School, scott green, is here tonight. Scott, can you waive your arm . Thank you. [applause] mark in uniform at the back of the room. This lecture series, which is about great military events, great commanders and sometimes great controversies in the art of war, has been ongoing since almost the beginning of my tenure 15 years ago. It has been our great series on the library. This is probably my last introduction because i have been drafted by the president so if you can identify with that, to go to washington to save the republic, which as you know needs saving. Say, thealways like to command school is the intellectual center of the army. It is selfcritical, selfaware, it plays no favorites and is the best place to learn from the experience and history of the battlefield and with extraordinary teaching and technology, to learn from todays battlefields and commanders. It is also a school for our allies and partners, and the future military leaders from around the world, a place where the future chief of staff of the Pakistani Army might rub shoulders from a future defense with a future defense minister from india. A place where future communication might and indeed has been into be incubated. It is a place of impeccable scholarship, socratic learning a regular audience members, as you know, frequently, expressing itself with a fine sense of humor. I want to thank our early sponsors and creators of the series. I have to say this because this may be my one chance, bob, but, ford, jim wilbanks starting and sustaining this great series, a series which will never die. Thank you. Tonight we have the return of. Ne of our favorites mark has the distinction of the highest number of views in our archived programs, with only the exception of a nationally televised popular cable show which i wont talk about. , he has thelecturer highest number of views on our website, 91,000 views. Mark0 people have watched explained the fall of france. I will guess tonights lecture will generate similar interest. Battlemy own little tiny of the bulge story. My father turned 18 during the battle of the bulge. The sudden turn of the war, the need for men and material led to ,hortened training periods spooked my grandmother so much that she forced my father to quit high school before graduation and join the navy. Expedition might not have worked out well as my father ended up on a ship in boston harbor, destined for the invasion of japan when the bomb was dropped. T didnt and up end up in he ardennes, although tonight we will. The professor has served 20 years with armored units in europe, the balkans, the middle east, commanded a tank company during desert storm, and he has a bronze star with a valor device on it. Floridaved a phd from state with a dissertation about the duke of wellingtons cavalry. A previous lecture on napoleon is anthologized in the great commanders book published by the combat studies institute of Fort Leavenworth of lectures given at the kansas city public library. In the epigraph, the professor puts thomas hardy quotes thomas hardy, saying war is unraveling good history. It is that and lessons for our time. Mark . [applause] mark thank you very much. Good evening. Started, i want to do an introduction of my own. I normally do napoleonic history. I rarely, ok never, have veterans in my napoleonic classes but i want to recognize to members of the audience, ken, who was in the 106th Infantry Division. We will talk about that. One of the key divisions we will talk about tonight. Also, we have clarence, who was parachutefifth regiment, jumped into holland and was in the 82nd airborne during the battle of the bulge. Do we have any other veterans of the battle of the bulge here or world war ii veterans . Can we just give these men around applause . [applause] applause . Of [applause] you were here four years ago when i gave a talk on the fall of france 1940, i started with a rhetorical question. What is a nice napoleonic guy like myself doing in the 20th century . I talk about my time in armored units in germany, and at the time, armor branch at fort knox was steeped in history. We went to the basic course, one of the things we did is we would go to the museum after reading about the campaign and they had huge map that came down off the top of the ceiling from this one room and you had armor officers who fought in the Fourth Armor Division talk about that and discuss what they had done with these young impressionable officers. When i arrived to my first armor battalion in october 1984, the second battalion 33rd armor regiment, which had been part of the third Armor Division during the battle of the bulge, i was a brandnew Second Lieutenant. There is not much more of an intimidating feeling than to walk into a tank battalion at that time, many senior noncommissioned officers were vietnam veterans. They had all been there together for a long time. You walk in knowing no one and knowing how little you know about what the army is about. You go in and you go to the battalion and you report and they tell you which company you will be assigned to. This particular battalion had a strong sense of the history of what it did. The battalion handed you to pieces of the president ial unit citation, the blue square that goes on your uniform. That was awarded to the battalion in 1944 for its actions on the germanbelgian border. He hands you a belgian corded rope that you hang on your sleeve and the battalion got it because it had been awarded that twice. Thefirst time for liberation of belgium in september and october 1944, the second time for its fighting offensive. Ardennes i was a new lieutenant, didnt know much about the army and im getting pulled into what soldiers had done 40 years before in my particular regiment. Ifriend of mine decided, and decided to go and visit the during the 40th anniversary celebrations in 1984 and i was a little disappointed. If you have been to gettysburg, you drive through the ardennes, it is beautiful countryside, there are few markers of anything. You dont know something monumental happened in these woods. We were there