- 4 hours ago
German generals feared surrounded Americans more than free ones because a pocket could become a weapon. This military history story follows Bastogne in the Ardennes and an earlier lesson at Mortain, where cut-off U.S. troops kept fighting, calling artillery onto German columns and refusing surrender.
At Bastogne, the 101st Airborne and attached armored units were short of shells, medicine, food, and winter gear, yet the ring never fully strangled them. McAuliffe’s one-word reply to the German surrender demand became famous, but the deeper story is how encircled Americans kept radios working, coordinated artillery, and turned a siege into a threat to the German advance.
Built from U.S. Army histories and postwar interviews, this WW2 documentary-style narration explores Bastogne, Mortain, the Ardennes offensive, and the German fear of an enemy that would not behave like a trapped army. It is ideal for listeners who enjoy World War 2 history, battlefield analysis, military storytelling, and narrated war documentaries.
SEO: WW2 stories, World War 2 history, Bastogne siege, Ardennes offensive, German generals, 101st Airborne, military history narration, historical war documentary, Battle of Bastogne, Mortain, and WW2 battlefield analysis for history listeners and documentary fans.
At Bastogne, the 101st Airborne and attached armored units were short of shells, medicine, food, and winter gear, yet the ring never fully strangled them. McAuliffe’s one-word reply to the German surrender demand became famous, but the deeper story is how encircled Americans kept radios working, coordinated artillery, and turned a siege into a threat to the German advance.
Built from U.S. Army histories and postwar interviews, this WW2 documentary-style narration explores Bastogne, Mortain, the Ardennes offensive, and the German fear of an enemy that would not behave like a trapped army. It is ideal for listeners who enjoy World War 2 history, battlefield analysis, military storytelling, and narrated war documentaries.
SEO: WW2 stories, World War 2 history, Bastogne siege, Ardennes offensive, German generals, 101st Airborne, military history narration, historical war documentary, Battle of Bastogne, Mortain, and WW2 battlefield analysis for history listeners and documentary fans.
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LearningTranscript
00:00december twenty second nineteen forty four eleven thirty in the morning the arlon road just south of baston belgium four
00:09german soldiers are walking up the road toward the american line two of them carry white flags
00:15in the foxholes of f company 327th glider infantry men watch them come over their rifle sights staff
00:24sergeant carl dickinson waves them in private first class ernest premitz a medic who speaks german comes
00:30up to interpret the senior german is a major wagner of the 47th panzer corps the side him is lieutenant
00:38helmut henke of panzer lair one small detail is worth noticing the germans have brought their own
00:45blindfolds they have come prepared for a formality the paper they carry goes up the chain to brigadier
00:52general anthony mcauliffe it is typed in english it speaks of the encircled usa troops and offers
01:00the honorable surrender of the encircled town two hours to decide after that it says one german
01:08artillery corps and six heavy anti-aircraft battalions stand ready to annihilate them
01:14mcauliffe hears what it is says us surrender ah nuts drops the paper and then writes that word
01:22down as his formal reply colonel bud harper carries it back himself henke asks whether the answer is
01:30affirmative harper tells him it is decidedly not and that his men will kill every german who tries to
01:36break into that town henke answers we will kill many americans this is war they salute and walk back
01:45down the road nearly everyone knows that word far fewer know what the german generals thought of the
01:52paper that provoked it after the war the commanders who fought around baston told an american historian the
01:59demand had been a military faux pas the man who wrote it seemed chagrined and the others believed
02:06he had kept mcauliffe's one-word answer as a historical document why would a german general be embarrassed by
02:12an ultimatum to an enemy he had already surrounded fritz bierlein commander of panzer lehr gave the first hint in
02:20a single line bastonia he said constituted a continual threat to the german attack not the americans running
02:28loose in front of them the trapped ones behind them so that is the question why did german generals
02:35men who built their careers on encircling enemies come to fear an american unit more after it was
02:41surrounded than before if you want to know what the american soldiers inside bastonia did to that ring
02:48and what it cost them hit like and subscribe it helps these stories find the people who should hear
02:54them to see why this was so strange you need to know what the word encircled meant to a german
03:00officer
03:00in 1944 it was the heart of the german way of war they had a name for the battle they
03:06wanted most
03:07kesselschlacht the cauldron battle armor breaks through swings wide and the pincers meet behind
03:15the enemy then the cauldron does the work inside it the enemy runs short of fuel then food then ammunition
03:23then hope in september 1941 east of kiev the germans closed one such ring and claimed more than 660 000
03:32prisoners let that number settle it is more than three times the size of the entire peacetime united
03:38states army of 1939 taken in a single pocket that is the mind behind the paper on the arlon road
