army's infantry made little headway against the 99th Infantry Division in the forests east of the twin villages, and the 2nd Infantry Division pulled back from Wahlerscheid into Krinkelt and Rocherath. CDB90 records the fight there twice: Krinkelt-Rocherath I (618, 17–18 December), a 12th SS Panzer Division win over a battalion of the 23rd Infantry, and Krinkelt-Rocherath II (619, 17–20 December), coded an attacker loss. The 38th Infantry held the villages until ordered out at 17:30 on 19 December, then fell back to Elsenborn Ridge, where massed artillery kept the 12th SS off the northern roads.

In the Losheim Gap the 14th Cavalry Group was pushed back on the first afternoon (Schnee Eifel North I, 622). The two arms of the 18th Volksgrenadier Division met near Schönberg at about 09:00 on 17 December, trapping the 422nd and 423rd Infantry on the Schnee Eifel (Schnee Eifel North II, 623, and Schnee Eifel Center, 620). After a failed break-out both regiments surrendered on the afternoon of 19 December. Cole puts the loss at no fewer than 7,000 and probably 8,000–9,000. South of them the 62nd Volksgrenadier Division drove the 424th Infantry back across the Our (Schnee Eifel South, 621).

Through the gap went Kampfgruppe Peiper of the 1st SS Panzer Division. It refuelled from American stocks at Büllingen, and shortly after noon on 17 December at the Baugnez crossroads south of Malmedy its men shot down prisoners from Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. At least 84 were killed (Cole gives at least 86). Engineers blew the bridges at Trois Ponts on 18 December, fighter-bombers caught the column in the Amblève valley, and Peiper was stopped beyond Stoumont. His survivors walked out of La Gleize on 23 December, abandoning their vehicles.

Further south Fifth Panzer Army struck the 28th Infantry Division. The 110th Infantry's village garrisons held XLVII Panzer Corps for two days before Clervaux fell on 17–18 December (Our River Center, 624); the 112th Infantry was forced back north-west towards St. Vith (Our River North, 625). On the southern shoulder the 4th Infantry Division's 12th Infantry gave ground only slowly to the 212th Volksgrenadier Division around Echternach (Sauer River, 483).

The road junctions, 17–23 December. At St. Vith (484, 17–23 December) the 7th Armored Division and remnants of the 106th held a horseshoe of hills for five days. The town fell on the evening of 21 December. Montgomery, now commanding the northern half of the battle, approved a withdrawal from the 'fortified goose egg' on 22 December, and the force crossed the Salm on 23 December. At Bastogne (485, 18–21 December) Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division blocked the eastern approaches at Noville, Mageret and Marvie while the 101st Airborne Division came up by truck. The town was surrounded by 21 December; on 22 December McAuliffe answered a German demand to surrender with 'Nuts!'.

Clear skies, 23–26 December. The weather broke on 23 December. That afternoon 241 transports dropped supplies over Bastogne, and on 24 December Allied fighter-bombers flew 1,138 tactical sorties. A Christmas Day assault at Champs and Hemroulle failed, and late on 26 December tanks of the 4th Armored Division broke through from the south. The 2nd Panzer Division, out of fuel at Foy-Notre-Dame, four or five miles from the Dinant bridges, was destroyed around Celles on 25–26 December by the US 2nd Armored Division and the British 29th Armoured Brigade.

Flattening the bulge, 3–25 January. After the Luftwaffe's Operation Bodenplatte against Allied airfields on 1 January, First Army attacked from the north on 3 January and Third Army pressed up from Bastogne. In deep snow, with fighter-bombers able to fly a full day only once in the first fortnight, the two armies met at Houffalize on 16 January; the 7th Armored Division retook St. Vith on 23 January.

Aftermath

Cole counts 41,315 American battle casualties from 16 December to 2 January, and MacDonald another 39,672 from 3 to 28 January: about 81,000 in all, some 8,400 of them killed. British losses were about 1,400. German losses are less certain: German returns give about 63,000, and MacDonald cites estimates from 81,834 to 103,900. About 3,000 civilians died. Germany lost over 500 tanks and assault guns and, in Bodenplatte, pilots it could not replace; on 22 January Hitler ordered the Sixth Panzer Army east against the Soviet winter offensive. Cole judges that the attacker, on the whole, lost more heavily than the defender.

The argument began before the fighting ended. Montgomery's press conference at Zonhoven on 7 January was read by Americans as claiming the credit; Churchill told the Commons on 18 January that 'the United States troops have done almost all the fighting'. Historians still debate the intelligence failure, whether the delay at St. Vith mattered as much as the stand at Bastogne, and how much the fighter-bombers actually destroyed: Cole notes that a ground count found about a tenth of the armour claimed on 24 December.

The Baugnez killings were tried at Dachau in 1946. Forty-three men, Peiper among them, were sentenced to death, but every sentence was commuted and all the convicted were free by 1956. For the US Army it remains the largest and bloodiest battle of the Second World War.

Wargaming it

The Bulge games at every scale. The whole offensive suits division or regimental counters, hexes of a mile or two and half-day turns; the CDB90 engagements suit battalion and company games: Krinkelt-Rocherath is a tank-and-bazooka street fight in fog, the Schnee Eifel a two-regiment encirclement, and the opening of Bastogne a string of team-sized roadblock actions at Noville, Mageret and Marvie.

The German player is racing a clock. The plan needed the Meuse within days; every blown bridge (Trois Ponts, the Amblève, the Salm) and every held junction (St. Vith, Bastogne, Elsenborn Ridge) costs hours the attacker does not have, and fuel should be tracked rather than assumed. The American player trades ground and green units for time while reinforcements arrive by road.

Weather is the decisive variable and deserves its own track. Fog and low cloud early cut visibility and kept Allied aircraft grounded; a freeze from about 20–21 December firmed the ground for armour; skies cleared from 23 December, then closed again from 28 December. Model air power mainly as delay and daylight movement penalties rather than tank kills: Cole found the 24 December claims about ten times the ground count.

What ifs: Sixth Panzer Army breaks the northern shoulder on day one; Peiper finds the fuel at Stavelot (Cole says 124,000 gallons were burned there to block him); the skies clear two days early or two days late; the 101st reaches Bastogne after Lüttwitz rather than before; or Hitler accepts the smaller solution east of the Meuse.

Maps and pictures