The counter-offensive in the Ardennes

On Christmas Eve 1944, the eighth day of the German offensive in the Ardennes, the commander of the American VII Corps, Major General Joseph Lawton Collins, agreed that Major General Ernest Harmon’s 2nd Armored Division should attack the next morning the spearhead of the German 2nd Panzer Division, which had come to a halt for lack of fuel near Celles, a few kilometres from the Meuse at Dinant. War chronologies record under this date simply that the American counter-attack in the Ardennes began. That needs clarifying, because the American response had no single starting day. In the south, III Corps of Lieutenant General George Patton’s Third Army had been attacking northwards towards encircled Bastogne since the morning of 22 December. In the north the Americans were not counter-attacking but defending – and successfully: on the ridge at Elsenborn (PL) they had held the German Sixth SS Panzer Army since the first day. What 24 December did bring was the decision to deliver the first powerful blow against the furthest-advanced German wedge – the fighting at Celles lasted from 24 to 26 December. The real Allied counter-offensive, intended to cut off the whole salient, was launched from the north only on 3 January 1945.

The Verdun conference

The first days of the offensive caught the Allied command by surprise. When the Germans struck the thinly held sector of Major General Troy Middleton’s VIII Corps on 16 December, General Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters at first took it for a local attack designed to draw forces away from the advance on the Saar and the Roer dams. Eisenhower soon realised, however, that something bigger was afoot, and that same evening he sent two armoured divisions into the Ardennes – the 7th from the north and the 10th from the south. From the supreme command reserve he also dispatched two airborne divisions that were resting in France after Operation Market Garden: the 82nd to Werbomont and the 101st to Bastogne.

On the morning of 19 December Eisenhower called a conference in old barracks at Verdun. It was attended by his deputy, Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, the commander of the 12th Army Group, General Omar Bradley, the commander of the 6th Army Group, General Jacob Devers, and Patton. Montgomery was not present. According to participants’ accounts, Eisenhower opened it by saying that the present situation should be regarded as an opportunity rather than a disaster, and that there should be only cheerful faces at the table. It was agreed that the Meuse was to be held at all costs, that in the south Devers would take over part of the Third Army’s front, and that Patton would turn as many forces as possible north and strike the left flank of the German wedge. Asked when he could attack, Patton is said to have replied that he could do so within 48 hours, with three divisions. Some of those present received this with disbelief, since it meant breaking off a prepared offensive in the Saar and swinging an entire corps through 90 degrees along icy roads. Patton, however, who – as his staff recalled – had ordered several variants of such a turn to be worked out even before the conference, was able to issue his orders with a single telephone call. The attack was set for 22 December.

Montgomery on the northern flank

The German wedge had cut the 12th Army Group in two. Bradley’s headquarters in Luxembourg lay south of the breach, and communications with Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges’s First Army and Lieutenant General William Simpson’s Ninth Army, which stood to the north of it, ran by a roundabout route. On 20 December Eisenhower – on the advice of his staff, including his chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, and his British intelligence chief, Major General Kenneth Strong – placed both these armies under the commander of the 21st Army Group, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Bradley was left with only Patton’s Third Army. The decision made sense from the point of view of communications and reserves – Montgomery had at his disposal Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks’s British XXX Corps, which since 19 December had been occupying the Meuse crossings between Givet and Liège on its own initiative – but Bradley took it as a sign of lack of confidence and, as he himself wrote after the war, found it hard to come to terms with losing command of most of his troops.

Montgomery went to Hodges’s headquarters at Chaudfontaine that same day, 20 December. One of his staff officers later described his arrival with the words that the field marshal had come “like Christ come to cleanse the temple” – a phrase that became a symbol of wounded American pride. Montgomery judged that the First Army was tired and dispersed, and decided first to “tidy up the battlefield”: to shorten the lines, gather reserves and only then counter-attack. As the reserve for the future attack he designated Collins’s VII Corps, withdrawn from the fighting in the Hürtgen Forest and being moved from 20 December into the area of Marche and Hotton.

This caution weighed heavily in a dispute that dragged on until the end of the war and long afterwards. American commanders, especially Bradley and Patton, believed that Montgomery delayed too long in striking from the north and gave up ground that could have been held. Montgomery and his defenders pointed out that in the first week there was nothing to counter-attack with, and that a premature attack could have ended in disaster. The best-known example was the decision to give up the salient on the River Salm near Vielsalm. The defenders of St. Vith – Brigadier General Robert Hasbrouck’s 7th Armored Division, with Brigadier General Bruce Clarke’s Combat Command B, and the remnants of the 106th Infantry Division – held this important road junction until the evening of 21 December. Montgomery allowed them to withdraw behind the Salm, which they did on 22–23 December, “with all honour”, in his words. On the night of 24/25 December Major General James Gavin’s 82nd Airborne Division also fell back to a shortened line, against the views of its commander and of the commander of XVIII Airborne Corps, Major General Matthew Ridgway.

