In September and October 1944, Field Marshall Walter Model, commander of German Army Group B, caused General Eisenhower no shortage of headaches. After the 20 July failed plot to kill Hitler and the rout of the German Army in the West after the fall of Paris, Hitler ordered Model to prevent the Allies from advancing into Germany at all costs. And for almost four months, against overwhelming Allied air and material superiority and constant tactical interference from Hitler, Model, the monocle wearing son of a music teacher from Saxony, did exactly that.

In the north, Model rallied the defeated Wehrmacht in the west and every Allied misstep was exploited. He deftly extricated the 15th Army from certain doom at Antwerp and bludgeoned the Allies with it in the Netherlands for the rest of the year. With the 15th Army and his reconstituted reserve, the II SS Panzer Corps, Model defeated Montgomery in the battles for the Dutch bridges in September (Operation Market Garden) and removed the Allied capability to conduct airborne operations for the foreseeable future. The Allies did not cross the Rhine at Arnhem until January, 1945, nor conduct another airborne operation until Operation Varsity in March, 1945.

In the south, Model’s First Army stopped Patton cold in Lorraine. On 18 September, the day after Operation Market Garden began, Model’s Fifth Panzer Army, led by Gen Hasso Von Manteuffel, counterattacked MG John S Wood’s 4th Armored Division resulting in the Battle of Arracourt, the largest tank battle on the Western Front up to that time. Patton’s famous “dash across France” lasted exactly 49 days. Around Arracourt, American crew quality, mechanical reliability, agile leadership, and responsive fire support defeated German technical and material superiority after 11 days of constant fighting. The Battle of Arracourt, Patton’s Pyrrhic victory, is virtually unknown today because of Patton hagiography and the more famous concurrent battle further north in Holland.

Nonetheless, Patton’s advance was stopped, not by Eisenhower as the famous books and movies like to trumpet, but by the Germans. Popular history likes to blame Patton’s delay on Eisenhower’s decision to prioritize supplies to the British, but that decision didn’t come until the 23rd of September, a week after Market Garden began, not before. And it was only in response to unexpected German resistance in Holland. (Patton’s fuel was briefly curtailed in late August, simply because it was more efficient at the time to prioritize Montgomery and Hodges, who were both closer to Normandy than Patton and within striking distance of V2 sites. Patton’s fuel resumed his fair share shortly thereafter on 4 September, almost two weeks before Market Garden. Patton was slowed more by the “250 mile” tank maintenance rule than by fuel. ) Patton had enough fuel to continue the attack but defeating Manteuffel’s counteroffensive drank fuel at a prodigious rate. Eisenhower’s 23 Sep decision didn’t stop Patton, Manteuffel did that, but it did prevent Patton from regaining his momentum. Mantueffel bought just enough time for the newly formed but static Volksgrenadier Divisions to dig in. For the next two months, famed tanker and maneuver warfare expert George Patton was forced to slug it out in battles that resembled the First World War twenty five years prior, and those against second and third rate German troops. The gateway city and ancient fortress of Metz, and the surrounding fortifications, particularly Ft Driant, didn’t capitulate until early December.

In the center, General Omar Bradley’s 12th Army Group closed in on the German frontier. Model reinforced the old Siegfried line defenses, and combined with Allied supply difficulties caused by his orders to destroy all French port facilities, forced Bradley to a standstill. Despite this, Eisenhower ordered the capture of Aachen, a German city on the border with Belgium. Aachen was of no special military or industrial value, but it was of immense propaganda value: It was the first German city threatened with capture by the Allies and it was the historic capital of Charlemagne’s “First Reich”. Model turned Aachen into a fortress and its defense made Eisenhower’s decision one of his few regrets as Supreme Allied Commander. Model’s defense of Aachen and the Huertgen Forest to the city’s immediate south delayed Bradley for three months. The Americans only captured Aachen in mid-November. Even worse, US troops only secured the town of Schmidt, the initial (September) objective in the Huertgen Forest operations, in January 1945. Model embroiled Bradley in vicious street fighting in Aachen and lured him into the near perfect defensive terrain in the Huertgen Forest for what were America’s worst defeats of the war. Although Model lost Aachen, he caused Bradley 45,000 casualties in the process and wrecked the American 12th Army Group. Model obliged Bradley to stop his offensives, reinforce his depleted divisions, and train the tens of thousands of new replacements that were required to advance into Germany any further.

In particular, the 28th Infantry Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard earned its nickname “The Bloody Bucket” in these battles, and the veteran US 1st Infantry Division, “The Big Red One” took 70% casualties at Aachen and Huertgen. In early December, these two divisions were so maimed that they were assigned a quiet sector of the front to rest and recuperate: the Ardennes Forest.

