From Behind the Dragon's Teeth: HItler's Folly? Or Wa8 It?

From Behind the Dragon’s Teeth: Hitler’s Folly?

Or Was It?

Hitler’s lunge into the Ardennes, so often criticized as a strategic mistake, might have been his best chance at stalemate and survival by Captain Kevin R. Austra In December 1944,B German divisions, nine of them armored, slammed into the U. S. First and Ninth Armies. For ten days, the German panzers zigzagged through the hills, valleys, forests, and fields of the Ardennes until stopped short of the Meuse River in Belgium. The German salient, 80 miles wide and 60 miles deep, was then pounded by U. S. and British forces. The Air Force all but eliminated German logistics. By February 1945, the U. S. Army drove back to its former December positions and the German Wehrmacht had no forces left to keep the Allies from the Rhine. Hitler’s Ardennes offensive proved supreme folly... or was it? Since that last bitter winter of the Second World War, much has been written about the Battle of the Bulge. It provides a certain fascination for military historians and served as inspiration for five major motion pictures. Most students of the battle have come to the same conclusion: Hitler forced his army to leave the security of the Westwall (often called the Siegfried Line) fortifications and exhaust themselves in the hopeless involuntary death throes of a dying man.’ A majority of the judgments leveled at the last great German offensive in the West are based on 1944 Allied expectations of a repeated 1918 -specifically, the overthrow of a failed regime, surrender before the nation’s borders were critically violated, and preservation of the surviving economic base. The Battle of the Bulge dashed Allied hopes the war would be over by Christmas -just like 1918.

General Dwight D.

Eisenhower, among others, was furious. Estimates described the German Army on the brink of collapse. Didn’t the Germans know the war was finished? Unfortunately. the conditions were not similar to 1918. At the end of the Great War, an intact German Army bowed to the wishes of a revolutionary government in Berlin and demobilized itself under the worst possible armistice conditions. The unconditional surrender terms scaring at Germany in 1944 compelled the Germans to fight on? Note too that in mid-1944 the Germans still controlled most of Europe, though D-Day was not far away. As a result, Hitler’s regime survived the halfhearted July 20th assassination attempt, armor and aircraft production peaked in summer and autumn 1944, and Germany’s armed forces numbered 10 million men in 327 divisions and brigades? Despite terrific losses at the front and at home, the German Army was losing slowly and exhausting its opponents.

Leaving the Dragon’s Teeth While planning the Ardennes offensive, Hitler remarked that “the side that lasts longer will do so only if it stands to lose everything.“4 German industry was failing. Constant air raids, essential mw material shortages, and lack of fuel ensured industry could never keep pace with the war. More critical, Germany was sapped of almost all its adult manpower. Infantry training, once regimented and several months in length, was reduced to a scant six weeks. Luftwaffe pilots found themselves committed to combat on their first operational flights. The German armed forces were fast losing their ability to wage offensive Warfare.

It is too simple to declare that Adolf Hitler in 1944 was insane, sick, or so drugged by his incompetent private physician, Dr. Morrell, that he was incapable of ntional thought. True, the stress of the last two years of war left the German leader an exhausted man who yearned for and still believed in a repeat of the glories earlier experienced in 1940. Indeed, until late 1941, the German General Staff still controlled operations of the m y, particularly on the Eastern Front. The resulting failure to subdue the Soviet Union in 1941 could well be attributed to the General Staffs delay in following up successes, as well as withholding urgently needed forces for an unwanted drive on Moscow. The mounting emotional pressure was compounded by the unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life. Hitler’s subsequent distrust of his own military commanders and purge of the army left him in absolute control of the war effort, and with it the insomnia and stress associated with supreme command. Though thoroughly exhausted and aware of Germany’s plight, Hitler’s decision to attack in the west was a logical decision made by a tyrant. Only the unlikely event that, Hitler would have been overthrown could have prevented the attack in its final manifestation. In retrospect, the German people probably would have agreed with the final offensive gamble in keeping with a German saying, “Better an end in horror than a horror without end.”’

