![]() ![]() ![]() His Kampfgruppe was surrounded, virtually out of fuel, short of ammunition, and reduced to about a quarter of its original strength.Īs a leading participant in Hitler’s last great offensive in the West, Peiper’s lightning dash through the thin American defenses in the northern Ardennes Forest had been halted in only three days by a combination of factors- bad planning, administrative weaknesses, a series of brilliant small-unit actions by the Americans, and bad luck! His small force of just over a thousand men and 25 tanks was by this time concentrated in an all-around defensive position in the tiny Belgian hilltop village of La Gleize, some 100 kilometers from his starting point behind the West Wall.Īfter failing to break through the 30th Infantry Division’s defenses in the Amblève Valley just to the west of Stoumont on December 19, and facing a serious fuel shortage, Peiper had gone on the defensive in the villages of Cheneux, Stoumont, and La Gleize, an area nicknamed “The Cauldron” by his men. By December 24, 1944, the commander of the Sixth Panzer Army’s strongest battlegroup, SS Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Jochen Peiper, was facing the ultimate military nightmare.
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