Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble Read online

  General Bradley made sure that when he went out he was sandwiched between another machine-gun-mounted Jeep in front and a Hellcat tank destroyer behind. He had been told by the Counter Intelligence Corps, alarmed by the assassination rumours, that he should not use a car, especially getting in and out on the street outside the main entrance of the Hôtel Alfa in Luxembourg. In future, he was to use the kitchen entrance round the back, and his room was changed to one further back in the hotel. All plates with a general’s stars had been removed from vehicles and even those on his helmet had to be covered over.

  The idea of German commando troops charging around in their rear areas turned the Americans into victims of their own nightmare fantasies. Roadblocks were set up on every route, greatly slowing traffic because the guards had to interrogate the occupants to check that they were not German. Instructions were rushed out: ‘Question the driver because, if German, he will be the one who speaks and understands the least English … Some of these G.I. clad Germans are posing as high-ranking officers. One is supposed to be dressed as a Brigadier General … Above all don’t let them take off their American uniform. Instead get them to the nearest PW cage, where they will be questioned and eventually put before a firing squad.’

  American roadblock guards and MPs came up with their own questions to make sure that a vehicle’s occupants were genuine. They included a baseball quiz, the name of the President’s dog, the name of the current husband of Betty Grable and ‘What is Sinatra’s first name?’ Brigadier General Bruce Clarke gave a wrong answer about the Chicago Cubs. ‘Only a kraut would make a mistake like that,’ the MP declared. Having been told that he should look out ‘for a kraut posing as a one-star general’, he was convinced he had discovered his man, and Clarke found himself under arrest for half an hour. Even General Bradley was stopped and held for a short time, despite having given the right answer to the capital of Illinois. The MP thought differently.

  British personnel in the American Ninth Army rear area aroused considerable suspicion during the panic. The actor David Niven, a Phantom reconnaissance officer in Rifle Brigade uniform, was challenged by one American sentry with the question: ‘Who won the World Series in 1940?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ Niven claimed to have replied with characteristic insouciance. ‘But I do know that I made a picture with Ginger Rogers in 1938.’

  ‘O.K. beat it, Dave,’ came the reply, ‘but watch your step for Crissake.’

  At a more senior level Major General Allan Adair, the commander of the Guards Armoured Division, accompanied by his ADC, was stopped at a checkpoint manned by African-American soldiers. Adair’s much loved but famously incompetent ADC Captain Aylmer Tryon could not find their identity documents. After much fruitless searching for them, the large NCO finally said, to Adair’s delight, ‘General, if I were you, I’d get myself a new aide.’

  Another way of checking was to make the soldier or officer in question lower their trousers to check that they were wearing regulation underwear. A German Jew, who had escaped to England soon after Hitler came to power, asked his commanding officer in the Royal Army Service Corps for permission to visit Brussels. Born Gerhardt Unger, he had, like many other soldiers of German Jewish origin, anglicized his name in case of capture by the Nazis. On the evening of 16 December, Gerald Unwin, or Gee, as he was known, began drinking with some American soldiers from the First Army in a bar. They told him of their German Jewish intelligence officer, a Lieutenant Gunther Wertheim. Gunther was his cousin and had escaped from Germany to America. So, on the spur of the moment, he decided to accompany his new friends back to their unit when they left early the next morning.

  As they came closer to the Ardennes front, they became aware of heavy firing in the distance and scenes of panic. At a roadblock near Eupen, Gee was arrested. He had no movement order or authorization to be in the area, and although he wore British uniform, he spoke with an unmistakable German accent. Hauled off to an improvised cell-block in a local school, Gee was fortunate not to have been shot out of hand in the atmosphere of rumour and fear then caused by Heydte’s paratroopers. He was saved for the moment by the fact that his underwear was standard British army issue, but he was locked up nevertheless in the school until summoned for interrogation the next day. As he was marched into the room, the intelligence officer gasped in astonishment: ‘Gerd?’ he said. ‘Gunther!’ Gee exclaimed in relief, on seeing his cousin.