In autumn 1944, Germany was not as close to defeat as some would believe. The German Army, whose back was broken in August in Normandy, was able to delay and withdraw to the 1939 German frontier. After a few tense weeks where much of the German border was defended solely by overgrown pillboxes and empty foxholes, the Germans were able to fill the gaps and halt the Allies. The base of the German frontier de-dragon’s teeth shielded the remilitm-ized Rhineland while German forces massed in the east, The Westwall was a mixture of designs and was never more than 15 percent complete at the start of the war. Unlike its French counterpart, Westwall was not a sin-fense was a series of fortifications know as the Westwall. These fortifications m the length of the German border from Holland to the southwest-em tip of Germany opposite Switzerland. Originally, a series of small forts along the Saar River opposite the French border, the defenses were extended!

Today one can drive along the western German frontier and cross belts of concrete antitank dragon’s teeth stretching below slits of grey crumbling bunkers. For their impotence in 194445, they remain formidable obstacles. The dragon’s teeth and shattered pillboxes zigzag through forest and farmers’ fields, forcing new roads to skirt and bridge them and housing to be built around them. Constructed between 1936 and 1939, the Westwall was Germany’s answer to the much-touted French Maginot Line. The once gleaming white gle, nonstop fortifrcation in depth. It relied on scattered prefabricated pillboxes emplaced to provide interlocking fire. In front of the pillboxes were concrete dragon’s teeth antitank obstacles, barbed wire, and minefields. Pillboxes and dragon’s teeth were anayed in belts several miles thick. In mas of rugged terrain, such as the High Eifel opposite Belgium, fortifications were less extensive. In this terrain, the dragon’s teeth were reduced to the size of small parking lot pylons. However, around Aachen, Sxubrucken, and high mobility areas such as the Losheim Gap, antitank obstacles took on monstrous proportions. The Westwall was never designed to be a permanent barrier. The concept was for attacking armies to be delayed by the defenses, rugged terrain, and waterways until a German counterattack could drive them out. In 1939, Europe in January, 1945 This map of Europe in January 1945. after the Ardennes battle, indicates how much of the continent was still under German control only four months before the end of the war. The crumbling Nazi empire extended over Norway, Denmark, and major portions of Italy. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Latvia, and the Netherlands. they proved their worth when the French Army moved into the Saar and occupied a few s q m kilometers of German territory during the abortive " S m offensive."

Although a formidable obstacle against weapons and tactics of the 1930s. there was little the fortifications could do to halt the American Army in 1944. As early as 1940, the Germans themselves used pmtroops to drop onto Belgian and Dutch strongpoints and directed panzers mund the Maginot Line, demonstrating the futility of fixed fortifications. After the June 6, 1944, Allied inn-sion of France, the Westwall was hurriedly reinforced and extended, particularly along the border with the Netherlands. There was no time to improve the already emplaced concrete pillboxes and antitank dragon's teeth since there was no concrete to spare while German industry built underground or reinforced factories. Nearly all of Westwall's armament and communication systems were dismantled and reinstalled along the English Channel in 1943.

Although the overgrown concrete bunkers and pillboxes were better naturally camouflaged than they were in 1939, their fields of fire were reduced by the same wild growth. In many cases, local caretakers did not have maps, plans, or keys to the fortifications in their districts. SITUATION IN EUROPE

During war, military technology advances by leaps and bounds. Not only does military necessity account for increased resourcing. battlefield experience provides a never-ending proving ground. Unfortunately for the Germans, pillboxes, designed for weapons of 1936. had no provisions for machine guns and antitank weapons of 1944. Weapons were not the only limitations. Initially, it was difficult to man the fortifications with the required number of soldiers. The best that could be accomplished in a few short months was newly dug fighting positions, fresh minefields, hundreds of miles of barbed wire, and ineffective iron gates across secondary roads. On September 10. soldiers from the U. S. 4th Infantry Division crossed the Our River near Schoenberg? Four days later, American soldiers from the 5th Armored Division crossed the Sauer River at Wallendorf. Without much effort, the Americans penetrated the first belt of concrete fortification and advanced to within a few miles of Bitburg. There was little to stop the Americans from occupying the whole Eifel region. The Germans raced troops from Trier to check the advance and destroyed the Sauer bridgehead a week later! The Our River incursion, opposite St Vith in Belgium, could not be dislodged.

