Foreword
1. Today the figure is 15 per cent. See Ancestry 2000, Census 2000 Brief (June 2004), at: http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/c2kbr-35.pdf
2. Military Vehicle Conservation Group Liberty Highway Tour of the Ardennes, 13–27 August 1978, reported in many Belgian and Luxembourg (Le Soir, L’Avenir du Luxembourg, Le Jour, Tageblatt für Lëtzebuerg, Le Courier, La Meuse) newspapers at the time.
Introduction
1. In 1944 it numbered about 800. The wider Hotton municipality, including outlying hamlets and villages, today totals 5,400.
2. Ken Hechler, Holding the Line: The 51st Combat Engineer Battalion and the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944–January 1945 (Studies in Military Engineering, Number 4, Office of History, US Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 1988), p. 38.
3. These US uniforms were more probably worn against the cold, than to deceive, as German winter clothing was in short supply and generally inferior. Interview at http://home.earthlink.net/~crcorbin/LeRoy2.html
4. Hechler, Holding the Line, op. cit., p. 41.
5. The commander of 116th Panzer, Siegfried von Waldenburg, later regarded the reverse suffered in and around Hotton as the turning point for his division during the battle. He observed after the war, ‘Our own casualties for the battle of Hotton were heavy; several of our tanks were lost through enemy artillery, others were damaged. Gradually the troops came to realise that what was to have been the deciding blow must have failed, or that victory could not be won; with that, morale and then efficiency began to suffer.’ For a fuller account of the battle, see: http://www.batarden.be/site/en/histoire-de-la-roche-dans-la-bataille-des-ardennes.html
6. T. Rees Shapiro, ‘Melvin E. Biddle, Honored for Heroism in Battle of the Bulge, dies at 87’, article in Washington Post, Tuesday, 21 December 2010.
7. http://cualumni.clemson.edu/page.aspx?pid=1737. For a fuller account of this engagement, see Lt-Col. Alfred S. Roxburgh, CO 289th Infantry Regt, 75th Infantry Division, ‘Brief Paper Examining the Facts and Drawing a Conclusion as to Who was in Command of the Augmented Attack and Defense on the Hill, La Roumière, 24, 25 and 26 Dec 44 and Why a 23:30 24 Dec 44 Night Attack was Critical’, Command Paper at: http://75thdivisiondad.com/75th_division_command_paper.htm
8. Generalmajor Rudolf Bader (PW 352173), 560th Volksgrenadier Division: Ardennes Campaign, 16 December 1944–25 January 1945, MS #B-024, 30 May 1946, NARA. Klippel lies at Block 15, grave 245 of the Recogne Cemetery, Bastogne.
9. The square names him as lieutenant, whereas Zulli was a captain, and has him dying on 21 December, whereas official US records suggest he died on 22 December.
10. Peter Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead. Civilians in the Battle of the Bulge (University Press of Kentucky, 2005), pp. 213–23; Robert K. McDonald, The Hotton Report (Finbar Press, 2006).
11. Major Loring went on to serve in the Korean War with the 8th Fighter Bomber Group. He was killed while leading a flight of four F-80 Shooting Star jets in a close-support mission on 22 November 1952. After being hit repeatedly by ground fire, he deliberately crashed his plane into the enemy missile sites, destroying all of them, for which he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
12. Interviews by Charles R. Corbin Jr with 3rd Armored Division combat veterans: Jack B. Warden, at http://home.earthlink.net/~crcorbin/Hotton.html
13. Major Peter Henry Lawless, MC, War Correspondent, Daily Telegraph, killed 9 March 1945, aged fifty-three (Plot VII, Row A, Grave 8). My thanks to Guy Leaning and his ‘British Overseas Chums – the BOCs’, with whom I last visited the cemetery.
14. Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963, Vol. VII, 1943–1949 (Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), pp. 7095–8.
15. This superseded the much-quoted US War Department General Order No. 114 of 7 December 1945. See Department of the Army, General Order No. 63, Units Entitled to Battle Credits: Ardennes–Alsace (HQ Department of the Army, 20 September 1948); Department of the Army Pamphlet 672–1, Unit Citation and Campaign Participation Credit Register (HQ, Department of the Army, July 1961).
1. In the Eagle’s Nest
1. Helmut Heiber (ed.), Hitlers Lagebesprechungen (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1962), p. 721, and Felix Gilbert, Hitler Directs His War (Oxford University Press, 1951).
2. 427 Squadron, based at RAF Leeming, operating Halifaxes, 11 December 1944, TNA Kew.
3. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (Macmillan, 1970), p. 440.
4. The fundamentals of Hitler’s speech to his commanders is taken from General Hasso von Manteuffel’s chapter ‘The Battle of the Ardennes 1944–5’, in H.A. Jacobsen and J. Rohwer, Decisive Battle of World War II: The German View (André Deutsch, 1965), pp. 401–2.
5. Percy Schramm, Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader (Allen Lane, 1972), p. 108.
6. Peter H. Merkl, The Making of a Stormtrooper (Princeton University Press, 1980).
7. This was a conscious move by the Reichswehr in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1918–20 throughout Germany to make sure that middle- and lower-class revolutionaries did not enter the ranks of the German officer class, particularly the infantry and cavalry. Hence the disproportionate number of officers bearing the titles of ‘von’, ‘Ritter’(knight), ‘Freiherr’ (baron), and ‘Graf’ (count). Logically, aristocrats tended to be better-educated and thus proficient in the many examinations needed for promotion and entry into the General Staff. Nevertheless there were fewer nobles than in the pre-1918 Kaiser’s army. Men from humbler backgrounds gravitated towards Nazi organisations where background was not a barrier to advancement, though there were many nobles in both the Luftwaffe and SS.
8. Heinz Linge, With Hitler to the End (Frontline, 2009), p. 164.
9. The idea, apparently, was Göring’s. On 2 August 1944 in East Prussia, he proposed that as ‘an outward token of gratitude for Hitler’s miraculous escape on 20 July the entire Wehrmacht (army, navy and air force) should adopt the Hitler salute forthwith’. It was signed into law the same day. Göring had learned the key link man in the conspiracy, shuttling between the main players, was Luftwaffe Lieutenant-Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, a cousin to Stauffenberg. Perhaps Göring’s offer to change the salute was to deflect any stain from his service. David Irving, Hitler’s War (Hodder & Stoughton, 1977), p. 677.
10. This was altered by statute on 24 September 1944, when Wehrmacht members were allowed to join the Nazi Party.
11. Martin Blumenson, United States Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations, Breakout and Pursuit (Center of Military History, US Army, 1961), p. 213.
12. Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., p. 684.
13. Führer Directive No. 51, issued on 3 November 1943 in East Prussia, copy at: http://www.alternatewars.com/WW2/WW2_Documents/Fuhrer_Directives/FD_ 51.htm
14. Percy Schramm (ed.), Kriegstagebuch Des Oberkommando Der Wehrmacht 1944–45, Band IV/7: 1.Januar 1944–22.Mai 1945 (Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1982), p. 463.
2. The Machinery of Command
1. A 60,000-acre site, the Maybach bunker complexes were constructed in 1934–5, with subterranean communication links to the military commands in central Berlin. Fast-moving Soviet forces occupied the virtually intact Zossen bunker facilities on 20 April 1945. When a telephone suddenly rang, one of the Russian soldiers answered it. The caller was a senior German officer asking what was happening. ‘Ivan is here,’ the soldier replied in Russian. The two Maybach bunkers were destroyed in 1946, but the communications centre, code-named Zeppelin, remains, being used by the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. It was manned for more than three decades, abandoned only when Russian troops pulled out in 1994, and is now open to the public as a museum.
2. The best modern account is Oberst Karl-Heinz Frieser, The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West (Naval Institute Press, 2005). Consequently historians now view blitzkrieg as the consequence of victory in May 1940, rather than its cause.
3. The controversial David Irving has written that ‘Percy Schramm was himself a mediocre historian, and the published volume of the Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht for 1942–3, written by his colleague Helmuth Greiner, is largely faked. I obtained Greiner’s real diary and handwritten notes and private letters from his widow and you can see from them the post-war fakery that went into the published edition.’ Irving’s admonition is an undeserved insult to the highly distinguished Schramm. While not disputing that the OKW Kriegstagebuch, from which I quote throughout this book, was pieced together after the war, and occasionally embellished, there is no indication it was a fake. Rather, because the original was burned in 1945, it is a reconstruction from the surviving fragments and the memories of Schramm and Greiner, and stands as a perfectly legitimate historical document. As an Official Historian of UK and NATO military operations in Bosnia and Iraq, I have experienced similar moments where speeches, conversations and documents have had to be reconstructed in the absence of the originals, lost or destroyed. Irving’s unfair attack on Schramm is at: http://www.fpp.co.uk/Letters/Hitler/McMahon_030209.html
4. See David Stone, First Reich. Inside the German Army During the War with France 1870–71 (Brassey’s, 2002) and Terence Zuber, The Battle of the Frontiers. Ardennes 1914 (The History Press, 2007).
5. The Germans employed 75 Pz IV, 70 Pz V and 32 StuG for the attack towards Avranches. Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., pp. 684–5.
6. See Mark J. Reardon, Victory at Mortain: Stopping Hitler’s Panzer Counteroffensive (University Press of Kansas, 2002) and Robert Weiss, Fire Mission!: The Siege at Mortain, Normandy, August 1944 (Burd Street Press, 2002).
7. Linge, With Hitler to the End, op. cit., p. 164.
8. Joachim Ludewig, Ruckzüg: The German Retreat from France, 1944 (MGFA/University Press of Kentucky, 2012), p. 283.
9. B. H. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill (Cassell, 1948), p. 445.
10. Schramm, Kriegstagebuch, p. 359.
11. John D. Heyl, ‘The Construction of the Westwall, 1938: An Exemplar for National Socialist Policymaking’, article in Central European History, Vol. 14/1 (March 1981), pp. 63–78.
12. John S. D. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969), p. 112; Irving, Hitler’s War, pp. 689–90.
13. Joseph F. McCloskey, ‘British Operational Research in World War II’, article in Operations Research, Vol. 35/3, pp. 453–70.
14. Becker memoir courtesy of Der Erste Zug website, at: http://dererstezug.com/VetBecker.htm
15. Blumenson, United States Army in World War II, op. cit., p. 208.
16. Ian Gooderson, ‘Allied Fighter-Bombers Versus German Armour in North West Europe 1944–1945: Myths and Realities’, article in Journal of Strategic Studies, 14/2 (June 1991), p. 221.
17. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., pp. 405–6; Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., pp. 700 & 751; Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge (US Army Center of Military History, 1965; new edn 1993), p. 5.
18. H. R. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s War Directives (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1964), pp. 262–78.
19. Percy Schramm, Ardennes Offensive, MS-A-862, p. 119.
20. General der Infanterie Hans Krebs (1898–1945) served in the 78th Infantry Regiment from September 1914 to July 1919, and held staff positions from 1929. Krebs, who spoke fluent Russian, became an assistant to the military attaché in Moscow, 1933–4. His subsequent career was that of chief of staff of various formations, rising to Generalmajor when Chief of Staff of Model’s Ninth Army in February 1942. In March 1943, he was made Chief of Staff of Army Group Centre and promoted to Generalleutnant, for which he received a Knight’s Cross, and followed his old boss to Army Group ‘B’ from September 1944 until February 1945 when he was appointed Deputy Chief of the Army General Staff. In succession to Heinz Guderian, on 1 April 1945, Krebs was appointed last Chief of the Army General Staff (OKH) and remained in the Führerbunker below the Reich Chancellery during Hitler’s final moments. With the Russians yards away, he and General Wilhelm Burgdorf committed suicide in the early morning hours of 2 May 1945.
21. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 395.
22. John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Doubleday, 1976), pp. 1124–5 and William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Simon & Schuster, 1960), pp. 1086–7.
23. OKW War Diary, Operations Order No. 795, 3 September 1944.
3. I Have Made a Momentous Decision!
1. Milton Shulman, Defeat in the West, (Secker & Warburg, 1947), p. 228.
2. Schramm, Kriegstagebuch Des OKW, 6 September 1944, op. cit., p. 431.
3. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., pp. 112–13.
4. Schramm, Kriegstagebuch, op. cit., p. 380.
5. OKW War Diary, 6 September; OB West War Diary 7 September 1944.
6. War Diary LXXX Army Corps, 8–10 September 1944.
7. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 268.
8. Ibid., p. 228.
9. The earlier V-1 (doodlebug) flying bomb attack on Britain started during the night of 13–14 June 1944; a total of 10,500 missiles would be launched; 3,957 were destroyed by anti-aircraft defences and fighters, but 3,531 reached England and 2,353 fell on London. The death toll from this last blitz was 6,184 killed and 17,981 seriously injured. Of the 1,115 V-2 rockets launched against England, 517 fell on London, killing 2,754 people and injuring 6,523. The last V-1 was destroyed over Sittingbourne in Kent on 27 March 1945. Two days later the last V-2 fell on Orpington in Kent.
10. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., pp. 409–10.
11. Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., p. 729.
12. Douglas E. Nash, Victory Was Beyond Their Grasp. With the 272nd Volksgrenadier Division from the Hürtgen Forest to the Heart of the Reich (Aberjona Press, 2008), p. 12.
13. Forrest C. Pogue, Pogue’s War: Diaries of a WWII Combat Historian (University Press of Kentucky, 2001), pp. 263–4. Entry for Monday, 27 November (D+174).
14. Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., p. 704.
15. Technically, it was not known as the Sixth SS Panzer Army until 2 April 1945. It is frequently referred to as the Sixth SS Army by historians of the Bulge, but did not receive the SS designation until after the Ardennes offensive.
16. Schramm, Kriegstagebuch Des OKW, 14 September 1944, op. cit., p. 372.
17. Kriegstagebuch Des 6. Panzer Armee, MSS A-924, ETHINT-15. NARA.
18. Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., p. 705.
19. Personal Diary of General Kreipe during the period 22 July–2 November 1944 (MS # P-069, D739.F6713, MHI Library, Carlisle, Pennsylvania), p. 24.
20. Toland, Adolf Hitler, pp. 1128–9; Heinz Günther Guderian, From Normandy to the Ruhr: With the 116th Panzer Division in World War II (The Aberjona Press, 2001), p. 283; Cole, The Ardennes, p. 17; Charles B. MacDonald, The Battle of the Bulge (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984), pp. 10–11.
21. In series 2, Episode 12 (Killing Hitler) of the Unsolved History TV documentary series, first aired in February 2004, Hitler’s conference room and the heavy map table it contained were rebuilt several times to the exact same dimensions. A briefcase left under the table, which held a like amount of explosive of the same destructive power, was similarly detonated and the results recorded, measured and analysed. They prove, to my satisfaction, that Hitler’s life was saved on 20 July 1944 only by an adjutant casually moving the briefcase to the far side of a thick table leg. Two identical rooms and tables were built and destroyed in these experiments, with the briefcase on different sides of the table leg, near to a mannequin of Hitler and away from him. The briefcase bomb nearest Hitler would undoubtedly have killed him. The one furthest from him had the destructive force of the blast contained and deflected by the table leg, mimicking what happened on the day. Stauffenberg’s bomb, unluckily, was an incredibly near-miss.
22. Courtesy of Professor Theodore Hesburgh, President of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. The communication of a vision is a vital aspect of leadership. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher and Barack Obama are all examples of political leaders with a vision. Their vision does not necessarily have to be popular, but a vision brings a far-sighted strategic sense of direction and purpose, which is often preferable to the short-term, tactical leader who is reactive.
23. Unlike many of the early Nazis who were descended from Bavarian, southern German or Austrian Catholic families, the Bormann brothers were born into a devout Lutheran family. Albert Bormann (1902–89) was to become an arch-rival of his more famous elder brother, Martin (1900–1945). Both were early Party members, Martin being a great friend of Rudolf Hess and joining the Party in 1927, Albert shortly after. By October 1931, Albert had joined the Kanzlei des Führers (Hitler’s Chancellery, not a state institution, but Hitler’s personal office), responsible for the Nazi Party administration. In 1938, Albert became Chief of the Persönliche Angelegenheiten des Führers (Personal Affairs of the Führer) office, not under the jurisdiction of his brother, and handled much of Hitler’s routine correspondence. Martin meanwhile became personal secretary to Hess, and when in May 1941 Hess fled to Britain, Martin Bormann immediately succeeded him as head of the Party Chancellery, and built his power as a master of political intrigue. Both brothers worked in the Führerhauptquartier, but remained distant. Traudl Junge, Hitler’s last secretary, worked for Albert before moving on to Hitler. Albert is much less well known than his sibling because he consciously avoided the limelight, and seems to have been genuinely liked by most of Hitler’s inner circle. He remained in the Führerbunker in Berlin until ordered to fly out on 20 April 1945, hence he managed to survive, unlike Martin (despite numerous claims to the contrary), whose remains were found by construction workers in West Berlin in December 1972. Martin Bormann had been tried in absentia at Nuremberg in October 1946 and sentenced to death for his participation in crimes against humanity. This put an end to much speculation that Martin Bormann had somehow escaped in the confusion of the Russian capture of Berlin and reached South America. Albert Bormann, by contrast, was merely sentenced by a Munich de-nazification court to six months of hard labour and released in October 1949. Refusing to write his memoirs, Albert Bormann died in 1989.
24. Transcript of 1973 Thames Television interview with Albert Speer, Reel 4, Imperial War Museum sound archive.
25. Edwin P. Hoyt, Goering’s War (Robert Hale, 1990), p. 186.
26. Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Hermann Göring (William Heinemann, 1962), p. 223.
4. Adolf Hitler
1. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Hutchinson, 1969, English edition), p. 183.
2. For sources, see David Lewis, The Man Who Invented Hitler (Headline, 2003) and John F. Williams, Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914–1918 (Frank Cass, 2005).
3. Williams, Corporal Hitler and the Great War, op. cit., p. 191.
4. Hugo Gutmann (1880–1962) was a Nuremberger by birth and member of the German Jewish population which numbered about 500,000 in 1914, of whom 100,000 served in the Kaiser’s forces during the First World War and 12,000 lost their lives. (Anne Frank’s father and uncle were also officers in the WWI German army.) During the 1920s, Gutmann owned and ran an office furniture shop in Nuremberg, and during the Third Reich era was protected from arrest and continued to receive a war pension, as a result of the influence of both SS personnel who knew his history, anti-Nazi elements in the German Police, and probably Hitler himself. In 1939, Gutmann and his family escaped to Belgium, migrating to the USA the following year; he settled in the city of St Louis, Missouri, where he changed his name to Henry G. Grant and went back into the furniture trade, dying in 1962.
5. Williams, Corporal Hitler and the Great War, op. cit., p. 191; Werner Maser, Hitler, (Allen Lane, 1973) op. cit., pp. 92–3.
6. Joachim C. Fest, Hitler (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974), p. 118 and note 10, p. 1144.
7. Hitler, Mein Kampf, op. cit., pp. 184–5.
8. Fest, Hitler, op. cit., p. 118.
9. Lewis, The Man Who Invented Hitler, pp. 21 and 215–16; Toland, Adolf Hitler, op. cit., pp. xvi–xviii.
10. My italics. Ibid, pp. 215–17. The exchange is from a thinly veiled story called Der Augenzeuge (The Eyewitness), written in 1938 by the Czech novelist Ernst Weiss, to whom Forster passed the medical notes of Hitler’s remarkable case in the 1930s. In Weiss’s novel, the patient, known simply as A.H., was ‘a corporal of the Bavarian regiment, an orderly in the regimental staff’, who had been ‘gassed by a grenade’ fired by the English on his last patrol, and suffered symptoms so that his ‘eyes had burned like glowing coals’ and, ‘being emotionally disturbed’, had been sent to a special clinic, known simply as ‘P’. David Lewis’s book The Man Who Invented Hitler is a compelling thesis that this is the true story of what happened to Adolf Hitler in October–November 1918, and to my mind it rings true. The details surrounding the case were only revealed in 1943 to US agents by one of Edmund Forster’s fellow doctors, and the novel published without acclaim or notice in 1963, long after the deaths of Forster and Weiss. Forster’s life was in danger after revealing this knowledge, and he committed suicide as the Germans marched into Paris (where he was living in exile) in June 1940.
11. Hitler, Mein Kampf, op. cit., pp. 185–8.
12. See also Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (Allen Lane, 1998), pp. 96–105.
13. Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Cassell, 1948), p. 41.
14. Churchill was fascinated by willpower and wrote about T. E. Lawrence (‘of Arabia’) in similar terms in his mini-biography of the latter in Great Contemporaries (Thornton Butterworth, 1937, revised 1939). Full of unrepentant admiration for this enigmatic figure, Churchill wrote ‘Solitary, austere, inexorable, he moved upon a plane apart from and above our common lot … he reigned over those with whom he came in contact. They felt themselves in the presence of an extraordinary being. They felt that his latent reserves of force and willpower were beyond measurement.’ He might have been a German writing about Hitler in the 1930s. Coming from Churchill, this underlines his understanding of the importance of willpower, whose admiration and exercise of it were very much hallmarks of his own long and distinguished life. See also Paul A. Alkon, Winston Churchill’s Imagination (Bucknell University Press, 2006), Chapter One, pp. 1–40.
15. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Chapter One, second and thirteenth paragraphs.
16. Alan Bullock, Hitler. A Study in Tyranny (Odhams, 1952), p. 56.
17. Major-General F.W. von Mellenthin, Panzer Battles. A Study of the Employment of Armour in the Second World War (Cassell, 1955), p. 424.
18. Schramm, Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader, op. cit., p. 110.
19. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., p. 367.
20. Toland, Adolf Hitler, op. cit., p. 1124.
21. Transcript of 1973 Thames Television interview with General Walter Warlimont, Reel 6 [13.00], Imperial War Museum sound archive.
22. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., p. 104.
23. Heinz Linge, ‘I was Hitler’s Valet: Memoirs of the Manservant Whose Final Act of Devotion was to Burn his Master’s Body’, article in Daily Mail, 6 August 2009; at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204388
24. Letter home to Frau Bormann, 9 September 1944. Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Heinrich Himmler (William Heinemann, 1965), p. 216.
25. I interviewed Misch in 1993 at his home in Rudow, south Berlin. He was an important eyewitness of Hitler’s last days in the Berlin Führerbunker during April 1945. Born in 1917, he spent nine years in Soviet captivity until 1953 and died in September 2013, while this book was being written.
