Essay/Term paper: Battle of the bulge

Essay, term paper, research paper:  World War

The Battle of the Bulge was an important fight because it was one that could have turned World War II around for the Germans. The Battle of the Bulge took place on December 16 1944. The Germans mobilized the last chance they had to win the war. The Germans wanted to cut the American forces in to two parts, because this way they could easily be destroyed. Hitler felt this was his last chance to win, because his forces were being pushed back and soon they would run out of the resources they would need to win the war. Hitler was mobilizing a task force of 500,000 Germans soldiers. The allies were slowly pushing through the Ardennes Forest on the German, Belgium boarder, with a force of 600,000 American solders, and 55,000 British soldiers. Hitler hoped to surprise the Allies of guard and quickly separate the army. The allies pushed through this are because they felt this was the least likely place to set up an attack to assault the Allies. The Germans selected it because it was easy to hide troops in the hills. Hitler code-named this attack as the "Wacht am Rhein". The Americans went through the area in a thin line to give support to the flank where the attack was expected.

During the War, Eisenhower and his staff felt this spot was the least likely to be attacked. The thought the Germans would not try anything through the narrow passageway. The American Army was kept long and thin whit a reinforced left and right flank to make sure of any attacks that would come right up the middle. "Thinking the Ardennes was the least likely spot for a German offensive, American Staff Commanders chose to keep the line thin, so that the manpower might concentrate on offensives north and south of the Ardennes. The American line was thinly held by three divisions and a part of a fourth, while the fifth was making a local attack and a sixth was in reserve. Division sectors were more than double the width of normal, defensive fronts."( John Kline)The Germans wanted do of the opposite of what the Americans wanted to do. As stated above the Allied troops were 'resting' and reforming; they consisted of General Simpson's 9th Army and General Hodges 1st US Army in the north and General Patton's 3rd Army to the south. The Ardennes was held by General Middleton who had the 8th US Army Corps, 106th and 26th Infantry Divisions and 4th and 9th Armoured Divisions.

"In late 1944 Germany was clearly losing the war. The Russian Red Army was steadily closing in on the Eastern front while German cities were being devastated by intense American bombing. The Italian peninsula had been captured and liberated, and the Allied armies were advancing rapidly through France and the Low Countries. Hitler knew the end was near if something couldn't be done to slow the Allied advance. He soon came up with a plan to do this." (David Sargent). This shows how Hitler has to come up with a brilliant game paln to win the war. The object of the German offensive was to push through the Belgian Ardennes, cross the Meuse, retake Antwerp and its harbor facilities, thrust to the north and reach the sea. This would cut off the Allied troops in Holland and Belgium, making it impossible for them to withdraw. The success of the operation depended on three important parts; the speed of the initial breakthrough, the seizure of Allied fuel supplies and communications centers between St.Vith and Bastogne, and the widening of the breach in the Allied lines to allow German troops to pour into Belgium.

There would be three armies: the 15th Army in the North, 7th Army in the South and the main push by Sepp Dietrich's 6th and von Manteuffel's 7th Panzer Divisions in the center! Specially trained German soldiers who spoke English fluently were infiltrated behind the Allied lines wearing American uniforms with orders to disrupt the deployment of Allied units and prepare the way for the German advance. The crucial problem for the German was their lack of fuel and the whole 'adventure' depended on their initial thrust capturing the allied supplies. without a supply of fuel they where siting ducks if they ever ran out. Hitler's last attack had to work or he would be defeated. The plan was to march 85 miles from Southern Belgium to Luxembourg and attack the allies by surprise. He would attack during the Christmas season in the Ardennes Forest, an area where there were only a few allied soldiers. The invasion was designed to split the American and British armies in half. However it did not succeed. The German armies caught the allies by surprise. They had some success in the beginning and were able to take a lot of land from the allies and captured many allied soldiers. The allied forces fought Hitler's armies bravely. They held on to their ground wherever they could. They slowed down the German armies until American and English reinforcements arrived to fight the Germans. The German army was no match for the allied forces. They were running out of fuel, men and ammunition. After fierce battles the German forces were pushed back and gave up all the land they had conquered in the beginning of the battle. The allied forces completely destroyed the German armies. From this time forward the Germans were never able to raise a large army again to attack the allies.

As 1945 approached it seemed, to most, that Germany's surrender was only a matter of time. The Allies, having been on the offensive for so long, had an all time high determination and morale. The idea that Germany could muster the supplies, troops, or will to launch an offensive seemed crazy. In fact, many were already asking the questions of when and where the assault on the Rhine should be launched. "Hitler, utilizing his talent of strategic vision, noticed a hole in the Allies defenses." He saw the Ardennes Forest of Belgium was lightly defended. The Ardennes Forest had traditionally been thought of as impassable to tanks and therefore not an option for either side. The Allies left only four divisions to defend a front of over eighty miles. Because the Germans had now been pushed back almost to Germany, and in some places were already fighting on German soil, the Allies lost the important intelligence on troop movements provided by French and Belgium residents. As a result Germany was able to do major troop movements and buildups right behind the front lines. Hitler secretly assembled the twenty-one divisions that would later take place in The Battle of The Bulge with out the Allies even knowing. Field-Marshal von Rundsted is generally credited with the plans for the offensive, however in actuality he was strongly opposed to the plan. It was Hitler and his immediate staff who secretly developed the plan, and turned down all requests for changes or revisions. In one of von Rundsted's request for revisions Hitler responded that the plan was good and needed no change. The plan was a good one if Germany had the fuel, men and supplies that Hitler's plan required, it could have succeeded giving Germany a major victory in the west. Fortunately for the Allies, Hitler's idea of the amount of fuel and number of men at his disposal was greatly exaggerated, and his plan did not take into account that three of his Panzer tank divisions were down to roughly 100 tanks per division. Less than half the amount in the American armored divisions.