on the 15th and 16th of december. We expected, at the bastonne, there would be some sort of huge ceremony and it was nothing. We didnt know what the time that they have what is called nuts weekend, a huge weekend commemorating the veterans that is done the first weekend in december because of the weather and the christmas holidays. As we are driving out, we are driving out to the south of luxembourg city, and in this little town, suddenly become up on this little town. There are cars parked everywhere alongside the streets. We get out of the car to see what is going on. There are people walking to the center of town. In the center of town, we arrived just as they were doing a ceremony to mark the 40th anniversary of the liberation of this village by pattons third the on the first day of battle of the bulge. What struck us as we stood there with this gentleman, i didnt know who he was, he was either luxembourgish or belgian. He was wearing Second Lieutenant bars and a Third Armored Division patch. My friend and i were both Second Lieutenants in the Third Armored Division. We were standing there and here whatcivilian reenacting people in our battalion did 40 years before. That kind of hooked me on the battle of the bulge. He and interested in the being interested in the ardennes offensive. You read about the regiment and you units that have been in there. I have been fortunate, my college sent me back five times to do staff rides with the officers through the ardennes. Last time i was there was this last february. I walked through the ardennes and i was able to study the actions of american and german officers. There is a certain fascination. If you know anything about the battle of the bulge, you probably know about the german attack in the middle of winter. You probably know about the defensive the bastonne. Troy middleton, the court commander of the corps that takes the brunt of the german offensive, says you dont have to be a genius to understand the importance of these two road intersections at bastonne. You probably know very little about the other crossroads. We will talk about the influence of the other crossroads. Panzer troops, his army will fight against the americans in bastonne and st. Vith. Place, his troops fight in both of them. In 1945 he says that of the two of them, he says st. Vith was a more important crossroads for the success of the german offensive. In 1951, he writes a letter to a friend of his him and he says he doesnt really understand in all these new histories coming out, focusing on the battle of the bulge, everything is emphasizing bastonne and he doesnt know what why there is no emphasis on st. Vith. If i ask most people who havent studied up before the lecture what went on there, you probably know very little. We will talk about that and talk about the importance of it. To give you a little bit of the bastonne is besieged for a week, the 20th through the 27th. There is a regiment that will encircle the 101st airborne division. In the same time period at st. Vith, the seventh Armored Division and 106th Infantry Division will fight nine different divisions from two different armies. It is a much greater scale of what is going to go on. About how we got here. The American Army and the allied forces are doing a broad foreign offensive in fault fall 1944. Begin your the german boarder they get near the german boarder. The logisticss lines, we havent open enough ports. The logistics are coming from normandy across france so logistics are stretched to the utmost. The weather turns bad and we get to the german boarder border, and the other part is what they call the miracle in the west, what the germans call the miracle in the west. Francethe advance across we destroy large numbers of german troops, particularly in a counterattack. We destroy equipment, and most of the soldiers will walk back. They have a cadre of trained soldiers and officers and when they produce tanks and equipment, they will be able to refill their forces very quickly. We expect when the weather improves, when the logistics improve, we will go on the offensive again and it will be in two different places. In the north, the 21st army group and the ninth and first offes up towards the ruhr the map to the north. In the south with the third army and seventh army crossing the rhine. In the center is this not impossible, impassable but very rugged ground known as the ardennes. It is beautiful countryside today, a tourist haven, beautiful little towns with wondering brooks, the roads are alongside these brooks and they are very narrow. In 1944, we will end our offensive into germany on the edge of the six reed line siegfried line. We have four divisions part of corps. The 106th Infantry Division, the 28th Infantry Division, the ninth infantry and fourth infantry. Thearea of the ardennes u. S. Forces are using is for two purposes. One are the units that have been so bloodied, they put the troops in there and refilled them with new replacements. The 20 eighth and fourth Infantry Divisions are experienced divisions that fought across france and have gone into the forest, they lost about a third to half of their strength and are being refilled from their bloody fighting in october and november. The other divisions, the ninth armored and 106th, our new. The 106th are so new, they have gone to the front, taken over the second infantry four days germanthe for the defensive will start. Theyre just settling in. The other division to the north is the 99th infantry. That division has only been on the line for approximately three weeks. You get a number of very inexperienced divisions and lots of bloodied divisions in this area. That is ok because we dont expect anything will happen. We are looking at this with what we call confirmation bias. We will be doing something to the germans, we will go back on the offensive after the losses and advances through the fall. How could they possibly do husband theer than resources for when we invade the homeland in great detail . The only thing going on is the second Infantry Division is doing a limited attack