03:46surround them and they are finished all that remains is to offer them a dignified way to admit it
03:51so keep two things in your head as we go first the list of what a ring is supposed to
03:57cut
03:57fuel food ammunition orders watch carefully which of those the ring around baston actually cut
04:05second that phrase the encircled town before this story is over a german general will be worrying about
04:13his own men being pocketed now here is the part that doesn't fit 10 days before the ultimatum on
04:19december 12th the same general who wrote it heinrich von ludwitz commander of the 47th panzer corps
04:27briefed his division commanders on the coming offensive turning to bayerlein in particular he said
04:33bastonje must be taken otherwise it will remain an abscess on our lines of communication
04:42listen to that word not an obstacle not a wall an abscess something that stays behind you refuses
04:51to heal and poisons everything that moves past it a general does not talk that way about an enemy he
04:58expects to run he talks that way about an enemy he expects to stay so where did ludwitz get that
05:05picture
05:06not from emmanuel four months earlier he had commanded the second panzer division in normandy
05:11in a counter-offensive aimed at the sea above a small french town called mortan that offensive ran
05:18into 700 american infantrymen who had been cut off on a hill and left to die they did not surrender
05:26what they did instead is the first clue and it started with two artillery lieutenants who could see
05:32everything august 7th 1944 a little after midnight mortan normandy the german counter-offensive comes
05:42out of the dark hitler has ordered it personally four panzer divisions are to drive west to avanche and
05:48the sea about 20 miles and cut off patton's third army which has just poured south through a corridor
05:55barely wider than a few roads the core leading the attack is the 47th panzer corps remember that number
06:03one of its divisions is the second panzer under heinrich von lutwitz east of the town rises a hill
06:09the americans call 314 and the germans call 317 on top is the second battalion 120th infantry 30th division
06:20about 700 men by daylight the battalion command post down in the town has been overrun ss troops have
06:28floated around both sides and the men on the summit are cut off captain reynold erickson takes command of
06:35what is left by the german book this is the easy part the spearheads keep driving west the hill becomes
06:43an
06:43island in a german sea shell it starve it and it falls except for two men near the summit first
06:53lieutenant
06:53charles bartz and second lieutenant robert weiss are forward observers from the 230th field artillery
07:00battalion they sit within a few feet of the crest with a radio and below them lies the whole valley
07:07the road west out of mortan the fields the hedgerows the german columns anything that moves they can see
07:18anything they can see they can hit picture it from below a german unit forms up to push west
07:27minutes later shells land on it not stray rounds fire adjusted by eyes watching that unit
07:36bartz and weiss bring down artillery on the assault groups climbing the hill and on every german formation
07:42in sight of the crest now think about what the germans are actually facing the hill is surrounded but the
07:50guns killing them are not on the hill they are miles away behind the german spearhead untouched
07:57the ring has cut the battalion off from the road it has not cut the battalion off from its artillery
08:04as long as one radio works the encirclement is only a line on a map so the germans cannot leave
08:10the hill alone
08:11the 17th ss panzer grenadier division throws roughly a regiment at it the attacks go on for five days
08:19and the germans try the other method too the one they will try again in december an officer in shiny
08:26boots very polite comes up under a white flag the battalion is surrounded he says they have until
08:32eight o'clock to quit ralph curly commanding e-company tells him to go to hell later his answer reached
08:40newspapers back home in fuller form he would surrender when every one of our bullets has been
08:45fired and every one of our bayonets is sticking in a german belly inside the perimeter it is grim
08:53food runs out men catch rabbits and chickens french civilians slip up the slope at night with milk
08:59the wounded pile up and the radio batteries are dying on august 10th cargo planes drop food and
09:07ammunition and about half of it falls outside the lines then the artillery comes up with an answer
09:14nobody had trained for lieutenant colonel lewis weiman commanding the 230th takes the shell cases normally
09:22used to scatter propaganda leaflets and packs them with bandages tape and morphine from the evening of
09:29august 10th his guns fire medicine onto the hill two other battalions join in pause on that the same guns
09:38killing the germans around the hill are now supplying the men on top of it everything the ring was supposed
09:45to cut is being stitched back together from outside one message from the hill sums up the mood not too
09:53worried about situation as long as artillery fire continues at noon on august 12th troops of the 35th
10:01division reached the battalion more than 300 men have been killed or wounded more than 300 walk off
10:08the division commander general leland hobbs called that hill a thorn in the flesh of every german
10:15movement in the area and the offensive it never reached the sea its left wing stalled under the eyes
10:23of the hill within days the german armies that had attacked west to cut off the americans were themselves