The Ardennes was directly in the path of Model’s December offensive to restore stability on the Western Front, Unternehmen Wacht am Rhine, “Operation Watch on the Rhine” more commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Operation Market Garden, the Allied airborne and ground invasion of the Netherlands in September 1944 conceived by Britain’s Gen Bernard Montgomery, didn’t need to capture just four bridges to succeed, as many of the narratives of the battle imply; the operation needed 32 bridges over 20 different rivers, canals, and streams along the 62 mile axis of advance to succeed. One such bridge was over the Wilhelmina Canal at the small town of Best outside of the Dutch city of Eindhoven. On the afternoon of 17 September, 1944, Company H, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division infiltrated the town to seize the bridge in order to allow the British armor to bypass Eindhoven on their way to Nijmegen. They didn’t know it, but they were outnumbered 6:1.

Two weeks before, Montgomery’s 1st Canadian Army seized the vital port of Antwerp and pushed the German 15th Army out of the city. A functioning port at Antwerp could alleviate the Allies massive supply problems, but the Canadians failed to also clear the Scheldt Estuary. Without the estuary cleared, Antwerp was “as useful as Timbuktu” in the words of Eisenhower’s chief of staff. Moreover, the failure to adequately clear the estuary allowed the battered German 15th Army to escape. Gen Walter Model ordered the 85,000 strong 15th Army to rest and refit just west of the Dutch town of Eindhoven.

Like Bittrich’s SS Panzer Corps at Arnhem, the German 15th Army was in a perfect position to counterattack the Allied landings and the single highway that XXX Corps was advancing northward on. The 15th Army sat astride the highway just west of the American 101st Airborne Division landings around Eindhoven.

When the planes of the airborne invasion were seen overhead on the morning of the 17 September 1944, German commanders in the 15th Army formed ad hoc “kampfgruppes” (battlegroups roughly 1000 strong) to operate against the landings. The German ability to “plug and play” units with a competent commander gave them an amazing flexibility on the battlefield. One such kampfgruppe was formed around an SS police battalion and sent to Best. As the lightly armed lone American airborne company with its attached engineers approached Best, they came under intense fire. Best became a microcosm of what happened to the British 1st Airborne at Arnhem. At Best, one platoon from Company H made it to the bridge and held the north end, while the rest of the company, and eventually the battalion was cut off nearby. That one platoon survived for two whole days before being overrun. The Germans who captured them thought an entire company had held the bridge, not just 22 men.

Over the next three days, the 15th Army counterattacked from around Best to try and cut “Hell’s Highway” at its base. Three German divisions: the 59th, 245th and 716th, and various Luftwaffe and rear area troops organized into battlegroups, including two battalions of fanatical and zealous SS policemen, launched themselves at the Americans. The fighting around the town of Best consumed the entire 502nd PIR, the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, and the 101st’s reserve BN from the 401st Infantry; or over 2/3rds of the entire 101st Airborne Division. The battle only ended when the 101st was reinforced by a brigade of British hussars and grenadiers from XXX Corps, which crossed the canal at the rebuilt Son Bridge to the east.

That British brigade was desperately needed in the fighting around Nijmegen to the north, and the lack of an exploitation force prevented the British from immediately continuing on to Arnhem after the capture of the Nijmegen Bridge over the Waal on 20 September. And although the 15th Army did not succeed at Best, it did cut the all-important highway in two other places farther north over the next several days.

On 17 September, 1944, the 3rd Amphibious Group, landed the 322nd and 321st Regimental Combat Teams of the US 81st Infantry “”Wildcat” Division on the island of Angaur to secure the phosphate plant and airfield, and prevent Japanese artillery from shelling Peleliu. By the 22nd, and after fierce fighting, the two RCTs forced the Japanese defenders into the northwest corner of the island, but then the battle began in earnest.

The northwest corner of Angaur was dominated by Romauldo Hill, but it couldn’t be approached effectively without going through the torturous terrain of a large stone quarry beneath it, dubbed by the Wildcats “The Bowl”. Furthermore, the Bowl had only one entrance, which they quickly named “The Bloody Gulch”. With the Japanese throwing shells at the Seabees constructing the airfield, all three had to be taken.

The 322nd RCT secured the Bloody Gulch after three furious and costly frontal assaults, all of which were to cover the construction of a road to bring up tanks and bulldozers. Once the entrance was secure, the battles for The Bowl and The Hill took on a different approach. The Japanese were dug in like they were on Peleliu, but the terrain meant only one RCT could fight at a time. The limited troops needed to be used differently.

The 322nd RCT decided to bury the Japanese.

