Electric Bison

The southernmost route contributing to Dietrich’s Sixth SS Panzer Army’s attack led to the Ambleve River system flowing away from the German border through Stavelot, Belgium. This route seemed ready-made for flinging a deeply penetrating spear through the thinly stretched U.S. defensive line.

Chosen to execute the task, Joachim Peiper, once personal adjutant to SS Chief Himmler, gave his name to the tailor-made military formation, Kampfgruppe, or Battle Group, Peiper, the largest of four task-organized mobile strike units of the 1st SS Panzer Division. Kampfgruppe Peiper contained the armored vehicles of the full SS Panzer Division, including the new 70-ton King Tiger tank, or Tiger II, which was impervious to U.S. anti-tank weapons but required a gallon of fuel to run for half a mile. When the Kampfgruppe began moving west it had only one-fourth the expected fuel requirement for reaching and crossing the Meuse River. According to an optimistic timetable, German plans counted on Peiper’s fast-moving armor unit to refuel at U.S. fuel depot as they were overrun. From the outset of executing its critically important task for Hitler, this formidable SS striking force began suffering defeat from a thousand cuts.

A few miles south of Monschau along the German-Belgian border is the beginning of the five-mile wide, seven-mile deep “Losheim Gap” in the Eifel Mountains. This and the westerly valleys in Belgium offered perfect terrain for launching the surprise offensive. There were no serious rivers or mountains to negotiate. From here, paved Highway 626 went northwest to Losheimergraben, then branched either north to Krinkelt-Rocherath and the eastern end of Elsenborn Ridge or, if continuing straight on Highway 626, northwest along the Ambleve and Lienne Rivers. Kampfgruppe Peiper took the latter route, passing through Lanzerath, Honsfeld, Bullingen, Malmedy, Stavelot, Trois-Ponts, and Werbomont on the way to the Meuse River crossing at Huy, Belgium.

After Malmedy, the terrain changes and the westerly river valleys develop steep banks and have narrow roads, which Peiper complained were better for bicycles than 70-ton tanks. He road-tested his armor for speed and believed his battle group of 5,000 infantry and 70 tanks could make it along the Losheim Gap to the Meuse route through Stavelot in the required time, cooing the Meuse on Day 2. Between and across low snow-covered hills as far as one can see, he would be followed by four supporting elements from the 1st SS Panzer Division.

Charged with clearing Peiper’s way into Lanzerath and Losheimergraben were the 12th Volksgrenadier and 3rd Falschirm (parachute) Divisions. The 12th Volksgrenadiers quickly ran into trouble in Losheimergraben on the Belgian-German border when they were stopped by the 1st Battalion of the 394th Regiment, U.S. 99th Infantry Division, backed by the 3rd Battalion in reserve near Bucholtz Station. The 1st Battalion fought from two customs houses and railroad crossings, using quad .50-caliber machine guns, called “meat-eaters” by the Germans. At one point, they destroyed a German self-propelled artillery piece before elevating their own mortars to 89 degrees, in order to drop rounds directly in front of their own positions. They held for one day before withdrawing to Murringen. Today in Losheimergraben there is a monument dedicated to the 1st Battalion, 394th Regiment, another bunch trained in Texas and Mississippi

With the help of tanks and 20-mm flak panzers in Peiper’s battle group, the 12th Volksgrenadiers finally took Losheimergraben and continued towards Murringen, where they were blocked by elements of the 23rd Regiment, U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, under Lieutenant Colonel John Hightower, who rushed down and screened the 394th’s withdrawal to Elsenborn.

The other unit charged with clearing the Peiper battle group’s way, also behind schedule, was the 3rd Fallschirm Regiment, which was slowed for an entire day by Lieutenant Bouck’s 18-man Intelligence and Reconnaisance Platoon of the U.S. 99th Infantry Division assigned to the 14th Cavalry at Lanzerath. In knee-deep snow and foxhole at the edge of the forest, Bouck’s small team held off German paratroopers who were charging uphill in waves. The Germans took 200 casualties before forcing Bock to surrender, but not before Bouck and his band had ruined the Sixth SS Panzer Army’s schedule, earning a Presidential Unit Citation in the process. This was the smallest military unit ever to receive such a distinction.

Peiper’s battle group finally broke loose from Lanzerath through Honsfield on December 17, advancing toward the U.S. fuel depot at Bullingen. Peiper managed to take Bullingen late on the 17th, but the delays gave other U.S. combat engineers time to block roads and blow up bridges off to the west.

Peiper refueled at Bullingen and charged west along the Ambleve River, passing through Baugnez Crossroads, site of the Malmedy massacre, and Ligneuville, and stopping for the night at the eastern edge of Stavelot. There, running low on fuel, he started hitting more resistance. He was now entering an area of forested hills, streams and rivers, and steep twisting valleys.

Seeing the immediate threat from Peiper’s force, the U.S. 30th Infantry Division had moved 49 miles from Aachen to Malmedy and Stavelot along Peiper’s route, and to Stoumont in front of him. The 30th was a veteran unit; it had landed at Omaha Beach shortly after D-Day, famously held out against German counterattacks in the Mortain Pocket, and spearheaded the U.S. breakthrough at St. Lo in Normandy, earning the nickname from the Germans as “Roosevelt’s SS.” It had recently been engaged at the tough battle for Aachen where it took 50 percent casualties, and now, after learning of the Malmedy massacre, was not taking many German prisoners. The SS Division they were facing, the 1st SS Panzer, “Liebstandarte,” was Hitler’s elite. But the two had met before in Normandy, and the confident 30th Infantry had a mantra going into this battle: “We beat them at Mortain.”

On December 18, Peiper’s tanks took Stavelot and moved west towards La Gleize. The following day, however, the 118th Regiment of the 30th Infantry retook Stavelot, counterattacking against Peiper’s rear elements, blowing up the bridges in the city, and cutting off the corridors for fuel and communications between Peiper and the other elements of the 1st SS Panzer Division that were trailing him.

Ahead of Peiper, U.S. engineer combat battalions played a crucial role, defending against Peiper’ battle group at several junctions and towns, and destroying bridges over the Lienne, Salm, and Ambleve, earning Peiper’s angry outburst at finding his river crossings blocked: “The Damned Engineers.” With little fuel, he had little room to maneuver or fight tank battles. Cut off to the rear, spread out piecemeal, and unable to get to the crossing to the south at Wanne and Trois-Ponts or in the center at Habiemont, he left part of his force at Cheneux, and backtracked with the majority to La Gleize, proceeding west from there down the meandering Ambleve river, along the dangerous winding river valley road, susceptible to ambush towards Stoumont and Werbomont, where he would finally enter open country around the Liege highway.