The once proud German Amy was unable to stem the tide, confming the military adage that obstacles alone are useless unless covered by fire and, more significantly, restored by counterattacks. Fortunately for the Germans, the United States Army slowed and halted in the rugged terrain and thick forests of the Eifel. The terrain, combined with stiffened German re-ARMOR - November-December 7992 sistance anchored mound the Westwall, stopped the Allied advance. For the Germans, an immediate counterattack to restore the border was out of the question. There were no forces yet available. In the beginning of September 1944, the Germans had only 100 serviceable tanks available on the Western Front? Allied operations in the Netherlands and incursions around Aachen and in front of the Rur (as spelled in Germany, becomes the Roer River in the Netherlands and is often spelled Roer in military accounts) Dams siphoned off divisions desperately needed elsewhere. However, Allied penetrations along the Siegfried Line in the southern region of the Schnee Eifel drew the attention of the Germans. It was only natural then that Westwall's original purpose could be exercised. An attack against the deepest penetration of the line would not only expel the Americans from the Eifel, but also threaten to envelop Aachen, as well as capture Antwerp, thereby severing the Allies' line of communications. The seeds of the Ardennes offensive were sown. Miracle In the West There would never have been a German offensive in the Ardennes if it had not been for Allied delays. After two months of slogging through hedgerow country in Normandy and clearing Brittany, the Allies broke out of their small comer of France while at the same time landing an army in the south. On August 25, Paris was liberated. In September, the Allies pushed into Belgium and penetrated the Siegfried Line into Germany and mched a position which, when planning the invasion, they had not expected to gain until May 1945.'' Then the advance ran out of steam. By advancing along abroad front the Allies rapidly liberated most of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg at the cost of exhausting their supplies. Not that supplies were short -there was just no way to get them to the ever more distant front line. Unlike the superhighways of today, there were no autobahns across France in the 1940s. The French railroad system was still wrecked from preinvasion bombing and resistance sabotage. Few of the ports were usable. They were either critically damaged or occupied by surrounded German divisions. German garrisons denied port facilities at Lorient, St. Nmire, La Rochelle, Calais, and Dunkirk and would continue to do so until May, 1945. Additionally, the German 15th Army controlled the sea outlet to recently captured Antwerp.

For the moment, all supplies had to be trucked to the various points of the front. The trip was frought with h m ards. In the space between departure and arrival, the convoys faced confusing routes, traffic jams, hijacking by roving bands of black marketeering American deserters and former French resistance, and diversions by competing armies.

Complicating the supply distribution was British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery's less than successful Netherlands offensive. a daring airborne and mechanized strike north onto Holland. The attack, code named MARKET GARDEN, was to seize seven Dutch bridges along a 70-mile route with three airborne divisions. Once British armor punched through the German line and crossed all seven bridges, the way would be clear to turn east, unimpeded by terrain, to slice through the German Ruhr industrial basin and then to Berlin. Though the opention captured five of seven bridges, the last bridge at Amhem on the Lower Rhine remained fmly in German hands (and would be until demolished in February, 1945). The soggy "island" between Arnhem and Nijmegen bridges was largely abandoned by the British who turned their eyes east toward what would eventually be the costly Reichswald operation. In total, the MARKET GARDEN operation provided a basis for a best-selling book and movie, but not much else. It denied other armies. particularly General George S. Patton's Third, the fuel required to exploit penetrations in Germany.

Indeed, almost all Allied activity that autumn was directed around Aachen. For reasons still debated today, the U. S. Army turned into the thick Hurtgen Forest. gained a few kilometers of ground while the better part of three U. S. divisions were mauled in a fruitless three-month campaign. To the south, the Ardennes, deemed an unlikely site of future German operations, was used by the U. S. Army as a place to send battle-weary divisions and train fresh units. During the delay. the Germans were not idle. Barely able to field an equipped force, the Germans mounted several modest counterattacks with scratch forces to restore large portions of the line in the hilly Eifel region. By November, units all along the front were standing to fight, and when threatened. they did so in good order. The Germans called the resurgence of their army "the Miracle of the West.""

With the exception of Aachen, the first major German city captured by the Allies, the western 1937 borders of German remained more or less intact.

The apparent threat in the West, combined with the local German successes, acted as a magnet for Hitler's military attention. Against advice of his generals, Hitler drained his carefully hoarded resources in preparation for a major attack. Hitler knew that the Ardennes was the last card to be played. Whether the forces were successful or not, the machines and war materiel could never be replaced. Why the West?

