The 101stAirborne and its allied units, the bravest of the brave, could only take so much after the siege. The SS hit them hard, and the Division shattered.
They were forced to break up, and escape and evade. There were about 15,000 men still in and around Bastogne. Of those, 8,000 were captured, 3,000 were casualties, and the rest escaped in ones and twos.
Most of the officers, including the acting commander, General McAuliffe, were killed or captured.
In addition to General Custer, Third Army lost General Gaffey, Colonel Abrams, Colonel Harkins, and other fine officers.
Other units in the Bulge were hit very hard, particularly Ninth Division. Its command post was overrun, and the Division Commander, General Craig, and the promising Chief of Staff, Colonel Westmoreland, were killed.
However, Custer's arrogance and disobedience may have actually shortened the war.
Sixth SS Panzer, and other units around Bastogne, including Panzer Lehr and the Fifth Parachute Division, turned northwest again, toward the Meuse, and there was almost no one to stop them.
But then the weather broke, and the Royal Air Force Tempests and American Army Air Force Mustangs went after the German supply lines around St. Vith.
Custer was not the only one who remembered the «mistake» at Falaise. Montgomery noted the extended German lines, and brought the 21stArmy Corps down, and other American units stopped the SS in their tracks.
Now there would be no suggestion of escape. Tactical air swept the roads and forests, and almost all of the German Panzers and their transportation, support and artillery were destroyed.
Sepp Dietrich was killed in one air raid, and his replacement, Herman Priess, ordered the remnants of the army to fall back toward Germany, in spite of Hitler's raving. But the soldiers trudging through the snow still fared badly.
There were fragments of the 101stin the forests, and they tore at the Nazis like wolves, getting the last drop of bloody revenge. More than ten Germans moving in a group were asking to be strafed.
Of the twenty-four German divisions ordered into the Watch On Rhine offensive of the Bulge, all were obliterated, and their names stricken from the German rolls. Only a few thousand of the Germans who marched west ever came back to Germany. While not as disastrous as the collapse of Army Group Center in Russia, this debacle definitely shortened the war.
German losses were over 120,000; American just under 100,000.
Other effects of Custer's disaster are fairly well known.
Montgomery, who was almost as incautious in his words as Custer, commented loudly and repeatedly on how, once again, it took the few British divisions in the ETO to save the Allies.
That was the final straw for Eisenhower. He declared it was either Monty or him. Roosevelt went to Churchill, who reluctantly relieved Montgomery. However, Eisenhower was forced to resign as well, and Omar Bradley became Supreme Commander.
There are those historians, particularly recently, who see the effect of Custer's death ranging even further.
They blame Custer for the 1948 Republican presidential debacle, when Vice President Harry S. Truman and his running mate, Omar Bradley, demolished Senator Dewey and Eisenhower.
Still further, they say this positioned Bradley to run in 1952, when he publicly shamed the Republican candidate, Eisenhower, for not squelching the ultraconservative right for, among other things, calling Eisenhower's mentor, General Marshall, a Communist.
This sparked Taft, McCarthy and others of their ilk to flee the party to form the Constitutionalists, and shatter the Republicans so badly that, from Roosevelt's era to the turn of the century, only one Republican has gone to the White House, and that for a single term.
Perhaps.
But I think not.
I don't think any single man can affect history that deeply. Even if Custer had not been in the position he was, and, say, George Patton had lived to see the Second World War, and there had been no disaster in the snow, I don't think matters would have been changed that much.
History, in spite of the popular phrase, is, in fact, a rather constant jade.
Compadres
S.M. Stirling & Richard Foss
The man who would be President in half an hour hopped into the open carriage with boyish energy and eyed the still figure who sat waiting for him. The big, somberly dressed man was as quiet as a cat, a relaxation that was complicit of motion, ready without tension.
"Are you ready, Senator?"
"Can anybody ever be ready for something like this?" The soft accent of the southern desert was still strong in his voice. "Twenty thousand people staring at the son of a mule driver while he takes the oath that means he is one heartbeat away from the Presidency?"
The Vice President flashed his famous grin, and the Senator noticed a few more gray hairs in his bushy reddish mustache. "We faced nearly that many at San Juan Hill, or at least it seemed so at the time. The Spanish were better armed, and considering the acumen of Senator Bryan, I should say they were also better led. Buck up, Francisco."
The Senator smiled. "You know, Theodore, you are the only one who calls me that."
"And you are about the only one courteous enough to remember my Christian name as well, no matter how I may correct the others when they shorten it. Back when I was Police Commissioner a pressman told me that as I was always making news, printing my name in the briefest manner possible saved paper and ink."
I have been called many things, Francisco thought. All the way back to the day at the mine…
"Git yo' back into it, y'fuckin greaser!"
The miner rose, slowly. He was a dark young man of medium height, turned browner still by the desert sun. The great open-pit mine around them rang with the sounds of pick and sledgehammer and shovel, with the clang of ore thrown into steel cocopans, with the voices of men and the hooves of mules. Distantly, acrump! came as dynamite shattered stone; the air smelled of rock dust, hot stone, sweat. Harsh southwestern sunlight streaked sweat through the white dust on the miner's face, bearing the bitter taste of alkali to his lips; heat reflected back from the white stone in an eye-squinting glare. Those lips quirked in the beginnings of a smile as he thought how it must sting the skin of the foreman, which had turned boil-red and hung in strips despite the wide hat he wore. He was from Alabama, with a cracker's long, lanky build and pale, washed-out blue eyes.
"I cannot haul the cocopan myself, senor," he pointed out reasonably. "And the mules need water and rest."
Then his hand moved with blurring swiftness, up under the rear of the baggy, dirty peon blouse he wore. His face broke into a smile, showing teeth nearly as bright as the stubby-bladed knife now resting in the soft skin beneath the foreman's throat. The tip was right next to the artery, just dimpling the surface, and a bead of sweat curved as it ran past. The dark man's voice sounded as calm and patient as before.
"… And if you call me a fucking greaser again, hijo da puta, I will cut your throat. Do you understand this?"
Hatred glared back at him, through the eyes of a man driven to the edge of madness by prickly heat rash and fatigue. "You're finished here-finished," the man croaked.
"I quit," the miner said succinctly. "And because you are a brave man to speak so, with a knife at your throat, I will let you live this once."
He stepped back and lowered the weapon, looking around at the circle of silence that had fallen among those who could see the little drama.
"Adios!" he called, grinning at the cheers that rang out; cheers from hispano and Anglo and the few Chinese as well. Then he cut the mule's traces with a few swift jerks of the steel, vaulted to its back (how unfortunate that it was not a fine stallion with a long sweeping mane) and flourished his sombrero.