At midnight, Unterofizer Otto Henning of Panzer Lehr’s reconnaissance battalion met some stragglers from 2nd Panzer:
Our unit was supposed to reinforce 2nd Panzer Division but the enemy’s artillery fire was so intense we didn’t dare move out of the forest. All this happened on Christmas day and, of course, we knew that the Ardennes offensive had failed.
Panzer Lehr’s efforts to rescue 2nd Panzer were thwarted by allied air power. On Christmas morning the Americans launched an all-out assault on the tip of the German bulge, seeking to trap those forces at Celles. The 2nd Panzer reconnaissance battalion was surrounded at Foy-Nôtre-Dame on Christmas day and 148 men surrendered. Their achievement of getting the furthest in Hitler’s Ardennes offensive had got them nowhere other than a prisoner of war camp. In three days fighting in and around the Celles pocket the 2nd, 9th and Panzer Lehr lost eighty-two tanks and 2,500 casualties.
The US 6th Armored Division launched an attack near Bastogne on 2 January 1945. Although the tanks were driven off, their infantry broke through the positions of the 26th Volksgrenadier Division, reaching Michamps. Under Normandy survivor von Ribbentrop, the 12th SS escort company and I Abteilung, SS-Panzer Regiment 12, was sent to counterattack. They recaptured Michamps and Obourcy and, along with the fighting at Arlencourt, 12th SS accounted for twenty-four American tanks. The 12th SS were then thrown at the northeast outskirts of Bastogne on the 4th, but the Americans turned back every attack. Shortly after, the 12th SS were withdrawn to Cologne. By now the 9th and 12th SS Panzer Divisions only had fifty-five tanks left between them.
Rundstedt counselled Hitler to withdraw the two battered panzer armies east of Bastogne, ready for the inevitable Allied counterattack. To the south in Alsace, to distract attention from the Ardennes, the Germans launched Operation North wind, involving ten divisions, including the Normandy veterans 21st Panzer, 10th SS Panzer under XXXIX Panzer Corps and 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, on 31 December. At the crucial moment Edgar Feuchtinger was again absent from 21st Panzer and was at home in Germany. On the 26th, the 17th SS had received fifty-seven new assault guns; a Panther tank company from 21st Panzer also reinforced it. Along with the 36th Volksgrenadier Division, the division attacked the US 44th and 100th Infantry Divisions near Rimlingen on 1 January. Within a week Northwind had been thrown back and the Americans recaptured Rimlingen on the 13th.
The 10th SS achieved some modest success in its attack from Offendorf to Herlisheim on 17 January, avoiding a mauling by American armour. Although the attack petered out, SS-Obersturmführer Bachmann, adjutant of the 1st Panzer Abteilung, SS-Panzer Regiment 10, remembered:
Everything went according to plan. The two panzer crews cooperated in a first-rate fashion. Panzer 2 opened fire while Panzer 1 raced into the junction and knocked out the first Sherman. More US tanks were knocked out, and a white lag appeared.
I stopped the fire and walked forward. An American officer offered to surrender. I requested that his men put down their weapons in front of me. When sixty Americans had put down their weapons, twenty Germans who had been in US captivity were added. I asked the Americans if they were the crews of the knocked-out tanks. The US officer explained that they were the crews of tanks that had not been knocked out and pointed to a farm to the left of the road where four Shermans sat, their guns facing the road. He said the other tanks were a little farther down. That was a surprise to us. We had to keep calm. I demanded speedy action. I had the American tank drivers step forward and ordered them to drive the Shermans to Offendorf, accompanied by one of the rearmed German soldiers. I felt better when the tank column set off. I advised the Abteilung in Offendorf of the approaching captured Shermans and requested more of our Panzers to come to Herlisheim and pick up another forty-eight prisoners. The total was twelve captured Sherman tanks and sixty prisoners. I deployed my own two Panthers forward to the edge of Herlisheim. From there they covered in the direction of Drusenheim and knocked out two Shermans on their way to Herlisheim. Thus my two Panthers achieved nine kills.
Bachmann’s tanks crews were rewarded with Iron Crosses, with Bachmann gaining the Knight’s Cross. While Northwind caused a crisis, it also wasted away Germany’s already-meagre reserves. After the Allies counterattacked in the Ardennes on 8 January, Hitler finally ordered a partial withdrawal. The 6th SS Panzer Army was needed on the Eastern Front, following a major Russian offensive. The 9th SS moved to the Longchamps area to help maintain communication with the 5th Panzer Army to the south and the 116th Panzer was moved to the Kleeve sector on the Rhine.
