Hitler's Last Days (5 page)

General Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower, in an official portrait.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Eisenhower is plagued by a daily list of worries. If anything, his life since becoming supreme commander of the Allied force in Europe has been one headache after another, punctuated by moments of world-changing success. But these new expectations about the war's end worry Ike deeply right now. He is well aware that the proposed New Year's date to end the war will be impossible. Yet his boss, army Chief of Staff George Marshall, has set this date in stone. Hence the deep frown lines on Eisenhower's high, bald forehead. Marshall is back in Washington, thirty-nine hundred miles from the front. He is chief of staff of the army and chief military adviser to President Roosevelt. No other officer in the combined Allied armies has more power and influence than he does.

American infantrymen on their way to Belgium.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Marshall just returned to the United States after a weeklong tour of the European theater of operations, whereupon he cabled Eisenhower his great displeasure about the strategic situation. The October pause brought on by poor logistics, which so enrages George Patton, infuriates Marshall, too. He is demanding an end to the stalemate. Everything possible must be done to attack deep into Germany and end the war by the new year.

Per Marshall's orders, this is to include using weapons currently considered top secret and placing every single available American, British, and Canadian soldier on the front lines. Nothing must be held back.

Eisenhower must find a way. Orders are orders. And his success has been largely based on obeying them. So Ike paces and smokes. A few top American generals are coming over for dinner tonight. The celebration of Aachen can wait until then.

So Eisenhower is faced with the stark reality that the lack of gas, guns, and bullets afflicts all the Allied forces up and down the five hundred miles of front lines. They are, for the most part, stuck and immobile. Eisenhower knows that Adolf Hitler and the armies of Nazi Germany are far from conquered.

*   *   *

What Eisenhower doesn't know is that German soldiers, guns, and tanks are quietly grouping near the German border. They do so under strict radio silence, lest the Americans hear their chatter and anticipate the biggest surprise attack since Pearl Harbor.

The Germans face west, toward the American lines and the thick wilderness of a place in Belgium known as the Ardennes Forest. It is here that U.S. forces are weakest because it is assumed that an attack through this dense wood is impossible. To tilt the odds even further in the Germans' favor, they know that George Patton and his Third Army are more than one hundred miles southeast, still in dire need of gas, guns, and soldiers.

So Operation Watch on the Rhine will be a successful counterattack that not even the great George Patton can thwart—of that Hitler and his generals are sure.

The Nazis are poised to turn defeat into victory with this counterattack and the development of a new atomic weapon that Hitler believes is almost ready.

The F
ü
hrer is still certain of ultimate victory.

Very certain.

CHAPTER 5

WAR ROOM, U.S. THIRD ARMY HEADQUARTERS

NANCY, FRANCE
DECEMBER 9, 1944
7 A.M.

C
OLONEL
O
SCAR
K
OCH THINKS THAT
Hitler is up to something.

The G-2, as General George Patton's top intelligence officer is known in military vocabulary, is also certain that the German army is far from defeated. In fact, he is the only intelligence officer on the Allied side who is quite sure that Germany is poised to launch a withering Christmas counterattack.

Only nobody will listen to him.

The sun has not yet risen on what promises to be another bitter cold and wet day in eastern France. Koch stands amidst the countless maps lining the walls of the war room, sixty miles south of the front lines. The forty-seven-year-old career soldier is bald and stands ramrod straight, with thick glasses that give him a professorial air.

Colonel Oscar Koch.
[U.S. Army Archive]

Just a few feet away, George S. Patton sits in a straight-backed wooden chair as Koch begins the morning intelligence briefing. Patton wears a long overcoat and scarf to ward off the cold, even indoors. He is pensive, and eager to once again be on the attack. In just ten short days, Patton is launching Operation Tink, which will take his Third Army into Nazi Germany for the first time. The invasion of Germany now awaits. Patton plans to cross the Rhine and press hard toward Frankfurt, then on to Berlin.

Unlike many generals, who plan an attack without first consulting with their G-2, Patton relies heavily on Koch.

And with good reason. A humble veteran soldier who made his way up through the ranks, Koch is perhaps the hardest-working man on Patton's staff. He is consumed with the task of collecting information about every aspect of the battlefield. Koch arranges for reconnaissance planes to fly over enemy positions, and then has a team of draftsmen construct precise terrain maps of the towns, rivers, railway lines, fence lines, creeks, farm buildings, bridges, and other obstacles that might slow down the Third Army's advance.

Map legend is
here
.

Koch also arranges for German-speaking American soldiers to exchange their military uniforms for peasant clothing at night, then travel behind enemy lines and mingle in bars and restaurants to collect information about German troop movements.

And Koch sees to it that data radioed back from the front lines by American patrols is carefully scrutinized.

Every bit of that information comes together in the war room's centerpiece, an enormous series of maps detailing the entire western front. British, American, Canadian, French, and German positions are all carefully pinpointed.

The maps' transparent acetate coverings are marked in grease pencil, with special notations for armored, infantry, and artillery. Each unit has a unique symbol. Once an army is on the move, its progress is closely tracked. A wet rag wipes the acetate clean, and a unit's new location is at once marked in grease pencil. In this way, Colonel Oscar Koch knows with almost pinpoint accuracy the location of every tank, artillery, airfield, fuel dump, supply depot, railway station, and infantry detachment between Antwerp and Switzerland.

And that, Koch now explains to Patton as the general listens with his usual intensity, is what troubles him. There is something missing.

The Third Army's proposed route across the Rhine and into Germany is defended by a small and vulnerable German force. So, in all likelihood, Patton's Operation Tink will begin as a rousing success—though Koch never goes out on a limb to predict a victory. War is too uncertain.

But Koch goes on to point out that a real problem lies farther north, on what will be Third Army's left flank during Operation Tink.

In particular, Koch is worried about an enormous German troop buildup. Although the roads are empty during daylight hours, Koch has discovered that thirteen enemy infantry divisions have been relocated under the cover of darkness to an area near the Ardennes Forest. This means an additional two hundred thousand German soldiers at the precise location where the U.S. lines are at their thinnest. German forces in the Ardennes currently outnumber Americans by more than two to one.

In addition, advance scouts from U.S. General Courtney Hodges's First Army report that they clearly hear the rumble of truck engines and the heavy clank of tank treads coming through the forest from the German lines. Koch has confirmed that five panzer divisions containing some five hundred tanks recently moved toward the Ardennes. Also, German railway cars loaded with men and ammunition are proceeding toward the Ardennes with increasing frequency. Just three days ago, a coded message intercepted by the Allies showed that a major German fighting force had requested fighter plane protection as they moved troops and supplies toward the Ardennes.

Perhaps spookiest of all: The Germans have shrouded this major movement in complete radio silence.

Koch does not have to remind Patton that radio silence usually precedes an attack.

Patton quietly absorbs what Koch has to say, sometimes taking notes or interrupting with a specific question. Despite believing that Koch is “the best damned intelligence officer in any United States command,” the general is well aware that every single other Allied intelligence analyst believes the Germans are too beaten down to launch a major offensive.

Should it take place, a German attack would be launched against positions currently occupied by the U.S. First Army. But the First's G-2, Colonel Benjamin “Monk” Dickson, is not concerned. He does not believe that the Germans pose a threat. Though he knows about the hundreds of panzers, the railway cars packed with elite SS divisions, and the sudden appearance of German fighter planes in the sky after months of Allied air superiority, Dickson prefers to believe that the German movement is a regular rotation of troops in and out of the area.