The Bulge
Goering, Hitler and Guderian survey plans for Wacht Am Rhein, a.k.a. The Battle of the Bulge, October 1944.
It began at dawn on Dec. 16, 1944, 64 years ago today, with rapid assaults through the Ardennes forest, as the Germans blitzed one last time, hoping to split the Allied armies and take Antwerp. As Guderian reportedly liked to say, “Man schlägt jemanden mit der Faust und nicht mit gespreizten Fingern.” You punch with the fist and not with the fingers spread.
Hitler’s hope was to cut supplies to the Allied armies, divide the Brits and Americans, get a separate peace in the West and turn his full attention to the Soviets. The Germans punched a bulge in the Allied line deep into Belgium, giving the battle its name. But the bulge wasn’t nearly big enough, and they quickly got bogged down well short of their objective. Whether it would have worked anyway is open to question … Churchill was no fan of Stalin, but Eisenhower, Churchill and FDR knew who the immediate enemy was and FDR and Churchill in particular were keenly interested in flattening Germany as a long-term European stability measure. That said, alternate histories are explored in what looks to be an interesting book in the Bulge reading list below.
The battle immediately took on the qualities of a strange Teutonic nightmare. 1st SS Panzer Division elements machinegunned 88 American prisoners in the snow at Malmedy, wounded survivors being finished off with headshots, and murdered 11 black American POWS after apparently torturing them with knives in a ditch at Wereth. Other SS trained to pass as Americans and while they failed to take their bridges, they succeeded in spreading chaos behind American lines. Hard fighting slowed the German advance, prevented them from taking key intersections and bridges, and cut some German units off. The drawn-out winter combat became the stuff of history, both dread and awe-inspiring, most notably in the siege at Bastogne, which gave the paratroopers of the 101st the opportunity to fight in all directions and a chip on their shoulders to this day over the notion they were saved by Patton. Gen. McAuliffe earned his own place in history when the Germans demanded his surrender and he replied, “Nuts.” An old paratrooper I interviewed a few years back, a resident of the Bedford VA who was at Bastogne, insisted McAuliffe actually said “Balls!” and a staff officer cleaned it up. But here’s a staff officer who says that’s not so.
In a month and a half of fighting in bitter cold, more than 19,000 Americans were killed, 41,000 captured and 23,000 wounded. Oddly similar casualty numbers on the German side, but they lost. A colleague of my dad’s, a big, good-natured engineer who brought over several buckets of ice cream when my younger brother and I had our tonsils out, had lost his eye as an infantryman in the Bulge and had a glass one that was fascinating to watch because it didn’t move. One of the compositors at the now-defunct newspaper where I started was hit in the head by stone fragments when a bullet hit his doorway. I barely knew him but someone who did said he was a little jumpy. Your Bulge veteran stories and observations in comments. It was only the last to date of many battles between greater powers that turned little Belgium into some of the bloodiest ground in Europe, scene of great generalship, great failure and much slaughter, so that many families might have an uncle buried there in World War II, a distant relative crippled at Passchendaele in the Great War, or a forebear who fought at Waterloo.
Quick wikipedia Bulge history here, detailed version here: The United States Army in World War II, The Ardennes, Battle of the Bulge, By Hugh M Cole. Neptunus Lex sums up events preceding the Bulge. A special tribute to one Bulge vet, aka “Dad,” at Liberty Peak Lodge. A Bulge library follows the art below, which is from a variety of sources, not necessarily in order, with a nod to reader MikeHu for pointing out the LIFE images:
Germans pass a knocked-out U.S. halftrack. December 1944
Belgian civilians killed during the German advance
Happy SS troopers smoke captured American cigarettes. That guy in the middle look familiar?
There he is, back to work, in this well-known captured shot. Unclear whether it is part of the same roll.
101st, Bastogne:
McAuliffe
Christmas in Bastogne, compliments of Castle Argghhh!!!, where a couple of these other images popped up.
Germans who assaulted Bastogne.
1st Army digging, in anticipation of more artillery fire. GI in the foreground doesn’t have to dig any more. December 1944.