  One of Skorzeny’s teams was captured on the evening of 18 December at Aywaille, less than twenty kilometres from the Meuse. The three men were found with German papers, and large sums in American dollars and British pounds. They were tried and sentenced to death five days later. Altogether sixteen members of Einheit Steilau were captured and sentenced to ‘be shot to death with musketry’. One group asked for a reprieve on the grounds that they were following orders, and faced certain death if they had refused to do so. ‘We were sentenced to death,’ their appeal stated, ‘and are now dying for some criminals who have not only us, but also – and that is worse – our families on their conscience. Therefore we beg mercy of the commanding general; we have not been unjustly sentenced, but we are de facto innocent.’ Their appeal was refused and the sentences confirmed by General Bradley.

  One of the group taken at Aywaille repeated the story about the plan to seize or kill General Eisenhower, thus confirming the worst fears of the Counter Intelligence Corps. There were also reports of a group of Frenchmen, former members of the Vichy Milice and the SS Charlemagne Division, who had been given the task of penetrating Allied lines to sabotage fuel dumps and railway cars. They were said to be wearing American coats, and pretending to be forced labourers who had escaped from a factory.

  Another three members of Einheit Steilau, due to be executed at Eupen on 23 December, made a last request just before their execution. They wanted to hear some Christmas carols sung by German nurses interned near by. While the firing squad stood ready, ‘the women sang in clear strong voices’. The guards looked at the condemned men, and apparently ‘hung their heads struck by the peculiar sentimentality of it all’. The officer in command of the squad was ‘half afraid that they’d shoot at the wall instead of the man when the command was given’.

  On 23 December, when British troops from the 29th Armoured Brigade guarded the bridge over the Meuse at Dinant, ‘visibility was almost nil’ due to fog, the commanding officer of the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment wrote. ‘An apparently American Jeep drove through one of the road blocks approaching the bridge on the east side of the river. This road block, as were all the others, was mined by the 8th Rifle Brigade who had established a movable barrier and arranged for mines to be pulled across the road should any vehicle break through the barrier without stopping. As we were by now in contact with the Americans, this Jeep was not fired on, but as it refused to stop the mines were drawn across the road and it was blown up.’ It was found to contain three Germans. Two were killed and one taken prisoner.

  This was probably the same incident (recorded with a certain artistic licence by Bradley’s aide Chester Hansen) in which four Germans in a Jeep lost their nerve on a guarded bridge and tried to smash their way through. The sentry pulled a string of mines across the road, and the Jeep blew up. Three of the Germans were killed instantly, the fourth wounded. The guards walked up, shot the fourth one dead, then tipped the Jeep and all the bodies into the river, ‘swept up the bridge’ and resumed their post.

  Skorzeny’s 150th Panzer-Brigade proved a complete anticlimax. Their tanks, most of which were German Mark IVs and Panthers unconvincingly camouflaged to look like Shermans, were painted in olive-drab paint with the white Allied star, in some cases with the surrounding circle omitted. Skorzeny himself knew that they would not have fooled the Americans except perhaps at night. He soon gave up all idea of thrusting through to the Meuse bridges after being bogged down in mud and thwarted by the immense traffic jams which built up behind the 1st SS Panzer-Division. On the evening of 17 December he
asked Sepp Dietrich to commit his force instead as an ordinary panzer brigade. Dietrich gave his consent and told Skorzeny to take his force to Ligneuville. Dietrich had another reason for agreeing so readily. The commanding general of I SS Panzer Corps asked for Skorzeny’s forces to be withdrawn, as they were ‘hindering the operation of the corps by driving between vehicles and doing exactly as they pleased’.

  On 21 December, the 150th Panzer-Brigade attacked north to Malmédy in a freezing fog. They forced back a regiment of the 30th Infantry Division until the American artillery ranged in, using the new and highly secret Pozit fused shells, which exploded on proximity to their target. More than a hundred men were killed and 350 wounded in the day’s fighting, including Skorzeny, who was badly wounded in the face by shrapnel and nearly lost an eye. The 150th Panzer-Brigade was withdrawn entirely from the offensive and Operation Greif was over. But in its only action it managed, purely by chance, to sow confusion, just as Einheit Steilau had done. First Army became convinced by the attack on Malmédy that the Sixth Panzer Army was preparing a drive north.