At 5:30 in the morning of December 16, 1944 with the benefit of fog and clouds keeping Allied planes on the ground, Hitler attacked a 90 mile American front between Monschau and Echternach using twenty one German divisions "high on morale but low on fuel". The first wave of the attack was by the 150th Panzer Brigade, a unit of about 2,000 English speaking Germans who knew American slang and customs. Under command of Colonel Otto Skorzeny, and using captured Jeeps and wearing American combat jackets, the Germans moved through the American lines cutting telephone wires, turning signpost, and setting up false mind field indicators. The 150th was under orders that if captured tell the Americans that thousands of Germans in Jeeps were behind the American lines. This operation was a huge success Thirty-two of the forty Jeeps that went in came back, and the ones who did not make it kept their orders and spread rumors of large numbers of undercover Germans. The Americans took the bait and set up checkpoints causing massive traffic jams and hundreds of American soldiers were sent to jail if they could not answer check questions such as the height of the Empire State Building. Later the Americans commended these under cover operations as "Military Genius". This was against the Geneva Convention. Later another war crime, were the acts committed by the 1st SS Panzer Brigade known as Battle Group Peiper. This unit captured the city of Stavelot and discovered a group of civilians huddled in a basement, The Germans took them out and shot them in cold blood in cold blood. Later that same day the US 99th Infantry Division retook Stavelot and held their positions until reinforcements arrived. Ironically while Peiper was held up in Stavelot he was with in a mile of a lightly guarded American fuel dump containing 2.5 million gallons of gasoline. But he did not know that it was there and therefore made no attempt to capture the fuel that could have changed the entire offensive.

While Peiper was held up in the north, von Manteuffel's 5th army broke through the US 106th Division. By the following day the 5th Panzerarmee had forced the surrender of 7,000 men. Further south the 58th and 47th Panzer Corps had made strong progress and each was close to their goals of Hoffalize and Bastonage. Only now two days after the offensive started did the Allies realize that it had a chance of succeeding. The fact that the US First Army HQ at Spa had to be quickly relocated after the 6th Panzerarmee advanced only miles from the town. On December 19, the German 47th Panzer Corps reached the town of Bastogne about the same time as the reinforcements, the 101st Airborne Division. That same day the US 30th Division was sent to reinforce the 99th division at Stavelot. With the help of air attacks, these two divisions cut off Peiper Battle Group from the rest of his army, and began pushing him back. By the 24th he had no gasoline at all, he and his troops abandoned their tanks and walked back through the Ardennes Forest.

Further south on that same day von Manteuffel's 5th Panzerarmee had taken the city of St. Vith and forced the US 7th armored division to retreat. " The base of the Bulge thuse Held To only About 35 miles the Germans could not get enough room to maneuver their armored divisions in there favorite Blitzkrieg fashion" (Dupuy, trevor 59). The Allied line was now broken wide open, Eisenhower acted quickly, putting Montgomery in charge of all the forces north of the breach and Bradley in command of those south of it. On December 21st, General Bradley gave General Patton the task of counter attacking von Manteuffel in order to relieve Brigadier-General McAuliffe and the 101st at Bastogne. The 101st had been at Bastogne for three days, completely cut off from All-American reinforcement when German General Luttwiz offered them terms of surrender. McAuliffe's response to the German white flag party..."Nuts!", confused the Germans. When asked the meaning of this answer, McAuliffe then responded "Go to Hell!"

By December 24, Christmas Eve, the bad weather had cleared and the allied air forces mad up for lost time flying 17,000 sorties in the next three days. von Rundstedt once again requested that the whole offensive be called off, Hitler refused. By now the defenders at Bastogne were almost defeated but knew that reinforcements would arrive soon. On December 25th, Christmas Day, German tanks made a last ditch effort to break into the town, but remarkably, the 101st held out. At 4:46 PM on the 26th, the US 4th Armored division broke through and made contact with the exhausted troops at Bastogne. By the 24th, Patton's counter from the south was pushing the German 7th army back. The 7th army and von Manteuffel's 5th Panzerarmee combined but were still not strong enough to stop Patton. Hitler released the 9th & 15th Panzer divisions from reserves, but even they were not enough to stop the counter attack by General Collins. On December 26th, he retook Celles, just five miles from Hitler's goal, the Meuse. This was the turning point of the battle. On December 27 von Manteuffel received the reinforcements he had been waiting for, but they were too few too late. Even if they would have arrived on time he lacked the fuel to put them to good use.

The Battle of The Bulge was over Hitler's last offensive had failed, but there were significant losses on both sides. "The resultant Battle of the Bulge led to heavy casualties on both sides and soberly reminded the Germany where not yet a beaten people" (Gary Hess 68) .The Americans could replace the weapons and tanks lost, Germany could not. All said, The Americans lost 76,890 men, the Germans 81,834. Over 700 US tanks were lost as opposed to Germany"s 324, and 590 American planes were downed compared to 320 Germans. If Germany would have had the men and the supplies to win this battle, the outcome might have been different for Germany.