However, the U.S. 119th Regiment, 30th Infantry Division, had by now blocked the main road west of La Gleize in nearby Stoumont, and the 82nd Airborne had arrived Werbomont slightly to the south. On December 19 Peiper pressed ahead, attacking Stoumont. Using infantry followed by Panther and Tiger tanks, Peiper’s armor finally tipped the balance as the entire 3rd Battalion of the U.S 119th Regiment was battered, with one of its companies totally destroyed and the rest forced back under cover of artillery. The 1st Battalion reserve set up the last available roadblock at Stoumont Station west of the city.

The situation for the Allies was critical. If Peiper broke through Stoumont Station, he could …

Now that we have covered Manteuffel’s attack against the U.S 106th Infantry Division sector in front of St.Vith, using Lucht’s Corps, we turn to his attack against the U.S. 28th Infantry (“Keystone”) Division sector a bit south, beginning at the intersection of the Belgium, German and Luxembourg border to Gemund. Here, in an area of forested hills and low mountains, Manteuffel faced more difficult terrain and difficult crossings over the steeply banked Our River. Nonetheless, he had five divisions in two corps facing two tired U.S. infantry regiments.

The northern of these two German corps, the 58th Corps under General Kruger, consisted of the 116th (Greyhound) Panzer and 560th Volksgrenadier Divisions. They were to advance in tandem through the 25-mile gap between St.Vith and Bastogne, starting in a narrow corridor near the Lutzkampen and Ouren river crossings, avoiding contact to the extent possible and racing ahead to Houffalize and the Meuse River. Kruger’s Corps was faced by a U.S. regiment, 3,000 men of the U.S. 112th Infantry.

Kruger jumped off between Kalborn and Burg Reuland using Our River bridges and attacking the seam between the U.S. 106th and 28th Infantry Division sectors. However, they immediately ran into stiff opposition from the 112th Regiment, U.S. 28th Division, supported by part of the 424th Regiment, U.S. 106th Division, while also encountering heavy U.S. artillery barrages at the river crossings. The U.S. defenders delayed Kruger’s Corps for 24 hours, inflicting losses on both German divisions.

Eventually, the 116th Panzer Division pushed the U.S. 112th Regiment north, separating it from the rest of the 28th Division and forcing it to join the defenses of St.Vith. Supported by the U.S. 811th Tank Destroyer and 229th Field Artillery Battalions, the 112th’s company-sized units continued to fight as they withdrew, setting up sequential roadblocks to inflict high casualties on the attackers who lacked heavy weapons because German engineer units required to construct bridges had been delayed. The U.S. 28th Infantry Division was supposed to be worn out from heavy fighting and the loss of 5,000 men in the Hurtgen Forest, and had been sent to the Ardennes Forest for rest. Its experience in combat was now proving to be very important.

Kruger’s men made it to Houffalize, but they were battered in getting there.

Manteuffel’s southernmost corps, the 47th Panzer Corps under General von Luttwitz, consisted of the 26th Volksgrenadier, 2nd Panzer, and Panzer Lehr Divisions. They were aiming for the road junctions at Bastogne some twenty miles to the west and planned to race through any roadblocks in their way. They faced the U.S. 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Division, spread in company-sized formations along a north-south Ridgeline called “Skyline Drive.” The 26th Volksgrenadiers, an old-line infantry division rebuilt after three years on the Eastern Front, was to lead the way, clearing roadblock for the panzers. The plan was to cross the Our River on boats and surround the America forward positions on Skyline Drive, then build bridges the armored divisions could cross. The 2nd Panzer Division, a famous armored division that had battled the Allies from Normandy to the German border, was attacking behind and slightly north of the Volksgrenadiers. The Panzer Lehr Division under General Fritz Beyerlein, previously Rommel’s Deputy in North Africa, was an elite unit, originally the training cadre for armored warfare. It also had been in France since D-Day and was now refitted for the Ardennes Offensive. It would attack along the southern part of von Luttwitz’s front.

As the offensive began, the 2nd Panzer attacked the 1st Battalion of the 110th Regiment supported by the U.S. 630 Tank Destroyer and 707th Tank Battalions at Marnach, suffering heavy losses before overcoming the Americans. At Clervaux, a dozen other panzer ran into stubborn defense by the 110th Regiment, which held out tenaciously in local buildings, a hotel, and a chateau. Although low on ammunition, the Clervaux defenders fought well into December 17 before surrendering. The 28th Division’s Commander, General Cota, had ordered the 110th Regimental Commander, Colonel Fuller in Clervaux, to “Hold at all Costs,” saying, “Nobody Comes Back.”

The Panzer Lehr Division made slightly better progress on the southern wing of von Luttwitz’s advance but took 100 casualties at Hoscheid. At Hosingen, the third battalion of the 110th Regiment and the 103rd Engineer Combat Battalion fought the 26th Volsgrenadiers house-to-house, hand-to-hand, holding on for almost two days. Similar house-to-house fighting took place in Consthum, Holtzheim, and Munshausen. At Weiler, the infantry company defending the village called artillery onto its own position after stopping wave-after-wave of German infantry attacks.

All along the front in the string of small villages, the 28th Division fought tenaciously, forcing the Germans to employ battalions against companies and platoons, The 110th lost 60 Sherman tanks from five tank companies, three engineer combat companies, and an artillery company killed or missing. The regimental commander, Colonel Fuller, was taken prisoner at Clervaux, but one-third of his men there received Bronze or Silver Stars. By December 18, two days after the start of Autumn Mist, the 110th had been virtually destroyed. Charles MacDonald pointed out that with only two U.S. battalions supported by two companies of medium tanks, the 110th Infantry held off four German regiments and nowhere had been routed. That was around 2,000 men versus 10,000. “Nowhere on the first day of the German offensive was there a more remarkable achievement by the American soldier.”

A few remnants of the 110th managed to escape and regroup at Wiltz on the road to Bastogne, joining the 44th Engineer Combat Battalion of 600 men, along with six tanks and five anti-tank vehicles from the U.S. 10th Armored Division’s 707th Tank Battalion. Here, ten miles from the Our River, half-way to Bastogne, the 28th Division survivors and engineers blunted successive attacks by the Panzer Lehr Division and 26th Volksgrenadiers attacking from the north and the 5th Fallschirm Division, German Seventh Army, from the south.

Wiltz is a sad story. Facing German paratroopers and 40 tanks, the U.S. defenders continued their stubborn defense until wiped out, holding a penetrated perimeter while short of ammunition. The US. 44th Engineer Combat Battalion lost 150 of its 600 men fighting in the town and providing the rear guard while others evacuated. The survivors had to run the gauntlet of German fire, and eventually were ambushed on the road towards Sibret and wipedout by German armor and artillery.

