Battle of the Bulge

Thanks Jeff,great details of U.S.Corps,Divisions,Regiments and even Company level actions.Cheers,Lee.

 

There were also some details on the large British contribution to the effective effort of the allies,in driving the Germans 'back'to their approx start line.cheers,Lee.

 

But I think Churchill was correct.! Cheers,Lee.

 

Cole and Mc Donald are simply a "must" for everyone with a serious interest in the Battle of the Bulge! I'm re-reading "A time for Trumpets" right now. Also consider Danny Parker!

 

There seems to be a lack of knowledge of Hitler's situation in this thread. Also there are exaggerations of Hitler's incompetence<br>with respect to tactics. Actually, Hitler often knew more about a situation than some of his generals and he had a <br>very good memory of military details. Mass murder has nothing to do with intelligence - the motivation is not intellectual.<br>That other mass murderer, Stalin was also quite intelligent. Both were considerably smarter than FDR. <br> But let's look at Hitler's situation at the end of 44. There is no possibility of defeating the Russians - there are simply <br>too many of them. Facing him in the West were far fewer troops, who had accomplished nowhere near as much, militarily, <br>as had the Russians. Hitler knows what few around here seem to know - if he retreats behind the Rhine, he may exist for <br>some period of time, but, once across, he won't be able to recross the Rhine and thus would have no chance for victory, <br>or negotiated settlement. Hitler's choice was quite simple and inevitable : attack his weakest enemy (the Western allies) <br>where they are thinnest, and do so in bad weather so the Allies air is grounded. Manteuffel's small slam may have had the <br>potential to destroy First Army, but it had no chance of splitting the Allies and potentially force one or both <br>to withdraw from the continent. Hitler underestimated both the mobility of the Allies and their strength,but the Allies had also<br>underestimated the German armies. There simply was no other option available that Hitler could accept. He preferred a long shot <br>to no shot at all, and so would most folks in his situation. You have to understand that no commander can know beforehand <br>precisely what will happen once the battle begins, and more than one battle was won by luck or a blunder by the other guy.<br>Sort of like a football game.

 

Actually Hitler´s plan was to beat the Allied in the west first. Then when he has the chance move the troops as soon as possible to the East and beat the Red Army. That was Hitler´s plan. Easy and simple. Total Victory in Europe for Hitler.

 

Hmmm...as a football game it would probably rate with say, Barnet v. Chelsea : maybe a lucky goal in the first 5 minutes but a predictable 8-1 by full time.

 

All these Hitler fanbois are getting on my nerves!

Hitler was delusional, the only option left was unconditional surrender. But he had decided that the german people would not deserve to survive a defeat and he acted accordingly, if you call that logical and sane behaviour, your call!

Calling "Wacht am Rhein" a long shot is ridiculous, it was an insane plan based on false informations that was impossible to realize. In the end the germans didn't even manage to go through with half of the "small solution", in the end it help to speed up the Allied victory.

 

Oh, I don't know. It's rather like Market Garden if you look at the actual German plan instead of the battle as rewritten by the allies. The southern wing that attacked through Bastogne (the 5th Panzer Army) was only the flanking movement. The actual focus of the attack was the 6th Panzer army to the north and that effort failed when they lost the bridges along the Ambleve. That main thrust ended fairly early, yet if they would have held those crossings there wasn't much north of them to hold them back. There were numerous fuel dumps around spa and the terrain opens up there to facilitate armored battle - they were no longer bottled up in the Ardennes.

At any rate, if they would have held those bridges (Peiper must have been idiot not to leave forces at Stavelot when he crossed) and if they would have gotten any of the fuel dumps just to the north of Stavelot there was an enormous German force to follow him along the Meuse. Even if they had just reached Antwerp and destroyed the port and then been defeated, they would have seriously damaged the allied war effort.

 

There is a plan......and there are forces and capabilities at hand, both have to match, otherwise you don't need to bother with a plan.

Tomorrow Liechtenstein and San Marino will attack the US of A, they will decapitate the nation by eliminating the White House, the senate and the lower house,simultanesly there will be a preemptive strike on all the CVN's as well as on all airbases and army barracks!!! How are Liechtenstein and San Marino pulling this off??? Well they have forged an alliance with the Klingons!

This is as realistic as "Wacht am Rhein" was on the 16th of december 1944.

The germans didn't even have half the means to pull off the "Kleine Lösung", Antwerps was not even a brain fart!

