The Bulge...One Divisions Story and some reflection

[markus544]

 

While all of us wait patiently for CMFB…Here is some interesting info from the 106th Division who fought in the bulge.  As I sure most of us know the Battle of the Bulge was the largest land battle fought by the United States Army and involved over three quarters of a million men.  I have read many books on the bulge, but this book, “Snow and Steel” by Peter Caddick-Adams, in my opinion, takes this monumental military story higher level.  While we sip our favorite drink in our warm homes sitting by our computers waiting…Let’s take a moment and reflect on the 89,500 casualties 19,500 killed, 47,500 wounded and the 23,000 captured and missing. These are just the US stats.  I think I we can hang in there like they did.

Link to 106th Infantry Division

http://106thinfantry.m.webs.com/

[jtsjc1]

Thanks for posting that. Considering how short that battle was (in comparison to say Stalingrad) the casualties were pretty steep. One of the great accomplishments in US Military history. I've had that book for awhile thanks for reminding me!

[markus544]

The stuff about Hitler.....was very interesting..I knew the guy was nuts, but the brothers grim and Hansel and Gretel, The forest, the bunkers....If he allowed the full development of the ME 262 into pure fighter, not the fighter bomber junk..That jet would have really made our guys in bombers and other fighter planes a bad time..Thank God Hitler would not listen to the many talented Officers who knew what they were doing.  The one thing that really stuck with me was this.. For every German tank, there was forty horses...Their infantry units were still mostly horse drawn...I have not seen of any horse drawn units you can deploy in CMFB...There were some Russian bred horses which they used which were quite hardy in winter weather. 

[Michael Emrys]

Hitler has a very great deal to answer for, but keep in mind a lot of the stuff written about him after the war was by generals wanting to deflect attention away from their own shortcomings as men and leaders. The legend re the Me-262 was discussed and debunked in this thread: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/121849-rumour-has-it/ . It was madness to think that Germany could challenge most of the rest of the industrialized world, but it was a madness that many shared with Hitler.

Michael

[Pak40]

It was always my understanding that Hitler deserved blame for insisting to use the Me-262 in the bomber role rather than the fighter role where it would have a clear advantage. I've never really heard that the Me-262 was delayed because it had to be adapted to the bomber roll, just Hitler's insistence that it be used in the bomber role when it did become available.

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

I think the decisiveness of the ME 262 is overstated anyway.  A lot of the things that crippled the Luftwaffe in the long run wouldn't have been exactly stopped by a very maintenance heavy, even very unreliable plane that was demanding on trained aircrew.

Would it have been more dangerous for bomber crews?  Maybe.  But we're talking about an airforce that increasingly struggled to put any planes in the sky for a variety of reasons. 

[Michael Emrys]

I think pk has it right. The Luftwaffe was a fading asset and a handful of wonder airplanes, even if they could get off the ground, would not have significantly tilted the balance. Yes they had great potential, but that potential did not measure up to mature weapons systems, and there was not enough time left for them to become so. And let us not forget that the Allies were working on their own jets. The Gloster Meteor was about ready to go on line and it was a plane that would serve in several air forces worldwide for over a decade after the war, a feat unmatched by any of the German designs although the 262 was produced in Czechoslovakia for a couple of years. The US had the P-80 (later F-80) and though it was not as far along as the Meteor, had the war continued much longer, could have seen combat over Germany.

Personally, I can't think of any realistic way for Nazi Germany to win the war at this point, and I am not sure that any such point ever existed unless you posit the Allies committing some huge blunder that they did not, like losing the Battle of the Atlantic, or somehow managing to lose a major fraction of the D-Day armada. I suppose that if Stalin had been overthrown in December, 1941 and his successors sued for peace, Hitler might have had a chance. But that didn't happen either.

Michael

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

I think if the ME 262 had been more of an occasional threat, we'd have seen P-80s and Meteors pushed into service.  The Meteor was almost as mature as the ME 262, the P-80 was not, but it was likely no worse than a lot of first block of operational airframes (see B-26s and Corsairs).  If there'd been a need, I'm sure there'd have been allied jet fighter squadrons in service against the Luftwaffe (vs the Meteor's homeland defense only missions).  