Late on December 18, when von Luttwitz’s southern corps finally arrived at the eastern outskirts of Bastogne, the 26th Volksgrenadiers were exhausted from fighting and keeping up with the tanks. The 2nd Panzer and Panzer Lehr Divisions had also been roughed up and were low on fuel and tired from struggling over muddy, chewed -up roads, with few engineers to dig out the vehicles or clear mines. After all that, von Luttwitz gave the 26th Volksgrenadiers the lead role in taking Bastogne, where they were to face the very tough 101st Airborne Division. Manteuffel’s expectation of bypassing resistance on the way to Bastogne had promised a vain hope. The virtually destroyed U.S. 28th Infantry Division had held out for a valuable two days, leading Corp Commander Middleton to write Colonel Fuller after he was released from a German POW camp at the end of the war, “Had your boys not done the job they did, the 101st (Airborne) would never have reached Bastogne in time.”

On the last day of our tour with Henri Mignon, we drove to Clervaux, winding down a hairpin road to the city center, to the hotel where Colonel Fuller held out before escaping out the back as German tank were sticking their guns through the buildings windows. As we got out at a …

Saint Vith, much like the next place picked to dig a line in hopes of stopping a forest fire, must be seen in its unique context. Because the place is a crossroads town, the divisions in General Lucht’s 66th Corps of Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army fully intended to capture and control those intersections. Not only a town was at stake, but the timetable for the German offensive. In this sector the Germans heavily outnumbered U.S. defenders, more than on any other fronting the Bulge, and the gradual terrain offered flexibility to the attackers, with Saint Vith only seven miles west of the German border.

As the Losheim Gap seemed an open door to Peiper’s battle group attacking northwest, so did the same low place present a southwesterly route with no serious rivers or mountains to overcome, an area of the Bulge less rugged than the northern or southern shoulders. It was a region of low hills, some bare, others forested, separated by valleys and draws, stretching from Krewinkel in the north to Bleialf in the south, with four east-to-west roads.

On December 16-17, three German prongs of attack followed the main roads. In the north, the 18th Volksgrenadier Division launched an encircling movement with support from the Sixth SS Panzer Army’s reserve Tiger tanks and the Fuhrer Begleit (Escort) Brigade. By the evening of the 17th, this German pincer had surrounded the U.S. 422nd and 423rd Regiments of the U.S. 106th (“Golden Lion”) Infantry Division, novice units in their exposed position for only a few days. These two regiments fought another two days under constant artillery fire and tank and infantry attacks. They found themselves without ammunition and trapped, with no communications to their division headquarters. On the 19th, 8,000 men finally surrendered at the village of Schonberg and were marched into Germany. They included 22-year old Kurt Vonnegut, subsequently imprisoned at Dresden to survive Allied fire bombing of that beautiful city. From that experience he later wrote Slaughterhouse-Five, and concluded that war, unfortunately, is inevitable. His essentially anti-war view argue that it’s therefore doubly important to ensure there are only just wars.

Montanans Mel Mellinger and Kenny Newton were with the 423rd Regiment in the surrender. They described landing in France and being taken directly to foxholes along a 22-mile front in temperature ranging from 32 degrees at night to 38 in the day, with lots of snow the night before the German offensive. Newton described the day the Bulge was launched, “hearing the rumbling of tanks, then retreating and mass confusion; no leadership, just a scramble. And fear, remembering the body of a soldier of the division in a foxhole under his greatcoat; he had shot himself; it was depressing; he had committed suicide, it was that tough.”

According to Mellinger, “the situation was changing so fast, no one knew what was going on. German 88s were there, combing the area for three days, pinpointing their shots, raking back and forth. By the 19th, the situation was really bad, with units hiding in the wooded areas, vehicles tumbling into a creek in the withdrawal, German shells coming back and forth; there were bodies pretty prevalent around the whole area; guys didn’t make it when they started to round us up. The Germans lobbed shells right into the field hospital.”

“We had a choice,” he said, “of lying in our ‘v’ trench full of water, five of us lying there soaked to the bone either that or the choice of getting shot. Finally, around the evening of the 19th, we were instructed by our leaders to start dismantling our rifles. We were surrendering. The Germans surrounded us and herded us like sheep to corral, 2,000 of us with no food for one day to the railroad spur, then a two-day and night march, throwing away our overshoes, our feet freezing, we were loaded into 40x8 boxcars, riding ten days with just room to sit, two meals a day, broth and a slice of bread, to Limburg railroad yard during an RAF bombing attack, then on to Dresden with tough guards who separated the Jewish POWs out.”

Another Montanan was also there, James Dew of Missoula, who confirmed that nobody knew what was going on. Dew also recalled the utter chaos, saying he was sure if there hadn’t been a surrender they would have all been killed, and being terrified when they did surrender, knowing the Malmedy Massacre had happened two days earlier. “I was extremely lucky,” he remembered. “I could have been killed with shrapnel right off.” Private First Class Stuart Bethel of Helena, Montana was killed with the 423rd, shot at Bleialf while serving in an anti-tank company. He is buried at Henri-Chapelle.

Slightly to the south, the 62nd Volksgrenadier Division attacked along the Steinebruck-St.Vith road, defended by two battalions of the 424th Regiment of the 106th Infantry Division, reinforced by Combat Command B of the U.S. 9th Armored Division, including the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion and 14th Tank Battalion. The 62nd Volksgrenadiers were initially blocked at Steinebruck and took tremendous casualties, but eventually penetrated U.S. defenses. Intensive shelling by the U.S. 591st Field Artillery enabled the Steinebruck defender to escape, outrunning a near encirclement and fighting their way back to assume defensive positions at St.Vith and Grufflingen.

Fortunately, as soon as Eisenhower heard of the German offensive, he had dispatched the 9th Armored CCB and the 7th Armored Division south to St.Vith under the command of the 7th Armored Commander General Hasbrouck. Rather than attempt a counter-attack to rescue the trapped U.S. regiments, Hasbrouck chose to defend St.Vith with its vital road junctions. He charged General Clarke, Commander of the 7th Armored CCB, with organizing the city’s defense.

“Clarke of St.Vith,” as he became known, created a defensive “horseshoe” facing east, northeast and southeast around the city, positioning field artillery to range all approaching roads with supporting fires. He faced the 7th Armored Division Combat Commands A and B east and North, with the 9th Armored CCB facing south and west, while feeding remnant of the 112th Regiment of the 28th Infantry Division, and the 424th Regiment of the 106th Infantry Division into the horseshoe as they withdrew to St.Vith.

