Operation Northwind (1944)

• 1. Introduction

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  Operation Northwind, known in German as Unternehmen Nordwind, was the last major German offensive of World War II on the Western Front. It opened on the 31st of December 1944, across Rhineland-Palatinate, Alsace and Lorraine, and it ran until the 25th of January 1945. Its planners aimed at a single American army and at one famous city. Why did Germany strike here, so late and so far from its main effort? Who commanded the assault, and who held the line against it? And what happened in two small Alsatian villages, where soldiers fought for days while civilians waited in cellars?

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• 2. A Diversion in the South

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  By the 21st of December 1944, the German drive in the Ardennes was losing its force, and it was plain that the Battle of the Bulge was close to failing.

  German commanders looked south for a way to ease the pressure. The U.S. 7th Army held a long, stretched line there. It had taken up a defensive posture to cover ground left empty when the U.S. 3rd Army turned north to help at the point of the German breakthrough. The German high command believed that a blow against this weakened line could draw strength away from the Ardennes.

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• 3. Orders From Adlerhorst

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  At his military command complex at Adlerhorst, Adolf Hitler addressed his division commanders on the 28th of December 1944, three days before the attack. He told them: "This attack has a very clear objective, namely the destruction of the enemy forces." He added that prestige was not at stake and that the task was "destroying and exterminating the enemy forces wherever we find them."

  The plan named two targets. German forces were to break through the U.S. Seventh Army and the French 1st Army in the Upper Vosges Mountains and the Alsatian Plain, and then destroy both. They were also to seize Strasbourg, which Himmler had promised would fall by the 30th of January. A larger scheme waited behind this one. Operation Dentist, or Unternehmen Zahnarzt, was meant to thrust into the rear of the U.S. Third Army and destroy it.

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• 4. Two Army Groups

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  Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz commanded Army Group G, one of the two formations that went into action. The other, Army Group Upper Rhine, was led by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Together they struck a front of 110 km held by the thinly stretched U.S. 7th Army.

  The timing worked against the Americans. On the orders of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 7th Army had already sent troops, equipment and supplies north to reinforce the armies fighting in the Ardennes. Soon the overextended army was in dire straits.

  On opening day, the Luftwaffe committed almost 1,000 aircraft in a parallel effort called Operation Bodenplatte. It was an attempt to cripple the Allied air forces based in northwestern Europe. It did not achieve any of its key objectives.

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• 5. A Growing Battle

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  Three corps of the German 1st Army, part of Army Group G, carried the first assault. By the 9th of January, the XXXIX Panzer Corps was also heavily engaged. By the 15th of January, at least 17 German divisions were in the fighting, counting units in the Colmar Pocket under a separate effort called Operation Solstice.

  Among them were the 6th SS Mountain, 17th SS Panzergrenadier, 21st Panzer and 25th Panzergrenadier Divisions. A smaller attack also hit French positions south of Strasbourg, but it was eventually stopped.

  The U.S. VI Corps bore the brunt of the pressure. By the 15th of January, it was fighting on three sides.

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• 6. The Villages of Rittershoffen

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  Colonel Hans von Luck led the 125th Regiment of the 21st Panzer Division with a specific goal. He meant to cut the American supply line to Strasbourg by crossing the eastern foothills of the Vosges, at the northwest base of a natural salient in a bend of the River Rhine. The Maginot Line ran east to west through this ground, and Allied forces made use of it. One description says it "showed what a superb fortification it was".

  On the 7th of January, Luck approached the line south of Wissembourg, near the villages of Rittershoffen and Hatten. Heavy fire met him from the 79th Infantry Division, the 14th Armored Division and elements of the 42nd Infantry Division. He reached the villages on the 10th of January.

  Two weeks of heavy fighting followed. Germans and Americans each held parts of the villages, while civilians sheltered in cellars. Luck later called the fighting around Rittershoffen "one of the hardest and most costly battles that ever raged".

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• 7. Retreat and Halt

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  Eisenhower feared the outright destruction of the U.S. 7th Army, so he rushed battered divisions out of the Ardennes. They had to travel southeast, more than 100 km. Their arrival was delayed.

  On the 21st of January, supplies and ammunition were short. The Seventh Army ordered the much-depleted 79th Infantry Division and 14th Armored Division to give up Rittershoffen. They fell back to new positions on the south bank of the Moder River.

  The German advance ended on the 25th of January, when the U.S. 222nd Infantry Regiment stopped it near Haguenau. That stand earned the regiment a Presidential Unit Citation. Reinforcements from the Ardennes began arriving the same day. The offensive was an operational failure, since its main objectives were not achieved. Strasbourg had been defended, but the Colmar Pocket still had not been eliminated.

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