The Significance of the Operation Nordwind - Essay Example

Operation Nordwind The Battle of the Bulge (Ardennes offensive) is widely regarded as the last great clash between the allies and the German army prior to the final siege of Berlin. Though more well-known, the German’s last major offensive was not in the Northern, Ardennes region of Luxembourg and Belgium, it occurred in Central France. As the Ardennes offensive was winding down in late December, 1944 and with Patton’s Third Army diverted from the south to the Ardennes, Hitler launched his final campaign, Operation Nordwind. Though waged on somewhat of a lesser scale, the battle was no less important in determining the course of the war and was fought with no less ferocity or heroism. Had the Germans succeeded in either campaign; the consequences could potentially have been devastating. The Ardennes Offensive has been often glorified, for example by the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ and rightfully so. However, Operation Nordwind was equally significant and holds the distinction of the final offensive, the last gasp effort by the German army. It was December of 1944 and the harsh winter of Northern European winter was fast approaching. The Allied forces formed a line that stretched along the Rhine River, essentially the German border with France, and were waiting for the orders to mount an all-out offense. The weak point of this line was located in the heavily forested and hilly Ardennes region which the allied command assumed was impervious to attack. Additionally, the allies did not believe the German army had the manpower to launch such an attack. The Germans, who had not mounted a winter attack in many centuries, surprised the allies by striking the Ardennes region which they correctly assessed was the weakest section of their line (“The War Against Germany”, 1985). By the end of 1944, the Germans realized the Ardennes offensive was going to be lost. However, the Allies were now weak in the Alsace region of central France which borders the Rhine. The U.S. Seventh Army had been stretched thin in this 100-mile line in order to cover the area vacated by the Third Army which had marched north to defend the Ardennes. Operation Nordwind was launched by the Germans on December 31 to take advantage of this weakness. “The Germans planned to exploit American weakness in this [Alsace] area by a three-pronged drive across the Rhine” (“Ardennes-Alsace”, 2006). In Adolf Hitler’s political testament ‘Mein Kampf,’ written while imprisoned in 1928 and discovered by allies after the war, he wrote, “Strength lies not in defense but in attack” (Hitler, 1939: 354). This statement epitomized Hitler’s military strategy throughout the war as evidenced by his blitzkrieg tactics and relentless campaigns to gain territories or regain lost ground. Therefore, the offenses in the Ardennes and Alsace should have come as little surprise to his senior officers who largely believed the operations were a useless waste of life and that the remaining forces should be used in defense of the Fatherland. Allied command assumed Germany would assume a defensive position and was in the planning stages of the Rhineland Campaign, the invasion of Germany, when they were caught by surprise by this tactic. The Ardennes and Alsace offences confirmed the fears of top German military officials. It cost a quarter million German soldiers their lives, destroyed what remained of the German army including 1,600 war planes and hundreds of tanks without gaining any territory or advantage. The allies, who had lost more than 100,000 in the two battles, regrouped and implemented the Rhineland Campaign six weeks later than they originally planned (“The War Against Germany”, 1985). More than 80,000 allied casualties were reported in the Ardennes, 20,000 in Alsace (“Ardennes-Alsace”, 2006). Just six months prior to Operation Nordwind, June 6, 1944, the allies invaded the beaches at Normandy. Now, on December 31, much of the battle-hardened, elite German forces had been annihilated and what remained was pressed into service in this last, futile offensive alongside newly conscripted troops. From August of 1944, Hitler had been building a sizeable reserve military force because of the ally’s steady progress towards Germany on both east and west sides but would not allow its use to reinforce Germany’s besieged defensive units. Hitler took units from existing divisions and drafted children, the elderly and the physically and psychologically impaired, all of which would have previously been judged unsuitable for military service. The survivors from Panzer divisions were reconstructed and combined with other various units from both western and eastern fronts. This combined with the citizen soldiers, the Volksgrenadier, or ‘people’s infantry’ to become, not a defensive force as the allies expected and German officers asked for, but the last vain attempt to win the war at Alsace. Though this last force was a conglomerate of the battle weary and unfit, it was well equipped with generous supplies of automatic assault weapons, armored vehicles and had numerous rocket battalions supporting each division. Hitler was optimistic that the enhanced firepower would compensate for the lack of well-trained soldiers (“Ardennes-Alsace”, 2006). Operation Nordwind was fought in bitterly cold conditions, during the worst winters in history. Hypothermia and frostbite was as much an enemy as were the opposing forces. In these horrific weather condition, Hitler sent this heavily armed but inexperienced First Army south through the Wissembourg Gap toward the town of Bitche and the U.S. Seventh Army group. He sent the German Nineteenth Army north from the Colmar pocket and on to Strasbourg to face the U.S. Sixth Army. Initially, Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had wanted to withdraw the Sixth from Strasbourg but ultimately caved to political pressures from General Charles de Gaulle, the leader of France’s provincial government, who was vehemently opposed to deserting the town. Giving it back to the