And yet the decision to attack in the West does not contradict Hitler’s lifelong fixation. Close scrutiny reveals its inherent consistency. Naturally defiance and despair influenced it—for he now hated the West, which had destroyed his grand design. And presumably in the radical moods of the last year he discovered once again his greater closeness to Stalin, that “fellow of genius,” as he had often called him, for whom one had to have “unreserved respect.”28 All in all, Hitler was prompted by a higher degree of calculation than we might expect of him on the verge of doom, at the end of his power and his life.
He believed that his admiration for Stalin gave him certain clues to the Russian’s behavior. Greatness, he knew, was by its nature inexorable; it would have no truck with those shifts that were the business of bourgeois statesmen. A new offensive against the East, therefore, could possibly delay the end, but certainly could not avert it. An offensive in the West, on the other hand, might produce a shock of surprise among the Americans and British, who he believed were easily shaken. Thus he would recapture the initiative and so secure that gain in time which might yet bring about the hoped-for split in the enemy coalition. In this sense the offensive was a kind of last desperate offer to the Western Allies to make common cause with him.
Above all, however, an offensive seemed possible only in the West; and this consideration virtually decided the matter. There he could advance once again, once again bring to bear his genius as a commander, which had been proved in offensive operations. The vast expanses of the Eastern front, with its gigantic rear areas, where he himself had gone astray even in the days of optimum force, offered far less of an operational base or goal than the West. In the West, moreover, the offensive could take off from the west wall’s system of fortifications. And since it would have shorter distances to cover, less fuel would be needed. Moreover, Hitler also thought that his armies in the East would put up a bitter resistance in any case. In the East fear was on his side, whereas in the West he had to reckon with a growing defeatism. The Morgenthau Plan (so-called after Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Ir.) for the dismemberment and agrarianization of Germany had just become known, and was being exploited by the propaganda specialists to build up anxiety. Though not entirely unsuccessful in this, they did not manage to create anything like the wild terror they had counted on. Consequently, the offensive was to confer upon the war in the West some of the grimness it already had in the East.
On December 11 and 12, a few days before the attack was started, Hitler summoned the troop commanders of the Western front in two separate groups to meetings in the headquarters of Field Marshal von Rund-stedt. Having first been relieved of weapons and briefcases, they were driven about haphazardly to confuse their sense of orientation until the column of cars at last stopped at the entrance to an extensive system of bunkers that proved to be the Adlerhorst (the Eagle’s Nest) Führer’s headquarters near Bad Nauheim. They were led down a lane formed by SS men to Hitler. One of the participants was stunned to discover “a stooped figure with a pale and puffy face, hunched in his chair, his hands trembling, his left arm subject to a violent twitching which he did his best to conceal.” An armed bodyguard stood behind every chair, and one of the participants later declared: “None of us would have dared so much as to pull out his handkerchief.”29
In a two-hour speech combining justifications with encouragements, Hitler informed the assembled commanders of Operation Autumn Mists. The attack was to advance through the Ardennes toward Antwerp, the Allies’ most important supply port, and subsequently to annihilate all enemy forces to the north. Hitler admitted that his plan was a gamble and seemed to stand “in a certain disproportion to the forces and their condition.” But the risk acted as a challenge to him; for the last time he was staking everything on a single card. He pointed out the advantages of an offensive strategy, especially within an overall defensive framework. He implored the officers “to make it plain to the enemy that no matter what he does he can never count on a surrender, never, never.” And then he came back to his ever-growing hope:
Never in the history of the world have there been coalitions like that of our enemies, composed of so many heterogeneous elements with such totally divergent aims…. These are countries that are already bickering with one another over their aims every day. And he who sits like a spider in his web, so to speak, watching this development, can see these antagonisms blowing up more and more with every passing hour. If they are hit by a few more very heavy blows, at any moment this artificially sustained common front may suddenly collapse with a tremendous clap of thunder… provided always that this battle in no circumstances leads to a further weakening of Germany….
Gentlemen, on other fronts I have accepted sacrifices beyond the call of necessity in order to create here the preconditions for another offensive.30
On December 16, with low-hanging clouds grounding the enemy air force, the offensive began on a front of seventy-five miles. Hitler had withdrawn several battle-hardened divisions from the Eastern front. The enemy was hoodwinked by deceptive radio messages. To avoid attracting attention, some of the heavy equipment was pulled into position by horses. Low-flying planes were assigned the task of drowning out with their motors the noises and clanging in the German positions. The surprise actually succeeded, and enabled the German divisions to break through at many points. But after only a few days it became apparent that the offensive would have been condemned to failure even without the fierce American defense, simply because the German side quickly ran out of energy and reserves. One tank group stopped a mile from an American supply dump containing 3 million gallons of gasoline. Another unit waited in vain on the ridge near Dinant for fuel and reinforcements, so that it could roll on the short distance to the Meuse. Just before Christmas, moreover, the weather changed; dense swarms of Allied planes reappeared in the blue skies and within a few days flew 15,000 sorties, literally smashing to pieces the German supply lines. On December 28 Hitler once more summoned the division commanders to his headquarters to implore and bully them:
Never in my life have I accepted the idea of surrender, and I am one of those men who have worked their way up from nothing. Our present situation, therefore, is nothing new to me. Once upon a time my own situation was entirely different, and far worse. I say this only so that you can grasp why I pursue my goal with such fanaticism and why nothing can wear me down. No matter how much I might be tormented by worries, even if my health were shaken by them—that would still have not the slightest effect on my decision to fight on….”31
In the East, meanwhile, the Red Army had begun its preparations for an offensive on a broad front, and on January 9, 1945, Guderian once more called on Hitler to alert him to the threatening danger. But Hitler would not hear of it; he was thinking only of his own offensive, which had once more restored the possibility of planning and operating. He called all warnings to the contrary “completely idiotic” and ordered the chief of Foreign Armies Intelligence, East, who had furnished Guderian with his information, to be “locked up in a lunatic asylum at once.” The Eastern front had never been buttressed by so many reserves as it was at the moment, Hitler stated. The chief of staff retorted: “The Eastern front is a house of cards. If the front is penetrated at a single point, it will collapse.”