NORDWIND in Alsace

31 December-5 January

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By 21 December Hitler had decided on a new offensive, this time in the Alsace region, in effect selecting one of the options he had disapproved earlier in favor of WACHT AM RHINE. With the Fifteenth Army's supporting thrust canceled due to Dietrich's failure to break the northern shoulder, and with no hope of attaining their original objectives, both Hitler and Rundstedt agreed that an attack on the southern Allied front might take advantage of Patton's shift north to the Ardennes, which Wehrmacht intelligence had identified as under way. The first operation, called NORDWIND ('NORTHWIND'), targeted the Saverne Gap, 20 miles northwest of Strasbourg, to split the Seventh Army's XV and VI Corps and retake the Alsace north of the Marne-Rhine Canal. If successful, a second operation, called ZAHNARTZ ('DENTIST'), would pursue objectives westward toward the area between Luneville and Metz and into the Third Army's southern flank. Lt. Gen. Hans von Obstfelder's First Army would launch the XIII SS Corps as the main effort down the Sarre River valley, while to the southeast four divisions from the XC and LXXXIX Corps would attack southwesterly down the Low Vosges mountain range through the old Maginot Line positions near Bitche. A two-division panzer reserve would be held to reinforce success, which Hitler believed would be in the Sarre River sector. Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler's Army Group Oberrhein, virtually an independent field army reporting only to Hitler, was to pin the southern flank of the Seventh Army with holding attacks. The new offensive was planned for the thirty-first, New Year's Eve. However, its target, the U.S. Seventh Army, was neither unready nor unwarned. Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch's Seventh Army, part of Devers' 6th Army Group, which also included the French First Army, had been among the theater's unsung heroes. After conducting assault landings on the coast of southern France in August 1944, the small army had chased a significantly larger force northward; but, much to the chagrin of his commanders, Patch had been ordered not to cross the Rhine, even though his divisions were among the first Allied units to reach its banks. In November the Seventh Army had been the Western Front's leading Allied ground gainer. Yet, when Patton's Third Army found its offensive foundering, Patch, again following orders, had sent a corps northward to attack the Siegfried Line's southern flank, an operational lever designed to assist Patton's attack.