Infantry with 4th Armored take aim
Ist Army GIs warm up during a lull, Ardennes, Dec. 20, 1944. (LIFE has more color shots here. I bypassed a lot of the LIFE photog shots at that site as most of them unfortunately appear to depict activity behind the lines, with GIs in relaxed or exposed positions that don’t suggest immediate proximity to the enemy. The more active, frontline shots in this sequence appear to have been taken mainly by military combat cameramen.*)
Medevac
82nd troopers follow the 340th Tank Battalion to engage near Herresbach, December 1944
Germans captured.
German wounded and captured in an attack on an American fuel depot, December 1944
Americans captured and murdered at Malmedy, Dec. 17, 1944, 64 years ago tomorrow.
Slain American POWs marked for identification by investigators documenting the murder of Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion POWs by 1st SS Panzer.
Identifying the dead.
More reading. Some standbys and some different takes:
Battle of the Bulge: Hitler’s Alternate Scenarios Peter Tsouras (alternate histories, by military historians)
Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible John C. McManus. Fellow Heraldo scribbler Jay Fitz of Hubblog fame raves about this one, on the heavy fighting by small units that held while others ran or surrendered. They fought, died and were sometimes overrun, but slowed the German advance and bought time for the 101st to arrive at Bastogne. This one was also highlighted by one of the vets on A Combat Veteran’s Reading List.
The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge John S.D. Eisenhower. Study of German, American and British command highly rated by Ambrose, apparently evenhanded despite dad’s role.
Panzer Leader Heinz Guderian. (Pictured above with that fat pig Goering and the carpet chewer. Guderian was deemed by U.S. authorities to be clear of war crimes over Soviet objections and went on to a career as an author while his son, a Wehrmacht panzer officer, became a general in the Bundeswehr. Here’s a German historian’s Guderian site with some of his favorite sayings, some worth stealing, like the one in the intro above.)
Achtung - Panzer! Heinz Guderian
Panzers in Winter: Hitler’s Army and the Battle of the Bulge Samuel W. Mitcham Jr.
Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945 (Contributions in Military Studies) Martin van Creveld
Jochen Peiper: Battle Commander, SS Leibstandardte Adolf Hitler Charles Whiting, on the SS commander whose men carried out the massacre at Malmedy.
At the Crossroads: SS Colonel Joachim Piper and the Ghosts of Malmedy Danny Sherrill Parker
The Malmedy Massacre John M. Bauserman
The Battered Bastards of Bastogne: The 101st Airborne and the Battle of the Bulge, December 19,1944-January 17,1945 George Koskimaki
Patton and the Battle of the Bulge Michael Green
Patton’s Panthers: The African-American 761st Tank Battalion In World War II Charles W. Sasser
Panther vs Sherman: Battle of the Bulge 1944 (Duel) Steven Zaloga
11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944 Stanley Weintraub
Seven Roads to Hell: A Screaming Eagle at Bastogne Donald R. Burgett
Noville Outpost of Bastogne: My Last Battle Don Addor
Infantry Soldier: Holding the Line at the Battle of the Bulge George W. Neill
The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of WWII’s Most Decorated Platoon Alex Kershaw
And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II Evelyn Monahan (unclear whether this includes the Bulge, but what the heck, nurses don’t get much historic notice)
Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany Stephen Ambrose
The Ardennes: The Battle of the Bulge, Hugh M. Cole
A Tour of the Bulge Battlefield William Cavanagh
Band of Brothers magnificent depiction of the Bulge and other battles, has the benfit of being entirely factual (DVD)
Battle of the Bulge Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw. Hollywood’s version. (DVD)
American Experience: The Battle of the Bulge David McCullough (DVD)
Christmas Memories - 1944 — The Battle of The Bulge Veterans (DVD)
WAR STORIES WITH OLIVER NORTH: THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE (DVD)
Hitler’s Last Gamble: Battle of the Bulge Bill Cain (a graphic history)
BATTLE OF THE BULGE (Images of War) Andrew Rawson (photos)
Nobody Comes Back: A Novel of the Battle of the Bulge Donn Pearce (novel)
The Angel of Bastogne Gilbert Morris (novel)
Finding Your Father’s War: A Practical Guide to Researching and Understanding Service in the World War II U.S. Army Jonathan Gawne
Let me know if I missed any good ones. Reviews in comments if you know any of these ones.