  The original contributor to Allied confusion, Oberstleutnant von der Heydte, was increasingly depressed in his Kampfgruppe’s forest hideout south of Eupen. He was bitter about the ‘amateurish, almost frivolous manner displayed at the higher levels of command, where the order for such operations originated’. Dietrich had assured him that he and his men would be relieved within a day. But there was no indication of a breakthrough round Monschau, and the American artillery on the Elsenborn ridge to the south still thundered away. Without radios, there was no hope of discovering the progress of the battle.

  Heydte’s 300 paratroopers had little food left, having jumped with emergency rations: two rolls of pressed bacon, two portions of sausage, two packets of ‘Soya Fleischbrot’, dextro-energen tablets, some of the German army hard bread called Dauerbrot, marzipan and Pervitin, a benzedrine substitute which had by then been banned. Under the cover of darkness, a group of his men had crept up to an American artillery battery during the night of 17 December and managed to steal some boxes of rations. But these did not last long when divided between 300 men.

  Heydte’s outposts near the road never attempted to attack a convoy, but picked off single vehicles. The Americans found a single strand of wire stretched across at neck height for anyone sitting in a Jeep. This was attributed to Heydte’s men, and it prompted the decision to fit an angled iron attachment on the front of Jeeps to cut any wires strung across roads or trails. There were very few incidents of this sort, but it was considered necessary to reassure drivers, especially when they advanced further into Germany because of the rumours of Werwolf resistance groups made up of Hitler Youth fanatics.

  On 17 December Sergeant Inber of the 387th Anti-Aircraft Artillery, driving south from Eupen, overtook a slow column of trucks with ease. But 400 metres ahead of it he was ‘ambushed, captured and whisked off the road before the leading vehicle of the convoy reached the point’. Inber was led off to Heydte’s main lair, about a kilometre into the woods, where the paratroopers treated him well. Heydte told Inber that he would release him if he could guide two of his injured men to an American aid station. The other American wounded whom they had captured were placed by the road where an ambulance could pick them up.

  Isolated paratroopers and air crew from the scattered drop soon fell into American hands. A survivor from a Junkers 52, brought down behind the Ninth Army, told his interrogators that they had ‘taken off believing they were on a practice flight, but learned while in the air that they were on a special mission’.

  After moving their hiding place, Heydte’s force clashed on 19 December with some of the troops from the 18th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Division who were combing the forest. There were a dozen casualties on both sides. Some of the soldiers searching for the German paratroopers did not report the parachutes they found; they simply cut them up to make silk scarves.

  Heydte, who was sickening and suffered from trench foot, gave up any idea of an advance on Eupen and decided to move east instead toward Monschau. His men were visibly weakened by malnutrition. They struggled through forest and marshes, and were soaked in the freezing waters of the Helle river which they had to wade. On 20 December, after another, heavier skirmish, Heydte told his men to make their way back to German lines in small groups. Altogether thirty-six were captured, but the rest reached safety. The thirty-seven fatal casualties in the Kampfgruppe were entirely from anti-aircraft fire on the first night.

  On 22 December Heydte, by then feeling very ill and utterly exhausted, went into Monschau on his own and broke into a house. When discovered by a civilian, he was relieved when the man told him that he would have to report him to the American military authorities. After a spell in hospital, Heydte was transferred to a prison camp in England. It was comfortable, but he and other officers held there never realized that their conversations were being recorded.

  12

  Tuesday 19 December

  On 19 December at dawn, Peiper’s Kampfgruppe attacked Stoumont with a battalion of panzergrenadiers, a company of paratroopers, and tanks in support on the road. The first assault failed. Stoumont seemed solidly held, and the 119th Infantry of the 30th Division launched a counter-attack on their right flank. But a little later in the thick morning mist the trick of Panther tanks charging at maximum speed worked once more. The anti-tank gunners did not stand a chance in the bad visibility. Only ghostly bazooka teams stalking panzers in the fog managed to achieve a couple of kills from the rear. A 90mm anti-aircraft gun sent to Stoumont in desperation managed to knock out a Tiger from the 501st Heavy Panzer Battalion.