10:30being encircled near falaise lutwitz's second panzer was caught inside that pocket and broke out with
10:37heavy losses in men and equipment so here is the first layer of the answer and notice how it turns
10:44the
10:44german logic upside down a free battalion on that hill could have been pushed off it would have pulled
10:51back to the next ridge out of sight of the road and the columns would have rolled on a surrounded
10:57battalion
10:58could not pull back it had nowhere to go so it stayed exactly where it was most dangerous on top
11:05of the
11:05road with a radio calling down the guns of a whole division on everything that passed the very thing
11:12that trapped them was the thing that kept them there that is what lutwitz carried into december an enemy
11:19behind your lines who will not leave who can see and who can reach back to his own guns an
11:25abscess
11:27but mortain was one hill and one battalion by december lutwitz no longer commanded a division
11:34he commanded the 47th panzer corps the same corps that had led the attack at mortain and his road west
11:42across the ardennes ran through a town where seven roads met on the night of december 18th two forces were
11:48racing for that town one was lutwitz's panzers the other was riding north out of france in open trucks
11:56short of ammunition many of them without winter coats who got there first would come down to ours
12:04and the first german general to find out was about to hit something he later described in two short
12:09sentences december 19th 1944 about two in the morning the village of mageray three miles east of
12:17bastonia fritz baerlein is at the head of panzer lair he has been told the road ahead is good a
12:24belgian
12:24civilian had promised him earlier that it looks bad but will get better and better it did not
12:31now in mageray another civilian tells him something worse about 50 american tanks have already passed
12:38through here heading east baerlein is badly shaken if american armor is out there in the dark it may be
12:46behind him he sets up a roadblock and starts worrying about his rear keep that reaction in mind the germans
12:54are the ones attacking the americans are the ones who look scattered and already a german division
13:00commander is looking over his shoulder at first light his column reaches the station at nef barely
13:07a mile and a half from the town then it stops for almost an hour the american historian who later
13:13questioned him could find no good tactical reason for the pause the americans used that hour the day
13:20before at nine in the morning the first trucks had pulled in the camp mormelon in france about a hundred
13:26miles away by eight that night 380 trucks had loaded some 11 000 men of the 101st airborne division
13:35they drove with their headlights on as far as bouillon in belgium a risk taken for speed they were short
13:42of
13:42rifle ammunition mortars blankets and overshoes many had no winter coats now one battalion is walking east out
13:51of baston into the fog lieutenant colonel julian ewell first battalion 501st parachute infantry has his
13:59orders from macauliffe move out at six make contact clear up the situation ewell's whole reply was yes
14:08sir visibility is about 500 yards a little after nine a german machine gun opens up just west of nef
14:16what follows is the first wall panzer lair hits at baston paratroopers spread across the fields
14:23shells begin falling on the german tanks and the infantry around them byerlein's grenadiers go to
14:29ground in his words after the war i was stopped by a tremendous artillery and then the effect was
14:37overpowering we were stopped before we could begin the infantry would not move and the tanks could not go
14:45forward alone north of town at noville the same thing happens to the second panzer division a team
14:52of the 10th armored division and a battalion of paratroopers stand in its path all day lutwitz is
14:59pleased with the fight but knows he has lost what he called a precious day that afternoon at four lutwitz
15:06asks his army commander for permission to throw his entire corps at baston he is refused the higher
15:14command's priority is the meuse river so the decision is made that will shape everything that follows
15:21the panzers will go around baston and race west the 26th volksgrenadier division under major general
15:28heinz kokot will stay behind close the ring and take the town in other words the germans chose to
15:35surround baston rather than take it remember that choice december 20th the village of vorden just
15:45southeast of baston kokot is moving his division into position when an american shell hits his command
15:51post truck everyone else inside is killed kokot is thrown against the wall of the village church
15:58he later called it his closest call of the war the ring is not even closed and the americans inside
16:05it
16:06are already reaching out for the man who is supposed to close it by evening kokot is near cible southwest
16:12of
16:13town he sees small groups of americans moving west stragglers from units that had fought for three days in
16:20the path of the offensive a belgian tells him the garrison is falling apart kokot decides baston is
16:27wide open on the south and west he has misread it those men were not the garrison the garrison was
16:35not
16:35leaving that night in the words of the german account the corps stood with baston almost solidly in its
16:42embrace now look at that map the way mcauliffe could it is the second layer of the answer and
16:49it is pure geometry before the ring closed the american guns around baston were strung out along
