“The division didn’t seek publicity; they had a war to fight. And fight they did. That’s why the 3^rd Armored Division was the best in the west.”

By Daniel Bolger

DURING WORLD WAR II, the United States Army fielded 16 armored divisions. All of them fought in the European Theater. But which one made the greatest contribution to the Allied victory?

Of course, every G.I. who served in one of these illustrious units would argue passionately that his own outfit played a decisive role. And to be sure, each American armored division did its part in the greatest war in history. Soldiers of courage and skill wore all 16 patches. But all unit pride aside, eight decades later, it’s possible to assess battle performance a bit more objectively.

As brave and bold though they were, soldiers of the 11^th, 12^th, 13^th, 14^th, 16^th, and 20^th armored divisions didn’t see much action until the spring of 1945; they helped finish off the German army. Impressive work, but not quite as important to the overall war effort as their predecessors.

The 9^th and 10^th armored divisions each played major roles in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and January of 1945. Both served in brigade-strength combat commands, to include the valiant defense of the key crossroads of Bastogne, Belgium. Without those capable tank crews, the 101^st Airborne Division’s stubborn but lightly-armed paratroopers and glider-borne infantry might well have succumbed. But while the 9^th and 10^th earned accolades in the Ardennes, they did miss the first six months of the 1944-1945 campaign on the European continent.

The 7^th and 8^th armored divisions arrived at the end of the wet, grim autumn of 1944. Both first saw action among the dank forests and gray “dragon’s teeth” pylons and pillboxes that marked the German Westwall border fortifications, also known as the Siegfried Line. The 7^th battled German panzers in the snowy fir stands outside St. Vith, stalling the German advance in the Bulge. For its part, the 8^th blunted the German Nordwind winter offensive in Lorraine. As with the 9^th and 10^th armored divisions, the 7^th and 8^th were right where they needed to be to help halt the great German counteroffensive of December 1944.

The 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th armored divisions led Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s renowned Third Army breakout and pursuit across France in the high summer of 1944. While it lasted, it was war American-style: fast, mobile and violent. All three divisions joined the bloody struggles along the German border in the fall of 1944. When the Bulge attack erupted, the 4^th armored punched through to link up with Americans surrounded in Bastogne. These divisions, especially the 4^th, can offer justifiable claims to major contributions to the May 1945 Allied victory in Europe.

But when you get down to it, though, only three American armored divisions were there for all of the toughest fights. Some might argue for the 1^st Armored Division. Known as “Old Ironsides,” the division fought in North Africa and then in Italy. The 1^st took Rome just before D-Day in Normandy. Although capable and spirited, soldiers of the division operated on a peninsula no well-suited to armored warfare. They were great performers in a secondary theater.

The 2^nd Armored Division has a stronger case. That division, too, landed in North Africa in November of 1942. The 2^nd had been formed and molded by Patton himself, and in his typical way, he’d bestowed upon it one flashy nickname: “Hell on Wheels.”

The 2^nd fought in Sicily and then moved to England to stage for the 1944 Normandy campaign. Landing in France just after D-Day, 2^nd Armored Division soldiers fought all summer in the Normandy hedgerows. When the Americans broke out in late July of 1944, 2^nd Armored Division led the way in the race across France. They too engaged in the bloody contest along the German border in the rainy autumn of 1944. The 2^nd Armored Division and 2^nd Panzer Division squared off just east of the Meuse River crossings of Dec. 24 to 26, 1944. The Americans won decisively. In the final carve-up of Germany, the 2^nd Armored Division closed the north side of the Ruhr Pocket, bagging some 376,000 German prisoners. With its distinctive “Hell on Wheels” moniker and long list of achievements, the 2^nd Armored Division just might have been America’s top tank division.

But there was one better.

The 3^rd Armored Division, like the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th, didn’t join the war until the hectic weeks immediately after D-Day. The division landed in Normandy without a nickname and under the command of an amiable, even-tempered U.S. Military Academy classmate of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley. His name was Leroy Hugh Watson. They called that West Point Class of 1915 “the class the stars fell on”; a record 36 per cent of graduates would go on to achieve the rank of general. Unfortunately, Watson couldn’t keep his own stars. Overmatched in the confusion of the July 1944 American breakout, the general was relieved of command of the 3^rd Armored Division.

The 2^nd Armored Division provided the backfill, and he was the right guy. Brigadier General (later Major General) Maurice Rose hadn’t gone to West Point. The 45-year-old Rose started as a National Guard infantry private back in World War I, gained his lieutenant bars and was wounded in action. Between the wars he’d gone to the usual Army schools and dusty garrison posts, transferred from infantry to cavalry, and seemed destined to retire as another obscure major, maybe a lieutenant colonel. Then came World War II.

Rose rocketed up the ranks from major to full colonel. Patton himself made him chief of staff of the 2^nd Armored Division, and when the unit deployed to North Africa, Rose was there. Most division chiefs-of-staff spent their war far back in a tent staring at a wall map; not Rose. He earned two Silver Stars for gallantry in combat.

This tall, taciturn “mustang” took command of the 3^rd Armored Division as the Normandy front broke wide open. The soldiers of the 3^rd Armored Division were already well-trained. Now they had a leader worthy of their steel.

Energized by Rose, who spent days and nights with his forward elements, the 3^rd Armored Division attacked to close the Falaise Pocket. Some 20,000 Germans escaped, but tens of thousands did not, nor did their hundreds of smashed and abandoned tanks, trucks and guns. With the Germans on the run, the 3^rd Armored Division pursued with a vengeance, bouncing the Seine, Marne and Aisne rivers.

