The Luftwaffe commenced Operation Bodenplatte, which had originally been planned for December 16, in an attempt to cripple Allied air forces in the Low Countries. The hope was to gain air superiority so that the stalled German advance in Wacht am Rhein could resume.
A tactical surprise resulting in the destruction of 500 Allied aircraft on the ground, it none the less failed to achieve its goal and actually destroyed the Luftwaffe as an offensive, or even defensive, force due to heavy losses. Allied losses were replaced within one week.
Soldiers of the 11th Armored Division murdered about 80 German POWs at Chenogne, Belgium, in reprisal for the Malmedy Massacre.
Some of the boys had some prisoners line up. I knew they were going to shoot them, and I hated this business.... They marched the prisoners back up the hill to murder them with the rest of the prisoners we had secured that morning.... As we were going up the hill out of town, I know some of our boys were lining up German prisoners in the fields on both sides of the road. There must have been 25 or 30 German boys in each group. Machine guns were being set up. These boys were to be machine gunned and murdered. We were committing the same crimes we were now accusing the Japs and Germans of doing.... Going back down the road into town I looked into the fields where the German boys had been shot. Dark lifeless forms lay in the snow.
Following the Malmedy Massacre some US units were issued orders not to take SS POWs, a clearly illegal order. The murdered POWs, however, were members of the Führerbegleitbrigade and 3rd Panzergrenadier Division, German Army units, the latter of which had been associated with atrocities in Italy.
The killing of SS POWs became routine in some units.
The event was covered up and only really became known in detail in 2018. This was not the only such event that occurred, and some units began to routinely kill SS prisoners.
The UK refused to recognize the Soviet sponsored Polish government.
Hitler made a radio address which omitted the current German situation to such an extent that it provoked Allied debate on who made it, and when.
It's worth noting at this point that while October, 1944, was the bloodiest month of the war for the US, in larger terms, the killing and dying ramped up massively starting in January, 1945, as the Allies closed in on Germany.
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Labels: "Wacht am Rhein", 1940s, 1944, Aircraft, Alsace-Lorraine, Filipino Army, Filipino resistance, German Wehrmacht, Operation Ichi-Go, Personalities, U.S. Air Force, Unternehmen Nordwind, World War Two
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