16:55roads each covering its own piece of front once the ring closed they were all in the middle every
17:03battery sat within a few miles of every point on the perimeter the armored field artillery battalion
17:09inside was firing across a full 360 degree front two battalions of heavy 155 howitzers had nearly
17:17three times the range of the airborne guns a call from any foxhole on any side could bring fire from
17:25almost every tube in town the germans had the opposite problem their ring was longer than the
17:31perimeter it enclosed to shift a battalion from the north to the south they had to march it around the
17:36outside of the circle over snow-covered roads under american observation to shift fire the americans
17:43only had to turn the guns kokat felt this before he understood it he noticed that whenever the american
17:50artillery spoke it spoke in heavy concentrations not scattered shells massed fire all at once wherever his
17:58men moved and he drew the logical conclusion heavy concentrations meant heavy supply the americans he
18:06reasoned must have plenty of ammunition he was wrong inside the ring by december 24th the airborne
18:15batteries were down to about 10 rounds per gun so how does a surrounded force that is nearly out of
18:21shells convince the general besieging it that it has more than enough december 21st 1944 bastonia
18:29by morning the ring is closed the last roads to the south and west are cut
18:35and inside the town the list from the start of this story begins to come due remember it fuel
18:43food ammunition orders let us go down that list the way mcauliffe's staff had to orders first because
18:52that one is simple the radio links out of bastonia never stopped working mcauliffe could talk to his
18:58core commander his artillery could talk to every battery inside the perimeter the ring had cut the
19:05roads it had not cut the voice medical care is the cruel one on the night of december 19th before
19:13the
19:13ring even closed german raiders had overrun the division's medical company at a crossroads northwest
19:18of town more than 140 americans were taken among them the division surgeon lieutenant colonel david gold along
19:27with most of the surgical equipment only eight officers and 44 men got away so now the wounded
19:33of baston are being collected in the town with too few medics too little equipment not enough blankets
19:40hold on to that it comes back and the weather is against them fog and low cloud have grounded the
19:47transport planes since the siege began an airdrop plan for december 22nd never reaches baston
19:54which brings us to ammunition and to the answer to the question we left hanging lieutenant colonel
20:00barry brown commands the 420th armored field artillery battalion he has about 1400 rounds he has to make
20:08them last five days and his guns are covering a front that runs all the way around the compass
20:14the division's own assessment on the 22nd is blunt artillery ammunition was running very low
20:21by christmas eve brown's guns are limited to about five rounds per mission
20:26the airborne batteries are down to around 10 rounds per tube one battalion of heavy howitzers fired 39
20:32rounds on the 24th two days later it was down to 27 about one-sixth of what it had been
20:39firing per
20:40day when the battle began so how did that sound like plenty to kokot here is the trick and it
20:47came
20:47straight out of being surrounded a battery with thousands of shells can afford to fire at anything
20:54harassing fire suspected positions a road junction at night a battery with 10 rounds per tube cannot
21:02it waits it fires only when an observer can actually see a target worth the shells
21:08and when it does fire it does not fire alone because every other battery in town is within
21:15range of the same spot so the germans around the perimeter heard long silences followed by sudden
21:22storms of steel wherever their men showed themselves gunners on the west side of the pocket fired across
21:28the town to help the defenders on the east kokot heard those storms and concluded the americans had shells
21:35to burn in reality they were spending their last ones as carefully as men counting coins that is the
21:42third layer scarcity did not make the surrounded americans weaker in the eyes of their enemy it made
21:48them more precise the same geometry that let every gun reach every sector turned a shortage into something
21:55that from outside sounded like abundance now look at the ultimatum again because it looks very different
22:02from here when ludwitz sent his officers up the arlan road on december 22nd he threatened annihilation
22:09by a german artillery corps and six heavy battalions but german divisions around baston had struggled to
22:16get substantial guns forward and the great bombardment the note promised never came that night the luftwaffe
22:23bombed the town instead so consider what actually happened on that road a german general short of guns
22:31threatened massive artillery against an enemy he believed was rich in shells in truth that enemy
22:38was nearly out both sides were bluffing only one bluff held because the american one was not a bluff at
22:45all
22:46it was fire discipline carried by geometry that is why the other german commanders later called the note
22:53a faux pas it promised something lutwitz could not deliver to an enemy who was not acting like a beaten
23:00one and mccullough's answer told them in one word that the americans knew it there is a human footnote
23:09here colonel bud harper who carried the answer back down the road worried afterward that his temper might