German’s, de Gaulle feared, would incite retributive acts by the infamously brutal German soldiers. Though Eisenhower decided to smooth the political feathers of an ally instead of doing what was militarily prudent, the allies prevailed in both Bitche and Strasbourg (Smith, 2005). “The Seventh Army received orders to hold its line in Alsace and defend Strasbourg. It did so in a month of bitter fighting, which ended in the complete defeat of the Nordwind attack” (Cosmas & Cowdrey, 1992). After Operation Nordwind had begun, Eisenhower believed “the Germans had given the Allies a great opportunity by impulsively committing their reserves” further stating that “by rushing from his fixed defenses the enemy has given us the chance to turn his great gamble into his worst defeat” (Pogue, 2005: 311). However, the cold weather and heavy snow that crippled the last German offensive was also a detriment to the allied air and ground efforts. This along with the heavily fortified and fanatically motivated Germans made their ‘worst defeat’ very costly to both sides. The Germans were not alone in their shortage of manpower. The allies also faced a severe shortfall of infantry soldiers in the winter of 1944 predominantly caused by the unexpected length of many battles and the unusually poor weather conditions. Though Eisenhower shuffled personnel to make up for the shortage, he still fell short of the number required to be effective. Of course the Ardennes and Alsace battles made the situation much worse. Not even the military draft system combined with the massive numbers of volunteers in America could keep up with the demand for more soldiers. The circumstances surrounding the battle of Alsace resulted in a momentous and historical development in racial relations in the U.S. although rarely acknowledged. This was the first time in American history that black soldiers were integrated with white units. Partly because of the bravery and tenacity with which the black soldiers fought at Alsace, total integration of the military was made law following the war. Prior to Operation Nordwind, the vast majority of blacks were not assigned to battalion units. These soldiers were generally relegated to periphery service duties. These troops were “permitted to volunteer for duty as combat infantrymen, with the understanding that after the necessary training, they would be committed to frontline service” (Smith, 2005). The color barrier was broken but racism persisted as the black soldiers were assigned to the most dangerous duties on the front line (Smith, 2005). The final two German offensives in the Ardennes region in late 1944 and the Alsace region in early 1945 were by all accounts a foolhardy gamble which senselessly cost many thousands of lives on both sides and their conclusion effectively drew the curtain closed on the Nazi regime. The original objective of these last-gasp offenses was to annihilate a considerable segment of the already depleted Ally ground units which would break apart the Ally’s coalition. Neither of these objectives came remotely close to becoming reality. “Like the Normandy Campaign, the Ardennes and Alsace struggle provided the necessary attrition for the mobile operations that would end the war. The carefully husbanded enemy reserves that the Allies expected to meet in their final offensive into Germany had been destroyed in December and January” (Cirillo, 1994). An allied victory most probably would have occurred eventually and possibly sooner rather than later but there is no question that the tremendous losses of soldiers, supplies, equipment and morale by the Germans due to the battles of Ardennes and Alsace were greatly influential in bringing the war in Europe to a quicker conclusion. These battles finished the German armies located both east and west of the Rhine. Eisenhower was of the opinion that this objective was imperative if the ultimate objective of invading Germany were to be militarily practical. The allied victories at Ardennes and then Alsace, combined with the advances of the Soviet Army, which had been fighting the German’s since 1941, caused Germany’s prompt collapse in the spring of 1944 (“Ardennes-Alsace”, 2006). Against the advice of his military counsel and to the surprise of Allied Command, Hitler assembled every male that could carry a rifle into a formidable army for one last desperate assault in the Alsace region of France. By taking advantage of the Third Army’s departure to the Ardennes, Hitler reasoned that a surprise attack on a weakened portion of the enemy’s line might turn the tide of the war in Germany’s favor. Had Hitler been successful at Alsace, the battle would not have been the last German offensive. Operation Nordwind was the final German offensive of WWII and the beginning of the end for the Nazi regime. It was also the beginning of the liberation of concentration camps and racial tolerance within the U.S. military. Operation Nordwind was a battle that marked historic firsts and lasts and can not be considered a lesser victory than the Battle of the Bulge by standards of strategic importance or ferocity of the fight. It has, however, been a battle that has been largely forgotten. Works Cited “Ardennes-Alsace: 16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945.” World War II Recreation Association. (June 16, 2006). May 4, 2007 Cirillo, Roger. “The Coalition Held in the Ardennes, and It Still Endures.” International Herald Tribune. December 30, 1994. Cosmas, Graham A. & Cowdrey, Albert E. United States Army in World War II. Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1992. Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1939. Pogue, Forrest C. “US Army in WWII.” (Notes of meeting at Maastricht, 7 Dec 44, DSC/TS.100/12, 8 Dec 44, SHAEF SGS 381 Post OVERLORD Planning, II). (June 12, 2005). May 7, 2007 Smith, Gary. Rhineland. Mt. Mestas Research. (2005). May 6, 2007 “(The) War Against Germany: Europe and Adjacent Areas.” The United States Army in World War II Pictorial Record. Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1985 (first pub. 1951) Read More