Operation Nordwind begins

Soldiers of the US Seventh Army spent the first hours of 1945 in the trenches and bunkers of northern Alsace and eastern Lorraine, beating off a German attack. On Adolf Hitler’s orders the German First Army had gone into the attack at about 11 p.m. on 31 December 1944, without any artillery preparation, and the first waves of infantry reached the main American lines at around midnight. The offensive, code-named Nordwind (North Wind), thus formally began in the old year, and New Year’s Day was its first full day of fighting. It was the last great German offensive on the Western Front.

For the record, the blow did not come as a complete surprise. The commander of 6th Army Group, General Jacob Devers, and the commander of the Seventh Army, General Alexander Patch, had been expecting an attack for several days – according to the US official history and later studies, they had been warned by intelligence reports, including decrypted German signals (Ultra), and by air reconnaissance. On the evening of 31 December Patch gathered his corps commanders at Fénétrange and warned them that the attack would come in the early hours of New Year’s Day. What did come as a surprise was its direction: the Americans expected the main blow in the Saar valley, but the most dangerous thrust came through the wooded, snow-covered mountains of the northern Vosges.

An offensive in the shadow of the Ardennes

Operation Nordwind was the offspring of the Ardennes offensive. The German attack that began on 16 December 1944 had stalled within a week short of the Meuse, and Bastogne had withstood its siege. To retrieve the situation, General Dwight Eisenhower sent a large part of the American forces north. General George Patton’s Third Army, which as late as November and December had been fighting on the Moselle and the Saar, wheeled towards the Ardennes, and Patch’s Seventh Army had to take over its sector.

As a result Patch – according to the US Army’s official history – was holding a front about 126 miles (more than 200 km) long: roughly 84 miles from the Saarbrücken area east to Lauterbourg on the Rhine, and a further 42 miles south along the Rhine as far as Strasbourg. He had six infantry divisions and two armoured divisions in reserve; each division held about 20 miles of front. Several divisions had only just arrived from the United States, without their own artillery and services. The Seventh Army’s line also formed an awkward salient: west of the Vosges stood Major General Wade Haislip’s XV Corps, and east of them, on the open plain between the mountains and the Rhine, Major General Edward Brooks’s VI Corps. The mountains themselves, where the roads ran across the line of a German advance, were considered poor ground for an attack and were held only by a weak screening force – Task Force Hudelson, made up of two mechanised cavalry squadrons and an armoured infantry battalion.

In the south, in Upper Alsace, the right wing of 6th Army Group was formed by General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny’s French First Army (PL). Facing it, the Germans held a large bridgehead on the left bank of the Rhine around Colmar – the Colmar Pocket, defended by the Nineteenth Army.

The German plan

The idea of a blow in Alsace was not new: the Wehrmacht Operations Staff had studied it as early as the autumn of 1944 but set it aside in favour of the Ardennes. On 21 December, when it had become clear that the Ardennes offensive was losing momentum, the Commander-in-Chief West, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, instructed Colonel General Johannes Blaskowitz’s Army Group G to prepare an attack on the weakened Seventh Army. Hitler approved the plan but demanded that the blow be stronger than originally intended. On 27 December he set its start for 11 p.m. on 31 December.

The aim of the operation was to break through to the Saverne Gap (Zaberner Steige) in the Vosges, cut off the American forces in northern Alsace and destroy VI Corps, and then link up with the Nineteenth Army in the Colmar Pocket. In this way the Germans hoped to regain northern Alsace, with Saverne and Strasbourg, force the Allies to transfer troops from the Ardennes and relieve their own forces in the north. Success was to be followed by a further operation, Zahnarzt (Dentist) – a blow against the flank and rear of Patton’s Third Army.

