The Battle of the Bulge: Hitler's Last Gamble in the Ardennes

Before dawn on 16 December 1944, the quiet of the Ardennes forest was shattered. German artillery opened up along the thinly held American line, and out of the mist came tanks and infantry on a front that Allied commanders had judged too rugged and too quiet to matter. Hitler had staked his last reserves in the west on a single desperate throw: a winter offensive meant to break through, race to the port of Antwerp and split the British and American armies in two.³

A battle of the Western Front of World War II, part of the greatest battles of World War II · Related: Normandy, Berlin · Before: Operation Market Garden · Key figures: Dick Winters

Background: Hitler's last gamble

By late 1944 the Allies had landed in Normandy, liberated France and reached the German border, and some of their leaders talked of the war ending by Christmas. In the autumn the advance slowed, and the Allied armies spent their strength in costly attacks along the frontier. Hitler, meanwhile, had secretly gathered a reserve and chose the Ardennes, the hilly, wooded country of eastern Belgium and Luxembourg, as the place to use it.⁴

His aims were sweeping. The panzers were to cross the Meuse River, take Antwerp, the port on which the Allied supply system depended, and cut the British army group off from the Americans. Hitler hoped that such a blow would break up the Allied coalition and push the Western powers toward a negotiated peace, leaving him free to turn against the Soviet Union.⁵

The ground made surprise possible. The Ardennes had few good roads and was thought unsuited to a big offensive, so the Allies held it lightly. Allied intelligence, from Eisenhower's headquarters down to the divisions, judged the Germans too weak for a large attack. Hitler timed the blow for weather that would ground Allied air power, which ruled the skies by day.⁶

Armies and commanders

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt held overall command on the German side. Three armies made the attack: the Sixth Panzer Army of the SS general Sepp Dietrich in the north, and the Fifth Panzer Army of Hasso von Manteuffel to its south, while other forces covered the southern flank. More than 200,000 men and some 1,000 tanks went in on the first morning.⁷

Facing them, along a front of some 75 to 88 miles, were just four American divisions of Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges's First Army, either green units gaining experience or veterans resting after heavy fighting. Above them stood the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the weeks that followed reinforcements poured in; the Army's history puts the average daily strength in the Ardennes at 610,000 men, and the National WWII Museum counts more than 600,000 Americans in all.⁸

The battle in phases

The breakthrough, 16 to 18 December

The German guns opened fire before dawn, and infantry moved forward through the dark and the mist. In the north the attack ran into hard resistance: the Americans held the Elsenborn ridge and denied the Germans the northern roads they needed. Farther south the Germans broke through the thin American line, and their spearheads pushed west toward the Meuse, creating the salient that gave the battle its name. For the first days mist, rain and low cloud kept most Allied aircraft on the ground, just as Hitler had hoped.⁹

The Germans also tried to sow chaos behind the front. In Operation Greif, led by Otto Skorzeny, small teams of English-speaking soldiers in American uniforms slipped through the lines to seize bridges, cut communications and spread rumors, while a scattered parachute drop tried to seize high ground in the north. Neither gained the panzers any real advantage, but the reports of disguised Germans unsettled the American rear.¹⁰

On 17 December, near Malmedy, men of Kampfgruppe Peiper of the 1st SS Panzer Division gunned down more than 80 American prisoners in a field; the U.S. Congress puts the number at 84. Near Wereth, eleven soldiers of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, an African American unit, were captured and murdered by SS troops. ¹¹

St. Vith and the northern shoulder

Everything turned on road junctions. In the north the crossroads town of St. Vith was held by American tankers and infantry against repeated attacks. The National WWII Museum writes that its defenders delayed the German timetable by nearly a week; the Army's history calls it five critical days.¹²

Bastogne

In the south everything depended on Bastogne, a small Belgian town where the roads of the region met. The 101st Airborne Division and the troops already there held it while German forces swept around them and cut it off entirely; the American Battle Monuments Commission dates the siege from 20 to 27 December. On 22 December a German emissary arrived demanding surrender. The acting division commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, replied with one word: "Nuts!"¹³

Surrounded and short of supplies, the garrison held on. When the skies cleared on 23 December, transport planes began dropping food, ammunition, winter clothing and medical supplies onto a drop zone marked out by pathfinders near the town. Over the following days hundreds of C-47 transports and dozens of gliders, some of them carrying the artillery ammunition the defenders needed most, flew in through German fire.¹⁴

