by Leo Barron
The ultimate objective for the offensive was Antwerp, Lucht had explained. It made perfect sense. Antwerp had become the main port for Allied forces in northwest Europe after its capture in the fall of 1944. The majority of Allied supplies from England and the United States disembarked at Antwerp. If the Germans captured Antwerp, they would cut off a major artery the Allies used to resupply their forces.6
Lucht told Kokott that he knew little else. No one at corps had received the order yet, and so Kokott did not know his division’s specific role, if any, in the overall plan. Finally, to maintain operational secrecy, Lucht informed Kokott that no one—not even his operations officer—could know about the operation. Kokott realized that he and many other senior officers in the Wehrmacht were signing statements of secrecy—punishable by death should it be determined later that someone divulged any details about the plan. To Kokott, it all seemed a little bizarre, particularly at this late stage of the war.
Now it was Friday, December 8. Cold, clear, but still no snow on the ground. It was only about two weeks before the holiday, and several of his senior officers were busy trying to scrounge up Christmas presents and food for family back home or comrades in arms. Kokott’s orderly had brought him the message to report to the headquarters of the XXXXVII Panzer Corps in Kyllburg, Germany. Again, Kokott thought this was odd, as the XXXXVII Panzer Corps was not his higher headquarters. Perhaps now he would find out what role his division might play in this obviously highly important, top-secret operation.
Wisely, Kokott had the foresight to start a training regimen of three-day maneuvers for his troops and staff, just in case the 26th would play a defining role in the upcoming plans. While the officers had pored over map exercises, the men had done some training in the valley, practicing the fine art of blitzkrieg that the Germans had perfected. It was a rather subdued effort, for Kokott obviously did not want to attract attention from higher headquarters. Yet, as he stood looking out over the valley pondering the importance of the upcoming meeting, Kokott hoped it was enough.
While Kokott waited impatiently outside his headquarters, his driver brought up his command car, splashing through the mud. Kokott was careful to lift his immaculate wool overcoat high over his boots before stepping in. With one last look at Waxweiler, Kokott ordered his driver to head for Kyllburg.
The drive to Kyllburg took longer than usual since the Oberkommando Wehrmacht (the German high command, or OKW) had forbidden most vehicle traffic during the day, unless bad weather grounded all flights. Fortunately, the overcast weather had allowed him to safely attend the meeting, because overcast weather meant the dreaded and ubiquitous Allied fighter-bombers were grounded. All along the roads of the Eifel the preparations for this major offensive were visible. Crates of ammunition and foodstuffs crowded the woods, and tucked in between the various stacks he saw vehicles of all types: tanks, trucks, trailers, cars, and artillery. All of this remained hidden under a canopy of trees, safe from the prying eyes of Allied aerial reconnaissance. Moreover, military police units had established various checkpoints to control the flow of traffic up to six miles behind the front, while roving patrols provided security in the villages and woods. Nothing was being left to chance.
Kokott was transfixed by all the matériel. This was it. This must be the big operation—the great gamble. The lavish amount of supply and hardware amazed him, as he had believed, like many other of his colleagues, that Germany’s vaunted war machine was being held together with bubble gum and baling wire. No one had seen such a gathering of Wehrmacht combat power in years. No one thought Germany could still produce such a vast amount of equipment, but the Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer, had apparently produced a miracle.
As impressive as it was, Kokott also realized this massive buildup made operational secrecy almost impossible. Any landser (common German foot soldier) marching in the rear areas could see something was up. Besides the prodigious piles of supplies, men by the trainloads were unloading at the various railroad stations throughout the Eifel and marching to the front. Unfamiliar faces were showing up at the Westwall as new division staffs conducted their reconnaissance of the forward assembly areas, while at night, a never-ending parade of trucks and tanks rolled constantly toward the front. He sighed. It was too late to do anything about it now.
