The Last Prussian

by Messenger, Charles;

  It is most unlikely that many of the commanders, least of all von Rundstedt, were taken in by Hitler’s largely fallacious arguments. The die, however, was cast and, in their eyes, there was nothing they could do about it. 12 December was, of course, von Rundstedt’s birthday and, following Hitler’s conference, the commanders repaired to his headquarters for a celebration. It was, according to Dietrich, a muted affair and by midnight all the Field Marshal’s guests had departed.44 Yet, if the generals were pessimistic, the same does not seem to have been so for their troops. In spite of von Rundstedt’s comments on the quality of those that made up the bulk of his forces, there seems to have been a genuine optimism amongst them during the weeks leading up to the offensive, although, of course, it was not until just before it opened that the troops were told what was about to take place. Up until then they had been led to believe that they were preparing for counter-attacks should the Allies break through in the Aachen area. Von Rundstedt had been ordered by OKW on 5 November to ensure that Volksliste III personnel whose loyalty was suspect should not be placed in forward positions and that, from 15 November, he was to report all soldiers missing from front line units. Besides being a valuable source of intelligence, desertions to the enemy are a very good indicator of morale. It is therefore significant that during the first twelve days of December only four deserters, all from Volksgrenadier divisions, were notified to OKW.45

  On the even of the offensive, Hitler issued his final instructions to Model. Primarily, they stressed that his Panzer divisions were on no account to turn northwards while east of the Meuse, thus reminding Model that no attempt to implement the Small Solution would be permitted. Furthermore, Model was to carry out ‘all orders from the supreme command unconditionally, and to see that they are followed down to the lowest unit’. Provided Model followed Hitler’s concept of operations ‘a great victory is assured’.46 These instructions were sent direct to Model, thereby bypassing von Rundstedt. It was now more than ever clear that the battle was not his to conduct

  12

  The Last Battles

  AT 0530 HOURS on 16 December, the German artillery opened up on the American defences in the Eifel. Half an hour later, the Volksgrenadier divisions responsible for the break-in began their attacks. The Ardennes counter-offensive had begun.

  In spite of gaining almost total surprise, the attack began to fall behind schedule on the first day. This was especially so in Sepp Dietrich’s Sixth Panzer Army sector, which Hitler had laid down would be the main thrust. Dietrich had planned on the break-in being achieved by the end of the first day. Then five SS armoured battle groups would pass through and race for the Meuse bridges. The infantry experienced unexpected difficulties, both with the terrain and with American units which stood and fought. In consequence, armoured elements had to be committed prematurely to assist the infantry in getting forward. Most of the routes quickly became impassable. By nightfall, only one battle group, led by Joachim Peiper, a regimental commander in the SS Leibstandarte, had actually penetrated the depth of American defences. Von Manteuffel, in spite of having more natural obstacles in the form of river lines to contend with, enjoyed slightly better success, but traffic jams prevented his armour from breaking out as quickly as he wanted. That night, an airborne drop west of Monschau, designed to prevent the Americans bringing in reinforcements from the north, proved abortive. The paratroops, most of whom were novices, were scattered over a wide area. The operations of elements of Otto Skorzeny’s 150 Panzer Brigade, dressed in American uniforms and driving captured jeeps, did, however, cause confusion behind the American lines, even to the extent of making Eisenhower a virtual prisoner in his headquarters at Versailles for fear of assassination. Von Rundstedt said that he had never been told of Skorzeny’s operations and that they were controlled entirely by OKW.1 Certainly, though, Dietrich knew all about them, placing Skorzeny under command of I SS Panzer Corps.2 Von Rundstedt must have also been aware of the plan for Skorzeny’s force since requests for volunteers and captured Allied equipment were passed by OKW to his headquarters and they also sent at least one complaint on the lack of response direct to Zimmermann at Ob West.3 Yet, von Rundstedt, after the war, also complained to his Allied interrogators that during the offensive Dietrich, whom he referred to as a ‘cigarette roller’ to Milton Shulman, (whether because Dietrich had once worked in a tobacco factory or, like himself, was an inveterate smoker is not clear) sent his reports directly to OKW, bypassing both Model and himself. They were then relayed to Model.4 Von Manteuffel, too, complained that he received little information from Sixth Panzer Army, although this was denied by Dietrich.5 It is possible that Dietrich reported directly on Skorzeny’s activities to OKW, but it is very difficult to accept that otherwise he did not keep at least HQ Army Group B informed.

