Ike's Spies (24 page)

Buoyant, breezy, sure of itself, the
AEF
waited only for a break in the weather to finish the job against the Wehrmacht. When the First Army gathered into its
POW
cages the 250,000th German prisoner, a staff officer suggested that they hold a formal ceremony at which the lucky German would be given a War Bond.
⁵
In 1979, General Strong recalled “the general euphoria that existed among the top commanders. The German was already beaten and that was that!”
⁶

It was difficult to think otherwise. On December 3, Eisenhower had written to the Combined Chiefs, “General Strong reports to me in his latest G-2 report that the attacks that began in November have eliminated at least 128,000 Germans. I know that there have been counted through the cages of the First, Ninth and Third Armies, more than 40,000 prisoners. Our losses have been nothing like the figures given above.”
⁷

Two days later, in a personal letter to Marshall, Ike said, “At present we have newly formed Divisions arriving on our front, and have attracted several Divisions directly from Hungary and East Prussia. In spite of all this, the enemy is badly stretched on this front and is constantly shifting units up and down the line to reinforce his most threatened points.”

That was exactly what Hitler wanted Ike to believe. Indeed, if Hitler could have seen Eisenhower's letter to Marshall, he would have been delighted. From Hitler's point of view, there was even better to come. Eisenhower declared that G-2 studies “show that the German is more frightened of our operations” in the Roer and Saar—that is, north and south of the Eifel—“than anywhere else,” and thus more likely to counterattack there.
⁸

The
SHAEF
intelligence team, along with its subordinate units
attached to the armies, corps, and divisions in the field, liked to think of itself as the best in the world. As Eisenhower's report to Marshall indicated, G-2 recognized that new divisions were coming into the line, that the Germans had been attempting to gather together an armored reserve, and that a counterattack was a distinct possibility. Indeed, First Army's G-2 Estimate No. 37 of December 10, 1944, declared that second among four possible German actions was “a concentrated counterattack with air, armor, infantry and secret weapons at a selected focal point at a time of his own choosing.”
⁹

Strong told Smith, early in December, that the German reserve might be transferred to the Eastern front, or that it might strike in the Ardennes or east of the Vosges, whenever the Germans had a prediction of six days of bad weather. Smith asked his G-2 head to go to Bradley to warn him of these possibilities. Strong did so, and Bradley said, “Let them come.”

Bradley's G-2 at Twelfth Army Group concluded that the enemy was using the Eifel as a training ground, putting replacements into the line there in order to give them experience. First Army G-2 reported in early December, “During the past month there has been a definite pattern for the seasoning of newly-formed divisions in the comparatively quiet sector opposite VIII Corps prior to their dispatch to more active fronts.” And VIII Corps' G-2 reported on December 9, “The enemy's present practice of bringing new divisions to this sector to receive front line experience and then relieving them out for commitment elsewhere indicates his desire to have this sector of the front remain quiet and inactive.”
¹⁰

In sum, at midnight on December 15–16, 1944, the Allies were as ignorant of German intentions and capabilities as the Germans had been of Allied plans at midnight on June 5–6, 1944. When, at dawn on December 16, the German artillery barrage began and the tanks started to grind their way westward through the mist and fog, the attack came as a complete surprise.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST
intelligence establishment had been badly fooled. Attacking where they were not expected helped the Germans but it was the size, fury, and sustained power of the attack that came as the greatest surprise to
SHAEF
.

Forrest Pogue,
SHAEF'S
official historian (and later General Marshall's biographer), has written a comprehensive analysis of
the intelligence failure. His conclusion is that there were four major reasons for it. First, although Ike and Bradley realized the Germans were capable of some offensive action somewhere, they were reluctant to move their troops from point to point to meet every possible threat, not only because it was impractical but also because it would disrupt their own offensive plans. The second reason was
SHAEF'S
emphasis on an offensive strategy. The third was the erroneous belief that Rundstedt, the cautious and traditional soldier, was controlling strategy and would not put his troops into the open where the Allied air force could destroy them. The fourth was the belief that the German fuel shortage would preclude any major counterattack.
¹¹

As noted earlier,
ULTRA
was of little help once the Germans stabilized the line and could use the telephone. What little
ULTRA
did reveal was, for purposes of predicting the Ardennes attack, misleading. Most
ULTRA
material came from the Luftwaffe, and most Luftwaffe traffic consisted of complaints about the fuel situation. The various Allied G-2s had come to rely excessively on
ULTRA
, rather like Mockler-Ferryman in the desert at Kasserine Pass. Because
ULTRA
did not reveal any preparations for an attack, while it did indicate a severe fuel shortage, the G-2s concluded that there was nothing to worry about.

Adolph Rosengarten,
SLU
with the U. S. First Army, in a 1978 article in the professional journal
Military Affairs
on his experiences with
ULTRA
, recalled one intercept that might have been decisive. “Dissected during a post-mortem of the Bulge with a reader from another headquarters, one signal in early December I remember from a Luftwaffe Liaison officer to his command had reported that he had reached his destination (if memory now serves, the headquarters of a named Panzer corps), where they were preparing for the forthcoming operations. Homer wrote that after the event even the fool is wise, and today one can infer from that signal that something on a large scale was planned. But, I submit, the American intelligence officer, who in early December 1944 used that isolated intercept to predict an offensive led by two Panzer armies with adequate flank support, would have been sent home.”
¹²

There was another hint that, properly interpreted, would have prepared the Allies for the assault. Operational Intelligence Centre at the British Admiralty detected, according to Patrick Beesly, “a very considerable southward movement of troops from Norway.
On October 30 it reported, ‘the gross tonnage of shipping which has made the passage from Oslofjord to Denmark from the middle of October amounts to 95,000
GRT
. It is estimated that this is sufficient to have lifted at least one division from Norway. Elements of the 269th Division previously stationed in the Bergen area have been identified on the Western Front during the last few days.' The movements continued throughout November and the first half of December.” Beesly adds flatly, “Eisenhower's intelligence staff cannot have drawn the right conclusions from these reports.