Desperate as the situation seemed, the German Reich still controlled a greater portion of Europe in late 1944 The Tiger II, or ’King Tiger,” was the best protected, best armed tank in W I I, and far superior to Allied rivals. This one, part of Kampfgtuppe Peiper, threw a track and was abandoned in the early stages of the Ardennes offensive. than it had after the conquest of Poland in 1939. Though the enemies of the Reich had multiplied in number and strength since 1941, the invading forces simply ran out of offensive steam. The Soviets drove into Poland and the eastern tip of East Prussia, but at great cost. The Red Army found itself at the end of a supply line stretched across eastern Europe. Continuous operations against stiff German opposition across a scorched countryside forced the Soviets to temporarily halt. Though the Soviets crossed the prewar Polish frontier in August, they paused east of Warsaw, where they remained almost five months. Stalin concerned himself with driving Germany’sallies out of the war and occupying the Balkans and Baltic countries.

As the Red Army gathered its breath for the final drive on Germany, Hitler concluded the Russians were offensively exhausted. Horrendous Soviet losses and a slim logistics chain made it “clear“ that the Russians had reached their high water mark. Hitler believed that administration of the conquered territories alone would stall the Russians indefinitely. For the time being, the Russians were not a threat. In northern Italy, Luftwaffe Field Marshal Albert Kesselring skillfully managed an economy of force mission in rugged temin and grudgingly gave ground. In Hitler’s opinion, the defensive battle in Italy was good for at least mother year. To the north, Norway and Denmark were secure for the moment. In fact, the Germans maintained military supremacy in Scandinavia, where the navy secured the waters mund Norway while the Luftwaffe ruled the Arctic. In Germany, the Luftwaffe managed to rebuild from its staggering piecemeal losses that summer into a force capable of several hundred sorties per day against Allied targets.” German industry, fmly under control of Minister of Armaments Albert Speer, had peak production just before D-Day. The production surge, in pat due to the Allied air forces momentary attention to French targets, provided much needed war material for a skeletal German Army. Decentralized production, round the clock manufacturing. and reinforced and underground factories made up for shortfalls due to bombing.

To quickly reequip units, the German Army called upon its. as yet bmly touched, vast stock of captured weapons stored at various depots from Czechoslovakia to Grafenwohr, Germany. Foreign artillery pieces of almost every caliber, originally planned as roadside monuments to commemo-nte German victories, were assembled to fulfill a military role. To make up for personnel losses, automatic weapons were increased throughout the m y to give units more fyepower, especially when fighting in wooded m. The 7.92-mm MP-44 assault rifle, the forerunner of the U. S. Army’s M-16 rifle of the 1960s. was issued in great quantities and was the most common German infantry weapon in the Ar-denne.’ The Reichsbahn, Germany’s efficient, though antiquated, state nil-road, was able to keep supplies moving despite homfic losses and massive nids on facilities. Despite rumors to the contrary, nil was the Wehrmacht’s primary mode of tmsporta-tion. Over the first two weeks of December, some 1,500 trains bearing troops. tanks, and guns unloaded in marshaling yards east of the Ardennes.14 With five years of experience, the Germans were technologically supenor to the Allies. Though they would never have the atomic bomb, and the “V” weapons were only a nuisance, the Germans made remarkable strides in military technology. The Luftwaffe, though driven from the skies of Europe, had the only operational jet fighter, bomber, and reconnaissance aircraft of the war. Indeed, the dual-jet engined Amdo 234 routinely photographed Allied supply beaches and battlefields in France.”

Throughout the war in the West, German armor was consistently supenor to that of the Allies. Though the French fielded superb tanks in 1940, they were not employed properly and were quickly rounded up by the invading Germans. With the German defeat in Fmnce, not only were many tanks lost in battle or due to air attack, damaged panzers could not be recovered from the battlefield before they were captured. The relative stabilization of the front allowed the German Army to rebuild its supply of armor. Hitler ordered that the entire production of the 68-ton Tiger I1 tank be sent. to the west and all medium armor to the Eastern Front.16 On the evening before the pat battle, 717 tanks and assault guns sat camouflaged opposite the American positions.”

