American transport C-47s dropped tons of supplies into Bastogne- medicine, food, blankets, ammunition-with an over 90 per cent success rate. The Germans continued to attack-they launched one of their heaviest assaults on Christmas Day-but they made no gains against the resupplied men of the 10th Armoured and the 101st Airborne.
From the Battle of Trois-Ponts on, events had turned rapidly. As Major Guderian of the 116th Panzer Division put it, “We started with fuel enough for only fifty kilometres.” Captured American fuel gave them enough for another twenty kilometres. Meanwhile, behind the German lines the traffic jams had been straightened out, so more fuel and ammunition could be brought forward. But as Guderian remarked, “We had no defence against air attacks.”
Peiper’s advance ended. That afternoon he got an order via radio- withdraw. For the Germans the offensive phase of the Battle of the Bulge was over. One of Peiper’s privates, Giinter Bruckner, asked a question to which the answer was obvious: “We were so well equipped, beautiful weapons, but what is the use of having a brand-new tank, but no gas? What is the use of having a machine gun when I have no more ammunition?”
Or what is the use of having the world’s best fighter aeroplane when there is no fuel to run it? By this stage the Germans had built hundreds of single-engine jets (Messerschmitt 163s) and twin-engine jets (ME-262s) and were going into production on a jet bomber. The Americans were not going to have jets until October. Some Allied airmen worried that if the war went on, the Germans might regain control of the sky. But the Luftwaffe was without fuel. The all-out bomber assault on German refineries and oil-related targets had a cumulative effect that was devastating.
For the Wehrmacht almost everything had gone wrong, all of it predictable. It had been madness to attack in the Ardennes-an area with the most difficult terrain and least adequate road system in all of Western Europe-with insufficient fuel. Of course Eisenhower had tried to continue the Allied offensive in September and October when his troops had insufficient fuel. But by December the Allies had fuel dumps throughout Belgium and Luxembourg. Now it was the Germans’ turn to retreat, abandoning their vehicles and weapons in disarray. Their week of glory was over.
DURING CHRISTMAS season of 1944 there were some 4 million young soldiers on the Western Front, the great majority of them Protestants or Catholics. They said the same prayers when they were being shelled, directed to the same God. They joined in denouncing godless communism, which was one side’s ally and the other side’s enemy.
In World War II no hatred matched that felt by Americans against Japanese, or Russians against Germans, and vice versa. But in Northwest Europe there was little racial hatred between the Americans and the Germans. How could there be when cousins were fighting cousins? About one third of the US Army in ETO was German American in origin.
The season highlighted their closeness. Americans and Germans alike put up Christmas trees and used the debris of war-like chaff, the tinfoil dropped by bombers to fool radar-to decorate them. Men who would never do such a thing at any other time prepared gifts for other men. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day men on both sides of the line sang the same carols. The universal favourite was “Silent Night.” Nearly every one of those 4 million men on the Western Front was homesick. Loneliness was their most shared emotion. Christmas meant family, and family and home meant life.
They couldn’t go home just yet, however, so the GIs did what they could to make where they were look like home. The 99th Division had taken its position in the Ardennes and gone to work building double-walled shelters. “We looked forward to spending Christmas secure in our log bunkers,” one sergeant wrote, “with a decorated tree, singing carols and enjoying a hot meal.”
Most rear-echelon people lived and slept in houses. Sometimes frontline men, too, when the line ran down the middle of a village. If a village had been or was the scene of a battle, its civilian population was usually gone. The first men into the village got first crack at looting what the combat troops wanted most-food, a change in diet. Shelves of canned fruits, vegetables, and meats made for some memorable holiday feasts.