RMardis in comments adds A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge Charles B. MacDonald.
snelson adds Guderian, Creator of the Blitzkrieg Kenneth John Macksey
MikeHu adds A Blood-Dimmed Tide: The Battle of the Bulge by the Men Who Fought It (Dell World War II Library) Gerald Astor;
Nuts! The Battle of the Bulge: The Story and Photographs Wenger, Goldstein and Dillon;
and Company Commander: The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War II Charles B. MacDonald
For an old school grunt’s eye view from Hollywood, MikeHu recommends: Battleground
Big Sam adds Battle: The Story of the Bulge John Toland … which has the photo of everyone’s favorite bullet-draped Waffen SS cigarette smoker on the front.
Welcome Gateway, Protein Wisdom, Scared Monkeys, Memeorandum, Neptunus Lex, Faustas, etal. Always good to see you. Armchair warriors and the other kind may want to check out A Combat Veteran’s Reading List. In other recent World War II business, here’s me trashing my old pal Max Kennedy’s excellent WWII tome Danger’s Hour on its al Qaeda angle. And here’s my old pal Max Kennedy asking when I plan to actually read it so we can debate the issue. Read it? That sounds like work. For another new WWII view getting some raves, here’s Retribution, on the last two years of the Pacific war.
* Footnote re war correspondence. Most of what I’ve seen suggests reporters and photogs generally didn’t directly cover combat on the line in those days, in part because of the conventions and restrictions of the day, and in part no doubt because of the fact that combat was a high-intensity meat grinder, unlike present-day warfare, in which neither Allied nor enemy deaths come close to the carnage of WWI, II or Korea.
Notable exceptions include Robert Capa, “If your photos aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” He landed in the first wave on Omaha Beach — a choice he immediately regretted, unabashedly recounting his “new kind of fear” and the intense self-preservation instinct that led him to bolt here. (Hard to call a man who covered five wars and was killed in action in Vietnam in 1954 a coward. Capa’s Omaha story reminds me a little of Dexter Filkins’ pucker moment in Falluja, recounted in The Forever War, in which he describes running forward into fire with Marines at one point only because of his greater terror at being left alone) Another notable exception is ”The Writing 69th,” a 1943 embedding project of the 8th Air Force that included Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney, came to a halt after one bombing mission when the NYT’s Robert Post was killed when the B-24 he was in was shot down. Ernie Pyle, though often exposed to fire and ultimately killed in action, came ashore in Normandy on D-Day plus One and appears to have generally operated close but to the rear of the front lines.
NeoConScum in comments is already making a liar out of me with his scribbling father-in-law Bill Davidson’s Bulge tale: Cut Off; Behind Enemy Lines in the Battle of the Bulge With Two Small Children, Ernest Hemingway, and Other Assorted Misanthropes. That sounds like a blast. Except the small children part.
In any case, a shift in coverage priorities, journalistic style, technology, seems to have driven the relative numbers up. Citing what appear to be deaths of Allied war correspondents, CPJ cites 68 killed in WWII, 17 in Korea, both high-intensity conflicts, compared to 66 in longer duration, lower-intensity Vietnam and 187 in Iraq, though many of the latter are specifically targeted terrorism victims and/or ethnic violence victims as opposed to direct combat victims. For more direct comparison with the high-intensity wars, CPJ lists 11 journalists and media support workers killed the three-week March-April 2003 invasion. Mainly non-embedded, by both US and Iraqi action, including two killed in the Hotel Palestine by a tank round from the unit I was attached to. Two of the three embedded journalists killed in action were also attached to the 3rd ID’s 2nd Brigade, and died in an Iraqi attack on the brigade’s field command center after the combat elements left on the assault on Baghdad. The Atlantic’s Michael Kelly moved between 2nd and 1st brigades and was with 1st south of Baghdad when he drowned after his vehicle reportedly came under fire and veered into a canal.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:05 am on Tuesday, December 16, 2008
29 Responses to “The Bulge”
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December 16th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Excellent list of books. Add ” A Time for Trumpets” by Charles MacDonald. (Excellent)
December 16th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Forgot review: I’ve read The Longest Winter and it was very good. I’ll have to pick up a few more of these from the list. I have The Longest Battle, but haven’t read it yet.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:04 am
in the picture of everyone looking over the map, Bush’s face doesn’t look right,somehow…. can you fix that?