  17 December saw Peiper reach Stavelot, 21 miles from his start line, by teatime, but little progress by the rest of Sixth Panzer Army. It was during Peiper’s drive on this day that the infamous Malmédy massacre of American troops occurred. Both von Rundstedt and Dietrich asserted after the war that the first that they heard of it was when it was broadcast by the Allied black propaganda radio station Soldatensender Calais on 21 December. Von Rundstedt stated that he ordered an immediate investigation. This ties up with what Dietrich told an American interviewer after the war, saying that Model asked him whether he knew anything about it and that he set up an investigation as a result.6 Given the fact that the suspected culprits were deep behind the enemy lines at the time, and that there were other things to worry about when the survivors did get back to their own lines, it is not surprising that the investigation, if indeed it did take place, got nowhere.7

  During the next few days, while Peiper experienced increasing frustration, both from the stiffening American defence and, more especially, because an American engineer battalion blew a number of vital bridges in his face, von Manteuffel made increasingly better progress. Even so, pockets of resistance held him up, especially in the towns of St Vith and Bastogne. The latter had been reinforced by one of the only two divisions in Eisenhower’s theatre reserve, 101st Airborne. The story of its epic defence of this key communications centre is well known. Out of it came one of the great military quotations of all time, when Brigadier General Anthony C McAuliffe, the acting divisional commander, dismissed a German surrender demand with the word ‘Nuts!’. Army Group B apparently transmitted this to von Rundstedt as Quatsch (Bosh), the nearest German equivalent. This must have caused von Rundstedt a wry smile since it was one of his favourite expressions. Blumentritt wrote that ‘he used to spit it out when reading some particularly unreasonable order from above’.8

  MAP 9. The West, September–December 1944

  By this time, Patton, whom von Rundstedt considered, together with Montgomery, as one of the two best Allied generals of the war,9 had begun his drive north to relieve Bastogne and it was clear that Dietrich’s effort further north was fizzling out. On Christmas Eve, with the fogs clearing and Allied air power making its presence increasingly felt, von Rundstedt realised that the offensive had litte prospect of further success and urged OKW to go on to the defensive.10 Hitler, though, was determined that it should continue and, in von Rundstedt’s words, it degenerated into ‘Stalingrad No 2’.11

  On Christmas Day, there appeared an article in Life magazine in the United States. Written by David Cort, it was headlined THE LAST PRUSSIAN. While it made no mention of the Ardennes, the article portrayed von Rundstedt as ‘the last and by far the greatest of the Prussian masters who almost won the world for Hitler’ and asserted that he had taken over the defence of the West from him. He was ‘Germany’s last hope’.

  ‘Von Rundstedt is as cold, functional and masked as a pillbox. There is no personal dash in him; he does not swagger; he is no Rommel. But beyond the fact that he is a far deadlier foe than Rommel or any Nazi general could have been, von Rundstedt knots in his own person all the crucial clues to the German Army, the Nazi state and the present undercov
er fight for power in Germany, as well as an omen for the next war.

  Cort commented, with some perception, on von Rundstedt’s involvement with the bomb plot Court of Honour. He portrayed its victims as having ‘broken the sacred law of the Prussian officer corps; they had failed, they had been caught and they had compromised the honor of the Army.’ The affair had ‘blasted into the open the enormous schism between Hitler and the Prussian officers who own the German Army.’ Von Rundstedt and his fellows intended to pin Germany’s defeat firmly on Hitler so that they could preserve their honour for the next war. He stressed that von Rundstedt was a defence expert and had conducted the autumn 1944 campaign with ‘his usual good sense’. Where the article was lacking in accuracy was in its detailed account of von Rundstedt’s life. Cort had clearly drawn his information from W E Hart’s book Hitler’s Generals, which, as has already been shown, was little more than wartime propaganda, being full of inaccuracies and baseless accusations.

  The significance of Cort’s article, appearing when it did, is that it reflected the respect, indeed almost awe, in which the Western Allies held von Rundstedt. They were convinced at the time that he had masterminded the Ardennes counter-offensive, and this helped to fuel the crisis that the attack provoked within the Allied ranks. Eisenhower, after the war, wrote that he and his staff always considered von Rundstedt ‘the ablest of the German generals’.12 Montgomery, too, in his notorious press briefing of 7 January 1945, when he claimed that he had pulled the American chestnuts out of the fire in the Ardennes, said: ‘I used to think that Rommel was good, but my opinion is that Rundstedt would have hit him for six. Rundstedt is the best German general I have come up against.’13 All this, though, would have been of little comfort to the Field Marshal, given the increasingly depressing situation and his powerlessness to do anything about it.

