Hitler's Last Days (12 page)

The request is denied. The F
ü
hrer refuses any defensive action.

Later that night, Peiper once again pleads for the lives of his eight hundred remaining men, arguing that the only way to save them is to flee through the woods.

Again, permission is denied.

A furious Peiper unholsters his pistol and fires several shots into the radio. The explosion mirrors the depth of his frustration.

Peiper makes up his mind. The First Panzer must escape, even if it means disobeying a direct order.

The word is passed.

By 3
A.M.
on December 24, Peiper and every tank crew member in the First gather to do something they have not done on a battlefield for a very long time—walk. Tank commanders throughout the division struggle to maintain their stoicism as they leave behind the fighting machines that have given them the godlike power of life and death for one thrilling and sleepless week. A dozen miles and two river crossings lie between Peiper and the German lines. The plan is to travel through woods by night and remain hidden during the day to avoid being spotted by those dreaded American Thunderbolt pilots.

Although the Nazi Party de-emphasized religion, traditional Christmas decorations were put up in homes, including Hitler's.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

The First forms a long, single-file column and begins its march in complete silence. A skeleton crew remains behind to blow up the now useless panzers and half-tracks. The spearhead of Operation Watch on the Rhine is no longer moving forward. The First SS Panzer Division is in full retreat, the burning hulls of its tanks lighting up the wintry Christmas Eve sky.

*   *   *

The Holy Evening, as Christmas Eve is known throughout Germany, ends late for Adolf Hitler. It is actually 4
A.M.
on Christmas Day as he slowly ascends the stairs from his war room and readies himself for bed. Christmas doesn't have a special meaning for Hitler. He refuses to acknowledge any religious aspect of the day even though he was brought up by devoutly Roman Catholic parents. Rising at noon, Hitler receives the news that Peiper and his division have escaped entrapment. This morning, as Hitler lay sleeping, 770 men of the eight hundred who began the journey from La Gleize swam the icy Salm River and reached the German lines safely.

That evening, after dressing in his usual formal manner, Hitler meets with his staff to celebrate the holiday, drinking a rare glass of wine and making jovial small talk. Then he descends once again into his war room. He seeks the latest reports from Bastogne, certain that he can renew his stalled attack if he captures the road octopus. Despite his declining physical condition, there is a gleam in Hitler's eye as he scrutinizes the maps. It is a gleam that his generals know well, for it is how the F
ü
hrer looks when he is devising some brilliant way to outwit his enemies.

No matter what the Allies might think, Adolf Hitler is far from beaten.

Dead bodies and destroyed vehicles litter a street in Bastogne, December 1944.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

 

CHAPTER 14

THIRD ARMY HEADQUARTERS

LUXEMBOURG CITY, LUXEMBOURG
DECEMBER 26, 1944
2 P.M.

G
EORGE
S. P
ATTON IS TIRED OF
breaking his promises. The air in his palatial headquarters is thick with cigarette smoke and the clack of typewriters. Junior officers and enlisted subordinates make sure to keep their distance from the volatile general as they range in and out of the situation room, not wanting to incur the wrath of a clearly exhausted Patton. When a message arrives from Eisenhower stating that he is very anxious that Patton put every effort on securing Bastogne, Patton nearly explodes.

“What the hell does he think I've been doing for the last week?” Patton will write in his diary tonight, after taking the professional high road and not criticizing his boss in front of the headquarters staff. After all, he has covered seventy-one miles in the past week, more than half the distance from Nancy to Bastogne.

Privately Patton seethes at Eisenhower's tactical choices. The Seventeenth Airborne, Eleventh Armored Division, and Eighty-Seventh Infantry have all been moved one hundred miles back to the French city of Reims as reserves, just in case the German breakthrough goes even deeper into the American lines. “We should attack,” he complains to his staff. Patton could sorely use the additional firepower those units would bring to the relief of Bastogne. Instead, they sit in the patient defensive mode that Patton deplores.

“We should attack.”

The general broods and studies maps of the front lines. He promised General Anthony McAuliffe and the 101st Airborne that he would be in Bastogne on Christmas Day. He even sent a message, promising them a special Christmas present. But that did not happen. Instead, Patton's tank crews are spread out over a thirty-mile-wide front, locked in a stalemate. They are gaining little ground and losing too many men and tanks as they battle for each and every inch of Belgian soil.

Tanks and infantry of the U.S. 6th Armored Division advance toward Bastogne.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Gone is the lightning speed of just days ago, when Patton's forces raced into combat like the cavalry. Thousands of dead Americans now lie frozen in the fields outside Bastogne, their faces turned the color of red wine from the blood pooling after death. Patton keeps a detailed tally of Allied and German casualties in his journal and knows that Germans are dying in far greater numbers.

He also knows that casualties tell only part of the story. The German lines are holding fast. Patton and the Third Army are stuck. Tony McAuliffe and the 101st Airborne are now enduring yet another day in the violent hellhole of Bastogne.

The soldiers and the three thousand civilians who share Bastogne are reluctant to leave their cellars for any reason. Elsewhere in the city, American wounded lie atop squalid litters inside makeshift field hospitals. They cannot help but hear the rasp of the bone saw as army surgeons cut away the destroyed arms and legs of their fellow soldiers.

George S. Patton relishes war. He accepts that horrible death can happen to any man, at any time. Patton finds war glorious and thinks there is no finer test of a man's courage.

Yet he is not immune to human suffering. Thus the Battle of the Bulge is taking a hard toll on Patton. It is within his power to ease the pain and hardship of those embattled men of the 101st Airborne. His failure to do so haunts him.

It has been a week since the meeting with Eisenhower in Verdun. Patton is too keyed up to sleep more than a few hours every night. So he is drained and dog-tired. His face is burned bright red from the windblast of too many hours in his open-air jeep. The lines around his blue eyes are deep. “I saw a tired, aging man,” notes a Red Cross volunteer who caught a glimpse of Patton at a Christmas Eve church service. “A sorrowful, solitary man, a lonely man, with veiled eyes behind which there was going on a torment of brooding and depression.”

Patton cannot rest. He is failing. “Christmas dawned cold and clear,” he wrote in his journal yesterday. “Lovely weather for killing Germans—although the thought seemed somewhat at variance with the spirit of the day.”

There was no Christmas truce, as so often occurred during World War I. So Patton arranged for every man in his army to have a turkey dinner—cold sandwiches for soldiers at the front, a hot meal for those behind the lines—and he left early in the morning to visit every one of his combat divisions.

It was a long day, and Patton was not uplifted by what he saw.

Now he spends December 26 knowing that some of his tanks are within a half dozen miles of Bastogne. But today, as with yesterday and the day before, victory hardly seems likely. Reports filtering back to his headquarters state that Patton's tank divisions continue to take heavy casualties.

Making matters worse—far worse—is that rather than helping Patton by pushing his own army south toward Bastogne, British Field Marshal Montgomery refuses to attack. He says his army is not ready.

*   *   *

The phone rings in Patton's headquarters. Major General Hugh Gaffey, commander of the Fourth Armored Division, is on the other end, requesting permission to launch a high-risk attack into Bastogne immediately.