Either way there's not much the Germans could have done to win barring the sorts of outlandish examples that's been listed.  And even those count on the allied follow up to those disasters being equally inept (like Moscow falls, but the Soviets do not counter attack, or there's not some weirdo Soviet-American offensive circa 1943 to liberate it).

It's almost like the Nazis required a never ending series of low probability events to occur to win.

[Michael Emrys]

It's almost like the Nazis required a never ending series of low probability events to occur to win.

Exactly. In gaming terms, they have to have perfect play with all the die rolls breaking their way while the Allies can't do anything right. The interesting thing for a historian is to try to understand how, with the deck so stacked against them, they were able to get as far as they did and pose as much of a threat as they did. Way too many factors weigh into that explanation to try to go into in a post, but it is one of history's greatest dramas.

Michael

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Exactly. In gaming terms, they have to have perfect play with all the die rolls breaking their way while the Allies can't do anything right. The interesting thing for a historian is to try to understand how, with the deck so stacked against them, they were able to get as far as they did and pose as much of a threat as they did. Way too many factors weigh into that explanation to try to go into in a post, but it is one of history's greatest dramas.

Michael

I think if I had to chalk their success up to one thing, is that the Nazis personified picking the most damaging option over the smartest option.  Like when doing the enemy assessment when planning an operation you always have the Most Likely Course of Action, which assumes an intelligent enemy reacting in a way that manages risk vs ability to accomplish mission, and then a Most Dangerous Course of Action which assumes the enemy has basically decided this battle is the decisive one, and he's throwing everything he has available into this one regardless of losses or impracticality.

Time and time again the Nazis hit with everything they had regardless of losses or impracticality* (or validity of long term strategy) which doubtless drew blood and sometimes impacted the ability of the Allies to conclude the war.  However as evident by the many disasters resulting this behavior only made the war worse vs achieving any sort of lasting success. 

*See literally every German counter-offensive against the Anglo-American forces post D-Day for great examples of this behavior.  

[AttorneyAtWar]

Whenever I need a metaphor for something that's inevitable I always say "Thats about as inevitable as a German counter-attack". Afterwords my friends or other people look at me funny, but its ok I know I'm right.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Raptorx7

[Michael Emrys]

I think that by the midpoint of the war, say the conquest of Sicily in the West and the battle for Kursk in the East, there was no question that Germany was going to lose the war. So the only question for them was how big a loss. The only hope for them not being totally overwhelmed—the historical outcome—was to drag the war out until their enemies got tired of playing and would settle on terms of less than unconditional surrender. This means playing a strictly defensive attritional strategy. This could certainly include limited counter-offensives and raids where the opportunity presented itself to put some hurt on their enemies, but these would have to be carefully calculated with one of the ruling principles preservation of own force. But big all-or-nothing offensives like the Battle of the Bulge entailed costs that shortened the war by months. Hitler and his henchmen were gamblers. Hitler liked to push his chips forward and roll the dice. A few times that worked, as against France in 1940, but soon the odds began to catch up to him.

Michael

Edited March 9, 2016 by Michael Emrys

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Think the fact that the gambling was so successful starting off really led to a mentality that the throw of the dice was an acceptable course of action vs a hail mary.  Looking back into 1940-1941, the odds weren't too bad, and generally when it came close to "even" the better quality/doctrined Germans stood a better chance of winning on the coin toss.  As the war went on this gap narrowed significantly and no longer would anything but exceptional luck allow for much German success in the long term (again the German success in the Ardennes was less "success" and more "totally depleted German forces in the west in exchange for low strategic value terrain, inflicting sustainable losses on the allies and doubtful delay of the spring offensives from west and east).

The failure to understand western resolve is also interesting and a systematic failure across the German military.  Time and time again it's virtually a planning factor that soft Americans and battle weary British troops will break once Der Panzers show up, and time and time again this proves to be false at great cost to Germany.  Not to mention the failure to understand they're fighting effectively two, or perhaps even three totally different fighting styles (see the Lorraine fighting in the fall of 1944 for trying to apply the Eastern Front doctrine to Americans and just how badly that goes) and to adapt to any of them.

In a lot of ways watching Germany is watching someone with a bad hand refuse to leave the table and to continue to struggle long after going broke (that said the Japanese were much worse and even more stubborn).  It isn't so much they're "good" and so much they're still sacrificing disproportionately to achieve any results long after more rational parties would have folded.  

