Innholdsfortegnelse for Battle of the Bulge i History of War

As the winter of 1944 tightened its icy grip across Europe, Nazi Germany found itself surrounded by powerful enemies intent on seizing Berlin and crushing the Third Reich once and for all. Yet, despite its precarious situation, Germany was far from defeated, and Hitler knew it. Clinging to one last shred of hope, he devised an audacious plan to strike at the Allies in the West in a bid to drive a wedge between them and turn the tide of the war in Germany’s favour. Summoning thousands of men and machines, Hitler’s commanders prepared to unleash one final assault, an onslaught that would catch the Allies off guard and remind the world that if Germany was to be beaten, many more people would have to perish first. The Battle of…

Just before 5.30am on 16 December 1944, an American soldier manning an observation post in Hosingen reported numerous flickering pinpoints of light among the German lines. They were the first muzzle flashes of a German artillery barrage. Between 1,600 and 1,900 guns and mortars opened up (reports vary), shelling 80 miles of Allied front. Cannons mounted on railway cars fired 14-inch shells at supply depots well behind the front line, and command posts and artillery positions came under fire from guns and rockets. Radio frequencies were jammed, making it extremely difficult for the American troops at the front to report the attack. The German advance inevitably followed. Searchlight beams aimed at low clouds lit the way as they pressed forward, supported by the new Messerschmitt 262 jet-powered aircraft.…

Although the northern shoulder of the Ardennes Offensive did not go as planned for Germany, the battle in the centre and the south of the bulge went far better. In the Schnee Eifel sector, General Manteuffel’s 5th Panzer Army launched an attack on positions held by the 28th and 106th Infantry Divisions. Manteuffel enjoyed numerical superiority over the thinly spread American infantry, but he did not possess the overwhelming strength enjoyed by German forces further north. As mentioned earlier, a pincer movement surrounded two regiments of inexperienced young recruits from the 106th Division, who misunderstood orders to evacuate the area should the situation become untenable. Their surrender was therefore inevitable. According to the records of the official US Army history, “At least 7,000 [US soldiers] were lost here, and the…

PZ.BEOBACHTUNGSWAGEN.IV AUSF.J. The Panzerbeobachtungswagen (Armoured Observation Vehicle) was created by modifying the Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.J. Changes included replacing the commander’s cupola with that from a Sturmgeschütz and fitting additional radio equipment. The Sturmgeschütz cupola allowed for the use of a scissor periscope when the main cupola hatch was closed. Pz.Kpfw.IV from this period were delivered from the assembly plant with the camouflage already applied. This consisted of a thin base coat of Rot (RAL 8012), about 50 per cent of which was over-painted with well-thinned stripes and patches, with sharp outlines of Dunkelgelb (RAL 7028) and patches of Olivgrün (RAL 6003). Wheels were always left in a single colour. JAGDPANTHER This Jagdpanther (Fgst.Nr. 303018) was completed at MNH, Hannover, at the end of November or the beginning of December 1944 and…

Kampfgruppe Bohm raced to the Meuse before Christmas 1944. This battle group was based around the 2nd Panzer Division’s reconnaissance battalion, Panzer Aufklarungs Abteilung 2, but its combat power was reinforced by Panther tanks from its Panzer regiment, Pz.Rgt.3. This was necessary as its reconnaissance battalion had been only partially refitted prior to the Ardennes operation. Its first company was absent due to refitting, while its third company was equipped mainly with bicycles. Illequipped or not, one of the reasons for the success of 5th Panzer Army in penetrating deep behind American lines was the more effective use of their reconnaissance units. Model’s Army Group B headquarters was critical of poor use of reconnaissance units by the neighbouring Waffen-SS Panzer divisions, which usually employed them like any other Panzer or…

This plate shows a column of tanks led by Abrams in Thunderbolt VI advancing towards Bastogne around Christmas 1944. Abrams switched to a M4A3 (76mm) medium tank in the autumn of 1944 after the Arracourt tank battles at the request of the CCA commander, Col. Bruce Clarke. As in the case of his previous tanks, this one carried the Thunderbolt cartoon on the hull side. The tank is fitted with duck-bill extended-end connectors for better traction in snow and mud.…

Hitler was down but not out. Despite the disarray the Ardennes Offensive was in, the Führer held a firm belief that the two operations he ordered to take place as the first days of 1945 arrived would have a decisive effect on the fortunes of the German army. This turned out to be only half true, with his forces suffering badly for the small victories that could be claimed in January……