  On 28 December, Hitler held another of his interminable conferences. Von Rundstedt tried once more to persuade him to halt the offensive and withdraw his forces east of Bastogne in order to save them from Allied counter-attacks on their now very vulnerable flanks. Hitler would have none of it. He accepted that if the counter-offensive had ‘not resulted in the decisive success which might have been expected’, it had nevertheless brought about a ‘tremendous easing of the situation’. The Americans had been forced to weaken the remainder of the Western Front and their defences in Alsace especially had become ‘extraordinarily thin’. He therefore intended to take advantage of this by launching a preplanned attack Nordwind on New Year’s Day. In the meantime, von Manteuffel, who had now taken over most of Dietrich’s armour, was to prepare for another thrust at the Meuse and keep Patton tied down in the Bastogne sector.14 The prospect seems to have filled Hitler’s entourage and OKW with renewed optimism. Next evening, Himmler held a reception and among the guests were von Rundstedt and some of his staff. Martin Bormann noted that Jodl danced at it, but it is difficult to believe that von Rundstedt really entered into the party mood. None the less, on the following evening, he reciprocated by entertaining Himmler and Bormann at his headquarters.15 Perhaps he hoped that he might be able to persuade them to make Hitler see sense.

  By now there was another and very much darker cloud looming over the horizon, which reinforced the need to go over to the defensive in the West. All the signs were that the long awaited Russian offensive over the Vistula was about to begin. Guderian had been left grappling with this problem and, deeply concerned by the way in which troops were being frittered in the West, had asked Hitler, on 26 December, to halt the Ardennes attack. Like von Rundstedt, he got nowhere. Thereupon he travelled to the West to plead his case in person. First, however, he visited von Rundstedt and Westphal and asked for their help in getting divisions transferred to the Eastern Front. ‘They showed,’ he later wrote, ‘as so often in the past, complete understanding of the needs of the other front’, and offered up three divisions. Guderian immediately had a warning order sent to these divisions, and, when Hitler and OKW tried to resist, was able to get his own way by telling them that C-in-C West had said that they were available.16 As it happened, Hitler now became concerned about the situation in Hungary and eventually they, and Dietrich’s army, were sent there.

  Operation Nordwind was duly launched on 1 January. It was conducted by Army Group G, now commanded again by Blaskowitz, who had succeeded Balck on Christmas Eve. Its object was the recapture of the Saverne Gap and the destruction of Patch’s United States Seventh Army and the left wing of De Lattre de Tassigny’s First French Army. The initial attack was carried out by von Obstfelder’s First Army, with elements of Army Group Upper Rhine, commanded by no less than Himmler, joining in later. Although it gained some ground initially, it never looked like achieving a decisive success and the Americans and French easily rode the blow. On the same day, the Luftwaffe mounted a virtually suicidal attack, Bodenplatte (Baseplate) on Allied airfields in Belgium and Holland in an effort to remove Allied air supremacy from over the battlefield. Although the Allies lost over 300 aircraft destroyed on the ground, it cost the Luftwaffe the same number. While it took just two weeks for the Allies to make good these losses, the Germans never could make up the difference, especially in the aircrew lost. These two failures, and that of not making any impression in the Bastogne area, together with the ever more desperate warnings from the Eastern Front, finally convinced Hitler that he had shot his bolt in the West. On 8 January, he permitted von Manteuffel to withdraw from the nose of the salient which he had created and, a few days later, authorised further withdrawals. Then, on the evening of 15 January, he and his staff left the Adlerhorst, boarded his special train, and departed for Berlin, leaving von Rundstedt to pick up the pieces.

  This did not mean that C-in-C West was to be allowed increased freedom of action now that he no longer had Hitler physically breathing down his neck. On 21 January he issued the following top secret order:

  ‘The following order by the Führer is issued in its original text:

  1. The Commanders of armies, corps and divisions will be personally responsible for all the following types of decisions or intentions reaching me early enough to enable me to exercise my influence on such decisions and for a possible counter-order to reach the front-line troops in time:

  (i) any decision involving an operational movement,

  (ii) any projected attack of divisional size or larger which is not covered by general orders issued by Supreme Headquarters,

  (iii) any offensive action on an inactive front exceeding normal patrol activity apt to draw the enemy’s attention to that sector

  (iv) any projected movement of withdrawal or retreat,

  (v) any contemplated abandonment of a position, a fortified town or fortress,

  2. The Commanders of armies, corps and divisions, the Chiefs-of-Staff and every single General Staff Officer or staff officers will be personally responsible to me to see to it that any report addressed to me directly or through channels will contain nothing but the blunt truth. In future I will punish drastically any attempt at veiling facts, whether done on purpose or through negligence …’17

  Hitler’s noose had been drawn even tighter around the necks of his generals. As one army commander put it: ‘The high command has lost all sense of time, space and relative strengths, and has so shackled the field commanders that they go into battle with their hands tied behind their backs and a halter around their necks, for they have to carry out the orders under pain of death; and when the execution of these orders ends in failure they are thrown out in disgrace and condemned as traitors.’18