Patton and Wacht am Rhine

We know Patton was able to attack northwards and help the Bastogne defenders in a very fast time. Some say he smelled the attack by Germans. But did he get info from the enigma group,too? He was able to turn his tanks so fast he must have had info of the German offensive I think. Anyone read more why Patton was so ready to attack northwards? The Allied HQ otherwise thought the Germans were beaten and the resistance was easy to beat. So the German offensive was a big surprise. But not for Patton. Why?

 

Both Patton's War As I Knew It and his S-2 Robert Allen's Lucky Forward address it. They're upstairs and I don't want to go there.

 

I know Patton said he could turn his troops in 24 hrs to north if necessary with meeting with Ike. And they did. And they DID.
Also Patton said about the German offensive " Let them go to Paris I don' t care" because he knew the more German troops would be in the bag once they started their offensive.

 

Reference is made to this in John Nelson Rickard's 'Advance and Destroy - Patton As Commander In The Bulge' ( University Press of Kentucky, 2011 ).

On p.75, it's described that 3rd Army HQ was telephoned on the night of Dec 16th to order the removal of 10th Armored from Patton to bolster Middleton's VIIIth Corps to the North. This followed receipt at 16:18 of a low-priority Bletchley Park ULTRA message concerning movement of Heeresgruppe G .

Patton immediately telephoned Bradley to complain and is recorded as saying : 'That's no major threat up there. Hell, it's probably nothing more than a spoiling attack to throw us off ballance down here and make us stop this offensive' ( on the Westwall ).

 

Thanx Martin.
However Patton was able to turn his tanks northwards in 24 hrs. To save the Bastogne men?!

" Spoiling attack". I know now what it means but many foreign people would wonder what is he spoiling? The soup?

 

Actually, that entire chapter (Chapter 4) goes in to some detail on the various intelligence and intelligence sources that Patton had access to and used, as well as those involved in gathering and analyzing said intelligence. Ultra was available(but not all relevant intercepts reached Third Army), air reconnaissance, prisoner reports, even an OSS section.

 

I did read that of all the Allied commanders Patton was believing the German messages most and Monty none?

 

It might have more to do with Patton having more faith in his senior intelligence officer, Colonel Oscar W. Koch, analysis and reasoning, as opposed to others. For instance, Bradley & Hodges had little faith in Colonel Benjamin Dickson - He, like Koch, "read the same tea leaves" and made the correct call about the upcoming German offensive. However, Dickson was known for "crying wolf" too many times, and was unfortunately not believed.

As to Montgomery, he did have success with ULTRA in North Africa. Montgomery appears to have believed ULTRA when it suited his plans(North Africa), and ignored it when it did not(Market Garden).

 

As a further note, Patton's staff began work on his contingency plans to strike north on or about December 9th or 10th, roughly a week before the German offensive began.

 

Interesting as data also shows Monty was closing the bridges in Belgium. The German offensive was a dead end although Ike faced a confusion in the meeting with his commanders as the Wacht started.

 

.....they [ US forces ] /etc were very experienced by then.....this wasn't the first time they had orders to move somewhere, then have those orders changed, then those changed, etc......wasn't the first time they had to dig in, only to be ordered somewhere else ......or told to hurry up---then wait--or vice versa

 

The usual army tactics. Run like hell somewherere you speñd 2 weeķs.

 

One of Napoleon's maximsd was A general-in-chief should ask himself several times in the day, 'What if the enemy were to appear now in my front, or on my right, or my left?"
Patton was a professional commander who took this seriously. Staff officers spend a lot of time planning contingency operations that never happen just in case. Even if he did not know the Germans were planning an attack on the corps to his left, it made sense to have a plan. It did not matter if Patton initially thought the attack in the Ardennes was a diversion or spoiling atttack to stop his operations.

Another man who believed in contingency planning was Kesselring In Italy. He knew the allies had command of the sea and could expect the allies to make landings somewhere. So contingency plans were made in case the allies landed, which they did at Anzio.

 

Whether it was believing an intellegence officer or contingency planning, one does not just wheel a corps 90 degrees into a new attack. Some sort of prior planning HAD to have taken place! Personally, I don't buy the Patton intuition story myself.