  Peiper’s Kampfgruppe cleared Stoumont nevertheless, crushing the infantry company defending it. Two platoons of Shermans arrived too late, and had to pull back. Peiper’s force pushed on four kilometres to the west to Stoumont station. American officers assembled a scratch force just in time. It included the reserve battalion from the 119th, fifteen incomplete Shermans extracted from a nearby ordnance depot by the newly arrived 740th Tank Battalion, a battery of howitzers and another 90mm anti-aircraft gun. With short cliffs on the north side of the road, rising to steep, wooded hillsides above, and a sharp drop on the south side down to the railway track along the river, this position could not be outflanked. Even though First Army headquarters feared that Peiper’s force would turn north towards Liège, Stoumont station would be the furthest point of his advance. The rest of the 30th Infantry Division and General Jim Gavin’s 82nd Airborne were concentrating in the area just in time: the 30th to counter-attack the German spearhead and the 82nd to advance from Werbomont to support the defenders of St Vith.

  Around 260 Belgian civilians, in an attempt to escape the fighting in Stoumont itself, went down into the cellars of the Saint-Edouard sanatorium, which from the steep hillside overlooked the Amblève valley. But the Germans took over the building as a strongpoint. Priests held masses to calm the frightened women and children when the Americans counter-attacked next day and fought their way in.

  The civilians thought they were saved, and greeted the GIs with joy, but the Germans came back in the night. ‘Sister Superior led the crowd in reciting twelve rosaries for those fallen in battle.’ The Americans again launched an attack, with Sherman tanks firing at point-blank range into the sanatorium. The roof collapsed, walls were blasted down, and parts of the basement ceiling came down in a cloud of dust and smoke. The priest gave general absolution, but by a miracle none of the women and children was hurt.

  On the morning of 19 December, Peiper heard that the Americans had retaken Stavelot to his rear, thus cutting his Kampfgruppe off from any hope of resupply when it was almost out of fuel. He sent his reconnaissance battalion back to retake the small town. Peiper sensed failure. He still bitterly regretted that his Kampfgruppe had been forced to wait for the infantry to open the way on the first day of the offensive. It should have been a surprise attack without artillery preparation, he believed, but with armoured combat
teams as well as infantry. In the subsequent advance west, the long snaking column had proved a big mistake. They should have had many smaller groups, each one probing for intact bridges and a way through.

  His Waffen-SS troopers continued to kill prisoners at almost every opportunity. In La Gleize on the route back, a member of the 741st Tank Battalion, cut off by the German attack the day before, remained hidden in the church. ‘From his place of concealment,’ a report stated, ‘this soldier observed the [German] tanks and infantry halt an American armored car. The occupants surrendered and were told to get out. They were promptly fired upon by machine weapons as they stood there with hands up. The Germans then took the vehicle and moved away.’ And Rottenführer Straub of the reconnaissance battalion later recounted another incident to fellow prisoners from the 26th Volksgrenadier-Division. ‘Our battalion advanced to Stavelot and on to La Gleize. From there we went back to Stavelot. Our Sturmführer just shot [prisoners] outright … There were twelve of them the first time. He just shot them because they were in the way.’

  SS panzergrenadiers convinced themselves of the most extraordinary stories to justify their actions. An eighteen-year-old soldier from the 1st SS Panzer-Division told a fellow prisoner of war that the reputation of one of their senior NCOs for shooting unarmed men was so well known that they had to deal with Americans who pretended to surrender but were secretly bent on revenge. ‘Some of them came along’, he said, ‘waving a white flag and we knew very well that they were out for our Oberscharführer, because he’d killed so many of them, so we took our machine pistols and shot them before they could do a thing. That’s the way we work.’