Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble (43 page)

When Devers had returned to his headquarters after meeting Eisenhower in Versailles on 26 December, he had ordered fall-back lines to be studied in northern Alsace. After the German attack started on 1 January either side of Bitche, Eisenhower ordered Devers to leave covering forces, but pull back his main forces to the Vosges, leaving Strasbourg undefended. It was a serious blow to morale in the 6th Army Group.
‘Spirits have reached a new low today,’
a colonel wrote. Through a loudspeaker across the Rhine, the Germans warned the people of Strasbourg that they would be back. But American artillery, aiming by sound, managed to knock out the loudspeaker with impressive rapidity.

Not surprisingly, panic spread when word got around that the Americans might be withdrawing. The population of the city was 200,000, and many feared German reprisals. An American correspondent there estimated that 10,000 fled. ‘They left mostly by train … women pushing baby carriages, wagons piled high with furniture.’ The numbers of those who left by road over the next two days varied from 2,000 according to the Americans to 15,000 according to French sources.

In Paris, the French provisional government was up in arms. De Gaulle immediately sent his own order to General de Lattre de Tassigny, commanding the First French Army south of the city.
‘It is self-evident that the French army
can never agree to abandoning Strasbourg. In the eventuality of Allied forces withdrawing from their present positions to the north of the First French Army, I order you to take responsibility and ensure the defence of Strasbourg.’ He then declared his position to Eisenhower and appealed to Churchill and Roosevelt to prevent an Allied withdrawal. SHAEF was warned that 100,000 people would have to be evacuated from the city, and another 300,000 more Alsatians risked German reprisals.

Next day General Alphonse Juin went to see Bedell Smith on de Gaulle’s instruction, to say that the head of the provisional government would be coming to Versailles to see Eisenhower next day. Juin and Bedell Smith had fallen out before, and this was their stormiest meeting of all. Tensions had already arisen after General de Lattre had complained about the lack of
equipment and supplies his First French Army had received, while the Americans had questioned the effectiveness of its attacks on the Colmar pocket. The French had suffered heavy casualties among their junior officers, and their replacements had trouble pushing their men forward.

Juin said that General de Gaulle would withdraw French troops from SHAEF command if American forces pulled back to the Vosges. According to Bedell Smith, he was extremely rude about Eisenhower’s handling of the war.
‘Juin said things to me’
, he told Eisenhower after the meeting, ‘[for] which, if he had been an American, I would have socked him in the jaw.’

On the morning of 3 January, before de Gaulle’s visit, Eisenhower discussed the evacuation of Strasbourg with his staff. That afternoon, de Gaulle appeared with Juin. Winston Churchill, who was already on a visit to France, also appeared following de Gaulle’s message. Eisenhower briefed the two heads of government on the dangerous position they faced. Then, in response to the French ultimatum of withdrawing their forces from SHAEF command, Eisenhower reminded de Gaulle that
‘the French Army would get no ammunition
, supplies, or food unless it obeyed my orders, and [I] pointedly told him that if the French Army had eliminated the Colmar Pocket this situation would not have arisen’. De Gaulle became extremely heated at this point.

‘If we were involved in war games,’
de Gaulle said, eventually controlling himself, ‘I would agree with you. But I am forced to consider the affair from another point of view. The withdrawal in Alsace will hand French territory over to the enemy. On a strategic level, it would just be a manoeuvre. But for France it would be a national disaster, because Alsace is sacred to us. In any case, the Germans pretend that this province belongs to them, and so they will not miss the opportunity to take vengeance on the patriotism which its inhabitants have demonstrated.’

With Churchill’s tacit support, de Gaulle won Eisenhower round. The Supreme Commander agreed to ring General Devers basically telling him to halt the withdrawal.
‘This modification pleased de Gaulle very much,’
Eisenhower wrote, ‘and he left in a good humour.’ He no longer had his offended expression, which Churchill once described as resembling a female llama surprised in her bath. After de Gaulle’s departure, Churchill murmured to Eisenhower,
‘I think we’ve done the wise and proper thing.’

De Gaulle was so exultant that he returned to dictate a communiqué to his
chef de cabinet
Gaston Palewski. Before issuing it, Palewski took it round to Duff Cooper, the British ambassador. It was so vainglorious that Cooper warned Palewski that it would hardly help matters.
‘It suggested’
, wrote Cooper in his diary, ‘that de Gaulle had summoned a military conference which the P[rime] M[inister] and Eisenhower had been allowed to attend.’ In any case, Eisenhower justified his change of mind to President Roosevelt, whose opinion of the French leader had still not improved, on the grounds that if the provisional government collapsed, Allied armies might well face chaos in their rear areas.

The US VI Corps was
‘in high spirits’
when ‘the order to withdraw to a line just east of the Vosges mountains was rescinded’, wrote Colonel Heffner. ‘It would have been a terrible blow to American prestige. We could never have lived it down. To be driven back is one thing and to give up without a fight is something else.’

French forces remained under SHAEF command as a result of Eisenhower’s compromise, but headaches in dealing with the French authorities persisted. Eisenhower subsequently complained that the French
‘next to the weather
… have caused me more trouble in this war than any other single factor’. SHAEF decided to stop passing
‘signal intelligence to First French Army’
since it was ‘not sufficiently secure’. On 7 January Devers warned General Patch, the commander of the Seventh Army in Alsace, that its telephone wires may be tapped.
‘This presents
a serious threat to Ultra security if reference should be made to Ultra intelligence by message or by disguised reference to a special form of intelligence. A few such references if pieced together by the enemy might be dangerously revealing.’