The northern shoulder held

Before anyone could think of a counter-attack, the Americans had to stop the main blow. The strongest German army in the Ardennes was the Sixth SS Panzer Army of Oberstgruppenführer Josef “Sepp” Dietrich, which was to take the shortest route to the Meuse at Liège and on to Antwerp. Its attack, however, broke against the so-called northern shoulder of the front. The young, inexperienced 99th Infantry Division and the veteran 2nd Infantry Division withdrew from the twin villages of Krinkelt and Rocherath to the ridge at Elsenborn and halted the Germans there; both belonged to Major General Leonard Gerow’s V Corps. To their south the 1st Infantry Division beat off attacks on the Dom Bütgenbach manor farm on 19–22 December. The Elsenborn ridge was backed by V Corps artillery, which broke up one attack after another.

The only formation of the Sixth SS Panzer Army to break through deeper was the battle group of SS-Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper of the 1st SS Panzer Division – the same unit whose men had shot prisoners near Malmedy on 17 December. Cut off and out of fuel around Stoumont and La Gleize, on the night of 23/24 December it abandoned its tanks and vehicles, and some 800 men made their way on foot to their own lines. By Christmas Eve, therefore, the most dangerous thrust of the offensive’s first days had already been stopped. The weight of the German attack had shifted south-west, to General Hasso von Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army, whose divisions had bypassed Bastogne and were pushing towards the Meuse.

Patton’s drive on Bastogne

The Third Army’s turn was one of the smoothest manoeuvres of the war. Within three days the headquarters of Major General John Millikin’s III Corps, until then earmarked for the Saar offensive, took over the sector south of the breach, and three divisions were moved into the area of Arlon and Luxembourg: Major General Hugh Gaffey’s 4th Armored Division, Major General Willard Paul’s 26th Infantry Division and Major General Horace McBride’s 80th Infantry Division. Columns drove day and night along snow-covered roads, and the army staff had to replan supply, communications and the movement of tens of thousands of vehicles. At the same time Major General Manton Eddy’s XII Corps was taking over the front on the southern shoulder of the breach, facing General Erich Brandenberger’s Seventh Army, which was to shield the left flank of the German attack.

At dawn on 22 December, in a snowstorm, III Corps moved north. That day, then, saw the start of the first American counter-attack in the Ardennes – two days before the date given in the chronologies. Progress, however, was slow. Facing them were the German 5th Parachute Division and the 352nd Volksgrenadier Division, which fought for every village. Combat Command A of the 4th Armored Division was held up at a blown bridge at Martelange on the Arlon–Bastogne highway, and on 24 December was fighting for the village of Warnach. Combat Command B reached Chaumont, a few kilometres from Bastogne, on 23 December, but a German counter-attack with assault guns drove it out of the village and destroyed a dozen or so tanks. The 80th Division took Ettelbruck and Heiderscheid, and the 26th Division advanced through difficult, wooded country towards Wiltz. After three days Bastogne was still several kilometres away, and the division defending the town – Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe’s 101st Airborne, which on 22 December had rejected the German call to surrender – had been receiving supplies by air drop since 23 December, made possible because the skies over the Ardennes had cleared.

On Christmas Eve Patton was irritated by the pace of the attack. According to his diary and the recollections of his staff officers, the 4th Armored Division was losing tanks and men, and there was too little infantry to clear the woods and villages. He therefore decided to shift the weight of the attack westwards: Combat Command R of the 4th Armored Division, until then in reserve, was to bypass the resistance and strike along side roads through Assenois. It was its tanks that two days later would break through to Bastogne.

At Celles, a few kilometres from the Meuse

Meanwhile, at the western tip of the breach, the most dangerous moment of the offensive for the Allies was unfolding. Colonel Meinrad von Lauchert’s 2nd Panzer Division, the furthest-advanced unit of the Fifth Panzer Army, had bypassed Bastogne and was pushing west through Marche and Rochefort. On 23 December its battle groups halted near Celles, and on the morning of 24 December its reconnaissance reached Foy-Notre-Dame (PL), only a few kilometres from the Meuse bridge at Dinant. It got no further. The tanks ran out of fuel, the supply columns could not get through the congested roads, and Allied fighter-bombers attacked them out of a clear sky. Waiting near Dinant were the tanks of the British 29th Armoured Brigade from Horrocks’s XXX Corps, which had occupied the crossings, and it was they who first clashed with the German spearhead.

On the American side this sector was held by Collins’s VII Corps – Harmon’s 2nd Armored Division, Major General Maurice Rose’s 3rd Armored Division and Major General Alexander Bolling’s 84th Infantry Division, which held Marche-en-Famenne. Montgomery wanted to keep the corps for the future counter-attack and instructed Hodges that, if necessary, VII Corps should fall back rather than be drawn into battle. On the afternoon of 24 December, however, Harmon reported to Collins that his patrols had located German battle groups near Celles and asked for permission to attack – according to the accounts, he said he had “the whole damned 2nd Panzer Division in the bag”. In the evening an order from the First Army reached corps headquarters, worded in terms general enough to allow different readings. Collins, in the absence of a clear prohibition, decided to attack the next morning. In those same days Combat Command A of the 2nd Armored Division had already clashed with German units on the roads near Ciney and Buissonville.

