In the aftermath of the defeat, a distraught General Jones exclaimed, “I’ve lost a division faster than any other commander in the U.S. Low on ammunition and under heavy artillery fire, some 6,500 G.I.s were forced to capitulate in one of largest mass surrenders of U.S. German attackers soon encircled the 422nd and 423rd and cut them off from any support. He phoned Lieutenant General Troy Middleton to request that they be withdrawn, but the line was bad and Jones came away from the call incorrectly believing that Middleton had ordered him to keep his troops in position. Jones, grew worried that the flanks of his 422nd and 423rd regiments were too exposed. Shortly after the German attack began, the 106th’s commander, Major General Alan W. line in a rugged area known as Schnee Eifel. The largely inexperienced outfit arrived in the Ardennes on December 11 and was ordered to cover a large section of the U.S. division.įew American units at the Battle of the Bulge felt the force of the German advance more severely than the 106th Golden Lions Division. A bad phone connection helped lead to catastrophe for one U.S. As a result, when the German offensive finally began, the region was thinly defended by only a few exhausted and green U.S. Many have since claimed the Allies were blinded by their recent battlefield successes-they’d had the Germans on the defensive since D-Day-but the American high command also considered the inhospitable terrain of the Ardennes an unlikely site for a counterattack.
Some American commanders also dismissed reports of increased German activity near the Ardennes, while others brushed off enemy prisoners who claimed that a major attack was in the offing. Allied commanders often moved on intelligence gleaned by “Ultra,” a British unit that decrypted Nazi radio transmissions, but the Germans operated under a veil of secrecy and typically communicated by phone when within their own borders. The Allies missed several early warning signs of an offensive.Įarly German gains in the Battle of the Bulge were largely due to the attack catching the Allies completely by surprise.
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