[applause] in uniform, at the back of the room. And 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 you know, needs saving. But as i always like to say, the 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 a future chief of staff of the Pakistani Army might rub shoulders with a future defense minister from india. Or a future commander of the Israeli Defense force might be the future commander of an era legion. A place where future communication might and indeed has been incubated. It is also a place of impeccable scholarship, socratic learning, and as our regular audience members, and i see a lot of you hear, know, frequently, expressing itself with a fine sense of humor. I want to thank our early sponsors and creators of the series. None of whom i think are here tonight, but i have to say this because this may be my one chance to say it bob, bud, jim , wilbanks, the former chair at the History Department at the command school, for starting and sustaining this great series, a series which will never die. Thank you. [laughter] crosby tonight we have the return of one of our favorites. Mark gerges. Mark has the distinction of the highest number of views in our archived programs, with only the exception of a nationally televised popular end of season cable show which i wont talk about. As a single lecturer, he has the highest number of views on our website, 91,000 views. 91,000 people have watched mark explained the fall of france. That lecture. I am going to guess tonights lecture will generate similar interest. Little tiny battle of the bulge story. My father turned 18 during the battle of the bulge. The sudden turn of the war, the desperate need for men and materiel which led to shortened training periods, spooked my grandmother so much that she forced my father to quit high school before graduation and join the navy. [laughter] crosby this desperate expedient 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. But he didnt end up in the ardennes, though tonight, we will. Professor gergen has received his ba and 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. He received a phd from Florida State with a dissertation about the duke of wellingtons cavalry. In the epigraph to that lecture professor gerges quotes thomas that war ising rattling good history. In his hands, it is that and also lessons for our time. Mark . [applause] mark thank you very much. [applause] mark well good evening. Good evening. Mark before i get started, i want to do a little introduction of my own. I normally do napoleonic history. I very rarely, ok never, have veterans in my napoleonic classes, but i want to recognize at least two members of the audience who are here up front. Ken, who was in the 106th Infantry Division. We will be talking about the gold lines. He was a senior advancement. One of the key divisions we will talk about tonight. We also have clarence stole who was in the 505th parachute regiment, jumped into holland september, 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 any other world war ii veterans . Can we just give these men a round of applause . [applause] and if you were here four years ago when i gave a talk on the fall of france in 1940, i started off with a rhetorical question. What is a nice napoleonic guy like myself doing in the 20th century . And i talked a little bit about my time in armor units in germany. And at the time, the Armored Branch at fort knox was steeped in history. We went to the basic course. One of the things we did, we would go to the museum after reading about the marine campaign, and they had huge map that came down off the top of the ceiling from this one room, and then you had armor officers who had fought in the Fourth Armored Division talk about that and discuss what they had done with these young impressionable officers. When i arrived to my First Armored battalion in october 1984, the second battalion 33rd armored regiment, part of the third armor division, which had been part of the third Armored Division during the battle of the bulge, i was a brandnew Second Lieutenant. There is not more of an intimidating feeling than to walk into a tank battalion, at that time. Many of the senior noncommissioned officers were vietnam veterans. They had all been there together for long periods of time. You walk in knowing no one, and knowing how little you know what the army is about. You go in and you go to the battalion, and you report and he tells you which unit company you will be assigned to. This particular battalion had a strong sense of the history of what it did. The Battalion Commander handed you two pieces of cloth. A blue square that goes on your uniform. That was awarded to the battalion in 1944 for its actions on the germanbelgian border. And then 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. The first time for the liberation of belgium in september and october 1944, the second time for its fighting during the ardennes offensive. And so here i was, a brandnew lieutenant, really didnt have much of knowing about the army, and im getting pulled into what soldiers had done 40 years before in my particular regiment. To,riend of mine decided and i, decided to go and visit the ardennes during the 40th anniversary celebrations in 1984 and i quite frankly was a little bit disappointed. If you have been to gettysburg, you see