In the autumn of 1941, the Anglo-American coalition forces were still fighting and frantically approached the western border of Germany, but repeated attacks on the Maginot Line were blocked. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 According to the situation, Rommel was determined to counterattack and encircle the weak defensive line of the Anglo-American forces in the Ardennes, and now the Germans have occupied Liège and Nancy in Belgium, cutting off the supply lines of the Anglo-American forces from Dunkirk.

Under the command of Manstein, commander-in-chief of Army Group A on the Western Front, the Germans fought with 113 divisions and about 1.3 million men and began the offensive at dawn on November 1 in the snowstorm. At this time, the Anglo-American coalition had only 4 divisions of the first-line alert force in the Ardennes area, and there were no fortifications to rely on.

On the 2nd, the positions of the 106th and 28th Divisions of the British and American forces were broken through, and the two regiments surrendered, and by the 2nd, the Germans had broken through to the west to a depth of more than 100 kilometers, forming a salient.

Under the serious threat of the Anglo-American forces, Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Anglo-American Forces in Europe, took decisive measures to place the two armies of the 11th Army Group of the British and American Coalition North of the Ardennes Forest, under the unified command of Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group of the British Army.

At the same time, a large number of reinforcements were urgently dispatched to resolutely block the German offensive and actively prepare for a counter-assault, and by the 24th, the United States and Britain had 44 divisions and 600,000 men participating in the battle, so that the pressure on the Maginot Line was suddenly reduced.

On November 6, 1941, the Battle of the Ardennes, the last and largest battle on the Western Front before the end of World War II, broke out. The attack was carried out by the Germans, who had been pretending to be defeated, and a soldier of the German Orningburg unit later recalled: "We had never seen such a scene, with countless German tanks pouring in".

In the late autumn of 1941, the Anglo-American coalition approached Germany from the Maginot Line, but Rommel deliberately lured the enemy deep and surrounded the Anglo-American coalition forces.

The plan for this large-scale campaign began at the end of September 1941, when German Führer Rommel began to secretly plan it. This battle plan was named the "Rhine Guard".

(The main content is: concentrate superior forces, quickly break through the Anglo-American defense line, force the Maas River, seize Nancy, the main supply port of the Anglo-American allied forces, and divide the Anglo-American allied forces into two, so that the Anglo-American allied forces will not have the opportunity to come to the second Dunkirk, and then come to encircle and suppress the landed Anglo-American allied forces).

This is almost a small copy of Manstein's plan four years ago, when Rommel formulated a completely different method of fighting on the Western Front in 1941, which was completely different from the traditional German army's Western Front warfare, that is, defeating the opponent by mobilizing forces on the inner line, and then mobilizing troops to gain superiority again on the other front after the victory).

Churchill later commented on the strategic intentions of the German army: "The German High Command planned to carry out a massive assault through the Ardennes, cutting off the bent left arm of the Anglo-American Army Group North at the shoulder blade.

This operation, in addition to its greater scale and differing in speed and weapons, resembled Napoleon's raid on the Prazen Plateau at the Battle of Austerlitz, cutting off and disrupting the roundabout movement of the Austro-Russian army and breaking through its central position. ”

Unfortunately, these analyses were an afterthought, and in Churchill's great book "Memoirs of World War II", he stated that his judgment of the German army at the time was that "we knew the danger and were willing to risk it", but he also had to admit that there was still a lack of attention to the German offensive:

"The German 6th SS Panzer Corps was a well-known force...... When the fighting on that front fell silent in early November, he temporarily escaped the surveillance of our intelligence services. ”

Montgomery, who commanded the LinkedIn army at this time, was more optimistic: "At the moment the enemy is fighting a defensive battle on all fronts; Their situation no longer makes it possible for them to launch a large-scale offensive war. By the time they understood that this was Rommel's trick, it was too late.

Montgomery didn't guess the first half correctly, but he did guess the second half. Skorzny, the head of the German special operations who participated in the special operation in the Ardennes, recalled that Rommel received him and said:

"I remember that he said that we would deploy 16,000 artillery pieces in the Ardennes, and in addition, the Luftwaffe would send about 5,000 aircraft, including many new jets."

Breaking through the 85-mile-wide defensive zone between the two Anglo-American armies in the Ardennes, Rommel said to the two marshals:

"Where the existing forces will definitely be able to break through...... The Anglo-American forces had a thin defensive line, and they would not have expected us to launch a surprise attack.

Therefore, by taking advantage of the enemy's unsuspecting surprise attack, we can count on a quick breakthrough, which is the key to the total annihilation of the French Anglo-American forces at that time.

As long as we fight more fiercely and annihilate more quickly, then the remaining Anglo-American coalition forces will be even more frightened, and we must let all the Anglo-American coalition forces understand that surrender is their only way to survive. ”

After the dawn offensive on November 3, the Germans quickly broke through the Anglo-American lines, according to one American soldier:

"The Germans broke through our line of defense for up to 80 kilometers, and they rushed to the breach, like a flood rushing into a that had been blown open. And the Americans desperately fled west along all roads. ”

American journalist Ingersoll described the situation as follows: The German 5th Panzer Army successfully surrounded two regiments of the 106th Division of the British and American forces with a pincer offensive the next day, forcing more than 7,000 British and American troops to surrender.

It was the worst defeat suffered by the Anglo-American forces on the European battlefield, and everything seemed to indicate that Rommel's plan was about to succeed.

However, when the 47th Panzer Corps of the German 5th Panzer Army arrived at Bastogne, the road transportation hub, only the 26th People's Grenadier Division, which was not strong in combat, was left to attack the city, and the main 2nd Panzer Division and Panzer instructors continued to advance around the city.

By November 7, the German attacking force had formed a protrusion about 100 kilometers wide and 30~50 kilometers deep, and continued to advance.

In response to the German offensive, Eisenhower quickly transferred the Allied 82nd and 121st Airborne Divisions to the first line of Bastogne-Saint-Vitus, which the Germans had not yet conquered but had already crossed.

After that, he quickly adopted a policy of attacking in the south and defending in the north: one of the most important orders was that the US 3rd Army should move north to attack the German bulge. "This turtle has stretched its head too far."

In a letter to Field Marshal Smoth, Churchill wrote that when the weather improved a week after the German offensive began, the fighters of the U.S. Eighth Air Force were back engaged in fierce battles with German planes in the skies of Western Europe.

The two sides did not want to bomb each other, forcing the German armored forces to be unable to move during the day, and the Germans captured Bastogne on November 9, caught between the 3rd Army and Hodges's 1st Army.

…… (To be continued.) )