/white smoke
BTW: there’s a book by one of the officers of an independent Engineer Bn that effectively tied up one of the advancing Panzer spearheads by blowing every bridge and mining all the roads in their area….. i disremember the name right now.
December 16th, 2008 at 4:48 am
The first few days were a little touch and go, and one of our divisions was essentially destroyed (106th Infantry Division), though the remnants of the division fought on until they were pulled out of the line in February 1945.
Here’s an interesting article on the 106th:
http://www.lonesentry.com/gi_stories_booklets/106thinfantry/index.html
December 16th, 2008 at 7:56 am
[...] take time today and visit Jules Crittenden as he recounts one of the most famous and important battles of WWII , The Battle of the [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 8:17 am
[...] that a Panzer division, or are you just happy to see me? Jules Crittenden. Posted by Dan Collins @ 7:17 am | Trackback SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “The Bulge [Dan [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 8:55 am
My father was a newly-arrived replacement in Company C, 38th Armored Infantry, 7th Armored Division. The 7th held St. Vith, a road junction north of Bastogne. The Germans eventually took the town, but the 7th held on to the ridges north and west of there and bottled up the advance. He remembered riding in an M3 halftrack going up the road toward the Germans while everyone else was going the other direction.
The father of one of my friends was in the 101st. He mentioned that once word got around about Malmedy, everyone pretty much stopped taking the SS prisoners. Crude, but effective.
December 16th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Okay, I give up. Who’s the guy in the picture so familiar to all but me???
December 16th, 2008 at 9:39 am
The suave Nazi in the background with the nicely tailored Nazi jacket and the Iron Cross in the background? That’s Brad von Pitt.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:46 am
The Brad Von Pitt behind Hitler and Goering has collar insignia for
SS Obergruppenfuehrer.
Here’s a wonderful book by a YANK Magazine correspondent who went on to be a Look Mag. Editor and author of many non-fiction books. Bill Davidson had a hell of an adventure in the Ardennes and delightfully chronicled it in,”CUT OFF…Behind Enemy Lines in the Battle of the Bulge with Two War Orphans, Ernest Hemingway and Assorted Misanthropes”. (Stein & Day, 1972) At the time I was married to his daughter(’70s), I had 3 ‘ends’ of my family who’d been in the Bulge. My Uncle Joe, Dad’s older brother, was with the Engineers at St.Vith and Mom’s younger brother, L.M., was badly wounded by a German 88 round which hit the tree he was leaning against while catching a smoke.
God Bless Them ALL.
December 16th, 2008 at 11:08 am
A good biography of Guderian is Guderian:Creator of the Blitzkrieg, by Kenneth Macksey.
Guderian was leading one of the Army Groups in Russia when Hitler tried to order the Wehrmacht to assist the Einsatzgruppen. Guderian acknowledged receipt of the order, and then refused to issue it to his troops. Hitler didn’t push the issue. This may have had something to do with his not being convicted of war crimes.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
[...] On 16 December, 1944 the Wehrmacht counter-attacked. [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
All those kraut shots at the beginning of the post were taken on Dec 18th and were all staged. If you look closer at the picture of the 3 germans running across the road, you also see a dude on the otherside of the road in a ditch without a care in the world(usually he is cropped out). All those shots were staged for propaganda purposes. The US unit the vehicles came from was a task force from the 14th Cav Group and were ambushed by Kampfgruppe Hansen of the 1st SS Pz Div. Unfortunately for the Krauts, all the footage they took at this spot was captured a few days later by the US 3rd Armored Division.
As for the Brad Pitt looking dude that is Hermann Fegelein. He married Eva Brauns sister in 1944 and was in the Bunker in April of 1945. Hitler had him whacked a day or so before his own suicide.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Repeating an earlier comment on an another thread, for books, I would add
Charles B. McDonald’s “Company Commander” (Review by Grant Jones, at “The Dougout”
and
Gerald Astor’s “Blood-Dimmed Tide”. Astor’s book takes some time to get started as he lets the vets tell their pre-war and training stories, but once the “Bulge” starts, you won’t put this book down (If you can, find a used-book store and get the hard-back version for easier reading - also find some good maps, as Astor only has one). He covers some of the same ground that Kershaw did later in more detail, but there’s a lot more here. What makes this book so compelling is that these are stories by enlisted men and junior officers who were there, on the ground and in the snow. McDonald’s book is also his personal memories, which he later used to help put together his definitive “Time For Trumpets” mentioned above.
