by Leo Barron
Several days after making a weather reconnaissance mission over the North Sea, the crew of bomber Z6 FH had received the news that Hitler was planning a major winter offensive to steal the initiative from the Allies on the Western Front. This had rekindled morale among the crew, and now they were going to fly night operations against tactical targets, just as the older pilots had done during the heady days of 1940 and 1941. The pilots and crews were excited to once again be involved in a major offensive against the enemy.3
Despite the obvious dangers, the Luftwaffe bombing crews were highly motivated to participate in Wacht am Rhein. Allied daytime and nighttime bombings had battered and wrecked their country. The once proud cities of the Reich now lay in ruins as British and American bombs destroyed the resplendent landscapes. Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, and many other German cities all lay in rubble. In the eyes of many German soldiers and pilots, the Americans and the British were violating the laws of war, as they targeted innocent civilians, and now the Germans were given an opportunity to even the score. Major Schmidt, the commander of I/KG 66, had delivered the orders to the Staffel 1 and its commander, Oberstleutnant (First Lieutenant) Piota. The operations officer, Oberstleutnant Heberstreit, then typed up the mission. The mission would take place on Christmas Eve, and their target was a crossroads town in Belgium where the Wehrmacht (armed forces) had surrounded a lone American division currently defending Bastogne.
Twelve Ju 88s left the aerodrome at Dedelstorf and headed west. The sun had already slipped below the horizon as the aircraft assembled into an echeloned formation. When they had completed the mustering, the six pathfinder Ju 88s flew ahead. Struhs looked out over the horizon as he tracked his bomber’s progress. The moon was three-quarters full, providing almost too much illumination as the planes raced through the clouds. From Dedelstorf they flew over Hannover, and then over Paderborn. From there they traveled over Bonn and finally south over Trier, where the Luftwaffe had erected a light beacon to guide the bombers and night fighters. The beacon also served as a reminder that they were fast approaching the front lines.
Inside the dark cockpit, the crew steeled themselves for combat, recalling the fate of previous Ju 88 crews shot down in the early days of the offensive. From Trier, Luftwaffe antiaircraft crews would mark the waypoints with flak star shells. Seeing the flak burst into a series of brilliant guiding lights, the crew of Z6 FH now commenced their path-finding run. After they passed the last starburst, they guided their plane for two minutes, using dead reckoning to reach the target area. Struhs looked ahead through the honeycombed windows of the Ju 88 and saw the quaint Belgian town nestled among the rolling hills of the Ardennes. The snow reflected the bright moonlight as they passed over the Belgian fields. As they closed in, he could make out the numerous roads that crisscrossed through the town that made it key terrain. The Ardennes region was a densely forested area with rolling hills, and for panzer units, it was severely restrictive terrain. You had to stay on the roads to drive through it. Therefore, towns like Bastogne were vital to any mechanized unit, since it was a major road hub. This mattered little to Struhs, busy preparing to drop the flares.
Dropping magnesium flares was a simple process. Struhs and the pilot, Leutnant Schulz, lined up the aircraft so that it would fly directly over the target in a straight line and cross over its center. Then, as the plane flew over, they dropped their flares at ten-second intervals. The plane would release a total of ten flares. After they completed their run, the Ju 88, a very maneuverable aircraft, swung around to observe the illuminated town. The flares burned brightly, like falling stars, flittering and sputtering to the ground. Struhs’s aircraft roared over the target once again—this time to drop green marking flares. The green flares would provide the follow-on bombers a clear aiming point. Their mission completed, the crew of Z6 FH turned their Ju 88 and headed home.4
Struhs probably wondered why they were bombing this picturesque Belgian town on, of all nights, Christmas Eve. He knew it was a target, and that was all that mattered. He had his orders, and he followed them to the letter.
What Struhs did not know was that his pathfinder mission was only the first phase of a much larger effort to seize the vital crossroads town before the American general George S. Patton could relieve the surrounded garrison. Inside the town were the paratroopers and glidermen of the 101st Airborne, tank destroyers of the 705th, and other American units. To keep the Americans awake and on high alert, the German high command had planned for not one but two bombing raids that night. According to Hitler’s plans, carried out by his generals currently encircling Bastogne, within just a few hours German tanks and soldiers would follow in the wake of the bombs and finally capture the town. The German commander had ordered the ground attack to start first thing on Christmas morning.
Much was at stake for the Germans. They knew if Bastogne did not fall, their entire Ardennes offensive would be at risk. The generals in charge of the attack realized that Hitler was dead serious about seizing Bastogne quickly, before the opportunity was lost. Hitler wanted Bastogne as a Christmas present, and now it was up to the thousands of Wehrmacht forces surrounding the city to make their leader’s wish come true. The attack on Christmas would decide the fate of Bastogne, and Hitler and his generals knew that whoever controlled Bastogne would undoubtedly determine the success or failure of Wacht am Rhein.