26. Maser, Hitler, op. cit., pp. 308–10.
27. Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 1120.
28. Toland, Adolf Hitler, pp. 1114–18; Linge, ‘I was Hitler’s Valet’, op. cit.
29. Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., p. 750.
30. Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler (Secker & Warburg, 1973), pp. 28–39.
31. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., p. 411.
32. See David Irving’s The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983), for Dr Morell’s account of Hitler’s medical conditions.
33. ‘Hair sprouted from his ears and cuffs. On his thick fingers he wore exotic rings obtained during overseas voyages, on which he had also picked up some foreign eating habits. For example, he would not peel an orange but bit into it until the juice squirted out,’ said Christa Schroeder in Er War Mein Chef (1985); translated as He Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler’s Secretary(Frontline, 2009).
34. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., p. 105.
35. Ibid.
36. Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., p. 710.
37. Fest, Hitler, op. cit., pp. 1067–71.
38. Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 1131.
39. Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., pp. 733–6.
40. Allan Hall, ‘As He Took Over Europe and Slaughtered Millions, There was Only One Thing Hitler Feared … Going to the Dentist’, article in Daily Mail, 11 December 2009; at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234784
41. Hall, ‘As He Took Over Europe’, op. cit.; Linge, ‘I was Hitler’s Valet’, op. cit.
42. Transcript of 1973 Thames Television interview with General Walter Warlimont (1894–1976), Reel 7, Imperial War Museum sound archive.
43. See Marcia Lynn Whicker, Toxic leaders: When Organizations Go Bad (Quorum Books, 1996) and Jean Lipman-Blumen, The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians – and How We Can Survive Them (Oxford University Press, 2004).
44. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., pp. 407–8.
45. See the helpful site on these matters, at: http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/related-conditions/pda-pathological-demand-avoidance-syndrome.aspx
46. Schramm, Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader, op. cit., p. 118.
47. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., p. 423.
48. Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Doctor Goebbels (William Heinemann, 1960), p. 223.
49. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (Michael Joseph, 1952), p. 378.
5. Unconditional Surrender
1. Personal Diary of General Kreipe during the period 22 July–2 November 1944 (MS # P-069, D739.F6713, MHI Library, Carlisle, Pennsylvania), p. 24.
2. Ibid., pp. 20–21.
3. Ibid.
4. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., pp. 407–8.
5. This was on 26 July 1944, when Leutnant Alfred Schreiber damaged a Photo Reconnaissance Mosquito of No. 540 Squadron RAF PR Squadron, which subsequently crashed.
6. http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=119848
7. Fritz Hahn, Waffen und Geheimwaffen des Deutschen Heeres: 1933–1945 (Bernard & Graefe, 1986); Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans Umbreit, Das deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Vol. 5/2: Organisation und Mobilisierung des deutschen Machtbereichs 1942–45 (Militarygeschichtlichen Forschungsamt/ Deutsche Verlags, 2003); aircraft figures from: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/german-c-production-26147.html. Flak barrel totals calculated from http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/GermWeapProd.html
8. Speer, Inside the Third Reich. While Speer’s memoirs provide fascinating insights into the workings of the Third Reich, they are also problematic in relation to the Holocaust, about which he claimed he knew very little. In 1995, Gitta Sereny’s book Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (Macmillan) challenged Speer’s version of events, claiming that his omissions and denials of knowledge were based on efforts to avoid execution at Nuremberg and that some of his later writings actually contradicted his court testimony. Sereny’s understanding of Speer as a crafty and intelligent witness who spent his remaining years trying to justify his actions both to himself and the public ring true. Thus his memoirs need to be read with a cautionary warning and may be only partly reliable.
9. H. R. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953), p. 279.
10. Audie Murphy, To Hell and Back (Transworld, 1949), p. 197.
11. These are hotly debated figures. I have used data from an objective online debate, here: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=150084, and Lutz Budraß, Jonas Scherner and Jochen Streb, ‘Demystifying the German “Armament Miracle” During World War II: New Insights from the Annual Audits of German Aircraft Producers’ (Discussion Paper No. 905, Economic Growth Center, Yale University, January 2005).
12. Steven Zaloga, Panther vs. Sherman: Battle of the Bulge 1944 (Osprey, 2008), pp. 12–14, and the very comprehensive US Air Force Strategic Bombing Survey German Tank Production Report at http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/tankrep.html. These overall figures hide the fact that Panzer IV production declined from 334 in June 1944 to only 207 in December. Panther tank production never reached its expected peak of 600 units per month and declined from a high of 400 in July to 308 in December.
13. Charles B. MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign. United States Army in World War II. European Theater of Operations (Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Washington, DC 1963), p. 71.
14. Noel Annan, Changing Enemies (HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 124–5.
15. Heinz Günther Guderian (1914–2004) was Inspector of Panzer Troops in the Bundeswehr, the position his father had held in the Third Reich. He retained his position as Operations Officer of 116th Panzer Division from May 1942 until the end of the War. Retiring in 1974 – I met him when serving in Germany in 1980 – he wrote the divisional history of his unit, From Normandy to the Ruhr: With the 116th Panzer Division in WWII.
16. ‘Balck has strong claims to be regarded as our finest field commander,’ wrote Major-General Friedrich-Wilhelm von Mellenthin. General Hermann Balck (1897–1982) came from a military family. His great-grandfather served in the King’s German Legion under the Duke of Wellington; his grandfather was an officer in the British Army’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. His father, William Balck, was a Generalleutnant in the German army and a Knight of the Order Pour le Mérite; Hermann Balck was nominated for the Pour le Mérite in October 1918, but the war ended before his citation could be processed. In the Second World War, he received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, ending in command of the Sixth Army. Sadly, his autobiography, Ordnung im Chaos: Erinnerungen, 1893–1948, has yet to appear in English. See David T. Zabecki, ‘The Greatest German General No One Ever Heard Of’, article in World War II magazine (April/May 2008).
17. Georg Grossjohan, Five Years, Four Fronts (Aegis, 1999), pp. 202–203.
18. Schramm, OKW War Diary; Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 276; Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., p. 706.
19. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 278.
20. Author’s lectures on Psyops, delivered to the NATO School, Oberammergau, Germany.
21. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 280.
22. The bunker in Aachen from where Wilck commanded and which witnessed his surrender has been preserved, but is currently under threat of demolition for apartments. The anti-Wilck leaflet is at http://www.bunkertours.be/nein_zum_abriss-1.html
23. Winston Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (Cassell, 1951), p. 615. Churchill’s memoirs state that in his 20 January 1943 cable to the War Cabinet in London the matter was discussed: ‘We propose to draw up a statement of the work of the conference for communication to the Press at the proper time. I should be glad to know what the War Cabinet would think of our including in this statement a declaration of the firm intention of the United States and the British Empire to continue the war relentlessly until we have brought about the “unconditional surrender” of Germany and Japan. The omission of Italy would be to encourage a break-up there. The President liked this idea, and it would stimulate our friends in every country.’ The War Cabinet responded the same day, stating that they did not think Italy should be excluded. Churchill seems to have believed that the matter would be further discussed but both he and Roosevelt became very occupied while dealing with General de Gaulle. His memoirs continued, ‘It seems probable that as I did not like applying unconditional surrender to Italy I did not raise the point again with the President, and we had certainly both agreed to the communiqué we had settled with our advisers. There is no mention in it of “unconditional surrender”. It was submitted to the War Cabinet, who approved it in this form’ (pp. 614–15). So the matter had been under discussion but it had not been part of the joint communique that the two leaders agreed in advance.
24. Agostino von Hassell and Sigrid MacRae, Alliance of Enemies: The Untold Story of the Secret American and German Collaboration to End World War II (St Martin’s Griffin, 2008).
25. Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (Collins, 1952), p. 570.
26. Time, 2 October 1944. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171, 933072,00.html
27. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., p. 433.
6. A Bridge Too Far
1. MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign, op. cit., p. 471.
2. Pogue, Pogue’s War, op. cit., pp. 271–2.
3. Charles Whiting, ’44: In Combat From Normandy to the Ardennes (Spellmount, 1984), pp. 168–72.
4. Günther Schmidt, ‘The 272 VGD In Action In The Eifel, 1944–45’, courtesy of Der Erste Zug website, at: http://www.dererstezug.com/272ndInAction/272ndInAction(1).htm
5. Generalmajors Rudolf Freiherr von Gersdorff and Siegfried von Waldenburg, 116 Panzer Division in the Hürtgen Forest, 2–14 Nov. 1944 (ETHINT 56), pp. 1–8.
6. Reuters, 9 September 1944.
7. The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: The War Years, edited by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr (Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), Vol. IV, pp. 2124.
8. It is an interesting reflection on democracy that during the Second World War, Britain suspended political elections ‘for the duration’, while the USA continued with them. Roosevelt’s policy here was right, and in the 7 November elections he won easily over the Republican contender, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, taking thirty-six states to Dewey’s twelve.
9. SHAEF – Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
10. Carlo D’Este, Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily July–August 1943 (Collins, 1988), p. 106.
11. US 3rd Armored Division report 18 Sept. 44, MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign, op. cit., p. 68.
12. US Army Battle Casualties and Non Battle Deaths in World War II, Final Report, 7 December 1941–31 December 1946 (Prepared by Statistical and Accounting Branch, Office of the Adjutant General, Washington DC, 1947) p. 32. See http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/Casualties/Casualties-1.html#theater
13. Stephen A. Hart, Colossal Cracks: Montgomery’s 21st Army Group in Northwest Europe, 1944–45 (Stackpole, 2007), p. 47.
14. Eisenhower’s personnel numbers excluded Devers’ Army Group until December 1944, which came under the Mediterranean Theatre. See Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command, The US Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations (Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Washington, DC, 1954) pp. 542–4. See http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Supreme/USA-E-Supreme-E.html
15. Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume II: September 1944–May 1945 (US Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations series, US Army Center of Military History, 1995), p. 6.
16. Blumenson, United States Army in World War II, op. cit., pp. 681 and 694; MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign, op. cit., p. 10.
17. US Army Transportation Museum website, at http://www.transchool.lee.army.mil/museum/transportation%20museum/redballintro.htm
18. Bart H. Vanderveen, The Observer’s Fighting Vehicles Directory (Frederick Warne, 1972), p. 57; War Machine magazine, No. 125, pp. 2495–9; Donald E. Meyer (comp.), The First Century of GMC Truck History, at: http://www.gmheritage center.com/docs/gm-heritage-archive/historical-brochures/GMC/100_YR_GMC_ HISTORY_MAR09.pdf
19. John A. Adams, The Battle for Western Europe, Fall 1944: An Operational Assessment (Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 23–7.
20. The Group were originally the 801st, renumbered to 492nd on 13 August 1944. The nickname came from the agent-dropping mission title, Operation Carpetbagger. The Bomb group actually moved 822,791 gallons of gasoline to Patton’s Third Army.
21. Alfred M. Beck, Technical Services, the Corps of Engineers, the War Against Germany, The US Army in World War II (US Army Center of Military History, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1985), pp. 257–60.
22. Rudi Williams, ‘African Americans Gain Fame as World War II Red Ball Express Drivers’, US Department of Defense News Story (American Forces Press Service, Washington, DC, 15 February 2002) and Dr Steven E. Anders, ‘POL on the Red Ball Express’, article in Quartermaster Professional Bulletin (Spring 1989). John R. Houston’s account courtesy of the US Army Transportation Museum, http://www.transchool.lee.army.mil/museum/transportation%20museum/personal stories.htm. Houston’s daughter became the famous singer Whitney Houston.
23. Eisenhower Papers, Vol. IV, pp. 2143.
24. Charles B. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, (William Morrow & Co., 1985), p. 51.
25. Ibid., p. 2120.
26. Personal Diary of General Kreipe, 16 September 1944, op. cit., p. 24.
27. Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Normandy to the Baltic (BAOR, 1946), p. 198.
28. OB West Operations Report, 24 September 1944, No. 8547.
7. A Port Too Far
1. Peter H. Merkl, Political Violence under the Swastika (Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 539.
2. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., p. 415.
3. John Lukacs, The Hitler of History (Random House, 1997), p. 166.
4. Toland, Adolf Hitler, op. cit., p. 829.
5. See my earlier book, Monty and Rommel: Parallel Lives (2011). Also Toland, Adolf Hitler, op. cit., p. 1136; Russell H. S. Stolfi, A Bias For Action: The German 7th Panzer Division in France & Russia 1940–1941 (Perspectives on Warfighting No. 1, Marine Corps University, 1991); and Blitzkrieg: The German Army at War, 7th Panzer Division ‘The Ghost Division’ (Panzertruppen Publications, 2013), pp. 103–12.
6. William B. Breuer, Bloody Clash at Sadzot (Zeus, 1981), p. 40.
7. David Jordan, Battle of the Bulge. The First 24 hours (Greenhill, 2003), p. 102.
8. Charles Foley, Commando Extraordinary: Otto Skorzeny (Longmans, Green & Co., 1954), p. 131.
9. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., pp. 122–6, 138–9 and 164–5; Jean-Paul Pallud, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now (After the Battle, 1984), pp. 106–128.
10. Otto Skorzeny, Skorzeny’s Special Missions: The Memoirs of the Most Dangerous Man in Europe (Robert Hale, 1957), pp. 145–50; Foley, Commando Extraordinary, op. cit.; and Charles Whiting, Skorzeny: The Most Dangerous Man in Europe (Pen & Sword, 1998).
11. Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. 1: 1889–1936: Hubris, op. cit., p. 77.
12. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 277.
13. Charles B. MacDonald, The Last Offensive: United States Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations (Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Washington, DC, 1973), p. 22.
14. Transcript of 1973 Thames Television interview with General Siegfried Westphal, Reels 3 & 4, Imperial War Museum sound archive.
15. Guderian, From Normandy to the Ruhr, op. cit., p. 283.
16. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., pp. 289–90.
17. Shulman’s post-war, October 1945 interview with Rundstedt, widely cited, but originally in Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 290.
18. As Model and Krebs died separately in May 1945, descriptions of his relations with Rundstedt and of his view of Wacht am Rhein are taken from an interview with one of his staff officers. See Charles V. P. von Luttichau, Report on the Interview with Mr Thuisko von Metzch, 14–19 March 1952, on Operations of Army Group ‘B’ and Its Role in the German Ardennes Offensive, 1944 (Office of the Chief of Military History/ NARA RG 319, R-series, #10), pp. 25–6.
19. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 290.
20. General Siegfried Westphal, The German Army in the West (Cassell, 1951), pp. 179–80.
21. Rundstedt Testimony, Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Vol. XXXI (Nuremberg, 12 August 1946).
22. Letter, Jodl to Westphal, 1 November 1944, Kriegstagebuch Des Oberbefehlshaber West.
23. Operation Directive, 10 November 1944, ibid.
24. On 1 November 1944 Zangen’s Fifteenth Army was combined with General der Fallschirmtruppe Alfred Schlemm’s First Parachute Army to form Army Group ‘H’ (for Holland), under Generaloberst Kurt Student.
25. Hitler, Mein Kampf, op. cit., pp. 180–81.
26. Oberstleutnant Freiherr von der Heyte, Kampfgruppe von der Heyte (25 Oct.–22 Dec. 1944), 33pp. interview of 1948, Foreign Military Studies, B-823, NARA.
27. Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts (John Murray, 1977), p. 197.
28. Westphal, The German Army in the West, op. cit., p. 172.
29. Author’s interview with Hauptmann Otto Carius, Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Royal Military College of Science, UK, 2000.
30. Westphal, The German Army in the West, op. cit., p. 189.
31. Sometimes written as O-Tag, Null being German for zero.
32. Franz Kurowski, Elite Panzer Strike Force: Germany’s Panzer Lehr Division in World War II (Stackpole, 2011), p. 170.
8. Heroes of the Woods
1. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., footnote 1, p. 19.
2. Besides the scene of his 1940 breakthrough, Hitler had some personal experience of the area, for in May 1940, General (as he then was) von Rundstedt set up the headquarters of his Army Group ‘A’ in Bastogne, where the Führer visited him.
3. Ludewig, Rückzug. The German Retreat from France, 1944, op. cit., p. 206.
4. Steve R. Waddell, United States Army Logistics: The Normandy Campaign, 1944 (Praeger, 1994), p. 99.
5. Benjamin King and Timothy J. Kutta, Impact: The History of Germany’s V-weapons in World War II (Da Capo Press, 1998), alt. title: Hammer of the Reich,Chapter 10. ‘Antwerp and the German Attack on Allies Supply Lines 1944–1945’.
6. Ibid.
7. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, op. cit., p. 188.
8. BBC News broadcast, 11 December 1941.
9. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 279.
10. Ibid., p. 188.
11. Klaus P. Fischer, Hitler and America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
12. Another of Wedemeyer’s classmates at the Kriegsakademie was Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven, a fellow 20 July 1944 plotter with Stauffenberg.
13. John J. McLaughlin, General Albert C. Wedemeyer: America’s Unsung Strategist in World War II (Casemate, 2012); Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (Henry Holt, 1958).
14. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, op. cit., p. 181.
15. Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (Basic Books, 1981), pp. 43–68; Benjamin J. Patterson, Ethnic Groups USA (Xlibris, 2008), pp. 59–84.
16. General der Infanterie Friedrich Wiese, Nineteenth Army (1 Jul.–15 Sep. 1944), interview in 1949, WWII Foreign Military Studies, MS-B-787, p. 30; and Generalleutnant Walter Botsch, Operations in Lorraine, Nineteenth Army (16 Sep.–17 Nov. 1944), WWII Foreign Military Studies, interview in 1948, MS-B-515, p. 63, both NARA.
17. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, op. cit., p. 101.
18. Fest, Hitler, op. cit., p. 37.
19. http://www.wagneropera.net/Themes/Wagner-In-Movies-Stukas-1941.htm
20. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoU-iCT21fc
21. See M.H. Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford University Press, 1997); R.A. Etlin (ed.), Art, Culture and Media under the Third Reich (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
22. Matthew Boyden, Opera. The Rough Guide (Rough Guides, 1999), pp. 251–79.
23. Robert G. Lee and Sabine Wilke, ‘Forest as Volk: Ewiger Wald and the Religion of Nature in the Third Reich’, paper in Journal of Social and Ecological Boundaries (Spring 2005), pp. 21–46.
24. The significance of trees and forests to Nazi mythology was explained as early as 1929 by Walther Schoenichen, in Der Umgang mit Mutter Grün: Ein Sünden- und Sittenbuch für Jedermann (In the Company of Mother Earth: An Everyman’s Book of Vice and Virtue). Schoenichen was a German biologist and environmentalist, and an early member of the NSDAP. Göring appointed him in 1942 as Director of the Reich Forest Ministry.
25. Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph des Willens (1935), at 0:49:00.
26. Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. 1: 1889–1936: Hubris, op. cit., p. 239.
27. Bill Yenne, Hitler’s Master of the Dark Arts. Himmler’s Black Knights and the Occult Origins of the SS (Zenith Press, 2010).
28. In 1945, seized SS records were found to include lists of names with the initials NN (Nacht und Nebel).
29. Ian Fleming, the Second World War British intelligence officer who planned assassination attempts against the Führer, would locate all the opponents of his eponymous hero, James Bond, in secret lairs based on Hitler’s various headquarters.
30. See Tony Clunn, The Quest for the Lost Legions (Savas Beatie, 2005), and Adrian Murdoch, Rome’s Greatest Defeat. Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest (Sutton, 2006).
31. Fergus M. Bordewich, ‘The Ambush That Changed History’, article in The Smithsonian Magazine (September 2005).
32. The massive free-standing victory statue standing on Mamayev Kurgan hill overlooking Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) in southern Russia is remarkably similar, and this may contain a political message to the Hermannsdenkmal, and all it represents.
33. Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. I: 1889–1936: Hubris, op. cit., p. 77.
34. Völkischer Beobachter, 5 January 1933.
35. Murdoch, Rome’s Greatest Defeat, op. cit., p. 175.
36. Karl Richard Ganzer, Das deutsche Führergesicht; 200 Bildnisse deutscher Kämpfer und Wegsucher aus zwei Jahrtausenden (J. F. Lehmann, München, 1937). Ganzer was a Nazi hack who produced dozens of books in a similar vein.
37. Der Spiegel, 28 August 2009.
38. Murdoch, Rome’s Greatest Defeat, op. cit., p. 178; David B. Cuff, The Clades Variana and the Third Reich, academic paper, the University of Toronto, May 2010.
39. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, op. cit., p. 78.
40. Murdoch, Rome’s Greatest Defeat, op. cit., p. 436.
41. Fest, Hitler, op. cit., p. 988.
42. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, op. cit., p. 486–7. Hitler, of course, was incorrect in stating that Arminius commanded the Third Legion, when he was only a senior auxiliary, and the legions concerned were the 17th, 18th and 19th.
9. Who Knew What?
1. Omar N. Bradley and Clair Blair, A General’s Life: An Autobiography by General of the Army Omar N. Bradley (Simon & Schuster, 1983), p. 351.
2. Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (Henry Holt and Company, 2002); obituaries, Guardian, 22 February 2000, New York Times, 9 March 2000.
3. Ralph Bennett, Ultra in the West: The Normandy Campaign of 1944–45 (Hutchinson, 1979).
4. See Group Captain F.W. Winterbotham, The Ultra Secret (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974); The History of the Special Liaison Units under the Control of Special Liaison Unit 1 (SLU 1), 1 January 1940–31 December 1945, HW 49/1 UK National Archives, Kew.
5. Under SHAEF, Allied staff branches were organised as follows: G[eneral staff branch] 1 = Personnel matters; G-2 = Intelligence; G-3 = Planning and Operations; G-4 = Supply issues; G-5 = Civil Affairs; G-6 = Publicity and Psychological Warfare Division, which was later split into two, unnumbered staff divisions, Psychological Warfare and Public Relations. Each usually had a US head and British deputy or vice versa. The British system of General Staff appointments put operations, training and intelligence under the ‘G’[eneral Staff] branch, while personnel and supply were part of the ‘A’[djutant General’s] and ‘Q’[uartermaster General’s] staff. The German equivalents were I-a (chief of staff or chief G-3 operations); I-b (chief G-4 supply and movement); I-c (chief G-2 intelligence); I-d (chief G-3 training); II-a (G-1 personnel – officers); II-c (G-1 Personnel – other ranks).