Christmas at Celles

On the morning of 25 December Isaac White’s Combat Command B of the 2nd Armored Division, supported by British tanks from Dinant and by fighter-bombers of the Ninth Air Force and British Typhoons, attacked the cut-off German battle groups at Celles and Conneux. Without fuel, the German tanks could not manoeuvre and were destroyed one after another. Relief attempts made over the following days by Lieutenant General Fritz Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division and the 9th Panzer Division from the direction of Rochefort and Humain were beaten off. By 26–27 December the spearhead of the 2nd Panzer Division had ceased to exist. According to American figures cited in the US Army official history (Hugh M. Cole’s The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge), the Germans lost more than 80 tanks, several dozen guns and several hundred vehicles here, and more than a thousand men were taken prisoner. A few hundred survivors made their way back to their own lines on foot by night.

Celles was the point at which the German offensive came closest to the Meuse, and the place where it finally lost its momentum. North of this sector the fighting continued: on Christmas Eve the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich took the crossroads at Manhay, retaken by the Americans on 27 December, and at Hotton and Marche German attacks had been beaten off for several days. But no German division any longer had the strength or the fuel to reach the river. As early as Christmas Eve Manteuffel – according to his post-war accounts – reported to Führer Headquarters that the Meuse could not be reached, and proposed turning north in order at least to destroy the American forces east of the river.

What began when

The chronologies’ formula of “the beginning of the American counter-attack” on 24 December thus simplifies the picture. In reality it was a series of decisions and attacks following one another:

• 19 December – the Verdun conference: decision to hold the Meuse and for the Third Army to attack from the south.
• 20 December – Montgomery takes command north of the breach; VII Corps designated as the reserve for a future attack.
• 22 December – Patton’s III Corps moves off towards Bastogne; the real start of the American counter-attack.
• 24 December – Collins decides to strike the 2nd Panzer Division; the fighting at Celles lasts from 24 to 26 December, the main attack on 25 December.
• 26 December – tanks of the 4th Armored Division reach Bastogne.
• 30 December – the Third Army resumes its attack northwards from Bastogne.
• 3 January 1945 – the First Army launches the real counter-offensive from the north, towards Houffalize.

From Christmas Eve to cutting off the salient

The battle went on for another month. On 26 December tanks of Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams’s 37th Tank Battalion of the 4th Armored Division punched a narrow corridor through to Bastogne, but the Germans went on attacking the town and the corridor for two more weeks, and on 30 December the Third Army’s attack from Bastogne collided with Manteuffel’s last major counter-attack. Hitler did not call off the offensive. On the contrary – on 31 December he launched Operation Nordwind in Alsace, aimed at Devers’s weakened 6th Army Group, and on 1 January 1945 the Luftwaffe carried out Operation Bodenplatte – a massed attack on Allied airfields in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, in which it destroyed many aircraft but lost hundreds of machines and irreplaceable pilots.

On 3 January 1945 Collins’s VII Corps – the same corps that had smashed the spearhead at Celles – advanced from the north on Houffalize together with XVIII Airborne Corps. Montgomery chose to strike at the base of the salient closer to its tip, rather than further east as Patton urged – Patton believed a deeper cut would make it possible to encircle a larger part of the German forces; Bradley, however, backed the shallower thrust on Houffalize. On 16 January patrols of the First and Third Armies met at Houffalize. By 25 January the front had returned roughly to the line of 16 December. The dispute over command did not die down: on 7 January Montgomery gave a press conference at which he presented his role in the battle in a way that Bradley and American officers considered belittling to their soldiers. Churchill had to stress in the House of Commons that the fighting in the Ardennes had been done above all by Americans, and the First Army returned to Bradley’s command on 18 January. Simpson’s Ninth Army remained with Montgomery until the crossing of the Rhine.

Place in the war

The counter-attack, which began on 22 December and gathered momentum on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, ensured that the last great German offensive in the west achieved none of its aims: the Wehrmacht did not reach the Meuse, did not get near Antwerp and did not split the British and American armies. It cost both sides dearly. According to American figures, US Army losses in the whole battle amounted to some 75,000 to 89,000 killed, wounded and missing – the heaviest American losses in any single battle in the west. German losses are estimated at 67,000–100,000 men, together with several hundred tanks and assault guns that the Third Reich could no longer replace. Thousands of Belgian and Luxembourg civilians fell victim to the fighting.

For the further course of the war, what mattered most was where these forces were missing. The armoured reserves and fuel used up in the Ardennes could no longer be used in the east, where on 12 January 1945 the Red Army launched the Vistula–Oder offensive and within a few weeks reached the Oder. In the spring of 1945 the Western Allies faced a German army that was no longer capable of any serious offensive in the west. The events of Christmas Eve at Celles and on the road to Bastogne also left their mark on the memory of the US Army – as proof that, after the initial surprise, it could quickly regroup and regain the initiative.