Patton turns north

Eisenhower rushed reinforcements to hold the shoulders of the German penetration. The First Army was to stop the German advance in the north, while George S. Patton's Third Army turned north to strike the southern flank of the salient. Within days Patton's troops were counterattacking, and on 26 December the 4th Armored Division broke through to Bastogne and lifted the siege.¹⁵ › George S. Patton

Turning point: short of the Meuse

The deepest German thrust came closest to success on Christmas Eve, when the spearheads of the Fifth Panzer Army were within about four or five miles of the Meuse. By then the advance was failing. Fuel was running out, the weather had cleared, and Allied aircraft were striking the German columns and supply lines. In the north Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who had taken command of the American armies on that side of the salient, had moved British reserves south to guard the Meuse crossings.¹⁶

Britannica credits the failure of the German drive largely to the outflanked American detachments that held Bastogne and other bottlenecks, and to the speed with which Montgomery covered the river. The Army's history adds that Montgomery's cautious methods caused much friction with the American generals, but that the Allied command held together.¹⁷ › Patton vs Montgomery

Aftermath

On 3 January 1945 the First Army began its counteroffensive from the north, while the Third Army pushed from the south. On 16 January the two armies met at Houffalize, cutting the salient in half, but the Germans had already carried out a skillful withdrawal that took much of their force out of the trap. By 25 January the front was back where it had been in December; Britannica ends the battle on 16 January.¹⁸

How many died at the Battle of the Bulge?

Some 19,000 Americans were killed: the official Army count cited by the National WWII Museum is 19,246, and the American Battle Monuments Commission gives about 19,000. Total American casualties, counting the wounded, missing and captured, passed 80,000. German losses were never officially counted; estimates run from about 80,000 to more than 100,000 killed, wounded and captured.¹⁹

The cost was staggering. The National WWII Museum counts well over 80,000 American casualties, including 19,246 dead in the official Army count and more than 23,000 men captured; the Army's December and January totals come to 80,987, and the U.S. Congress gives over 89,000. German losses have never been officially computed: the Army's history cites estimates of 81,000 to 103,000, the National Archives 80,000 to 100,000, and Britannica 120,000. For Germany they were impossible to replace.²⁰

Why was the Battle of the Bulge important?

It was Hitler's last major offensive in the west, and it failed. To stop it the Americans fought the largest battle in the US Army's history, and Germany lost men and equipment it could not replace. With its last reserves in the west spent, it could no longer regain the initiative there, and the war in Europe ended sooner.²¹

Britannica offers a double verdict. Judged on its own terms, it argues, the offensive was a profitable operation for Germany: it upset the Allies' preparations and did great damage at a cost that was not excessive for the effect. Viewed in relation to the whole war, however, it was fatal, because Germany lost men and materiel it could not replace and with them any chance of prolonged resistance to the coming Allied offensive.²²

Hitler had spent the reserves he had hoarded for months, and with them the ability to regain the initiative in the west. In the Army's judgment the losses in men, equipment and morale helped bring a quicker end to the war in Europe; the U.S. Congress resolution of 2019 says the victory made possible Germany's final defeat in May 1945.²³

Legacy and memory

After the battle Winston Churchill said that it was undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and would be regarded as an ever-famous American victory. The National WWII Museum still calls it the largest battle the U.S. Army has ever fought. Even the name has two stories: the American Battle Monuments Commission says the press coined it for the bulge on the battle maps, while Britannica traces the phrase back to a description Churchill used in May 1940.²⁴

Bastogne's stand became the defining symbol of the campaign, personified, in the words of the 2019 Congress resolution, by McAuliffe's one-word reply, which Britannica calls legendary. The Army itself presents the battle above all as the story of American soldiers, often isolated and unaware of the larger picture, who slowed the German advance at crossroads and bridges.²⁵

Visiting the battlefield today

Many of the Americans killed in the battle lie in the Ardennes, Henri-Chapelle and Luxembourg American Cemeteries, cared for by the American Battle Monuments Commission; the U.S. Congress resolution names the same three cemeteries among the places where Belgium and Luxembourg keep the memory of the battle.²⁶