6. Forrest C. Pogue, The Ardennes Campaign: The Impact of Intelligence (edited transcript of remarks to the NSA Communications Analysis Association, 16 December 1980), pp. 28–9. Available online at: http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/ardennes_campaign.pdf
7. Lieutenant-Colonels Charles R. Murnane and Samuel M. Orr.
8. Tom Bigland, Bigland’s War (Privately printed, 1990).
9. David W. Hogan, Jr, A Command Post at War. First Army Headquarters in Europe 1943–45 (US Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC, 2000), p. 291. Bradley remained hugely popular among his old headquarters staff at First Army, the veterans among them seeing ‘Twelfth Army Group staff as interlopers in assuming their role as the main American field headquarters on the Continent’, and some ‘did not hesitate to bypass their army group counterparts to deal direct with Bradley’.
10. Diane T. Putney, Ultra and the Army Air Forces in World War II. An Interview with Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court Lewis F. Powell, Jr (Office of Air Force History, US Air Force, Washington, DC, 1987), p. 22.
11. This was Lieutenant-Colonel James D. Fellers. See MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 61.
12. Memorandum For Colonel. Taylor, Office of the Military Attaché, US Embassy, London, from Lieutenant-Colonel Rosengarten, Subject: Report on ULTRA Intelligence at the First US Army, 21 May 1945; and Rosenthal, Subject: Notes on ULTRA Traffic, First US Army, 27 May 1945, both RG 457, SRH-023, NARA; Rosengarten, pp. 6–7.
13. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 55.
14. Patrick Delaforce, The Battle of the Bulge: Hitler’s Final Gamble (Longmans, 2006) pp. 82–4; Gerald Astor, Terrible Terry Allen: Combat General of World War II. The Life of an American Soldier (Presidio Press, 2003), pp. 83–4.
15. Pogue, The Ardennes Campaign, op. cit.
16. Hogan, A Command Post at War, op. cit., p. 291. While regarded as ‘a fine intelligence officer, a dedicated, careful craftsman in an army that valued his field all too lightly’, Dickson was his own worst enemy in picking fights with Sibert, Thorson and Kean.
17. Ibid., p. 288.
18. Ibid., pp. 288–9.
19. Major Daniel P. Bolger, ‘Zero Defects: Command Climate in First US Army, 1944–45’, article in Military Review (May 1991), pp. 61–73. Available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/090716_zero-defects-(May_1991_MR)-Bolger.pdf
20. Hogan, A Command Post at War, op. cit., p. 289.
21. Lieutenant-Colonel Melvin C. Helfers.
22. Major Kevin Dougherty, ‘Oscar Koch: An Unsung Hero Behind Patton’s Battles’, article in Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin (April–June 2002), p. 64.
23. Hogan, A Command Post at War, op. cit., p. 290.
24. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., pp. 52–3.
25. E.g., Forrest C. Pogue, The Ardennes Campaign, op. cit.
26. James L. Gilbert and John P. Finnegan (eds), US Army Signals Intelligence in World War II. A Documentary History (Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, DC, 1993), pp. 179–201.
27. Jay von Werlhof, ‘One Man’s Decision: Why SHAEF Failed to Halt the Battle of the Bulge’, article in The Bulge Bugle (August 2003), pp. 11–16.
28. ‘Eisenhower knew Battle of Bulge was coming – 1st Lt. Ray Walker of Punta Gorda gave him the word’, story in the Charlotte Sun newspaper, Port Charlotte, Florida, 16 December 2002; also http://donmooreswartales.com/tag/battle-of-the-bulge/
29. Ibid.
30. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 57.
31. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the US intelligence agency formed when Roosevelt ordered Colonel William J. Donovan to create an organisation based on the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Special Operations Executive (SOE); it became the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). OSS was established on 11 July 1941 with Donovan as the ‘Co-ordinator of Information’, and it was designed initially to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the US armed forces. Prior to this, America had no overseas intelligence service.
32. William J. Casey, The Secret War Against Hitler (Regnery, 1988). See also Robert Sherrod’s review of Casey’s book, ‘A Spook When Young’, in the New York Times, 25 September 1988.
33. Colonels Robert A. Schow, John H. Claybrook, Lieutenant-Colonel Howard B. St Clair, John K. Montgomery, Jr, Paul S. Reinecke, Jr, and 1st Lieutenant John S. D. Eisenhower, Infantry Report of the General Board, United States Forces, European Theater, Organization and Operation of the Theater Intelligence Services in the European Theater of Operations, Study #14, File: 320.2/57, n.d., but c.1946. Available at http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/eto/eto-014.pdf
34. Interview in 1999 with my second cousin, George Stephen Clive Sowry, RNVR, who worked at RAF Medmenham and his wife, Section Officer Jeanne Sowry, WAAF, who also worked at Medmenham.
35. Constance Babington Smith, Evidence in Camera (Chatto & Windus, 1957), pp. 222–3; Taylor Downing, Spies in the Sky. The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence During World War II (Little, Brown, 2011), pp. 321–3.
36. John F. Kreis (ed.), Piercing the Fog: Intelligence and Army Air Forces Operations in World War II (US Air Force Historical Studies Office, Washington, DC, 1996), p. 88.
37. Peter Calvocoressi, Top Secret Ultra (Cassell, 1980) p. 48; Asa Briggs, Secret Days: Code-breaking in Bletchley Park (Frontline, 2011), pp. 122–3.
38. Obituary: ‘Peter Calvocoressi: Political Writer Who Served at Bletchley Park and Assisted at the Nuremberg trials’, Independent, 20 February 2010.
10. The Cloak of Invisibility
1. Bennett, Ultra in the West, op. cit., pp. 192 and 199.
2. Ibid., p. 195.
3. Ibid., p. 194.
4. Ibid., pp. 195–6.
5. Ibid., p. 197.
6. Ibid., p. 197.
7. Ibid., p. 201.
8. Ibid., pp. 197–8 and 202–3.
9. Ibid., pp. 178–9.
10. Ibid., pp. 196, 197 and 202.
11. Paul H. Van Doren, ‘A Historic Failure in the Social Domain (Social Domain case study using the 16 December 1944 surprise attack in the Ardennes Forest)’, paper given at the Decision making and Cognitive Analysis Track, 10th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium, McLean, Virginia, 13–16 June 2005, p. 13. Paper at http://www.dodccrp.org/events/10th_ICCRTS/CD/papers/035.pdf
12. MAGIC decode SRS 1419 of Baron Oshima’s 6 September report on his 4 September conference with Hitler, and Van Doren, ‘A Historic Failure’, op. cit., p. 28.
13. MAGIC SRS 1492 decode of Baron Oshima’s 20 November report on his 15 November meeting with German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, and Van Doren, ‘A Historic Failure’, op. cit., p. 30.
14. MacDonald, The Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., pp. 24–5; Robert E. Lester (Project Editor) and Blair D. Hydrick (Compiler), A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of World War II Research Collections. Top Secret Studies on U.S. Communications Intelligence during World War II, Part 2: The European Theater (University Publications of America, 1989); Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, p. 173.
15. MacDonald, A Time For Trumpets, op. cit., p. 64.
16. Rosengarten Report, on ULTRA Intelligence at the First US Army, op. cit., p. 5.
17. MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign, op. cit., pp. 243–6.
18. 12th Army Group G-2 Periodic Report #165, 17 November 1944, Annex 2, file 99/12–2.1, RG407, NARA.
19. 12th Army Group G-2 Periodic Reports, Weekly Periodic Summary No. 15, period ending 18 Nov. 44, file 99/12–2.1, RG407, NARA.
20. Trevor N. Dupuy, David L. Bongard and Richard C. Anderson, Jr, Hitler’s Last Gamble: The Battle of the Bulge, December 1944–January 1945 (HarperCollins, 1994), p. 4.
21. Oscar W. Koch and Robert G. Hays, G-2 Intelligence for Patton (Schiffer Publishing, 1999), p. 94; MacDonald, A Time For Trumpets, op. cit., p. 69.
22. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 70.
23. Ibid., pp. 70–71.
24. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., p. 57.
25. Dupuy et al., Hitler’s Last Gamble, op. cit., pp. 4 and 40–1; Bradley and Blair, A General’s Life, op. cit., p. 354.
26. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 165
27. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 212; Pogue, The Ardennes Campaign, op. cit., p. 31; Harry Yeide, Steel Victory (Presidio, 2003), p. 191.
28. Major Jade E. Hinman, When the Japanese Bombed the Huertgen Forest. How the Army’s Investigation of Pearl Harbor Influenced the Outcome of the Huertgen Forest, Major General Leonard T. Gerow and His Command of V Corps from 1943–1945, A Monograph for the School of Advanced Military Studies US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2011. Also, http://www.battleofthebulgememories.be/en/stories/us-army/345-the-battle-of-elsenborn-december-44-part-i-of-v.html
29. Charles Whiting, The Last Assault (Leo Cooper, 1994), p. 55.
30. Memoir of Cecil R. Palmer (1922–2010) at: http://www.99thinfantrydivision.com/cecilpalmer.php
31. Stephen E. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers (Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 187.
32. Memoir of Cecil R. Palmer, op. cit.
33. Jerry C. Hrbek, ‘They’re Our Prisoners’, article in The Bulge Bugle (May 1994), pp. 16–18. Obituary at http://obits.masslive.com/obituaries/masslive/obituary.aspx?pid=154819594
34. Of specific relevance to the Ardennes, Charles B. MacDonald wrote Company Commander (Infantry Journal Press, 1947); The Battle of the Bulge (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984), published in the USA as A Time for Trumpets (William Morrow, 1985) in addition to official histories and other works. Also useful is Charles D. Curley, How a Ninety-Day Wonder Survived the War(Ashcraft Enterprises, 1991).
35. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, op. cit., p. 181.
36. Charles Roland Memoir, Eisenhower Center, University of New Orleans. Amongst others, George W. Neill, Infantry Soldier: Holding the Line at the Battle of the Bulge (University of Oklahoma Press, 2002) is another useful 99th Division memoir.
11. This is a Quiet Area
1. Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, pp. 573–4.
2. For the perfectly justifiable reason that no American officer had ever commanded an army group before.
3. See Chapter 5 on Middleton in J.D. Morelock’s Generals of the Ardennes. American Leadership in the Battle of the Bulge (National Defense University Press, 1994).
4. Ibid., p. 235.
5. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 175.
6. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, op. cit., p. 187.
7. Roland Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourge, Vol. I: The Germans (Schiffer Publishing, 1994) p. 130.
8. Bradley R. McDuffie, ‘For Ernest, With Love and Squalor: the Influence of Ernest Hemingway on J.D. Salinger’, article in The Hemingway Review (22 March 2011).
9. Robert O. Babcock, War Stories: Utah Beach to Pleiku. 4th Infantry Division (Saint John’s Press, 2001), p. 292.
10. Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950).
11. William Walton, ‘The Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. A Gloomy German Wood Takes Its Place in US History Beside the Wilderness and the Argonne’, article in Life magazine, 1 January 1945.
12. George Wilson, If You Survive (Presidio Press, 1987), p. 193.
13. Carolyn Burke, Lee Miller. On Both Sides of the Camera (Bloomsbury, 2005), pp. 236–7.
14. Babcock, War Stories, op. cit., p. 335.
15. Ibid., pp. 334–5.
16. Charles Whiting, Papa Goes to War. Ernest Hemingway in Europe 1944–45 (Crowood Press, 1990), p. 159.
17. Major Frederick T. Kent, ‘The Operations of 22nd Infantry Regiment (4th Infantry Division) in the Hürtgen Forest, Germany, 16 November–3 December 1944’ (Rhineland Campaign, Personal Experience of a Regimental S-4), Research Paper for the Advanced Infantry Officer’s Course No.1, 1946–1947, The Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia. At http://1–22infantry.org/history2/hurtgenpageone.htm. Also see Wilson, If You Survive, op. cit.
18. Major John T. Litchfield, and ten other officers, The Ardennes: The Battle of the Bulge: Winter Defense and Counterattack (Student Research Paper, Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1984), p. 44.
19. Due to the proximity of German land forces to the transmitter during the Bulge campaign, Luxembourg went off-air between 19 and 23 December. See The Psychological Warfare Division, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. An Account of Its Operations in the Western European Campaign 1944–45 (1951), pp. 41 and 89; David Garnett, The Secret History of the Political Warfare Executive 1939–1945 (St Ermin’s Press, 2002), pp. 426–7.
20. 1115th AAA Gun Battalion memoir courtesy of their website: http://www.115th-aaa-gun-bn.com/Story/luxembourg.php
21. The PX was an abbreviation of ‘Post Exchange’, the US equivalent of the British NAAFI, where minor non-issue luxuries and comforts could be purchased by troops just behind the combat zone. It was not open to civilians. See David Colley, The Road to Victory. The Untold Story of Race and World War II’s Red Ball Express (Brassey’s, 2000), Chapter 16, pp. 123–31.
22. Newsweek, 8 January 1945.
23. Life magazine, 26 March 1945.
24. Yank newspaper, 4 May 1945.
25. Paul F. Jenkins (1916–2007), oral interview; OH-146, Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center, 2000.
26. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. I: The Germans, op. cit., pp. 13–15.
27. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, op. cit., p. 181.
28. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 176.
29. Roland Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II: The Americans (Schiffer Publishing, 1995), pp. 129–130.
30. Donald Bein interview, March 2011. http://www.battleofthebulgememories.be/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=594%3Athe-weather-on-16- december-1944&catid=1%3Abattle-of-the-bulge-us-army&Itemid=6&lang=en
31. M. Bedford Davis, Frozen Rainbows, (Meadowlark Publishing, 2003), p. 211.
32. Danny S. Parker, Battle of the Bulge: Hitler’s Ardennes Offensive, 1944–1945 (Combined Books, 1991), p. 39.
33. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 94.
34. Marguerite Linden-Meier Report, M 1232–1/R-1232–1, Military Archives, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I am grateful to Mr Roland Gaul for alerting me to this file.
38. Marlene Dietrich became a naturalised US citizen in 1939. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II: The Americans, op. cit., pp. 105–6; John C. McManus, Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible (John Wiley, 2007), p. 33.
36. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., pp. 11–14.
37. Missing Air Crew Report for Flying Officer John R.S. Morgan, Major Glenn Miller and Lieutenant-Colonel Norman F. Baessell, 01/08/1945, Missing Air Crew Report number 10770, 12/1944, Record Group 92: Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774–1985, NARA. Of numerous theories advanced over the years, from a story which first appeared in December 2001, it seems most likely that Miller’s plane wandered into an area where returning Allied aircraft could jettison their unused bomb loads. See http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/dec/15/humanities.research
38. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 205.
39. Robert E. Merriam, Dark December: The Full Account of the Battle of the Bulge (Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., 1947), p. 65.
40. http://www.lerenfort.fsnet.co.uk/page24N.htm
41. Whiting, The Last Assault, op. cit., p. 13.
42. Colonel Daniel B. Strickler, After Action Report of the German Ardennes Breakthrough As I Saw It from 16 Dec 1944–2 Jan 1945, Record Group 407, 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, Box 8596, NARA.
43. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., p. 193.
44. Gerald Astor, A Blood-Dimmed Tide: The Battle of the Bulge by the Men Who Fought It (Dell Publishing, 1992), p. 44.
45. Whiting, Papa Goes to War, op. cit., p. 173.
46. Major Jeffrey P. Holt, Operational Performance of the U.S. 28th Infantry Division, September to December 1944 (Master’s Thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2004), p. 44. Available at: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a284499.pdf
47. Lt. Thomas J. Flynn interview 1–2 May 1945, Company ‘K’, 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, Record Group #407, NARA; McManus, Alamo in the Ardennes, op. cit., p. 36.
48. Oral interview Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Joe Soya, 1982, Paul Van Doren Collection, Small Manuscript Collection, George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, Virginia.
12. Brandenberger’s Grenadiers
1. Harry Yeide, Fighting Patton. George S. Patton Jr Through the Eyes of His Opponents (Zenith Press, 2011), p. 360.
2. Bruce Quarrie, Order of Battle (12): The Ardennes Offensive. I Armee & VII Armee. Southern Sector (Osprey, 2001), pp. 10–12.
3. Yeide, Fighting Patton, op. cit., pp. 359–60.
4. The recorded strength of 2nd Flak Division on 8 November was 20 heavy batteries (80 × 88mm towed guns) and 21 light/medium batteries (84 × 37mm and 20mm towed guns) on towed mountings. The 15th Flak Regiment nominally comprised 9 heavy batteries (36 × 88mm towed guns) and 6 light/medium batteries (24 × 37mm and 20mm towed guns), but the precise allocation of weapons seems to have varied. See http://www.ww2.dk/ground/flak/2fladiv.htm
5. Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr Panzers in Winter. Hitler’s Army and the Battle of the Bulge (Stackpole, 2008), p. 20
6. Völkisher Beobachter, 3 August 1944.
7. Volksgrenadiers and Volksgrenadier divisions should not be confused with the Volkssturm, raised at the same time, as we have seen.
8. The 257th Volksgrenadier Division comprised 40 per cent returning convalescent soldiers, for example.
9. Gunter K. Koschorrek, Blood Red Snow (Greenhill, 2002), p. 290.
10. Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., p. 682.
11. Headquarters Fifth Panzer Army, Directive on Tactics, 20 November 1944.
12. Wolfgang Fleischer, Das letzte Jahr des deutschen Heeres 1944–1945 (Dörfler, 2007), p. 129.
13. Edgar Christoffel, Krieg am Westwall 1944/45 (Helios, 2011), p. 242.
14. As NATO Historian for IFOR and SFOR during 1996–7, I encountered large numbers of WW2-era weapons and ammunition used by the various Croat, Serb and Bosnian factions, including PO-8 Luger pistols, MG-34 and MG-42 machine guns, MP-40 machine-pistols, M-1911 semi-automatic pistols, Thompson sub-machine guns and Sten guns. Sealed cans of ammunitions bearing dates from 1941 to 1944 also surfaced and were still being issued to the local militias.
15. Kiss memoir, The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XII/1 (February 1993), p. 17.
16. Kiss memoir, ibid. Although the carrying of rubber hoses by Volksgrenadiers featured prominently in the 1965 movie Battle of the Bulge, I have not encountered this in other memoirs of the Ardennes campaign.
17. These included guns of 75, 100, 105, 120, 122, 128, 150 and 152mm calibres. The figures vary in different sources; these are from Cole, Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., p. 213.
18. Karl G. Larew, ‘From Pigeons to Crystals: The Development of Radio Communication in US Army Tanks in World War II’, article in The Historian, Vol. 67/4 (Winter 2005).
19. The archives vary as to the number of Nebelwerfer projectors deployed with Seventh Army. This is the figure cited in Cole, The Ardennes op. cit., p. 213.
20. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. I: The Germans, op. cit., pp. 239–42.
21. There seems to have been little uniformity or standardisation in Volksgrenadier divisions. The Sturmgeschütz (StuG) assault gun was Germany’s most common AFV of the Second World War. Built on the chassis of the Panzer III tank, but without a turret, it was initially intended as a mobile, armoured light gun for infantry support. Gradually the StuG was employed as a tank destroyer and eventually used to replace tanks in armoured formations. They weighed twenty-four tons, carried a crew of four and a 75mm gun; more than 11,500 were built, plus an additional 1,000 modelled on the Panzer IV chassis. Collectively, they destroyed more enemy tanks than panzers, and by 1944 Sturmgeschützunits claimed to have knocked out 20,000 tanks. They were far more cost-effective than tanks and, because of their low silhouette, StuGs were easy to camouflage and harder to hit than a conventional tank. However, their lack of a traversable turret gave them a severe disadvantage in an offensive, so they were better suited to defensive scenarios. The Hetzer (‘Baiter’), of which nearly 3,000 were manufactured, was smaller, built on to the Czech Pz 38(t) chassis, weighing in at fifteen tons, also carrying a crew of four with a 75mm gun. It was one of the most common of late-war German AFVs, and popular with crews on account of its mechanical reliability and the fact that its small size made it easy to hide. Many nations used StuGs and Hetzers for decades after the war, a tribute to their practicality and durability.
22. Nat Frankel and Larry Smith, Patton’s Best: An Informal History of the 4th Armored Division (Hawthorn Books, 1978) pp. 135–6.
23. The archives are at variance, citing between twenty-one and twenty-seven vehicles.
24. After captivity, Schmidt wrote several papers for the US Army Military History Programme, including B067 – 352nd Volksgrenadier Division, 16 December 1944–25 January 1945 (1946) and P-032G – Ardennes Project; both in Foreign Military Studies, NARA.
25. Courtesy of Grenadier Regiment 916 research website at: http://www.gr916.co.uk
26. Yeide, Fighting Patton, op. cit., p. 363.
27. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge, Vol. I: The Germans, op. cit., pp. 132–3.
13. The Baron
1. Germà Bel, ‘Against the Mainstream: Nazi Privatization in 1930s Germany’, article in Economic History Review (2009); Winfried Wolf, Car Mania: A Critical History of Transport, 1770–1990 (Pluto Press, 1996), pp. 94–5.
2. Arvo L. Vecamer, ‘Deutsche Reichsbahn – The German State Railway in WWII’, online article at: http://www.feldgrau.com/dreichsbahn.html
3. Patton also competed in Olympic Pentathlon at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm.
4. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, op. cit., p. 452.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., pp. 450–51.
7. The sixty-two-year-old Lucht had seen service in the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, when he commanded the artillery of the German Condor Legion supporting Franco, and in France and Russia, where he had shone as a divisional and corps commander. In October 1943 the old warhorse was given LXVI Corps in Russia, which he took to southern France in August 1944 to oppose the Operation Dragoon landings; thereafter his formations were pulled back to Germany in preparation for Herbstnebel.
