Operation Lüttich was a codename given to a German counter-attack during the Battle of Normandy,
which took place around the American positions near Mortain from 7 August to 13 August 1944.
(Lüttich is the German name for the city of Liège in Belgium, where the Germans had won a victory in the early days
of August 1914 during World War I.) The offensive is also referred to in American and British histories of the
Battle of Normandy as the Mortain counter-offensive.
The assault was ordered by Adolf Hitler, to eliminate the gains made by the First United States Army during
Operation Cobra and the subsequent weeks, and by reaching the coast in the region of Avranches at the base of the
Cotentin peninsula, cut off the units of the Third United States Army which had advanced into Brittany.
The main German striking force was the XLVII Panzer Corps, with one and a half SS Panzer Divisions and two
Wehrmacht Panzer Divisions. Although they made initial gains against the defending U.S. VII Corps, they were soon
halted and Allied aircraft inflicted severe losses on the attacking troops, eventually destroying nearly half of
the German tanks involved in the attack.[2] Although fighting continued around Mortain for six days, the American
forces had regained the initiative within a day of the opening of the German attack.
As the German commanders on the spot had warned Hitler in vain, there was little chance of the attack succeeding,
and the concentration of their armoured reserves at the western end of the front in Normandy soon led to disaster,
as they were outflanked to their south and the front to their east collapsed, resulting in many of the German
troops in Normandy being trapped in the Falaise Pocket.
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