The situation at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge
was a daunting one for American forces along the thinly manned line in the
rugged Ardennes region. Having achieved total surprise at the strategic and
tactical levels, the Germans attacked the 80-mile sector with a 2.5:1 initial
advantage in assault infantry, a 4:1 edge in tanks, and a 4.7:1 superiority in
artillery. That the battered American line bent—or, more appropriately,
“bulged”—but did not break is at combat’s most basic level a tribute to the
courage, tenacity, and sacrifice of the individual GIs who chose to stand and
fight against such seemingly overwhelming odds. Yet, the leadership actions of
American senior commanders—the “generals of the Bulge”—ultimately determined
whether the GIs’ sacrifice in the U.S. Army’s greatest battle would yield
victory or defeat.
The Battle of the Bulge, therefore, put American leaders at
all levels to the test in what was, in effect, the greatest “leadership
laboratory” of the war in Northwest Europe. Evaluating how American senior
leaders met that challenge—their successes as well as their failures—reveals
not only their level of skill at battle command but, importantly, their
strength of character.
Further, simply pointing out the successes and failures of
American battle leadership in this watershed battle begs an overall assessment.
Historian Forrest Pogue said, “You never get it absolutely right. History is
always escaping us.” Yet, “history” also demands an attempt at a comprehensive
accounting and a fair appraisal of the performance of American senior
leadership in the Battle of the Bulge.
SUCCESS OR FAILURE?
The shortest and simplest answer to the question of how
American senior leaders performed in the Ardennes fighting is perhaps best
summed up by a quote from historian Martin Blumenson’s reflective essay on
Eisenhower and his top lieutenants: “Success on the battlefield speaks for
itself.” That is, because the ultimate test of the effectiveness of combat
leadership is battlefield victory, American commanders in the Ardennes should
therefore be judged successful leaders. However, such a simplistic answer not
only ignores the failures of senior commanders before and during the battle, it
also slights the truly outstanding successes of those individual leaders whose
command decisions proved vital in achieving, as Charles B. MacDonald
characterized it, “the greatest single victory in U.S. history.”
Certainly, failures in American leadership led to a
situation that permitted Hitler to organize and launch his great offensive against
a sector of the line so weakened that German battlefield success seemed highly
probable. This leadership failure and the resulting German strategic surprise
were later compounded by the inability of the Allies to launch a timely,
coordinated counteroffensive that could have trapped and destroyed the bulk of
German troops in the bulge. Both of these leadership failures represented
serious lapses in battle command on the Allied, principally American, side of
the battle line. To these two failures at the strategic level must be added the
biggest leadership failure of the battle at the tactical level—the mass
surrender of two regiments of the 106th Infantry Division.
Examining the actual conduct of the battle once the German
attack began, however, yields an overwhelmingly positive assessment of how
American battle leadership fought that campaign. Although American senior
commanders were responsible for the one-sided conditions in the Ardennes
through their actions in the months preceding the attack, they nevertheless
responded to the assault in a timely fashion with solid, effective, competent
leadership that proved successful in gaining control of the battle and winning
it. Their actions at the operational and tactical level combined to overcome
the strategic blunders and turn a potentially disastrous situation to the
Allies’ favor.
Eisenhower may have invited the German riposte in the first
place with his insistence on a general Allied offensive advancing along
multiple axes that left the Ardennes thinly manned, but he largely redeemed the
situation by reacting to counter quickly, then defeat, the German attack.
Similarly, Bradley’s egregious failure to exert aggressive, positive command of
his army group from the very beginning of the battle was effectively offset by
Eisenhower’s unusually active role in the actual conduct of the fighting. For
once forsaking his habitual hands-off approach to the exercise of battle
command, Ike intervened early and appropriately to create the conditions
leading to the defeat of the German offensive. Moreover, Bradley’s
“intransigence in failing to move his headquarters” to a position from which he
could exercise firm and effective control of the fast-moving battle prompted
Eisenhower’s most morally courageous decision of the war—giving British Field
Marshal Bernard Montgomery command of all U.S. forces in the northern half of
the bulge. A “team player” throughout his career, Ike again demonstrated this
defining characteristic at a critical moment in the battle by placing the good
of the Allied coalition ahead of national pride or any personal animosity he
felt toward the abrasive British field marshal. By doing so, Eisenhower clearly
proved that he was an Allied commander, not merely an American one—even though
his action effectively relieved of command his longtime friend and West Point
classmate, Bradley.