At 09.30am on New Year’s Day, the Luftwaffe staged its long-delayed attack on Allied airfields, codenamed Bodenplatte (baseplate). Among the participants were the Me-262A-2a fighterbombers (1) of KG51, one of Hitler’s new wonder weapons. 21 of these aircraft took part in attacks on RAF airfields at Eindhoven and Heesch in the Netherlands. The Eindhoven strike was conducted in conjunction with Bf-109 and FW-190 fighters (2) of Jagdgeschwader 3 and was the more successful of the two missions, destroying or damaging about 50 of the Typhoons (3) and Spitfires stationed with the three wings there. The attack on Heesch with Jagdgeschwader 6 had little effect, and one Me-262 was lost to ground fire. Kampfgeschwader 51 was the principal Luftwaffe unit operating the fighter-bomber version of the Me-262 at the time, and…

After the Allies’ successful D-Day landings, the Axis lines had collapsed in the West, its armies being pushed back closer and closer to the German border… But could one last push snatch glorious victory from the gaping jaws of defeat? Hitler certainly thought so……

German paratroopers had proved a great asset during its victories of 1940 and 1941. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hitler was to turn to them again during the Battle of the Bulge, but by then Germany had very few experienced paratroopers and even fewer pilots trained in making airdrops. Their successes of the early war years were not to be repeated. In Operation Stösser, Hitler planned to use around 1,000 paratroopers to take a strategic road junction approximately seven miles north of Malmedy, blocking American reinforcements and giving General Dietrich’s Sixth Panzer Army time to reinforce the thrust’s newly created defensive perimeter. They were to hold the junction for 24 hours, after which they would be relieved by the advancing 12th SS Panzer Division. In charge of the drop was Oberst Friedrich August…

Probably the most vivid image to have emerged from the Battle of the Bulge was the sight of King Tiger tanks advancing through the snowy pine forests of the Belgian border, immortalised by a series of photographs taken by a German combat cameraman on the morning of 17 December 1944. In many accounts of the battle, these images have come to symbolise the armoured spearhead of Kampfgruppe Peiper as it steamrollered through American defences. But in reality, the image highlights the underlying problem of the German offensive. The King Tigers (1) of s.SS-Pz. Abt. 501 were not in the vanguard of the German attack but brought up the rear of Kampfgruppe Peiper due 3 to the difficulties of moving such awkward and accident-prone tanks on the narrow country roads of…

Following the surprise German offensive in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944, Eisenhower ordered his senior commanders to meet on 19 December in Verdun to discuss the Allied counterattack. The meeting was held in a vacated schoolroom in a complex of buildings assigned to the 12th Army Group. Bradley had not used the complex, preferring a forward headquarters in Spa, Belgium, and this site was chosen since it was away from the threatened area and between Eisenhower’s Versailles headquarters, Patton’s headquarters in Etain and Bradley’s Belgian headquarters. Present at the meeting were Ike, Bradley, Patton, Devers, Tedder, Smith and Freddie de Guingand representing Montgomery. The initial briefing was given by Ike’s intelligence officer, Major-General Kenneth Strong. At this meeting, Patton unveiled his scheme to relieve Bastogne. Two of his corps…

In the early morning of Christmas Day, Kampfgruppe Mauke of the newly arrived 15th Panzergrenadier Division launched an attack against the positions of the 502nd Parachute Infantry (1) and the 327th Glider Infantry on the northern side of the Bastogne perimeter. The attack was beaten decisively in savage skirmishes in the woods and villages outside the city. This scene shows the aftermath of the skirmish as the paratroopers try to reinforce their positions for a possible renewed German onslaught. The most vivid memory for most American veterans of the Battle of the Bulge was the misery of life in the foxholes. Units would move every day or so, which necessitated the digging of another set of foxholes and defensive positions (2). While foxholes were useful in providing protection from German…

0n New Year’s Day 1945, Hitler – still convinced that victory was possible – launched two new offensives designed to reclaim the initiative and turn the tide of the Battle of the Bulge, which was definitely going against him. Operation Norwind (North Wind) was to be an attack on the Alsace-Lorraine region of northern France, territory captured by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 but returned to France after World War Hitler’s rationale for the new offensive was that the conflict in the Ardennes had drained American troops from Alsace-Lorraine, which lay around 125 miles south. As the Führer himself put it, “The Americans have been forced to withdraw something like 50 per cent of the forces from their other fronts to the Ardennes. [The result] is that their…

After the initial post-D-Day collapse, the German forces had rallied and regrouped. Operation Market Garden, the Allies’ attempt at attacking the heart of Germany’s industrial lands, was successfully thwarted. Buoyed by this success, Hitler planned an offensive of his own. It was a bold operation that went against the advice of his generals, but he believed a surprise armoured attack in the Ardennes region could split the Allied lines, cut off their supplies and reinforcements and cause havoc in the alliance between Britain, the US and France. Officially known as The Ardennes Offensive, the inward bulge it briefly caused in the front line gave the operation the name by which it’s more commonly known – the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler identified the Ardennes as a key weak point in…