The battle that would result from Hitler’s orders would become the climactic event of the Bastogne saga: a rapid-fire, desperate assault by overwhelming German armored might, defended in bloody struggle by the ragged but determined GIs trapped in Bastogne. It would be either the last stand of the American defenders or the culmination of the German drive to capture the vital crossroads. Either way pointed to a climactic showdown—a desperate bloodbath in the snowy fields of Bastogne.
For hundreds of German and American soldiers facing off in the siege, the events of Christmas 1944 would destroy any sense of holiness and peace on earth. For the soldiers on both sides, and for the brave people of Bastogne, this would be no silent night.
CHAPTER ONE
“We Gamble Everything!”
“The enemy move more rapidly this way…. It was impossible for such a handful to make a stand against this superior force.”
—Congressional delegate William Hooper at the evacuation of Philadelphia, before the British Army captured it in the fall of 17761
Friday, 8 December 1944
Headquarters of the 26th Volksgrenadier Division
Waxweiler, Germany2
Oberst (Colonel) Heinz Kokott shook his head glumly as he glanced over the message from headquarters. It was the sixth year of the war, and as far as Kokott was concerned, Germany was losing. He was the commander of the newly designated 26th Volksgrenadier (or people’s grenadier) Division, and like many officers in the Wehrmacht, he wondered how the war was going to end. His instincts told him the future did not look good, but despondency was something that the führer did not tolerate. A lack of will could end in a lack of life for those who were not careful with their thoughts. He forced down whatever feelings he had, trying desperately to purge the inklings of defeatism within his mind. Now was not the time to replay past decisions. Besides, he had a very important meeting to attend at the corps headquarters.
Kokott stepped out of his own division HQ in Waxweiler, Germany, breathing in the cool winter air that filled his lungs like a glass of ice-cold water. The cold was invigorating, and so was his view of the surrounding countryside. Nestled in the valley of the Prüm River in the Eifel region of Germany, Waxweiler in the early winter of 1944 still resembled a village from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Hills surrounded it on all sides like an amphitheater, and in the center of the town, a church spire reached to the heavens like a needle pointing directly to God. Many of the trees were spindly and leafless, but some evergreens dotted the hillsides, creating a natural patchwork quilt of verdant green and soiled brown. Though it was December, mud still covered much of the area, since ra
in was more common than snow in this region of Germany, but this did not detract from the rustic beauty of Waxweiler. It was a quiet and tranquil place—far removed from the sounds and sights of battle. It was also far from the nonsense that was Berlin, where staff officers plotted fictitious battles on maps and reported lies to their superiors. Berlin was more than four hundred miles (650 kilometers) northeast of Waxweiler, but the distance in reality was far greater. For the past two years, Berlin demanded the impossible from army units stationed on the western front. In short, Waxweiler’s blessed isolation was also a curse.
Kokott smiled wistfully, remembering better times for Germany. So far, Waxweiler had escaped the ravages of war. Ironically, American soldiers had occupied the town after the Armistice of 1918—the very enemy Germany was facing once again. Waxweiler, fortunately for its denizens, had survived both this war and the Great War. Many towns in Germany could no longer claim such a fortunate status. Allied bombs had wrecked much of the Third Reich, and five years of costly battles had sapped the strength of the Fatherland. Even worse, the bones of Germany’s sons lay scattered across the fields of Russia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, North Africa, Norway, France, and Belgium, and with them the dreams of a generation of lost youth. Still, many in Germany believed that victory was not beyond their reach. The führer promised that the fortunes of war would look favorably on Germany again. Many still believed him. Kokott himself was far less sanguine.
That August, victory belonged to the Allies. For most of the summer, on both fronts, the Allies had a monopoly on success. Soviet armies rolled over German divisions in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, while in France, American and British units pulverized outnumbered German forces as if they were titans and the Germans were delicate sand castles. Then, as if the führer controlled a force field, the Allied juggernaut skidded to a halt at the western borders of Germany. Hitler had predicted such an event in August. Some of the generals probably thought Hitler was suffering from dementia due to the bombing that almost took his life in late July—the result of a failed assassination attempt. Few believed that the Allies would run out of gas at the German border so close to total victory. Hitler, though, was already preparing for the counterstrike.
For Nazi Germany, the Allied pause was a fortunate respite. It bought time for the Wehrmacht to reconstitute and reorganize. By mid-September, the Western Front had stabilized, and the Russian steamroller had also sputtered to a halt along the banks of the Vistula River in Poland. At the same time, an Allied airborne operation in Holland failed. Meanwhile, the Americans were hurling division after division at the German frontier. The American Army edged ever forward, but progress was now in costly inches instead of miles, and the human toll for the Allies was growing exponentially. Many German generals called the startling change of fortune Das Wunder im Westen (“the Miracle in the West”).
Unlike his peers in the Waffen SS, Kokott looked nothing like the Aryan superman that Hitler held in such high regard. In fact, his countenance would remind an observer of Goofy, the Disney character, with his crooked smile and chipped teeth. In addition to his odd features, Kokott’s vision was poor, and he wore thick, round, horn-rimmed glasses to compensate for this handicap. Furthermore, his high forehead and his dark slicked-back hair made him look more like a disheveled professor than a decorated officer in the Wehrmacht. In spite of his modest appearance, he was a successful and esteemed officer. Although Kokott was Heinrich Himmler’s brother-in-law (and it’s quite possible that a little nepotism may have had something to do with his standing in the Wehrmacht), the easygoing Kokott seemed naively unaware that such a relationship may have played any role in his advancement.
