Ardennes: The Small Solution?

[CombinedArms]

I'm becoming convinced from the discussion here that the Small Solution offered only marginally better prospects of success than Hitler's wished-for sweep to Antwerp and also entailed signficant risks. But it seems like the Germans ought to have SOME way of taking advantage of the Allied weakness in the Ardennes, combined with the heavy concentration vs. that weakness and their achievement of complete surprise.

And it seems to me, on reflection, that there was a way to get a significant gain out of the situation--with minimal risk--if only they'd been willing and able to recognize and act on what they had right in front of them at the correct moment.

Let's call this third alternative "The Smaller Solution" or, perhaps more accurately, "The Super Spoiling-Attack." What this approach would entail would be to abandon all idea of sweeps to Antwerp or the Meuse or ambitious encirclements through Liege (which might have netted, we've said, at best 4 divisions.) What if, instead, they simple crushed and destroyed all of the divisions they had in their grasp early in the campaign. If the German high command had focused on actually destroying all of these divisions instead of bypassing them and sweeping to the Meuse, they might have achieved a major victory and a serious if temporary blow to Allied capabiites amounting to the destruction of seven divisions. Instead, they managed to destroy just one division--the 106th, and even then a regiment managed to escape.

Moving from north to south, I'm thinking of

1. The 2nd and 99th divisions, which might have been promptly encircled if Peiper had cut behind the Elsenborn ridge when he had the chance.

2. The 7th Armored, The 9th Armored CCB, and regiments of the 28th and 106th in the St. Vith salient. These might really have been bagged if the main German elements weren't pressing on to the Meuse.

3. The 106th, which really was 2/3rds bagged, but if the St. Vith regiment were captured, they'd have got it all.

4. The 101 Airborne, and CC's of the 9th and 10th Armored at Bastogne. Again, Bastogne might have been crushed if the German armored divisions weren't pressing on to the Meuse.

Add 'em up and you get 7 divisions, the 2nd, 28th, 99th and 106th Inf, the 101 Airborne, and the 7th and 9th Armored. One regiment of the 28th would survive in the Southern Shoulder, but the CCA of the 10th Armored woudl be gone, adding up, in effect to 7 full divisions. My idea would be that if the Germans had simply destroyed all the units they had in their grasp, then gone on the defensive--perhaps gradually withdrawing back to the West Wall--they would have inflicted a terrible blow to the US forces. It wouldn't have won the war, but it would a produced a major victory instead of the major defeat that resulted from the silly preoccupation with the Meuse.

I'm not saying this ever would or could have happened, given Hitler's demand for the Big Solution. But it does seem like a way to derive an actual advantage from the strategical and tactical edge the Germans derived from the opening stages of the battle.

4.

[ July 31, 2004, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: CombinedArms ]

[Kingfish]

I don't think all 7 would have been destroyed. The 106th and 28th for sure, given how thinly stretched they were on the front lines, but if the Germans opted not to push to the Meuse then the entire tactical picture would have changed and divisions that were caught historically in pockets might not have been.

For instance, had Pieper tried for Elsenborn then the St Vith pocket wouldn't have been so isolated, thus allowing the allied high command an opportunity to reinforce it with additional units. Imagine the St Vith salient with the 7th armored plus 82nd airborne and the remnants from 106th and 28th.

[JonS]

Originally posted by CombinedArms:

encirclements through Liege (which might have netted, we've said, at best 4 divisions.)

IIRC, 1st US Army was quite heavily concentrated there, and concievably the whole lot - ~10 divs - could have been encircled given blah blah blah.

"The Super Spoiling-Attack"

How does that win the war for Germany? If it doesn't win the war, what is the point?

they might have achieved a ... serious if temporary blow to Allied capabilites amounting to the destruction of seven divisions. Instead, they managed to destroy just one division--the 106th, and even then a regiment managed to escape.

IIRC, the balance sheet was a bit different to what you state.

from Hitlers Last Offensive, Peter Elstob, Corgi, 1972, page 454:

The Germans ... virtually destroyed two* American infantry divisions and badly mauled nine of the remaining fourteen involved in the Ardennes. All eight of the American armoured divisions which took part lost heavily and five of them were eliminated, at least temporarily, as attacking forces. All three airborne divisions could not be used in their proper role for some time afterwards.

Now I would freely acknowledge that "HLO" isn't the greatest book on the subject. However, it is one I have to hand, and the conclusions about damage to US forces are about the same as I've seen anywhere else.

In addition to the damage to the forces involved, there was the 5-6 week delay imposed on Allied offensive plans.

I think perhaps a more interesting question might be something along the lines of: Given the strategic objective of winning the war (rather than embracing 'the barren rot of defence' and just delaying defeat), how could the Germans have arranged and employed the forces at their disposal to have acheived a better result than they historically did, given a similar response form the Allies?

Regards

JonS

* Presumably the 106th and 28th.

