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“Peiper must be stopped!”
Lieutenant General Courtney M. Hodges, commanding the U.S. First Army, looked up from his maps and saw chaos everywhere. All across the Ardennes Forest, American forces were reeling from a surprise German counterattack that struck on the morning of December 16, 1944. While some frontline units stubbornly held their ground, others simply disappeared annihilated by the Nazi juggernaut.
One marauding enemy column particularly worried General Hodges. This was Kampfgruppe Peiper, the spearhead of the German 1st SS Panzer Division. Named for its commander, SS Lt. Col. Jochen Peiper, this powerful force was headed for the crossroads city of Liege, first stop toward its ultimate objective of Antwerp and the Belgian coast.
Operation Stösser was launched during Germany’s last gamble:
Wacht am Rhein (Operation Watch on the Rhine), Hitler’s offensive in the West which Americans know as the Battle of the Bulge, had as its ultimate objective the Belgian port of Antwerp. Recently captured, it was under repair to be reopened as a deep-water port.
When Antwerp was serviceable, the Allies would be able to bring supplies and reinforcements quickly to the front lines instead of transporting them across France from the Channel ports. To reach Antwerp, the German Army would push through the Ardennes Forest. An armored spearhead would attack in the Eifel plateau region of western Germany, lying between the Rhine and Moselle Rivers and the Luxembourg and Belgian frontiers.
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