The 7th Armored was a veteran unit with combat experience from Normandy to Holland. Aided by clogged, muddy roads and traffic jams that were slowing the Fifth Panzer Army movement, especially the artillery, Clarke was holding the city against fierce but uncoordinated piecemeal attacks. German commander Manteuffel, himself was out on the clogged roads, trying to direct traffic, realizing the importance of taking St.Vith on schedule to protect the German supply line and free up troops for the drive to the Meuse using the St.Vith road network.

After surrounding the American regiment at Schonberg, the 18th Volksgrenadier moved to attack the next U.S. roadblock at Prummerberg Height, a commanding hill located five miles directly east of St.Vith along the main Bleialf to St.Vith road.

Here, the Volksgrenadiers encountered tough resistance from the U.S. 81st and 168th Engineer Combat Battalions, a part of the U.S. 38th Armored Infantry, and the 275th Field Artillery, aided from overhead at one point by three P-47s. Employing effective mortar and directed artillery fire, the defenders held their line of foxhole over three days against three separate German attacks by infantry and self-propelled assault guns, earning the defenders a Presidential Unit Citation.

On December 19 another German threat developed, this time to the northwest behind St.Vith, from the fast moving Fuhrer Begleir Brigade panzers. There had been one clash already involving a task force of the 1st SS Panzer southern wing. Here, 7th Armored’s Combat Command A (CCA) again successfully defended Poteau crossroads, keeping open the St.Vith escape route west while outlying U.S. units around …

Seven miles south of Hofen, near the German villages of Hollerath and Hellenthal, lay two additional pre-designated attack routes, or “Rollbahns” A and B, for the German assault to open the northern shoulder. These routes were directed against the Twin Villages of Krinkelt-Rocherath, three miles across the border into Belgium through the Krinkelt Forest, or “Krinkerwald.” Secondary German attacks were directed another five miles further south against the village of Losheimergraben just across the German border at the Losheim Gap. The German 277th Volsgrenadier Division attacked the Twin Villages, and the 12th Volksgrenadier Division attacked Losheimergraben. Entire SS Panzer divisions were to follow each of the breakthroughs.

After visiting the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and nearby Aachen Germany, we drove down Highways 258 and 265 from Aachen along the Belgian-German border through Monschau and the small German towns in the heavily wooded Schnee Eifel low mountain range, stopping briefly in Hollerath and Losheimergraben. It was here among the Haselpath and Krinkelt forests, along the mountainous, curving, narrow paved roads running from village to village amid gorges and rocky sharp hills and streams, that the German Sixth SS Panzer Army, including the 12th SS Panzer Division, quietly assembled its infantry and tanks in the weeks before the attack toward Elsenborn Ridge.

We walked among German tank traps of the Siegfried Line, the starting point for the logging trails of the time leading through the woods towards the U.S. 99th Infantry positions. The area today, is cross-country skiing terrain for the Germans, an area of scattered half-timbered resort towns, each with a large spa-like lodge and family houses built along hillsides.

We continued south along the same highway another three miles through steep forested hills and valleys and woods until we reached Losheim and the five-mile gap through the Schnee Eifel range. From here, the 1st SS Panzer Combat Group under Peiper started northwest to Stavelot, while the German 5th Panzer Army under Manteuffel attacked slightly southwest to St. Vith. We continued south again along the border near Prum, Germany, amazed that the German soldiers accomplished so much despite the demanding challenges of terrain.

The struggle for the Twin Villages, perhaps the premier American success of the Bulge, began in the forest trails along the German Belgian border as the 277th Volksgrenadiers attacked the dug-in GIs of the 393rd Regiment, 99th Infantry Division, who blocked the attack but were forced to slowly withdraw. These were desperate fights, with the novice but tough U.S. regiment losing 1,300 of it 3,100 men. Survivors were either captured or fled west to regroup. The 3rd Battalion of the 393rd in the Krinkelt forest at Jansback Creek was the first unit hit, and lost 72 percent of its troops. Soldier siphoned gasoline from wrecked jeeps to ignite flame pits across forest trails, but the enemy came on, bayoneting the Americans in their foxholes. The 1st Battalion also suffered almost as much. The two battalions bent but did not break.

The morning of the second day, December 17, following the blunted 277th Volksgrenadier attacks, General Dietrich threw in two battalions of the 12th SS Panzer Division’s infantry (“Hitler Youth”) and tanks to finish the job. The 12th SS Panzer, drawn from the Hitler Youth for which it was named, had blocked the British breakout at Normandy and had lately been fighting on the Eastern Front. It comprised 14,000 SS troops, 90 tanks, 60 self-propelled guns, and 40 tank destroyers. It as also known as the “Murder Division” for atrocities committed by its youthful fanatics, including the killing of British and Canadian prisoners in Normandy. It often did not take prisoners. On this morning, the 12th SS Panzer grenadiers and tanks emerged from forest trail at a place called the “Ruppenvenn” on the western edge of the forest, where they butted up against the veterans of the nearby U.S. 2nd Infantry Division who had been rushed from the north the evening before.

The 2nd Infantry Division was a experienced unit, having fought three elite German paratroop division in Normandy. Our veteran friend back in Helena, Ed Miller, a sergeant in the U.S. 69th Infantry Division, recalled fighting alongside the 2nd Infantry at the end of the Bulge, together taking Leipzig after crossing the Rhine.

The 23rd Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division was dug in, blocking the Germans’ route to the Twin Villages while covering the withdrawal of the battered U.S. 99th Infantry Division survivors to Rocherath and onto Elsenborn Ridge half a mile to the rear. Noted Bulge historian Charles MacDonald, who was Company K Commander with the 23rd Infantry at the “Ruppenvenn,” described a situation where “bullets were so thick one couldn’t move around let alone escape.” The Germans lost approximately 300 killed by the end of the second day, and the Americans lost 300 killed, wounded, or captured a well.

On December 17-18, the 12th SS Panzer Division finally pushed beyond the “Ruppenvenn” into the Twin Villages where fierce and confused street fighting ensued, with U.S. infantry squads, bazooka teams and tank destroyers from the 2nd Infantry’s 23rd and 38th Regiments stealing between stone buildings to pick off German infantry and hunt down Tiger and Panther tanks. This was a heroic stance with no quarter given. The last thing MacDonald saw as he was being carried away on a stretcher was an American infantryman attacking a German tank with his rifle. Other soldiers were pouring gasoline on disabled German tanks to set them on fire. In two days of desperate fighting, U.S. tanks and tank destroyers from the 612th and 644th Tank Destroyer Battalions and the 741st Tank Battalion, ambushing the German Panzers from hedgerows and houses, combined to destroy almost 50 German tanks.

