← Previous Item

Battle in the Schnee Eifel

Next Item →

http://wargame-scenarios.com/images/m44winter.jpg
http://wargame-scenarios.com/images/m44logo.jpg

Title
Battle in the Schnee Eifel
Description
Further up in the center, this same morning of December 16, 1944, Fifth Panzer Army attacked the positions held by the U.S. 28th and 106th Infantry Divisions. Thinly spread and outmatched, numerically as well as materially, the 422nd and 423rd …
Subject
Source
Publisher
Date
1944-12-16
Scenario#
6760
Scenario Description
Further up in the center, this same morning of December 16, 1944, Fifth Panzer Army attacked the positions held by the U.S. 28th and 106th Infantry Divisions. Thinly spread and outmatched, numerically as well as materially, the 422nd and 423rd infantry regiments dug-in in the Schnee Eifel sector, soon found themselves threatened by a pincer attack of 18. Volksgrenadier-Division. The Germans overtook the villages of Roth and Bleiaf, leaving the US Artillery near Auw by Prüm exposed. Desperate counter-attacks by the reserve US Engineer battalions temporarily stopped the German advance; but lacking direction from their commander, 422nd and 423rd remained dug-in, as the Germans closed off any possible path of retreat. On the 19th, low on ammunition, the two regiments were finally forced to surrender. With up to 9,000 men lost and a substantial amount of arms and equipment, the Schnee Eifel battle would go down in US Army history as "the most serious reverse suffered by American arms during the operations of 1944/45 in the European theater".
Location
Schnee Eifel, Germany
Battle Name
Battle Narrative
The Losheim Gap is a 5 miles (8.0 km) long, narrow valley at the western foot of the Schnee Eifel, on the border of Belgium and Germany. Most accounts of World War II describing the Battle of the Bulge focus on the attack by the Germans around the Siege of Bastogne and the Battle of St. Vith, while the Germans' primary ambitions were actually anchored in taking the Losheim Gap. In this region of the border between Belgium and Germany, it is the only region conducive to military movement. In 1944, "Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein" (Operation Watch on the Rhine) was planned by Hitler to trade space for time by an attack which would advance through the Allied armies to Antwerp. This would be through "the Ardennes, a region that had long fascinated Hitler, where German armies had attacked with tremendous success 1914 and again, at Hitler’s personal instigation, in 1940 .... (but not also, as is often erroneously remarked, in 1870. That advance was from the Saar-Palatinate through the Wissembourg Gap into Alsace)".
Narrative Source
Combatants
German
American
Additional Information
Game Type: Standard
Board Type: Winter
Website Access: Available

Geolocation