[Childress]

The two essential factors that doomed Germany:

1- The (unnecessary) decision by Hitler to declare war on the USA following Pearl Harbor insuring a two front war.

2- Ultra.

Sometimes one detects a regretful tone in books discussing the what-ifs of WW2, namely Germany's missed opportunities and blunders. Is there a dark, unacknowledged recess in our souls that wanted the Nazis to win?

[AttorneyAtWar]

The two essential factors that doomed Germany:

1- The (unnecessary) decision by Hitler to declare war on the USA following Pearl Harbor insuring a two front war.

2- Ultra.

Sometimes one detects a regretful tone in books discussing the what-ifs of WW2, namely Germany's missed opportunities and blunders. Is there a dark, unacknowledged recess in our souls that wanted the Nazis to win?

Ive always been interested in what-if's and alternative history especially WW2, maybe its not so much "I wanted that to happen" but more of "Its incredible that something like that didn't happen due to some small detail". Of course I am sure there are plenty of books with that tone, but it may be easy to mistake the two sometimes.

[Childress]

The preferred side in war games tends to be the Germans. Because they had the sexiest machines, the smartest uniforms? Or merely a case of rooting for the underdog or re-writing history? Inquiring minds....

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

I think it gets to the fact that at the wargamer level:

1. A Panther by itself is a very powerful tool.  If you're looking for a very powerful thing to shoot the other things, it's good.  However once we get further away from the physical tank on the ground, the worse it gets, and I'd contend it is a lot worse than the Sherman/T-34 in terms of winning a war vs a battle.  

But if all the wargame is worried about is armor width and gun size, the Germans tended to win out there even if it was at the expense of building smarter pieces of equipment.  Not to mention the Germans cranked out dozens of sub-types and variants of things, while often if you're American leaning it's like, do you want the Sherman with the 75 MM or the 76 MM? and that's about for variety.  

2. There's a certain level of mystique about it, like forbidden fruit and all.  

3. There's less sexiness to winning historically vs ahistorically.  If you lose France as the Germans, well crap, I'm no worse than they were, but man if you held onto Paris until 1945 that must mean you're a military genius!  

 

Dunno.  I prefer Americans because I am a cold hearted Yankee Imperialist myself.  

[Michael Emrys]

The preferred side in war games tends to be the Germans. Because they had the sexiest machines, the smartest uniforms? Or merely a case of rooting for the underdog or re-writing history? Inquiring minds....

Several good answers have been offered here to that question. I would add with a slightly different emphasis that psychologically some people (and lots of gamers) feel that the Germans ought to have won due to a perception that they were the practitioners of a more brilliant form of military science while the Allies just plugged along in a more humdrum fashion and won solely by virtue of having more of everything, more men, more resources, more industry, etc. Of course this is only true as long as the war is only narrowly viewed as a review of battlefield tactics. In fact, in many areas the Allies outplayed the Germans by significant margins and that is why they won. In knowing how to get the most out of their nations' economies, in the intelligence war, and most of all in grand strategy, the Allies simply did it better.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

The two essential factors that doomed Germany:

1- The (unnecessary) decision by Hitler to declare war on the USA following Pearl Harbor insuring a two front war.

2- Ultra.

I would say that what doomed Germany was Hitler's decision to abandon political and diplomatic strategy, where he was winning, and resort to arms, which turned out to be a much riskier proposition. He either seriously miscalculated the chance that Britain and France would go to war, or he was over confidant that it would not matter. I think that once Britain and France are at war with Germany, it is likely that sooner or later the US will be too, and the more time passes the greater that likelihood becomes. Hitler's declaration against the US greatly simplified matters for Roosevelt and Churchill, but it seems very likely that in another six months to a year FDR would have found some pretext to bring the US in against Germany anyway. The important difference might have been that by that time the war against Japan would already be shifting into high gear with production focussed to that end. How to shift the focus onto the historical Germany first strategy could have been problematical. But to get back to the main point, my own feeling is that nails were being pounded into German's coffin when (1) it was unable to force a decision on the UK that Hitler desired, and (2) when Barbarossa failed to achieve its objectives. Only by offering generous terms to his enemies at that point, could Hitler have avoided the total calamity that befell the Reich. This apparently he was constitutionally incapable of doing.