By the 28th the German bulge had gone, for the loss of 100,000 casualties and most of their armour; 5th Panzer Army and 6th SS Panzer Army lost up to 600 tanks. Although the offensive was stopped, it showed how the defeat at Falaise had singularly failed to crush the panzer divisions on the Western Front. Hitler’s great gamble had not paid off, although in five weeks of fighting twenty-seven US divisions suffered 59,000 casualties thanks to his reconstituted panzer divisions. However, Hitler had achieved what Falaise had failed to do, the near total destruction of his panzer forces in the West. This time there could be no miraculous recovery.
Holding the Rhine
General von Manteuffel’s 5th Panzer Army was redeployed to help defend the Ruhr. In preparation for the advance of Montgomery’s 21st Army Group (Canadian 1st, British 2nd and US 9th Armies), the Allied air forces sought to disrupt communications within the Ruhr and between the Ruhr and the rest of Germany with Operation Bugle. This was followed by Operation Clarion, a major bombing offensive designed to destroy German communications and morale at the end of the month. Significantly, Bugle helped to ensure that much of Model’s Army Group B, consisting of 5th Panzer Army and General Gustav von Zangen’s 15th Army, remained trapped in the Ruhr.
Following the counterattacks into the Ardennes and Alsace, German reserves were now completely depleted. The remaining mobile panzer reserve comprised the XLVII Panzer Corps, consisting of the 116th Panzer Division and the 15th Panzergrenadier Division. These sounded formidable but they could scrape together just thirty-five panzers. Units of 9th Panzer were also despatched to defend Cologne.
The Americans launched Operation Lumberjack on 1 March, employing Lieutenant Courtney H Hodge’s US 1st Army and General George S Patton’s US 3rd Army attacking between Koblenz and Cologne. The plan was to drive Army Group B back through the Eifel region to the Rhine. Six days later, Hodges met his VII Corps commander General Collins on the Rhine at Cologne. The US 3rd Armored Division drove the remnants of the 9th Panzer Division from the city, but the Hohenzollern Bridge was destroyed before it could be secured.
These operations served to distract the Germans southward. Lieutenant General Fritz Bayerlein, commanding the German LIII Corps, wanted to gather three divisions before counterattacking at Remagen, but Hitler gave orders for immediate attacks with everything to hand. On 10 March the newly-formed Schwere Panzer Abteilung 512 was thrown at the bridgehead. It was one of only two units equipped with the Jagdtiger, which, although armed with a formidable 12.8cm gun, weighed a colossal seventy tons and was not easy to operate. The 512 were unsuccessful, as were elements of 9th Panzer, and covered the German withdrawal.
Montgomery’s preparations for the crossing of the Rhine took two weeks, which many felt unnecessary. The Americans were particularly unhappy with his cautious preparations and meticulous planning. While they were getting ready, the XLVII Panzer Corps was able to regroup in the Netherlands and the Germans improved their defences, particularly at Speldrop.
General Brian Horrocks, commanding the British XXX Corps, had a good picture of what to expect:
According to my intelligence staff whose information was always astonishingly accurate, we were opposed by the 8th Parachute Division round the small town of Rees with part of the 6th and 7th Parachute Divisions on its lanks. Behind in immediate reserve were our old friends, or enemies, 15th Panzergrenadier Division and 116th Panzer Division.
On the whole, the stunned
Germans defending the Rhine were brushed aside on 23 March and by dawn the Allied bridgehead had been firmly established. However, the Germans were quick to recover their wits and the fallschirmjäger began to fight back. At midnight on the 23rd the 15th Panzergrenadier Division was directed toward Rees near the German II Parachute Corps sector, while the 116th Panzer Division was ordered across the Lippe to attack the Americans. It found itself having to take control of the frontline from the 180th Infantry Division, which had disintegrated.