After several hours of driving along the winding roads choked with traffic, Kokott finally arrived in Kyllburg. Kyllburg, like Waxweiler, was a small town tucked away in the Kyll River valley of the Eifel. Hills hemmed in Kyllburg on all sides. Dominating the skyline was the Gothic Stiftskirche (Collegiate Church) complex and monastery, built in the fourteenth century as the region’s parish church. Close by was the massive, baroque Marburg Castle, which was constructed in the early eighteenth century for the local potentate Johann Werner. Like many villages in the Eifel, Kyllburg so far had escaped the cruel hand of war. The only indicators that the townsfolk had suffered the ravages of combat were the widowed women and fatherless children who roamed the streets like lost souls. Kokott, though, hardly noticed. Although not insensitive to these scenes, he had been hardened by this war. These scenes were all too common now in Germany, especially in the large cities that had suffered at the hands of the Allied day and night bombing campaigns.
Pulling up to the XXXXVII Panzer Corps headquarters, located at an ornate building in the center of town, Kokott got out of his car and hurried inside. Several division commanders were already in the room, and on a large table in front of them was a map of the Ardennes. The usual smell of cigar and cigarette smoke assaulted Kokott’s senses. Kokott recognized most of the commanders, congenially talking in pairs and groups of three or more, waiting anxiously for the meeting to begin. One of them was General Fritz Bayerlein, the commander of the vaunted Panzer Lehr Division. He had built his reputation as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s chief of staff during the North African Campaign. Standing next to him was General Henning Schönfeld, the commander of the 2nd Panzer Division. Also in the room was General Walter Krüger, the commander of the LVIII Panzer Corps. Standing beside Krüger were two men who would become the masters of Kokott’s fate in the next few weeks.7
One of them was General der Panzertruppen Baron Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz, the commander of the XXXXVII Panzer Corps. He had a heavyset face that made him look like the friendly town butcher, but the monocle he wore over his right eye contradicted this jovial facade. He was a born-and-bred Prussian officer from Silesia. In short, von Lüttwitz was almost a caricature of the typical Nazi officer depicted in American propaganda films.
Kokott quickly learned from von Lüttwitz’s staff that he and his division were now under the command of General von Lüttwitz and the XXXXVII Panzer Corps. Like Kokott, Baron von Lüttwitz had cut his teeth on the Eastern Front, but unlike Kokott, von Lüttwitz had experience fighting the Americans and British in Normandy. Similar to Kokott, von Lüttwitz was a career army officer who had taken an oath to defend his country, and had spent most of his life in the defense of Germany. Von Lüttwitz came from an old and well-known military family in Germany. His uncle, Walther von Lüttwitz, was well-known for having been jailed in the 1920s after a putsch failed to take over a post–World War I government that many saw as sympathetic to the Versailles Treaty.8 Von Lüttwitz himself had seen the ravages of battle as a young man in the First World War as a second lieutenant in the 48th Infantry Regiment, which had seen action at the Somme in northwest Europe. Impressed by his service, his superiors had awarded him the Iron Cross, Second and First Class, for acts of bravery during several battles in 1917 on the Western Front.
When war broke out again in 1939, von Lüttwitz missed most of the action in Poland and saw no combat in the France campaign. It was in Russia where von Lüttwitz shone as a panzer commander. From 1941 on, he soared in rank from lieutenant colonel to major general. During this span of time, he commanded the 59th Rifle Regiment, the 20th Rifle Brigade, and finally the 20th Panzer Division when its division com
mander, Major General Walther Durvert, became ill. This time, his superiors also awarded him the clasp for his Iron Cross, First Class, in August of 1941 for heroic actions as the commander of the 59th Rifle Regiment as it fought the Soviet army that summer. From 1942 to 1944, paradoxically, von Lüttwitz’s career continued to rise as the fortunes of Nazi Germany began to fall. In 1944, he was transferred to command the 2nd Panzer Division in France to prepare for the Allied invasion. Hitler wanted his best panzer commanders there to ensure the Allies would fail in their attempt.
On June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy, and OKW ordered the 2nd Panzer Division to the front. Because the Allies controlled the air, many Wehrmacht units spent weeks on the road trying to reach their destinations as they attempted to avoid the ever-present Allied fighter-bomber aircraft. Wisely, von Lüttwitz had trained his soldiers before the invasion on how to move stealthily and avoid the Allied air threat by moving only at night and during inclement weather. Using these tactics, the 2nd Panzer Division reached the front within days—not weeks. When his tanks arrived at the front, von Lüttwitz sent them into battle near Villers-Bocage. It was here on June 14 that they won an important victory, effectively halting the advance of the British 7th Armored Division. Although senior German commanders praised Lüttwitz for his aggressive action, unfortunately the celebration was short-lived.
