Wehrmacht Forces For The Ardennes Offensive - Background

Background

By 1 December 1944, the only sector of the front where the Western Allies were not on the offensive was along the Ardennes. In late July 1944, Allied forces in France were able to break out of the Normandy area during Operation Cobra, forcing a general eastwards retreat of German forces. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who commanded Western Allied forces in Western Europe, used the opportunity to encircle the German army in Normandy. In an effort to reverse their misfortunes, the Wehrmacht launched Operation Lüttich on 7 August in the vicinity of the town of Mortain. Despite efforts to break through the American 30th Infantry Division to cut off Allied forces in Northern France, by 13 August it was clear that the offensive had failed. Even while battle was raging around Mortain, Allied armies continued the encirclement of the Wehrmacht in Normandy, closing what would be known as the Falaise pocket on 20 August; the encirclement cost the Germans an estimated 10,000 dead and another 50,000 wounded. Although a much larger number of German soldiers were able to escape eastwards, they were forced to leave behind their heavy weapons and equipment. Paris was liberated on 25 August 1944, marking the end of Operation Overlord.

Almost immediately, the Allied drive across the Seine River continued, although the Wehrmacht was able to prevent a complete rout; according to the Germans, the equipment abandoned as they retreated from the Seine was as much of a disaster as the Falaise Pocket. Field Marshal Walter Model, who had temporarily replaced Gerd von Rundstedt as commander of German troops in France, reported that some panzer divisions only had five to ten operational tanks, while he could not match the Western Allies' mobility with his poorly outfitted infantry divisions. By early September, as the Allies pushed to the German border, Model calculated that the actual strength of the 74 divisions at his disposal was no more than that of 25. In an effort to stabilize German lines in the West, von Rundstedt was reappointed as Commander-in-Chief West on 7 September 1944. Approaching the Belgian border in early September the Allied offensive came to a grinding halt, as its supply lines struggled to keep up with the pace of the advance. For example, on 2 September, General George S. Patton's Third Army requested 2,840,000 liters (750,000 US gal) of gasoline, and received 96,000 liters (25,000 US gal).

The Wehrmacht began to reorganize itself along a defensive front known as the Siegfried Line. Eisenhower felt that he could relieve the supply problem by using Antwerp to unload supplies in Europe; however, German troops held the Scheldt estuary and consequently Allied shipping could not get through to the Belgian port city. In an effort to open the Scheldt estuary, Eisenhower approved Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Operation Market Garden, which was launched on 17 September. However, by 21 September the operation had failed to dislodge German defenders from the southern Netherlands and open the seaway to Antwerp; the supply problem was at its worst.

Using the opportunity to rebuild their strength, the German Army in the West was able to accumulate a strength of around 500 tanks and assault guns by late September, despite prioritization of new equipment for the Eastern Front. This was in stark contrast to the estimated 100 which had been available before. German defenses along the Siegfried Line continued to strengthen, and the Wehrmacht was able to establish a defensive depth of an average of 4.8 kilometers (3.0 mi), with the strongest defenses built opposite of Patton's Third Army.

Despite Germany's reorganization, their manpower was still incomparable to that of the Western Allies. While Germany's Army Group B was able to increase their armored strength from 100 to 239 vehicles, these were opposed by 2,300 Allied tanks. Field Marshal Model reported that only 6,500 replacements had been sent to cover the 75,000 casualties suffered during the month of September. Eisenhower commanded three army groups, totaling eight field armies with 55 divisions; these provided a two-to-one advantage in artillery guns and a twenty-to-one advantage in tanks, and could count on almost 14,000 combat aircraft, as compared to the Luftwaffe's 573.