Advance and Destroy: Patton as Commander in the Bulge

2.The Opposing Armies in December 1944

2 The Opposing Armies in December 1944 It was not that his [Hitler’s] soldiers now lacked determination or drive: what they lacked was weapons and equipment of every sort. —Hasso von Manteuffel German ground forces in World War II were finally defeated in May 1945 because they fought a multifront war against the world’s three greatest industrial powers. They were simply outnumbered in manpower and materiel. Eisenhower’s G-3, Major General Harold R. Bull, calculated that Allied numerical superiority in Normandy on July 1, 1944, was between 2.5:1 and 3:1. At the end of the Normandy campaign the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) concluded that the “process of final military defeat . . . has begun. . . . Whatever action Hitler may now take, it will be too late to affect the issue in the West, where organized German resistance will gradually disintegrate under our attack, although it is impossible to predict the rate at which this will take place.” The JIC assessment was deterministic and declared that German defeat would occur before 1945. The 200,000 casualties sustained by the U.S. Army from January to May 1945 ruined this estimate.1 Yet the fundamental truth was inescapable: the Allies’ numerical and material superiority, the major components of their war-fighting system, simply overmatched that of the Wehrmacht. At the strategic level the Allies possessed the necessary margin of superiority to seize and retain the initiative in northwestern Europe and to conduct operations at a significantly higher tempo than their opponent . From D-Day until the beginning of the Bulge the Allies conducted 26 The Road to the Bulge large operations at a rate of almost six to the Germans’ one. The Allied operational interval was just over three days, versus twenty-one days for the Germans.2 Their sustained defensive posture was a clear indication of the Germans’ numerical and material inferiority. Well before the first Allied soldier stepped ashore in Normandy, the Wehrmacht lost the strategic initiative in Russia, never had it in Italy, and did not have it in northwest Europe until the Ardennes counteroffensive. Mustering sufficient combat power to temporarily seize the initiative in the west in late 1944 was achieved by economy of force and the acceptance of considerable risk. Despite the drastic measures taken to assemble the necessary combat power, Heeresgruppe B suffered from major deficiencies. The German Army in Late 1944 Hitler’s combat power rested on twenty divisions for the main strike force and another nine division equivalents in reserve. At Kursk eighteen months earlier he had massed fifty divisions in a far greater display of German might. Yet his violation of that almost sacred rule in German military thinking—to avoid multifront wars—had significantly eroded German combat power in the west. Rundstedt and Model were hardly surprised at the totals for the Ardennes. They recognized that Hitler’s November 10 order of battle listing thirty-eight divisions was pure fantasy. Patton’s own actions had ensured that the stated requirements could not be met. His renewed offensive in Lorraine in early November drew in the 36th, 347th, and 719th Infantry Divisions and the 256th Volksgrenadier Division (VGD). Most important, Third Army fixed the 11th and 21st PDs and the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division (PGD) plus Panzer Lehr for an extended period of time.3 The most potent of the three armies was Dietrich’s Sixth Panzer Armee ; it was nine divisions strong, with the greatest concentration of SS divisions since Normandy. SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Priess’s I SS Panzerkorps contained SS-Oberführer Wilhelm Mohnke’s 1st SS PD “Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler” and SS-Standartenführer Hugo Kraas’s 12th SS PD “Hitler Jugend.” The Leibstandarte had reorganized two months before the Ardennes and received about 3,500 new troops, bringing it to a strength of 17,988. It was the least diluted of the regenerated SS divisions, and its panzer regiment contained 100 Panzerkampfwagen (Panzer) IVs and Vs (Panthers) and was further augmented by thirty Panzer VI Königstiger (King Tiger) IIs of Schwere (Heavy) SS-Panzer Abteilung (Battalion ) 1, of which perhaps fifteen were operational.4 Each of its two panzer The Opposing Armies in December 1944 27 grenadier regiments contained two battalions. This was the same for all the SS panzer divisions. The 12th SS PD had fought savage battles in Normandy against the Canadians in early June and...