23:15have made the next german attack worse it did not need to the attacks were coming anyway inside the pocket
23:23the men did what infantry always do they dug deeper into frozen ground they shared what food they had
23:31they wrapped themselves in whatever they could find some wore mattress covers and bed sheets as snow capes
23:38they watched the fog their whole future in a very literal sense depended on the sky
23:45on the german side the higher command was growing uneasy the panzers that had bypassed baston were
23:51racing west toward the muse and every one of them depended on roads that ran through or around a
23:57town the germans still did not own lutwitz's abscess was no longer a figure of speech it was on the
24:04map
24:04sitting across the roots his own spearheads needed for fuel and shells and then on the night of the 22nd
24:12the weather began to change a cold front was moving in from the east by morning the fog would lift
24:19what cocott's officers saw in that clearing sky on december 23rd they misread completely and their
24:27mistake tells you exactly what the ring around baston could cut and what it never could december 23rd 1944
24:356 45 in the morning chowgrove airfield england two c-47s lift off into the dark in the lead aircraft
24:43flown by lieutenant colonel joel crouch sits a pathfinder team of the 101st airborne
24:49their stick is led by a paratrooper named jake mcneese the night before he had been told this
24:55was no exercise belgium the 101st is cut off in baston when someone wished him luck mcneese answered
25:04that he didn't need good luck he needed a miracle stop and think about what these men are doing
25:10every soldier in baston would give a great deal to be outside that ring these men are volunteering to jump
25:17into it over belgium an 88 opens up in the flight path one round passes between mcneese and the
25:25sergeant beside him crouch dives to treetop height just after 9 35 the green light comes on the two
25:33sticks jump onto a field at the edge of baston and mcneese throws orange smoke in every direction so the
25:39second team can find him they set up their equipment on a pile of bricks on high ground
25:44in the fields between baston and senant champs the radar beacon that will guide the transports
25:50stays switched off until the very last moment so german direction finders cannot fix it
25:56then the sky does what it has not done all week it clears one transport pilot said that earlier in
26:04the week the weather had been so bad that even the birds were walking now he said you could see
26:10for a
26:11hundred miles in all directions at 11 50 the first carrier drops its loads within a little over four
26:19hours 241 planes are directed to baston each carries about 1200 pounds hundreds of colored canopies fill
26:28the sky over the fields west of town jeeps and trucks are already racing out to collect them most of
26:34what comes down is artillery ammunition now go back to the list from the beginning of this story
26:39fuel food ammunition orders the ring was supposed to cut all four in a single afternoon the americans
26:51began putting back the most important one through the roof and here is how it looked from kokot's side
26:57his officers saw the parachutes and believed more paratroopers were landing reinforcements dropping
27:04straight into the pocket the effect in kokot's own words was to increase the disorder in the ranks of
27:11the attackers the same afternoon 82 american fighter bombers worked over german positions around the
27:17perimeter for the first time since the siege began the americans inside could see their own air force
27:23overhead this is the fourth layer of the answer and it may be the one that frightened german officers
27:29most for a reason specific to their own war two winters earlier at stalingrad the german army had
27:36tried exactly this an encircled german army to be kept alive from the air the luftwaffe could not do it
27:44and that army died in its pocket every german general of 1944 knew what the word airlift had come to
27:51mean in their own service now they watched an american encircled force get resupplied on the first clear day
27:58not by a desperate trickle of transports but by a stream that would continue the next day with about
28:04a hundred and sixty more planes a ring that cannot stop supply is not a siege it is a perimeter
28:11you happen
28:12to be standing around that night hasso von manteufel commander of the fifth panzer army came to kokot's command
28:20post in person by this time according to the german account the high command was thoroughly alarmed
28:27and it was not only the parachutes to the south american pressure against the german flank was
28:33growing patten's third army had turned north and was attacking toward baston in manteufel's words
28:39resistance from the south was increasing hour by hour his order to kokot was five words long bastonia must
28:48be taken at all costs think about how far things have moved on december 12th bastonia was a junction
28:57to be taken quickly or bypassed on the 20th it was a ring left to one infantry division by the
29:0523rd the
29:06army commander was standing in that division's headquarters telling it to take the town whatever the
29:11cost that same evening at a quarter to seven kokot's men struck at the village of marvie on the southeast
29:18edge of the perimeter with infantry and at least two companies of tanks they overran a platoon of
29:24paratroopers on a hill south of the village three german tanks reached the southern houses then the tank
29:31destroyers and tanks of team o'hara stopped them the americans claimed eight panzers to hold marvie
