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General George S. Patton and the Battle of the BulgeBy Stanley Weintraub | MHQ | 10 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post The Bulge—Eisenhower despised the label—exploited widespread intelligence failures. Americans have often been let down by intelligence lapses bred by complacency. The salient into the Allied lines was reaching perilously toward the Meuse River when, on Tuesday morning, December 19, 1944, soon after the counterattack in the Ardennes forest had gained momentum, a shaken Eisenhower convened key generals in Verdun. He traveled there from Versailles at 11 a.m. in an armor-plated Cadillac he had used since Algiers. Taking no chances, a security detail escorted him. Adolf Hitler’s favorite commando officer, Otto Skorzeny, who had plucked Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans, had been leading Germans in GI uniforms taken from prisoners and the dead, and using captured American jeeps to misdirect units and sow confusion. One commando taken prisoner imaginatively declared that Skorzeny was out to kidnap Eisenhower. As a result, an otherwise unimportant look-alike lieutenant colonel was being driven around Versailles in Eisenhower’s hat and overcoat while the supreme commander, nearly immobilized by the empty threat, had left furtively for his meeting site. The strategy session took place on the second floor of an old stone barrack surrounded by a sea of slush and mud. Warmed inadequately by a lone potbelly stove, the room was set up with large easels for displaying maps. There, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, General Bradley, General Patton, Lt. Gen. Jacob Devers, and Field Marshal Montgomery’s deputy, Freddie de Guingand, and their aides were to work out joint moves to blunt the German thrusts. (Monty would not deign to travel to meet with lower ranks than his own.) Eisenhower unpersuasively described the fumbled defense crisis as an opportunity rather than a disaster, appealing for “only cheerful faces at this conference table.” Farther to the east, where the frontiers of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg met, the conferees knew that dismayed American divisions were still being mauled. Although Ike warned Patton about bluster and bravado, thinking big as usual, Patton offered: “Hell, let’s have the guts to let the sons of bitches go all the way to Paris. Then we’ll really cut ’em up and chew ’em up.” Several at the table laughed, but Eisenhower interrupted sharply with “George, that’s fine. But the enemy must never be allowed to cross the Meuse.” Eisenhower wanted the breakthrough blunted and narrowed. It had already disrupted plans to strike into Germany. Containing the bulge between the Belgian crossroads towns of Bastogne and St. Vith would limit the few viable routes by which the Germans could move reinforcements and supplies toward the Meuse. Despite the Western Allies’ continuing insistence that only unconditional surrender loomed—to allay Josef Stalin’s paranoia that the West might make a separate peace to let the Germans fight the Russians without an enemy at their backs—a desperate Hitler dreamed of striking a deal. A two-pronged attack toward the Meuse, threatening Paris, and toward Antwerp, the key Belgian port supplying the Allies, might not only frustrate the penetration of Germany itself but also buy time to develop more “miracle” weapons. V-2 supersonic rockets, first launched toward London in early September, were a frightening beginning. However erratic the missiles might have been, there was no defense against them. The Luftwaffe was putting into production the first jet warplanes, which might dominate the skies. American troops, now bearing the brunt of the fighting, were stretched thin. “We are taking three trees a day,” an officer conceded, “yet they cost us 100 men apiece.” Juggling operational boundaries, Eisenhower wanted General Jake Devers’ Seventh Army to move up from the south of France into areas from which Patton had planned to jump off into the Saar, and Patton to attack the southern flank of the Bulge below Bastogne. The Saarland, east of Metz and southeast of Luxembourg, Germany’s richest source of coal and a center of iron and steel production, was crucial to its further war potential. When Patton took Metz on November 22, it was the first time it had fallen to an enemy since a.d. 415. By December 5, he had four crossings of the Saar River in place. After that, weather and weariness had bogged the Third Army down, while even German reinforcements from the rubbish heap of the last reserves were fighting hard. Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
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10 Comments to “General George S. Patton and the Battle of the Bulge”
My name is SSG Phillip Murray with 2nd BN 27th IN 25th ID. I am looking for my grandfathers brother who was killed in the Battle of The Bulge. His name is Robert Murray. I would like all the information you could find on him please. I have been looking for informattion on him for a few weeks now and ha e found nothing. I would like to write a little book on my grandfather and 4 brothers in WWII one of them being deceased. I appreciate you help
By Phillip J Murray on Jul 6, 2008 at 11:38 pm
You might consider looking around on the net for what unit he was a part of. There’s a large number of sites around which might be able to put you in touch with people who might have known him.
For instance, the 9th Infantry Division Association comprises the 60th, 47th and 39th Infantry Divisions as well as a large number of other units.
http://www.octofoil.org
Aside from that, your best bet in this is to look through resources such as the national archives which will contain all of the reported information on events in WWII. Good luck in your search!
By Torry Crass on Dec 28, 2008 at 3:44 pm
i think that there should be more information because these teachers at estrella vista elementary want speicific onfo man they want everything from us!!!!!!1
By richard on Jan 12, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Search for PHILLIP MURRAY.
Hello from BELGIUM,result search ROBERT J MURRAY,LOOK
service:42145804
18th infantry regiment,1st infantry division.
Died 18 jan 1945
plot-f…row 6….grave 14.
HENRY CHAPELLE AMERICAN CEMETERY-BELGIUM
abmc.gov
BONNE CHANCE .GOOD LUCK.