The German First Army’s attack south was more or less held west of Bitche, where it was led by the 17th SS Panzergrenadier-Division
Götz von Berlichingen
, the 101st Airborne’s opponent at Carentan in Normandy. The XV Corps had good positions and was supported by Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division, which once again showed its mettle. (According to the staff of 6th Army Group, Leclerc
‘simply refused to fight under de Lattre’
, because Lattre had served in Pétain’s Army of the Armistice.) But from Bitche to the Rhine two German army corps, attacking without an artillery bombardment and in heavy fog, managed to infiltrate past American positions in the forested areas. Advancing
down towards the Saverne Gap, the German divisions forced back the overstretched American VI Corps spread across the Low Vosges and Rhine plain.

General Patch’s Seventh Army was heavily outnumbered, and it fought well, with just a few exceptions due to panic in the rear or laziness at the front. Divisional commanders were angry to hear of troops
‘surprised, captured or surrounded while bivouacked in or defending a town or village’
. This was nearly always due to a lack of all-round security, or alertness. In Bannstein ‘a unit was completely surprised. The men were sleeping and the Germans walked into the town unopposed and captured our troops, arms and a considerable number of vehicles.’ In three other places, similar incidents took place, but most of the men were released when US troops came to their rescue.

Fighting conditions were made far worse by heavy snow and the twisting, ice-bound roads of the Low Vosges. By 5 January, the 6th SS Mountain Division, brought down from Scandinavia, had reached Wingen-sur-Moder twenty kilometres short of Saverne. Resisted strongly by the 45th Infantry Division, that was as far as they advanced on the western side. For the moment, the other three American infantry divisions held the line of the River Rothbach. But Himmler had obtained further divisions, including the 10th SS Panzer-Division
Frundsberg
, and prepared a fresh attack.

General Eisenhower may have rated the French as his biggest problem next to the weather, but he had also mentioned to General de Gaulle that Field Marshal Montgomery was not easy to deal with. He did not, however, foresee that the greatest crisis in Anglo-American relations was about to explode. On 5 January, Eisenhower heard that news in the States of Montgomery taking command of the Ninth and First US Armies had just broken, despite the fact that SHAEF had unwisely tried to suppress it. All of Air Chief Marshal Tedder’s fears about the British press were realized. General de Guingand’s plea to correspondents had failed: their newspapers again demanded that Montgomery should now be confirmed as ground forces commander in western Europe. The American press, not surprisingly, did not like the idea that a Briton, and especially Montgomery, should be in charge of two whole American armies. SHAEF was nevertheless forced to issue its own
communiqué confirming the arrangement. Correspondents, both American and British, had become enraged by the inept and complacent treatment of the press by the military authorities at Versailles.

Bradley, already rattled by the prospect of a congressional investigation into why the US Army had been so unprepared for the Ardennes offensive, also feared how the news of Montgomery taking over two of his armies would be construed back home. And he deeply resented the fact that, in a poll for
Time
magazine’s Man of the Year, Patton had been voted second to Eisenhower, while he had never even been considered. Deeply upset, he immediately suspected Montgomery of leaking the story about the change in command and regarded it as a deliberate
‘attempt to discredit the Americans’
. He rang Eisenhower to complain, but Eisenhower assured him that the story had broken in the States and had not been leaked from 21st Army Group headquarters.

According to Hansen, Bradley believed that
‘the public clamor for this appointment is obviously officially inspired’
. He remained convinced that Winston Churchill was scheming to have Montgomery named as overall ground forces commander. Clearly he still believed this to be a possibility, for he declared to Eisenhower that he
‘wouldn’t serve one day under Montgomery’s command
… General Patton has likewise indicated that he will not serve a single day under Montgomery. I intend to tell Montgomery this.’ Eisenhower said that he would pass on his concerns to Churchill, but neither Churchill nor even Brooke was pushing for such a promotion. They were well aware of American views, and were privately appalled by the storm brewing. Churchill wrote to President Roosevelt, emphasizing British confidence in Eisenhower’s leadership and praising the bravery of American divisions during the battle.

Bradley feared that the story would
‘repudiate the efficacy of his Army Group
command, undermine the confidence of his subordinate commanders and eventually [affect] the morale and confidence of the troops. Second, there is the equally evident picture that it may undermine public confidence in the States in his [Bradley’s] command and indicate to our people there that it was necessary for us to resort in an emergency to British command in an effort to retrieve our “chestnuts from the fire”.’

The British campaign to have Montgomery made field commander of the whole western front, Hansen wrote, implied
that
‘the German breakthrough
would not have happened had Montgomery been in command to prevent it. The current inference of all news stories now is that the German attack succeeded because of the negligence of the American commander – namely Bradley … The effect has been a cataclysmic Roman holiday in the British press which has exulted over the announcement, and hailed it as an increase in the Montgomery command.’ He went on: ‘The troops are referred to as “Monty’s troops” in a palavering gibberish that indicates a slavish hero devotion on the part of the British press … He is the symbol of success, the highly overrated and normally distorted picture of the British effort on our front.’

Bradley, wound up by his entourage, felt he was fighting for his career and reputation. He had just written to General Marshall, giving his view of the situation and justifying his ‘calculated risk’ in leaving the Ardennes front so weakly defended up to 16 December.
‘At the same time,’
he added, ‘I don’t want to apologize for what has happened.’

Montgomery telephoned Churchill to tell him that he planned to give a press conference to make a strong call for Allied unity and support for Eisenhower. Churchill replied that he thought it would be
‘invaluable’
. Field Marshal Brooke, on the other hand, was not so sure. He knew too well Montgomery’s inability to control his bragging. So did several of Montgomery’s senior staff officers.