29:39mcauliffe sent in the last half of team cherry his final mobile reserve when the fighting ended an hour
29:45before dawn the village was still contested so christmas eve begins with both sides stretched to their
29:52limit the americans have used their last reserve the germans have been ordered to finish it on the
29:59evening of december 24th manteufel thought it through once more his conclusion has survived in
30:05the official history almost as an epitaph to leave baston as a sally port onto his left rear it says
30:12made no
30:13military sense to this experienced soldier a sally port the gate in a castle wall through which the
30:20defenders ride out that is what an experienced panzer general now saw in a town full of surrounded
30:26americans not a prison a gate pointed at his back he ordered the town taken on christmas day kokot planned
30:34the attack for three in the morning in darkness because he knew what american planes would do to his men
30:39in daylight he chose the northwest side of the perimeter because he was convinced it was the
30:45weakest it was not it was the strongest and freshest sector the americans had and the men waiting there
30:53had something kokot had not counted on standing a few hundred yards behind their foxholes december 25th 1944
31:013 in the morning roll northwest of baston christmas begins with german bombs falling around the chateau at
31:10roll command post of the 502nd parachute infantry an hour later about 50 grenadiers of kokot's 77th
31:18regiment push into the village of shan and in the dark to the south the main blow begins a regiment
31:26of the
31:2615th panzer grenadier division under colonel wolfgang mauka drives toward hemroll and baston behind
31:33roughly 18 mark 4 tanks before dawn the tanks break through the line of the 327th glider infantry
31:41they reach a battalion command post they roll right through the firing positions of a battery of the
31:48755th field artillery so close that the howitzers cannot depress their barrels enough to fire about an hour
31:55and a quarter into the attack the tank group reports back to kokot it has met little american reaction
32:02now pause because this is the moment the whole german theory of warfare was built for
32:09against a normal front line a breakthrough like this is victory behind the line lies the soft rear
32:16supply dumps headquarters cooks and clerks roads leading away breakthrough and you can roll for miles
32:25while the enemy runs but this is not a front line this is a pocket and a pocket has no
32:32rear behind the
32:34foxholes of baston there is no soft country there is only more baston every tank destroyer every gun
32:42crew every reserve is somewhere inside a few miles and all of them can face any direction break through a
32:50pocket and you do not arrive behind the enemy you arrive in the middle of him that is exactly what
32:57happens west of hemroll the german tanks split half swing toward the chomps road and the paratroopers of
33:06the 502nd two american tank destroyers are knocked out falling back then two more covering c company from a
33:14wood lot knock out three panzers bazookas get two more the other half keeps driving for hemrule and runs
33:21into a crossfire from every side at once four tank destroyers of the 705th tanks of the armored team held
33:29in
33:29reserve gunners of the 463rd parachute field artillery firing over open sites glider infantrymen with bazookas
33:38remember what cocotte said about the american artillery it spoke in heavy concentrations here on christmas
33:46morning the concentration was not artillery it was everything the grenadiers who had ridden in on the
33:53tanks are cut off about 50 of them hide in a stream bed they are rounded up not by infantry
33:59but by
34:00cannoneers of the 755th the same artillerymen whose guns had been overrun a few hours earlier
34:07at noon cocotte writes off the tanks and the infantry of the attacking battalion as lost
34:13he asks his corps for permission to stop he is refused capturing baston he is told is absolutely
34:20necessary because the pressure from the south keeps growing he renews the attack knowing it will only add
34:27to his losses he later called his final push a desperate effort when it came massed american howitzers
34:36broke it up here is the fifth layer inside a pocket there is no weak point behind the line because
34:44there is no behind the very thing that makes a surrounded force look doomed on a map the fact
34:50that it is enclosed means every part of it can reach every other part the germans had broken through
34:58they had nowhere to break through too now widen the lens because christmas day has another story 40 miles
35:06to the west it is the one that shows what baston was really costing lutwitz's corps had two jobs
35:14take baston and push west to the muse his spearhead was the second panzer his own old division from
35:22mortin by midnight on december 23rd its reconnaissance battalion had reached the village of foie notre dame
35:28a few miles short of the muse at dinon another battle group held cell nearby then it stopped the division
35:37was short of fuel its war diary records it as hindered in its mobility through lack of fuel
35:44its chief of staff wrote the process of marching on dinon had come to a halt
35:49it waited for support on its flanks that never arrived ask yourself where that support was the
35:57infantry and tanks that might have covered those flanks were being fed into the fighting around one
36:01belgian town kokat's whole division part of panzer lair a regiment of the 15th panzer grenadiers the
