The Battle of the Bulge

In December 1944, in an all-out gamble to compel the Allies to sue for peace, Adolf Hitler ordered the only major German counteroffensive of the war in northwest Europe. Its objective was to split the Allied armies by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp.

On December 16, three German armies (more than a quarter-million troops) launched the deadliest and most desperate battle of the war in the west in the poorly roaded, rugged, heavily forested Ardennes. The once-quiet region became bedlam as American units were caught flat-footed and fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and, later, Bastogne, which was defended by the 101st Airborne Division. The inexperienced U.S. 106th Division was nearly annihilated, but even in defeat helped buy time for Brigadier General Bruce C. Clarke's brilliant defense of St.-Vith. As the German armies drove deeper into the Ardennes in an attempt to secure vital bridgeheads west of the River Meuse quickly, the line defining the Allied front took on the appearance of a large protrusion or bulge, the name by which the battle would forever be known.

The Battle of the Bulge was the bloodiest of the battles that U.S. forces experienced in World War II; the 19,000 American dead were unsurpassed by those of any other engagement. British losses totaled 1,400. The German High Command's official figure for the campaign was 84,834 casualties, and other estimates range between 60,000 and 100,000.

Do not forget about the airborne component of the Ardennes offense: Operation Bodenplatte

Well technically it was not apart of the Ardennes offense but it had a similar goal and took place at the same time.

Webb wrote on Dec 20^th, 2012 at 10:14pm:


Say what you want, Baffetto's military genius was WAY overrated. He wasn't a strategist and barely had some competence in tactics, he was more a gambler than anything else.

With the advantage of knowing how things really were, we KNOW he was gambling the last fuel with the intent of stealing fuel from the allies... hoping against hope that the weather held so the allies' planes would not rain lead and cordite on his parade.

As soon the weather would have cleared, fuel or not fuel, his troop would have been subjected to death from above. AGAIN. And the attempt could not have really lasted to make a real impression.


Webb wrote on Dec 20^th, 2012 at 10:14pm:


The Americans had OTHER reasons in wanting to keep pressure against the "evil communists enemies".

That said... call me naive if you want, I never could fully understand the Americans' visceral rejection of communism. All right, the rich bas... people with ALL the money I CAN understand, but common people?

Being against ALL the dogmas of communism I CAN understand, how could I not, but against EVERYTHING?

There had ALWAYS been good ideas among the bad ones, in ALL Utopian or Dystopian beliefs. The classic diamonds among the... matter that for politeness we'll call rubble, here. It's a FACT OF LIFE. The complete, total and absolute abhorrence of ALL communist ideas always stank of foaming at the mouth spin doctoring from the interested parties to me.

This said, I DON'T WANT to start ANY KIND of discussion about IT ALL. Every attempt in making me do so will be ignored with absolute prejudice.


Webb wrote on Dec 20^th, 2012 at 10:14pm:


The overreaching was something the eggheads SHOULD have thought about BEFORE it happened, I agree, but it wasn't SO bad to compromise the allies' front, at the time. YET. The real problem was more the complacent, if not downright lazy thinking that the winter would bring a calming down of the counterattacks from the Germans.

It was the waning will to keep pressure during winter time and thinking they had all the time in the world that created the premises for the battle of the bulge. The overreaching played a lesser part.


Webb wrote on Dec 20^th, 2012 at 10:14pm:


The commies weren't the problem, at the time. The USA were engaged in their own double front war and had all the interests (or I sure hope they realized they had all the interests) to snuff down a problem FOR GOOD to move all their forces on the other.

I DON'T WANT to believe the allies would be so absolutely naive IDIOTIC to believe Baffetto would keep his word about an armistice, when he had always showed no intention of keeping things peaceful if he had a chance to gamble his own ways, as he had showed time and times again.

Of course there was surely a certain pressure from the nazi sympathizers among them (all of them powerful and rich people that will not be named here with a thing for antisemitism... hmmmm... I can sort of see a pattern, here) and their at the time isolationistic thinking, but you have to put into this equation that the Americans were not the only ones fighting this war in Europe, and could hardly expect to be able to balk with impunity when there was a good portion of the whole army aiming for Baffetto's jugular in sight.

And we've not put into equation the south front still. The one coming up from Italy.


Webb wrote on Dec 20^th, 2012 at 10:14pm:


Matters of weeks, if not days, with the vast counter-intelligence the Brits had built. That WOULD have made the Americans look nothing short of scumbags, had they pulled off the war to search an alliance with the real evil against their "idealistic enemies", once that smallish detail would have been aired.

Just think of the already mentioned Brits and their straight, and correct I might add, thinking that Baffetto was the REAL, highest priority problem to deal with BEFORE thinking about dealing with the Russians (and they were hardly communist friendly), beside being not a small slice of the Allied front. Had that happened, we would live in a vastly different world, today.

In the end, as I said above, once the skies cleared and the Allies could use their domain of the skies again, tanks with or without fuel would have had a hell of a time to survive and the offensive would have found a premature stop anyway.

I am sorry, but I believe you are oversimplifying things. Things were much more complicated, and I am hardly the correct person to highlight everything there is that SHOULD be highlighted anyway. It was, and remains, a desperate last move. Hell, I who have no battle competence can see it, how could the allies miss it?

Webb wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2012 at 2:49am:


All right. They did, not you, yet you did raise the stakes with calling this an idiocy only because it had not worked.

There's this belief being tossed around, born in... I don't want to sound like a jerk, but I think it was AMERICA... that if a thing or an idea is idiotic but works, then it's not idiotic. Well, I call BULLSHIT. If a thing or idea is idiotic but works, then it is one of the many cases (too many to be listed here) of an idiotic thing or idea that works. The fact that it works makes it not a bit less idiotic.

But returning to the idiots of WWII we were talking about, on the bases already covered on my previous post (and I suspect so many other I did not) said idiotic plan had NO WAY to work, and hardly only speaking in hindsight. Hitler had WAY too many enemies, even among his highest ranking officials. Even before the death camps matter becoming known, he had made himself the most hated man of his times, and one of the most hated of all times, to have a single hope in hell his naive dream could become reality.

Even had they being able to taken Antwerp, it would simply have become another front, a urban one, in the pushing-back-the-Germans struggle the war had by then become. And once that had happened, the Vermacht would have been tired, weary and in no way capable to oppose efficiently a re-taking of the lost ground from the Allies.

Of course WE who are NOT idiots can see it was a waste of time, men and resources... for the little Austrian man it was just another bluff in which squander what he had left of his forces, and one that the impressive amount of military might fielded against him COULD NOT avoid to call.