At 1800 on the 25th, the Americans drove 116th Panzer from Hunxe. The following Day the panzers initially found themselves holding the entire XLVII Panzer Corps front until assisted by the 180th and 190th Infantry Divisions. To the south LXIII Corps, consisting of the 2nd Parachute and ‘Hamburg’ Divisions, struggled to hold the line. The latter was made up of staff and communications personnel supported by some fallschirmjäger. During the night of 27/28, the 116th Panzer withdrew under covering fire from the divisional artillery, two days later it was strengthened with just fourteen new Jagdpanthers.
With the Allies swarming over the Rhine, there was very little the Germans could do to contain them. Within a week of the crossing Montgomery had amassed twenty divisions with 1,500 tanks, and 30,000 German PoWs went into the ‘bag.’ General Schlemm’s 1st Parachute Army was forced northeastwards toward Hamburg and Bremen, which opened a breach with the German 15th Army defending the Rhur. Schlemm was wounded and command fell to General Günther Blumentritt, who, along with his superior, General Johannes Blaskowitz, was under instruction to hold fast at all costs. Both knew in reality that this was a pointless exercise, the situation was a shambles, there were few panzers or artillery and no air cover or reserves. Those reinforcements that did arrive were deemed all but useless, comprising frightened old men and boys.
Blummentritt, feeling it his duty to save the men under his command rather than throw them away in the defence of the Reich, withdrew behind the Dortmund-Ems Canal, toward the cover of the Teutoburger Forest. During April both geographical features were assaulted by the British 7th and 11th Armoured Divisions, which had pushed over the Rhine.
At Glissen west of the River Weser, the 2nd Fife and Forfar Yeomanry 11th Armoured Division, captured weeping, ill-equipped youngsters from the 12th SS. They had been reduced to bicycles and panzerfausts to fend off British tanks. The 7th Armoured found itself enduring a feeble counterattack southwest of Harburg from members of the 12th SS Reinforcement Regiment and other Hitler Youth supported by just two self-propelled guns on 26 April. A day later, in the Harsfelt area, elements of the division captured a former 21st Panzer officer leading school students armed with panzerfausts.
To the south General Bayerlein, with LIII Panzer Corps, was ordered by Model on 29 March to try to break out eastwards with the remains of the Panzer Lehr, 9th Panzer, 3rd Panzergrenadier and 3rd Parachute Divisions. This represented the panzers’ last major offensive in the West, but by 2 April they were back where they started, driven back by American firepower.
Hodges’ US 1st Army broke out of the Remagen bridgehead, then the spearhead of the US 9th and 1st Armies linked up on 2 April at Lippstadt east of the Ruhr. The US 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions had sealed the Ruhr pocket. The remnants of Model’s Army Group B, some nineteen divisions from the 5th Panzer Army and 15th Army along with LXIII Corps from the shattered 1st Parachute Army, were caught in the Ruhr pocket. Hitler grandly dubbed it the ‘Ruhr fortress.’ The Allies meantime pushed on to meet up with the Red Army on the Elbe. The Ruhr pocket was left to Lieutenant General Leonard T Gerow’s specially-created US 15th Army, consisting of eighteen divisions from the US 1st and 9th Armies. The outcome was inevitable.
Surrender
The 9th, 116th and Panzer Lehr Panzer Divisions, who had been unable to contain the American breakout in Normandy but successfully avoided being trapped in the Falaise pocket, surrendered to the Americans in mid-April. Some 36,000 German troops, including 3,000 from 116th Panzer, were rounded up near Brilon. Other elements of the 116th, such as Panzerjäger Abteilung 228 and 9th Panzer, capitulated in the Harz Mountains. On the 21st Generalleutnant Josef Harpe, commanding the 5th Panzer Army, finally surrendered along with 325,000 men, including twenty-nine generals. Model chose death and committed suicide the same day. Within two weeks Nazi Germany had capitulated.
The two remaining Normandy veterans still in the west, who had fought so vainly to halt the American break-out, also laid down their arms. The 2nd Panzer Division, members of which had fought to the last at St Lambert-sur-Dives, had lost almost half its strength in Normandy and since been involved in the Rhine battles, ended the war at Plauen, where it surrendered in May. The ill-prepared 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, which had been swept away by Operation Cobra yet, nonetheless, escaped Normandy, after taking part in Operation North Wind was pushed back into Bavaria and finally surrendered its weapons in the Achen see area on 7 May 1945. The division was able to muster just two Infantry and one transport regiment and three armoured cars.