8. Manteuffel’s post-war recollections to the US Army Historical Programme are B-151 and B-151a, Fifth Panzer Army, Ardennes Offensive. Others in the series of immense value are B-321, LVIII Panzer Corps in the Ardennes Offensive, 16 December 1944–11 January 1945 (General der Panzertruppen Walter Krueger); A-939, The Assignment of the XLVII Panzer Corps in the Ardennes, 1944–45 (General der Panzertruppen Heinrich von Luettwitz); B040, 26th Volks Grenadier Division in the Ardennes Offensive (Generalmajor Heinz Kokott); A-955, Report on the Campaign in Northern France, the Rhineland, and the Ardennes (Oberst Hans-Juergen Dingler); B-506, LVIII Panzer Corps Artillery, 1 November 1944–1 February 1945 (Generalmajor Gerhard Triepel); A-941 and A942, Panzer Lehr Division, 1 December 1944–26 January 1945 and 15–22 December 1944 (both Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein), all Foreign Military Studies, NARA.
9. Pallud, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op. cit., p. 48.
10. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., pp. 279–80.
11. The fifty-two-year-old chain-smoking Walter Krüger was a highly decorated veteran panzer commander with service in France and two and a half years in Russia, by which time he had won a Knight’s Cross and Oak Leaves. In January 1944 he was rested and given LVIII Panzer Corps in France, whom he would eventually take to the Ardennes.
12. Waldenburg’s 1973 obituary is at: http://www.116thpanzer.com/forum/m/836079/viewthread/4409928-generalmajor-siegfried-von-waldenburg
13. On 7 June 1944, the division possessed 78 Panthers, 66 Panzer IV and 13 PzIII.
14. Generalmajor Rudolf Bader, 560th Volks Grenadier Division – Ardennes Campaign (16 December 1944–25 January 1945), B-0024, RG-338 Foreign Military Studies, NARA.
15. David Stone, Hitler’s Army: The Men, Machines, and Organization: 1939–1945 (Zenith Press, 2009), pp. 204–07.
16. Shuling Tang, ‘History of the Automobile: Ownership per Household in the United States’, chapter in Transportation Deployment Casebook. History of the Automobile: Ownership per Household in the United States. E-book at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Transportation_Deployment_Casebook/History_of_the_Automobile:_Ownership_per_Household_in_U.S. Americans possessed 22,500,000 vehicles in 1935 and a population of 127,250,000. This equated to one vehicle per 0.7 per cent of American households at the time. Apart from a population rise, the household ownership percentage and individual ownership percentage remained broadly similar through the war years. See also: Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power: 1933–1939 (Penguin, 2006).
17. James J. Weingartner, A Peculiar Crusade: Willis M. Everett and the Malmedy Massacre (New York University Press, 2000), p. 61.
18. Hasso von Manteuffel, MS #B-151a, and ETHINT-46, Fifth Panzer Army, Mission of November 1944–January 1945, Foreign Military Studies, NARA.
19. Generalmajor Heinz Kokott, B-040, 26th Volks Grenadier Division in the Ardennes Offensive, Foreign Military Studies, NARA.
20. Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, Bastogne. The Story of the First Eight Days, in Which the 101st Airborne Division Was Closed Within the Ring of German Forces (Infantry Journal Press, 1946), pp. 174–6.
21. Jabo=abbreviation of Jagdbomber (light bomber or ground attack aircraft).
22. Every source seems to cite slightly different figures. As an average these will be broadly correct. Cole (p. 177) cites 27 Panzer IVs, 58 Panthers, and 48 StuGs.
23. In the 2nd Panzer Division, the battlegroups, large organisations of 2,000–3,000 personnel, were known as Kampfgruppe (KG) Cochenhausen, KG von Bohm, KG Gutmann and KG Holtmeyer.
24. Lauchert was well regarded by Heinz Guderian and had been an observer of the Normandy battles, where he encountered Sepp Dietrich, who also had a favourable opinion of him.
25. P.A. Spayd, Bayerlein: From Afrika Korps to Panzer Lehr. The Life of Rommel’s Chief-of-staff Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein (Schiffer Publishing, 2003).
26. Bayerlein became an articulate commentator on the WW2 German army and wrote extensively, was involved in the reformation of the Bundeswehr and worked with film companies; Bayerlein died in his home town of Würzburg in 1970.
27. Pallud, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op. cit., pp. 50–51; Samuel W. Mitcham, Panzer Legions: A Guide to the German Army Tank Divisions of World War II and Their Commanders (Stackpole, 2007), pp. 201–4. On 12 December, Panzer Lehr reported 23 Panthers, 30 Panzer IVs, 15 Jagdpanzers and StuGs and 14 Jagdpanzers IVs. Due to its excellent and uncontroversial reputation, Panzer Lehr remains in the Bundeswehr’s Order of Battle today, its only named division.
28. Colonels Paul Freiherr von Hauser and Joachim Ritter von Poschinger led 901st and 902nd Panzergrenadier Regiments respectively. Panzer Lehr deployed in three Kampfgruppen, named after the Reconnaissance Battalion commander, Major Gerd von Fallois, Hauser’s KG (Kampfgruppe) 901 and KG 902, commanded by Poschinger.
29. Steven J. Zaloga, Battle of the Bulge 1944 (2): Bastogne (Osprey, 2004), p. 23.
30. Generalmajor Otto-Ernst Remer, The Führer-Begleit-Brigade in the Ardennes, MS #B-592 and MS #B-383 (1954), NARA.
31. Author’s translation from Hans Hejny, Der letzte Vormarsch: Ardennenschlacht 1944 (Europäischer Verlag, 1983), a rare published account of the battle from a German soldier’s point of view.
14. We Accept Death, We Hand Out Death
1. John A. McCarthy, Walter Grunzweig and Thomas Koebner (eds), The Many Faces of Germany (Berghahn, 2004), pp. 214–15. I met Graf von Einsiedel (b. 1921) in Berlin in 1983. He died in 2007.
2. Based on several author interviews with Herr Hans Hennecke, February–April 1981.
3. April 1945 found him promoted to Training Company commander, overseeing sixteen- and seventeen-year-old recruits, when he was captured.
4. Josef ‘Sepp’ Dietrich, who was born in that decade of years (1885–95) that furnished most senior commanders of the Second World War – in his case, in 1892, making him fifty-two at the Battle of the Bulge. Born into the poorest of backgrounds, he volunteered in 1914 for the Bavarian artillery and served in some of the same battles as Hitler, who was a Bavarian infantryman. In February 1918 he was assigned to a tank unit, seeing action as gunner in a unit of captured British tanks, winning an Iron Cross and promotion to sergeant-major. A pre-war drifter, he returned home a decorated hero with an ability to lead and command, which was Hitler’s story too. Although he first came across his future Führer in 1921, it was not until 1928 that Dietrich actually joined the NSDAP (Party Member 89,015) and the Schutzstaffel. His SS number was 1,177 of an organisation that eventually numbered thirty-eight divisions and 950,000 men, and had been founded in 1921 as bruisers and brawlers to protect Hitler’s person at his first political meetings.
Hitler immediately took to his chief bodyguard, whom he considered rough but straight as a die, with a proven war record and sense of humour that cheered even the darkest moments of the nascent Nazi Party. On Hitler’s election as Chancellor in January 1933, Dietrich was tasked to create the SS Watch-Battalion-Berlin (Stabswache Berlin), a display unit to guard the Reich Chancellery, which later became the SS-Leibstandarte (Life Guard) Adolf Hitler, with a strength of nearly 1,000. Dietrich’s lack of education showed when he took the Leibstandarte to Poland in September 1939 – then a brigadier, Dietrich’s prior military experience was as an NCO, twenty-one years earlier. Fortunately, his 1a (chief of staff) was an ex-regular army colonel and Kriegsakademie graduate, Willi Bittrich, who provided the brains, while Dietrich rose to the role of leader. The regiment was one of the few fully motorised units in the German army and participated in the campaigns against Poland and France, where it performed adequately, rather than brilliantly.
By the end of 1940, the Waffen-SS (or fighting-SS) was confirmed as a regular unit of the German military, with Dietrich at its head in the rank of General der Waffen-SS. The Leibstandarte was further expanded and in April–May 1941 invaded Yugoslavia and Greece, where it shone in combat. In 1941, Dietrich’s regiment was expanded into a division of 13,000 officers and men and arrived in Russia. During the 1941–2 winter campaign Dietrich himself suffered severe frostbite, indicating that he was not tucked up safe and warm in his HQ, and won admiration for getting to know many of the men under his command by name. Hitler personally followed Dietrich’s achievements in Russia on his situation map, the Leibstandarte’s movements indicated by a flag annotated ‘Sepp’. In 1942 Dietrich’s command was again in Russia with some of the first Tiger tanks, and a divisional strength of 21,000 – significantly more than army divisions and surely a mark of favouritism. Hitler awarded him Diamonds to his Knight’s Cross for his outstanding leadership in Normandy and promoted him to Oberstgrüppenführer, a rank below Himmler, assessing him as ‘unique … a man who is simultaneously cunning, energetic and brutal. Under his swashbuckling appearance, Dietrich is a serious, conscientious, scrupulous character. And what care he takes of his troops!’ As a reaction to 20 July, and in what was widely interpreted throughout Germany as a reward for the wider loyalty of the Waffen-SS, Hitler entrusted him with the Sixth Panzer Army. On hearing this, the ever-loyal Krämer, knowing his old boss would need help in his new assignment, resigned his own command of the 12th SS-Hitlerjugend Division to accompany ‘Sepp’ into battle yet again as his chief of staff.
5. Close to Rommel, Dietrich had just waved the latter off from his own HQ on 17 July 1944 when Rommel’s staff car was attacked by Allied fighters in Normandy. Rommel’s alleged parting words to Dietrich were, ‘Something has to happen! The war in the West has to be ended!’ To which Dietrich was supposed to have responded, ‘You, Herr Generalfeldmarschall, are my commander-in-chief, and I shall obey only you, whatever the order!’ This is frequently interpreted as Rommel sounding out Dietrich’s likely response to a change of leadership (i.e. Hitler’s assassination, which was attempted on 20 July). Dietrich’s ambivalence reflected his growing (and widely known) disillusionment with Hitler’s command style, and a refusal to countenance retreat from Normandy – if true, an abrupt change of heart for Hitler’s loyal henchman of sixteen years.
6. Dietrich surrendered to Patton’s men on 8 May 1945. After the war, he was found guilty of complicity in the massacre of American soldiers near Malmedy, though his responsibility for the deed was never proven. Sentenced to life for contradicting ‘the customs and ethics of war’, several anti-Nazi former colleagues, among them Guderian and Speidel, testified on his behalf and the sentence was commuted to twenty-five years. Released in October 1955, he was later sentenced by a German court for murder during the June 1934 massacre of the SA leadership. He enjoyed seven years of liberty before dying of a heart attack in April 1966, aged seventy-tree – an unlikely end for a soldier who, at several moments, should have met death on the battlefield. Despite a bloody reputation, his biographer Charles Messenger argues convincingly that Dietrich was not an ideologically committed Nazi, just a rather good leader of men, who was never afraid to roll up his sleeves and muck in. In his last years he helped found the Hilfsorganisation auf Gegenseitigkeit der Waffen SS (Waffen-SS Self Help Organisation) or HIAG, which lobbied successfully for Waffen-SS soldiers to be paid a war pension like their Wehrmacht colleagues. At what was probably the last big gathering of the Waffen-SS, 7,000 wartime comrades, as well as former adversaries, came to his funeral, where Wilhelm Bittrich, his first chief of staff, gave the address.
7. Freytag von Loringhoven (1914–2007) obituaries, Guardian, 28 March 2007; New York Times, 1 April 2007.
8. Philipp Freiherr von Boeselanger (1917–2008) obituaries, Daily Telegraph, 2 May 2008; New York Times, 3 May 2008; online interview at: http://operationvalkyrie.wordpress.com/primary-sources/
9. Pallud, The Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op. cit., pp. 30–33.
10. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., pp. 290–91.
11. Bruce Quarrie, The Ardennes Offensive: VI Panzer Armee: Northern Sector (Osprey, 1999), p. 20.
12. During the fighting, Oberst Kosmalla was seriously wounded and Generalmajor Eugen König of 12th Volksgrenadier Division took command.
13. Schmidt memoir, op. cit.
14. Otto Gunkel, ‘The Reestablishment of the 272nd VGD at Döberitz’, courtesy of Der Erste Zug website, at: http://www.dererstezug.com/272ndInAction/272ndInAction(3).htm
15. Schmidt memoir, op. cit.
16. Gunkel memoir, op. cit.
17. Ibid.
18. Wego died in an attack on 4 January 1945, his Soldbuch evidencing his death retained a small steel splinter piercing it. He is buried in the VDK military cemetery at Gemünd.
19. Reinartz details courtesy of http://aufhimmelzuhause.com/id33.htm website.
20. Becker memoir courtesy of Der Erste Zug website, at: http://dererstezug.com/VetBecker.htm
21. Ibid.
22. Philip Howard Grey, ‘The True North Shoulder and How It Upset Hitler’s Schedule’, article in The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XXVIII/4 (November 2009), pp. 6–10.
23. Max Hastings, Armageddon, The Battle for Germany 1944–45 (Macmillan, 2004), p. 232.
24. Richter details courtesy of http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/Forums/show thread.php?t=532514 website.
25. Colonel C.P. Stacey, Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, Vol. III, The Victory Campaign, The Operations in North-West Europe, 1944–1945 (Ottawa, 1966), p. 270; Timm Haasler, Roddy MacDougall, Simon Vosters and Hans Weber, Duel in the Mist, vol. 2, The Leibstandarte during the Ardennes Offensive(Panzerwrecks 2012), p. 208.
26. Major-General Michael Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant (Spellmount, 1995), p. 49.
27. Author’s interview with Hennecke, 1991, op. cit.
28. Hans Bernard (1920–2010) interview, Robert Kershaw, Tank Men: The Human Story of Tanks at War (Hodder & Stoughton, 2008).
29. Kershaw, Tank Men, op. cit.
30. Freytag von Loringhoven obituaries, op. cit.
31. Whiting, The Last Assault, op. cit., p. 173; Paul Eisen, ‘From the people who brought you The Destruction of Dresden … The Flattening of Düren’, online article (20 February 2012) at: http://www.deliberation.info/from-the-people-who-brought-you-the-destruction-of-dresden-the-flattening-of-duren/
32. Kershaw, Tank Men, op. cit.
33. Peter von der Osten-Sacken (1909–2008) and Edouard Jahnke interviews, Kershaw, Tank Men, op. cit.
34. Stacey, Official History of the Canadian Army, Vol. III, The Victory Campaign, op. cit., p. 270.
35. Sources differ only slightly on these numbers, which are nevertheless broadly correct for 16 December 1944.
36. Kressmann (b. 1918) interview, Kershaw, Tank Men, op. cit.
37. Werner Kinnett (1927–89) interview by Bill Medland for Military Magazine, 1985.
38. Hans Baumann (b.1925) interview, Kershaw, Tank Men, op. cit.
39. Bernhard Heisig, later an artist (1925–2011) interview, Kershaw, Tank Men, op. cit.
40. Stacey, The Victory Campaign, op. cit., p. 270.
41. Fritz Langanke (1919–2012) interview, Kershaw, Tank Men, op. cit.
42. Stacey, The Victory Campaign, op. cit., p. 270.
43. He was captured by the 106th Division. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., pp. 93–4; Whiting, The Last Assault, op. cit., pp. 28–9.
44. Haasler, et al. Duel in the Mist, vol. 2, op. cit., p. 209.
45. Ibid., p. 208.
46. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., p. 260.
47. Philipp von Boeselanger obituaries, op. cit.; Jürgen Girgensohn, later an SPD politician (1924–2004) interview, Kershaw, Tank Men, op. cit.
Interlude
1. J. Neumann and H. Flohn, ‘Great Historical Events That Were Significantly Affected by the Weather: Part 8, Germany’s War on the Soviet Union, 1941–45; II. Some Important Weather Forecasts, 1942–45’, article in the Journal of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 69/7 (July 1988), pp. 734–5.
2. Royce L. Thompson, Study of Weather of the Ardennes Campaign (CMH, 2 October 1953), p. 7.
3. James Arnold, Ardennes 1944: Hitler’s Last Gamble in the West (Osprey, 1990), p. 24.
4. Schroeder, He Was My Chief, op. cit., p. 125.
5. These were U-810, U-1053 and U-1228. See: Battle of the Atlantic: U-Boat Operations, December 1942–May 1945, Central Security Service, National Security Agency, Publication SRH-008, pp. 171–3. Online at: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Ultra/SRH-008/SRH008-12.html
6. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, op. cit., p. 345.
7. POW website at: http://www.radiomarconi.com/marconi/monumento/pow/pows.html
15. Null-Tag
1. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 283. Leuthen was the 1757 battle which saw Frederick the Great at his peak. He used terrain and decisive manoeuvre to destroy the much larger Austrian army in the Seven Years’ War, thus establishing Prussia’s military reputation. The association of smashing a much larger rival would have been known to most of Model’s audience.
2. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington – letter to John Croker, 8 August 1815.
3. Author’s interview, William S. Blaher, 106th Division, Hotel Zur Post, St Vith, 17 December 1994.
4. The number of artillery tubes and rocket projectors is reported variously as 1,600 and 1,900. Some were from detachments of the neighbouring Army Groups, and took no further part in Herbstnebel, other than to contribute to the opening surprise.
5. Michael Green and James D. Brown, War Stories of the Battle of the Bulge (Zenith Press, 2010), p. 41.
6. Details in his Wehrmacht Soldbuch courtesy of Swayne Martin. Peter Kelch died on 21 May 1945, aged twenty-one, fourteen days after the war ended, and lies in the Heidelberg-Friedhof Cemetery.
7. In captivity, Generalleutnant Franz Sensfuss wrote several papers on the history of 212nd Volksgrenadiers for the US Army Historical Division, including VGD: MSS # A-930, A-931, und B-073.A-930, A-931, and B-073.
8. The main sources for German Seventh Army are the US post-war interviews and debriefs now in Foreign Military Studies at NARA. They include: A876, Ardennes Offensive of Seventh Army, 16 December 1944–25 January 1945 (General der Panzertruppen Erich Brandenberger); B-030, LXXXV Corps, 1 December 1944–10 January 1945 (General der Infanterie Baptist Kniess) and B-081, LXXX Corps, 13 September 1944–23 March 1945, Part Two (General der Infanterie Dr Franz Beyer); the divisions are recorded in A-930, A-931, 212th Volksgrenadier Division-Ardennes, 16 December 1944–25 January 1945 (Generalleutnant Franz Sensfuss); B-023 (Heilmann); B-067, 352nd Volksgrenadier Division, 16 December 1944–25 January 1945 (Generalmajor Erich Schmidt); B-073 212th Volksgrenadier Division, Ardennes (Sensfuss); and P-032f, Ardennes Project (Generalmajor Hugo Dempwolff).
9. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II: The Americans, op. cit., p. 129.
10. William J. Gaynor, ‘Did They Fool Us?’, article in The Bulge Bugle (November 2010), p. 23.
11. Whiting, Papa Goes to War, op. cit., p. 167.
12. Ibid., p. 178.
13. Illustrative of the morale-boosting information about the war contained in US newspapers (but forbidden in the United Kingdom), on 23 March 1945, the Le Mars [Plymouth County, Iowa] Semi-Weekly Sentinel repeated a US Fourth Division Order of the Day, which read, ‘Over four months ago after advancing through the Ardennes, the Fourth Infantry Division broke through the Siegfried Line and occupied the Schnee Eifel. Relieved by another division, the Fourth moved north and attacked through the Huertgen Forest, moved south again and successfully defended the city of Luxembourg against the German counter-offensive in December, attacked across the Sure and Our Rivers and advanced against continuous opposition until it was again opposite the Schnee Eifel. In spite of almost incredible weather conditions and the long period of continuous contact with the enemy, the division then recaptured the Siegfried Line defenses on the Schnee Eifel and captured the fortified town of Brandscheid which had heretofore successfully withstood all attacks made against it. The 70th Tank Battalion contributed aggressive and invaluable support throughout this entire operation.’ The Le Mars Sentinel went on to report, ‘The 70th Tank Battalion is commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry E. Davidson Jr, of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Company ‘A’, which supports the 8th Infantry, is led by Captain Gordon A. Brodie of Le Mars. Capt. Francis E. Songer commands Company ‘B’ in support of the 12th Infantry, and First Lieutenant Preston E. Yoeman of Crystal Lake, Illinois, commands Company ‘C’ in support of the 22nd Infantry. Captain Herman Finkelstein of Philadelphia is commanding officer of Company ‘D’ which is used in general support.’
14. Zaloga, Panther vs. Sherman: Battle of the Bulge 1944.
15. Yeide, Steel Victory, op. cit., pp. 201–4; Belton Y. Cooper, Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armoured Division in World War II (Presidio, 2003), pp. 156–63.
16. Babcock, War Stories, op. cit., pp. 341–2.
17. Ibid., p. 336.
18. Cecil E. Roberts, A Soldier from Texas (Branch-Smith Inc., Texas, 1978), p. 54.
19. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II: The Americans, op. cit., p. 117.
20. Ibid., pp. 119–20.
21. Lieutenant-Col George Ruhlen’s 3rd Armored Field Artillery Battalion, equipped with 105mm howitzers mounted on the M-7 tracked Sherman chassis.
22. AAR, 60th Armored Infantry Battalion, 9th Armored Division, Oct 44 Thru Mar 45, AAR #361-U, Ref. 8609-AIB-131, NARA.
23. AAR, 60th Armored Infantry Battalion, op. cit.
24. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II: The Americans, op. cit., p. 130.
25. Ibid., p. 131.
26. Möhring’s cap, ear muffs and map case are now in the Diekirch Historical Museum.
27. Whiting, Papa Goes to War, op. cit., p. 182.
16. The Bloody Bucket
1. One of many distinguished tactical leaders on 6 June 1944, Rudder’s activities in particular have been lionised by Americans not least because of his portrayal in The Longest Day, but also because of his subsequent achievements at Texas A & M University, of which he was later President. He died in 1970.
2. Reporting for duty six weeks later, Slovik informed his company commander that he was ‘too scared’ to serve in a rifle company and asked to be reassigned to a rear area unit, adding he would run away if he were assigned to a rifle unit. As the 109th had been hard hit in Normandy and were heading for the Hürtgen and needed every spare man, he was sent to a rifle platoon. Slovik wrote a series of notes to his superiors, stating his intention to run away if sent into combat, and refused to withdraw them. Slovik was buried in the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery, alongside ninety-six other American soldiers executed for crimes such as murder and rape, an unhappy reminder of another problem the US Army was experiencing as well as fighting the Germans.
3. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II: The Americans, op. cit., pp. 41–2.
4. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., p. 214.
5. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. I: The Germans, op. cit., pp. 58.
6. Special Report [German] Army (SRA), 1148 31 December 1944, National Archives (Kew, UK), Ref. WO 208/4140.
7. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II: The Americans, op. cit., p. 87.
8. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 151.
9. Ibid. Emphasis (complete) in original transcript.
10. See Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, Soldaten on Fighting, Killing and Dying. The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs (Simon & Shuster, 2012).
11. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge, Vol. II, op. cit., p. 88.
12. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge, Vol. I, op. cit., pp. 37–8.
13. Ibid.
14. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge, Vol. I, op. cit., pp. 35–6.
15. Ibid., p. 35.
16. Gaul, The Battle of the Bulge, Vol. I, op. cit., pp. 63.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., pp. 104–5.
19. Ibid., p. 81.
20. Ibid., p. 84.
21. Author’s interview, Hubert ‘Bill’ Cavins, 28th Division, Hotel Zur Post, St Vith, 17 December 1994.
22. Ibid., p. 60.
23. Ibid.
24. Davis, Frozen Rainbows, op. cit., pp. 211–12.
25. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 208.
26. Macdonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 151.
27. See the excellent Hoesdorf Plateau Guided Walk website at: http://www.mnhm.lu/www/france/downloads/the-u.s.-side.pdf
28. Letter home, 30 January 1945 from Lieutenant John J. Perkins. He seems to echo a very similar description of the First World War Western Front. See The Western Front, Introduction by Sir Douglas Haig, illustrations by Muirhead Bone (The War Office /Country Life, 1917).
29. Lieutenant-Colonel James E. Rudder, Unit Report No.6, From 1 Dec 44–31 Dec 44, 109th Infantry Regiment (4 January 1944), NARA.
30. Whiting, ’44: In Combat From Normandy to the Ardennes, op. cit., pp. 167–8; Jeff Johannes and Doug Nash, German Rations at the Front: A snapshot of what the German Soldier consumed during the Battle of the Bulge, at http://gr914.webs.com/rations.htm
31. Bruce E. Egger and Lee MacMillan Otts, G Company’s War (University of Alabama Press, 1992), p. 113.
32. Author’s interview with T/Sergeant Gilbert T. Gouveia, Company ‘G’, 333 Infantry Regiment, Hotel Zur Post, St Vith, 17 December 1994.
33. Richard D. Courtney, Normandy to The Bulge (Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), p. 54.
34. Johannes and Nash, German Rations at the Front, op. cit.
35. IPW (Prisoner of War) Interrogation Reports, IPW Team 60, 134th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division, 2 January 1945, NARA.
36. Ibid.
37. See A-931, Generalleutnant Franz Sensfuss, 212th Volksgrenadier Division, op. cit.
17. The Baron’s Blitzkrieg
1. Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 283.
2. 106th Division, S-3 (Operations) Signals Log, 16 December 1944, NARA.
3. Author’s translation from Hejny, Der letzte Vormarsch, op. cit.
4. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, op. cit., p. 459.
5. An Interview with Generalmajor Heinz Kokott, ETHINT-44, 29 November 1944; Ardennes Offensive, Battle of Bastogne, Part 1, Ms. No. B-040, not dated, both NARA.
6. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, op. cit., p. 459.
7. Jenkins, Oral Interview, Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center, op. cit.
8. Ibid.
9. Wilfrid R. Riley, ‘188th Combat Engineers in Belgium’, article in The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XXXIII/1 (February 2014), p. 8.
10. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles R. Shrader, Amicicide: The Problem of Friendly Fire in Modern War (University Press of the Pacific, 1982).
11. Yeide, Steel Victory, op. cit., pp. 199–201.
12. William C. C. Cavanagh, A Tour of the Bulge Battlefield (Leo Cooper, 2001), p. 160; Mike Tolhurst, Battleground Europe. Bastogne (Leo Cooper, 2001), p. 39; McManus, Alamo in the Ardennes, op. cit., p. 75.
13. Interview by Hugh Ambrose in the Eisenhower Center, University of New Orleans; Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, op. cit., p. 190.
14. Ibid.
15. Frank A. LoVuolo memoir, The Bulge Bugle, Vol. IX/1 (February 1990), pp. 12–13.
16. Ibid.
17. ‘Colonel With Cane Led the Attack’, New York Sun, 9 January 1945, p. 4.
18. Shoemaker memoir, courtesy of his grandson, at: http://www.327gir.com/ 28thInfantry.html
19. Reusch memoir, courtesy of http://www.stengerhistorica.com/History/WarArchive/ VeteranVoices/Reusch.htm
20. Chamness memoir, Bulge Bugle, May 2001; http://www.battleofthebulgememories.be/stories26/32-battle-of-the-bulge-us-army/725-hq-company-112th-infantry-regiment-28th-id.html
21. Clarence Blakeslee, ‘The Battle Started on 16 December 1944’, article in The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XXXIII/1 (February 2014), p. 29.
22. Charles Haug memoir from Green and Brown, War Stories of the Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., p. 43.
23. Shoemaker memoir, op. cit.
24. Sergeant (later Colonel) Olsen memoir courtesy of http://www.justinmuseum.com/oralbio/lolsenbio.html
25. Haug memoir in Green and Brown, War Stories of the Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., p. 45.
26. Ibid., pp. 46–7; McManus, Alamo in the Ardennes, op. cit., pp. 77–8.
27. Schober memoir, courtesy of http://www.veteransofthebattleofthebulge.org/2012/06/21/milton-j-schober-106th-id-a-collection-of-memories/
28. Reusch memoir, op. cit.
29. Chamness memoir, op. cit.
30. Major Thomas Michael McGinnis, Unit Collapse: A Historical Analysis of Two Divisional Battles in 1918 and 1944, Master Degree Thesis, US Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1987.
18. Golden Lions
1. For example, at http://lions44.hubpages.com/hub/Ardennes106th
2. Morelock, Generals of the Ardennes. American Leadership in the Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., p. 280.
3. Smallwood memoir, courtesy of CRIBA (Centre de Recherches et d’Informations sur la Bataille des Ardennes) website, at: http://www.criba.be/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=308:my-war&catid=1:battle-of-the-bulge-us-army& Itemid=6
4. Mike Tolhurst, St Vith. US 106th Infantry Division (Leo Cooper, 1999), p. 40.
5. Charles B. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 114. MacDonald was making a personal observation here, as a former captain in 2nd Division.
6. Smallwood memoir, op. cit.
7. Kester memoir, courtesy of CRIBA (Centre de Recherches et d’Informations sur la Bataille des Ardennes) website, at: http://www.criba.be/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=467:give-me-the-jeep&catid=1:battle-of-the-bulge-us- army&Itemid=6
8. Kline memoir, courtesy of: http://www.indianamilitary.org/German%20PW%20Camps/Prisoner%20of%20War/PW%20Camps/Stalag%20VIII-A%20Gorlitz/John%20Kline/Kline-John.pdf
9. Berninghaus memoir, courtesy of Traces website, at: http://www.traces.org/USPOW.berninghaus.html
10. Kline memoir, op. cit.
11. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 115.
12. Berninghaus memoir, op. cit.
13. Smallwood memoir, op. cit.
14. Colonel R. Ernest Dupuy, St. Vith. Lion in the Way (Infantry Journal Press, 1949), Chapter 4, pp. 21–62. There are no complete records for the division, as those of 422nd and 423rd Infantry Regiments, and other divisional units were destroyed before capture.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Smallwood memoir, op. cit.
18. Dupuy, St. Vith. Lion in the Way, op. cit.
19. The Cub of the Golden Lion, Newsletter of the Veterans of the 106th Infantry Division.
20. Howard Peterson memoir, The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XII/1 (February 1993), p. 20.
21. Interview, ex-Leutnant Kurt Schwerdtfeger (1919–2007), at Biedenkopf, 10 December 1994. Schwerdtfeger turned twenty-five on 22 December, in the middle of the fighting. Jüttner (1908–2003) was later awarded the rare distinction of Swords to his Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, served as a colonel in the post-war Bundeswehr and died in 2003, aged ninety-five.
22. Martin memoir, courtesy of The Bulge Bugle, August 1991, pp. 15–16.
23. Allan Hall, ‘Junkies in Jackboots: Nazi Soldiers Given Highly Addictive Crystal Meth to Help Them Fight Harder and Longer’, story in the Daily Mail, 31 March 2011.
24. Dupuy, St Vith. Lion in the Way, op. cit.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. US Army Corp of Engineers, EP No. 870-1-25 ‘Interview with General William M. Hoge’, article in Engineer Memoirs (Published by US Army 1993), p. 130.
29. Dupuy, St. Vith. Lion in the Way, op. cit.
30. Ibid.
31. John Toland, Battle. The Story of the Bulge (Random House, 1959), p. 35. Charles B. MacDonald gives a slightly longer version of this conversation, though essentially the same details, from an interview with the US Signals officer, Captain Ralph G. Hill Jr, responsible for connecting the Jones–Middleton call. See A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., pp. 128–9.
32. Dupuy, St. Vith. Lion in the Way, op. cit.
33. Morelock, Generals of the Ardennes, op. cit., pp. 294–5.
34. Dupuy, St. Vith. Lion in the Way, op. cit.
35. Lieutenant David Millman, Unit History of Company ‘C’ of the 331st Medical Battalion, 106th Infantry Division (1945), NARA; unit history also courtesy of CRIBA (Centre de Recherches et d’Informations sur la Bataille des Ardennes) website, at: http://www.criba.be/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id= 347:co-qcq-331st-medical-battalion-106th-infantry-division-unit-history&catid= 1:battle-of-the-bulge-us-army&Itemid=6
36. Christianson memoir courtesy of CRIBA (Centre de Recherches et d’Informations sur la Bataille des Ardennes) website, at: http://www.criba.be/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=289:my-two-years-six-months-and-twenty-eight-days-in-world-war-ii&catid=1:battle-of-the-bulge-us-army&Itemid=6
37. 106th Division, S-3 (Operations) Signals Log, 16 December 1944, NARA.
38. Dupuy, St. Vith. Lion in the Way, op. cit.
39. Ibid.
19. They Sure Worked Those Two Horses to Death
1. Whiting, The Last Assault, op. cit., p. 55.
2. Robert E. Humphrey, Once Upon a Time in War (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), p. 25.
3. Ibid., pp. 44, 48.
4. So was I, and it is an awesome responsibility when all your soldiers are older than you are, and you have to try and shield your immaturity and inexperience of life from them.
5. Humphrey, Once Upon A Time in War, op. cit., p. 60.
6. ‘Overseas with the 99th Division’, Wallace memoir courtesy of CRIBA (Centre de Recherches et d’Informations sur la Bataille des Ardennes) website at: http://www.criba.be/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98:overseas-with-the-99th-division&catid=1:battle-of-the-bulge-us-army&Itemid=6
7. Haas memoir, courtesy of http://www.memoriesofwar.com/veterans/haas.asp
8. Humphrey, Once Upon a Time in War, op. cit., p. 60.
9. John E. McAuliffe memoir, The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XII/1 (February 1993), p. 18.
10. Howard P. Davies, United States Infantry, Europe 1942–45, Key Uniform Guide (Arms & Armour Press, 1974).
11. Humphrey, Once Upon a Time in War, op. cit., p. 63.
12. Michael Lawrence, ‘Alhambra Man Recalls Battle of the Bulge’, article in the Alhambra Source, 12 December 2013.
13. Humphrey, Once Upon a Time in War, op. cit., p. 65.
14. Ibid., p. 82.
15. Charles Roland Memoir Eisenhower Center, University of New Orleans. Among others, Neill, Infantry Soldier: Holding the Line at the Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., is another useful 99th Division memoir.
16. Pallud, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op. cit., p. 133.
17. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., p. 70.
18. Harry Levins, ‘New book gives WWII platoon its due finally’, article in St Louis Post-Dispatch, 18 December 2004. Alex Kershaw’s extremely readable The Longest Winter (Da Capo Press, 2004) is devoted to this entire episode.
19. Lieutenant-Colonel John R. Finch and Major-George J. Mordica II, ‘Miracles: A Platoon’s Heroic Stand at Lanzerath’, article in Combined Arms in Battle Since 1939 (US Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1992), p. 179; MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 177; Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., pp. 182–93; Astor, A Blood-Dimmed Tide, op. cit., pp. 479–86.
20. Haasler, MacDougall, Vosters and Weber, Duel in the Mist, vol. 2, The Leibstandarte during the Ardennes Offensive, op. cit., p. 213.
21. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., p. 50.
22. Ibid., p. 40.
23. Ibid., p. 52; The 12th SS operated in exactly the same fashion, being subdivided into four all-arms Kampfgruppen, named after their commanders, Kuhlmann, Müller, Krause and Bremer.
24. VIII Corps, G-2 Periodic Report No. 196, 30 December 1944. Box 3965, 208-2.1/RG-407, NARA.
25. See ‘An Interview with Joachim Peiper’, 7 September 1945, Foreign Military Studies, ETHINT-10/ RG-338, NARA.
26. Author’s interview with Hans Hennecke, 1981, op. cit.
27. See Case Number: 6-24 (US vs. Valentin Bersin et al.), pp. 1906–8, File Number: US011/NARA. Also cited in Danny S. Parker, Fatal Crossroads (Da Capo Press, 2012), p. 29; James J. Weingartner, Crossroads of Death (University of California Press, 1979), and the same author’s Americans, Germans, and War Crimes Justice: Law, Memory, and ‘The Good War’ (Greenwood, 2011).
28. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., p. 72.
20. ‘A 10 Per Cent Chance of Success’
1. Petrina memoir, Bulge Bugle, Vol. XIII/4 (November 1994), p. 27.
2. An Interview with Gen. Pz. Hasso von Manteuffel: Fifth Panzer Army, Nov 44–Jan 45, ETHINT-46, 29 and 31 October 1945; Answers to Questionnaire of 9 April 1946, both NARA.
3. Joseph S. Kennedy, ‘Norristown Fielded Winning WWII General George Smythe & his 47th Infantry Fought in Two Major Battles in The European Theater’, article in Philadelphia Inquirer, 5 November 1995; Lewis Sorley, Westmoreland. The General Who Lost Vietnam (Houghton Mifflin, 2011), p. 21; and US 9th Division history website, at: http://9thinfantrydivision.net/battle-history/ardennes-alsace/
4. Colonel William R. Carter USAF, ‘Air Power in the Battle of the Bulge: A Theater Campaign Perspective’, article in Airpower Journal (Winter 1989).
5. Stephen Darlow, Victory Fighters: The Veterans’ Story (Grub Street, 2005), p. 219.
6. No. 403 Squadron RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force): Operations Record Book, AIR 27/1781, The National Archives, Kew.
7. Darlow, Victory Fighters, op. cit., p. 221.
8. Sources inevitably provide different figures, but these are broadly correct.
9. Carter, ‘Air Power in the Battle of the Bulge’, op. cit.
10. Jet aircraft: 40; bombers: 55; ground-attack: 390; single-engine fighters: 1,770; twin-engine fighters: 140; Reconnaissance: 65; Total: 2,460. Frank Craven and James L. Cate (eds), The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 3, Europe: Argument to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945 (University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 673.
11. Harold R. Winton, ‘Air Power in the Battle of the Bulge: A Case for Effects-Based Operations?’, article in Journal of Military & Strategic Studies, Vol. 14/1 (Fall 2011).
12. Darlow, Victory Fighters, op. cit., p. 215.
13. Major Donna C. Nicholas, USAF and Major Albert H. Whitley, USAFR, The Role of Air Power in the Battle of the Bulge, Research Report, Air Command and Staff College Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama (April 1999); John F. Fuller, Thor’s Legions: Weather Support to the US Air Force and Army, 1937–1987 (American Meteorological Society, 1990).
14. Approximately 8,500 sorties were flown by the Ninth Air Force between 23 and 27 December 1944. The British Second Tactical Air Force, the Eighth Air Force and RAF Bomber Command accounted for the remainder of the 16,000 sorties.
15. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 522.
16. Darlow, Victory Fighters, op. cit., pp. 214–16.
17. ‘Memoires of the Battle of the Bulge’, article by W. C. Bill Armstrong, Service Battery, 263rd Field Artillery Battalion, in The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XXIII/1 (February 2004), p. 23.
18. Paul Fussell, The Boys’ Crusade (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), p. 137; Michael Schadewitz, The Meuse First and Then Antwerp: Some Aspects of Hitler’s Offensive in the Ardennes (J. J. Fedorowicz, 1999).
19. Schadewitz, The Meuse First, op. cit., p. 210.
20. Foley, Commando Extraordinary, op. cit., p. 144.
21. Kay Summersby [ghost-written Frank Kearns], Eisenhower Was My Boss (Prentice-Hall, 1948).
22. Alfred D. Chandler and Stephen E. Ambrose (eds), The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years: Vol. V (Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), pp. 175–180.
23. Pogue, Pogue’s War: Diaries of a WWII Combat Historian, op. cit., pp. 301–302.
24. After the war, Eisenhower would present Niven with a Legion of Merit for setting up the BBC Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme, a radio news and entertainment station.
25. Memoir: George Lehr, Company ‘F’/ 393rd Infantry, ‘Odyssey: A personal view of World War II’, courtesy of 99th Infantry Division Association website, at: http://99div.com/direct/odyssey_a_personal_view_of_world_war_ii+312lehr+4f6479737365793a204120706572736f6e616c2076696577206f6620576f726c6420576 172204949
26. Pallud, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op. cit., pp. 108–109.
27. George S. Patton Jr, War As I Knew It (Houghton Mifflin, 1947), p. 207.
28. Skorzeny was tried as a war criminal in 1947 for this ruse de guerre. He and nine officers of the Panzerbrigade 150 were charged with ‘improperly using American uniforms by entering into combat disguised therewith and treacherously firing upon and killing members of the US forces’. Acquitting all defendants, the military tribunal drew a distinction between using enemy uniforms during combat and for other purposes including deception. A surprise defence witness was RAF Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas, a former SOE agent, who testified that he and his operatives also wore German uniforms behind the lines.
21. Stray Bullets Whined Through the Trees Around Us
1. Dettor memoir, The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XIII/4 (November 1994), pp. 19–20.
2. Parker survived the war, retired to Florida and died aged eighty-five in September 2006; Major-General Walter E. Lauer (intro.), Battle Babies: The Story of the 99th Infantry Division (Stars and Stripes, 1945); and courtesy of MIA Project website at: http://www.miaproject.net/battlefield-relics-memorabilia/battlefield-relics/bayonet-charge/
3. Ibid.
4. Hastings, Armageddon, op. cit., p. 232; ‘Oberst Osterhold: Noble Foe, Good Friend Dies’ (11 June 2002), 99th Infantry Division Association website at: http://99div.com/olddirect/oberst_osterhold_noble_foe_good_friend_dies+03osterhold+4f6265727374204f73746572686f6c643a204e6f626c6520666f652c20676f6f64206672696 56e642064696573
5. Walter memoir, courtesy of Historynet.com website, at: http://www.historynet.com/robert-walter-recalls-his-baptism-of-fire-during-the-battle-of-the-bulge.htm
6. Ingraham memoir, op. cit.
7. Walter memoir, op. cit.
8. Dettor memoir, op. cit.
9. Roger V. Foehringer (1924–2006) memoir courtesy of http://www.faehrtensucher.com/ardennen-1944-1945/persönliche-geschichten/roger-foehringer/; obituary at: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-12-17/news/0612170145_1_roger-prospect-heights-late
10. Ibid.
11. Wallace memoir, courtesy of CRIBA(Centre de Recherches et d’Informations sur la Bataille des Ardennes) website, op. cit.
12. Lauer, Battle Babies: The Story of the 99th Infantry Division, op. cit.
13. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., pp. 658–9. The figure of 1,250,000 American rounds fired during the Battle of the Bulge sounds suspiciously low. Allied artillery was capable of firing this quantity over a week in 1916 and during a twenty-four-hour period by 1918.
14. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., Chapter VI: ‘The German Northern Shoulder Is Jammed’.
15. William C. C. Cavanagh, The Battle East of Elsenborn: The First US Army at the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944 (Pen and Sword, 2004) pp. 87–8; Hubert Meyer, The 12th SS: The History of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division, Vol. 2 (Stackpole, 2005), p. 252.
16. Meyer, The 12th SS: History of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division, Vol. 2, op. cit., pp. 253–4.
17. Ibid., p. 254.
18. Douglas Martin, ‘Vernon McGarity, Dies at 91, War Hero; Fought in the Battle of the Bulge’, article in New York Times, 23 May 2013.
19. Ibid., p. 255.
20. Cited in Brigadier Sir James Edmonds, Official History of the [First World] War, Operations in Italy 1915–1919 (HMSO, 1949), p. 218.
21. MacDonald, Company Commander, op. cit., p. 97.
22. Ibid., p. 101.
23. Ibid.
24. Memoir, The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XII/1 (February 1993), p. 17.
25. MacDonald, Company Commander, op. cit., p. 102.
26. Kiss memoir, The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XII/1 (February 1993), p. 17.
27. Ibid., p. 18.
28. MacDonald, Company Commander, op. cit., p. 104.
29. Cavanagh, The Battle East of Elsenborn, op. cit., p. 95.
30. MacDonald, Company Commander, op. cit., p. 105.
31. Yeide, Steel Victory, op. cit., pp. 195–7.
32. Kiss memoir, op. cit.
33. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., Chapter VI: ‘The German Northern Shoulder Is Jammed’.
34. MacDonald, Company Commander, op. cit., p. 111.
35. Adam Bernstein, ‘Medal of Honor Winner Jose M. Lopez Dies at 94’, article in Washington Post, 18 May 2005.
36. MacDonald, Company Commander, op. cit., p. 113.
22. The Conference
1. Not Zondhoven (there is no such place), as is often inaccurately reported; Bigland, Bigland’s War, op. cit., p. 80.
2. D. K. R. Crosswell, Beetle. The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith (University Press of Kentucky, 2010), p. 807.
3. Captain Harry C. Butcher, My Three Years With Eisenhower (William Heinemann, 1946), p. 611.
4. The Pavillon Henri IV, built on the ruins of the Château Neuf of King Henri IV, was a historic place, where Louis XIV was born and had spent his youth and where his father, Louis XIII, had died.
