Importance of St. Vith?

Often, when one thinks of the Battle of the Bulge, Bastogne is, with good reason, the first thing that comes to mind. However, my friend's grandfather, whom I don't know really well, was in the fighting at St. Vith, although not in the 82nd Airborne. He claims that St. Vith was just as important as Bastogne. Is that true, and why or why not? I have always wanted to know why the 101st is so much more lauded than the 82nd.

 

The First Attacks at St. Vith
St. Vith lay approximately twelve miles behind the front lines on 16 December. This was an average Belgian town, with a population of a little over 2,000 and sufficient billets to house a division headquarters. It was important, however, as the knot which tied the roads running around the Schnee Eifel barrier to the net which fanned out toward the north, south, and west. Six paved or macadam roads entered St. Vith. None of these were considered by the German planners to be major military trunk lines, although in the late summer of 1944 work had been started to recondition the road running east from St. Vith to Stadtkyll as a branch of the main military system, because normally the Schnee Eifel range served as a break-water diverting heavy highway traffic so that it passed to the north or south of St. Vith. (See Map III.)
In German plans the hub at St. Vith was important, but it was not on the axis of any of the main armored thrusts. The German armored corps advancing through the northeastern Ardennes were slated to swing wide of the Schnee Eifel and St. Vith, the I SS Panzer Corps passing north, the LVIII Panzer Corps passing south. But despite admonitions from the German High Command that the armored spearheads should race forward without regard to their flanks it was obvious that St. Vith had to be threefold: to insure the complete isolation of the troops that might be trapped on the Schnee Eifel, to cover the German supply lines unraveling behind the armored corps to the north and south, and to feed reinforcements laterally into the main thrusts by using the St. Vith road net. The closest of the northern armored routes, as these appeared on the German operations maps, ran through Recht, about five miles northwest of St. Vith. The closest of the primary armored routes in the south ran through Burg Reuland, some five miles south. St. Vith is built on a low hill surrounded on all sides by slightly higher rises. On the south the Braunlauf Creek swings past St. Vith and from the stream a draw extends to the west edge of the town. About a mile and a half to the east a large wooded hill mass rises as a screen. This is crossed by the road to Schonberg, which then dips into the Our valley and follows the north bank of the river until the Schonberg bridge is reached, approximately six miles from St. Vith.

Battle of the Bulge

 

That's a good map, JCF...

I've visited St Vith and it is actually quite remote and surrounded by densely-forested, hilly terrain. It is still an important road junction ; you just can't 'by-pass' it, you have to go through.

As an aside, it is in the German-speaking part of the Ardennes and the people are almost 'more German than the Germans'. Even today, it's not the friendliest of places to an English-speaker.

 

Thanks Martin . I thought it and the quote would be a good indication as to why it was important.

 

THAT would have came from the official history of the Battle of Ardennes would it?

It's amazing that they held something so close to the start line of an all-out attack for eight days.

By 22 December some German units stopped recieving food!

 

Totally agree on both parts. I also visited on my trip to the battle area.

 

I thought a good book that explained the importance of the surrounding towns was Seven Roads To Hell. You could give that a read too!

 

a very important stop over for the LW ngiht fighter force when they were performing night ground attack missions and being hounded by BC Mossies and to the lesser extent the US 9th AF P-61's. much of this is still unknown

 

St. Vith was unavoidable because of the road network. If the German plan was not on such a tight timetable and someone besides Hitler crafted it (such as Rundstedt who was kept in the dark during planning); maybe the tactics would have been diffrent in avoiding it. Doubtful though, this was the shortest route to Antwerp. There is a question for 'What if '.

My question is why was the defence of Bastogne praised by history and and St. Vith is not very well remembered. I'm not bashing the defenders of Bastogne here. I am just questioning why history sometimes does this.

The holding of St. Vith is an underdog story in itself. They faced the 6th Panzer Army which was a combined force of Waffen SS, Regular German Army and Luftwaffe ground troops. They would also face the 5th Panzer Army which was on the 6th's left flank. These two forces were very strong and had plenty of Armour. It was thought they would push through the American line very quickly.

The 7th German Army faced Bastogne. It was the weakest German Army in the field on this campaign. It had almost no armored support and did not become a real factor until St. Vith became a tough nut to crack. The Americans hold here too.

It was no picnic too be at either place (St. Vith and Bastogne) or even on that line. The campaign was a bust for the Germans when they could not break St. Vith. So why was Bastogne the better story line in history?

 

The map I posted pretty much explains it.

 

The battle of St. Vith also severely hampered German offensive power and logistics. They had to deploy their armored formations prematurely into the battle from rail, (like the Fuhrer Begleit Brigade, a heavily armored force with a lot of combat power) to annhilate the resistance. This was to have severe consequences later on, when the spearhead of the 2nd Panzer Division was essentially forced to fight alone.

 

It sure did hamper them. Although their offensive power was not so great before hand. Hitler wanted to use total Waffen SS troops to spearhead the whole attack. Not enough Waffen SS men were available from battle losses already substained during the summer; so they had to consolidate troops.

 

The Ardennes offensive was probably the worst planned German offensive of the war. The placement of the divisions makes no sense.

The Waffen-SS divisions were pretty much wreaks- 9th and 10th SS had suffered losses defeating the British at Market Garden and the combat elements of the 12th SS had been almost completely destroyed in the Normandy battles. 1st SS suffered heavily as well (but not as much).