 

Operation Bodenplatte and Wacht am Rhein. The final destruction of the German fighting power. Hitler was truly the best Allied spy they ever had.

 

The main concept for the Germans is that the Americans would behave exactly like the French did in 1940. Assuming that a second battle would go exactly like the first isone ofthe worse mistakes that can be made. Losing the German army would not have been any kind of victory, it just made things easier fo the Soviets.

 

Outside of Barbarossa, The Battle Of The Bulge was the most delusional idea of Der Dummkopf, Hitler.

Let's say he captures Antwerp during the Bulge. Wouldn't they need a supply line ? So, The Allies foot soldiers pull back from this new "German Corridor" and the 8th AF, bomb that corridor to oblivion.... In about 2 days.

Instead of sacrificing those divisions for an insane, mad dash to Antwerp, these same divisions would have formed one hell of a defense along the Ruhr. Maybe, under General Kesselring.

Hitler was an idiot and should never be thought of as a commander or statesman. Just a delusional murderer.

 

I disagree, mostly. The Germans had concentrated enormous forces and there were enough allied supplies in Antwerp and south of Antwerp to keep them mobile and fed. Meanwhile, everyone to the Northeast of that position (the entire British army) is cut off from supplies.

I'm not saying it would have won the war for them, but they would have done tremendous damage. It's one thing to have those forces bottled up in the Ardennes and quite another to have them on the coastal plain. It would have been Caen all over again, except this time 1/3rd of the allied forces would have been totally cut off from supply. Keep in mind that wartime propaganda leads us to look at the 5th Panzer army (Bastogne) while in fact, the "schwerpunkt" of the battle was the 6th Panzer army to the north and that army was very close to breaking out when they lost the bridges.

The air forces were not much of a factor in the Bulge. They came in and bombed Malmedy three (!) times during the battle even though it was in American hands, and the weather just got worse in January.

I *think* they would have been beaten within a month or so, but the port would have been destroyed and the allies would be back to trucking everything from Normandy. The British would have been in a terrible position without supplies, and would have suffered terrible losses and likely would have blamed Eisenhower. We might have met the Russians on the Rhine instead of the Elbe or conversely, with reduced pressure in the west the war might have lasted another six months.

 

It should be noted that the weather cleared on December 23rd, allowing the Allied Air Forces to target railway transportation centres to the East of the battlefield. On that day, 423 heavy bombers of the 8th Air Force were operating, together with 632 fighters, in addition to 624 medium bombers from the 9th AF. The clear weather continued until the beginning of January. On 27th December, ULTRA decrypted a message from Heeresgruppe B complaining that the Allied Air Forces had 'dominated the skies and made...systematic destruction of all traffic centres.....the progressive destruction of the railway lines and stations and of multiple road junctions in the Eifel (is) making the supply situation tense and dangerous......trains had to be unloaded along the Rhine...too far from troops given the lack of fuel and tonnage space needed'

The best source for air activity in the Ardennes Offensive remains Danny S Parker's 'To Win The Winter Sky' from which I took the above info.

 

December 23rd is when they began mistakenly bombing Malmedy thinking it was Zulpich and later bombed Malmedy again thinking it was St. Vith and then bombed it a third time for no reason that has ever been ascertained...

The Germanbattle plan hinged on taking the allied supplies, which is sort of the point. If they had broken out, there would have been little need for resupply from Germany. There were millions of tons of supplies all around Antwerp and as far south as Spa. In fact, Peiper missed a half million gallons of gas just a kilometer or so off his route at Stavelot. There were thousands of pieces of artillery and armor sitting in numerous depots between there and Antwerp so if they had broken out of the Ardennes (which they almost did!) they would have had all the supplies they needed while at the same time depriving the allies of those supplies. The northern prong was already using a number of Shermans and they simply would have collected more as they moved north. The southern prong would have just turned north now that the way was open - they would have no reason to get bogged down at Bastogne.

The air forces would have had periods of clear weather, but for most of the next month they would have been shut down just as they were through January of 45.

Again, I don't think it would have won the war or anything close to that, but it would have been a real disaster for the western allies instead of a near-disaster.

 

A lot of misconceptions in some posts. I will answer in detail later on.

 

Agreed. Some posters quote sources, others do not.......

 

They definitely made sure the German offensive would not get supplies to continue their attack. Pretty much end of story there for the Wacht am Rhein, I think.
I guess Patton was the only calm man saying " Let them go all the way to Paris". The only thing that was going to happen was that the Germans would lose all their important equipment.