The last great offensive of WW II. 60 years ago today!

[southpaw]

The last ditch effort by the Germans to stem the Allied tide started Dec. 16, 1944. It would be known as the "Battle of the Bulge".

I thought the following article was quite inciteful and put the battle in perspective.

Sixty years ago at dawn

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | On December 16, 1944, General Bradley came to my headquarters to discuss ways and means of overcoming our acute shortages in infantry replacements. Just as he entered my office, a staff officer came in to report slight penetrations of our lines in the front of General Middleton's VIII Corps and the right of General Gerow's V Corps in the Ardennes region. . . . - Dwight Eisenhower, "Crusade in Europe"


It had started with the dawn: an unexpectedly heavy artillery barrage. How had the retreating Germans managed to mass so many guns? Was this just a local attack, or a feint to distract the attention from a major blow elsewhere?


Soon it became clear that the enemy had massed more than artillery. The Sixth Panzer Army, a mobile reserve that had disappeared from the view of Allied intelligence, reappeared. When the barrage lifted, German armor came pouring out of the woods, headed for the seam between the British and American armies.


Instead of sheltering behind the Siegfried Line, the "retreating" Germans were advancing. Through an only lightly defended 50-mile stretch of the Ardennes.


Allied intelligence had collected reports of a transfer of German troops from the Eastern to the Western front in the fall of 1944, and there was ample evidence that they were being reassembled in the Ardennes, but word never filtered up to headquarters. No one had connected the dots. (Sound familiar?)


The weather wasn't on our side, either. The coldest, snowiest winter in European memory made Allied air superiority irrelevant. The panzers sped on, opening a growing wedge. Allied headquarters was compelled to sacrifice unity of command as the German advance split the British and American armies; Ike had to designate separate commanders for each sector of a crumbling front.


In the heat of battle, confusion reigned. Disguised as American MPs, English-speaking, American-accented Germans were sending relief convoys down the wrong roads, or into murderous ambushes. Just liberated French cities were exposed again, and Paris was jittery. The British press demanded that Eisenhower turn command of the land forces over to Montgomery - or anyone else competent.

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Von Runstedt and his staff had taken everything into account except the sheer cussedness of the American resistance. The 7th Armored held onto the crossroads at St. Vith longer than anyone would have imagined possible. And at Bastogne, the key to the battle, the 101st Airborne refused to yield at all, and entered legend.


According to the German battle plan, Bastogne was to be overrun on the second day of the operation; it never was. General Anthony McAuliffe's one-word response to the German commander's surrender terms would become a classic summation of American defiance: "Nuts!"


Forced to split up and go around isolated pockets of American resistance, the German advance slowed. Unlike 1940, there was no breakout. Methodically, the Allied command drew up new defensive lines, then held. And to the South, Patton was turning the whole Third Army on a dime and hurtling to the rescue . . . .


Before it was over, the Battle of the Bulge would involve three German armies, the equivalent of 29 divisions; three American armies, or 31 divisions; and three British divisions augmented by Belgian, Canadian and French troops.


More than a million men would be drawn into the battle. The Germans would lose an estimated 100,000 irreplaceable troops, counting their killed, wounded and captured; the Americans would suffer some 80,000 casualties, including 19,000 killed - that's a rate of 500 a day - and 23,554 captured.


But the Allied forces held. And the war went on, moving across the Rhine and then into the heartland of the enemy. Against all bitter expectations, the conflict in the European theater would be over in four months.


There's a different kind of war on now, but war itself remains the same brutal experience. And it invokes the same admixture of fear and desperation, bloody miscalculation and incredible heroism, over-confidence and unchanging defeatism.


Much was gained by that decisive victory in the Ardennes 60 years ago, but victory obscures as much as it reveals. How the Battle of the Bulge turned out may seem inevitable now that history has unfolded but, as Wellington was supposed to have said of Waterloo, "it was a damned close-run thing."


The passage of time erodes memory, and we tend to forget the pain, the sacrifices, the mercurial swings of public opinion, the alternating hopes and fears, the daily uncertainty of war . . . and the necessity of endurance.

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[LionPride]

Good read southpaw - Thanks.

[southpaw]

Thanks LP, most people forget that if the Germans had broken through and split the Anglo-American lines and captured Antwerp WW II might have ended a little differently.

[El-Moldo]

The Russians were on the doorstep of Eastern Germany. They may have been able to take over all of Germany at that time. Would THEY have stopped there?

[southpaw]

That is one scenario. Another is that a German breakthrough might have caused a collapse between the Allies. Germany would have had a better bargaining position to negotiate a settlement and end the war on the western front. Leaving the Nazis and the Russians to fight a death match in Poland.