Throughout the late summer of 1944, the Allies continued to pour men and matériel across the channel and into western France. Even though the 2nd Panzer Division inflicted serious losses on Allied units, the Allies could quickly replace their tanks and men. The Wehrmacht could not. By August, the German lines had disintegrated; the remaining Wehrmacht and SS units were staggering and faltering as they struggled to reach the safety of Germany. Many German soldiers died in the desperate retreats, the Allies capturing many more.
Decimated by continuous Allied attacks, by August the 2nd Panzer Division was a panzer division in name only. All that remained in its panzer regiment were seven tanks. Even with this paltry force, von Lüttwitz led his division to freedom as the Allied pincers closed the Falaise Pocket behind him. Many other units and their commanders were not so fortunate. Trapped by Allied fighter-bombers, they were destroyed piecemeal.
The loss of so many commanders led to major shuffles in the panzer corps. The OKW promoted some and sacked others. Von Lüttwitz’s performance had not gone unnoticed. On September 4, 1944, OKW ordered him to take command of the XXXXVII Panzer Corps, replacing General Hans von Funck, who had earned the ire of the führer because of his poor performance in the Normandy campaign (when von Funck received his dismissal order, OKW provided no particular explanation). Von Lüttwitz had his first challenge as corps commander, fighting a battle against General George S. Patton’s Third Army in Lorraine in mid-September. During these battles, the XXXXVII Panzer Corps performed well at first, but once again, sheer Allied numbers and Allied airpower were too much to overcome, and the struggle in Lorraine ended with Patton victorious. In October and November, von Lüttwitz pulled the XXXXVII Panzer Corps off the front lines to undergo a refit. It had been a hard summer of fighting in Normandy and France, and von Lüttwitz’s corps was now a shadow of what it once had been. Time was needed for the men to rest and recuperate, and for OKW to refurbish the XXXXVII Panzer Corps with whatever men, vehicles, and supplies they could scrape together.9
On this chilly day in Kyllburg, it was up to von Lüttwitz to brief his new division commanders on the operations order for the great winter offensive. Kokott nodded his head in concentration as he listened to von Lüttwitz, wondering whether this new commander would turn the sorry state of affairs around for the 26th Division and lead them to victory.
The other man in the room was Baron General Hasso von Manteuffel, the commander of Fifth Panzer Army, and, ergo, von Lüttwitz’s boss. Von Manteuffel was a diminutive man (he barely topped five feet) who came from a traditional and honored Potsdam military family known throughout Germany. He had served competently as a junior officer during the Great War, and had also been a jockey and pentathlon champion. His military career had been stellar in this, his second war, leading to rumors and comparisons to the late Erwin Rommel. (Although still revered by the Wehrmacht command as a tactical genius and national hero, tragically, Rommel had committed suicide in early autumn after being implicated in the July bomb plot.)
In fact, because of von Manteuffel’s successful leadership in Russia and North Africa, he had quickly become one of Hitler’s rising stars. Like von Lüttwitz, he was also a member of the Prussian aristocracy; also like von Lüttwitz, his meteoric rise had more to do with his merits and skills as a leader than his family connections. He was one of the few field commanders who felt he could speak honestly and directly to Der Führer. Hitler, in turn, respected von Manteuffel enough to value his opinions over those of many other senior officers. Von Manteuffel had so impressed Hitler that the führer promoted him to army commander after he’d served only as a division commander, skipping the prerequisite corps command.
Years of constant warfare had etched the gaunt features of von Manteuffel’s face, making him appear older than he was. Still, Kokott thought, as he watched the short ex-cavalryman stroll to the table, von Manteuffel was as feisty and optimistic as ever. The baron was known to be a risk taker and competitor, and was not one to be easily intimidated. Perhaps it was this energy and confidence that attracted Hitler and many others to him in these darker days of the war. In truth, Kokott could not have asked for better commanders.10
For the next few minutes, the various officers exchanged pleasantries. At a polite signal from a staff officer, the men extinguished their cigars and cigarettes and set down their drinks, and the briefing began. The commanders watched and listened as various operations officers of the XXXXVII Panzer Corps staff outlined the major points of the corps plan while pointing at various objectives on the large map. Meanwhile, von Manteuffel watched, like an overseer. He was there to make sure his subordinate commanders fully understood his intent.
