Hitler's Commanders (26 page)

In mid-October, the XXXXVII Panzer was pulled out of Alsace and sent north of the Rhine, where it assumed control of the 9th Panzer and 15th Panzer Grenadier divisions. These it directed in some limited-objective attacks in the Peel Marshes. It was pulling back to its reserve positions on November 9, when von Luettwitz was formally promoted to general of panzer troops, to rank from November 1. He again launched a series of spoiling attacks against the Americans from November 16 to 21, during which he halted the advance of the U.S. 2nd Armored Division and relieved the hard-pressed German infantry. Casualties were fairly heavy on both sides, and XXXXVII Panzer was again sent into reserve on November 24, but these orders were quickly countermanded when the Americans seized the town of Lindern. Luettwitz’s forces were again thrown into the counterattack and even managed to surround the town, but their lack of infantry and the prompt Allied reaction doomed the operation to failure. On December 2, the corps was again pulled back into reserve. Six days later, Luettwitz and Walter Krueger were let in on a closely guarded secret: Hitler planned to launch a massive, surprise offensive in the Ardennes later that month. On December 12, Luettwitz and his two divisional commanders were among those taken by indirect routes from von Rundstedt’s headquarters at Ziegenberg Castle to the elaborately camouflaged Fuehrer Bunker at Adlershorst. Here they listened in grim silence to Hitler’s rambling oration on his hopes and plans for the campaign. No one was particularly pleased with his exaggerated expectations, but naturally no one dared contradict him.

Upon his return to his own headquarters at Gerolstein, Luettwitz summoned his own divisional commanders and their operations officers to a special planning conference. For this offensive, Luettwitz was to have his old 2nd Panzer Division (under recently promoted Major General Henning Schoenfeld), as well as the 26th Volksgrenadier Division (Major General Heinz Kokott) and the Panzer Lehr Division (lieutenant General Fritz Bayerlein). The plan called for the 2nd Panzer to cross the Our River over bridges laid by his engineers and to push on to Houffalize by evening. On his left, Kokott would also cross the Our and then the Gerf, whereupon Bayerlein’s armor would dash through the gap and drive for Bastogne.

Schoenfeld doubted the ability of his division’s engineers to achieve its initial objectives and asked that the Fuehrer Begleit Brigade be released from reserve to support his attack. Luettwitz said that he would check into the state of his old division himself and get back to Schoenfeld, although he doubted if it were feasible to commit the Fuehrer Begleit so early, even if Field Marshal Model (the army group commander) agreed, which he also doubted. In fact, Luettwitz arrived in the 2nd Panzer Division’s assembly area before Schoenfeld returned and found that his old subordinates disagreed with Schoenfeld’s estimates of the division’s capabilities. Luettwitz then went to Manteuffel’s headquarters and asked permission to relieve Schoenfeld of his command. Manteuffel concurred and recommended that he be replaced by one of his own former subordinates from the Grossdeutschland Panzer Grenadier Division—44-year-old Colonel Meinrad von Lauchert, a holder of the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves. Lauchert was already at Manteuffel’s headquarters so the two were quickly introduced, and Luettwitz liked what he saw. At 9 a.m. on December 15, Luettwitz sacked Schoenfeld and replaced him with Lauchert, who immediately began an inspection of his new command.
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He soon assured the corps commander that his division could accomplish its missions. Famous last words!

Lauchert had not been a divisional commander two days before Hitler’s last major offensive of the war began on the morning of December 16. Luettwitz’s corps struck along an 11-mile line against a single U.S. infantry regiment. Colonel von Lauchert succeeded in getting his 2nd Panzer across the Ourthe and was well on the way to Clervaux during the first 24 hours, but Kokott’s grenadiers had less luck and thus delayed Bayerlein’s forces, which were supposed to follow them across the river. By late on December 17, however, Bayerlein’s tanks and grenadiers were finally on the move, making for the central town of Bastogne, which Luettwitz believed to be the corps’ most important objective. Hitler, however, had directed that if Bastogne could not be taken quickly and easily, it was to be bypassed and left for the following infantry to deal with. As late as the night of December 18–19, Luettwitz was still appealing for permission to envelope Bastogne and attack it with his entire corps. Manteuffel turned down this request (he had no choice, given Hitler’s orders) but did give Luettwitz authorization to launch a limited attack.
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Meanwhile, five miles north of Bastogne, the 2nd Panzer (which had swung north instead of attacking the heavily defended hamlet of Longvilly) ran into what Lauchert believed was a powerful defensive force at Noville. Since the defenders of Noville effectively blocked the advance to the west, Lauchert awaited the arrival of his badly strung-out main body—that is, until Luettwitz arrived. The panzer general, however, believed that the Noville positions were only lightly held and at once ordered an attack with tank support, which he proceeded to direct himself.

