That the British, after briefly testing the use of massed armor in Normandy, accepted a similar system reflected the fact that the Allied armies were fully motorized.5 The race across France and Belgium showed infantry divisions could keep pace with the armor in a way neither the Germans nor the Soviets could match, while heavily concentrated armor tended to get in its own way. The riflemen were also supported by armor on a scale considered jaw-dropping by Landser standards. An American infantry division on the offensive could usually count on a battalion of fifty Shermans and another of three dozen tank destroyers able to serve as assault guns manqué or to tie into the radio network as supplementary fire support. Its British counterpart could call on up to a brigade of Shermans or Churchills, the latter roughly a better-protected, turreted counterpart of the Sturmgeschütz IIIF, plus a family of specialized armor: flame-throwing tanks, mine-clearing tanks, and tanks with turrets removed and converted to armored personnel carriers.
It nevertheless remains defensible to suggest that in terms of doctrine and material, Allied armor on D-Day was ideally configured to defeat the panzers of Operation Blue. Technical changes during the campaign were marginal. The M-18 Hellcat tank destroyer, introduced in late 1943, could make the incredible top speed of 55 miles per hour, but had almost no protection and carried the same 76mm gun as the new mark of Sherman. Although official tank destroyer doctrine still considered a heavy gun unnecessary, a 90mm gun on a modified M-10 chassis went into production in April 1944. By V-E Day, 22 battalions of them were on the ground in the European Theater of Operations. The M-26 tank, whose heavy armor, 90mm gun, and 48-ton weight made it a reasonable counter to the Panther, was not standardized until 1945; only around 200 were serving with the armored divisions when the war ended.
US design and procurement agencies did manage to develop and introduce by late 1944 the definitive light tank of World War II. Weighing a bit over 18 tons, with a medium-velocity 75mm gun adapted from an aircraft model and a top speed of 35 miles per hour, the M-24 was ideal for 1941. In 1944 all it needed was a buggy whip.
On the British side the number of Fireflies was doubled. More 17-pounders were mounted on more Lend-Lease M-10s, and on obsolescent tank chassis, of which there were so many in Britain’s inventory. At best these were stopgaps. But British tank designers, who for much of the war might as well have been working for the other side, finally got it right with the Comet, a fast 35-ton Panther killer with a modified 17-pounder gun and a better all- round tank than the M-26. But only a single armored division received the new vehicles during the war. The even better Centurion set postwar standards of effectiveness for years, but only began field trials in May 1945, reflecting a government decision to delay projects that could not enter service in 1944. The bureaucrats responsible did not have to clean human remains from burned-out Sherman hulls.
With those points made, others can be offered as counterweights. Stephen Zaloga appropriately observes that technical comparisons and tank-on-tank duels are disproportionately interesting to battle buffs and war gamers, particularly with the development of computerized visuals. In fact, the number of tank-versus-tank battles fought during the European campaign was limited, and many of those were small scale, involving a half dozen on each side. Postwar research, moreover, indicated that in those situations the most important factor was reaction time: seeing first, firing first, and hitting first. Second came tactics: positioning and movement. Technical comparisons were less significant.
An experienced crew, or a well-trained one, had a better chance in a direct confrontation. On the other hand, a poor crew with an inferior tank in a hull-down position, or on the flank or rear, had at least a first-strike edge over better men advancing in a state-of-the-art AFV. That held true even for the much- vilified tank destroyers. British M-10s manned by artillerymen successfully engaged Panzer IVs in Normandy; M-18s showed well against attacking Panthers at Arrancourt and many another now-forgotten sites.
“Advancing,” however, is the operative word. About half of all Allied tank losses in the European theater of operations came from high-velocity gunfire. British and Americans alike tended to describe any such round as an 88. Case studies suggest that as many as three-fourths were in fact 75mm. These could have come from Panthers or Panzer IVs, assault guns or open-topped tank destroyers—and not least from the towed antitank guns, whose crews contributed heavily to German defensive successes in Normandy. One or two well-positioned, well- camouflaged Pak 75s (and the Russian Front had made the Germans experts in concealment) could slow the boldest tankers until infantry could arrive to finish them off. And the gunners often had a good chance of getting clear to fight again before matters reached grenade range.
“Advancing” might also be cited as an adjective modifying the positive consequences of the Sherman’s well-established mechanical reliability. While it is certainly preferable to have tanks on line rather than under repair, recently available German statistics for the Eastern Front make clear that the crucial variable in maintenance was ability to recover the vehicle. In the predominantly offensive campaign for Northwest Europe, where the Allies generally occupied the battlegrounds, would it have been any more difficult to salvage a less-reliable tank with higher survivability in combat?
Much clearer is the fact that missions shaped proficiency. By 1944, as the previous chapter indicates, the panzers were configured by equipment and experience to fight other mechanized forces, whether by holding a front or counterattacking. Most Allied tank engagements were combined-arms operations involving buildings and entrenchments, troops caught in the open and unarmored vehicles. A Sherman in an American armored division might carry as little as a third of its gun ammunition in armor-piercing rounds. Machine guns could be used more often than the main armament in “routine” situations: the .50-caliber on the turret of most Shermans chewed through earth and walls with devastating effect.
