(Stills from the footage of 2./SS-Pz.Rgt.1 at the entrance of Stoumont, Dec. 1944)
The Panther of Untersturmfhrer Kaufmann (211). a very interesting rear view gives us a glance of the spare road wheel stored on the Panthers engine deck, hanging from the jack bracket is a dented bucket and we can see the distinctive damage to starboard exhaust that will help identify this vehicle after its loss. Also is a better view of the burning M4 High-Speed Tractor of the US 143rd AAA Gun Battalion.

kampfgruppe:

After reaching their objective, a Volksgrenadier battalion commander briefs his Kompanie commanders.

kampfgruppe:

Supply train horses of a German unit “watered” in a Luxembourg brook. This photo is probably taken during Dec. 23-26 time frame, before the sky completely cleared up, making any movement during the day impossible for fear of U.S. air raids.

StuG. III Ausf.G of an unknown SS unit during the Ardennes offensive.

Two American soldiers inspect a Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.J from 6. Kompanie/SS-Panzer-Regiment 1 knocked out by M10 tank destroyers of the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion near Wirtzfeld on December 17.

Unternehmen Strösser

The 6. Panzer-Armee were informed on 10 December 1944 of another special mission, this time of a more orthodox nature, intended to facilitate its advances. This was Unternehmen Strösser, which called for airborne troops in the early hours of the first day behind the American positions in the north, to either open the roads in he Hohes Venn for the oncoming armor or to form a secure position between Eupen and Verviers during the period before a defensive front could be established.
 Chosen to command the operation was a much-decorated veteran of the airborne forces, Oberst Friedrich von der Heydte, who a short time before had been posted from commanding Fallschirm. Regt. 6,  fighting in Holland, to build a new paratroop training school at Aalten. The school had just started to function when, on 8 Dec. he was ordered to report at once to Generaloberst Kurt Student at the 1. Fallschirm. Armee headquarters at Dinxperlo, about ten kilometers to the south.
 He was ordered to form a Kampfgruppe of 800 men, taken from each of the  regiments of II. Fallschirmkorps. Because secrecy would have been compromised by moving an entire regiment. 

Around this time in 1944 Skozeny’s commandos were training and prepping for the Ardennes. Men from every unit on the Western front was being pulled and trained for an operation that was going to be, to quote A.H. “The next Dunkirk.”
The already worn down Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and SS Divisions were pulled for this mission which would later be known to the Germans as Unternehmen Wacht Am Rhein. This operation was broken into smaller ones known as: Unternehmen Bodenplatte, Unternehmen Grief and Unternehmen Wärung.
To the world, it would later be known as The Battle of the Bulge…

A Jagdpanzer IV/70 (V) from SS-Panzerjger-Abteilung 1 off the road and into an adjacent field to bypass the wrecked armored cars, halftracks and light tanks from the 18th Cavalry Squadron, 14th Cavalry Group that was ambushed by Kampfgruppe Hansen during their attack towards Poteu from Recht. The lack of Zimmerit indicates this vehicles was produced after mid-September 1944 although a cine film
(Die Deutsche Wochenschau Nr. 747) it was still fitted with the earlier horizontal cylindrical exhaust muffler that was ordered to be replaced by the vertical Flammentöter flame suppressing exhaust in August.

Under the code name “Rabenhügel,” Heersgruppe B,G, and H were ordered to furnish Allied tanks, vehicles and uniforms to Grafenwöhr for use by Obersturmbannfürer Ötto Skorzeny’s Panzerbrigade 150 during the Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (Ardennes Offensive). M8 armored cars such as this one captured by 116. Panzer-Division in late autumn of 1944, should have been turned over. Records show that Panzerbrigade 150 was equipped with a few American scout cars and armored cars although no photographic evidence appear to exist that purport that any of them were M8s’s. The bumper indicates this one was captured from the Third Army’s 42nd Cavalry Squadron.

A Panzerkampfwagen IV Ausf. J belonging to Kampfgruppe Peiper, Le Gleize Belgium, 26.12.1944.