Armageddon - Max Hastings [157]
Few men in the line, however, possessed Pogue’s academic objectivity about such matters. The Malmédy massacre provided a focus for all the fears, losses and humiliations of the first days of the American retreat. It generated a sense of grievance which possessed little rational justification amid brutalities which differed only in scale, not in kind, on the two sides of the line. But outrage about the atrocity was of great service to the American defence at a critical time. It aroused among GIs a hatred of their enemy that was conspicuously absent for much of the north-west Europe campaign. It helped to make many Americans fight harder in the vital days of December, and it made them disinclined to mercy. “This was the only time I saw American troops kill German soldiers that were trying to surrender,” wrote Private Donald Schoo of the 80th Infantry Division. “If they wore the black uniforms of the SS, they were shot.” Like many men, he did not know that every German tank crew wore black.
All over the battlefield, groups of Americans cut off from their own people and their own formations were struggling to regain cohesion and purpose amid chronic uncertainty about what was going on. Nothing did more harm to the morale of ordinary American soldiers in those first days than their ignorance. “We were in a state of confusion and without much of a leadership,” said Corporal Max Lehmann of the 99th Division’s 394th Infantry. “We had no idea what was going on in the next town to us, let alone the big picture,” said Private Murray Mendelsohn, a combat engineer. Major Melvin Zais found himself sheltering in a cellar with two other officers, the more senior of whom set about slicing some potatoes he found and cooking them over a candle. Zais thought wryly: “If this is the way it is for a full colonel, I don’t want any part of this army.” On 20 December at V Corps, Sergeant Pogue scribbled in his diary:
remarkable how little we know of situation; how much the high-ranking officers deal in rumor-mongering. It seems remarkable that few expected counter-attack. It was only way Germany could relieve pressure, restore waning hope of her people, forestall unrest, disrupt our plans, postpone the war of attrition. When the attack is beaten back, if we have enough stuff to follow them through, we may gain the Rhine and beyond quicker than we would have done otherwise.
Stalin agreed. “Very stupid,” he observed, when he heard of the German offensive. The German Army was already thinking likewise.
STEMMING THE TIDE
FOR THE WEHRMACHT, the first days of the offensive yielded a brief surge of exhilaration and hope. “Enemy morale was higher than at any time during the campaign,” acknowledged a U.S. Army post-war report. A certain Lieutenant Rockhammer, whose tank unit is unidentified but who was evidently an ardent Nazi, wrote to his wife on 22 December:
For once, we find ourselves a thousand times better off than you at home. You cannot imagine what glorious hours and days we are enjoying. It looks as if the Americans can’t hold our big push. Today, we overtook a retreating column and flattened it . . . we got past them by taking a back road through the wood; then, as if we were on manoeuvres, we lined up along the road with 60 Panthers. This endless column approached us, their vehicles side by side, hub to hub, filled to the brim with men. We were able to concentrate the fire of 60 tank guns and 120 machine-guns on them. It was a glorious bloodbath, vengeance for our devastated