For once, the corps commander was wrong. Not only was Noville strongly held, but it was defended by brave and determined U.S. troops who delayed the entire 2nd Panzer Division a full 48 hours and inflicted disproportionate losses on von Lauchert’s forces in the process. It was not until the evening of Wednesday, December 20, that the young colonel and von Luettwitz met on the gutted main street of Noville.

“I propose to drive south in pursuit of the enemy and capture Bastogne,” Colonel von Lauchert suggested.

But, as we have seen, the commander of the XXXXVII Panzer Corps already had his orders. “Forget Bastogne and head for the Meuse,” Luettwitz snapped.
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By this time Luettwitz was a full three days behind schedule. None of his divisions had done what they should have, and, at higher headquarters, Manteuffel and Model (the commander of Army Group B) were becoming more and more annoyed. Nor had things gone any better with his other two divisions.

Luettwitz’s affinity for his own former command led him to habitually travel with the 2nd Panzer. Left to his own devices, Fritz Bayerlein of the Panzer Lehr developed his own ideas of how the offensive should proceed, and Kokott, his junior in rank, was dragged along with him. Having crossed the Clerf River during the night of December 17–18, Bayerlein split his forces and drove on Bastogne from two directions. He sent half his force toward Longvilly and headed down a back road via Niederwampach to Mageret with the rest (including most of the panzers). By 2 a.m. on December 19 he had secured Mageret, capturing an American hospital in the process. Badly informed of U.S. strength, he wasted almost four hours here, apparently trying to seduce an American nurse. Finally, about 5:30 a.m., he moved toward Neffe and again halted, this time for the better part of the day.
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Kokott’s slower-moving infantry got involved in a two-day battle with the American defenders at Longvilly, thus frustrating any hope of a quick capture of Bastogne, which was heavily reinforced during these delays.

Although he did not have orders to defend Bastogne, the American commander in this sector, Lieutenant General Troy Middleton, was convinced that it had to be held even if its defenders had to accept temporary encirclement. The seven roads radiating from this modest town of 3,500 made it the hub of the road network for all of the southern Ardennes, and Middleton firmly believed that the Allies could not afford to abandon it to the Germans. Consequently, on December 19, he posted the bulk of his reserves here—18,000 men in all, including dozens of tanks and guns and the elite U.S. 101st Airborne Division.

By nightfall on the 20th, when Luettwitz at last turned his attention to his other two divisions, he discovered that the U.S. perimeter around the junction town was fiercely held and neither Bayerlein nor Kokott seemed to be making much headway. He read their reports with considerable annoyance—particularly the part about Panzer Lehr’s taking to almost impossible back roads. “If Bayerlein can’t read a map,” he growled at Colonel Albrecht Kleinschmidt, his chief of staff, “then he should have let one of his staff officers do it!”
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Although he now had 45,000 men in the vicinity of Bastogne, Luettwitz, in conformance with his instructions, ordered the 2nd Panzer Division to bypass it to the north, while most of the Panzer Lehr bypassed it to the south. Kokott’s 26th Volksgrenadier, reinforced with a regiment from Panzer Lehr, was left to handle the isolated American garrison.

During the next few days, Bastogne was completely sealed off by the Volksgrenadiers and the accompanying motorized infantry. The Neufchateau road, the last supply line into the town, was cut off only minutes after Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe (the acting commander of the 10lst Airborne) returned from a conference at the corps headquarters (General Middleton’s VIII) in Neufchateau.

On December 21 and 22 the Germans pressed their attacks only desultorily, which incensed Baron von Manteuffel when he visited Luettwitz’s headquarters at noon on the 22nd. Somewhat earlier, General von Luettwitz had ventured a maneuver that was to annoy his fellow commanders, amuse his enemies, and win for him a dubious place in the history of the Second World War.