In his impatience to get his division back on schedule, the commander of the 12th SS-Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, General Kraas, decided to commit his Panzer regiment to help root out the American infantry in the streets of Krinkelt. The town was shrouded in fog and icy rain, and the green GIs of the recently arrived 99th ‘Battlin’ Babes’ Division were intermixed with the hardened veterans of the 2nd Infantry Division. The twin villages of Krinkelt and Rocherath were typical of farm communities in this rural region, with sturdy buildings made of stone. They proved to be ideal defensive positions for the US infantry. Most of the German Panzergrenadiers who were supposed to accompany the tanks into the town were stripped away from the Panzers by small arms fire before they…

As an ‘old hand’, this paratrooper retains the Fallschirmjager jump helmet; newer members of the two Fallschirm divisions involved in the Ardennes Offensive wore the standard Stahlhelm. His helmet is covered by a string net into which leaves and twigs could be inserted to break up the silhouette, and he wears a woollen toque. Jump smocks had, however, disappeared to a degree by this stage of the war, except for special operations such as ‘Stösser’. He therefore wears the combat jacket in splinter camouflage material, which was first issued to the Luftwaffe field divisions in 1942. His trousers, however, are the padded type made of a cotton/rayon mix in the brownish water pattern camouflage that was also used on the ‘third pattern’ jump smocks. Together with his officer’s pattern waist…

General Bruce Clarke’s approach to defending St Vith was to use the mobility and firepower of his tank units to keep the Wehrmacht at bay for as long as possible. US armoured divisions were weak in infantry, with only three battalions per division, and while they could be used for defence, the type of linear defence in depth practised by infantry units was out of the question. So the tanks and other supporting troops in St Vith held positions for as long as they could and then fell back to more defensible positions. Here we see a pair of M4 medium tanks conducting a rearguard action in the outskirts of St Vith shortly before Clarke was forced to abandon the town. The M4 medium tank was a durable, reliable design,…

The German troops on the southern flank of the bulge, under the command of General Hasso von Manteuffel, had three immediate objectives to achieve. Firstly, they needed to cross the River Our. They were then to support the attack on the road junction at St Vith in the central zone before going on to take Bastogne, another important road junction. Units from two divisions were to seize the bridge over the Our at Ouren. General Walter Krüger’s LVIII Panzer Corps was spearheaded by Generalmajor Siegfried von Waldenburg’s 116th Panzer Division, partnered by the 560th Volksgrenadier Division. The 116th was an experienced, veteran division, and in March 1945 was described as “the famed and best German Panzer Division” by the commander of the 9th Army talking to The New York Times…

The advance by Kampfgruppe Feuchtinger towards Haguenau Forest was blocked by a string of Maginot Line fortifications built by the French army in the 1930s. Hatten had several casemates (1) on its eastern side as well as observation bunkers and personnel shelters behind the town in the direction of Rittershoffen. When 25. Panzergrenadier-Division was given the assignment of breaking through this line on 9 January, they began their preparations by calling forward their divisional Pionier units (engineers), who were equipped with portable flame-throwers and explosive charges. In addition, Panzer-Flamm-Kompanie 352, which was equipped with ten Flammpanzer 38(t) tanks (2) had been attached to the Kampfgruppe specifically for these sort of situations. The usual tactic for dealing with these pillboxes was to attempt to cut through any barbed-wire obstructions in the…

“IF HITLER MOVED DIVISIONS FROM THE EASTERN FRONT TO THE WEST, THE WEAKENED ALLIED FORCES COULD BE VULNERABLE” By early January 1945 the Ardennes Offensive had ground to a halt. The 2nd Panzer Division had been stopped short of the Meuse; Kampfgruppe Peiper had halted on the north shoulder; and key German objectives, such as the town of Bastogne, remained in Allied hands. It was time for the Allies to counterattack, pushing back the bulge and restoring the front line to its December 1944 shape. A plan was formed. General Patton’s 3rd Army in the south would strike north, while Montgomery’s forces in the north would press south, with the two coming together around Houffalize on the River Our. Yet there were concerns within the corridors of Allied power. Both…

American and British divisions pushed into Germany from the west, while the Red Army entered from the east… It would only be a matter of weeks before Allied troops were crossing the Rhine. The Mardasson Memorial honours the memory of the 76,890 American soldiers who were wounded or killed during the Battle of the Bulge. The complex is a pentagram with a height of 12 metres and a side length of 31 metres centred by a circular atrium with a diameter of 20 metres. While the inner walls are covered with ten paintings from the battle, the outer crown is engraved with the names of the contemporary 48 US States, and the insignia of most of the participating battalions are shown on the walls.…