monuments. You drive through the ardennes, it is beautiful countryside, there is very few workers of anything. You dont know something monumental happened in these woods. And we were there on the 15th and 16th of december. Bastogne inthat at particular there would be some , sort of huge ceremony and it was nothing. We didnt know at the time in bastogne 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. But as we are driving out, we are driving out to the south of Luxembourg City, and as we get there, this little town on a back road suddenly we come up on , this little town. There are cars parked everywhere alongside the streets. And we get out of the car to see what is going on. There are people walking to the center of town. We get there and in the center of town, we arrived just as they are doing a ceremony to mark the 40th anniversary of the village liberation of this village by Pattons Third Army on the first day of the battle of the bulge. And what struck us as we stood there was this gentleman. I didnt know who he was, he was either luxembourgish or belgian. But he is wearing Second Lieutenant bars and a third Armored Division patch. And here my friend bob and i were both Second Lieutenants in the third Armored Division. We were standing there, and here is a civilian who is reenacting what people in our battalion did 40 years before. That really kind of hooked me on the battle of the bulge, being interested in the ardennes offensive. As an armored officer, you read about the regiment, you read about the units that were in there. I have been fortunate, my college sent me back five times to do staff rides with the officers in through the ardennes. Last time i was there was this last february. Was able to walk through the ardennes and look at the ground and study the actions of american and german officers. There is a certain fascination. And if you know anything about the battle of the bulge, you probably know about the german attack in the middle of winter. And you probably know about the defense of bastogne by the 101st airborne division. Troy middleton, the Corps 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 ersections at some thief st. Vith and bastogne. You probably know very little about the other crossroads. We will talk about the influence of the other crossroads. A general of panzer troops, his army will fight against the americans both in bastogne and in st. Vith. He is not his ego makes one battle seem better than the other. He takes place, his troops fight in both of them. In 1945 he says that of the two of them, he says st. Vith was a much more important crossroads for the success of the german offensive. In 1951 he is going to write a letter to a friend of his and he says he doesnt really understand in all these new histories coming out on the battle of the bulge. Everything is emphasizing bastogne and he doesnt know why there is no emphasis on st. Vith. If i ask most people who havent studied up before the lecture tonight what went on there, you probably know very little. We are going to talk about that and talk about the importance of it. And to adjust give you a little bit of a scale, to pick your interest, the stone bastogne is besieged for a week, the 20th through the 27th. There is a fullscreen a deer volksgrenadier 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. And it is a much, much greater scale of what is going to go on. So lets talk a little bit about how you got here. The American Army and the allied forces are doing a broad foreign front offensive in fall 1944. They start to get near the german border. We start to run out of steam. A number of things have happened. The logistics lines, we havent opened enough ports. The logistics are coming from the normandy front across france, so logistics are being stretched to the utmost. The weather starts to turn bad. We also start to get to the german border, and the other part is what they call the miracle in the west, what the germans call the miracle in the west. During the advance across france, we are going to destroy large numbers of german troops, particularly in the more 10 counterattack. We destroy equipment, and most of the soldiers walk back. They have a cadre of trained soldiers, educated officers, and when they produce tanks and equipment, they are going to be able to refill their forces very quickly. We expect when the weather improves, when the logistics improve, we are going to 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 armies up towards the ruhr off the map to the north. In the south with the third army and seventh army down crossing the rhine. In the center is this not impassable i hate using that term. It is very rugged ground known as the ardennes. If you go there today it is , beautiful countryside today, a tourist haven, hiking trails, beautiful little towns with wandering brooks. The roads are alongside these brooks and they are very narrow. In we are going to end our offensive into germany on the edge of the sick free line and the west six read the siegfried line and the west wall. We have four divisions, part of the u. S. Eighth corps, the 106th Infantry Division, the 28th Infantry Division, the ninth infantry and fourth infantry. The area of the ardennes the u. S. Forces are using for two purposes. One are the units that have been so bloodied in the forest