By October, and continuing throughout the autumn of 1944, the various Allied intelligence staffs were aware that the Germans had assembled the Sixth Panzer Army in the area east of Aachen. However, the positioning of its divisions was misinterpreted by Allied intelligence as preparation for defending the Reich against what SHAEF defined as “a final showdown before the winter,” rather than as the preparation for a massive counteroffensive. The lone exception was the astute Third Army G-2, Col. Oscar Koch, who was not deceived by the German buildup opposite the Ardennes. Even as Patton's Third Army staff was planning a major new offensive, to commence on December 19, to crack the Siegfried Line and drive to the Rhine, Eisenhower had already made up his mind, “regardless of the results” of the forthcoming offensive, to transfer divisions from Third Army to the northern armies to support a breaching of the Rhine and the main assault into the heartland of the Reich. While Koch closely noted signs of further German buildup, Third Army was also planning measures to counter any potential threat in the Ardennes so that, as Patton told his staff, “We'll be in a position to meet whatever happens.”
By mid-December there was something of a lull in the bloodletting, brought about largely by the weather. In the rugged, heavily forested Ardennes, with its poor road net, Bradley had taken what he later described as “a calculated risk” by lightly defending what had traditionally been a major German invasion route. On the thinly held front lines were only two newly arrived, untested American infantry divisions and two battered veteran divisions of Troy Middleton's VIII Corps in the process of absorbing replacements. In such vile weather it was deemed unlikely that the Germans could mount a serious threat. Moreover, despite Germany's historical pattern of initiating counteroffensives when things looked darkest, it was assumed by the Allied high command that there was simply no way the Germans could secretly pull off such an operation in the Ardennes. As early as November 25 Patton had disagreed, noting that “First Army is making a terrible mistake in leaving VIII Corps static, it is highly probable that the Germans are building up east of them.”
The dispersal of American units in the Ardennes was a direct result of Eisenhower's broad-front strategy, which had been reduced to, as one historian has noted, “the premise that ‘more is better'—that is, more tanks, more bullets, more beans, more fuel, and above all more men. ‘More men' was Eisenhower's principal worry on 16 December 1944, not the threat of a German attack.” Indeed, the existing situation in the Ardennes, concludes Russell Weigley, revealed a fundamental and damaging flaw: “It was not that the broad-front strategy was wrong; the more basic trouble was that the Anglo-American alliance had not given Eisenhower enough troops to carry it out safely…. There were not enough Anglo-American divisions, or enough replacements for casualties in the existing divisions. Eisenhower could not create a reserve unless he abandoned the broad-front strategy.”
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