5. And one of Napoleon’s mistresses.
6. G. E. Patrick Murray, ‘Eisenhower as Ground-Forces Commander: The British Viewpoint’, article in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 97/4.
7. Crosswell, Beetle. The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith, op. cit., p. 808.
8. D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, op. cit.
9. Patton, War As I Knew It, op. cit., p. 178.
10. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 240.
11. Annan, Changing Enemies, op. cit., pp. 115–16.
12. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., pp. 188–9.
13. Bradley and Blair, A General’s Life, op. cit., p. 395.
14. Cole C. Kingseed, Old Glory Stories: American Combat Leadership in World War II (Naval Institute Press, 2006), p. 89; Morelock, Generals of the Ardennes, op. cit., p. 154.
15. Thomas R. Stone, ‘General William Hood Simpson: Unsung Commander of the US Ninth Army’, article in Parameters Vol. XII/2 (February 1980).
16. Ibid.
17. On 22 September 1950, Bradley was promoted to General of the Army, to date the last US commander to achieve that rank.
18. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 172.
19. Annan, Changing Enemies, op. cit., pp. 116–17.
20. Crosswell, Beetle, op. cit., p. 740.
21. Timothy M. Gay, Assignment to Hell. The War Against Nazi Germany with Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A.J. Liebling, Homer Bigart and Hal Boyle (NAL Caibre, 2012), pp. 421–2; Walter Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life (Knopf, 1996), p. 121.
22. Cronkite, ibid.
23. T. Michael Booth and Duncan Spencer, Paratrooper. The Life of Gen. James M. Gavin (Simon & Schuster 1994).
24. Major-General Anthony McAuliffe assumed command of the 103rd Infantry Division on 15 January 1945.
25. Eduardo Peniche (retired Professor of Spanish at Lone Star College, Kingwood, Texas) memoir courtesy of Lone Star College System website, at: http://www.lonestar.edu/library/kin_Peniche.htm
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Colley, The Road to Victory, op. cit., pp. 190–92.
29. Ibid., pp. 190–91.
30. McAuliffe memoir, The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XII/1 (February 1993), p. 19.
31. Author’s interview with T/Sergeant Gilbert T. Gouveia, Company ‘G’, 333rd Infantry Regiment, Hotel Zur Post, St Vith, 17 December 1994.
32. Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1992), pp. 47–8.
23. The Tortoise Has Thrust His Head Out Very Far
1. Patton, War As I Knew It, op. cit., p. 190.
2. Ibid., pp. 190–191; Chandler and Ambrose (eds), The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Vol. V, op. cit., pp. 175–6.
3. Crosswell, Beetle, op. cit., pp. 810–14.
4. Major William C. Sylvan and Captain Francis G. Smith Jr (eds), Normandy to Victory: The War Diary of General Courtney H. Hodges and the First US Army (University Press of Kentucky, 2008),
5. Morelock, Generals of the Ardennes, op. cit., p. 180.
6. John A. Adams, The Battle for Western Europe, Fall 1944: An Operational Assessment (Indiana University Press, 2010), p. 159.
7. Bigland, Bigland’s War, op. cit., p. 81.
8. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 245.
9. Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke (eds Danchev and Todman), War Diaries 1939–1945 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), p. 636.
10. Ibid.
11. Front page, Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Tuesday, 19 December 1944.
12. Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, 19 December 1944.
13. Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters 1939–45 (Collins, 1967), p. 423.
14. The Times, Tuesday, 19 December 1944.
15. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. VI, Triumph and Tragedy (Cassell, 1954), p. 240. Alanbrooke, War Diaries, op. cit., p. 636.
16. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. VI, op. cit., p. 241; Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower, op. cit., p. 621.
17. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, p. 424.
18. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. VI, op. cit., p. 240.
19. H. G. Nicholas (ed.) Washington Weekly Despatches 1941–1945. Weekly Political Reports from the British Embassy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981), pp. 486–7.
20. Patton, War As I Knew It, op. cit., p. 190.
21. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. I: The Gathering Storm (Cassell, 1948).
22. Patton, War As I Knew It, op. cit., p. 191.
23. Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower, op. cit., pp. 618–19.
24. Alanbrooke, War Diaries, op. cit., p. 637.
25. Russell F. Weighley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants (Indiana University Press, 1981), p. 615.
24. A Pint of Sweat and a Gallon of Blood
1. Babcock, War Stories: Utah Beach to Plieku, op. cit., pp. 341–7.
2. 70th Tank Battalion AAR – Yeide, Steel Victory, op. cit., p. 202.
3. Ibid., pp. 202–203.
4. Gaul, Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II: The Americans, op. cit., p. 140.
5. Interview with Generalmajor Franz Sensfuss, 10 April 1946, MS A-930, NARA, pp. 4 and 6.
6. Marvin Jensen, Strike Swiftly. The 70th Tank Battalion from North Africa to Normandy to Germany (Presidio, 1997), pp. 266–7.
7. General J. Lawton Collins, Lightning Joe: An Autobiography (Louisiana State University Press, 1979), p. 294.
8. Frankel and Smith, Patton’s Best, op. cit., pp. 133–4.
9. Author’s interview Horace R. Bennett, 17 December 1994, St Vith, Belgium.
10. Gaul, Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II, op. cit., p. 81.
11. Eugene Patterson, Patton’s Unsung Armour of the Ardennes. The Tenth Armored Division’s Secret Dash to Bastogne (Xlibris, 2008), pp. 24–5.
12. Correspondence in 1994 with Lieutenant-Colonel Haynes W. Dugan (1913–2007) of Shreveport, Louisiana, Assistant G-2 and Publicity Officer at US 3rd Armored Division 1941–5. See also website at: http://3ad.com/history/wwll/dugan.pages/articles.pages/patton.htm
13. Jensen, Strike Swiftly, op. cit., pp. 270–71.
14. Cooper, Death Traps, op. cit., p. 166.
15. Patterson, Patton’s Unsung Armour, op. cit., p. 35.
16. Ibid., p. 28.
17. Ibid., p. 39.
18. Ibid., p. 53.
19. Correspondence with Mr Belton Y. Cooper (1917–2007) of Birmingham, Alabama, in October–December 1994 and his book, Death Traps, op. cit., p. 165.
20. Ibid., p. 166.
21. Correspondence with Mr Belton Y. Cooper, op. cit.
22. Ray Moore, Terrify and Destroy. The Story of the 10th Armored Division (printed in Paris, 1945), p. 3.
23. Patterson, Patton’s Unsung Armour, op. cit., pp. 55–6.
24. The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XIV/2 (May 1995), p. 18.
25. After Action Report, 61st Armored Infantry Battalion, 10th Armored Divison, Nov 44 thru May 45 (US Army Combined Arms Research Library (CARL), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas).
26. Gaul, Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II, op. cit., pp. 123–4; Roger Shinn, Wars and Rumours of Wars (Abingdon Press, 1972), p. 30.
27. Gaul, Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II, op. cit., p. 133.
28. Ibid., pp. 125–6.
29. Shinn, Wars and Rumours of Wars, op. cit., pp. 43–4.
30. Ibid., p. 44.
31. Interview with Generalmajor Franz Sensfuss, op. cit., p. 6.
32. Christian Hartmann, Halder: Generalstabschef Hitlers, 1938–1942 (Schöningh, 2010), p. 331. Cited in Neitzel and Welzer, Soldaten, op. cit., p. 280.
33. Interview with Generalmajor Franz Sensfuss, op. cit., p. 5.
25. A Man Can Make a Difference
1. Egger and Otts, G Company’s War, op. cit., p. 99.
2. Gaul, Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II, op. cit., p. 136.
3. Graham Smith, The Mighty Eighth in the Second World War (Countryside Books, 2001), pp. 237–40.
4. Jensen, Strike Swiftly, op. cit., pp. 273–4.
5. Gaul, Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II, op. cit., p. 137.
6. Egger and Otts, G Company’s War op. cit., pp. 102–3.
7. Jensen, Strike Swiftly, op. cit., p. 268.
8. Egger and Otts, G Company’s War, op. cit., pp. 108–9.
9. I have found the same. Inevitably I found my own letters home from Sarajevo or Iraq could never reflect the reality of military operations, and I practised self-censorship.
10. Jensen, Strike Swiftly, op. cit., p. 284.
11. The US 75th Infantry Division also reported cases of dysentery, jaundice and pneumonia.
12. Egger and Otts, G Company’s War, op. cit., p. 110.
13. Interview with Generalmajor Franz Sensfuss, op. cit., p. 6.
14. Thomas M. Hatfield, Rudder: From Leader to Legend (Texas A & M University Press, 2011), p. 225.
15. Gaul, Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, Vol. II, op. cit., pp. 107–8.
16. Ibid., Chapter 12.
17. Michael Weaver, Guard Wars: The 28th Infantry Division in World War II (Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 235–6.
18. Captain Harry M. Kemp, The Operations of the 3rd Battalion, 109th Infantry (28th Infantry Division) in the vicinity of Diekirch, Luxembourg, 16 December–23 December 1944 (Personal Experience of a Battalion Executive Officer, Advanced Infantry Officers Course, The Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia, 1949–50).
19. Dupuy, Bongard, and Anderson, Hitler’s Last Gamble, op. cit., Chapter 7.
20. Major Embert A. Fossum, The Operations of Task Force ‘L’, 109th Infantry (28th Infantry Division) near Grosbous, Luxembourg, 20–23 December 1944 (Personal Experience of a Task Force Commander, Advanced Infantry Officers Course, Fort Benning, Georgia, 1948–9); Hatfield, Rudder: From Leader to Legend, op. cit., p. 233.
21. Ibid., pp. 236–7.
22. Fossum (1917–77) went on to fight in Korea, retired as a colonel, and become Professor of Military Science at the University of Oregon.
23. Weaver, Guard Wars, op. cit., p. 240.
26. No More Zig-Zig in Paris
1. The Traveller’s Guide Through Belgium, Or [A] New and Complete Geographical, Historical, and Picturesque Account of That Country With Information on Its Curiosities, Antiquities and Customs, Best Hotels, Etc. Etc., A Detailed Description of All Objects Worthy of Notice, And Principal Roads To Holland (Wahlen, 1833), pp. 213–14.
2. Don Addor, Noville Outpost to Bastogne: My Last Battle (Trafford, 2004), pp. 5–7.
3. Michael Collins and Martin King, The Tigers of Bastogne: Voices of the 10th Armored Division in the Battle of the Bulge (Casemate, 2013), p. 65.
4. Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., pp. 189–91; 335 and 367.
5. Tolhurst, Battleground Europe: Bastogne, op. cit., p. 70.
6. Ibid., p. 64.
7. Collins and King, The Tigers of Bastogne, op. cit., p. 64.
8. Addor, Noville Outpost to Bastogne, op. cit., pp. 10–11.
9. Ibid., p. 18.
10. F. Phillips, To Save Bastogne (Stein and Day, 1983), p. 160.
11. Tolhurst, Battleground Europe: Bastogne, op. cit., p. 44.
12. Alice M. Flynn, Unforgettable: The Biography of Captain Thomas J. Flynn (Blue Sky Publishing, 2011), pp. 90–108.
13. Tolhurst, Battleground Europe: Bastogne, op. cit., p. 46.
14. Collins and King, The Tigers of Bastogne, op. cit., p. 67.
15. Ibid., p. 83.
16. Ibid., p. 67.
17. Courtesy of Skylighters (website of the 225th AAA Searchlight Battalion from Omaha Beach to V-E Day), at http://www.skylighters.org/xmas2002/index3.html
18. Donald R. Burgett, Seven Roads to Hell: A Screaming Eagle at Bastogne (Presidio Press, 1999).
19. Ibid., p. 47.
20. Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers: From Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 179.
21. Ibid., p. 180.
22. Burgett, Seven Roads to Hell, op. cit., pp. 44–6.
23. An Interview with Gen. Pz. Hasso von Manteuffel: Fifth Panzer Army, Nov 44–Jan 45, ETHINT-46, 29 and 31 October 1945; Answers to Questionnaire of 9 April 1946, both NARA.
24. ‘28th Signal Company in the Bulge’, Robert W. Eichner memoir, courtesy of Battle of the Bulge Memories website, at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5F1NKKLGgCQJ:www.battleofthebulgememories.be/stories26/ 32-battle-of-the-bulge-us-army/737–28th-signal-company-in-the-bulge.html+ &cd=40&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
25. Kurowski, Elite Panzer Strike Force, op. cit., pp. 173–4.
26. Eichner memoir, op. cit.
27. Ibid.
28. Max L. Noe memoir, courtesy of The Military Order of the Purple Heart, Texas Capital Chapter 1919, Austin, Texas. Webpage at: http://webcache.googleuser content.com/search?q=cache:wnCetuyBwE0J:www.purpleheartaustin.org/noe.htm+&cd=34&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
29. Christer Bergström, The Ardennes 1944–1945: Hitler’s Winter Offensive (Bergstrom, 2014).
30. Patterson, Patton’s Unsung Armour of the Ardennes, op. cit., pp. 58–9.
31. John A. Foley (1915–2001) memoir, courtesy of his son Jack and the bloody- bucket.be website, at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:g Wrdm6GXIZAJ:www.bloodybucket.be/johnafoleybis.htm+&cd=32&hl=en&ct= clnk&gl=uk
32. Kurowski, Elite Panzer Strike Force, op. cit., pp. 176–7.
33. A US Army Field Hospital was a small, mobile unit of just over 200 personnel, which included 13 physicians, 3 dental officers, 5 medical administrative officers, 18 nurses, 183 enlisted men, a chaplain and two Red Cross workers. Specialised surgeons, nurses and technicians were assigned as necessary. The outfit was subdivided into a headquarters and three smaller units, known as platoons or detachments, each equipped to serve as an independent mini-hospital. Most patients were those who were too severely wounded to withstand an ambulance ride further back. Much time was spent in moving, usually at night under blackout conditions, and field hospitals were based where possible in large stone buildings, such as schools or factories.
34. The Château de Wiltz is today a wonderful luxury hotel, where a stay is highly recommended. Wiltz was also headquarters of the 103rd Medical Battalion, which supported Cota’s 28th Infantry Division.
35. Dr John W. Fague, ‘A Combat Nurse in the Bulge’, article in the News Chronicle of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, 12 July 2002; article in The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XXIII/1 (February 2004), p. 10.
27. The Hole In The Doughnut
1. Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War (original edition 1947; new edition, University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), p. 9.
2. Majors D. N. Charles, T. J. Camp, I. R. Fielder, W. H. Moore and G. W. C. Waddell, The Effects of Isolation on Small, Dispersed Groups of Men on the Battlefield (Group Research Project, 24 Army Command & Staff Course, 1990).
3. Phillips, To Save Bastogne, op. cit., p. 148.
4. John Davis with Anne Riffenburgh, Up Close: A Scout’s Story From the Battle of the Bulge to the Siegfried Line (Merriam Press, 2008), p. 86.
5. Egger and Otts, G Company’s War, op. cit., p. 101.
6. Davis, Frozen Rainbows, op. cit., p. 213.
7. Neill, Infantry Soldier. Holding the Line at the Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., pp. 251–2.
8. General Matthew B. Ridgway and Harold H. Martin, Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway as told to Harold H. Martin (Harper, 1956); and see Ralph Storm, ‘Medics in the Bulge’, article in The Bulge Bugle, Vol. XXIII/1 (February 2004), p. 9.
9. Robert M. Bowen served in the 1st Battalion of the 401st Glider Infantry Regiment, which acted as a divisional reserve battalion from D-Day onwards. Courtesy of Skylighters website, op. cit., at http://www.skylighters.org/xmas2002/index7.html
10. Burgett, Seven Roads to Hell, op. cit., pp. 64–5.
11. Major General R. W. Grow (Intro.), Brest to Bastogne: The Story of the 6th Armored Division (Stars & Stripes, Information and Education Division, Special and Information Services, ETOUSA, Paris, c. 1945), p. 1.
12. Charles McMoran Wilson (Lord Moran), The Anatomy of Courage (Constable, 1945).
13. Neill, Infantry Soldier, op. cit., p. 237.
14. Courtesy of Syiek family archives at http://www.syiek.com/bastogne/
15. Including Hugh Cole, Charles B. MacDonald and John S. D. Eisenhower.
16. Courtesy of http://www.lonestar.edu/library/kin_Peniche.htm
17. Collins and King, The Tigers of Bastogne, op. cit., pp. 89–90; personal interviews in Wardin, December 1989.
18. Addor, Noville Outpost to Bastogne, op. cit., p. 19.
19. Ambrose, Band of Brothers, op. cit., p. 180; Burgett, Seven Roads to Hell, op. cit., p. 60.
20. Addor, Noville Outpost to Bastogne, op. cit., p. 24.
21. Ibid., p. 49.
22. Guy Franz Arend, Bastogne: A Chronology of the Battle for Bastogne with Comments (Bastogne Historical Center, 1987), pp. 125–33.
23. Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., pp. 101–103.
24. Courtesy of Colonel Emile Engels; the Bastogne Historical Center; and website at: http://www.blackfive.net/main/2013/12/band-of-brothers-nurse-augusta-chiwy-someone-you-should-know.html
25. Arend, Bastogne, op. cit., p. 139.
28. Nuts!
1. Torsten Ove, ‘The Next Page: Soldiers’ Honor Restored: The Wereth 11 of WWII’, article in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 7 November 2010; Rodney Cress, ‘Remembering the Wereth 11 and Black GIs’, article in Salisbury Post (North Carolina), 10 November 2013; Jim Michaels, ‘Emerging from History: Massacre of 11 Black Soldiers’, article in USA Today, 8 November 2013. In 2010, Robert Child directed a documentary, The Wereth Eleven, narrating the story of the eleven African American soldiers murdered by SS during the Battle of the Bulge.
2. An Interview with Gen. Pz. Hasso von Manteuffel: Fifth Panzer Army, Nov 44–Jan 45, ETHINT-46, 29 and 31 October 1945, NARA.
3. Arend, Bastogne, op. cit., pp. 152–5.
4. Ibid., pp. 159–60.
5. McAuliffe’s whole life became defined by the ‘Nuts!’ comment. His performance in the Bulge earned him a Distinguished Service Cross and command of the 103rd Infantry Division. He was a later commander in Europe and Korea and retired from the US Army as a full general in 1956, dying in 1975. Kinnard commanded the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in Vietnam and died in 2009. See his obituary in the New York Times, 10 January 2009. My interview with General Kinnard was in May 1984, just before the fortieth anniversary of D-Day. See transcript of interview with Lieutenant-General (retired) H. W. O. Kinnard on PBS documentary The American Experience: ‘Vets Remember: A colonel in the 101st airborne, H.W.O. Kinnard, discusses surrender’, at website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/bonus-video/bulge-vets-kinnard/
6. Interview by author, St Vith, December 1994.
7. 420th Armored Field Artillery AAR, 26 December 1944, NARA.
8. Colonel Ralph M. Mitchell, The 101st Airborne Division’s Defense of Bastogne (Combat Studies Institute, 1986).
9. Ibid.
10. Standing for ‘Situation Normal, All F****d Up.’
11. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., p. 479.
12. Pallud, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op. cit., p. 345; Arend, Bastogne, op. cit., p. 215.
13. Frankel and Smith, Patton’s Best, op. cit., p. 41.
14. Professor A. Harding Ganz, ‘Breakthrough to Bastogne’, article in Leadership Handbook for the Armor Officer: Thoughts on Leadership (US Armor School, Fort Knox, Kentucky, 1986), pp. 2–44 to 2–58; Cavanagh, A Tour of the Bulge Battlefield, op. cit., pp. 151–5.
15. Courtesy of Kenneth Koyen, ‘Combat Photographer Robert Capa and the Battle of the Bulge’, article in History of Photography, Vol. 25/4 (Winter 2001). Capa was killed on 25 May 1954 covering the war in Indochina.
16. Collins and King, The Tigers of Bastogne, op. cit., p. 212.
17. Mitchell, The 101st Airborne Division’s Defense of Bastogne, op. cit.; Arend, Bastogne, op. cit., p. 244.
18. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., pp. 416–17.
19. Ralph Ingersoll, Top Secret (Harcourt, Brace, 1946).
20. Cavanagh, A Tour of the Bulge Battlefield, op. cit., pp. 147–8; Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., pp. 372–3.
29. Head For the Meuse!
1. Guderian, From Normandy to the Ruhr, op. cit., pp. 302–10.
2. Ibid., p. 310.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 317.
5. Ibid., pp. 317–18; 321.
6. Ibid., p. 320.
7. Ibid., pp. 321 and 317.
8. Harold P. Limbaugh and John D. Campbell, The Men of Company K (William Morrow and Co., 1985), p. 130.
9. Nigel de Lee, Voices From the Battle of the Bulge (David & Charles, 2004), p. 202.
10. Guderian, From Normandy to the Ruhr, op. cit. p. 323.
11. Behrens survived being taken prisoner in late February 1945. Interview courtesy of Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, Catalogue #14228, interviewed 10 June 1994.
12. Limbaugh and Campbell, The Men of Company K, op. cit., pp. 131–2.
13. Guderian, From Normandy to the Ruhr, op. cit., p. 325.
14. Limbaugh and Campbell, The Men of Company K, op. cit., pp. 133–4.
15. Denise Goolsby, ‘Bomber Kept Busy in Battle of the Bulge’, article in the Desert Sun, California, 17 December 2010, courtesy of website at: http://archive.desertsun.com/article/20101218/NEWS13/12180304/Bomber-kept-busy-Battle-Bulge
16. Guderian, From Normandy to the Ruhr, op. cit., p. 330.
17. Goolsby, ‘Bomber Kept Busy in Battle of the Bulge’, op. cit.
18. Kurowski, Elite Panzer Strike Force, op. cit., pp. 183–5.
19. Ibid., p. 186.
20. Ibid., p. 187.
21. Lieutenant Leonard R. Carpenter, On the Counter-Reconnaissance Screen, 23–24 December 1944: The Defense of Marche’s area (Statement to T/5 Jack Shank, Historical Section 84th Infantry Division) NARA.