The staff officers presented the strategic concept first. Hitler had titled it Wacht am Rhein, or “Watch on the Rhine.” The name in itself was a ruse to make the Allies believe the operation was little more than a shoring up of the defenses on the Siegfried Line, which was an extensive line of pillboxes and dragon’s teeth antitank obstacles that stretched along the western border of the Reich. There would be nothing defensive about Hitler’s plan. It was designed to secure a crucial victory for the Reich.
According to the plan, on “Null Day” (the German version of D-day) a combined series of coordinated assaults would smash into an unsuspecting Allied line, using the Ardennes Forest along the Belgian border as cover. Hitler believed the Ardennes, thick with forested plots and hills and valleys, would be the area the Americans would least expect an attack to come from.
Field Marshal Walther Model, commander of Army Group B and overall operational commander, planned to hurl three armies into the Ardennes: the Sixth SS Panzer Army under General Sepp Dietrich, the Fifth Panzer Army under von Manteuffel, and the Seventh Army under General Erich Brandenberger. In these armies were seven panzer divisions, two panzer brigades, thirteen Volksgrenadier (or people’s grenadier) divisions, and two Fallschirmjäger (paratroop) divisions. In addition, he could call on one panzer division, two Panzergrenadier divisions, and one Volksgrenadier division from the strategic reserve. In short, he would amass twenty-two divisions in the first wave and another four in the second wave.11 Meanwhile, in the areas where tanks could not operate, Model would his use Fallschirmjäger and Volksgrenadier divisions. (A typical panzer division was composed of one panzer regiment and two Panzergrenadier regiments. A panzer regiment, at full strength, had more than a hundred tanks.12 The standard Volksgrenadier division had three infantry regiments, and each regiment had two battalions each.)
To make up for the shortage of manpower, the Wehrmacht increased the firepower of the individual soldier in these divisions. Many of the
grenadiers would carry the latest Sturmgewehr 44 semiautomatic assault rifle instead of the bolt-action Mauser K98.13 In total, the German force would number more than 850 Panzers and self-propelled assault guns.14 In terms of manpower, the numbers were staggering. A normal panzer division had a complement of anywhere from 14,000 to 17,000 soldiers, depending on whether it was an SS or a regular army unit. A Volksgrenadier division numbered around 10,000 men, while a Panzergrenadier division could muster 14,000 soldiers. Finally, a Fallschirmjäger division could field up to 16,000 paratroopers. Therefore, Model commanded more than 250,000 soldiers in the first wave and nearly 50,000 in the second.15 Added to this, 1,900 pieces of artillery, both mobile and static, would be committed to providing an initial bombardment and follow-on artillery support as the offensive moved ever forward toward the goal of assaulting and seizing Antwerp. A front more than eighty miles wide through the Ardennes had to be selected in order to accommodate the massive forces involved.
Hitler had amassed quite a strike force, but in actuality, it had half the number of infantry divisions that Army Group A had on hand during the invasion of France in 1940. Hitler may not have enjoyed the sheer manpower and number of divisions that he did in 1940, but in terms of overall firepower, it was the largest German offensive ever on the Western Front. After all, Hitler had the same number of panzer divisions in the first wave in this new offensive that he had in 1940. That was the number that counted.
The officers in the room knew that to have any chance of success, Wacht am Rhein would need to be a quick and total surprise to the Allies—a blitzkrieg in the dead of winter. The attack would have to bulldoze through the Ardennes and achieve vital objectives rapidly. Four days would have to be sufficient for the combined armor and infantry forces to reach and cross the Meuse River. From there, the Sixth SS Panzer Army would seize the cities of Brussels and Antwerp, while the Fifth Panzer Army and Seventh Army secured its southern flank.16 If the Wehrmacht could not meet this timetable, and if the Allies were able to react rapidly enough, the major portion of the German army would be caught in a vise—cut off from Germany, and stuck between the Americans and the British. In typical Hitlerian style, Der Führer had no backup plan. It was all or nothing. If the Allies surrounded his forces, he had nothing left in his panzer cupboard to throw at them. The Allies would encircle his armies and destroy them.