36:10very one whose tanks were burning near hemorrholl that morning even a brigade on hitler's own orders
36:17turned back toward baston on christmas day the american 2nd armored division under major general
36:24ernest harman struck the stranded spearhead the reconnaissance battalion at foie was surrounded
36:29and destroyed of more than a thousand men 148 were taken prisoner harman reported his division had
36:38destroyed or captured 82 tanks 83 guns and 280 motor vehicles put those two scenes side by side on the
36:49same christmas day a german force was surrounded near the muse and ceased to exist within hours and an
36:57american force that had been surrounded for five days was still destroying every attack sent against it
37:04the germans knew precisely what a pocket was supposed to do at foie a pocket did exactly that
37:12to them so where does that leave kokat on the night of december 25th
37:17his attack has failed his corps commander's spearhead is dying in the west and the pressure from the south
37:23that manteufel had warned about is no longer pressure it is a column of american tanks a few miles away
37:30about to reach a crossroads called asanois what one american lieutenant colonel decided to do at that
37:37crossroads the next afternoon was not in his orders and it turned the ring around baston inside out
37:44december 26th 1944 early afternoon high ground near cloche mall about five miles southwest of baston
37:53lieutenant colonel creighton abrams of the 37th tank battalion and lieutenant colonel george jacquez of the
37:5953rd armored infantry are looking north their battalions belong to the 4th armored division
38:04the spearhead of patton's drive to break the ring they have been fighting their way up for days
38:11abrams is down to about 20 medium tanks jacquez is short about 230 men their objective is the
38:18village of cibre they believe it is heavily defended then they look up the sky is full of cargo planes
38:26nearly 300 of them that day streaming in over their heads toward baston and dropping supplies into the
38:32pocket abrams proposes something else forget cibre there is a smaller road through a village called
38:39asanois that runs straight into baston make a dash for it four battalions of field artillery and a
38:46battery of heavy guns drop about 2 340 shells on asanois then c company of the 37th goes in led
38:55by
38:55a sherman named cobra king with first lieutenant charles bogus in the turret his orders are simple plow
39:02through without stopping as bogus put it later we weren't supposed to stop on the way either
39:09they go through at full speed firing straight ahead while the tanks behind fire to both sides
39:15the gunner corporal milton dickerman said he used the 75 millimeter main gun
39:21like it was a machine gun 21 rounds in a few minutes
39:26after the first tanks pass the germans set off mines behind them and knock out a half track
39:32north of the village in the woods there are block houses and then bogus sees men in american uniforms
39:39attacking a pillbox he has heard the stories of germans dressed as gis so he questions their platoon
39:45leader before he trusts them they are american combat engineers of the 326th airborne engineers
39:54from inside the pocket at about 10 minutes to 5 in the afternoon the ring around baston is broken
40:0220 minutes later abrams shakes hands with mcauliffe the germans had not expected an attack on that
40:09secondary road and look at who was holding it kokat's 39th regiment kokat had been ordered to take
40:16the town with everything he had every unit he could scrape together had been facing inward at the
40:21paratroopers the blow came from behind that is the final layer and now everything fits go back to
40:30bierlein at mageret in the first hours of the battle worrying about american tanks behind him
40:36on the 19th after the fight at neff he was already thinking about how to pull out what he considered
40:41his
40:42pocketed forces a german general attacking a surrounded enemy worrying about being pocketed
40:49himself it sounds absurd it was the most accurate instinct anyone on the german side had that week
40:56because here is what a ring around an american unit actually did it did not separate that unit from the
41:02american army it fixed that unit in place at a point the whole american army knew about and then held
41:09the
41:09besieging germans in place around it while kokat's men faced inward patton's men were coming up from the
41:17south while lutwitz poured regiments into the siege his spearhead ran dry a few miles from the muse
41:23and was destroyed the germans standing around baston were not surrounding the americans they were
41:30standing between two american forces one inside one coming so here is the answer to the question this
41:39story began with put as simply as it can be put german generals feared surrounded americans more than free
41:46ones because a free american unit could retreat and a retreating enemy can be chased a surrounded
41:53american unit could not retreat so it stayed it stayed on your roads like the battalion on the hill
41:59at mortain it kept its radio and through the radio it kept its guns and those guns could reach every
42:06point of its perimeter it was fed from the sky it had no soft rear for you to break into
42:12and every hour
42:14it held it pinned you down while the rest of the american army moved against you that was the abscess
42:21lutwitz had warned about before the first shot was fired and it was why his ultimatum was such an
42:27embarrassment every promise in that note that the americans were cut off that they would be annihilated
42:33that surrender was the only honorable way out rested on the old german picture of a pocket
