Battle of Bulge, German view

[Seedorf81]

Since CM Market Garden should be on it's way, I assume the Battle of the Bulge comes closer too. In preparation I've got a question.

Having read an awful lot about the BotB/Ardennes (John Toland - The story of the bulge" is an excellent read), I still don't know much about the reasons why this German offensive failed so miserably.

Yes, small groups of determined GI's fought tenaciously,

and yes, The 101st AB and 10th Armrd. Div. put up a mighty good defense at Bastogne,

and yes, Jochen Peiper used ultra-fuel-consuming KINGTIGERS on small and ever-winding roads that even forced kubelwagens and jeeps to slow down (I still wonder if he hadn't gotten much farther if he had only used Pzkw IV's and JgpzIV's),

but that doesn't explain to me why, for instance, the Germans couldn't take Bastogne. Their numerical advantage alone should have been enough to obliterate the Bastogne defenders. It seems to me that the German commanders made some weird decisions during the entire battle.

Are there any forum-members that know were I can find information on the German perspective?

[The Teacher]

NUTS !

Fuel was a major problem.

The German pool of manpower was pretty much used up by this point, they still had some good troops but alot of what was left by this point were either war weary or the training had become poor.

The German divisions by this point in the war were in a very poor condition in general, but there were still some good units with quality leadership.

Alot of the troops that were used lacked training and experience. If you were bombed and straffed almost daily you wouldnt be all that keen either.

But still it was a huge effort and once the offensive had failed the forces were just getting ground down day after day.

What if the Germans had used the forces they had for the Bulge against the Russians, an interesting what if ?

Cheers

Stephen

[Bulletpoint]

It's a philosophical issue, but I suspect a lot of history is determined by chance. Later, we can try to analyse why something happened or didn't happen, but the opposite might also have happened, and then we would be discussing that instead.

[Chris Ferrous]

The strategic assessment of the Ardennes region pre-war, was that it was bad tank country, and the fact of the matter is that that is TRUE!

The reason Hitler succeeded in 1940 was because the Belgian defenders were Cavalry units and thin on the ground. Thus the Germans occupied the Ardennes very quickly and used it as a covered deployment / transit zone for their sudden concentrated thrusts across the Sambre and Meuse Rivers and thence into northern Belgium, the Channel coast and the Paris plain.

In 1944 the Germans were assaulting an experienced enemy in appalling terrain, in shocking weather conditions. The road net, although in many respects 'adequate' didn't fit their strategic design (unlike in 1940) in that the thrust was intended to be NW. If you look at even a modern map of the region, I don't think there is a single major road starting in the E and running NW. The entire area is riddled with bottlenecks and choke points caused by steep valleys, dense forests, rivers and swollen streams, and small stone-built towns. The only things on their side were bad visibility which negated Allied Air supremacy, surprise, choice of location, and concentration of force. The fuel and ammo situation was adequate for a brief supercharge thrust but as soon as that failed (and despite the undoubted heroism of the US troops in situ) and it was doomed to fail simply because of the terrain constraints.

The US took full advantage and despite heavy losses inflicted losses in excess of their own.

Undoubtedly the offensive DID marginally prolong the war in the west. It may / may not have shortened the war in the east.

If there really had been a super-weapon forthcoming which could have been produced and deployed in those few weeks gained, then the Battle of the Bulge could well have been adjudged a German victory.

One final point: I have always equated Hitler's Ardennes offensive with Napoleon's Waterloo campaign. Both proved these leaders could still lead men, could still have power, were still a force to be reckoned with, and they both failed. So they were 'ego-trips' which furnished their respective nation no benefit. In fact, some of their best troops were all but annihilated; Hitler's 1st SS Panzer, and Napoleons Old Guard.

NO doubt there'll be some flak. I shall retire to my bunker.

[Broadsword56]

@chris ferrous: No flak from me, I think you got it exactly right. Problem is, the Ardennes is probably the most-wargamed subject in history (right up there with Stalingrad), and many players want a highly realistic game. Some also feel they should be able to win as the German side. Nothing wrong with playing alternate history and, say, giving these Germans a super weapon to see what would have happened, or having the weather stay overcast longer than IRL to see what happens when Allied airpower remains grounded. But if the Bulge is gamed with the historical setup and basic parameters, then a German victory in the terms Hitler conceived it should be virtually impossible.