CHRISTIAN. BELGIUM COUNTRY.
By BOSMANS CHRISTIAN on Feb 6, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Im taking the person of the century challenge I vote Patton
By Everett Perry on May 21, 2009 at 9:21 am
Was hoping to read something insightful here; surprised instead to find the most psycophantic piece of ignorant rubbish I have read in a long time. It’s reverence of Patton is matched only by its disdain for the excellent job that Montgomery did in re-organising the northern shoulder.
Monty was quite right…the attack by Patton was in too little strength into too difficult terrain, in too difficult weather. The objective of the attack was to reduce pressure on 1st US Army by forcing the Germans to respond. Patton signally failed in this objective. Both of 5th or 6th Panzer Armies continued attacking Hodges 1st US Army unhindered. Essentially, they ignored Patton, because his attack was floundering and was not threatening their advance on their actual objectives.
Hodges, without any orders from Bradley or Eisenhower, neither of whom bothered to ring or visit him, was most grateful to be put under Mongomery’s command. Montgomery is generally acknowleged by even his harshest critics to have done an excellent job of generalship.
The suggestion that Montgomery refused to visit persons of lower rank can only be a deliberate lie, since it is obviously absurd on a moment of the merest thought. How does one exercise command without visiting subordinates and issuing orders? Montgomery visited his army commanders almost every day, regularly visited the corps commanders, and personally gave talks to many thousands of the US troops involved in the Battle of the Bulge, something that US commanders could have learned from. The US troops were astonished to have a field marshal talking to them when they had for the most part never been talked to by their divisional general, let alone a corps or army commander. Monty’s philosophy was that you went forward to subordinates to give orders at the place where they were to be carried out, not call your subordinates back to you at your ivory tower. The meeting referred to is the only one that Monty did not attend because he was tied up on that day directing the actual battle, which is more than either Eisenhower or Bradley were doing.
The suggestion that Eisenhower came up with the idea of shortening the southern army groups to provide reinforcements is also fantasy. That was Montgomery’s suggestion and at first Eisenhower didn’t do it (because it necessarily involved giving up ground). He was later persuaded, but did not want a confrontation with Devers so asked one of his staff to pass the news to Devers (that he should shorten salients and withdraw in places so as to free up reserves). Devers did no such thing, in an excellent example of the disdain that Eisenhower’s battlefield commanders generally had for him as a general, even if they thought the world of him as a person. By the time Eisenhower got around to ordering Devers properly, De Gaulle stepped in politically and forced Eisenhower not to relinquish French territory. So the divisions never did get made available.
None of this is particularly hard to find out.
Finally, the writer seems to go on about the lack of commitment of British formations. He seems to think it would have been wise to cut Brit troops and supply lines across US supply lines. It would not have been. The Brits expanded their frontage to release US divisions to reinforce the Ardennes. Only the Brit garrison units that Monty had the foresight to place on the Meuse bridges got into some limited action to blunt the tip of the German spear. Later on, however, a full British corps of three divisions came into action on the right flank of the counter attack, ordered by Montgomery, by Lightning Joe Collins 7th US Corps….but the writer doesn’t seem to want to mention this, and deliberately leaves the reader with a false impression. Perhaps it would too gracious? Too balanced?
The short capsule on Normandy….where Patton breaks out while the stolid Bradley and Montgomery is pure fantasy where any resemblance to reality is accidental. To point out only the most egregious distortion: the breakout was already achieved before 3rd Army was activated. One hopes the writer will at some stage actually read a history of the Normandy campaign…try Carlo D’estes Decision at Normandy for the US view or Hamilton’s bio on Monty for the Brit view.
There is a lot more, but time does not permit. Basically the article is a disgrace that should never have been commited to type.
By McIvan on May 21, 2009 at 11:30 pm
I couldn’t have said it better than McIvan. History has shown (p.e. the Enigma) that US war correspondence (driven by pride and arrogance) have invented propaganda on their own..;-) I think that the myth around G.S.Patton has been strengthened over the last decades mainly caused by the fact that he died just after the war. Nevertheless he has been a great inspiror and into lengths of time we should be greatfull to those who liberated us!
By Marcel on Jun 17, 2009 at 1:45 pm
The bulge was technicaly a draw both sides had losses about the same. In fact when the battle was closed down the US Army had not recovered the ground it had lossed.
Initially Patton refused to move North when ordered by Bradley and had to be odered by Eisenhower
Opertion Cobra the US Breakout at Normandy only took place after Monty took the bulk of the German tanks onto the Brits and Canadian Armies. six and a half Panzer Divisions including all the SS Panzers. The US faced one and a half panzer divisions at Cobra. and after ‘Goodwood’ The Germans had only 174 AFVs to counter attack Cobra. The British were facing almost 700
It is now widely accepted that that Patton used Ultra to avoid having to fight German Panzers. The British Secret Recconnaisance Regiment (The Phantoms) provided most of Pattons intelligence on the Ground and some of their reports seem to support this
Many people believe that the German Alpine Fortress was invented by the US government to excuse Patton’s moving away from the main German defended areas, going south when the main German forces were moving North. But to the US as long as Patton was advancing even when it was in the wrong direction that was OK.
By the way Monty commanded four of the major succesfful battles of WW2, Alamein, Mareth, Normandy and the Rhein crossingand many smaller succesfull ones. Tell me which US General could match him for success and size
By Arnie on Oct 31, 2009 at 7:06 am