rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 981narrow German salient had become too great. And two days before Christmasthe weather had finally cleared and the Anglo-American air forces had begun tohave a field day with massive attacks on German supply lines and on the troopsand tanks moving up the narrow, tortuous mountain roads. The Germans madeanother desperate attempt to capture Bastogne. All day Christmas, beginningat 3 a.m., they launched a series of attacks, but McAuliffe’s defenders held.The next day an armored force of Patton’s Third Army broke through from thesouth and relieved the town. For the1094Germans it now became a question of extricating their forces from the narrowcorridor before they were cut off and annihilated.But Hitler would not listen to any withdrawal being made. On the eveningof December 28 he held a full-dress military conference. Instead of heedingthe advice of Rundstedt and Manteuffel to pull out the German forces in theBulge in time, he ordered the offensive to be resumed, Bastogne to be stormedand the push to the Meuse renewed. Moreover, he insisted on a new offensivebeing started immediately to the south in Alsace, where the American line hadbeen thinned out by the sending of several of Patton’s divisions north to theArdennes. To the protests of the generals that they lacked sufficient forces eitherto continue the offensive in the Ardennes or to attack in Alsace he remaineddeaf.Gentlemen, I have been in this business for eleven years, and . . .I have never heard anybody report that everything was completelyready . . . You are never entirely ready. That is plain.He talked on and on, ∗ It must have been obvious to the generals long beforehe finished that their Commander in Chief had become blinded to reality andhad lost himself in the clouds.The question is . . . whether Germany has the will to remain inexistence or whether it will be destroyed . . . The loss of this warwill destroy the German people.There followed a long dissertation on the history of Rome and of Prussiain the Seven Years’ War. Finally he returned to the immediate problems athand. Although he admitted that the Ardennes offensive had not ”resulted inthe decisive success which might have been expected,” he claimed that it hadbrought about ”a transformation of the entire situation such as nobody wouldhave believed possible a fortnight ago.”The enemy has had to abandon all his plans for attack . . . He hashad to throw in units that were fatigued. His operational plans havebeen completely upset. He is enormously criticized at home. It isa bad psychological moment for him. Already he has had to admitthat there is no chance of the war being decided before August,perhaps not before the end of next year . . .∗ For several hours, judging by the length of the stenographic record of this conference,which has survived almost intact. It is Fragment 27 of the Fuehrer conferences. Gilbert givesthe entire text in Hitler Directs His War, pp. 158-74.