into the ruhr river and that will start before the fighting on the 16th of december. The german planning for this offensive begins in september. In the early part of september, the german losses have been so bad on the western front that. Hey have 100 operational tanks to put that in perspective, when they attack on the 16th of december, they have 1800 tanks they will bring and assault guns. They are in terrible shape. , and theves a briefing isef of the wehrmacht talking about the retreat into heland and alsace and when mentions the word ardennes, hitl er slams his hand and says i have made a momentous decision. We will attack out of the the goal ofh antwerp. He seized upon the gap between the british 21st army group and the u. S. 12th army group. He wants to use the ardennes and move rapidly across the river, did in bridges like he 1940, then move to antwerp. Isolating the 21st army group and hopefully creating another theirk. If he can isolate 21st army group, he hopes that will knock britain out of the war. If it doesnt knock them out totally it will stem the United States into action. He can take troops and put them into what he considers the real threat, the Eastern Front against russia. He will select three armies. Speed will be paramount to the german success. Is made up ofrmy ss troops and that will be the main effort. It will be the army that will come sweeping through here, take the area and go up to antwerp. Supporting the flank will be the , a shapingr army operation. It is supposed to take a critical crossroads near st. Vith no later than the second day and in the self, the seventh army, and infantry army. Much the weakest of the three armies, only 40 assault guns and the bulk of tanks assault guns to the north to protect the flank of the fifth panzer army. German preparations became known , it has a defensive name. It seems like they are going to be defending, not attacking. Where they position the troops looks like where you would position troops when the u. S. And british offensives start again for counterattack, and all the plan theinto germans are trying to do. Rebels andhree soldiers, 1800 tanks and guns, 1900 artillery pieces against this front. You can see the numbers, 11 divisions in the north versus eight divisions and the fifth panzer army and seventh army but those numbers are a little the typeg because of of troops in the sixth panzer army. Facing them will be 83,000 tanks. S, 250 we teach when you go on the offensive you need three to one odds for the offensive to be successful. Where the germans decide they will penetrate, they have 81 odds in infantry and fourone odds in Mechanized Forces and tanks and assault guns. They have clearly massed their forces to be able to do with. There are two commanders of the armies we will talk about tonight. Of of them is the Commander Army group b. He will be the operational level commander. We will talk quite a bit about the panzer commander tonight. Looke two armies, when you at the u. S. Infantry divisions versus the german division, the u. S. Division is a little bigger. You have to look at the german Divisions Division by division to be able to see how good they are. That is because the older division, the grenadier divisions, have about 14,000 soldiers. Some of the new grenadier divisions will stand up in the 80 , only have about strength so between 800010,000 soldiers. That confuses part of how we look at the order of battle from the germans. The German Panzer divisions are supposed to have about 160 tanks while our divisions have 186 medium tanks, then 77 light tanks. Most german divisions have less than that. Some of the key german weh rmacht divisions have 80 tanks. These are closer to the ss divisions, the elite German Forces. This is where they will put their main effort. Divisions that have almost 19,000 soldiers in them, and as we talked through tonight, this is the panzer, the tiger one, their medium tank, the equivalent of our sherman, and these are assault guns. Vehicleswo armored that will play a key part. One is the tank, the sherman tank. Tanks are designed to kill people, not kill other tanks. Tanks are designed, exploitation, go after headquarters, supply units. Part of our doctrine at the time is that tanks go after and do the exploitation, and to defeat enemy tanks we have a tank destroyer. The tank gun is low velocity, not good for fighting against 76 or tanks where we have 90 millimeter tank destroyers. Have the big gun and be fast on the battlefield and move around, it has one thing a tank doesnt have and that is good armor protection. The tank destroyers, there is no top amateur at. There is no top, on the tur ret so they can move their vehicle effectively. At the divisions, the type of divisions we will have, the Infantry Division, when we start to create an army, we will finally have 89 divisions altogether. The 106th is one of the last divisions that will be set up in the summer of 1943. It has about a year of training stateside, then the casualties from the Normandy Campaign and the drive across france start to hit the army. We havent calculated the number of infantry casualties. What will end up happening is, the first 3000 soldiers in lowerlevel noncommissioned officers will be taken from the 106th division. A few weeks later, another 3500 will be taken. Within a short time in summer 1944, they will lose almost 7000 trained infantry and get new replacements, but they wont begin in the time to really integrate them into the unit and praying. They will be shipped overseas in october, have 19 days of training in england, then they begin to transit over to france. I get on the ships and they have a storm in the channel, and they spend four days unable to land, seasick on board. They get to france and there is no trucks waiting for us. They spend a day and a half waiting in the fields for trucks to show up. They get on these open top trucks and spend two days crossing france in wet, rainy weather. They finally pull into the st. Vith area in december, taking over from the second Infantry Division. They are pretty happy. The second infan