The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945

In the eyes of Hitler and his chief military advisers, Keitel and Jodl, the enemy inroads since the summer strengthened rather than weakened the case for the planned western offensive. The pressure, military and economic, on Germany was relentlessly intensifying. The tightening vice, they felt, could be loosened only through a bold strike. German losses of men and equipment had mounted sharply over the autumn, predominantly on the eastern front but also in the west. But so had those of the enemy. The American casualties in fierce autumn fighting for relatively minor territorial gains totalled almost a quarter of a million men, dead, wounded or captured.¹⁰ Hitler impressed upon his commanders that the time to strike against an enemy that had suffered high losses and was ‘worn out’ was ripe.¹¹ Beyond that, the eastern front—the heavy fighting in Hungary notwithstanding—was for the time being seen to be relatively stabilized, though no one was in doubt that a big new offensive would soon be launched. This was seen as all the more reason to press home the advantage of a German offensive in the west without delay.

Heavy priority was accorded to the demands of the western offensive in allocation of men and armaments. Three armies of Army Group B were to take part. The 6th SS-Panzer Army, led by SS Colonel-General Sepp Dietrich, one of Hitler’s toughest and most trusted military veterans, and the 5th Panzer Army under its brilliant commander and specialist in tank warfare, General Hasso von Manteuffel, were to spearhead the attack in the north and centre of the front.¹² The 7th Army, under General Erich Brandenberger, was assigned the task of protecting the southern flank. Some 200,000 men in five panzer and thirteen People’s Grenadier divisions were assigned to the first wave, supported by around 600 tanks and 1,600 heavy guns. However, many of the men were young and inexperienced. Some divisions came, already battle-weary, from the fighting on the Saar. Fuel shortages were a major concern, even with some supplies taken from the hard-pressed eastern front. And an even bigger worry was the weakness of the Luftwaffe. All available planes—including two-thirds of the entire fighter force—were assembled for the attack. Hopes had to be placed in bad weather limiting the massive supremacy in the air of the Allies. Even so, the Wehrmacht began with a substantial numerical advantage in ground-troops and heavy armaments in the 170-kilometre-wide attack zone.¹³ The element of surprise would be vital to make this momentary superiority tell. But even surprise would not be enough if the offensive could not be sustained.

There were grounds enough for scepticism about the chances of success. Both Rundstedt and Field-Marshal Model, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B, thought the aim of Antwerp, around 200 kilometres away, far too ambitious, given the strength of available forces. They favoured a more limited aim of beating back and destroying the Allied forces along the Meuse, between Aachen and Liège. But Hitler wanted no ‘little solution’, no ‘ordinary’ victory. He would not be moved from the aim he had stipulated for the offensive. In the end, Rundstedt and Model declared themselves to be ‘fully in agreement’ with Hitler’s ambitious plan. Privately, both remained extremely dubious. Model thought it had ‘no chance’. Dietrich and Manteuffel also bowed, their own doubts still unassuaged, to the imperative.¹⁴ Like most military commanders, they saw it as their duty to raise objections to the operational plan but then, when these were rejected, to fulfil to the best of their ability the orders of the political leadership, however futile they deemed these to be. Hitler still had the capacity, however, to make the impossible seem possible. Manteuffel himself accepted that Hitler’s addresses to the divisional commanders on 11 and 12 December had made a positive impact. ‘The commanders’, he later wrote, ‘took away from this conference a picture of the enemy’s overall situation. They had been given an appreciation of the situation from the one source in a position to see the full military picture and it seemed to give an assurance of favourable conditions.’¹⁵

In the top echelons of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, there was no readiness to back the well-founded misgivings of those who would lead the offensive. Keitel and Jodl were daily in Hitler’s immediate proximity and remained heavily under his domineering influence. Both remained believers in his unique qualities as Führer, adepts of his form of charismatic authority.¹⁶ If they harboured doubts, they kept them to themselves. Jodl refrained from any criticism of Hitler’s decision even when interrogated by his Allied captors in May 1945.¹⁷