The 2nd SS was in the best condition out of the SS divisions yet, due to political reasons, not deployed as the spearhead. Panzer Lehr was a total wreak, just like the 12th SS.

Yet Lehr and 1st SS/12SS were deployed along with 2nd Panzer as the main assault units.

Overall, the Heer Panzer divisions were in better shape, particuarily the 2nd Panzer (probably in the best shape).

The Spearhead should have been composed of 2nd Panzer, 2nd SS, 1st SS, Fuhrer Begleit Brigade, under the command of Manteffuel.

The Panzers they used made no sense. They used too many assault guns and Panther tanks. They even attached a King Tiger Battalion to 1st SS Panzer Regiment probably for propaganda reasons. It made no sense- the unit just consumed massive amounts of material and sold KG Peiper short.

What they needed to rely on was the Panzer Mark IV, which was ideal in the cramped environment and didn't consume 40% more fuel (like Panther units). And the close range negated the Panther's armor and gun, so it became as combat effective as the Panzer IV. The Assault guns/Jadz units were not effective in this environment, why waste so much material to support them?

 

hmm seems everyone agrees that St. Vith was almost of equal importance. History does funny things. it doesn't matter much now, anyway. Ask the average American, and they wouldn't know the 101st, much less the Battle of the Bulge. Only historians and enthusiasts like us can fully appreciate what occurred in Bastogne, and people like us can also appreciate what occurred in St. Vith. So now, essentially, they will both live on in history.

 

St. Vith was the major road hub within the Losheim Gap. This was the traditional route of access out of the Schnee Eifel and through the Ardennes westward. 18th and 26th VG opened the route crushing the 14th Cavalry Group and then falling on the flank of the 106th which also collapsed and two-thirds of which surrendered.
This left the route almost totally open to the Germans who had not fully recognized their success and luck. Instead, the 6th SS Pz Army took about 48 hours to figure out that trying to take Eisenborn Ridge wasn't going to work and that the breakthrough had actually been made, for the first and only time in the West, by a couple of lowly infantry divisions South in the Losheim Gap.
By the time the Germans redirected their assault to take advantage of this, the reminants of 9th Armored along with the newly arrived 7th Armored and 82nd Airborne closed the door on this breakthrough. Instead of pouring through the American lines and likely reaching the Meuse, the Germans found themselves fighting orgainzed and ready units at virtually every road junction. They had their local successes but their window of opportunity had passed.

 

This is incorrect. Hope as Hitler and Model might, the performance of the SS troopers was a sore disappointment in this battle. Though 60% of the offensive's armor was deployed in the Sixth SS Panzer Army, Dietrich advanced less, took less objectives, and destroyered less American units than von Manteuffel's Fifth Panzer Army regulars. The army was expected to break through Eisenborn Ridge in the Sixth SS Panzer Army's sector. Instead, it was Fifth that forced it open at the Losheim Gap. The Twin Tyrant of War are logistics and time. Without the prompt capture of St. Vith, as has already been noted, the Germans could not strike into operational depth before XVIII Airborne Corps and other mobile formations intervene.

 

6th Panzer Army's performance was pretty mediocre IMHO and worse than the 5th even though they had double the material assets. Most of the SS units were wreaks before they were committed into the battle. Most of their best combat officers/Ncos were lost in previous actions.

The commander, Dietrich, was basically an empty suit and he relied on a group of SS and Heer staff officers to make strategic decisions. He also had less than two weeks to prepare his strategy.

The SS use of their armor recon elements was pretty poor, and they repeatedly got distracted and tangled in conventional engagements against Allied infantry rather than help spearhead the advance. SS armored recon battalions were decimated in Normandy/Market Garden, so that explains some of their behavior.

KG Peiper, in command of the main thrust, stormed forward but made a bunch a tactical and logistical errors. The Battlegroup was a mess to begin with: it severely lacked engineering and bridging equipment, mobile artillery assets, and armored recon elements. It had way too many heavy tanks (Panthers and Tiger II) that slowed the Kampfgruppe down dramatically..

The 12th SS was wreak before the battle, and they made a poorly implemented attack in the early stages and wreaked their Panzer Regiment, many of their armor disabled by US bazookamen and Tank Destroyers in ambush.

The 2nd SS did much better than the spearhead divisions and had several tactical successes, but it was given more of a security role against the Allied Counteroffensive but it did well.

 

Irregardless of the state of the 6th SS Pz Armee, the whole idea was proposterous. The German resources were better put to use as a reserve to be used against Allied spearheads or breakthroughs.

 

Thanks for keeping me honest Triple C.

I was reading "Battle of the Bulge; St. Vith and the Northern Shoulder" by Steven J. Zaloga. I was going from memory. Here is what I was thinking of:

(page 11) " The offensive would be conducted by three armies; two Panzer armies in the North and center and a relatively weak infantry army on the southern flank to block counterattacks aginst this shoulder. Hitler would have preffered to use only his trusted Waffen-SS Panzer Divisions, but there were not enough. So he settled on an attack by the 6th (SS) Panzer Army in the vital northern sector parallel assault by the 5th Panzer Army in the center. The 6th Panzer Army sector from Monschau to St. Vith was the most inportant, since success here would secure the shortest route over the Meuse through Liege to Antwerp".

I guess it would have been proper to say that the 6th Panzer Army was built around two Waffen SS Corps; this is where the diffrent branches of the army were mixed.