FREE ESSAY ON BATTLE OF THE BULGE

BATTLE OF THE BULGE

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.