Ardennes Offensive and the high German morale

Why was morale so high? Was German propaganda depicting a victory entirely dependent on the "Wonder Weapons?" What was the psychology predominant among the officers and men?

Captured GIs often told accounts of German troops having high morale during the offensive.

An account I've read was that of a major (or colonel) captured by the German tank spearhead. He had a two hour conversation with the commander, SS Colonel Peiper, and was shocked that the man genuinely believed that Germany could defeat the Allies (even at the final stage of the war). Peiper talked about the war winning "Wunderwaffen" and the new reserves that would drive the Allies back into the sea.

Even more shocking was the fact that Peiper was a battle group commander of extensive experience- he served since the beginning of the war and lead a large tank battlegroup against the Allies in Normandy. He experienced the worst the Allies could deliver and retreated along with the others to the East.

However, other officers- like the commander of the Panzer Lehr Division, Baylerin (a veteran of three fronts), believed that the war was entirely lost and fought conservatively. And the senior officers (Brandenburger, Dietrich, Manteffuel ) all believed that that the offensive had no hope of real success.

 

The Allies demand for "Unconditional Surrender" and Goebbel's propaganda including information about the proposed Morgenthau Plan played a big factor in the resistance of the Germans and especially the German Military. That along with the sometimes pathological belief in Hitler and the so call "Wonder" weapons. It wasn't just a belief in just winning the war,for most knew the war was lost, but a determination keep the Allies out of Germany. The Fatherland.

 

So it was mainly a matter of fear and "blotting out reality", then..

 

reality gents, morale was not so high; the raw kid recruits - yes they were pumped full, the Alt Hasse knew full well the end was around the corner, this was just another op to get killed. Even for Bodenplatte the LW veterans knew the ill-conceived idea was going to do nothing to slow the Allied AF

 

there may have been a grim determination,with all the destruction meated out by Bomber Command and theU.S.8th A.A.F.maybe they thought it was payback time,cheers.

 

Erich is right - witness 'Sepp' Dietrich's famous remark : -

'All I had to do was to cross the Meuse, capture Brussels and then go on to take Antwerp. The snow was waist deep and there wasn't room to deploy four tanks abreast, let alone six armoured divisions. It didn't get light 'til eight and was dark again at four, and my tanks can't fight at night. And all this at Christmas time....'

There is plenty of evidence that many on the German side knew that the game was up ( think of von der Heydte and his paratroops ! ).

But there's also no doubt that some of the footsoldiers - especially among the VI SS Panzer army who had been given the very latest in weaponry - were highly motivated at the beginning of the Offensive. We need to remember that soldiers on all sides often didn't have a good 'overview' - they only saw what was happening in their immediate vicinity.

BTW, Peiper was 'out' of the Normandy fighting quite early - certainly by the first week of August ( he was evacuated from Caen back to Germany, whether with jaundice or splinter wounds isn't known ). So he missed first-hand experience of the destruction at Falaise.

 

********Minor Threadjack in Re: "Morgenthau Plan"**********​

".....What makes this a unique chapter in American history is that Dr. White and several of his colleagues, the actual architects of vital national policies during those crucial years, were subsequently identified in Congressional hearings as participants in a network of Communist espionage in the very shadow of the Washington Monument. Two of them worked for the Chinese Communists.​

Stated in its simplest terms, the objective of the Morgenthau Plan was to de-industrialize Germany and diminish its people to a pastoral existence once the war was won. If this could be accomplished, the militaristic Germans would never rise again to threaten the peace of the world. This was the justification for all the planning, but another motive lurked behind the obvious one. The hidden motive was unmasked in a syndicated column in the New York Herald Tribune in September 1946, more than a year after the collapse of the Germans. The real goal of the proposed condemnation of "all of Germany to a permanent diet of potatoes" was the communization of the defeated nation. "The best way for the German people to be driven into the arms of the Soviet Union," it was pointed out, "was for the United States to stand forth as the champion of indiscriminate and harsh misery in Germany."4.............."

The Henry Morgenthau Plan and the Problem of Policy Perversion (synopsis)

Documents Regarding the "Morgenthau Plan" (the actual draft of the plan)

**********Threadjack Complete***********​

 

I think that another factor is that certainly some - maybe the less-experienced, younger 'Nazi' soldiers - believed in Hitler's rhetoric about 'racially inferior/decadent' US troops and did believe to a certain extent that victory in the Ardennes would be easy.

 

This reminds me of SS General Meyer's quote after D-day "Little fish, we'll throw them into the sea in a week"....

 

In spite of all the setbacks,reverses, round-the-clock bombing and hardship the Germans suffered during the war, there was never a complete collapse of German morale (civilian or military) even by the time Russian tanks were rolling though Berlin in 1945.
I believe it was because Goebbels and the rest of the Nazis were masters of manipulation. (A German citizen knew only a small fraction of what we now know - that is, they knew only what the Nazis wanted people to know. You only have to look at some of the old youtube German propaganda videos to get an idea of what that time must have been like.) The Germans had followed their Fuehrer out of depression and chaos of the 1930's and back into prosperity and astounding wartime success and Hitler for a long time had kept most of his promises. There was a reason many Germans had faith in their Fuehrer - they really had no other choice.

More important, many German officers and almost all the German Generals were veterans of the first World War. (Hitler himself spent 4 years in the trenches as a courier, ending the war with an Iron Cross and the rank of - corporal.) The Germans had carefully studied all aspects of their world war 1 experiences, including morale - what had worked, what hadn't, and why - and when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 they were probably as well-prepared, at least ideologically, as any army could ever be.

 

over all the German military and civilian population had 0 faith in the little Austrian by 1945, they knew full well the outcome, it was just the process of slowing the inevitable down. Do not think so highly of the German propaganda newsreels Deutsche Wochenschau with all the beloved Teutonic back ground music and Goebbels high fluenced pop jargon..........all it was to be was to pump up the civilians to show the folks back home what the boyz were doing on all the fronts.
the essence of even the newsreels in most of 45 show what was happening on the Ost front clearly pointing that this was the most cruical during the war in the latter war months - to keep the "Soviet horde" at bay while some sort of talk or settlement with the western Allies could be accomplished; that was the hope anyway.

my own relatives dealt with this and the short comings the pitfalls and the embarassment of why did we do such things.........and yet they stuck by their principles separted thank God from the party and it's evil regime. Relatives reamined strong even with the occupation and the clean-up of so much destruction was around them

 

Agreed...

 

same went for the LW JG's on the Eastern Front they were biding their time away just to protect the forlorn capital that was getting smeared by BC and US bomber command units. the end was at hand everyone knew that, anyone thinking there could even be a possible victory in sight was dellusional