Summary of Leo Barron's Patton at the Battle of the Bulge

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Death was never far from the mind of Colonel Rudolph-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, as he was constantly on the run from the Gestapo. He had tried to kill Hitler on March 21, 1943, and was now en route to a meeting at Army Group B Headquarters.
#2 Colonel Rudolph von Gersdorff was a conspirator against Hitler. He was born in 1905 in the town of Lubin, Silesia. He attended the War Academy in Berlin to become a general staff officer, and when the war broke out in 1939, he was a captain on the staff of the Fourteenth Army.
#3 On July 27, 1944, he became the chief of staff for the Seventh Army. It was not an auspicious start. The U. S. Army’s Operation Cobra had begun only two days earlier, and it was the breakout the German army’s High Command had feared since D-day.
#4 The German war potential allows them to form an offensive force by rehabilitating and completely reconstituting the twelve panzer and panzergrenadier divisions at present employed on the Western Front, as well as some twenty volksgrenadier divisions and two airborne divisions. The most important factor will be surprise and speed.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Military
• World War II
• History
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 10 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822501621
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Leo Barron's Patton at the Battle of the Bulge
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Death was never far from the mind of Colonel Rudolph-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, as he was constantly on the run from the Gestapo. He had tried to kill Hitler on March 21, 1943, and was now en route to a meeting at Army Group B Headquarters.

#2

Colonel Rudolph von Gersdorff was a conspirator against Hitler. He was born in 1905 in the town of Lubin, Silesia. He attended the War Academy in Berlin to become a general staff officer, and when the war broke out in 1939, he was a captain on the staff of the Fourteenth Army.

#3

On July 27, 1944, he became the chief of staff for the Seventh Army. It was not an auspicious start. The U. S. Army’s Operation Cobra had begun only two days earlier, and it was the breakout the German army’s High Command had feared since D-day.

#4

The German war potential allows them to form an offensive force by rehabilitating and completely reconstituting the twelve panzer and panzergrenadier divisions at present employed on the Western Front, as well as some twenty volksgrenadier divisions and two airborne divisions. The most important factor will be surprise and speed.

#5

The American First Army was hitting hard the area around Aachen, and General George S. Patton’s Third Army was racing across France and into the retreating Army Group G in the Moselle region. The Allies had focused their combat power in those two sectors, leaving a huge gap in the Ardennes region.

#6

The German High Command had made a huge assumption about American intentions. They believed that the Americans would react to the German surprise attack by massing their combat power to prevent a German assault across the Meuse River.

#7

The town of Bad Münstereifel provided a fitting backdrop for the staff exercise. It was typical of the Rhineland town, with half-timber-framed homes and a stone wall built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

#8

The Seventh Army was led by General Brandenberger, who had brought his three corps commanders with him. The first was Dr. Franz Beyer, commander of the LXXX Army Corps. Next to him was General Baptist Knieß, the commander of the LXXXV Army Corps. Knieß was a stocky man who looked more like a fat German baker than a German general.

#9

The 4 volksgrenadier divisions controlled by two corps would lead the attack. The LXXXV Infantry Corps would be on the right, and the LXXX Infantry Corps on the left. They would attack abreast in the sector between the towns of Vianden, Wallendorf, and Echternach.

#10

The first portion of the map exercise was complete. The officers debated the type of artillery bombardment that would precede the attack, proposing a short barrage since they did not have a lot of intelligence on American targets.

#11

The Our River, near the town of Roth, was a winding snake that twisted its way through the steep, wooded hills. It was this reason that made the Our so defensible. It was not wide, but its fast-moving current and sheer banks made any crossing tricky.

#12

Heilmann was a Fallschirmjäger, or paratrooper, and the commander of the 5th Fallschirmjäger Division. He was the only person in his division who knew about the upcoming attack. He had a job to do, but he did not want to raise suspicion, so he disguised himself as a gefreiter.

#13

The 5th Fallschirmjäger Division was a new unit that had been formed in March 1944. It was commanded by Heilmann, and it saw intense combat during the invasion of Normandy in June. By the end of July, the division was wrecked, and only its remnants escaped the Falaise pocket in August.

#14

The 13th Fallschirmjäger Regiment had a dearth of trained soldiers, and the division’s problems were deeper than a lack of proper training and essential equipment. Many of the senior officers and NCOs had little taste for war.

#15

The 5th Fallschirmjäger Division, under the command of Major Gerhard Martin, was fully trained and ready for combat. The attached 11th Assault Gun Brigade had twenty assault guns. They would form the backbone of Heilmann’s offensive combat power.

#16

The Fallschirmjäger general, Heilmann, was tasked with crossing the Our River. He knew that the Americans had placed few forces along the river’s edge. He concluded that the Americans were defending the sector with just a battalion. The Americans had established listening and observation posts in the castle fortress of Vianden while buttressing those positions with some light artillery.

#17

On December 11, Heilmann and his corps commander, General Baptist Knieß, went to see Hitler at his headquarters in Ziegenberg to discuss the upcoming Ardennes operation. Heilmann thought that the Americans had rigged the game in their favor.

#18

The 5th Fallschirmjäger Division was tasked with attacking the enemy from an assembly position behind the West Wall, and then breaking through the position with the main effort directed at Vianden. As the offensive progressed, the division would reach the general line of Sibret, Vaux-lez-Rosières, and Martelange.

#19

Heilmann mapped out the axis of advance for the follow-on forces. The 5th Pioneer Battalion would ferry the assault companies across the Our River by pneumatic pontoons, build a ferry at Bauler, and reach the Wiltz River with its main forces and ferrying material via Hohscheid.

#20

The plan for the assembly of the troops and equipment was reviewed. The main thing was to gain the Wiltz crossings intact on the first day, and bypass any villages or islands of resistance. Roads were to be avoided.

#21

The German offensive was going to fail if they didn’t surprise the Americans, so Heilmann stressed the importance of bypassing pockets of resistance. The more time they wasted mopping up resistance in the tiny villages that dotted this region of the Ardennes, the less time they would have for digging foxholes and preparing fields of fire for Patton’s tanks.

#22

The American G-2, Colonel Oscar W. Koch, thought the Germans were defeated. In fact, they were getting ready to launch a large spoiling attack and maybe even a counteroffensive.

#23

The German buildup was not opposite the Third Army’s area of operations, but it was in their own area of interest because a German attack there would threaten their flank. The American lines were weak in the area north of VIII Corps.

#24

The American intelligence officer who was in charge of planning for the attack on Frankfurt, General Walter Koch, was also in charge of planning for the defense of the city. He concluded that the Germans were planning sabotage and other missions behind Allied lines that would be part of a much larger offensive.

#25

The American army was facing the same amount of German combat power as VIII Corps, which was half the size of Third Army. The question was when and where, and according to the German prisoner of war, the when was in the next two weeks.

#26

On the German side of the lines, men were girding themselves for battle, while most of the American soldiers were writing Christmas letters to family back home. The 5th Fallschirmjäger Division would play a key role in the defense of the southern flank of the German counteroffensive.