Analysis

Hitler's last offensives-in December 1944 in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg, and in January 1945 in the Alsace region of France-marked the beginning of the end for the Third Reich. With these final attacks, Hitler had hoped to destroy a large portion of the Allied ground force and to break up the Allied coalition. Neither objective came close to being achieved. Although perhaps the Allies' victory in the spring of 1945 was inevitable, no doubt exists that the costs incurred by the Germans in manpower, equipment, supplies, and morale during the Ardennes-Alsace battles were instrumental in bringing about a more rapid end to the war in Europe. Eisenhower had always believed that the German Army on the Western Front had to be destroyed west of the Rhine River to make a final offensive into Germany possible. When added to the tremendous contributions of the Soviet Army, which had been fighting the majority of Germany's armed forces since 1941, the Ardennes-Alsace victory set the stage for Germany's rapid collapse.

With little hope of staving off defeat, Germany gambled everything on achieving a surprise operational decision on the Western Front. In contrast, the Allied coalition pursued a more conservative strategy. Since the Normandy invasion Eisenhower's armies had neither the combat power necessary to mount decisive operations in more than one sector nor the reserves; more importantly, their logistical capability was insufficient to fully exploit any major successes. The resulting broad-front Allied advance steadily wore away the German defenses; but, as in the case of the Ardennes and Alsace fronts, the Allied lines had many weak points that could be exploited by a desperate opponent. Moreover, once Hitler's attacking legions had been stopped the Allies lacked the combat power to overwhelm the German divisions defending their recently acquired gains. In the Ardennes, terrain and worsening weather aided the Germans in holding off Allied counterattacks for an entire month, ultimately allowing them to withdraw a sizable portion of their initial assault force with perhaps one-third of their committed armor. The battle in the Alsace appeared to be less dramatic than in the Ardennes, but was no less an Allied victory. Hitler spent his last reserves in Alsace-and with them the ability to regain the initiative anywhere. Like the Normandy Campaign, the Ardennes-Alsace struggle provided the necessary attrition for the mobile operations that would end the war. The carefully husbanded enemy reserves that the Allies expected to meet in their final offensive into Germany had been destroyed in December and January.

Some thirty-two U.S. divisions fought in the Ardennes, where the daily battle strength of U.S. Army forces averaged twenty-six divisions and 610,000 men. Alsace added eleven more divisions to the honors list, with an average battle strength of 230,000. Additionally, separate divisional elements as well as divisions arriving in sector at the end of the campaign granted participation credit to three more divisions. But the cost of victory was staggering. The final tally for the Ardennes alone totaled 41,315 casualties in December to bring the offensive to a halt and an additional 39,672 casualties in January to retake lost ground. The SHAEF casualty estimate presented to Eisenhower in February 1945 listed casualties for the First Army at 39,957; for the Third Army at 35,525; and for the British 30 Corps, which helped at the end at 1,408. Defeating Hitler's final offensive in the Alsace was also costly; the Seventh Army recorded its January battle losses at 11,609. Sickness and cold weather also ravaged the fighting lines, with the First, Third, and Seventh Armies having cold injury hospital admissions of more than 17,000 during the entire campaign. No official German losses for the Ardennes have been computed but they have been estimated at between 81,000 and 103,000. A recently published German scholarly source gave the following German casualty totals: Ardennes-67,200; Alsace (not including Colmar Pocket)-22,932. Most of the figures cited do not differentiate between permanent losses (killed and missing), wounded, and non-battle casualties.