Although Bradley vehemently decried Ike’s decision to give
Montgomery command of two-thirds of Bradley’s 12th Army Group—calling it
Eisenhower’s “worst possible mistake”—the chaotic tactical situation and
Bradley’s (and First Army commander Courtney Hodges’s) own failures made the
command change the course of action most likely to accomplish Ike’s intent of
regaining control of the battlefield and then trapping the bulk of German
forces in the Ardennes. That Eisenhower’s plan—clearly outlined to his senior
subordinates at the 19 December 1944 meeting in Verdun—failed to cut off and
destroy most enemy troops in the Ardennes was due more to the inherent nature
of coalition command than to any egregious leadership failure on Ike’s part.
Like politics, coalition command is “the art of the possible,” relying on
building consensus rather than merely issuing orders. Eisenhower did all that
seems reasonably possible as a coalition commander to achieve his goal of
trapping the Germans: Ike told the British field marshal his commander’s
intent—and impatiently reminded Montgomery several times over subsequent days;
he gave Montgomery command of the forces sufficient to accomplish that objective;
and Ike quickly set in motion Patton’s counterattack as the southern pincer in
his planned envelopment. In short, Eisenhower had given Montgomery all the
tools the British field marshal needed to launch a timely attack from the
north. However, as leader of an allied coalition Ike lacked any practical means
of forcing Montgomery to promptly obey. Eisenhower could—and did—attempt to
motivate Montgomery into launching a timely attack from the north, but he could
not compel the British commander to do so as he could his American
subordinates.
Yet, even though Ike failed to motivate Montgomery to launch
a more timely counterattack on the north of the bulge that in conjunction with
Patton’s thrust in the south might have cut off and annihilated nearly all
enemy forces, the 100,000 (or more) precious combat troops, hundreds of
panzers, and last major reserves of war materiel the Germans lost in the battle
were, nonetheless, unavailable to confront Ike’s armies—and Stalin’s massive
forces in the East—during the subsequent battles for Germany.
And, at the operational level, Patton’s aggressive
development and execution of the American counterstroke from the south more
than made up for Bradley’s lack of a firm hand at the helm of 12th Army Group.
Patton really didn’t need Bradley’s help anyway.
It was Patton again, along with his West Point classmate,
William H. Simpson, and some outstanding subordinate commanders at the corps,
division, and regimental levels who created battlefield success when Hodges’s failures
and bad decisions threatened to doom First Army. With Simpson rapidly flooding
First Army area with reinforcements, Patton striking swiftly to relieve
Bastogne, and solid subordinate commanders like Middleton, Gerow, Hasbrouck,
Cota, Barton, Fuller, and Clarke stubbornly frustrating every enemy move,
Hodges’s army not only survived, it ultimately triumphed, despite the First
Army commander’s poor leadership.
Mistakes of leadership and command at the tactical level,
including the horrendous disaster that befell the 106th Infantry Division, also
tended to be redeemed by the successes of American battle leadership in the
Ardennes. Even though Middleton and Jones failed to save the 422nd and 423rd
Infantry Regiments of Jones’s 106th Division from encirclement and surrender on
the Schnee Eifel in front of St.-Vith, Clarke’s masterful mobile defense of the
area with his combat command of the 7th Armored Division and attached units
largely compensated for the loss of the infantrymen. Further, despite the Germans’
rapid rush through the Losheim Gap, the Americans’ stalwart defense of the
commanding Elsenborn Ridge stymied the enemy’s ability to exploit the rupture.