It is correspondingly reasonable to suggest that tank crews conditioned to that kind of fighting might lose a little of the type of situational awareness required for tank-on-tank action. But the panzers were always somewhere in the background. Any German tank encountered could take on the dimensions of a Panther or Tiger. Allied and Japanese airmen in the Pacific similarly reported destroyers as cruisers and cruisers as battleships. Stress and adrenaline were major factors; panzer crews in Russia were no less prone to upgrade their opposition for scoring purposes and bragging rights.
Armor revisionists are fond of stating—accurately—that only three Tiger battalions fought in Normandy, all in the British sector. It is no less true that in their greatest number, during the Battle of the Bulge, Panthers were only a quarter of the AFVs committed—even before they started breaking down. But in the middle distance on a cloudy day, the differences between a Panzer IVJ and a Tiger can be difficult to discern even without the distractions of combat. What stood out was their common feature: the long-barreled, high-velocity gun calculated to make instant believers of US Ordnance types more interested in engines and transmissions than in weapons design.
V
DURING THE AUTUMN of 1944, in the aftermath of the failed attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20, and in the aftermath of the Red Army’s colossal breakthroughs in the East, the Nazi regime and the German people mobilized their last reserves of ferocity and fanaticism. The propaganda vision of a people’s community at arms and the free rein given to violence on both foreign and home fronts enhanced a pattern of exploitation and dehumanization already permeating German society from the factories to the countryside. Rationality gave way to passion and to fear as retribution loomed for a continent’s worth of crimes.
The Wehrmacht went out fighting and it went down hard. Like the German people, it neither saw nor sought an alternative. The prospective fate implied in the Allies’ demand for unconditional surrender could assume terrifying form to men who had seen—and participated in—the things done “in the name of the Third Reich and the German people.” That meant reconstruc
ting shattered divisions by placing officers at road junctions and impressing every man without a clear destination, even if cooks became tankers and sailors found themselves in the Waffen SS. It meant filling out ranks with teenage draftees and men combed out of the increasingly moribund navy and air force. It meant reequipment by an industrial system that continued to defy the best efforts of the Combined Bomber Offensive. It meant morale enforced by laws making a soldier’s family liable for any derelictions of duty. It meant field courts-martial that seemed to impose only one sentence: death.
Combine Eisenhower’s commitment to a continuous front with the relative weakness of Allied ground forces, and weak spots must inevitably emerge. The most obvious one was in the American sector: the Ardennes Forest, a static sector manned by a mix of green divisions and veteran outfits that had been burned out elsewhere. Hitler’s intention, shared and underwritten by High Command West, was to replicate the success of 1940 by striking through the Ardennes for Antwerp. The port’s capture would both create a logistical crisis for the Allies and divide the British from the Americans, opening the way to their defeat in detail and—just possibly—to a decisive falling-out between partners whose squabbling, egalitarian relationship was never really understood by German strategic planners who believed in client systems rather than alliances.
That the Allies still had absolute control of the air over the front, and that German fuel supplies were about enough to get their tanks halfway to Antwerp, did not concern the Führer. Nor were his generals excessively disturbed. The planners of High Command West preferred in principle a more limited operation: a double envelopment aimed at Liege. They were, however, never able to convince even themselves why Germany’s last reserves should be used that way. What was to be gained, except a drawn-out endgame?
At least the West was geographically small enough to offer something like a legitimate strategic objective. The Eastern Front presented only the prospect of a second Kursk, with the last of the panzers feeding themselves into a Russian meat grinder somewhere east of the existing front line. Panzer Lehr’s Fritz Bayerlein echoed many of his counterparts when he said he persuaded himself that the attack would succeed in order to give his orders credibility and sustain the aggressive spirit of his subordinates. If Operation Watch on the Rhine proved a Twilight of the Gods, then it would be a virtuoso performance as far as the army’s professionals and the zealots of the SS could make it.
By mid-December a buildup overlooked or discounted by confident Allied commanders gave the Germans a three-to-one advantage in men and a two-to-one advantage in armored vehicles in their chosen sector of attack. A new 6th SS Panzer Army had been organized in September under Sepp Dietrich. By this time in the Western theater the distinctions and antagonisms between army and Waffen SS had diminished, especially in the panzer formations, where the consistently desperate situation and the relatively even numbers of divisions made close mutual support a necessary norm. In the projected offensive, 5th Panzer and 6th SS Panzer Armies would fight side by side with few questions asked.
Part of the army panzers’ reconstruction involved reorganization. Both in Russia and in the West, the events of 1944 had resulted in serious losses of trained specialists and no less serious discrepancies between the numbers actually available in the combat units and those in the divisions’ rear echelons. One response was pairing panzer divisions by twos in permanent corps that would assume service and training responsibilities. Five were organized and saw action, against the Russians in the final campaign. More significant was the introduction on August 11 of the Panzer Division Type 1944. This gave each panzer grenadier regiment an organic pioneer company and each tank battalion organic maintenance and supply companies. Both changes acknowledged the decentralization that had become the panzers’ tactical and operational norm. Battalions consistently shifting rapidly from place to place and battle group to battle group would now be more self-sufficient. Divisions would now be better able to concentrate on planning and fighting—at least in principle.