As far as Ultra goes, it was certainly a powerful weapon in the hands of the Allies, but it was far from the only one, and it would not have availed much had they not possessed the means to act decisively on its information. For instance, I think the Double Cross system to provide Germany with false clues was almost as important. At certain critical points, British intelligence played German intelligence like a violin, almost writing the Germans' parts for them. That's one example. Another is that it wouldn't have mattered quite so much knowing where the U-boats were lurking if the Allies had not had the means to hunt them down and kill them. So a great many factors played into Allied victory and to try to single out just one or a few strikes me as an exercise in futility. The Allies had many arrows in their quiver. Some worked, some did not. But they might not have found out which ones worked if they had not at least considered them all.

Michael

[markus544]

Getting back to the bulge..Peiper did want to take those "King" tiger tanks with him.  They were too slow and heavy.  He told his men don't stop for anything. Peiper was leading the spearhead...In the book the "Longest Winter" a small "I&R" detachment held up Peiper's advance for a day or more.  The battle of Lansareth where Hitler threw a " Fallschirmjager" unit, not the real deal paratroopers, just a bunch of former luffwaffe guys thrown together and made to look like a real unit  This american unit kicked the crap our of these third stringers who were suppose to clear the way for the "spearhead".  Bad move on Hitler's part.   If a real crack unit was up front clearing the way for Peiper's "spearhead well it would have only prolonged the evevntual defeat of the whole deal.  This could make for a good scenario in CMFB, if you like to play the good guys and cream the Germans in their frontal assaults against fixed positions with plenty of  automatic weapons. 

Edited March 13, 2016 by markus544

[Childress]

As far as Ultra goes, it was certainly a powerful weapon in the hands of the Allies, but it was far from the only one, and it would not have availed much had they not possessed the means to act decisively on its information. For instance, I think the Double Cross system to provide Germany with false clues was almost as important. At certain critical points, British intelligence played German intelligence like a violin, almost writing the Germans' parts for them.

That and the development of the A Bomb can be seen in retrospect as the opening salvos in the ongoing Revenge of the Nerds.

[Michael Emrys]

That and the development of the A Bomb can be seen in retrospect as the opening salvos in the ongoing Revenge of the Nerds.

Yeah, let's hear it for the nerds!

Michael

[Childress]

Yeah! We're all nerds here. And don't confuse nerds with geeks. Nerds love to use to use jargon or unfamiliar terminology in their dialogue, whereas geeks will use obscure references rarely. Geeks don't populate IT departments.

[Michael Emrys]

But geeks do bite the heads off of live chickens.

The billed performer's act consisted of a single geek, who stood in center ring to chase live chickens. It ended with the performer biting the chickens' heads off and swallowing them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_show

Michael 

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Re: Revenge of the Nerds

There is an awesome book called "Engineers of Victory" that is exactly all about the nerds who won World War Two.  Highly recommended.

Getting back to the bulge..Peiper did want to take those "King" tiger tanks with him.  They were too slow and heavy.  He told his men don't stop for anything. Peiper was leading the spearhead...In the book the "Longest Winter" a small "I&R" detachment held up Peiper's advance for a day or more.  The battle of Lansareth where Hitler threw a " Fallschirmjager" unit, not the real deal paratroopers, just a bunch of former luffwaffe guys thrown together and made to look like a real unit  This american unit kicked the crap our of these third stringers who were suppose to clear the way for the "spearhead".  Bad move on Hitler's part.   If a real crack unit was up front clearing the way for Peiper's "spearhead well it would have only prolonged the evevntual defeat of the whole deal.  This could make for a good scenario in CMFB, if you like to play the good guys and cream the Germans in their frontal assaults against fixed positions with plenty of  automatic weapons. 

I do think it's interesting in many ways the classic stereotype of inexperienced draftee GIs vs battle hardened Deutchtroopers is in many ways flipped on it's head by the Bulge, as many US units had been blooded and indeed were what we'd consider quite skilled (see 2 ID's performance at the Twin Villages, 2 and 4 AD's performance in general) while many German units were simply all the sailors and airmen they could spare K98s to, or were "veteran" in that their logistics train had escaped France and little else.