To be fair, Kokott was a professional soldier in his own right who had served admirably during the lean interwar years. He was born in 1890 in the town of Gross Strehlitz. Later on, he enlisted as a soldier in the 157th Infantry Regiment, but he did not see action in World War I. After the war, he earned his commission as second lieutenant in 1923 and served in the 7th Infantry Regiment for more than a decade.
At the outset of World War II, Kokott was an instructor at the Infantry School in Döberitz. His first major command was as a battalion commander for the Second Battalion of the 196th Infantry Regiment, and it was on the Eastern Front where Kokott began earning his reputation. During the winter of 1941 Kokott assumed command of the 178th Infantry Regiment, and led the regiment for several months before attending a staff school. When he returned to the front, his superiors gave him another command in the 337th Infantry Regiment, where he served as its commander for a year. When he completed this posting, he returned to Germany to be the commandant of the Infantry School at Beverloo. A year later, he took over the command of the 26th Volksgrenadier Division in August 1944 while it recovered from operations in eastern Poland.3
In the first week of November 1944, the division received orders to ship out to the Westwall, along the Our River, as part of the buildup for Wacht am Rhein. After spending years on the Eastern Front, the 26th Volksgrenadier Division would face a much different enemy now—the Americans. By the first week of December, the 26th Volksgrenadier Division had also replaced most of its losses from the campaigns of the previous summer and fall, and now it was near 100 percent strength. Prior to its deployment in the West, Kokott had overseen the division’s five-week shakedown period in the fall. During this time, it received former Luftwaffe airmen and Kriegsmarine sailors to fill its depleted frontline infantry units. The division’s cadre of noncommissioned officers was a mixture of seasoned Eastern Front veterans and transfers from the German navy, air force, and rear-echelon army personnel who were of little value as soldiers, since they knew nothing about infantry tactics.
Fortunately, thought Kokott, the officers were of higher quality. The regimental, battalion, and company commanders were all veterans of the Eastern campaigns. In addition, the division had been busy repairing and acquiring new equipment to replace its losses. The most important were the new vehicles: fourteen Hetzer self-propelled tank hunters, small and speedy tanks armed with 75mm armor-piercing guns, that were the latest in German tank-destroyer technology. In addition, Kokott had trained the division hard all November. By midmonth he felt sure his men were ready for action.4
But by the end of the month, Kokott began to notice some subtle changes occurring in his command area. For starters, by mid-November his division began to assume a much larger frontage so that other units could pull back to the rear for rest and retraining. Next, his higher headquarters ordered him to cease all reconnaissance activity. Kokott thought this was most peculiar. He knew his sector was a quiet one; after all, his primary adversary, the U.S. 28th Infantry Division, located in front of the 26th VGD’s lines and across the Our River, was recovering from a bloody stretch of fighting in the Hürtgen Forest. The Americans seemed none too keen to start much trouble with the Germans. Still, to Kokott, the idea of halting all reconnaissance and surveillance operations did not seem prudent, and he did not like the idea of ceding no-man’s-land to the Americans. In disobedience, Kokott continued to send out his patrols and operate his observation posts. Orders might be orders—Befehlen sind befehlen, as the Germans said—but Kokott was smart enough to realize he still had an enemy to his front—a powerful enemy that he might soon have to face in combat.
In the last week of November, new units began to arrive in the rear areas, and as more arrived, traffic clogged the narrow country roads and highways. There were overcrowding problems in the nearby billets as well. The German army was stuffing unit after unit into the hamlets and villages that dotted the Eifel region. It was all very strange, thought Kokott. Something was definitely afoot—perhaps the army commanders were preparing for a major operation?5
That first week of December, Kokott learned that his suspicions were correct. He received a summons to meet with the corps commander, General Walter Lucht. Lucht told him that Hitler had decided to strike back, and he wanted to do it in the West—against the America
ns. Hitler chose the Americans and the Western Front for several reasons. First, an attack of more than twenty divisions would have little impact against the Russian hordes. The number of enemy divisions along the Eastern Front was in the hundreds. The Russians would lose dozens of divisions trying to halt the German advance, but they would be successful in the end, because they could replace their losses. However, the German army could not.
On the other hand, along the Western Front, the Allies could field only a little more than fifteen armored divisions, and just over forty-five infantry and airborne divisions. A sudden successful attack by a force of twenty or more divisions would seriously jeopardize the entire Allied front, particularly if this attack was aimed at a thin sector of the Allied line. Moreover, the main reason Hitler chose the Americans instead of the British was overextension. The American Twelfth Army Group had the most divisions, but it also had the largest area of operations and was overextended. The Americans lines were brittle in some places, especially around the Ardennes. A massing of overwhelming combat power at one of these weak spots could result in a successful breakthrough and potentially a breakout.
