Allied lines held in the north against the onslaught of two Panzer armies. In the center the Twenty-eighth Infantry Division slowed a German drive across northern Luxembourg to the Belgian road center of Bastogne. In the south the Fourth Division and part of the Ninth Armored Division blocked the southern shoulder of the penetration. The German drive was thus contained at both shoulders and constricted by lack of roads. On the second day, 17 December, the supreme Allied commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Twelfth Army Group commander, Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, rushed reinforcements to the southern shoulder, in part to relieve the besieged U.S. forces in Bastogne. Other units began to build a line westward from the Elsenborn Ridge lest the Germans turn north toward supply depots around Liège. By the fourth day, 19 December, the Germans had severed communications between the southern and northern armies. This prompted Eisenhower to put Bradleys two northern armies under the Twenty-first Army Group commander, Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 18:00:00 +0000
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