[Mies]

I like the idea from CombinedArms of a “Super Spoiling-Attack”. All of the proposed solutions wouldn’t have regained any form of offensive superiority to the Germans. Like stated before the war was lost for the Germans anyway. In my opinion the only thing they could do was to try to get out of the prospect that faced them when the war was lost and that was unconditional surrender. The way do to this was to inflict as many damage as possible to the western allies to get them to a point where they would actually negotiate surrender. Whether or not Hitler would have opted for that way out is a whole different question.

Off course the way the Battle in the Ardennes was actually fought during December ’44 and January ’45 did reflect in de destruction and mauling of significant numbers of Allied divisions. However the Germans paid dearly for the operation and where the allies had the means to recover the Germans had not. At this stage of the war loosing the amount of man and material they did was yet another big blow to their war efforts.

What I find intriguing to this specific battle and to what there probably is no single answer is this: What would have happened if the Germans had treated the whole operation as an attempt to do as much damage to the allies as possible with the minimum amount of losses to themselves. If they would have accomplished that there would have been a change to launch other spoiling attacks on a different location whether on the Eastern or the Western front. Given the outcome arguably the Battle of the Bulge could in fact have speeded up the end of the war by accelerating the offensive power the Germans could bring to bare.

Mies

[Sergei]

Originally posted by JonS:

How does that win the war for Germany? If it doesn't win the war, what is the point?

No operation alone has to win a war, and you know that that doesn't mean that an operation is without a point. Germany couldn't have won the war in any case in 1944 and on, but let's just assume that we don't know that for sure. Any operation that would have sapped Allied strength and disrupted their plans while still letting the German forces fight another day was worthwhile.

Realistically Germany should have surrendered unconditionally, but Hitler wouldn't have done that, now would he?

[CombinedArms]

Thanks Mies and Sergei! I think the key here is that while a "super spoiling attack" was outside the range of German thinking, it might actually have achieved a military advantage whereas the other Ardennes scenarios didn't or probably wouldn't.

And the one thing the western Allies were sensitive to was excessive casualties. Wiping out 7 divisions would look like excessive casualities to a lot of people in the west, though similar losses had frequently been sustained by both the Germans and Russians in prior operations. Probably the western allies would have kept going, but it would have created a definite crisis of confidence on the Allied side. Often the outnumbered side tries to "protract the war," as Washington shrewdly did in the American Revolution and as North Vietnam did, later. The aim is to focus on avoiding high risk battles, preserving resources and going for the kill in winnable situations (like Yorktown.) It wasn't in Hitler's mindset, but it might have been a better strategy.

It's not certain that seven divisions could actually have been destroyed, of course, but something like this outcome is much less speculative than anything we're looking at with the Small Solution--something between five and seven divisions seems a likely consequence of the Super Spoiling attack. And the US was on a strict division budget--only 89 for both Europe and the Pacific IIRC. They could replace individual soldiers, but replacing whole divisions was not really part of the plan.

And while many US divisions in the actual battle were damaged, only the 106th was in fact destroyed. What did those quickly rebuilt divisions do in the war that followed? The 9th Armored captured the Remagen bridge. The 7th Armored broke out of the Remagen bridgehead and helped encircle the Ruhr, leading to the surrender of 300,000 men. The 2nd Inf captured Leipzig. The 101st Airborne captured Berchtesgaden...and so forth. If the US didn't have those divisions, the shape of the war would have been different, and considerably more difficult.

[simovitch]

I remember playing "Fortress Europa" by AH in my youth, and when I got the "panzer reserve" late in the game I was always loath to use them in an immediate counterattack role. It seemed to make more sense to fortify the west wall, or counterattack the allies as they pushed toward the Rhine over clear terrain. The game was truly one of my favorites of all time, and it did provide an effective model to analyze the alternative history put forth in this discussion.

Did anyone else play FE, and mull over the options available to the "panzer reserve"?

[CombinedArms]

Hmmm... very interesting. I never played FE but I'd be interested to know how the more cautious strategy with the panzer reserve worked out in game terms.

It also prompts me to reflect that the history of Hitler's generalship is a history of squandering or misusing the "panzer reserve". Let me count the ways: at Stalingrad, Kursk, Tunisia, Mortain-Falaise, destruction of Army Group Center, Ardennes, etc., etc. The one time he allowed his generals to extract the encircled armor--in the evacuation of Sicily-- they made life hell for the subsequent attackers of Italy. And his failure to commit the "panzer reserve" in a timely manner in Normandy perhaps caused another catastrophic defeat. Hitler always insisted on control of the panzer reserve and he almost invariably blew it. It would be interesting to see how the war might have gone if that hadn't happened--would FE model that?

[simovitch]

As far as I remember, the game mechanics required the German player to forfeit armored replacements from August(?)-December, and remove from the map all of your panzer divisions around August or so. Then they would all appear at full strength in December - just in time for the player to stage a Battle of the Bulge.

I don't remember if it was an optional rule or not, but a house rule could render it so...