Hitler, however, had no intention of staying on the defensive in the west over the winter. As early as mid-September he was planning a counter-offensive. By October, with the front stabilising, he had decided on an attack in the Ardennes, designed to split the British and American fronts at a weakly held point, cross the Meuse and recapture Antwerp. On 27 October Rundstedt and Model met with General Alfred Jodl, chief of operations at OKW, and told him flatly that they considered this impossible with the available forces. Instead they suggested a more modest operation to destroy the Allied concentrations around Liège and Aachen. Jodl took their views back to Hitler, but on 3 November he told them that the Führer's mind was made up, and that he wanted the attack to begin before the end of November. The spearhead was to be the 6th Panzer Army, commanded by Sepp Dietrich and largely made up of Waffen-SS units such as the , and , and the 5th Panzer Army, commanded by General Hasso von Manteuffel.