22. Author’s interview with Oberst (retd) Gerhardt Tebbe, Münster, Germany, May 1984.
23. Limbaugh and Campbell, The Men of Company K, op. cit., pp. 135–41. Also see Railsplitters, a small booklet, introduced by Major-General Bolling, covering the history of the 84th Infantry Division, published (Stars & Stripes, Paris, 1945).
24. Author’s interview with Oberst (retd) Gerhardt Tebbe, op. cit.
25. Limbaugh and Campbell, The Men of Company K, op. cit., p. 143.
26. Ibid., pp. 148–9.
27. Cavanagh, A Tour of the Bulge Battlefield, op. cit., pp. 191–4.
28. An Interview with Gen. Pz. Hasso von Manteuffel: Fifth Panzer Army, Nov 44–Jan 45, ETHINT-46, 29 and 31 October 1945, NARA.
29. Noël Bell, From the Beaches to the Baltic: The Story of the G Company, 8th Battalion, the Rifle Brigade During the Campaign in North-west Europe (Gale & Polden, 1947).
30. Pallud, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op. cit., p. 352.
31. MSS # A-939 (General der Panzertruppen Heinrich von Lüttwitz), The Assignment of the XLVII Panzer Corps in the Ardennes 1944–1945 and B-456 (Oberstleutnant Rüdiger Weiz), 2nd Panzer Division, 21–26 December 1944, both at NARA.
32. Bell, From the Beaches to the Baltic, op. cit.
33. General James Gavin, On to Berlin (Viking, 1978), p. 249.
34. Author’s interview with Misch in 1993 at his home in Rudow, south Berlin.
35. Bell, From the Beaches to the Baltic, op. cit.
36. Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., p. 254.
37. Kurowski, Elite Panzer Strike Force, op. cit., p. 188.
38. Guderian, From Normandy to the Ruhr, op. cit., pp. 337–8.
39. Ibid., pp. 337–9.
30. The River of Humiliation
1. Author interview with Pete House, St Vith, 17 December, 1994. Also: ‘My experiences during the Battle of the Bulge’, memoir courtesy of website at: http://www.indianamilitary.org/German%20PW%20Camps/Prisoner%20of%20War/PW%20Camps/Stalag%20IX-B%20Bad%20Orb/Pete%20House/Experiences/Experiences.htm
2. Kline memoir, courtesy of website at: http://home.planet.nl/~wijer037/bulge/forms/the%20106th%20infantry/John%20Kline.htm
3. Author interview with John A. Swett, St Vith, 17 December 1994. Also: memoir, courtesy of Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge website, at http://www.veteran softhebattleofthebulge.org/2012/04/17/john-a-swett-106th-infantry-division-army- history/
4. Hal Richard Taylor, A Teen’s War . . . Training, Combat, Capture (1st Books Library, 1999), p. 112. Taylor (1925–2010) retired as Director of Public Affairs from the US Department of Agriculture in 1980 after a career that included work at four universities and for a special project in communication. Then he became an international consultant and secretary-treasurer of the Agricultural Communicators in Education (ACE).
5. Humphrey, Once Upon a Time in War, op. cit., p. 122.
6. Swett interview and memoir, op. cit.
7. Kline memoir, op. cit.
8. Pete House interview and memoir, op. cit.
9. Captured German letter home, dated 24 December 1944, quoted in Twenty-First Army Group Psychological Warfare Summary, January 1945. Cited in Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 313.
10. Taylor, A Teen’s War, op. cit., p. 115.
11. Ibid., pp. 117–18.
12. Marilyn Estes Quigley, Hell Frozen Over: The Battle of the Bulge (AuthorHouse, 2004), p. 90.
13. Ibid., pp. 87–8.
14. Kline memoir, op. cit.
15. Ibid., p. 121.
16. Pete House interview and memoir, op. cit.
17. Taylor, A Teen’s War, op. cit., p. 123.
18. Nelson memoir, courtesy of website at: http://www.battleofthebulgememories.be/en/stories/us-army/698-interview-with-willard-nelson-422nd-inf-regt.html
19. Colonel Charles C. ‘Moe’ Cavender, ‘The 423rd in The Bulge’, article in The Cub (newsletter of the 106th Division), Vol. 3, No. 4 (November 1946). See also http://www.106thinfdivassn.org/the423.html
20. Kline memoir, op. cit.
21. Pete House interview and memoir, op. cit.
22. Taylor, A Teen’s War, op. cit., p. 124
23. Ibid.
24. Charles J. Shields, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life (Henry Holt, 2011), pp. 57–9; Ervin E. Szpek and Frank J. Idzikowski, Shadows of Slaughterhouse Five. Recollections and Reflections of the American Ex-POWs of Schlachthof Fünf (iUniverse, 2008), Chapter 4, pp. 78–138.
25. Dupuy, St. Vith: Lion in the Way, op. cit., pp. 148–9.
26. Captured letter home, dated 24 December 1944, quoted in Twenty-First Army Group Psychological Warfare Summary, January 1945. Cited in Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 314.
27. Bruce Watson, When Soldiers Quit: Studies in Military Disintegration (Praeger, 1997), Chapter 6: Surrender: Disintegration of a Division, December 1944, pp. 90–110.
28. Wojtusik memoir: Joseph Andrew Lee, ‘POW Recalls Battle of the Bulge’, article in On Patrol (Magazine of the USO – United Service Organizations), 7 January 2011.
29. Nelson memoir, op. cit.
30. Quigley, Hell Frozen Over, op. cit., pp. 101–102.
31. Setter memoir, courtesy of The Bulge Bugle, Vol. X/4 (November 1991), p. 10.
32. Edward L. Bohde memoir ‘The Way It Was’, courtesy of Pegasus Archive website at: http://www.pegasusarchive.org/pow/edward_bohde.htm
33. Quigley, Hell Frozen Over, op. cit., p. 102.
34. Wojtusik memoir, op. cit.
35. Swett interview and memoir, op. cit.
36. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., pp. 291–4; Pallud, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op. cit., pp. 197–200; Cavanagh, A Tour of the Bulge Battlefield, op. cit., pp. 119–22; Whiting, The Last Assault, op. cit., pp. 133–9; Colonel Thomas P. Kelly, Jr, The Fightin’ 589th (1st Book Library, 2001); Dupuy, St. Vith: Lion in the Way, op. cit., pp. 133–7; Joseph Martin Giarrusso, Against All Odds. The Story of the 106th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge (Master of Arts Thesis, San Jose State University, December 1998); Major P. J. St Laurent, Major C. L. Crow, Major J. S. Everette, Major G. Fontenot and Major R. V. Hester, The Battle of St Vith, Defense and Withdrawal by Encircled Forces. German 5th & 6th Panzer Armies versus US 7th Armored Division and Attachments, 17–23 December 1944 (Report, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1984); Quigley, Hell Frozen Over, op. cit., Chapter 5, pp. 87–105; Frank L. Andrews, The Defense of St Vith in the Battle of the Ardennes December, 1944 (Master of Arts Dissertation New York University, February 1964). Andrews fought and was captured at St Vith as a member of the 168th Engineer Combat Battalion.
37. Taylor, A Teen’s War, op. cit., p. 127.
38. Captured German diary quoted in First Canadian Army Intelligence Summary, 30 January 1945. Cited in Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., p. 316; William Donohue Ellis and Thomas J. Cunningham, Jr, Clarke of St. Vith. The Sergeants’ General (Dillon/Liederbach, 1974), p. 113.
39. Quigley, Hell Frozen Over, op. cit., p. 105.
40. Green and Brown, War Stories of the Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., pp. 87–8.
41. Taylor, A Teen’s War, op. cit., p. 127.
42. Pete House interview and memoir, op. cit.
43. Bruns was sentenced to death on 20 April 1945. Headquarters, First US Army, Case Notes of United States v. Hauptmann Kurt Bruns, Office of the Staff Judge Advocate, 20 April 1945, declassified 1 March 1948, NARA.
44. Kline memoir, op. cit.
45. Earl S. Parker, Memoirs of a Tour of Duty: WWII in Europe (1stBooks, 2001), p. 33.
46. Captured letter home dated 22 December 1944, quoted in US 101st Airborne Division G-2 Report, January 1945, cited in Shulman, Defeat in the West, op. cit., pp. 313–14.
47. PFC Lehman Malone Wilson of the 82nd Airborne lies in the Springfield National Cemetery, Missouri, with a date of death recorded as 29 January 1945.
48. Dupuy, St. Vith. Lion in the Way, op. cit., pp. 150–54.
49. Captain Alan W. Jones, Jr, Operations of the 423rd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division, in the vicinity of Schönberg, Germany, during the Battle of the Ardennes, 16–19 December 1944 (Personal Experiences of a Battalion Operations Officer, Advanced Infantry Officer’s Class No. 1, 1949–1950, The Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia). Jones’s father, commanding the 106th, was felled by a heart attack in the first week of battle, his stress being compounded by the news that Alan, Jr, was listed as missing in action; it was some time before news arrived that he was a POW. The Divisional XO, Brigadier-General Perrin, took over until 7 February, when he was replaced by Major-General Donald Stroh. After St Vith was retaken, the 424th Infantry and 591st and 592nd Field Artillery Battalions saw combat for another two months, fighting their way back into Germany.
50. Oberstleutnant Dietrich Moll, 18th Volksgrenadier Division (1 Sept. 1944–25 Jan 1945), Foreign Military Study B-688, Historical Division, USAEUR, now at NARA.
51. US 90th Divisional History, January–March 1945, ‘The Ardennes’.
31. Roadblocks
1. Jacqueline and Bob de Ruyter, Ardennen Poteau ’44 Battlefield Guide. The museum’s website is at: www.museum-poteau44.be
2. Jack Belden ‘Retreat in Belgium’, in Samuel Hynes, Anne Matthews and Nancy Caldwell Sorel, Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938–1946 (Library of America, 2001), pp. 596–9.
3. Ellis, Clarke of St. Vith, op. cit., pp. 96–7.
4. Belden, ‘Retreat in Belgium’, op. cit.
5 Andrews, The Defense of St Vith, op cit., pp. 77–8.
6. Major Donald P. Boyer, Jr, Narrative Account of the Action of the 38th Armored Infantry Battalion at St Vith, 17–22 December, 1944, NARA.
7. Bruce C. Clarke memoir, Combined Arms Research Library.
8. Gavin, On to Berlin, op. cit., p. 229.
9. Ibid., pp. 232–3; 237.
10. Pogue, The Supreme Command, op, cit., Appendix ‘F’, Orders of the Day, p. 547.
11. Gavin, On to Berlin, op. cit., pp. 238–9.
12. Pogue, Pogue’s War, op. cit., p. 303.
13. Captured German diary quoted in First Canadian Army Intelligence Summary, 30 January 1945, op. cit.
14. Ellis, Clarke of St Vith, op. cit., p. 135.
15. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, op. cit., pp. 462–5.
16. Gavin, On to Berlin, op. cit., pp. 243–4.
17. Sergeant First Class (retired) Richard Raymond III, ‘Parker’s Crossroads: The Alamo Defence’, article in Field Artillery (August 1993).
18. Reusch memoir, op. cit.
19. Gavin, On to Berlin, op. cit., p. 235.
20. Reusch memoir, op. cit.
21. Pierson memoir, courtesy of Battle of the Bulge memories website, at: http://www.battleofthebulgememories.be/en/stories/us-army/659-parkers-crossroads.html
22. Gavin, On to Berlin, p. 235.
23. George Winter, Manhay. The Ardennes. Christmas 1944 (Fedorwicz, 1989), p. 17.
24. Reusch memoir, op. cit.
25. George Winter, Manhay, op. cit.
26. Michael Connelly, The Mortarmen (Trafford, 2005), p. 150.
27. Connelly, The Mortarmen, op. cit., pp. 143–53; William B. Breuer, Bloody Clash at Sadzot, op. cit.
32. Malmedy
This chapter was inspired by the series of battlefield staff rides (named ‘Exercise Pied Peiper’) researched by Major-General Mike Reynolds in the 1970s, when he was a battalion commander with British forces stationed in Germany. The result of General Reynolds’ work has been several books and the battlefield tours, still practised by the British Army today, which not only investigate US and German tactics but leadership issues as well.
1. Courtesy of Hans Wijers. http://home.planet.nl/~wijer037/bulge/forms/Fallschirmjager.htm
2. Pallud, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op. cit., p. 135.
3. Wallace memoir, courtesy of CRIBA (Centre de Recherches et d’Informations sur la Bataille des Ardennes) website, op. cit.
4. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., p. 77.
5 Leutnant Manfred Rottenberg is buried at the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK-German War Graves Commission Cemetery) at Lommel, Belgium, among 32,331 identified and 6,221 unidentified other graves from the Second World War.
6. Don Smart, Company ‘B’, 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion: Action at Honsfeld, Belgium, During the Battle of the Bulge (e-book at http://www.microrap.biz/ 612th-tdb/_adobe/company_b_history.pdf), p. 8
7. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., pp. 203–4.
8. Ibid., p. 207.
9. Parker, Fatal Crossroads, op. cit., p. 182.
10. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., p. 83.
11. Lying in a much-contested part of Belgium, Malmedy was annexed by France in 1795 and by Prussia in 1815, and was often spelt in the French way, Malmédy (with the accent), to define it as French, though today the accent has been dropped.
12. Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., pp. 63–4; Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., pp. 86–7.
13. In 1946, a US War Crimes Trial identified a total of 308 US soldiers and 111 Belgian civilians, including those killed at the Baugnez crossroads, who had been murdered by Kampfgruppe Peiper.
14. Parker, Fatal Crossroads, op. cit., pp. 205–20.
15. Bob Wyatt, Leeton in World War II. A Small Town’s Sacrifices (AuthorHouse, 2011), p. 319.
16. Whiting, ’44: In Combat from Normandy to the Ardennes, op. cit., p. 191.
17. Parker, Fatal Crossroads op. cit., p. 184.
18. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., pp. 88–93.
19. Gay, Assignment to Hell, op. cit., pp. 409–12.
20. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 237.
21. Abilene Reporter News, 18 December 1944; Kansas City Star, 18 December 1944. Charles F. Appman (1919–2013) died in August 2013. See his obituary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 30 August 2013.
22. Pogue, The Supreme Command, op. cit., Appendix A: SHAEF and the Press, June 1944–May 1945, pp. 519–28.
23. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., Chapter XI, note 5.
24. Pogue, Pogue’s War, op. cit., pp. 296–8.
25. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., pp. 93–7; Record Group 153: Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), 1792–2010, NARA.
26. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5X0VyAJUOo
27. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., pp. 252–9; Parker, Fatal Crossroads, op. cit., pp. 127–54
28. See Parker, Fatal Crossroads, op. cit., p. 267. To be fair, I never asked Hennecke about the events at Baugnez on the occasions we met. Being a British Army officer in the Cold War era, I was more interested in his life fighting the Russians.
29. Parker, Fatal Crossroads, op. cit., p. 130.
30. Ibid., p. 27.
31. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, pp. 98–100.
32. Cavanagh, A Tour of the Bulge Battlefield, op. cit., pp. 85–7.
33. They are: Sergeants Lincoln Abraham and Joseph F. Collins, T/4 Caspar S. Johnston, T/5 John M. Borcina and Privates Clifford H. Pitts, Nick C. Sulliven and Gerald R. Carter. After the war, the families of three men had them returned to the States for burial. Nick Sullivan is buried in Kentucky, Gerald Carter in Kansas, and Lincoln Abraham in Minnesota; the rest remain buried in Belgium.
34. Hobart Winebrenner and Michael McCoy, Bootprints (Camp Comamajo Press, 2005), pp. 181–2.
35. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Chapter 12.
36. MacDonald, Company Commander, op. cit., p. 142.
37. Leinbaugh and Campbell, The Men of Company ‘K’, op. cit., p. 143.
38. Neill, Infantry Soldier, op. cit., p. 247.
39. Burgett, Seven Roads to Hell, op. cit., pp. 162–3.
40. Ibid., pp. 165–6.
41. Neill, Infantry Soldier, op. cit., pp. 243–4.
42. Kurt Gabel, The Making of a Paratrooper: Airborne Training and Combat in World War II (University Press of Kansas, 1990), p. 173.
43. Raymond Gantter, Roll Me Over: An Infantryman’s World War II (Presidio, 1997), pp. 129–130. Gantter was thirty when he entered the army and began to keep a journal in September 1944. He completed the manuscript in 1949; he died in 1985 and his book was published posthumously in 1997.
33. The Northern Shoulder
1. Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., p. 20.
2. Shehab memoir, courtesy of: http://www.veteransofthebattleofthebulge.org/vbob/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/shehab-story.pdf
3. Pogue, Pogue’s War, op. cit., p. 322.
4. Neill, Infantry Soldier, op. cit., pp. 247–8.
5. Also equipped with Jagdpanthers and fighting in the Ardennes were the 519th Heavy Panzer Battalion and 559th.
6. Author interview with Otie T. Cook (1920–2013), North Carolina, 1994; and ‘Wineka column: A Veteran’s Memories’, article in the Salisbury Post (NC), 1 December 2009.
7. Ralph E. Hersko, ‘US Troops Fight at Elsenborn Ridge’, article in The Bulge Bugle, Volume XXIX/2 (May 2010), p. 9.
8. The 1942 TOE (table of establishment) for a US Army headquarters was 759. It is likely, with protective troops and war establishments, that figure had reached at least 2,000 by December 1944 when all its elements, including the supply and rear echelons (not previously co-located), were lodged in Spa. See Hogan, A Command Post at War, op. cit., p. 298. They moved on 18 December to the Hôtel des Bains in Chaudfontaine, then on 22 December, behind the Meuse to a Belgian army barracks at Tongres, eleven miles north of Liège.
9. Michael D. Doubler, Closing With the Enemy. How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944–1945 (University Press of Kansas, 1994), p. 225.
10. Cavanagh, The Battle for the Twin Villages, op. cit.
11. Alvin R. Whitehead, ‘Shower Time’, online article, courtesy of the MIA Project website.
12. Neill, Infantry Soldier, op. cit., p. 234.
13. Lieutenant-Colonel James M. Gleckler, ‘Neglected, Hard-Learned Lessons: Looking back at Field Artillery Tactics, Techniques and Procedures in Major Combat Operations’, article in Fires magazine (September–October 2012), pp. 53–62.
14. William F. McMurdie, Hey, Mac! A Combat Infantryman’s Story (Red Apple Publishing, 2000), p. 89.
15. Meyer, The 12th SS: The History of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division, Vol. 2, op. cit., p. 296.
16. McMurdie, Hey, Mac!, op. cit., p. 89.
17. Captain Harry R. Ostler, Field Artillery Journal (March 1945).
18. McMurdie, Hey, Mac!, op. cit., p. 87.
19. December 2006 interview with Dr John Kerner, who was originally born John Kapstein, changing his name later in life. In 1939 he attended medical school in Berkeley, California, where he joined the ROTC, and served as a battalion surgeon in both the 10th Mountain Division and 35th Infantry Divisions. Courtesy of Dr John Kerner, Telling Their Stories, Oral History Archives Project, Urban School of San Francisco, California.
20. Captain Richard Van Horne, Field Artillery Journal (February 1945).
21. Major Donovan Yeuell, Field Artillery Journal (February 1945).
22. Courtesy of Hans Wijers, at http://home.planet.nl/~wijer037/bulge/forms/Fallschirmjager.htm
23. ‘Interrogation Report, 134th Regiment, 1 Jan 45 [of] 1 PW from 8th Co, 2nd Regt, 1st SS Armd Div’. IPW [Team] 60, US 35 Infantry Division, NARA.
24. Gleckler, ‘Neglected, Hard-Learned Lessons’, op. cit., pp. 59–60.
25. McMurdie, Hey, Mac!, op. cit., p. 84.
26. Combat Interview No. 20: 2nd Division, Commanding General (Combat Interviews, Adjutant General’s Office, World War II Operations Reports), 407/427, NARA.
27. McMurdie, Hey, Mac!, op. cit., pp. 87–8 and 91.
28. Ibid., p. 107.
29. James R. McIlroy, ‘Foxhole Monotony’, online article courtesy of the MIA Project website, at: http://www.miaproject.net/war-stories/jr-mcilroy-foxhole-monotony/
30. James R. McGhee, ‘Personal Account’, courtesy of the 87th Division Legacy Association website, at: http:/www.87thinfantrydivision.com/History/334FA/Personal/000003.html
31. ‘World War II: Interview with Lieutenant-Colonel McClernand Butler’, article courtesy of Military History magazine (June 1996).
32. Lawrence van Gelder, ‘Alexander G. Shulman, 81; Used Ice for Burn Treatment’, obituary in the New York Times, 12 July 1996; Studs Terkel, ‘The Good War’: An Oral History of World War II (The New Press, 1984), pp. 282–3.
33. Walter R. Cook, Lieutenant-Colonel, Surgeon, Medical Bulletin, Office of the Surgeon, HQ Second Infantry Division, December 1944, NARA.
34. Author interview with former Sergeant Jay H. Stanley, St Vith, 17 December 1994.
35. Cook, Medical Bulletin, op. cit.
36. Whitehead, ‘Shower Time’, online article, op. cit.
37. Gene Garrison, Unless Victory Comes. Combat With a Machine Gunner in Patton’s Third Army (Casemate, 2004), pp. 124–5.
38. Cook, Medical Bulletin, op. cit.
39. Ralph G. Martin, The GI War, 1941–1945 (Little, Brown, 1967), p. 206.
40. December 2006 interview with Dr John Kerner, op. cit.
41. Cook, Medical Bulletin, op. cit.
42. Author interview with Vern B. Werst, 17 December 1994, St Vith.
43. Cavanagh, The Battle East of Elsenborn and the Twin Villages (Pen & Sword, 2004), p. 164.
44. Neill, Infantry Soldier, op. cit., pp. 251–2.
45. Dom is an abbreviation for the French word ‘domaine’, meaning that Dom Bütgenbach was an old landed estate.
46. Meyer, The 12th SS, op. cit., p. 293.
47. Ibid., pp. 298–9.
48. Doubler, Closing With the Enemy, op. cit., pp. 211–14.
49. Ibid., p. 307.
50. Richard H. Byers, ‘Christmas on the Ridge’, online article courtesy of the MIA Project website, at: http://www.miaproject.net/war-stories/elsenborn-christmas-day-on-the-ridge/
51. Samuel L. Lombardo, ‘Christmas on the Ridge’, op. cit.
52. Bernard Nawrocki, ‘Christmas on the Ridge’, op. cit.
53. Parker, Battle of the Bulge, op. cit., p. 197.
54. Meyer, The 12th SS, op. cit., pp. 302–3.
55. My thanks to the MIA project for alerting me to this story at: http://www.miaproject.net/mia-search-recoveries/slaughter-on-a-remote-hill/
34. Those Damned Engineers!
1. Handbook To Belgium (Ward Lock, 1921), p. 282.
2. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., p. 108.
