On 19 December, at the Verdun conference, the 6th Army Group was again relegated to a supporting role. Eisenhower ordered Devers to assume the front of two of Patton's corps that were moving to the Ardennes, and then on the twenty-sixth he added insult to injury by telling the 6th Army Group commander to give up his Rhine gains by withdrawing to the Vosges foothills. The switch to the defense also scrapped Devers' planned attacks to reduce the Colmar Pocket, the German foothold stretching 50 miles along the Rhine's western banks south of Strasbourg. Held in check by two corps of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny's French First Army, this area was the only German bridgehead in Devers' sector. But by Christmas Eisenhower saw a greater threat than the Colmar Pocket opening on his southern front.

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Allied intelligence had confirmed that a new enemy offensive in the Alsace region was imminent. Eisenhower wanted the Seventh Army to meet it by withdrawing to shortened lines to create reserves, essentially ceding northern Alsace back to the Germans, including the city of Strasbourg. Not surprisingly, Devers, Patch, and de Lattre objected strongly to the order. In the end rather than withdraw, Devers shifted forces to create a reserve to backstop the key enemy attack avenues leading into his front and ordered the preparation of three intermediate withdrawal lines forward of the defensive line designated by Eisenhower. By New Year's Eve, with two U.S. divisions withdrawn from the Seventh Army and placed in theater reserve, the 6th Army Group's front resembled the weakened defense that had encouraged the German Ardennes offensive. Patch's six divisions covered a 126-mile front, much of it along poor defensive ground. Feeling that the Sarre River valley just north of the Low Vosges would bear the brunt of any attack, Patch assigned Maj. Gen. Wade Haislip's XV Corps a 35-mile sector between Sarreguemines and Bitche, with the 103d, 44th, and 100th Infantry Divisions holding from northwest to southeast, backed by the experienced French 2d Armored Division. Maj. Gen. Edward H. Brooks' VI Corps took up the balance of Patch's front from the Low Vosges southeast to Lauterbourg on the Rhine and then southward toward Strasbourg. Brooks' corps had the veteran 45th and 79th Infantry Divisions and the 14th Armored Division in reserve. Patch inserted Task Force Hudelson, a two-squadron cavalry force, reinforced with infantry from the uncommitted 14th Armored Division at the boundary joining the two American corps.

The deployment of three additional units-Task Force Linden (42d Infantry Division), Task Force Harris (63d Infantry Division), and Task Force Herren (70th Infantry Division)-demonstrated how far Devers and Patch would go to avoid yielding ground. Formed from the infantry regiments of three arriving divisions and led by their respective assistant division commanders, these units went straight to the Seventh Army front minus their still to arrive artillery, engineer, and support units that comprised a complete division. By late December Patch had given the bulk of Task Force Harris to Haislip's XV Corps and the other two to Brooks, who placed them along the Rhine between Lauterbourg and Strasbourg.