At the same time, at a crossroads called “Lausdell” a few hundred meters north of Rocherath, the 2nd Infantry Division’s 9th (Manchu”) Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel McKinley, President William McKinley’s grand-nephew, was having its own fight with “Hitler Youth” battalions trying to cut off American escape routes. With assistance from U.S. tank destroyers and field artillery, the Regiment stopped the Germans but at a high cost, starting with 600 men and ending with 270, as U.S artillery targeted German tanks that were assaulting and rolling over American foxholes. An America commander once again had called indirect fire onto his own position. McKinley’s stand became legend for saving the day against overwhelming odds.

Surviving Lausdell was First Lieutenant Sam Milesnick, a rancher’s son from Belgrade, Montana, one of 16 Montanans to earn the second highest award for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross. While serving with the 9th Regiment, Company B, Milesnick, although severely wounded, helped fight off a tank attack by the 12th SS Panzer Division on December 17. As German tanks arrived in a column of five accompanied by infantry, Milesnick destroyed the first tank by igniting it with gasoline. A bazooka hit failed to destroy the second, but it ran over a mine and was disabled. Two other tanks then took bazooka rocket hits.

The Germans returned in the dark to continue the fight through that night and the next day. Milesnick stayed on the field, helping his battalion stand its ground despite dwindling numbers over a two-day battle. When he was interviewed in 1945 about his action by a New York Times war correspondent, Milesnick responded imply that they had orders to “stand their ground at all costs.”

He recounted the situation on the 17th, as he and others watched the Germans massing tanks and moving on American positions: “We had nothing to work with but rifles, machine guns, and mortars. Some bazookas just showed up-we didn’t have time to discuss things during the battle, ‘look there’s a tank.’ We were pinned down and the situation…

On December 19, General Dietrich shifted the 12th SS Panzer Division south to attack Dom Butgenbach in order to avoid the Elsenborn defenses and open Rollbahn C, the main road from Bullengen to Malmedy in the west. This was to be another significant battle. Dom Butgenbach sat astride the Malmedy route and was by now occupied by the veteran U.S. 1st Infantry Division’s 26th Infantry Regiment. The storied 26th was to achieve more glory here.

On the night of the 20th, Dietrich launched his largest attack against Dom Butgenbach, using two battalions of 12th SS Panzer grenadiers, tanks, and self-propelled assault guns against the right flank of the 26th Regiment supported by elements of the U.S. 613th Tank Destroyer Battalion. The Germans were once again stopped cold after a number of ferocious attacks over two days.

In a postwar assessment by the U.S. Army Armor School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, the 1st Division credited its success to artillery, including using illumination rounds at night. Keeping their own dug-in infantry positions well informed, they called in concentrations of fire to separate German infantry from German tanks, making the latter easier prey for anti-tank guns and bazookas. Ten thousand U.S. artillery rounds were fired over eight hours, some using new new proximity (“posit”) fuses in “time-on-target” barrages. One U.S. battalion commander was forced to call in a volley on his own position.

Combat engineers placed a thousand mines to channel German armor into killing zones.

The 26th Infantry Regiment’s motto at Dom Butgenbach had been, “we fight and die here.” Today, an obelisk at the Butgenbach traffic circle show the importance of that slogan, listing the men of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division who lost their lives blocking this major east-west attack route (Rollbahn C). Out of its strength of 2,500 men, the 26th Regiment lost 500 men killed. The 12th SS Panzer experienced 800 killed among its 1,200 casualties. German assaults continued until December 23, but, as at Elsenborn Ridge, they never broke through. German Rollbahns A, B, and C were now blocked.

Private First Class John Horton of Helena, Montana, was in the U.S. 1st Infantry Division’s 5th Field Artillery Battalion and said in a newspaper interview on July 11, 2004, that his hands were still constantly shaking as a result of 443 day in combat. Including the Bulge, his run under fire had taken him through North Africa, Sicily and Normandy.

Horton described the fighting at Dom Butgenbach, where his division fought in sub-zero temperatures and five feet of snow, blocking the 12th SS Panzer and 3rd Fallschirm Divisions. He mentioned one particular attack when “six German tanks broke through American line but were taken care of by American anti-tank gunners, engineer, clerks and cooks, fully repelling the enemy after hand-to-hand fighting.

The U.S. Army’s official history described this assault by “some twenty truckloads” of 12th SS grenadiers deployed behind a dozen tanks against the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. 26th Infantry Regiment on December 19. The German tanks that managed to break through the initial U.S. artillery bombardment, anti-tank fire, and bazooka kept on the road to Dom Butgenbach, until the 155-mm howitzers of the 5th Field Artillery Battalion began to lob high explosive “uncomfortably close. Possibly crippled by concussion, the tanks were abandoned…”

Another Helenan, John Viereck, who received two Bronze Stars and a Combat Infantryman Badge while serving with an anti-tank company, was in the Bulge as a radioman and cryptographer, also with the U.S. 26th Infantry Regiment. Viereck’ main memory was that “he was the coldest he’s every been in his life, and used blankets belonging to his compatriots who’d been killed in action.”

At the same time, the 16th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 1st Division, with help from the 745th Tank Destroyer Battalion and Corps artillery, delayed four elements of the German 1st SS Panzer Division going south of Butgenbach between Faymonville and Waimes to join Peiper’s drive west. Each of the German elements was battered at roadblocks and pushed south into German Rollbahns D and E, jamming the routes intended for use by Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army attacking St. Vith.

Field Marshal Model, in charge of the German western front, summed up the northern shoulder campaign after the war, linking the failure of the entire Ardennes offensive to the inability to take Elsenborn Ridge quickly. Elsenborn, Model said, was the prerequisite for further advance west, “Without quick breakthrough and high ground we faced a threat to our flanks and to our tanks following Peiper’s success.” Head of the German High Command, General Jodl, concurred, saying Germany, “had it controlled Elsenborn Ridge and Butgenbach, would’ve had a screen to face north, using infantry to block U.S. reinforcements.” Patton, he said, was still a long way south, not an immediate threat.”

While touring Elsenborn Ridge, we praised the U.S. artillery advantage to our guide. Mignon agreed, but reminded us that the battle was really a victory for American logistics. Imagine, he said, getting all those shells from the U.S. factories over the ocean to Antwerp and Cherbourg, then on to Liege, and finally to Elsenborn. We were reminded of Montana’s home front contributions, including sled-dog teams used to supply snowbound troops and treat and recover casualties in hip-deep snow. After a call went out to bring sled-dog teams into the Bulge from their normal aircrew search-and-rescue assignments under the air bridge to Europe, 209 dogs with their drivers and sleds were flown to Toul, France.