3. Major Ken Hechler, An Interview with Obst. Joachim Peiper (NARA/ETHINT 10, 7 September 1945), pp. 18–20.
4. Ibid. I am most grateful to Major-General Mike Reynolds for drawing the inconsistencies in Peiper’s testimony to my attention.
5. Hechler interview, op. cit., cover note and p. (i).
6. Cavanagh, A Tour of the Bulge Battlefield, op. cit., p. 15.
7. The best modern map, which covers the entire battlefield, is Michelin Sheet No. 214 (1:200,000 scale), the exact successor of those used by the Germans in 1944. In more detail, the following 1:100,000 scales maps are also most helpful: 115: Ciney–Houffalize; 116: Esneux–St Vith; 118: St Hubert–St Vith.
8. Officially the 99th Infantry Battalion (Separate). This was an independent unit, part of the Twelfth Army Group’s special troops, and had no connection with the 99th (Checkerboard) Division.
9. Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., pp. 64–8.
10. Cook memoir, op. cit.
11. A German prisoner later claimed to have ‘fixed’ the explosives on the Stavelot bridge so that it couldn’t be blown, but this was an idle boast. The bridge was never even prepared for demolition. See Gavin, On to Berlin, op. cit., p. 214.
12. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., pp. 120–21; Hans Wijers, Battle of the Bulge, Vol. Two, Hell at Bütgenbach/ Seize the Bridges (Stackpole, 2010), pp. 184–5; Ralf Tiemann, Die Leibstandarte, Band IV/2 (Munich Verlag, 1987), pp. 81–2.
13. Wijers, Battle of the Bulge, Vol. Two, op. cit., p. 185.
14. Captain Leland E. Cofer, ‘The bridge at Stavelot’, article in The Bulge Bugle, Volume XIX (February 2000), pp. 12–14.
15. Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., pp. 40–49.
16. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., Chapter XI ‘The 1st SS Panzer Division’s Dash Westward, and Operation Greif’, pp. 266–7.
17. Hechler interview, op. cit., p. 8.
18. Janice Holt Giles, The Damned Engineers (Houghton Mifflin, 1970), Introduction.
19. Gavin, On to Berlin, op. cit., p. 223.
20. Ibid., p. 219.
21. Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., pp. 49–51.
22. I am most grateful to the director and staff of the December 44 Historical Museum at La Gleize. Their website is at: http://www.december44.com/en/history_battle_of_the_bulgela_gleize.htm. Another of Peiper’s King Tigers has also survived. This tank, with turret number 332, was abandoned, out of fuel, near Trois-Ponts, and captured on 24 December 1944. It was then moved to Spa and eventually shipped to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, USA.
23. Cole, The Ardennes, op. cit., pp. 259–71.
35. End of the Bulge
1. Arend, Bastogne, op. cit., pp. 199–200.
2. Original in Bastogne Historical Center, reproduced in Arend, Bastogne, op. cit., pp. 198–9.
3. Ibid.
4. Lionel P. Adda, ‘Grateful for Small Things’, article in The Bulge Bugle, Volume XII/4 (November 1993), p. 26.
5. ‘Hier wird nicht geschossen’, article in Der Spiegel magazine, 13 May 1985; article by Fritz Vincken in The Frederick Post, 22 January 1996; Rod Ohira, ‘Fritz Vincken, Bakery Owner, Dead at 69’, article in Honolulu Advertiser, 11 January 2002; Rod Ohira, ‘The Night God Came to Dinner’, online article, courtesy of the Divine Mercy Center of Hawaii, webpage at: http://www.divinemercyhawaii.org/index.cfm?load=page&page=302.
6. Courtesy of the MIA Project, http://www.miaproject.net/x-files/x-4013-unknown-or-unbekannt/. The US Army recovery team later found the remains had been transported from elsewhere and buried in St Vith, deepening the mystery. Known from his files as X-4013, the unidentified soldier, who is as likely to be German as American, lies at Plot A, Row 17, Grave 3, in the Ardennes American Cemetery, Neuville-en-Condroz, Neupré, Belgium.
7. Hitler, Mein Kampf, op. cit., p. 741. He repeated these ideas at length in the last major public speech before his death, on the 25th Anniversary of the Announcement of the National Socialist Party’s Programme, 24 February 1945.
8. Ibid.
9. Interrogation Report, 134th Inf Regt, IPW [Team] 60, 1 Jan. 45, NARA.
10. Hills memoir, Stephen Ambrose Manuscript Collection, National D-Day Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana.
11. General Walther Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964), p. 493.
12. F. H. Hinsley, Official History of the Second World War: British Intelligence in the Second World War (HMSO, 1993), p. 566.
13. Kerner interview, op. cit.
14. Ibid.
15. Interrogation Report, 134th Regt, IPW [Team] 60, 2 Jan. 45, NARA.
16. Peter Harclerode, ‘Go To It’: The Illustrated History of the 6th Airborne Division (Caxton, 1990), p. 113.
17. Interrogation Report, 134th Inf Regt, IPW [Team] 60, 23 Jan. 45, NARA.
18. Max Hastings, Armageddon (Macmillan, 2004), p. 268.
19. Desmond Scott, Typhoon Pilot (Secker & Warburg, 1982), p. 157.
20. Brigadier Sugden died at 7.15 p.m. on 4 January 1945.
21. See: Gary Orfalea, Messengers of the Lost Battalion (The Free Press, 1997).
22. Weather observations of First Lieutenant Kendall M. Ogilvie, Battery ‘A’, 17th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, NARA.
23. Author’s interview with former Gefreiter Otto Gunkel, 981st Volksgrenadier Regiment, Monschau, September 1992.
24. McMurdie, Hey Mac!, op. cit., p. 109.
25. John Davis, Up Close: A Scout’s Story (Merriam Press, 2012), p. 66.
26. Ogilvie, 17th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, op. cit.
27. J. Ted. Hartman, Tank Driver (Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 47, 54 and 58.
28. Joe W. Wilson Jr, The 761st Black Panther Tank Division in World War II: An Illustrated History of the First African Armoured Unit to See Combat (McFarland & Co., 1999), p. 53.
29. Front page, Baltimore News-Post, 9 January 1945
30. Cavanagh, A Tour of the Bulge Battlefield, op. cit., p. 166.
31. ‘Allied Progress Continues in Belgium: Montgomery’s Men Capture Laroche’, Daily Telegraph, Friday, 12 January 1945.
32. The Advocate (Tasmania), Friday 12 January 1945, front page; Daily Mail, Tuesday, 16 January 1945, front page; Baltimore News-Post, Monday, 15 January 1945, front page.
33. Pallud, The Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, op cit., p. 481. It must be stressed, however, that though every source quotes a different figure, somewhere in the 75,000–80,000 range is likely to be broadly accurate.
34. Though critically low on fuel (with not enough even to reach Antwerp), the Germans were also dangerously short of vehicles before Herbstnebel began, with little ability to recover or repair those battle-damaged or broken down, and certainly possessed too few to reach the Belgian port under combat conditions in mid-winter. For example, on 10 December, 116th Panzer Division (at 75 per cent strength) reported they were deficient of 432 trucks, 111 Maultier tracked transports and thirty-two prime movers for artillery. Failing even to reach the Meuse had cost them (by 27 December) an additional 128 half-tracks and motorcycles, 112 trucks, five Maultier and five prime movers. All the attacking divisions reported similar or greater deficiencies. The majority of the infantry and artillery units, including all the Volksgrenadier divisions, had limited mobility, relying completely on horses for all their transportation and resupply needs. Horses and their four-wheeled wagons were slow and more vulnerable to winter weather than vehicles. Most of the Wehrmacht’s trucks were destroyed or abandoned during the latter stages of Herbstnebel. See Guderian, From Normandy to the Ruhr, op cit., pp. 291 and 525.
35. Mitcham, Panzers in Winter, op. cit., p. 160.
36. The Performance of a Lifetime
1. Butcher, My Three Years With Eisenhower, op. cit., p. 625.
2. Ibid.
3. Schramm (ed.), Kriegstagebuch Des Oberkommando Der Wehrmacht 1944–45, op. cit., p. 30.
4. Dr Roger Cirillo, Ardennes-Alsace (US Army Center for Military History, 2006), pp. 37–43 and 48–53.
5. ‘106th Division Has Heavy Loss: More than 7,000 Men Believed Prisoners’, Tuscaloosa News, Tuesday, 23 January 1945, p. 6.
6. CAB106/1069, TNA, Kew, UK.
7. CAB106/1071, TNA, Kew, UK.
8. Ibid.
9. One of Monty’s personal liaison officers, Major Tom Bigland, has left a record of Monty’s words. See Bigland’s War, op. cit., pp. 84–6.
10. See my earlier work, Monty and Rommel: Parallel Lives (Preface, 2011), pp. 448–50.
11. Daily Mail, Monday, 8 January 1945, p. 1.
12. Bigland, Bigland’s War, op. cit., p. 84.
13. Ibid.
14. Caddick-Adams, Monty and Rommel: Parallel Lives, op. cit., pp. 448–50.
15. Bradley, A General’s Life, op. cit., pp. 384–5.
16. New York Times, Wednesday, 10 January 1945, p. 1.
17. Daily Mail, Wednesday, 10 January 1945, p. 1.
18. Eisenhower Papers #2276. See Crosswell, Beetle, The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith, op. cit., p. 1035.
19. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, op. cit., p. 389.
20. Gavin, On to Berlin, op. cit., pp. 258–9.
21. Ibid.
22. Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, op. cit., pp. 610–14.
23. Delaforce, The Battle of the Bulge: Hitler’s Final Gamble, op. cit., p. 318.
24. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, op. cit., p. 218.
25. Schramm, Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader, op. cit., pp. 169–70, and Fest, Hitler, op. cit., pp. 1066–7.
26. Guderian, Panzer Leader, op. cit., pp. 382–7; Mellenthin, Panzer Battles. A Study of the Employment of Armour in the Second World War, op. cit., p. 411.
27. Mellenthin, Panzer Battles, op. cit., p. 409.
28. Guy Sager, The Forgotten Soldier (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), p. 87.
29. Hechler, Interview with Peiper, op. cit., p. 9.
37. Beyond the Bulge
1. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, op. cit., p. 420.
2. Britain’s Daily Mail published a banner headline on 29 December 1944, stating ‘Patton’s 3rd Army Strikes at “Bulge” from South’, but the prissy Daily Mail put the word ‘Bulge’ in inverted commas, thinking it indecorous and rude.
3. Patton, War As I Knew It, op. cit., p. 208; Sean M. Walsh, ‘It Was Newman’s Call at The Battle of the Bulge’, article in Cape Cod News (Hyannis, Massachusetts), 5 January 1995; The Bulge Bugle, Volume XV/4 (November 1996), p. 15.
4. Patton, War As I Knew It, op. cit., p. 221.
5. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets, op. cit., p. 617.
6. Collins, Lightning Joe: An Autobiography, op. cit., p. 294.
7. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods, op. cit., p. 429.
8. Merriam, Dark December, op. cit., p. 174.
9. Map issued with Images of War Magazine, Vol. 3/No. 38 (Marshall Cavendish, 1990).
10. Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, op. cit., pp. 359–73.
11. Mitchell Kaidy, ‘Battle of the Bulge Was Longer, Bloodier than Army Admits’, article in The Bulge Bugle, May 2000.
12. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. VI, op. cit., p. 243.
13. Churchill and Roosevelt (who was quartered on the ground floor of the Livadia itself) went there at the most drab time of the Crimean year. I can vouch for the fact it looks its best in the summer months with spectacular views on to the cobalt-blue Black Sea. These days its upper rooms house exhibitions about the Russian royal families who lived there, while downstairs is devoted to the Yalta conference.
14. Stewart Halsey Ross, Strategic Bombing by the United States in World War II: The Myths and the Facts (McFarland, 2003), p. 180; Norman Longmate, The Bombers (Hutchinson, 1983), p. 333.
15. Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography, op. cit., p. 48.
16. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, op. cit., p. 418.
17. ‘German Court Reviews Execution Over Failure To Blast Remagen Bridge’, article in Park City Daily News (Bowling Green, Kentucky), 1 February, 1967, p. 25.
18. Author interview with Oberst Krug, October 2000.
19. Patton, War As I Knew It, op. cit., pp. 273–4.
20. When used with great success in the Pacific by US Marines, they were known as LVTs – Landing Vehicles Tracked, or Amtracs; in Italy they were labelled Fantails.
21. Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Horrocks, Corps Commander (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1977)
22. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. VI, op. cit., pp. 363–4.
23. Ibid., p. 365.
24. Charles B. MacDonald, US Army in World War II, The Last Offensive (Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1973), p. 221.
38. On to Berlin!
1. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. VI, op. cit., p. 348.
2. Interview with Brigadier-General (retd) Hans-Georg Model, Steigenberger Hotel, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, October 2000.
3. Annan, Changing Enemies, op. cit., pp. 125–6.
4. This era of post-WW2 German history is not easy reading, as Giles MacDonogh in his After the Reich: From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift (John Murray, 2008) suggests. Equally uncomfortable, though almost certainly wrong, is James Bacque’s Other Losses, an Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of French and Americans After World War II (MacDonald, 1989). He asserts that ‘over 800,000, almost certainly over 900,000 and quite likely over a million’ German prisoners were killed in US prison camps after the war. US academics have noted that Bacque is a Canadian novelist with no previous historical research or writing experience, who has made a lot of money from his allegations, which are popular with the Holocaust Denial community. He certainly treats historical evidence and documentation in a cavalier fashion, and when a panel of distinguished American academics was convened to discuss Bacque’s allegations, the late Stephen Ambrose spoke for them in noting that his charges were ‘demonstrably absurd’. Abuse certainly took place, but it was neither institutional nor widespread.
5. Burke, Lee Miller, op. cit., p. 253.
6. Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson, Ol’ Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of Strom Thurmond (University of South Carolina Press, 2002), p. 76.
7. Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, op. cit., p. 705.
8. Patton, War As I Knew It, op. cit., p. 330.
9. Harold Evans, The American Century (Jonathan Cape, 1998), p. 344.
10. Max Hastings, Victory in Europe (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), pp. 137–63.
11. Burke, Lee Miller, op. cit., p. 258.
12. Mohnke managed to survive his Soviet captivity and, perversely, avoided all charges of war crimes, dying in his bed, aged ninety.
13. Stephen Harding, The Last Battle: When US and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe (Da Capo Press, 2013).
14. Daily Express, 18 May 1945.
15. New York Times, 18 May 1945.
16. Based on several author’s interviews with Herr Hans Hennecke, February–April 1981.
17. Pogue, Pogue’s War, op. cit., p. 377.
39. Punctuation Marks of History
1. These figures are much disputed and relate to the fact that US casualty returns were collected by a variety of sources (e.g. division, corps, army, hospitals) and assessed over time periods, not regions, thus some casualties were not related to the Bulge. The killed and wounded figure of 76,890 is that inscribed on the solemn and imposing Mardasson Memorial, dedicated in 1950, and situated just outside Bastogne. The stone structure was built in the shape of an enormous five-pointed pentagram, and contains the names of all the US states; its twelve-metre-high roof offers excellent panoramic views of the battle ground around Bastogne. POW statistics from the report by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Planning, and Preparedness (OPP&P), Former American Prisoners of War (US Department of Veterans Affairs, April 2005), p. 5. The US non-battle casualties may have been as high as 20,000; to these totals should be added British losses of 200 killed and 1400 wounded.
2. Patton, War As I Knew It, op. cit., pp. 328–30.
3. British War Cabinet, Joint Planning Staff, Russia: Threat to Western Civilization (Operation Unthinkable), [Draft and Final Reports: 22 May, 8 June and 11 July 1945], Public Record Office, CAB 120/691/109040/002.
4. Pamela C. Harriman, ‘The True Meaning of the Iron Curtain Speech’, article in Finest Hour, Vol. 58 (Winter 1987–1988), at: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/biography/in-opposition/qiron-curtainq-fulton-missouri-1946/174-the-true- meaning-of-the-iron-curtain-speech
5. Central Intelligence Agency, Effect of Soviet Restrictions on the US Position in Berlin (Top Secret Report for President Truman, 14 June 1948) at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Berlin Airlift Study Collection.
6. Originally published by the Infantry Journal Press, Washington, DC, in 1946, Marshall’s Bastogne is available as a free download at http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/Bastogne/bast-fm.htm. He shared the credit for Bastogne with his assistants, Captain John G. Westover and Lieutenant A. Joseph Webber.
7. Later editions of Dark December were titled The Battle of the Ardennes, and an edition published to tie in with the 1965 movie Battle of the Bulge.
8. Published in the United Kingdom as The Battle of the Bulge.
9. Robert Edward Merriam died aged sixty-nine in 1988. The Robert E. Merriam Papers 1918–1984 are housed in the University of Chicago Library.
10. Hechler interviewed several of the US and German soldiers involved, in 1957 publishing the The Bridge at Remagen: The Amazing Story of March 7, 1945 (new edition, Presidio Press, 2005), which was adapted into a successful film in 1969.
11. US Army Field Manual FM 1–20, Military History Operations (February 2003), pp. 1–2/1–3.
12. Other movies depicting the Battle of the Bulge include: Attack! (Robert Aldrich, 1956); The Last Blitzkrieg (Arthur Dreifuss, 1959); Ski Troop Attack (Roger Corman, 1960); Counterpoint (Ralph Nelson, 1968); Castle Keep (Sydney Pollack, 1969); A Midnight Clear (Keith Gordon, 1992); Silent Night (Rodney Gibbons, 2002); Saints and Soldiers(Ryan Little, 2003) and Everyman’s War (Thad Smith, 2009)
13. Jay Hyams, War Movies (Gallery Books, 1984), p. 114.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 158
16. Saturday Review, review of Battle of the Bulge (1966, Volume 49/1, p. 43).
17. Cirillo, Ardennes-Alsace, op. cit., p. 53. The nineteen US divisions in Normandy were the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 35th, 79th and 83rd, 90th Infantry; 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th Armored; and 82nd and 101st Airborne.
18. Some fifteen divisions fought in the third major US theatre, the Mediterranean, of which seven later also redeployed to fight in Europe.
19. Crusade in Europe was acknowledged as inspiring the twenty-six-episode documentary series, The Great War (about the First World War), shown on UK, Canadian and Australian television from 1964. Its main narrator was Michael Redgrave, with additional readings by Ralph Richardson. The formula was also repeated with outstanding success in another twenty-six-part documentary, Thames Television’s The World at War of 1973–4, produced by Jeremy Isaacs and narrated by Laurence Olivier. All three were critically acclaimed and received huge viewer figures.
20. John Eisenhower had also been in talks with film producer Tony Lazzarino about writing a screenplay for a Battle of the Bulge movie, reportedly titled The 16th of December or The Final Guns. Scheduled for release in December 1969, it was never made, and Eisenhower’s research was instead more profitably directed to his book, The Bitter Woods.
21. Whiting, The Last Assault, op. cit., p. 225.
22. Ibid., p. xvii.
23. Whiting (1926–2007) joined the British Army aged sixteen, lying about his age. By 1945 he had reached the rank of sergeant in the 52nd Reconnaissance Regiment (52nd Lowland Division), operating in armoured cars and serving in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany in the last months of the Second World War.
24. Terkel, ‘The Good War’: An Oral History of World War II, op. cit.
25. Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (Random House, 1999), Introduction.
26. Mary Jo Tate, The Critical Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work (Infobase, 1998), pp. 306–7.
27. Ambrose, Band of Brothers, op. cit.; D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (Simon & Schuster, 1994); Citizen Soldiers, op. cit.
28. As an indication of this new interest, annual visitor numbers at the Omaha Beach cemetery, run by the American Battlefields Monuments Commission, where Saving Private Ryan begins, have reached almost two million per year, since the premiere of the film, making Ambrose (albeit indirectly) one of the most influential military historians of modern times.
29. The TV series also used David Kenyon Webster’s Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper’s Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich (Louisiana State University Press 1994), which was based on his wartime diaries, but only published forty years later, long after the author’s death in 1961.
30. Stephen E. Ambrose, Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 (Simon & Schuster, 1984).
31. See their website at: http://www.veteransofthebattleofthebulge.org/
40. Reputations
1. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitler’s Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan myth, and Neo-Nazism (New York University Press, 1998), p. 174.
2. Der Spiegel, 9 April 1952, ‘Heil Rommel’.
3. Der Spiegel, ibid. Also, David Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 93–5, and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York University Press, 2001), Chapter 5.
4. Jewish Telegraph Agency, 4 February 1972, ‘Names of 13 High-ranking Nazis Disclosed; One of Them Now in Egypt’.
5. Skorzeny died in 1975, Remer in 1997, Martins in 1993 and Rudel in 1982.
6. Rafael Poch, ‘ El jefe de comandos de Hitler quiso formar un ejercito alemán en la España de los cincuenta’, and ‘Un nazi en la España de Franco’, articles in La Vanguardia, 4 and 8 December 2011. I am most grateful to Cristina de Santiago for her research in Spain into Otto Skorzeny.
7. Ken Silverstein, Private Warriors (Verso Books, 2000), p. 112.
8. These included about 120 Panzer IV, the balance being Jagdpanzer IV and StuG III.
9. See Dani Asher’s The Egyptian Strategy for the Yom Kippur War: An Analysis (McFarland & Co., 2009)
10. See General Avraham (Bren) Adan, On the Banks of the Suez (Presidio Press, 1980).
11. Bill Warnock, The Dead of Winter: How Battlefield Investigators, WWII Veterans, and Forensic Scientists Solved the Mystery of the Bulge’s Lost Soldiers (Chamberlain, 2005).
12. Brigadier-General Oscar W. Koch (1897–1970)
13. Reynolds, The Devil’s Adjutant, op. cit., pp. 264–9.
14. MacDonald, Company Commander, op. cit., pp. 302–3.