The Second Objective

37

Late on the morning of December 22, General Eisenhower issued his Order of the Day to all the Allied troops in Europe, his first public acknowledgment of the seriousness and scale of the Battle of the Bulge.

The enemy is making his supreme effort to break out of the desperate plight into which you forced him by your brilliant victories of the summer and fall. He is fighting savagely to take back all that you have won and is using every treacherous trick to deceive and kill you. He is gambling everything, but already, in this battle, your unparalleled gallantry has done much to foil his plans. In the face of your proven bravery and fortitude, he will completely fail.

But we cannot be content with mere repulse.

By rushing out from his fixed defenses the enemy has given us the chance to turn his great gamble into his worst defeat. So I call upon every man, of all the Allies, to rise now to new heights of courage, of resolution, and of effort. Let everyone hold before him a single thought-to destroy the enemy on the ground, in the air, everywhere-destroy him. United in this determination and with unshakable faith in the cause for which we fight, we will, with God’s help, go forward to our greatest victory.

Later that same day, for reasons that have never been adequately explained, the extraordinary security detail surrounding General Eisenhower at the Grand Trianon in Versailles was ordered to stand down. He soon returned to his former patterns of free movement behind the lines and among his forward troops.

On the morning of December 23, the weather over Belgium and the Ardennes Forest cleared. For the first time in the week since the battle had begun, combined Allied air forces took to the sky and entered the fight against the invading German armies with devastating effect. Within three days, elements of Patton’s Third Amy reached the exhausted American defenders who had resisted the ferocious siege of Bastogne. Hitler’s last gamble had reached its high-water mark. Within days, his bold offensive would devolve into a desperate retreat toward the German border to save what remained of his battered divisions from utter destruction. Although intense fighting would continue for weeks into the New Year, generating for both sides the highest casualty rate of the entire war, initiative and momentum had shifted back toward the Allies for the final time. Less than five months later, at SHAEF’s field headquarters outside Reims, German field commanders signed the official articles of surrender.

After watching his staff struggle and fail to produce a satisfactory statement to commemorate the moment, with characteristic modesty General Eisenhower summed up the entire war effort in a single sentence:

“The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 0241 local time, May 7, 1945.”