Dave Armstrong, who trained with sled dogs at Camp Rimini outside of Helena, returned to the area after the war to live. He remember his team being one of two that mushed toward the southern sector of the Bulge to retrieve casualties. The two sleds returned with two flyers, one alive and one dead. A newsreel of the time shows him with his team on the way to the battlefield, passing the Arc de Triomph in Paris. Armstrong later became instrumental in starting the Montana Race to the Sky annual sled dog and driver endurance race. Eddie Barbeau, a member of the Ojibway Tribe who also trained at Camp Rimini, remembered using his sled and team to bring supplies to isolated front line units under attack in the Bulge. Barbeau returned to Helena, and taught traditional native technologies such as the tanning of hides. He left a big hole in the community when he died, having started the Helena Indian Alliance to serve the health and cultural needs of 5,000 Metis and tribal members passing every year through the Prickly Pear Valley.

In sum, starting at 5:30 a.m. December 16, 1944, the German 6th SS Army drive on the northern shoulder was slowed and blocked by the heroic U.S. stances at Hofen, the Twin Villages, Elsenborn Ridge, and Dom Butgenbach. The only German success was by the 1st SS Panzer Division, led by Kamfgruppe Peiper, which had broken through to Stavelot and constituted a major threat. We now turn to that.

Credit must go to U.S. Fifth Corps Commander, General Leonard Gerow, who was in charge of the northern sector. On day one of the surprise offensive when everyone was reeling, he and the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division Commander, General Walter Robertson quickly came up with the defensive plan based on Elsenborn Ridge high ground, getting the 99th and 2nd Infantry Divisions up there quickly into prepared fortified foxholes in front of powerful U.S. 1st Division artillery under Commanding General Clift Andrus. Known as “Mr. Chips,” Andrus, the expert artilleryman, would play a crucial role in the battle for Elsenborn Ridge.

Robertson’s role that day has been called inspirational.

By the evening of December 18, after pulling back from Rocherath, the U.S. 99th Infantry held the Elsenborn slope facing Krinkelt to the southeast, while the U.S. 2nd Infantry held the southern slope facing Wirtzfeld and Butgenbach. They were dug in and backed by pre-registered artillery, including 90-mm anti-aircraft guns used as artillery. Here, they blocked the two Rollbahns (A and B) assigned to the 12th SS Panzer Division for its run to join Peiper.

As it turned out, the Elsenborn defensive position never broke.

Between December 18 and December 21, the 12th SS Panzer, having finally taken the Twin Villages, hit the southern face of Elsenborn Ridge, but lost 44 tanks and 1200 men on top of those already lost. The 277th Volksgrenadiers and 3rd Panzergrenadier Divisions launched three assaults against the eastern face on December 20, but were destroyed by massed time-on-target artillery fire from 155-mm “Long Toms” and 105-mm howitzers. Other 4.5- and 8-inch Guns fired shells 16 kilometers into the German rear, blocking German movement to the attack area.

The 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion played a crucial role here, as it had at the Twin Villages.

It is time to examine in detail the eleven critical junctures of the battle, starting with the most northern fight along the original line of attack, Hofen the northern hinge.

The first essential fight involved a dangerous avenue over and around Elsenborn Ridge, along the extreme northern shoulder of the German offensive. The attackers placed priority on swinging open the northern shoulder of defenders as though they represented a giant door, widened with multiple consequences, all of which were bad for the Allied strategic effort against Germany. The door’s hinge was at Hofen, where German success on this extreme northern arm of the offensive would permit a sweep across Hohes Venn open land to Verviers and Eupen, while trapping U.S. forces already positioned on Elsenborn Ridge.

A series of furious attacks against Hofen met stiff America resistance. The main defending unit, the 395th Regiment of the U.S. 99th Infantry Division, was aided by a company from the U.S. 9th Division, tanks of the U.S. 38th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, and at least one anti-tank gun from the U.S. 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion, whose men also served as infantry. These combined units were supported by field artillery positioned to their rear on Elsenborn Ridge.

In below-freezing temperatures, the German 326th Volksgrenadier Division attacked out of Monschau and Kanzen, emerging from the Monschau Forest to be stopped completely by the 395th Regiment, despite outnumbering the Americans five to one.

One participant of that battle, George will, an infantryman in a rifle platoon of the 395th Infantry Regiment, wrote a book that described the opening day of the Bulge, starting with a pre-dawn German artillery barrage advancing in front of a full regiment of infantry attacking at five points through snow illuminated by searchlights bouncing off overhead clouds. A second attack came at noon on the 16th, broken up by artillery and 81 mm mortar fire from the weapons platoon, leaving 104 Germans killed and 160 wounded."

On the third day, December 18, the Germans tried one last time. At 8:30 a.m. after a heavy artillery and rocket barrage, two regiments of Volksgrenadiers accompanied by 10-12 tanks made an assault against two U.S. companies. Within one hour most of the attackers had been liquidated by artillery, mortars, and small arms, but only after the American regimental commander had been forced to call in six five-minute artillery barrages on his own position. After a rain of 1,025 4.5-inch rounds fired by the U.S. 18th Field Artillery Battalion and 8-inch shells from U.S. 5th Corps guns, the bodies of 250 Germans lay strewn from 50 yards in front to 200 yards behind U.S. foxholes. Try to imagine the tired mixture of relief and repulsion when emerging alive from a hole in the snow to such a scene.

Neil credited U.S. success to skilled artillery and mortar teams knowing how to support infantry, offering special tribute to the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion’s anti-tank guns and the 9th Division’s twelve 3-inch guns for blocking 20 German tanks en-route to the battle.

He offered another clue, citing the excellent training the 99th Division had received at Camp Wolters, Texas, Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi, and Camp Maxey, Texas before being shipped overseas. He had, he said, learned there about digging and attacking foxholes, patrolling enemy territory, using and surviving live rifle fire, and working field artillery with both infantry and tanks. The trainees even rode in tanks to observe how little tank gunners could actually see, and to experience a tank’s vulnerability from the sides and rear. While participating in mock battle with the U.S. 12th Armored Division in winter maneuvers, the 99th recruits had perfected their lessons on how to fight with and against armor, prepare secondary lines of defense, set booby traps, and set anti-personnel mines.