Leading the refitting effort was the often maligned Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausf B, better known as the King Tiger 11. Like its predecessor, the Tiger I, the King Tiger was superior in armor and armament to any Allied tank. In battles in Normandy, the Tiger eliminated its opponents with ease. So feared were these 68-ton giants that Americans often called every German tank a “Tiger.”’* Apart from production shortages and the tank’s vulnerability to air attack, 136 King Tigers (remarkable considering only 476 were manufactured during the war) were ready for the Ardennes offensive.’’

Regardless of Hitler’s disdain for the armies of Soviet Russia, the west, from a cartographer’s point of view, was the threat. Historians studying the Ardennes offensive usually do so with 1937 maps of Germany. To Hitler, as well as to the German people, Germany was larger. Kesselring’s determined defense in Italy was due not so much to Italy’s surrender as it was that the Germans shared a common Soldiers of the U. S. 99th Infantry Division are marched into captivity by German paramop-ers after the initial surprise of the Ardennes attack. national border (the former Austrian frontier). An Allied offensive into Austria was an attack on Germany itself. For the time being, that possibility was months away.

In the east, Germany swallowed half of Czechoslovakia and was close to Germanizing the country. The border area, known as the Sudentenland, was already part of the Reich. The “Protectorate” of Czechoslovakia was in no danger of imminent invasion. In Poland, Germany was in the process of repossessing areas owned by Germany before 1918. With the exception of a few towns in East Prus-At a farmyard in Belgium on the second day of the offensive, German paratroop ers look over antitank guns, trucks, and jeeps left behind by U. S. units. At upper right, the German Panther tank. At lower right, the Tiger II, one of 136 that were scrounged together for the thrust into the Ardennes. sia, these lands were safely in German hands.

An attack against the Red Army would undoubtedly bring tactical success, but reach no strategic objective. In order to be Victorious, the Red Army would have to be driven hundreds of miles, at least out of Belorussia and the Ukraine. Hitler’s carefully hoarded pmzer force would easily be swallowed in the %pet Marshes and vast expanse of Russia.

An offensive in the Balkans was to be avoided entirely. The German forces there were having enough problems protecting their lines of communications against partisans, and finks against the Soviets and turncoat allies. Italy offered opportunities, but not for a heavy panzer force. The very mountainous terrain which formed Kesselring's successful defense would be turned against the Germans. Additionally, there were no raw materials to be gained, no thankful population to liberate, and no relief on fronts closer to Germany. If there was an attack, it would have to be on the Western Front.

The situation in the West was by far the most dangerous. The Allies had already liberated the Belgian easternmost province of Eupen et Malmedy?' which was annexed by the Reich in 1940 (they were lost by Germany after the First World War in 1919).

The American capture of Axhen and incursion toward the Rur Dms posed a threat to the industrial Ruhr. This congested area, encompassing seved major cites along the Rhine, had already taken a beating from continuous Allied air attacks. Its capture would virtually eliminate German war production.

Luxembourg, described as German by tradition. Ftench by politics?' was close to annexation by the time of the June 6 Allied invasion of France. In The Ardennes Gamble Adrennes battle map shows limits of German objectives and actual progress, army boundaries, and Allied front line on the day the battle began.

September, only a sliver of the country along the Our and Sauer Rivers remained German.

Why the Ardennes?

Historians in the 1950s and 1960s contend the Germans attacked through the Ardennes because of earlier victories through the wooded area in 1914 and 1940. However in 1914, the German border extended farther to the west than it did in 1937. True, German Panzer Genenl Heinz Guderian's thrust through the Ardennes in 1940 was a masterstroke, but it also was directed southwest against weakened French, Belgian, and British positions. The 1944 drive would be northwest toward Antwerp, against the grain of the country and in an area of very few From the Ardennes, it was only 110 miles to Antwerp - a reasonably attainable, though not necessarily re-tainable. strategic objective. Not only would the attack relieve the pressure on the German border, but would cut off the bulk of the British Army in the north and deny the Allies their northernmost port.