The attack was entrusted to the First Army under General of Infantry Hans von Obstfelder. Two assault groups were formed. The first, XIII SS Corps (the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division “Götz von Berlichingen” and two Volksgrenadier divisions), was to attack in the Saar valley around Sarreguemines and Rohrbach. The second, made up of XC and LXXXIX Corps (four or five weak Volksgrenadier divisions (PL) in all), was to strike south from the area east of Bitche through the northern Vosges. The 21st Panzer Division and the 25th Panzergrenadier Division were held in reserve. Many German divisions bore impressive numbers on paper, but in reality they were often little stronger than a regiment, and their soldiers were poorly trained.

Himmler on the Rhine

Heinrich Himmler had a separate part in the operation. At the end of November 1944 a new Army Group Oberrhein (Upper Rhine) had been carved out of the forces on the upper Rhine, and the Reichsführer-SS himself took command of it, despite having no experience whatever of commanding large formations. The army group was directly subordinate to Hitler’s headquarters, not to the Commander-in-Chief West, which complicated coordination with Blaskowitz. Himmler’s command included the Nineteenth Army in the Colmar Pocket and the units defending the right bank of the Rhine, among them Volkssturm detachments.

On 23 December Army Group Oberrhein was brought into the plans for the operation. It was to pin down Allied forces with raids and by establishing bridgeheads on the Rhine north and south of Strasbourg, and once the First Army had emerged from the Vosges, to strike north of Strasbourg and join hands with it around Haguenau and Brumath. Several accounts state that Himmler promised Hitler he would take Strasbourg by 30 January, the anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power – but this should be treated with caution, as it is not well documented.

The conference at the Adlerhorst

On 28 December Hitler received the divisional and corps commanders earmarked for the operation at the Adlerhorst, his western headquarters at Ziegenberg near Bad Nauheim, to which he had moved from Berlin before the Ardennes offensive (earlier, in November, he had left the Wolf’s Lair). The surviving record of this conference shows how Hitler saw the situation. He admitted that the objectives in the Ardennes had not been achieved, but claimed that the offensive had brought “an enormous easing” of the situation by forcing the Allies to abandon their own plans. The new blow, he said according to the minutes, had “a very clear aim, namely the destruction of the enemy’s forces. This is not a matter of prestige.” He reckoned that smashing several American divisions in Alsace would then allow the offensive in the Ardennes to be resumed.

The generals listened in silence. Many of them knew that their divisions were under strength and short of artillery, fuel and ammunition, and that as soon as the weather improved, Allied air power would rule the battlefield. Hitler also pinned political hopes on Nordwind: he believed that further blows would undermine the unity of the Western Allies.

New Year’s Eve and the first days

The attack began without an artillery bombardment so as not to give away its start. The infantry emerged from the bunkers of the Maginot Line, which on this sector were still in German hands, and low cloud and dense forest shielded it from air attack throughout the first day of fighting.

In the west, in the Saar valley, XIII SS Corps ran into the US 44th and 100th Infantry Divisions, well dug in and deployed in depth. This was exactly where Patch and Haislip had expected the main blow and where they had concentrated most of their strength. The attack failed: the Germans managed to drive a wedge about three kilometres deep near Rimling, but the 100th Division held its positions, and later American counter-attacks won back further scraps of the lost ground. The US Army’s official history notes that even the American commanders were surprised at how badly this attack had been prepared; the 17th SS Division performed particularly poorly, failing to bring its tanks into action in time. By 5 January the offensive in the Saar valley had come to a complete standstill.

In the mountains it was a different story. The Volksgrenadier divisions of XC and LXXXIX Corps fell upon the thinly spread outposts of Task Force Hudelson south-east of Bitche and quickly overran them. The most successful was the 361st Volksgrenadier Division, which had retreated through these same mountains in the autumn and knew the ground. Within a few days the Germans had advanced a dozen or more kilometres south, through Philippsbourg and Baerenthal, towards Wingen and Wimmenau. The fighting was waged in frost and snow, for individual villages and the junctions of narrow mountain roads. The Americans rushed everything they had to hand into the threatened area – regiments of the 45th Infantry Division, units of the newly arrived 70th and 63rd Divisions, and the 14th Armored Division.

