en.wikipedia.org
Herbstnebel was created as an alternative to
Wacht am Rhein,
Adolf Hitler's plan to seize
Antwerp and bottle up all Allied forces in Belgium and the
Netherlands. Model, along with all the other senior commanders involved, believed this was unachievable given Germany's limited resources at the time. Thus he devised a less ambitious scenario that would not cross the Meuse, but still deliver a sharp defeat to the Allies. Like
Wacht am Rhein, Model's attack would be launched in the
Ardennes sector, but would then turn north instead of continuing west and northwest.
[1]
Field Marshal
Gerd von Rundstedt commanding
OB West, had come up with a similar plan,
Fall Martin ("Case Martin"). Von Rundstedt's plan called for a two-pronged attack instead of a single thrust, but in both plans the area of operations remained east of the Meuse. Model and von Rundstedt combined their plans to present a joint solution to Hitler, called by Model the "small solution". Hitler rejected it in favour of his "big solution", which formed the basis for the
Battle of the Bulge.
Situation map on December 16th 1944 at noon:
Available also through the Library of Congress web site as a raster image.
www.loc.gov
What if Hitler had accepted Model and Rundstedt's 'Small Solution' instead of his OTL Ardennes offensive?
It would involve and offensive from the 15th army around the Roermond area with two infantry divisions and 2 armored divisions initially (more to follow) and a southern pincer that would move north to pocket forces in the Aachen area.
Largely it would involve the same forces as OTL, but differently deployed. For instance the German 7th army in the south would only cover the northern most part of Luxembourg rather than the central part IOTL, 5th panzer army would focus solely on the 106th division, and 6th panzer army would strike north through Kesternich and Monschau with armored divisions in addition to infantry, rather than just a couple of infantry divisions IOTL.
Seemingly it would be a much better option than the OTL plan, as the northern pincer would tie down vital US reserves like the 7th armored division that would have otherwise showed up at St. Vith, same with 30th division. Meanwhile in the south the US 78th division won't simply face a single worn out Volksgrenadier division (which IOTL inflicted a lot of damage on them at Kesternich), instead also a Panzer division, same with the cavalry group at Monschau. Pieper would also be tasked with turning north instead of continuing west to the Meuse, so could hit some critically vulnerable areas that he bypassed historically:
From Christer Bergstrom's "Ardennes Offensive":
In Büllingen, Peiper’s Kampfgruppe stood only slightly more than a mile south of Wirtzfeld. Had Peiper been allowed to make just a small deviation from the assigned march route to capture this location—which his task force without any doubt could have accomplished in a couple of hours—the road would have been opened to the 12. SS- Panzer-Division, which thus had been spared the costly battle of the ’twin villages’ Rocherath and Krinkelt (see pp. 191). Such a maneuver also would have enabled the two panzer divisions of the I. SS-Panzerkorps to carry out a pincer movement to surround and annihilate both U.S. 2nd and 99th Infantry divisions. This in turn would probably have resulted in a total collapse for the U.S. defenses in the sector assigned to the 6. SS- Panzerarmee, possibly allowing Sepp Dietrich’s troops to reach the Meuse within a couple of days. Moreover, von der Heydte’s paratroopers could have been relieved. But, as we have seen, Hitler had made it quite clear to the 6. SS-Panzerarmee that on no condition was it allowed to deviate from the assigned march route, and hence, Peiper continued westwards.
U.S. 2nd Infantry Division’s commander, Major General Robertson, felt a moment of strong anxiety. Early on the morning of 17 December he phoned the commandant of the Division’s Special Troops and told him that the Germans had broken through, and wanted him to get every man he could bring up—even cooks, truck drivers, and clerks—to form a last ditch defense of the command post. These were the troops that Sternebeck’s tanks had encountered north of Büllingen. But as the feared German attack from the south never materialized, Robertson soon was able to concentrate on the defense of the ’twin villages’ Rocherath and Krinkelt.
From the US army official history of the Bulge:
The advance guard of the 1st SS Panzer Division had reached Büllingen on the early morning of 17 December, by its presence threatening the open right flank and the rear of the 99th Division. Although the German armored column veered southwest, under the eyes of the astonished Americans, the presence of the enemy this deep within the bare south flank was a cause of grave concern to General Lauer and later to General Robertson. Through the morning only a handful of engineers and headquarters personnel, backed up with single tank destroyer and antiaircraft pieces, stood in the way of a German dash north across the American rear. But the 1st SS Panzer, intent on objectives far to the west, failed to make this play.3 A platoon of Mark IV tanks did scout the Butgenbach road but withdrew when three were destroyed by the few guns of Company B, 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion emplaced near Dom Butgenbach.
Basically the areas east and north of Peiper were virtually undefended on the 17th and had he taken advantage of that it would have imploded the defenses of Elsenborn ridge before they even got set up. That virtually guarantees a breakthrough on the southern flank of the Aachen bulge and really screws the US 1st and 9th armies:
The bulk of the fourteen divisions under First U.S. Army command on 16 December were deployed north of the Belgian Ardennes.
Behind them, roughly in the triangle formed by the cities of Liège, Verviers, and Spa, lay the supply installations built up through the autumn to support the advance toward the Rhine. At Spa, which had served the German Emperor as headquarters in World War I, the First Army had established its command post surrounded on every side by service installations, supply dumps, and depots. Liège, twenty miles northwest of Spa, was one of the greatest American supply centers on the Continent. Verviers, an important and densely stocked railhead lay eleven miles north of Spa. (See
Map I.)
If that falls the entire 1st and 9th armies are cut off from all supply, as per the US quartermasters history of WW2 it was the basic/intermediate/advanced supply dump zone for both armies and had 45 days supplies for 900,000 men:
Actually, despite optimism all through the autumn, there were no outstanding Allied successes until March 1945, and meanwhile the lack of a supply system echeloned in depth hampered support for the combat forces. The most serious deficiency was at Liège. For lack of a base installation at Antwerp, this site had to function simultaneously as base, intermediate, and advance depot all winter.
At Liège, eight million gallons of gasoline were lined along the Meuse River for two miles.
Liège Depot controlled warehouses and open storage scattered across the entire width of Belgium from Herbesthal westward to Givet, France.
Starting on the 21st of December they started evacuating supplies, so they'd have largely remained where they were during this ATL breakthrough and be overrun:
In the First Army area, largely in Belgium, POL stocks were evacuated from the main reserve dumps between Spa and Stavelot, the Welkenraedt Class I dump was completely evacuated, and four thousand tons of Class II and IV items were removed from Eupen. Meanwhile First Army was supplied directly from Liège, which was closer to many army truckheads and railheads than the relocated army depot near Gembloux.74
I'm leaving out substantial details though, but I'm curious what the other posters here think about what would happen if this operation were launched and 1st and 9th US armies are cut off along with the British XXX corps east of the Meuse and lose their supply depots in the process, which would be west of the breakthrough point for the Panzer armies moving up from the Ardennes.
