Battle of the Bulge

ilovepotatos

ilovepotatos

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I'm playing through a simulation computer game right now, trying to get Germany's last offensive working. Honestly, I think they were insane.

What kind of army sends Volksgrenadiers onto the front line of the most important offensive of the season? By the time the bulge was attacked by the Germans, Russia was already well on their way to winning the war, but for the sake of this thread, lets please keep it to the western front.

So what do you guys think? Do you think they used too many Panthers? Panthers were notoriously bad on gas, and we all know how important fuel was to the Germans for this campaign.
 
Overall they were trying to re-create their earlier in the war blitzkrieg successes by splitting the Allies on an east-west axis. Fortunately they were not successful.
 
I my opinion, the 250,000 average Wehrmacht and SS soldiers could have been augmented by many of the 400,000 German soldiers just a couple hundred Kms away in Norway, who were doing a lot of garison type work only. So 500,000+ troops, led by good field commanders, plus more available fuel and ammo from the North, could have made it, easily, past the major rivers and to the Atlantic coast, I think a 200Kms+ advance.
I've always been puzzled how the Battle of the Bulge got so bogged down so quickly. If they let Rommel live 2 months after his death order, he would have repeated his earlier success in this same region.
Not to lesser our Allied victory, but really the German Wehrmacht/SS had a fraction of their once great talent in 1944 compared to what was a great army in 1941. Most of their talent was dead, POW's or horribly wounded by the time the Bulge was on.
 
German plan was to seize Allied fuel dumps along the way to refuel their tanks and kept rolling. They didn't and without air cover, their armours were sitting ducks when the sky cleared.
 
I think the Germans just prioritized quality over quantity. In that war, quantity usually won. That's why it's so remarkable when a small force defeats a big one.
 
I think they should have just left a rear guard to hold the western allies & sent all that materiel east to try & push back the soviets. Then they could just turn over Germany to the western allies & been way better off post war.
 
Bastonge: Key Crossroads Held By Riflemen with their Garands

Essentially the Allies were "caught napping here". As I recall over 50,000 Americans were taken prisoner and it was a massive set back for the Allies in that respect. Essentially too not seizing successfully the Allied fuel dumps doomed the initial forward impetus of the Bulge. Also Gen Patton's 82 Airborne troops rushed by truck from another battleine were a very effective counter. There were as well Canadian troops involved in the battle as CANLOAN officers with British Forces.
Air Power of the Allies was the key reposte once the weather bettered. However for a critical juncture the weather precluded an Allied air drop.
I like to think that one or the central reasons why General George Patton called the M-1 Garand rifle as "one of the greatest implements of battle ever made" was its role by skilled riflemen in the Battle of the Bulge.
 
The Queens Medalist 86 said:
I my opinion, the 250,000 average Wehrmacht and SS soldiers could have been augmented by many of the 400,000 German soldiers just a couple hundred Kms away in Norway, who were doing a lot of garison type work only. So 500,000+ troops, led by good field commanders, plus more available fuel and ammo from the North, could have made it, easily, past the major rivers and to the Atlantic coast, I think a 200Kms+ advance.
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Most of those German troops in Norway were specialized Mountain Troops and had spent most of the war in static positions. Also, the SS units in Norway were higly critized for their poor training and performance. Much has also been made of the fact that they were too old (30+). They probably would have been of limited use in a panzer grenadier role without the training required. The majority of them, however, would have gladly gone to the Bulge just to get away from the environment (insane cold in the winter, insane bugs in the summer, no R&R).

Can't imagine the logistics of moving an army out of Norway in late 44 with the control of the skies and sea that the British had. Also, even as late as 44 Hitler feared a British invasion of Norway and the strategic implications.

The real key to the Bulge was the fuel issue and control of the air. The Germans had neither and the result was inevitable.

Cheers

O'Kelly's Boys
 
With paranoid madman Hitler running the show and dictating everything from his bunker, Nazi Germany never had a chance of winning the campaign anyway.

Hitler pretty much lost the western front when he allowed the Allied forces to gain a foothold in Normandy against the advice of his experienced military commanders.
 
O'Kelly's Boys said:
Most of those German troops in Norway were specialized Mountain Troops and had spent most of the war in static positions. Also, the SS units in Norway were higly critized for their poor training and performance. Much has also been made of the fact that they were too old (30+). They probably would have been of limited use in a panzer grenadier role without the training required. The majority of them, however, would have gladly gone to the Bulge just to get away from the environment (insane cold in the winter, insane bugs in the summer, no R&R).

Can't imagine the logistics of moving an army out of Norway in late 44 with the control of the skies and sea that the British had. Also, even as late as 44 Hitler feared a British invasion of Norway and the strategic implications.

The real key to the Bulge was the fuel issue and control of the air. The Germans had neither and the result was inevitable.