The Russians in the winter of '44 had serious supply problems and really couldn't mount a serious offensive until Spring. With no pressure and bombing from the west the Germans could have put up a much stiffer defense.

[southpaw]

How would the modern media cover the "Battle of the Bulge".

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War Unwinnable In Face Of Renewed German Offensive
Transterrestrial Musings ^ | December 17th, 2004 | Rand Simberg

Posted on 12/17/2004 6:50:17 AM PST by NonZeroSum

December 17th, 1944

PARIS (Routers) Long-time critics of the Roosevelt administration declared themselves vindicated today, as the Germans began a renewed offensive yesterday in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, opening a huge hole in the "Allied" lines and throwing back troops for miles, with previously unimaginable US casualties.

Early yesterday morning, eight German armored divisions and thirteen German infantry divisions launched an all-out attack on five divisions of the United States 1st Army. Hundreds of heavy guns, howitzers and multiple-rocket launchers were fired on American positions.

The 5th and 6th Panzer armies, consisting of some eleven divisions, broke through the Loshein Gap against the American divisions protecting the region. The 6th Panzer Army then headed north while the Fifth Panzer Army went south. The latter army attacked the U. S. VIII Corps some 100 miles to the south, which was quickly surrounded, resulting in mass surrenders of unprepared American soldiers. By any reasonable and objective standard, it was an utter military disaster for the "Allied" forces.

It all came as a complete shock to the Roosevelt administration who, rumor has it, had been informed by the head of OSS that the imminent collapse of the German army was a "lead-pipe cinch." This only confirmed reasonable pre-election suspicions that the administration and General Eisenhower were operating on flawed intelligence, and led the nation into an invasion of Europe on clearly false pretenses.

This new setback came amidst continuing problems with the new government in France, installed by the "Allies." Many consider it a puppet, lacking legitimacy, and it has proven itself inept. The situation is chaotic, and "President" De Gaulle has shown himself to be unable to control food riots, or prevent the commission of massacres of former regime loyalists and the German troops who had supported the overthrown legitimate Vichy government. Though elections are promised sometime in the future, there is widespread doubt, given the infighting between FRLs, communists, and Gaullists, that peaceful and orderly elections can be held any time soon or that civil war can be prevented.

Many have pointed out that the troop strength on the continent has been inadequate since the invasion at Normandy last June, and that this only confirmed that. In addition, they say, it didn't help that, due to incompetence at the highest levels, up to the newly installed Secretary of War Hull, many troops died as a result of our own bombs.

"They ignored our warnings about getting embroiled in a quagmire here, and this campaign has been a disaster, from the hundreds killed in training, to the thousands who died on the beaches in France," said an anonymous State Department source. He continued, "We've also shamed ourselves before the world with our reckless policies and atrocities." In the wake of all this, some, off the record, are suggesting that it's time to consider impeachment of the recently reelected president.

Back in Washington, despite lofty rhetoric from the White House about the "liberation" of Europe, many had always been skeptical about the prospects for defeating Germany. As they correctly point out, the Germans are after all defending their homeland, and no matter how bad the alleged depravations of the Nazi regime, all familiar with the German character know that they can be depended on to fight to the death against any foreign invader, no matter how well intentioned. Many of the German dead or captured for the past few weeks have been adolescents, some only fourteen or fifteen years old, with dead, untrained yet willing hands clinging to their rifles. Seeing such images of dedication to the cause, it's difficult for many to believe that victory is possible.

As a result, the new setback has renewed rumbling among some that the time has come to seek an accord with the Nazi regime that could allow a withdrawal from Europe with honor, and not lose any more American troops in a hopeless cause, let alone bog them down for an unforeseeable period of time. "It was Japan that attacked us, not Germany," pointed out a Senate staffer. "We need to focus our resources on the true enemy in the Pacific."


Some staffers on Capitol Hill implied that the timing itself of the offensive was suspicious. "Hitler wanted Roosevelt to be reelected, so that he could continue to fight a war against a sick, senile incompetent. Had he started this offensive before the election back on November 7th, everyone would have seen what a disaster this president has been on foreign policy, and Hitler would have had to confront a young, vibrant Tom Dewey."

Others, representing moderate Democrats, seemed resigned. "We're stuck with a stubborn megalomaniac who's eventually going to have us at war with the rest of the world. How long will our Russian allies put up with this kind of behavior? How can we found or host a 'United Nations' when we ourselves are the author of so much aggression?"


(Copyright 2004, by Rand Simberg)

[LionPride]

Well, that pretty much sums it up. Funny how history tends to repeat itself, and how some easily forget........