As fate would have it, geography favored a German buildup. The Eifel region opposite the Ardennes offered cover and concealment, particularly for an m y without air cover. As they had in 1914 and 1940. spurs of the Reichsbahn railroad m right into the Eifel from Trier and Koblenz. The German population of the region was unquestionably loyal, thus the chance of betrayal was slight. Additionally, ARMOR - Novembef-December 1992 most of the families immediately across the front lines had at least one father or son still in the German Army and the locals could be considered sympathetic. For the limited resources available, compared to the forces allotted in 1940, the Ardennes was deemed ideal.

Though German generals like Field Marshal Walther Model advocated an attack to regain the historic Holy Roman capital, Aachen, Hitler would not hear anything of it. In his estimate, Aachen could be retaken, but the cost would be too great. Throughout the war, Hitler rarely supported plans that involved direct assaults on major cities. City fighting easily swallowed divisions and tied them down for weeks at a time. Hitler remembered Stalingrad all too clearly, where a panzer army was committed to a city that could have been outflanked. Seizing hchen would have no stmte-gic significance. Moreover, hchen was too close to the British and Canadian forces in the Netherlands. Axhen's capture would no doubt evoke a swift counterattack. Despite feeble attempts to dissuade him, Hitler was set on attacking through the Ardennes, cutting off British and Canadian annies, and inflicting a defeat on the Americans similar to that of their 1943 disaster at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia at the hands of Panzer Armee Afrika. Paralysis of the enemy, not necessarily his physical destruction, was the aim?3 Hitler was convinced that the Allied link with the Russians was fragile and a defeat in the West would serve to rupture the alliance.% Though he knew he could not win the war. he might be able to sue for a sepmte peace without surrender and then deal militarily with the Russians.

In hindsight, the goal seems unrealistic. To the German military, and particularly to Hitler, it was the only logical course of action. Germany could not survive by fighting a defensive war, unconditional surrender would bring terms worse than those of 1918, and the dictatorship would have been doomed. The only mute left was through the Ardennes.

Notes 'Cooper, Uatthcw, The German Army 1933-1945. Scarborough House, Chelsea. Michigan. 1978. p. 518.

2Crookenden. Napier, Bank of rhe Bulge 1944. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 1980. p. 6.

31bid.. p. 7. 'Irving, David. Hifler's War. Avon Books. New Yorlc, 1990, p. 722. 'Elstob, Peter, Basrogne, fhe Road Block, Ballantine Books. New York. 1972, p. 8. 'Flaherty. Thomas H.. Editor, The Reach for Empire. Time-Life Books. Alexandria, Virginia, 1989, p. 36.

7Nosbuesch. Johannes, Bis Zum Bitterern Ende, Paulinur-Druckerei. GmbH, Trier, Bun-desrepublik Dcutschland. 1978, p. 113.?bid.. p. 93. 'cooper. p. 515.

"Ibid.. p. 516.

"Goolrick, Willian K. and Ogden Tanner, The Baffle of fhe Bulge, Time-Life Books. Alexandria, Virginia, 1979, p. 32. '*Criers, Thomas E., Editor, The Second World War, the Wert Point Military History Series, Avery Publishing Group, Wayne, New Jer-re 1984. p. 370. 'Parker, Danny S.. Battle of rhe Bulge, Combined Books. Conrhohocken, Pennsylvania. 1991. p. 54.

141bid.. p. 25..''Irving.

David, Gorring, Avon Books. New York, 1989, p. 441.

Cooper. p. 517.

"Parker, p. 26. '*Ibid., p. 234. ''lbid. mMacDondd. Charles B., A Time for Trum-pers, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1985, p. 28.

"Flaherty. Thomas H.. Editor. The Heel of the Conqueror. Time Life Books. Alexandria. Vi inia, 1991, p. 11. 'Perret, BVM. Knights of the Black Cross, St. Maltin's Pnsr, New York, 1986. p. 237. %mper. p. 520.

"Lucas, James, Reich, Gnfion Boob. Lon-16 don, 1989.

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Captain Kevin R. Austra is currently the S3 training officer, 103d Military Intelligence Battalion, 3d Infantry Division (Mechanized), Wunburg, Germany. He graduated from Seton Hall University in 1982 and received his masters degree from Central Michigan University in 1989. In 1991, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his service during Operation DESERT STORM. He has published several articles on the Battle of the Bulge and is a frequent visitor to the Ardennes battle site.