Cheers

O'Kelly's Boys
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You are forgetting all the beautiful blond Norwegian girls that the German soldiers could check out..lol.....the girls more than made up for the cold winters and summer bugs,..lol
 
The German plan was also poorly conceived with the best troops in the north. They should have reinforced sucess in the center. Furthermore the americian troops fought harder and better then the germans thought that they would. Give the americian infantryman credit here!
 
ilovepotatos said:
So what do you guys think? Do you think they used too many Panthers? Panthers were notoriously bad on gas, and we all know how important fuel was to the Germans for this campaign.
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I believe the Germans should have opted for a less thirsty, more fuel efficient tank, or the "Green Panther", perhaps even an electric version (Bosch) of the Panther (EVP) without the Maybach engine, until cheap Saudi Oil became available. :)

Why? Because you, me, us and them pissed it all away, the gas that is, and now you're paying the carbon tax (Panther Tax) in BC and lovin' it. :p

Perhaps all real future wars should be played on a chess board game or on the computer to keep gas prices at 35 cents per litre. :slap:
 
There were a few lines of thought historians have settled on as why the Germans put so much of their last gasp into the Ardennes.

Hitler himself was a megalomaniac, unable to concede that his generals may have known more about military strategy and tactics than he did. In Hitler's mind, he was going to score a big win against the Western allies and slow them down enough so that their alliance began to fall apart with the Soviets.

This came close, the Western allies still detested the Communist Russians at the time and allying with them was only for convenience. There is recent evidence that the German high command actually believed they may be able to negotiate a seperate peace with the West and ally with them against the Russians. By this late in the war, there was NO stopping the Soviets. The Russians had lost 8.5 million killed in action, and tens of millions more civilians. (Compare this to combined U.S. and Commonwealth killed in action in Europe at about 250,000.) They had conscripted 30 million during the course of their war, from 1941 to 1945. The Germans coulnd't have hoped to stop them, even if they'd thrown every last man, woman and child at them. The high command was counting on this Soviet power to create a sense of future fear in the Western allies against the USSR. The Soviets had one hell of a grudge to settle for the second time in 25 years. Seeds of the cold war gentlemen.

Another driving force for the Germans (read Hitler), was that the battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes was to buy time until the newest German secret weapons became mass produced and able to turn the tide; Messerschmidt 262 Jet fighter, improved rocket weapons etc. Hitler both refused to listen to those who tried to tell him the infastructure wasn't there to build them anymore and those who could have told him were quite terrified of Hitlers state of mind by late in the war. It's a good thing for all of us things turned out the way they did, but if Hitler had taken from Stalin's example and actually learned to listen to his high command (granted on pain of being shot if they failed), the Germans may have done better.
 
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Slyder73 said:
It's a good thing for all of us things turned out the way they did, but if Hitler had taken from Stalin's example and actually learned to listen to his high command (granted on pain of being shot if they failed), the Germans may have done better.
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Did it really matter whether it was Hitler or Stalin who won? Stalin stood atop a much higher pile of corpses, that's the only difference. Perhaps Hitler would have come close to matching him if Germany won, but he didn't have as much time, particularly as Stalin, who was able to murder and exterminate countless more after the war was over in the Gulag archipelago. It would have been much better, even ideal perhaps, for the Germans to surrender separately and for the world to battle the Soviet Union.
 
I think the Germans just prioritized quality over quantity. In that war, quantity usually won. That's why it's so remarkable when a small force defeats a big one.
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It should be noted that the emphasis of quality is a part of the German strategic situation. Surrounded by hostile nations (Russia on one side, France on the other), and outnumbered (by both), the only successes could come if they successfully beat one side quickly, then turned on the other. Pretty much every German strategic plan from Schlieffen to the bliztkreig was based on this premise.
 
skirsons said:
Did it really matter whether it was Hitler or Stalin who won? Stalin stood atop a much higher pile of corpses, that's the only difference. Perhaps Hitler would have come close to matching him if Germany won, but he didn't have as much time, particularly as Stalin, who was able to murder and exterminate countless more after the war was over in the Gulag archipelago. It would have been much better, even ideal perhaps, for the Germans to surrender separately and for the world to battle the Soviet Union.
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That's what a large number of Western Allies wanted, from those in high places down to the newest private. Patton even went on records as wanting to push through Germany and carry on to Moscow.
 
bdtyre said:
That's what a large number of Western Allies wanted, from those in high places down to the newest private. Patton even went on records as wanting to push through Germany and carry on to Moscow.
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Made sense at the time since US was the only nation with the nuke. MacArthur also suggested to nuke commie China during the Korean war.
 
Dont forget that Hitler DIDNT know that Eisenhower had the power to make crack strategic decisions without consulting either country ( GB/US). Hitler planned his counteroffensive in the Ardennes hoping that slow decision making on the allies part would benefit him. If he had known that the allies had such low supplies, due the nearest useable port still being Cherbourg 350 miles away, he could have bitten off a bigger chunk. The port in Antwerp had been an 3 month long cluster getting rid of mines, dozens of naval gun emplacements and demolition laden docks. So to throw some canuck history in there....WE got rid of those guns and opened up that port to let supplies flow in.
 
And even if they had made it to the coast, what then? An allied army on either side, and the german supply line overextended. The end result would have been the same, just would have taken a tad longer. they certainly could not have held onto any gain.
 
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