Chapter 18
The Reckoning in the East
The escape of the Waffen-SS panzer divisions and heavy tank battalions from Normandy also had severe ramifications for the Red Army in the dying days of the Third Reich. While the blow in the west from the reconstituted SS units in the Ardennes had failed, Hitler remained undeterred, planning to launch them in the east. The Soviets received intelligence from the British Military Mission on 12 February 1945 that 6th SS Panzer Army with the 1st SS, 2nd SS, 9th SS and 12th SS Panzer Divisions were on their way. Similarly the troublesome 10th SS, still commanded by SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Harmel, was despatched eastward to Pomerania to help cover the retreating German armies.
The survivors of Schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 501, (formerly 101), 502 (formerly 102) and 503, having blown up the last of their Tiger tanks in Normandy, were shipped back to Germany. The latter two battalions were destined to fight in Hungary, East Prussia and Berlin in the closing months of the war, while the 501 would be involved in Hitler’s last futile offensive in Hungary.
Operation Solstice
While the Soviets claimed it was their winter offensives that saved the Western Allies, there were in fact more German tanks on the Western front at this time. The absence of the 5th and 6th Panzer Armies, committed to Operation Wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine) or Herbstnebel (Autumn Mist), greatly helped the Red Army. At the end of 1944 there were some 2,229 tanks and assault guns committed in the West, compared to just 950 tanks in the East. When the Soviets launched their Vistula offensive, the absence of two of Hitler’s most formidable tank armies was a considerable bonus.
In late January 1945 Sepp Dietrich was summoned to Berlin, where he saw Army Chief of Staff, General Heinz Guderian. They both agreed that all available troops, including the 6th SS armour, should be sent to defend the River Order; the Russians established a bridgehead over the river at Wriezen near Kustrin, just forty-five miles (72km) from Berlin on the 31st. They managed to get 100 tanks across the river before the Germans moved to seal off the bridgehead. Hitler however had other plans for Dietrich and his remaining panzers.
Throughout January the 9th SS conducted a fighting withdrawal to the German border. They were then sent to the Kaufenheim-Mayen area to be re-equipped before being sent to Hungary. The 10th SS, which had also faithfully served II SS Panzer Corps throughout the Normandy campaign, at Arnhem and the Ardennes offensive, was detached from its sister division and sent to the Vistula sector. Its remaining thirty-eight Panzer IVs and fifty-three Panthers would not rejoin the 6th SS Panzer Army for Hitler’s forthcoming Hungarian offensive.
Another Normandy veteran, Schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 502 (formerly 102), was refitted at Sennelager, while the 503’s I Kompanie moved to Bentfeld, the II to Eilsen and the III to Hovelhof. Kurt Knispel from the battalion was able to go home one final time. The Panzer Ersatz und Ausbildungs (training and replacement) Abteilung 500 at Paderborn provided much-needed crews and 503 received forty-five n
ew Tiger IIs during 19-22 September 1944. The following month it was shipped to Hungary, subordinated to the Feldhernhalle Panzer Corps and assisted in the futile defence of Budapest.
Panzer Abteilung (Funklenk) 302, which had narrowly missed seeing action in Normandy, was sent to join Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front in August 1944, equipped with three Panzer IVs, forty StuG IIIs and 155 Borgward IVs. By early December there were still thirty-eight StuGs operational, ten of these had been lost by mid-January1945 and only three were available by March. The unit ended up fighting in Eastern Prussia.
By January 1945 Abteilung 503 was back in Germany to take part in one of Hitler’s last ill-fated counterattacks. Split in two, one group was sent to the Arnswalde-Pomerania area and the other to the Landsberg-Küstrin area. In particular, Arnswalde’s strategic position of protecting Stargard and the sea port of Stettin meant that there was a strong German garrison defending the town. The first group under Obersturmbannführer Fritz Herzig, along with a panzer support battalion, 1,000 troops and 5,000 civilians, was trapped in Arnswalde on 4 February.
Herzig’s Tiger IIs could easily have broken out but that would have meant cruelly abandoning everyone else to their fate at the hands of the Russians. Three days later SS-Untersturmführer Fritz Kauerauf, with three Tiger IIs, set out from Stargard for Arsnwalde via Reetz. Instead he became involved with the 11th SS, trying to stop the Soviet advance to the Baltic.
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 28