page_title: Wehrmacht forces for the Ardennes Offensive
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Wehrmacht forces for the Ardennes Offensive / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: An M-8 "Greyhound" armored scout car of the US Army passes under the Arc de Triomphe after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. The identifying numbers of the vehicle were censored for security reasons, making it difficult to identify the unit. They appear to read "20X 20R-1" or "28X 28R-1", which would indicate a vehicle of the reconnaissance troop of the 20th or 28th Infantry Divisions. However, the image is captioned here as showing a vehicle of Troop B, 102nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, which was attached to the French 2nd Armored Division. Both the 102nd Cavalry and 20th Infantry were present at the liberation and in the parade that followed on the 29th.
context_page_description: The Wehrmacht forces for the Ardennes Offensive were the product of a German recruitment effort targeting German males between the ages of 16 and 60, to replace troops lost during the past five months of fighting the Western Allies on the Western Front. Although the Wehrmacht was keeping the Allied forces contained along the Siegfried Line, the campaign had cost the Wehrmacht nearly 750,000 casualties, mostly irreplaceable. However, the rapid advance of the Allied armies in August and September after Operation Overlord had created a supply problem for the Allies. By October, the progress of the Western Allies' three army groups had slowed considerably, allowing the Germans to partly rebuild their strength and prepare for the defense of Germany itself. Adolf Hitler decided that the only way to reverse his fortunes would be to launch a counter-offensive on the Western Front, forcing both the United States and Great Britain to an early peace, and allowing the Wehrmacht to shift its forces to the Eastern Front, where it could defeat the much larger Soviet Red Army.
  Hitler earmarked three field armies for the offensive: the 7th and the Fifth and Sixth Panzer.
context_section_description: By 1 December 1944, the only sector of the front where the Western Allies were not on the offensive was along the Ardennes.  In late July 1944, Allied forces in fighting in Normandy were able to break out of the Normandy beachhead in Operation Cobra, forcing a general eastwards retreat of German forces.  General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander on the Western Front, used the opportunity to encircle the German army in Normandy. In an effort to reverse their misfortunes, the Wehrmacht launched Operation Lüttich on 7 August in the vicinity of the town of Mortain. Despite efforts to break through the U.S. 30th Infantry Division to cut off Allied forces in Northern France, by 13 August it was clear that the offensive had failed. Even while battle was raging around Mortain, Allied armies continued the encirclement of the Wehrmacht in Normandy, closing what would be known as the Falaise Pocket on 20 August; the encirclement cost the Germans an estimated 10,000 dead and another 50,000 wounded. Although a much larger number of German soldiers were able to escape eastwards, they were forced to leave behind their heavy weapons and equipment.  Paris was liberated on 25 August 1944, marking the end of Operation Overlord.
  Almost immediately, the Allied drive across the Seine River continued, although the Wehrmacht was able to prevent a complete rout; according to the Germans, the equipment abandoned as they retreated from the Seine was as much of a disaster as the Falaise Pocket. Field Marshal Walter Model, who had temporarily replaced Gerd von Rundstedt as commander of German troops in France, reported that some panzer divisions only had five to ten operational tanks, while he could not match the Western Allies' mobility with his poorly outfitted infantry divisions.  By early September, as the Allies pushed to the German border, Model calculated that the actual strength of the 74 divisions at his disposal was no more than that of 25. In an effort to stabilize German lines in the West, von Rundstedt was reappointed as Commander-in-Chief West on 7 September 1944. Approaching the Belgian border in early September the Allied offensive came to a grinding halt, as its supply lines struggled to keep up with the pace of the advance. For example, on 2 September, Lieutenant General George Patton's U.S. Third Army requested 2,840,000 liters (750,000 U.S. gal) of gasoline, and received 96,000 liters (25,000 U.S. gal).
  The Wehrmacht began to reorganize itself along a defensive front known as the Siegfried Line.  Eisenhower felt that he could relieve the supply problem by using Antwerp to unload supplies in Europe; however, German troops held the Scheldt estuary and consequently Allied shipping could not get through to the Belgian port city. In an effort to open the Scheldt estuary, Eisenhower approved Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Operation Market Garden, which was launched on 17 September. However, by 21 September the operation had failed to dislodge German defenders from the southern Netherlands and open the seaway to Antwerp; the supply problem was at its worst.
  Using the opportunity to rebuild their strength, the German Army in the West was able to accumulate a strength of around 500 tanks and assault guns by late September, despite prioritization of new equipment for the Eastern Front. This was in stark contrast to the estimated 100 which had been available before. German defenses along the Siegfried Line continued to strengthen, and the Wehrmacht was able to establish a defensive depth of an average of 4.8 kilometers (3.0 mi), with the strongest defenses built opposite of Patton's Third Army.
  Despite Germany's reorganization, their manpower was still incomparable to that of the Western Allies. While Germany's Army Group B was able to increase their armored strength from 100 to 239 vehicles, these were opposed by 2,300 Allied tanks. Field Marshal Model reported that only 6,500 replacements had been sent to cover the 75,000 casualties suffered during the month of September. General Eisenhower commanded three army groups
caption: An American M8 armored scout car in front of the Arc de Triomphe at the "Liberation Day" parade in Paris.
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