It seems clear that when the leadership successes and failures of this battle
are closely examined—when the actions and command decisions of the senior
American commanders and their resulting impact on the battle’s outcome are
weighed and measured on the scales of victory and defeat—American battle
leadership was a tremendous success.
The senior leaders like Eisenhower, Simpson, Patton,
Middleton, and Clarke actually won this greatest land battle in U.S. history;
they didn’t merely survive it. Their battle leadership in the Ardennes was not
that of military incompetents or amateurs who didn’t know their jobs. Ike and
the other successful American commanders showed they knew exactly what had to
be done, and they quickly set about doing it. On balance, American battle
leadership in America’s greatest land battle proved decisively successful.
KNOWLEDGE AND PROFESSIONAL SKILL
These U.S. Army senior World War II commanders all had to
study and learn their trade, then practice it before they could become
successful battle leaders, and they had all engaged in the systematic study of
warfare, in one form or another, their whole adult lives. With few exceptions,
these leaders attended a progressively higher series of schools and
professional military education courses, alternating with ever more demanding
command and staff officer assignments. Through these alternating line and
school duties, they gained a background of knowledge and professional skill
leading to positions of ever-increasing responsibilities. Once the war began,
they gained combat experience and learned valuable lessons in combat command on
the battlefields of North Africa, Sicily, and France.
The meek, the incompetent, and the troublesome were, for the
most part, weeded out on those same battlefields, their places taken by others
who, having been similarly prepared, were moved up from subordinate commands or
were impatiently waiting in the wings for their own chance.15 They all learned
the basics of their trade between the World Wars in service schools like the
Command and General Staff School, the War College, and the Army Industrial
College. They supplemented the basics with practical knowledge gleaned from a
variety of command and staff assignments in troop units spread over the globe
in such places as the Philippines, Hawaii, the Canal Zone, and the United
States. While still junior officers, they challenged their ingenuity and
broadened their perspectives and experience in other varied duties such as
organizing and running the Civilian Conservation Corps, teaching ROTC and
coaching college football, or managing an engineer district the size of
Texas.18 They served apprenticeships under more senior commanders like George
Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Fox Conner, and Adna R. Chaffee and they continued
to learn. And throughout their careers, they interacted with and learned from
each other, growing as leaders. When the lucky few were chosen from the pack
and given senior command during the war, the competent ones gained valuable
combat experience they put to good use and continued to advance. Those found
lacking in competence, skill, and higher command ability typically were
summarily sent back to the States to serve in training units or to perform
administrative duties—often, the humiliation of being removed from overseas
combat assignments was made even worse when the failed leaders were, in effect,
demoted by being forced to revert to their much lower prewar “peacetime Army”
ranks.
CHARACTER COUNTS
The commonality of prewar training, education, and
experience of the U. S. Army’s senior World War II leaders raises another vital
question: If these officers’ preparation and backgrounds were so similar, why
did some succeed while others failed? The answer has little to do with their
prewar career experiences or even the unpredictable vagaries of luck. The
answer lies within each man. It’s called character. The phrase “character
counts” is a time-worn, often overused platitude. Yet, it has the single redeeming
virtue of being true. The personalities of leaders vary. The specific
techniques, procedures, and command styles leaders use to control the ebb and
flow of battle typically are unique to the individual. But the key, defining
quality that separates leadership success from failure is character and it
does, indeed, count. Strength of character is the common denominator shared by
successful leaders of such disparate personalities and command styles as
Eisenhower, Simpson, Patton, Middleton, and Clarke. And it is the quality most
often found lacking in those instances of leadership failure displayed notably
by Bradley, Hodges, and Jones.
Character is created by the values and beliefs instilled in
an individual from an early age by family, trusted friends, and admired role
models; then, it becomes deeply embedded and reinforced through defining life
experiences; and, finally, it is internalized by faithful adherence to a strong
ethical code that places selfless service and duty above purely personal gain.