Whenever lead elements halted on the near side, Rose took charge. He personally cleared damaged bridges on foot and under fire. He didn’t say much; his deeds spoke volumes.

The 3^rd Armored Division swiftly crossed the old trench lines of the Great War. When on Aug. 31, 1944, Allied code-breakers identified German columns retreating near Mons, Belgium, Rose’s 3^rd Armored Division were ordered to head east at full tilt toward the German border. The armored task forces pivoted 90 degrees to push hard to the north. The idea was to cut off and destroy German units trying to pull out of France. In a brutal meeting engagement on Sept. 2 to 3, Rose’s troops shot up German trucks and tanks, killing many and taking some 8,000 prisoners. They didn’t hang around to admire their handiwork.

Instead, with Rose leading in his jeep, the division hurtled towards the German border. Supposedly the Westwall pill boxes were empty. One good, hard push would do it, maybe allowing a final advance straight into Nazi Germany to end the war.

Again, the division outran withdrawing German elements, gobbling up Belgian cities: Huy, Liege, Verviers, and Eupen.

On Sept. 12, the 3^rd Armored Division reached the Westwall. In three days of vicious close combat among dragon’s teeth, minefields, barbed wire aprons and concrete bunkers—all very much manned—the division broke through.

Then it halted. The 3^rd Armored Division was out of gas. The division had raced so far, so fast that they’d motored past the ability of Allied supply trucks to keep up. The same sorry scene happened in the British area up north and in other American zones, too.

The headlong summer advance was over. Now came the chill, damp and gloom of continental autumn. A war of attrition followed as desperate Germans contested every yard of their borderlands.

The 3^rd Armored Division did its part in the bloody struggle to secure Aachen, Germany, as well as the ill-fated, blood-soaked attempts to take the Hürtgen Forest. Many Americans died. Scores fell wounded from tree-burst shells; Rose himself caught fragments in both of his upper shoulders.

In perhaps the only positive news of this ugly period, the division adopted the nickname “Spearhead” bestowed by Chicago Tribune war correspondent Jack Thompson. The division had been first out of the Normandy hedgerows — some would dispute that — first across river after river, and certainly first through the Westwall and into Germany. All good, but when would the Spearheaders get going again? The Germans would see to it.

A massive winter counteroffensive in the Ardennes was not the sort of thing taught in German General Staff coursework, but former Austrian-born lance corporal Adolf Hitler wasn’t much burdened by military common sense. Trusting in his mystic intuition, the Nazi dictator ordered the attack. Beginning on Dec. 16, the Germans tore open a 60-mile stretch of the thinly held American lines. As in the glory days of the 1940 blitzkrieg, panzers led the way.

The Americans scrambled to block the German thrusts. Major General Maurice Rose’s Spearhead division held the far end of the northern shoulder. To the division’s rear was the Meuse River and German victory. But thanks to sharp-shooting Sherman tank crews, gutsy half-track infantrymen, tireless howitzer gunners, hard-working engineers, all the logistics troops — not to mention peerless leadership — the Germans never made it past the 3^rd Armored Division. Nazi SS tanks and infantry hit the Americans again and again. They did not get through.

When the huge German push failed, and after tough fighting to compress the resultant Bulge, a spring offensive loomed.

When the weather warmed, the 3^rd Armored Division punched east. After a week of tangling with German rear guards in battered towns, on March 6, 1945, the division —Spearhead indeed — took the vast, ruined city of Cologne on the rain-swollen Rhine.

The Germans blew the great bridge there, but to the south, the U.S. 9^th Armored Division grabbed the bridge at Remagen. Engineers got to work and the 3rd Armored Division crossed the Rhine. Their next task was to encircle the shattered Ruhr industrial region and the German contingent defending therein.

The 3^rd Armored Division linked up with the 2^nd Armored Division at Lippstadt on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945. Ten days later, Spearheaders liberated the horrific Nazi slave labor camp at Nordhausen, a reminder of why this war mattered. Three weeks later, Nazi Germany surrendered.

The 3^rd Armored Division advanced all the way from the Normandy beaches to the heart of Germany. In 231 days of combat, they’d lost 2,540 soldiers killed and 7,331 wounded with 632 Sherman tanks destroyed — more than any other American armored division. They’d also taken 76,720 German prisoners and inflicted an unknown number of casualties on their foe. In all the big battles, the 3rd had been right there.

Major General Maurice Rose didn’t get to attend any VE-Day celebrations. In his characteristic manner, after dark on Good Friday, March 30, 1945, he was out front in a jeep when a wrong turn brought him face to face with a Waffen SS Tiger II tank. The enemy tank commander aimed his burp gun and killed Rose with one long burst. To the very end, he led from the front. His soldiers responded accordingly. In that regard, too, the Spearhead Division was unique.

Like their fallen commander, the division didn’t seek publicity; they had a war to fight. And fight they did. That’s why the 3^rd Armored Division was the best in the West.

Daniel Bolger is the author of The Panzer Killers: The Untold Story of a Fighting General and His Spearhead Tank Division’s Charge into the Third Reich. A retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, Bolger was a combat commander in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A top graduate at the Citadel and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, he earned a PhD in history from the University of Chicago. His military awards include five Bronze Star medals (one for valor) and the Combat Action Badge. He teaches history at North Carolina State University.