[Michael Emrys]

The reason Hitler succeeded in 1940 was because the Belgian defenders were Cavalry units and thin on the ground.

They were also not committed to defending. They blocked a few roads temporarily by blowing down some trees and then moved hastily out of the way. This was bad news for the French at Sedan since the Germans arrived on the scene 24-48 hours sooner than they were expected.

Michael

[womble]

The only flak I'd like to send up is about whether the Bulge offensive actually prolonged the war or not. Would the same forces commited to defensive operations not have been more effective in delaying the Allies, rather than being minced up to no avail? Sending them east would have probably just been another teaspoon added to the bailing bucket, in terms of stopping the OstFront sinking into the tide of red.

As Broadsword says, a realistic game based on the Bulge should pretty much preclude a German operational victory.

[Michael Emrys]

Undoubtedly the offensive DID marginally prolong the war in the west.

I'm not so sure. If instead of throwing all the armor that had been amassed for the offensive into what became a kill sack, they had held it in reserve in a strategy of flexible defense and counter-attack, they might have prolonged the war another month or so. That would not, however, have prevented Germany from losing the war. Hitler's gamble in the Ardennes was that if he pulled it off, it might prevent him from losing the war altogether. It was a really, really long shot against really, really long odds. But nothing else promised even as much.

Michael

[Sgt Joch]

Form Hitler's point of view, the choice was either gamble in the Ardennes and perhaps pull off a miracle or do nothing and commit suicide in his bunker on june 15, 1945 instead of april 30th.

sort of a no brainer..

[JonS]

Sgt J:

yeah, on those terms the Ardennes offensive was kind of a rational decision. Of course, the completely irrational bit is how he got to the point where that was the decision to be made.

[Sgt Joch]

I 'm sure the fact that he was taking crystal meth did'nt help.

[ridethe415]

A few quotes from the losing side:

"All I had to do was to cross the river, capture Brussels, and then go on to take the port of Antwerp. The snow was waist-deep and there wasn’t room to deploy four tanks abreast, let alone six armored divisions. It didn’t get light until eight and was dark again at four, and my tanks can’t fight at night. And all this at Christmas time!"

- Sepp Dietrich

"The Ardennes battle drives home the lesson that a large-scale offensive by massed armour has no hope of success against an enemy who enjoys supreme command of the air. Our precious reserves had been expended, and nothing was available to ward off the impending catastrophe in the east."

- General von Mellenthin

[Pak40]

Obviously many things contributed to the Germans losing this operation but don't forget that the main thrust was on the norther shoulder where the few available routes had to cross rivers set in deep gorge like valleys. Once the bridges were blown or held on these points the advances, which were almost at a snail's pace to begin with, grinded to a halt.

Even if Bastogne had fallen the Germans had nothing to sustain a deeper push. Knocked out tanks need to be replaced after all. The allies had the replacements but the Germans did not.

[JasonC]

On why the Germans couldn't just overwhelm Bastogne with numbers, because they decided to bypass with their major elements instead. The Heer panzer divisions leading the thrust in the area did not want to get bogged down battering away at 15 infantry battalions in position. Doctrine said ignore the strong points and go around - they went around. In theory that was supposed to ensure the destruction of bypassed pockets by driving any supports or relief so far away from those pockets, that those in them would have to attack outward, and would destroy themselves trying, or run out of ammo and surrender in place.

Air resupply helped delay that, but it took an actual counterattack by a full corps from the south, re-establishing overland contact, to ensure the bypassed position could actually hold. The actual battle was decided in the meantime, west of Bastogne, not within it (or even south of it in the meet up counterattack).

As for the comments from others that the right / north was the German main effort, they may have wanted it so at the beginning, and the illusion created by Peiper's pencil thin breakthrough may have further that impression, but there was never any real prospect of it happening that way. The center was the weak part of the line, not the US left / German right. The center duly collapsed. The Heer PDs made the important push, not the SS ones on the German right. But after 2 weeks of advance they were too weak to keep punching against the reserves arriving in theater, and they lost the meeting engagements at the tip of the bulge. Badly.