This book, Nuts! the Battle of the Bulge: The Story and Photographs by Wenger, Goldstein and Dillon has an incredible photographic record, with just gut-wrenching photos of American GIs.
I had an uncle in the 82nd Airborne, 508th PIR near St. Vith, and another uncle with Third Army AAA (119th AAA Gun Bn) on the south flank, just north of Arlon.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
“That’s Brad von Pitt.”
I recognized Brad…but who’s that dude with the funny looking mustache?
December 16th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
And as far as movies go, forget “Battle of the Bulge” with Henry Fonda and Robert Shaw, go for Battleground with Van Johnson, James Whitmore, Marshall Thompson, John Hodiak and others. Sure, it has 1940s movie conventions and overemphasizes the Germans posing as GIs, but it’s meant to be a grunt’s view and had the benefit of many still young survivors to help out. Great, humanistic flick.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I dunno, Surls, but I’m pretty sure the Luftwaffe lickspittle behind that fat pig Goering is Sean von Penn in heavy makeup.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
My 18 yo future father was there with Company K of the 325th GIR of the 82nd Airborne Division. In fact he was there all the way to the occupation of Berlin.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
A book to add that is very solid is John Toland’s “Battle, the Story of the Bulge.” Toland over the years wrote several outstanding books, though he couldn’t touch the work of the favorite of my youth, Cornelius Ryan.
December 16th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
These video’s will still make you boiling mad, even 64 years later…
a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN04TTWhZ6A”>Here’s the NY Times take on this… oops…. I mean, Goebbels’ propaganda ministry
a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlL6C6hPHmg&feature=channel”>Part 2, here
December 16th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Ugh…
Here’s the NY Times take on this… oops…. I mean, Goebbels’ propaganda ministry
Part 2, here
December 16th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Pardon my incompetence, Part 1 is here
(All slanders against Great “American” nespapers were unintentional)
December 16th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
[...] The Bulge [...]
December 17th, 2008 at 12:52 am
The fat bastige leaning on the table looks a bit like Al Gore while in the moody, water retention part of his monthly cycle.
One of the story lines often neglected about the Battle of the Bulge is how much the Germans hated fighting the Americans. It seems the Americans didn’t follow the prescribed patterns of defensive setup that the Germans had become accustomed to in the fights against all their previous foes. Captured German soldiers often complained that the Americans didn’t fight fair. When attacking an American position, defensive fire nearly always came from an unexpected area, and all too often, pre attack shelling didn’t take out American machine guns and/or mortars, because the Americans always put them where ever it dang well pleased em, rather than following the rigid rules of emplacement that honorable enemy followed.
The habit of isolated American squads or platoons to decide that they’d retreated far enough and to suddenly, for no rhyme or reason that the Germans could figure out, turn to and fight to the death, really was a source of consternation.
That was one of the issues that really got under the German soldiers’ skin. Dang Americans just wouldn’t stay beaten like a proper foe.
December 17th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Kajonnes…Fegelein tried to save his skin by boogying from the Bunker. Hitler ordered him hunted down and, subsequently, shot in the rubble strewn courtyard.
As a kid watching “Battleground” on TV, my favorite part was the clicking effect they gave the GI with false teeth. They’d have a shot of the the snow laden foxholes and you’d hear ‘rattle-clickity-click’ coming from one.
December 20th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Patton’s G2, Oscar Koch, had gathered, and interpreted, sufficient intel to anticipate a major German offensive in the Ardennes. It seems that Koch eventually succeeded in persuading Patton of the accuracy of his data, and of his interpretation thereof, but was not successful in similarly persuading SHAEF command.
March 13th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Picture of my uncle in this article; Thomas F. Watt. Died at Malmedy.
March 13th, 2009 at 8:39 am
To missing uncles. Best regards.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I have recently watched The movie Battle of the Bulge, and have seen the series Band of Brothers, Just wanted to say thanks to all those service persons who took part in the campaign, and to say I hope in my life time I never have to experience what those guys went through. God bless you all, And there but for the grace of god go I. Just Thanks.