Blaskowitz and Obstfelder decided to exploit this success, and from 2 January they committed the 6th SS Mountain Division “Nord”, just transferred from Norway after the German withdrawal from Finland. It was the strongest German division on this sector, trained for winter warfare. On 4 January two of its battalions took Wingen-sur-Moder and captured prisoners, but were cut off there from their own forces. After bitter fighting with units of the 45th and 70th Divisions, they withdrew from the little town during the night of 6–7 January. The attack in the Vosges came to a halt before it reached the Saverne Gap.

Strasbourg in the balance

From the first day Nordwind also had a political dimension. As early as 26 December Eisenhower, alarmed by reports of German preparations, had told Devers to prepare to shorten the front: to withdraw VI Corps from the salient on the Lauter and fall back from the Alsatian plain to the line of the Vosges. This meant abandoning Strasbourg to the Germans – a city liberated on 23 November by General Philippe Leclerc’s French 2nd Armoured Division. Devers temporised, and on 1 January, after telephoned reprimands from Eisenhower’s staff, he ordered Patch to withdraw by 5 January. The French government, forewarned by liaison officers, reacted at once: General Charles de Gaulle declared that the French would defend Strasbourg even if the Americans left, and he feared reprisals against the inhabitants, who after the liberation had openly declared themselves for France. The dispute was settled on 3 January at a conference attended by Eisenhower, de Gaulle and Winston Churchill.

The rest of the offensive and its end

When the attack in the Vosges stalled, the Germans shifted the weight of the fighting to the Alsatian plain. During the night of 4–5 January the 553rd Volksgrenadier Division of Himmler’s army group crossed the Rhine at Gambsheim, north of Strasbourg, and established a bridgehead which the Americans failed to eliminate for many days. From 7 January the Nineteenth Army struck north from the Colmar Pocket towards Strasbourg against French positions (Operation Sonnenwende) and came to a halt a dozen or so kilometres from the city. From 8–9 January the 21st Panzer Division and the 25th Panzergrenadier Division went into action and for two weeks fought heavy battles for the villages of Hatten and Rittershoffen on the Maginot Line; the inhabitants, who had not been evacuated, sat them out in their cellars and suffered grievous losses. At Herrlisheim on the Rhine the US 12th Armored Division twice attacked the bridgehead, reinforced by the 10th SS Panzer Division, without success.

On 20–21 January VI Corps, exhausted and short of supplies, withdrew to a new line on the River Moder, north of Haguenau. The last German attacks, during the night of 24–25 January, broke down on this line, and on 25 January Hitler ordered the offensive to be called off. That same day American reinforcements began to arrive from the Ardennes. A few days later the best German divisions in Alsace left for the Eastern Front, where a great Soviet offensive had been under way since mid-January.

The balance sheet was unfavourable to the Germans. According to the US Army’s official history, the Seventh Army lost about 14,000 killed, wounded and missing in January, and the attacking German forces almost 23,000. The Germans had regained part of northern Alsace and a bridgehead on the Rhine, but they had not destroyed VI Corps, had not reached the Saverne Gap and had not taken Strasbourg. The Allies could make good their losses; the Germans could not.

Place in the history of the war

Operation Nordwind remains in the shadow of the Ardennes, although its offensive phase lasted longer and was fought in equally harsh winter conditions. It showed that even after its defeat in the Ardennes the Wehrmacht was still capable of local offensives, and it confirmed the Allies in their belief that the Germans were not yet at the end of their strength. Strategically, however, it did the Germans more harm than good: it tied down armoured divisions and reserves in the west just as an offensive was beginning in the east, on the Vistula and in East Prussia, which there was no one left to stop.

The withdrawal of VI Corps to the Moder shortened the front and in February allowed the French and Americans to eliminate the Colmar Pocket (by 9 February 1945). The Germans abandoned the ground between the Moder and the frontier of the Reich only in March, during the Allied offensive in the Palatinate. The dispute over Strasbourg, for its part, lodged itself in de Gaulle’s memory as an example of how allies’ military decisions might take no account of French national interests – something some historians link with his later policy towards NATO.