The places where lessons were taught, and at least learned for a time, are on a lattice of little rivers, interwoven by tiny roads and bridges in their distinct valleys mixed like fingers clasped, or the askew headwaters valleys of Montana. Instead of the Big Hole or the Bitter Root Rivers adding eventually to the waters of the Missouri and Columbia, the comparatively sized Meuse and Moselle add to the mighty Rhine. This second largest of Europe’s rivers flows in a generally northwestern direction from the southeastern Alps to border the edges of Switzerland with Austria, Lichtenstein and Germany, then serve as the border between France and Germany to become the Upper, Middle and Lower Rhine of Germany’s Rhineland. At the Dutch city of Nijmegen, the Rhine becomes the Waal River, a 48-mile west-flowing riverine passage for Germany to reach the North Sea at Rotterdam. As the Rhine and Waal angle northwest, the Meuse falls northeasterly through France, Belgium and the Netherlands to just short of Nijmegen where it curves west to the North Sea. The Moselle moves roughly in parallel as it drains parts of France, Luxembourg and Germany into the Middle Rhine at Koblenz in Germany.

Covering less than 60 miles south from Monschau, Germany to Echternach, Luxembourg, and 60 miles west from the Roer River (called the Rur in Germany) south of Monschau to the Meuse River south of Namur, the lattice of Ardennes killing fields is slightly larger than any one of the floors of several Montana valleys. South of Liege and Aachen, the forested Ardennes intersperses tree cover on the deeply wrinkled divide between the Meuse and Moselle. Where there are open fields, the subtly bend enough to frustrate long-range direct artillery fire. In perhaps equal numbers lie ridges and sharp gorges formed in places along the many tributaries feeding the Meuse from the south and east and the Moselle from the north and west. Though miniaturized, the terrain dominates the battlefield with hills high enough to isolate combat engagements and steep-banked little rivers that stop armored vehicles in the absence of bridges.

The rivers of the northernmost system, the Ruhr, flow northwards to the Meuse from the German side of the Belgian-German Border. The streams pass through part of the Eifel Hills and the gorge at Monschau. The largest system, the Ourthe River, also flows north into the Meuse. It heads toward Liege after combining the Western and Eastern Ourthe Rivers just west of Houffalize, thereby draining the Belgian Province of Luxembourg, including Bastogne. The Ourthe also accepts the west-flowing water of the Ambleve River.

The Ambleve begins in the forests along the German-Belgian Border. Along its way past Stavelot, the Ambleve draws water from the tiny Warche River, which flows west from the German-Belgian Border past Bullingen, Butgenbach, Waimes and Malmedy. Another feeder of the Ambleve and Ourthe from the German-Belgian Border is the Salm River, rising close to Belgium’s border with the small country of Luxembourg, and passing through Trois-Ponts.

A third river system, the Sauer (known as the Sure in parts of Belgium and Luxembourg), flows eastwards into the Moselle River from southeastern Belgium. On its way, the Sauer forms the border between Luxembourg and Belgium. After passing Ettelbruck and Diekirch, it forms the border between Luxembourg and Germany. The Sauer’s smaller tributaries in the Ardennes include the Our River, flowing generally southwards, and the Prum River, which flows southwards from the Schnee Eifel Hills on the German side of the border.

There were many sad points along our journey, places where we saw the brutal nature of war. At Honsfeld, Belgium, we passed through the intersection where Kampfgruppe, or Battle Group, Peiper rolled over the bodies of defending U.S. engineers, whose remains were then photographed by German cameramen. In the photos, three dead American soldiers lie on the road, and German soldiers mull over their bodies after stripping away their boots. Today, this site has been memoralized with white road signs. The American combat engineers, along with a few anti-tank guns of the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion, were the first obstacle in Peiper’s path after Lanzerath, standing alone against the massive German surprise attack. The men lying there to be photographed for perpetuity had no chance, not even the option of becoming prisoners. The same SS troops they faced were from Hitler’s 1st SS Panzer Division, recently transported from Russia where they had routinely been killing prisoners and burning villages. Peiper’s unit had justly earned the nickname “Blowtorch Battalion.” Private William Sorteberg of Sidney, Montana was one of those killed at Honsfeld while serving in the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion.

Moving past this early no-name skirmish, Peiper’s Kampfgruppe continued killing American prisoners: 19 GIs and 3 Belgians in Honsfeld; 8 more GIs in Bullingen; the the atrocious running down, murdering, and mutilating of 11 African-American GIs. The best-known Malmedy Massacre of 100 Americans shot in a field or by coup de grace at Baugnez Crossroads eclipsed the killing of another 8 Americas at Hotel du Moulin in Ligneuville. As superior SS officers were enjoying their lunch, an attending sergeant told a private guarding some nearby American prisoners, “Take the swine out and shoot them.” After the war when the lunching SS officers were tried for these routinized executions, the world learned that before the Bulge attack the commander of the 1st SS Panzer Division told his officers, based on procedures in Russia, “You know how to deal with prisoners.”

Major John C. Harrison, a Helena, Montana attorney doing his military service on the First Army staff, helped plan the D-Day invasion on Eisenhower’s staff and was subsequently sent to investigate Bulge atrocities and other German violations of The Hague Convention on Warfare, including the Malmedy Massacre and the Stavelot civilian massacres. In letters home, he described his anger at seeing where 75 Belgian men under the age of 35 were pushed into a cellar and shot one at a time, and a house where the SS killed 25 women and children in a separate incident. Harrison would return home after the war to serve a long tenure on the Montana Supreme Court. He once said he had two jobs during the Bulge, investigating war atrocities and staying alive. It was so cold, he said that “we warmed up by keeping our backs in front of burning buildings.”

Once the word was out, American soldiers undoubtedly repaid SS troops in kind. Near Bastogne at Recogne is just one of the German military cemeteries filled endlessly with neatly arrayed black stone crosses demonstrating the German toll paid in combat. Each short, chiseled marker holds the name, rank, nation and date of birth for six men, buried one on top of the other. Their rank identifies the SS men, perhaps one of the six on each stone. These SS and regular soldiers from the many other countries dominated by the Nazis paid the brutal price by dying violently on a large scale.

But then, so did Americans. We found the price of our country’s and our state’s exchange in this deadly quid pro quo in two nearby military cemeteries, Henri-Chapelle, Belgium, and Hamm, Luxembourg.