Overconfidence was one reason, looking in the opposite direction another. Ike was emphasizing the offensive. The Allied bombers were blasting German production facilities. The Red Army was pressing hard on the Eastern front. Rundstedt's only hope for holding the line once spring came was to husband his forces. To use them up in a German offensive that could achieve nothing more than a slight tactical success made no sense. What
SHAEF
, the army groups, and the armies were concerned with was not what the Germans might do to them but rather what they would do to the Germans.
¹⁴

Only in the Eifel, in German territory, could the Wehrmacht assemble such a mighty force without
SHAEF
discovering its presence. Had the Germans tried to do it anywhere in France, Holland, or Belgium, local resistance groups would have gotten the word to
SHAEF
immediately. Indeed, the surprise the Germans achieved at the Bulge is one of the most telling comments on the value of the underground forces to Ike and his armies during the campaigns in France.

Spies inside Germany might have helped predict the attack, but both
SOE
and
OSS
had concentrated on cooperating with the French, and neither had an extensive spy network set up in enemy territory.
OSS
had only four men inside Germany and they had no communications with London and were producing no intelligence.
¹⁵

Eisenhower personally insisted on accepting the blame for the surprise, and he was right to do so, for his failures were the crucial ones. He had failed to read correctly the mind of the enemy commander; he had failed to recognize that Hitler, not Rundstedt, was directing the strategy; he had failed to see that Hitler would try anything. He was the man responsible for the weakness of the line
in the Ardennes, the one who had insisted on continuing the offensives north and south of that area. As a result of his policies there was no general
SHAEF
reserve available.

But despite his mistakes, Ike was the first Allied general to grasp the full import of the attack, the first to be able to readjust his thinking, the first to realize that although the surprise German offensive and the initial Allied losses were painful, in reality Hitler had given
AEF
a magnificent opportunity. On December 16, at Versailles, Bradley was inclined to think, on the basis of scattered reports, that the attack was a local one that could be stopped without difficulty. Ike insisted that he send armored divisions from the north and south toward the flanks of the attack. The next day Ike reported to Washington that the enemy had “launched a rather ambitious counterattack east of the Luxembourg area where we have been holding very thinly.” He said he was bringing some armor in to hit the German flanks and concluded, “If things go well we should not only stop the thrust but should be able to profit from it.”
¹⁶

By December 19 the Germans were already dangerously behind schedule. Although they had crushed most of Middleton's VIII Corps, small units or groups of Americans continued to fight and hold up the advance. As expected, the poor road system was hurting the Germans, too, especially because Ike had rushed the 101st Airborne into the key road junction at Bastogne.

But in the Allied world, there was something close to panic. In Paris the French flags that in August had waved so proudly from nearly every window were now discreetly put back into storage. In Belgium people braced themselves for another German occupation nightmare. Jews who had survived the first occupation went back into hiding.

A special German detachment of English-speaking soldiers, dressed in American uniforms and infiltrated behind the lines, added to the panic. Some put on U. S. Military Police armbands and misdirected traffic, while others went on kidnaping and assassination missions, with Ike himself as the ultimate target. As one result, Harry Butcher recorded, “Ike is a prisoner of our security police and is thoroughly but helplessly irritated by the restrictions on his moves. There are all sorts of guards, some with machine guns, around him, and he has to travel to and from the office led and followed by an armed guard in a jeep.”
¹⁷

In spite of the disastrous beginning, it was at the Bulge that Eisenhower came into his own as a military commander. As General Strong has written, “The Ardennes shows Eisenhower at his very best—decisive, determined and in full control of the situation.”
¹⁸
On December 19, when the threat appeared most alarming, he called a war council at Verdun, where the Allied High Command met in a cold, damp squad room in a French army barracks, with only a lone potbellied stove to ease the chill. Everyone looked glum and serious.

Ike opened the meeting by declaring, “The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not of disaster. There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table.”

Patton picked up the theme. “Hell, let's have the guts to let the —— — —— go all the way to Paris,” he said, grinning. “Then we'll really cut 'em off and chew 'em up.”
¹⁹

Eisenhower next told his commanders what he had already said to Butcher: “It is easier and less costly to us to kill Germans when they are attacking than when they are holed up in concrete fortifications in the Siegfried Line, and the more we can kill in their present offensive, the fewer we will have to dig out pillbox by pillbox.”
²⁰

Another mark of Eisenhower's self-confidence during this crisis was a conversation he had with Bradley, with only General Strong present to overhear it. Because the early German success had disrupted communications lines, Eisenhower had given command of the U. S. First Army to Monty, on a temporary basis only. Bradley was furious. He did not like Monty to begin with, and it was galling to have the First Army taken from him at the height of the battle.

“I cannot be responsible to the American people if you do this,” Bradley told Ike—one of his oldest and best friends—and added for good measure that he wished to resign at once. Ike was shocked, according to Strong, but recovered quickly and declared flatly, “Brad, I, not you, am responsible to the American people. Your resignation therefore means absolutely nothing.” Bradley hesitated a moment, then accepted the situation.
²¹

THE BATTLE THAT FOLLOWED
, the Battle of the Bulge, is the most written-about battle of World War II, and it need not be discussed any further here, except to point out that once the attack
began, the Germans left behind them their telephone and teleprinter links, so they were forced to use the radio again. That brought
ULTRA
back into play. The
SLUS
could report to their commands the location of German units, the relief and replacement of top officers, the chain of command, division boundaries, the location of headquarters, and the movement of larger formations.