Once a tunnel or bunker entrance was discovered, the Wildcats seized it. They then packed it with smoke pots and napalm from the airfield, and sealed it by bulldozer. It was then ignited and wherever the smoke and coughing Japanese appeared elsewhere on the Hill or in the Bowl, the process was repeated. After a few days, the Japanese fiercely counter attacked when they heard or felt the approach of a bulldozer. The last hole was filled a month and 1,614 casualties later, on the 23rd of October.

The 322nd had to secure Angaur by themselves was because the other RCTs were needed elsewhere. On 26 Sep, 1944, the 323rd RCT loaded up on the USS Storm King and was sent north to secure the Ulithi Atoll so MacArthur had a deep water lagoon close by for his invasion of the Philippine island of Leyte. The rest of the 321st were pulled off the line on Angaur on 23 Sep so they could be sent to help out the 1st Marine Division on Peleliu. By 27 September the 321st were in the thick of the fighting for Bloody Nose Ridge. That battle would eventually would consume all three RCTs of the 81st Wildcat Division.

Although the Japanese suffered a devastating loss at Saipan, the Imperial Japanese General Staff considered the battle lost by the Japanese Navy, not the Japanese Army: the Americans took enormous casualties taking the island. The battle validated the new Japanese island defensive tactics of dug in ambushes, interlocking fields of fire, infiltration and night counterattacks instead of defending on the beaches. The Imperial General Staff planned for the new doctrine to buy the Japanese Navy the time necessary to create the opportunity for the Khitai Kessen, or the decisive battle that would end the war. Furthermore, the war in the Pacific would become an attritional battle and the casualties sustained in taking each island could break the will of the American people.

Lt Gen Sadae Inoue, commander of the 14th Infantry Division was charged with the defense of the Palau Islands, which were tailor made for the new defensive tactics. The three islands of Peleliu, Ngesebus, and Angaur consisted of steep ridges honeycombed with caves that were perfect for this defense. His 14000 troops had four months to prepare for an American invasion. He dug his artillery in deep and his troops prepared to fight from underground for the entire battle. One of Inoue’s regimental commanders, Kunio Nakagawa, would not slavishly follow the new doctrine though. On Peleliu, the only landing areas were small and obvious and they were covered by a small outcropping on the southern coast (The Point) that enfiladed the entire beach, which could only be assaulted from inland. On Peleliu, Nakagawa planned for the Americans to fight a Tarawa style battle at the beach, followed by a Biak and Saipan style battle further inland. And the the Marines did.

On 15 September 1944, the US 1st Marine Division landed on the island of Peleliu in order to secure MacArthur’s right flank from attack as he returned to the Philippines and secure the Palau’s airfields for future use. The US Navy’s three day bombardment had little effect on Inoue’s defenses. The Marines took enormous casualties seizing the beachhead, the airfield, and finally the Point. The Japanese counterattacked with 13 Type 95 Ha Go tanks and 200 infantry supported by artillery and mortars, and nearly retook the airfield. Japanese artillery fire from Ngesebue Island and Umurbrogol Mountain, soon to be nicknamed Bloody Nose Ridge, made every square foot of Peleliu unsafe.

On 19 Sep, the Marines began their assault on Bloody Nose Ridge. The Marines quickly found that grenades and flamethrowers were no longer sufficient to root the Japanese out of their caves because they were too deep. Every cave had to be cleared and sealed, and the Japanese were ingenious in concealing entrances and firing holes. In the next six days Chesty Puller’s 1st Marine Regiment took 70% casualties. On 20 September, the 5th Marines invaded Ngesbue Island to silence the artillery there that was devastating the troops on Peleliu.

Marine regiments, and soon US Army regiments from the 81st US “Wildcats” Infantry Division were rotated through the fight for the ridge. On 23 Sep, the 7th Marines, and the III Amphibious Corps reserve, the 321st Regimental Combat Team of the US 81st Infantry Division surrounded the mountain and continued the assault. They in turn were replaced by the 5th Marines and the 323rd RCT in early October. The 81st Infantry Division took over the battle on 15 October, after the 1st Marine Division was “fought out”, until the island was declared “secure” on 27 November, two and half months after the initial landing.

The last Japanese unit on the small island didn’t surrender until April… of 1947, and the last Japanese soldier on Peleliu wouldn’t surrender until 1955.

The 1st Marine Division took 7000 casualties, and the 81st took 2500 casualties taking Peleliu. The battle for the Palau’s was the most casualties in one operation in the entire Pacific theatre up to that time. The Imperial Japanese General Staff was correct though: a great controversy immediately arose as to whether the cost to take Peleliu was worth its contribution to MacArthur’s upcoming campaign in the Philippines.