to the north they put the troops in there and are refilling them with new replacements. The 28th 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 in the forest. The other divisions, the ninth armored and 106th, are new. Particular are so new, they have gone to the front, taken over the second infantry four days before the german offensive is going to start. Theyre just settling in. The other division which is in fifth court, the north is the 99th infantry. That division has only been on the line for approximately three weeks. So you get a number of very very , inexperienced divisions and a lot of bloodied divisions in this area. That is ok because we dont expect anything is going to happen. We are looking at this with what we call confirmation bias. We are going to 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 anything other than husband the resources for when we start to invade the homeland in great detail . The other thing that is really going on is the second Infantry Division is doing a limited attack into the ruhr river dams, and that will start before the fighting on the 16th of december. So 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 they have 100 operational tanks. To put that in perspective, when they attack on the 16th of december, they have Something Like 1800 tanks they will bring tanks and assault guns. They are in terrible shape. Hitler is getting a briefing, and the chief of the wehrmacht is talking about the retreat into holland and the retreat into alsace, and when he mentions the word ardennes, suddenly hitler slams his hand onto his table and says, i have made a momentous decision. We will attack out of the ardennes with the objective of antwerp. What hitler seized on is this gap between the british 21st army group and the u. S. 12th army group. He wants to use the ardennes and move very, very rapidly across the muse river seizing bridges , like he did in 1940, then move to antwerp, isolating the 21st army group and hopefully creating then another dunkirk. If he can destroy the 21st army group, britains main armies on the continent he hopes that will , knock britain out of the war. If it doesnt knock them out totally, it will at least stun the United States into action. He can take troops and put them into what he considers the real threat, the Eastern Front against the russians. To do this, he is going to select three armies. Speed is going to be paramount to the german success. The sixth panzer army is made up of ss troops, and that will be in the main effort. It is going to be the army that is going to come sweeping through here, take the area and go up to antwerp. Supporting the flank of that will be the fifth army, fifth panzer army, a shaping operation. It is supposed to take the critical crossroads town of st. Vith no later than the second day and in the south, the seventh army, an infantry army, the weakest of the three armies, only has about 40 assault guns with the bulk of tanks and assault guns into the north and that is mainly to protect the flank of the fifth panzer army. Become knownations as it has a defensive name. It seems like they are going to be defending, not an attack. Where they position the troops looks like where you would position troops when the u. S. And british offensives start again for counterattacks, and all this goes into the deception plan the germans are trying to do. Soldiers, 180000 tanks and guns, 1900 artillery pieces against this front. And you can see the numbers. It is about 11 divisions in the north versus eight divisions and the fifth panzer army and seventh army, but those numbers are a little misleading because of the type of troops that are up in the sixth panzer army. Facing them in the eighth corps will be 83,000 soldiers, 250 tanks. Today we teach when you go on the offensive, you need three to one odds for the offensive to be successful. And germans where they decide they are going to penetrate, they had 81 odds in infantry and 41 odds in Mechanized Forces and tanks and assault guns. So they had clearly massed their forces to be able to do it. There is two commanders of the armies we are going to talk about tonight. One of them is the commander of army group b. He is going to be the operational level commander. And then the German Panzer troop commander, we will talk quite a bit about his actions tonight. Of the two armies, when you look at the u. S. Infantry divisions versus a german division, the u. S. Division is a little bit bigger. You almost have to look at the german Divisions Division by division to see how good they are. That is because the older division, which are called volksgrenadier divisions, have about 14,000 soldiers. Some of the new volksgrenadier divisions will stand up in the fall, only have about 80 strength, between 8000 and 10,000 soldiers. That confuses part of how we look at the order of battle from the germans. German Panzer Divisions, tank divisions are supposed to have about 160 tanks while our divisions have 186 medium tanks, then 77 light tanks. 263. Most german divisions have less than that. Some of the key German Wehrmacht divisions only have about 80 tanks. But those numbers are actually closer to the actual strength of the ss divisions, the elite German Forces. This is where they are going to put their main effort. It is divisions that have almost 19,000 sold