Strength of character not only allows leaders to recognize what “the right
thing to do” is in a difficult situation, but also provides them the inner
strength and moral courage to actually do it when they otherwise might be
tempted to take the easy way out.
The Battle of the Bulge placed incredible stress on
commanders at all levels, particularly American senior leaders whose decisions
determined the fate of thousands of soldiers reeling under the German
onslaught. Under such phenomenal pressure leaders of character showed their
mettle. Leaders lacking in this defining quality usually failed, unless they
were incredibly lucky or an exceptionally competent subordinate stepped forward
to fill the leadership void. Several instances of contrasting character among senior
commanders during the U.S. Army’s greatest battle stand out.
Eisenhower’s morally courageous decision on 20 December 1944
to relieve Bradley of army group command for the duration of the battle
demonstrated the strength of Ike’s character and revealed a weakness in
Bradley’s. Ignoring the fact that his command failures to this point in the
battle had essentially forced Eisenhower to implement the action while unable
to provide valid tactical reasons as to why he should retain his entire
command, Bradley’s protests seem clearly to be motivated by how Ike’s decision
would affect his own image and career. As Jonathan Jordan perceptively wrote,
although Bradley could not articulate to Ike why giving Monty command of
two-thirds of his army group was a bad idea tactically, he clearly realized
that “it was certainly a bad move for Omar Bradley” professionally.
At the army level, the command decisions, prompt actions,
and coolness under stress of both the steady Simpson and the volatile,
brilliant Patton stand in stark contrast to Hodges’s egregious lapses in
character and judgment. In particular, Simpson’s unselfish and key
contributions to providing Eisenhower with many of the troops Ike needed to
turn the tide of the battle—and his loyal support of Ike’s decision to place
Ninth Army under Montgomery’s command—demonstrated superb strength of
character.
VIII Corps commander, Middleton, not only demonstrated
character that was calm and cool under fire, but featured Middleton’s moral
courage in going against accepted tactics, organization, and procedures. When
he broke up Roberts’s 10th Armored Division Combat Command B into smaller
formations and when he used combat engineers as fighting infantrymen, Middleton
realized that his actions would inevitably garner criticism. Yet, he knew that
in the desperate situation it was “the right thing to do” and had the moral
courage to do it.
Perhaps the starkest contrast in character revealed by the
Battle of the Bulge was that between Bruce C. Clarke and Alan Jones. Although
the precarious situation of Jones’s 106th Division at St.-Vith during the first
two days of the German onslaught was hardly of his making, Jones nevertheless
failed to exhibit the necessary strength of character that might have prevented
a bad situation from becoming the disaster for his division that it was. Clarke
was disturbed at the chaos that Jones’s weak leadership allowed to reign in his
division headquarters, but he was personally appalled when he witnessed that
Jones, in Clarke’s words, “deliberately lied” to his corps commander Middleton
by intentionally misrepresenting the dire situation as “things are looking
up…we are going to be all right”—and according to Clarke, continued to lie to
cover it up over the next few days. In contrast to Jones, Clarke’s character
was severely tested during the week-long cauldron of his magnificent defense of
St.-Vith—and came through in flying colors.
The best of the U.S. senior commanders had their share of
failures, and even the unluckiest ones, those most victimized by the unexpected
German offensive, experienced at least some measure of success. Combat is an
incredibly confusing and obscure environment, and the waging of war is an
imprecise science that, if it follows any law, seems most faithful to the Law written
by the mythical Murphy. Sorting out the “good” leaders from the “bad” is no
easy task; they are often two manifestations of the same commander’s leadership
and character. But, in the end, whether they were good leaders or bad, heroes
or victims, most of the senior combat leaders of the American Army in northwest
Europe found themselves in the Ardennes that terrible December to face what
became one of the greatest tests of their battle leadership the war would
produce. In this final exam in battle leadership that called on all their
knowledge and experience they had gained over the decades leading up to the
Battle of the Bulge, it seems clear that the leaders of skill and character
passed this test.
