World War II Day by Day

Bastogne, Eastern Belgium • January 3, 1945

Beginning on this date and the next in January 1945 the German Wehr­macht (armed forces) began a risky, last-ditch attack on the U.S. garri­son at Bas­togne in East­ern Bel­gium. Adolf Hitler, in planning his mas­sive onslaught against Anglo-Amer­ican forces via the densely forested Ardennes region shared by Bel­gium, France, and Luxem­bourg (Opera­tion Watch on the Rhine), recog­nized Bas­togne’s impor­tance. Not only was the small village (popu­lation less than 4,000) a com­muni­cation hub—1 of 3 in the Ardennes—from which 7 major hard-surfaced roads ema­nated from its town square, but an enemy-held Bas­togne could hinder the Wehr­macht’s thrust to the Belgian coast and constitute a danger to the German flank.

General der Panzertruppe Baron Hasso von Man­teuffel, com­mander of the 5th Panzer Army, was deter­mined as ever to “erase” the Amer­ican garri­son at Bas­togne, calling it the “cen­tral prob­lem” now that the Ger­man Ardennes Cam­paign, better known in the West as “The Battle of the Bulge,” had sputtered out in early Janu­ary 1945. Just days before, more than 100,000 men of the 5th Panzer Army were assem­bling in the Bas­togne sector, ready to con­verge on the town (another 30,000 were en route) and strike a victory or at least chew up Amer­ican divi­sions that poured into the fight. Though armored spear­heads of Gen. George S. Patton’s U.S. Third Army managed late on Decem­ber 26 to relieve Man­teuffel’s siege of Bas­togne (Decem­ber 20–27, 1944), Patton, following a visit there on New Year’s Day 1945, con­fided in his diary on Janu­ary 4 after a letup in fighting around Bastogne that day and the previous one: “We can still lose this war . . . the Germans are colder and hungrier than we are, but they fight better.”

However it was the Germans who lost the war in the West (and with it, Bas­togne) when, on Janu­ary 16, 1945, Patton’s Third Army at last met up with Gen. Courtney Hodges’ U.S. First Army at Houf­falize, now a moon­scape of charred rubble a little more than 10 miles/­17 kilo­meter north of Bas­togne. The once 60‑mile/­97‑kilo­meter‑deep (Decem­ber 26, 1944) Ardennes sali­ent had shriveled and was now closed off, and the war-weary players in Hitler’s scheme to force a nego­tiated peace on the Western Allies had totally exhausted them­selves on a fool’s errand. The most heroic and famous epi­sode in the Battle of the Bulge, namely the week­long siege of Bas­togne, claimed 3,000‑plus American lives and an unknown number of Germans.

After staving off the enemy for over a month at great human cost (nearly 92,000 casual­ties between Decem­ber 16, 1944, and Janu­ary 25, 1945), the Western Allies swiftly reas­serted them­selves. By early Febru­ary 1945, some 2 mil­lion U.S., British, Cana­dian, and Free French sol­diers were ready for a steam­roller assault on Ger­many’s western heart­land in the Ruhr pocket and Rhine plain. On the Eastern Front, Soviet forces and their allies had launched a steam­roller of their own on Janu­ary 12, 1945. The apoca­lyptic collapse of Hitler’s Thou­sand Year Reich following the Fuehrer’s suicide in Berlin on April 30 was 3 months away.

The Legendary Defense of Bastogne During the Battle of the Bulge, December 20–27, 1944

Above: Control of its Bastogne’s crossroads was vital to the German offen­sive directed at the Allies’ vital supply harbor at Ant­werp, Bel­gium, because all 7 main roads in the Ardennes Forest (5 roads and 1 rail­way station are iden­ti­fied in this photo) con­verged on this small Eastern Bel­gium town. The German siege of Bas­togne lasted from Decem­ber 20 to 27, 1944, after which it was broken by ele­ments of Gen. George S. Patton’s U.S. Third Army. Not until Janu­ary 9, 1945, based on Ultra inter­cepts, did the Allies learn that the enemy, half-starved, lacking trans­port, yet struggling to push vehicles and heavy equip­ment in extreme cold, was aban­doning the Bastogne sector, or pocket. On Janu­ary 11 the German retreat was under heavy American artillery fire.

Above: Brig. Gen Anthony C. McAuliffe (1898–1975) (left frame), a division artil­lery com­mander thrust into role of acting com­mander of the 101st Air­borne “Screaming Eagles” Divi­sion, famously called German Gen. Hein­rich Frei­herr von Luett­witz’s bluff. Luett­witz (1896–1969) (right frame), an armored corps commander who knew the cap­ture of the Bel­gian cross­roads town of Bast­ogne would be costly and time-consuming with his forces at hand, on his own initi­a­tive sent two emis­saries under cover of a white flag to McAuliffe’s com­mand center on Decem­ber 22, demanding sur­render of the town. Bas­togne, Luett­witz alleged in his note, was sur­rounded by strong armored forces (his), soon to be rein­forced by artil­lery and heavy (non­existent) anti­aircraft bat­talions. McAuliffe had a mili­tary, moral, and life-and-death deci­sion to make for his besieged men and Bastogne’s civil­ians. His mono­syllabic, all caps deci­sion carried back to Luett­witz, “NUTS!” (equiv­a­lent to Bloed­sinn in German), never did provoke crippling Ger­man punish­ment, though the Luft­waffe did hammer the town on Decem­ber 24 and 30, the latter in a 73‑plane raid. U.S. C‑47 air­drops of medi­cine, ammu­nition, and food on Decem­ber 21, 23, and 26, the latter delivery aug­mented by 11 Waco engine­less gliders bringing medi­cal perso­nnel and fuel, helped sus­tain the defenders, out­numbered approxi­mately 5 to 1. After dusk on Decem­ber 26, a tank bat­talion of Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army broke the town’s siege, opening a southern supply corr­idor. The corridor was so narrow “you can spit across it,” one officer remarked.

Left: On a rubble-filled street in Bastogne on Christ­mas Day, 1944, three members of the 101st Air­borne Divi­sion walk past bodies of fellow soldiers killed in a German bombing raid the night before. The 101st Air­borne Divi­sion received a Presi­dential Unit Cita­tion for their heroic defense of Bastogne. On Decem­ber 30, 1944, Patton person­ally awarded McAuliffe the Distin­guished Ser­vice Cross, the second highest mili­tary award that can be given to a member of the U.S. Army. Three days later the Army promoted McAuliffe to major general and gave him com­mand of the 103rd Infan­try Divi­sion, which he led from January to July 1945.

Right: U.S. supply trucks and replacements for the 101st Air­borne Divi­sion roll through the bomb-cratered, shell-torn streets of Bas­togne following the town’s deliv­erance on Decem­ber 27, 1944. By then the Ardennes initi­ative had passed from Ger­man to Amer­ican hands, as both sides realized. Ger­man media aban­doned head­line treat­ment of the Ardennes Cam­paign to focus on developments in Nazi-occupied Greece and Hungary.

Battle of Bastogne, December 20–27, 1944 (May want to skip first 2 minutes of video)