The new panzer divisions were still authorized two tank battalions, each of as many as 88 tanks. Paper may be infinitely patient; reality is less forgiving. In the autumn of 1944, Allied heavy bomber strikes repeatedly hit most of the big tank manufacturing complexes: Daimler-Benz, MAN in Nuremberg, and the Henschel Tiger II plant in Kassel. Speer was able to sustain production, but only around half of the 700 Panthers and Panzer IVs scheduled for delivery in December reached the intended users.
The shortages also reflected decisions made in the Armaments Ministry. Speer had kept up tank production by transferring resources from the manufacture of other vehicles and by cutting back on spare parts. The latter dropped from over a quarter of tank-related contracts in 1943 to less than 10 percent in December 1944. Critical resources, like the molybdenum that made armor tough as opposed to brittle, were in critically short supply. Quality control slipped badly in everything from optics to transmissions to welding. The continued willingness of Germans to report for work despite the bombing is often cited. The on-the-job efficiency of men and women deprived of everything from their homes to a night’s sleep has been less investigated.
The increasing use of slave labor in war plants had consequences as well. Distracted, tired foremen and overseers were easier to evade. Risks that seemed foolhardy in 1943 took on a different dimension as the Reich seemed on the edge of implosion. Deliberate sabotage was probably less significant than hostile carelessness. But increasing numbers of panzers were coming on line with screws poorly tightened, hoses poorly connected—and an occasional handful of shop grit or steel filings deposited where it might do some damage. That was no small matter in contexts of frequently inexperienced crews and frequently nonexistent maintenance vehicles.
The immediate response was to reduce the number of tanks in a company to 14, and where necessary to replace those with assault guns of varying types. Even with these makeshifts, 15 panzer divisions still had only one tank battalion. Sometimes an independent battalion would be attached—Leibstandarte, for example, benefited by receiving the Tigers of the 501st SS as its de facto second battalion. Other divisions found themselves with new battalions equipped with Jagdpanthers or Jagdpanzer IVs, trained for antitank missions rather than tank tactics, or in the close cooperation with panzer grenadiers that remained the assault guns’ mission in an offensive.
Training and equipment were general problems in divisions preparing for the Ardennes offensive. Panzer Lehr, the army’s show horse, had its full complement of men, a third tank battalion equipped with assault guns, and one of the supplementary heavy antitank battalions. Das Reich, however, reported a large number of inexperienced recruits, and reported individual and unit training as at low standards. Leibstandarte described morale as excellent, but combat readiness above company level as inadequate. The 116th Panzer Division was short of armor, motor vehicles, and junior officers and NCOs. Second Panzer Division lacked a third of its vehicles: on December 14, one panzer grenadier battalion was riding bicycles. It was all a far cry from the spring of 1940.
In its final form, Watch on the Rhine6 incorporated three armies deployed on a 100-mile front under Model, commanding Army Group B since Rundstedt had been restored, at least nominally, to his former position in September. The balance of forces at the cutting edge, and their missions, demonstrated the army’s decline relative to the Waffen SS. Dietrich’s 6th SS Panzer was the spearhead, with Leibstandarte, Das Reich, Hohenstaufen, and Hitler Jugend as its backbone, and five army infantry divisions as spear-carriers and mop-up troops. Fifth Panzer Army would cover Dietrich’s left, and Manteuffel had the army’s armored contribution: Panzer Lehr, 2nd and 116th Panzer Divisions, plus four infantry divisions. Protecting his left flank in turn was the responsibility of 7th Army, with four infantry divisions and no armor to speak of.
Watch on the Rhine’s order of battle incorporated 200,000 men, 600 armored vehicles, almost 2,500 supporting aircraft—that number itself a triumph of concentr
ation involving stripping the Reich’s air defenses. Radio silence was draconically enforced. Camouflage was up to Eastern Front standards. Parachute drops and sabotage units were expected to confuse surprised defenders even further. The offensive seemed structured to maximize what the Germans—the panzer troops in particular—considered their main strength: sophisticated tactical and operational expertise.
Model could in principle call on another ten divisions, but only two were panzers; the offensive would rise or fall with its starting lineup. The operational plan was Sichelschnitt recycled. Dietrich, at the Schwerpunkt, was to break through around Monschau, cross the Meuse around Liege, and strike full tilt for Antwerp. Manteuffel would cross the Meuse at Dinant and aim for Brussels. The panzers were expected to be across the Meuse before the Allies could move armor sufficient to counter them.
As so often before, however, German focus devolved into tunnel vision. None of the specific plans addressed the subject of Allied air power. The responsible parties similarly avoided addressing directly the fuel question. By comparison to the Western campaign’s early months, fuel supplies were impressive, but the Panthers and Tigers were always thirsty. Were the Americans likely to be so confused, so feckless, and so obliging as to leave their fuel dumps intact as refilling points? In the climate of December 1944, asking such a question suggested dangerous weakness of will and character.
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