Tucked quietly into rolling hills west of Aachen, Germany, Henri-Chapelle holds 7,992 dead Americans from aircraft news, the green hell of the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle for Aachen and the Battle of the Bulge. These liberators lay interred one for each marker beneath row upon row of white crosses and stars. At Hamm, further south along the German line of attack, the American war cemetery in Luxembourg contains another 5,076 beautifully arrayed Carrara marble headstones. They’re dressed in white rows that narrow away to distant sections. Most of these buried, including 22 sets of brothers lying side-by-side, died in the Battle of the Bulge serving with Patton. The two cemeteries’ combined 13,068 dead represent one-third of the original interment; twice the number of those still remaining were sent back to their homes for re-burial. At least 77 young Montanans never went home. Each one, even if there is no one now left to remember the details of their abbreviated lives, was such a terrible price to pay to finally stop Hitler.

As life continues, above these still-honored dead the same kinds of jet-powered airliners that carried us to this place convey a dreadful feeling that modern technology makes quaint the hard lessons here, or never learned or long forgotten.

At the beginning of World War II there were only three regiments of Waffen, or Weapon, SS. By the Battle of the Bulge there were thirty-eight divisions. Of these, seven were German SS Panzer Divisions. If a stake needed to be driven through the heart of the police state called Nazi Germany, the point of that stake must have to penetrate through the battle-hardened shell of Hitler’s SS Panzer units. These self-described tightly regimented political soldiers, beholden only to Hitler, considered themelves racially superior and above the law.

The evolution of the SS instructs our generation about how inflating the importance of close-minded, ignorant and arrogant men and women, found in small numbers in every society, becomes a tyrant’s base of power for controlling that entire society. Parliamentary procedures and important documents like the U.S. Constitution carefully try to protect the rights of individuals, while always guarding against control by a minority. In post-World War I Germany, such frameworks for legal protection, never foolproof, were overwhelmed by Hitler and his collaborators. Eventually a tiny minority called the Schutzstaffel (SS), or “protection squadrons,” grew into a second German armed force, operating parallel to but independent of the Wehrmacht.

In the early years around 1923, Hitler and his close associates convinced this small but steadily growing wall of “hall protectors” to believe they were racially pure, when in fact they were nothing more than a fanatically loyal private police force. Eventually Hitler used them as the backbone of the police state that dominated Germany. His early collaborator, Heinrich Himmler, led the SS, organizing and maintaining a secret sub-branch called the Gestapo. Gradually, as the Gestapo used arrest, torture and killing, to terrorize and subdue opposition to Hitler, Germans experienced complete loss of their civil rights, including protection against midnight surprise searches, arrest, and disappearance without a trace. Isolation in the face of this quiet but deadly bullying caused the broader population of Germans to pay lip service to Hitler’s regime, to willingly wear the required badges, and to not object to the substantial national sacrifices required for the sake of onerous militarization. As the SS grew stronger, its opposition weakened because Hitler had found a way to make the German people keep their mouths shut.

Eventually Himmler and selected members of the SS became entrusted with Hitler’s even more secret “final solution,’ a massive operation to exterminate “unwanted” human beings, including Europe’s Jews, Communists, liberal political opponents, homosexuals, and Gypsies. While the Allgemeine SS, or General SS, enforced Hitler’s broad policy of racial supremacy in Germany, the highly secret “Totenkopfverbande SS,” or Deaths Head SS, operated the concentration and extermination camps, created to gather and murder close to six million Jews and millions of other profiled, dehumanized and targeted minorities and political prisoners. While doing this, the SS in all its virulent forms viewed themselves as a sort of racially pure Knights of the Round Table. They knew themelves as essential in Hitler’s conspiracy to hold power.

In 1934 the SS became essential in Hitler’s trajectory to absolute power, after the angry former corporal had already made himself dictator. Members of the SS found it easy to be loyal to their Fuhrer, rather than to any constitution established for the protection of their fellow Germans’ rights and lives, or to international law designed to protect fellow Europeans. In June of that year, during The Night of the Long Knives, Hitler and Himmler brought the SS out of comparative obscurity to murder between 207 and 1,000 of the leadership of the brown-shirted “Sturmabteilung.” or SA Storm-Troopers, consisting of millions of military veterans and adventurers then thought to be the most important paramilitary arm of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’, or Nazi, Party. As it turned out, Hitler never trusted the SA. He knew that many of them saw themselves differently, more as a surrogate army for Germany. By the summer of 1934, only a quarter of the SA’s four and a half million storm troopers were even members of the Nazi Party. SA leaders were content to disrupt normal government operations after achieving important positions with the government. They intended to eventually gain control of the German Army even with Hitler as dictator. With the SA threatening his power, Hitler decided to purge the brown shirts while also eliminating other opponents and rivals. In a few days, beginning the night of June 30, 1934, he began the effective process of striking absolute fear into the hearts of any countryman opposing him.

Six months after publicly thanking the SA Leaders for “imperishable services” to the Nazis and Germany, Hitler struck. While saying the brown shirts were planning a coup, he had them seized in a South Bavarian resort hotel. That’s where he had isolated senior SA leaders from their followers, with the expectation they would be discussing the SA’s overall role in Germany’s future. The leading brown shirts and others across Germany were simultaneously seized and killed in nearby barracks or prisons or murdered on the spot. The entire SA was disarmed. Though hard to believe that such a rampage might be ignored by a civil society, leaders of the army, the court system and the Catholic Church as well as the balance of German citizenry accepted Hitler’s claim that he had acted as at the supreme Judge of the German nation against a National-Bolshevik uprising. Later inquiry proved that the SA leadership had no intention of a coup, but it was too late. Hitler’s will had become the supreme German Law.

The real beneficiaries of this turn of events were the SS, then placed directly under Hitler. Two years later Himmler, the man who built the SS, was also given command of all the police capability in Germany even though Hitler had promised the Heer, or Army, that its members would be the only bearers of arms in and for Germany. By the Battle of the Bulge, the SS, especially the SS Panzers, had become a far more dangerous rival to the Wehrmacht, which included the combined army, navy and Air Force, than anyone could possibly have imagined. A bloody lesson emerged. Eventually all bullies must be confronted, and this really had to happen once and for all in the Ardennes Forest on December 16, 1944.

The ultimate confrontation started at 5:30 am on that day in the deep snow, darkened copses, tiny intersections, narrow gorges and streets and solid stone and brick houses and barns of the vast battlefield we traveled from Montana to survey. In that morning’s early darkness, four tired or inexperienced America army divisions, all of them too thinly spread, were suddenly and viciously attacked by three German armies, twenty German divisions, four of them SS Panzer. To both of us the setting for such a historic confrontation seemed like West Virginia around Harpers Ferry or northern Idaho around Kellogg. Here in terrain that could easily pass for North American, American soldiers did not cut and run as Hitler expected of the people he disdained as “mongrels.” They stayed, they died, and they put a stake through the heart of a contemptuous bully.