42:40the americans in baston had stopped fitting that picture days before the note was written
42:45notice too what never changed the ring did not make the americans in baston stronger
42:51they were short of shells short of medicine cold hungry and losing men the 101st airborne alone lost
42:59more than 1600 officers and men in battle casualties during the siege and con that command b of the 10th
43:06armored lost about 500 more what the ring did was turn their stubbornness into something larger than
43:13themselves 700 men on a hill 11 000 in a town each time the germans closed the circle and each
43:22time
43:22the circle closed around the germans the fighting did not stop when bogus reached the engineers
43:29the corridor was narrow and for another week the germans tried to cut it but the ring was gone and
43:35it
43:36never closed again and baston had one last way of answering the german generals
43:41it came after the war when the man who had written the surrender demand sat down to talk about it
43:46one
43:48thing he said and one thing he had kept tell you more about what baston meant to them than any
43:53battle
43:54report november 1945 germany the war in europe has been over for six months in a series of ten conferences
44:03an american historian named s l a marshall sits across from three german generals heinrich von lutwitz who
44:11commanded the corps around bastonia fritz beyerlein of panzerlaer heinz kokot of the 26th volksgrenadiers
44:20also at the table is colonel harry canard a year earlier he was the operations officer of the 101st airborne
44:28he planned the defense of the town these men had surrounded now the officer from inside the ring
44:34and the officers who drew it are going over the same maps marshall found kokot shy scholarly and
44:41dignified a man who never raised his voice he judged that kokot of all of them had seen the true
44:48situation at bastonia most clearly it was kokot who described the heavy concentrations of american fire
44:55and the parachutes that only added to the disorder among his own men lutwitz was the one who repeated
45:01for the record what he had told his division commanders on december 12th bastonia must be taken
45:08or it would remain an abscess on their lines of communication he had seen the danger before the
45:14battle began he could not prevent it and then there was the paper the other commanders called the
45:22surrender demand a faux pas lutwitz seemed chagrined at having written it and they believed he had kept
45:29mcauliffe's reply one typed sheet with one word on it held by the man it was meant to humiliate as
45:37a
45:37historical document think about why a general would keep that not as a trophy as evidence it was the moment
45:48the german picture of a pocket met the american reality and lost lutwitz died in 1969 in neuburg
45:57under donau kokot died in 1976 in traunstein in bavaria now the americans anthony mcauliffe became a
46:08four-star general and commanded the united states army in europe he died in 1975 and lies at arlington
46:15the square at the heart of baston bears his name his aide later said that nuts was simply part of
46:23his normal vocabulary he rarely swore creighton abrams became chief of staff of the united states army
46:31the army's main battle tank still carries his name cobra king the sherman that led the column through
46:38asanois was found decades later standing as a monument at a base in germany it was identified by
46:45its markings and brought home for preservation harry canard the colonel at marshall's table
46:52went on to command the first air assault division in the united states army and took it to vietnam
46:58as a young officer he had watched a surrounded division survive because supplies came down from the
47:04sky he spent much of his career building a division that came from the sky itself on the hill at
47:11morton
47:12captain reynold erickson and his four company commanders each received the distinguished service
47:17cross the battalion received the presidential unit citation robert weiss the young observer who sat
47:24near that crest with a dying radio lived to write the story of those five days himself
47:30and now go back to where we started december 22nd the arlon road near the kessler farm remember the
47:38blindfolds the german officers brought their own because they expected a formality an encircled town
47:45and an honorable surrender two hours and it would be done when the answer came back the german major was
47:53so angry that he threw his blindfold away as he walked back to his own lines staff sergeant carl dickinson
48:01and private first class ernest premitz went back to their foxholes the paratroopers and glider infantry
48:07and tankers of baston went back to the cold they had no idea that the men across the snow were
48:14already
48:15more worried about them than they were about anything to their front all they knew was that they were
48:20surrounded short of almost everything and not leaving that was the whole secret the question
48:27this story began with has an answer simple enough to say in two sentences a free american unit could be
48:35pushed back and a retreating enemy can be chased a surrounded american unit would not move and so it became
48:43a fixed point the whole american army could fight toward with the germans caught in between the germans
48:51built their war on encircling their enemies at mortin and at baston american soldiers showed them what it
48:58meant to encircle an enemy who would not quit thank you for watching this story to the end if it
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