Tonight, we will be talking about the 75th anniversary of the battle of the bulge. Tonight is also probably my farewell introduction, if that isnt a contradiction in terms, for the ongoing signature series with the History Department of the general staff college. The director of the command school, scott green, is here tonight. Scott, can you wave your arm . Thank you. [applause] 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 in 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. 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 the future chief of staff of the Pakistani Army might rub shoulders with a future defense minister from india. A place where future communication might and indeed has been incubated. It is a place of impeccable scholarship, socratic learning, and i see a few 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. None of whom i think are here tonight. I have to say this because this may be my one chance, bob, bud, jim wilbanks, for starting and sustaining this great series, a series which will never die. Thank you. Tonight we have the return of one of our favorites. Mark gerges 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. 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. Explain the follow france. I will guess tonights lecture will generate similar interest. I have my own little tiny battle 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 shortened training periods, and this spooked my grandmother so much that she forced my father to quit high school before graduation and join the navy. This desperate expedition might 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. He didnt end up in the ardennes, although tonight, we will. Professor gerges 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. He received a phd from Florida 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, professor gerges quotes thomas hardy, saying war is unraveling good rattling history. It is that and lessons for our , time. Mark . [applause] mark thank you very much. Good evening. Before i get 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 two members of the audience. Ken, who was in the 106th Infantry Division. We will talk about that. Man. . Senior bands one of the key divisions we will talk about tonight. Also, we have clarence, who was in the 505th parachute 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 a round of applause . [applause] if you were here four years ago when i gave a talk on the fall of france in 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, the Armored Branch at fort knox was steeped in history. We went through 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 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, which had been part of the third Armored 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 Commander handed two pieces of cloth. One was 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. It had been mentioned in the orders of the day the belgian mark belgian army. The first time for the liberation of belgium in september and october 1944, the second time for its fighting during the ardennes offensive. 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. A friend of mine and i decided to go and visit the ardennes during the 40th anniversary celebrations in 1984 and i was a little disappointed. If you have been to gettysburg, you see monuments. 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. Ognexpected that in bast 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 we come 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 Army on the first day of the 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 is a civilian reenacting what people in our battalion did 40 years before. That 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 and units that were 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 by the hundred first air division. 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 bastogne. H and what is interesting as you 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 in bastonne and st. And st. Vith. It is not his ego to make battle one better and 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 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 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 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 scale, the pig the picture. Bastogne has been written to siege for a week. The 20th through the 27th. There is a regiment that will encircle the 101st airborne division. At 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. Lets talk about how we got here. The American Army and the allied forces are doing a broad foreign offensive in fall 1944. They get near the german border. We start to run out of scene. A number of things have happened. One, the logistics 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 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 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 armies up towards the ruhr off the map to the north. In the south with the third army and seventh army crossing the rhine. In the center is this not impassable, but very rugged ground known as the ardennes. It is beautiful countryside today, a tourist haven, beautiful little towns with wandering 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 siegfried line. We have four divisions, part of the u. S. Eighth corps, the 106th Infantry Division, the 28th we will talk more about them in some detail. The 28th Infantry Division, the ninth infantry and fourth infantry. The area of the ardennes the 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 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. The other divisions, the ninth armored and 106th, are new. The 106th are so new, they have gone to the front, taken over the second infantry four days before the german 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 anything other than husband the 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 they 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. Hitler gives a briefing, and the chief of the wehrmacht is talking about the retreat into holland and alsace and when he mentions the word ardennes, hitler slams his hand and says, i have made a momentous decision. We will attack out of the ardennes with the goal of 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, seizing bridges like he did in 1940, then move to antwerp, isolating the 21st army group and hopefully creating another dunkirk. If he can isolate the 21st army if he can destroy the 21st army group, written written army he hopesain , 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. To do this, he will select three armies. Speed will be paramount to the german success. The sixth panzer army is made up it will eventually get the ss panzere sixth army. It is made up of 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 fifth panzer army, a shaping operation. It is supposed to take a critical crossroads near st. 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 40 assault guns with the bulk of tanks and 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 of this goes into the plan the germans are trying to do. They mask three rebels and 300,000 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 misleading because of the type of troops in the sixth panzer army. Facing them will be 83,000 soldiers, 250 tanks. 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 41 odds in Mechanized Forces and tanks and assault guns. They have clearly massed their forces to be able to do it. There are two commanders of the armies we will talk about tonight. One of them is the commander of army group b. He will be the operational level commander. We will talk quite a bit about the panzer commander tonight. Of the two armies, when you look 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 volksgrendadier, have about 14,000 soldiers. Some of the new grenadier divisions the newer only have 80 of that strength. 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 Wehrmacht divisions have 80 tanks. Those numbers are closer to what the actual strength of 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, the panther, tiger one, tiger two, their medium tank, the equivalent of our sherman, and these are assault guns. We have two Armored Vehicles 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 german tanks where we have 76 or 90 millimeter tank destroyers. Two to 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. T