Since the departure of the 2nd Panzer Division and the bulk of Panzer Lehr, the capture of Bastogne by attack would be both costly and time-consuming, and Luettwitz doubted if it could be accomplished at all with the forces at hand. He therefore decided to take by bluff what he could not take by force. Selecting a major and a lieutenant from his staff, Luettwitz directed them to bear a surrender ultimatum to the American commander in Bastogne. They reached the forward U.S. outposts about 11:30 a.m., where an American captain took their message to General McAuliffe’s headquarters. Luettwitz’s note informed McAuliffe that he was surrounded by strong armored forces, which would soon be reinforced by his own corps artillery and six heavy anti-aircraft battalions. If he wanted to avoid useless loss of life, Luettwitz stated, McAuliffe’s only alternative was an honorable surrender. McAuliffe made the classic monosyllabic retort, “Nuts!” This he soon put in writing:

“To the German Commander: Nuts! From the American Commander.”

When Hasso von Manteuffel was informed of this unauthorized ultimatum, he was furious. According to postwar interviews, this was the almost unanimous reaction of all the German commanders when they heard about the incident. When the two staff officers returned with the short but sharp refusal, the commander of the 5th Panzer Army was even more outraged. Luettwitz’s bluff had been called. In fact, XXXXVII Panzer Corps could not even get its own artillery over the frozen roads to Bastogne, much less six heavy flak battalions, which it did not have.

Desperately, Manteuffel informed Army Group B headquarters of the situation at Bastogne and called for as much artillery as Model could spare. Failing that, he asked for Luftwaffe bombing attacks.

Model was unable to send the artillery; in fact, much of the divisional artillery of Luettwitz’s three divisions had failed to get up to the front after six days. The air force, however, managed to mount a series of ineffective strikes against the town over the next four days, but these were far from the overwhelming punishment Luettwitz had so unwisely promised.

The unfortunate corps commander was not allowed to forget his rash act for some time, either. Manteuffel, who had lost faith in him, spent as much time as he could breathing down Luettwitz’s neck, and when he was forced to absent himself to 5th Panzer Army Headquarters, he delegated Major General Carl Gustav Wagener, his chief of staff, to oversee the operations of his disgraced subordinate. Indeed, it is difficult to explain why Manteuffel left Luettwitz in command at all, unless it was because he considered the senior divisional commander, Lieutenant General Fritz Bayerlein, even less trustworthy.

Despite the urgent need for a rapid advance to the Meuse (as specified in Hitler’s original plan), the encircled garrison of Bastogne took on an almost exaggerated importance in the minds of the commanders in Army Group B after it had been bypassed. Though von Lauchert’s division was making fairly steady progress in the right direction, Manteuffel ordered it to divert one of its two grenadier regiments, plus artillery support, for employment against the pocket. By Christmas Eve, the crack Fuehrer Begleit Brigade—that legion of heroes specially chosen for their bravery to guard the Fuehrer—was committed to the attack, following in succession (as December turned into January) by the 9th Panzer Division, the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division, and part of the 116th Panzer Division.

All their efforts produced nothing. Not only was the inimitable General Patton able to break the siege on December 26 and open a supply route to McAuliffe’s courageous defenders, but the westward drive of the 2nd Panzer Division came to a halt in the vicinity of Celles, about four miles from the Meuse, because it had run out of fuel. Then, on December 25 and 26, it fell victim to a rapidly developing Allied counterattack, spearheaded by the strong and relatively fresh U.S. 2nd Armored Division. The weather had now cleared and Allied Jabos were once again everywhere, pinpointing German positions, paving the way for the attacks of the ground forces, and blasting every German vehicle that moved.

In the ensuing carnage, the 304th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, the II Battalion of the 3rd Panzer Regiment, and two-thirds of the 273rd Panzer Anti-Aircraft Battalion were wiped out. About 2,500 German soldiers were killed or wounded and 1,200 captured. Some 450 trucks and 81 artillery pieces were also lost. Only about 600 men, led by the indomitable Major von Cochenhausen, managed to break out of the pocket. They eventually succeeded in reaching German lines—on foot. No vehicles or tanks escaped the American encirclement.

At the same time the 304th Panzer Grenadier Regiment was being annihilated, the 2nd Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion was attacked by the U.S. 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion and the British 29th Armoured Brigade at Foy-Notre Dame, less than two miles to the northeast. It also was destroyed.