At bottom, the issue was that strategic surprise gave only a temporary odds advantage in the local area. The Allied armies of 1944 were vastly more capable and more mobile than those of the early war, and they flocked to the break in site from all directions. The German odds edge had evaporated down to parity in 2 weeks time. They were already checked and stalling out along most of the frontage in 1 week. There were still several weeks more of wild hammering from both sides, but no prospect of anything but mutual attrition resulting, after that first week or two.

In earlier periods, the Germans had frequently been able to cash such a local and temporary odds edge for an operational dislocation that destroyed large portions of the enemy force opposite, and kept that local ratio high for longer as a result, through exchange efficiency in destroying pocketed enemies, or making large enemy formations irrelevant (out of position or bypassed or dead). But despite the German's own belief that this reflected their own skills or doctrine, those outcomes mostly reflected the ineptitude and doctrinal weaknesses of their early war opponents. Against enemies without those weaknesses, and with superior operational mobility, every edge gained by local concentration or surprise was a rapidly vanishing asset.

If the opponent has any reserves or lateral mobility, let alone both, and isn't dumb, they simply make the odds edge go away by backpeddling where outnumbered and flocking to the wound with reserves, and the global odds ratio reasserts itself. The Germans didn't make those notions obsolete or inoperative in 1940 or 1941, in the west or Russia respectively. Inept opponents could not pull off the correct reactions. Change that, and the old formula was pretty much useless. It could give a local tactical edge and occasionally move the lines around on the map a bit, but that did not change the fundamental logic of the war. Which remained an affair of relentless attrition, all theorizing to the contrary notwithstanding.

[Seedorf81]

Everybody so far, thank you for responses. Especially JasonC for your very insightful answer.

[Paper Tiger]

It failed so miserably because it was almost impossible to do. A massive drama on a Wagnerian scale fitting of a madman. (Wagner has a lot to answer for.) And we can be grateful that Hitler tried to do it at all.

There's not much doubt in my mind that the Bulge helped to shorten the war as Hitler squandered an important strategic reserve that could have held up the Allies advance somewhere for a week or two more and every week of the war counted at this point. With the war within their borders, they started doing terrible things to their own people so this definitely saved a lot of innocent lives, as well as in the concentration camps in Germany itself.

For me, Hitler was, for the most part, a good strategic thinker with no real military ability but was an outrageous gambler. In the early days, he appeared to be a very lucky gambler indeed and his success in the face of such odds gave him more confidence. But the 'House' always wins and so, as the war progressed, he made rasher and rasher decisions which made some sense on the strategic level if you consider what would have happened had the Army actually managed to pull it off. Forget that it what he was asking was impossible. What would have happened if it had worked. Viewed like that, the Bulge is actually quite a bold (i.e. insane!) concept.

The trouble was that he seemed to think he was possessed of some great gift and whatever he decided to do was supported by 'Providence' as he would put it. And when it didn't happen, it was a result of treachery and sabotage thus adding insult to the heroic efforts the German soldiers made on his behalf.

[Sgt Joch]

I had read somewhere that the forces used in the offensive could have extended the war for another six weeks.

3-4 years ago, I was at a business supper and happened to be sitting next to an older gentleman who had emigrated to Canada from Belgium after the war. After a decent interval, I asked him about the war. It turns out his family had a farm somewhere between Bastogne and Liège and he was 14 in december 1944. One day, german officers arrived and requisitioned one of the rooms in the house to use as a HQ. They were very formal and correct and he says he was very impressed by the leather coats they wore. After two days, the germans left and the Americans arrived. The Americans were very generous and gave them blankets and food. The Americans did not stay long since they were chasing the Germans. A few days after that, a british unit came through which "requisitioned" a lot of the stuff the Americans had given them. He was very impressed by the Germans and Americans, not so much by the British.

I also asked him about may 1940 when he would have been 9-10, but he had no real recollection of the Germans coming through.