Cod Ww2 Battle Of The Bulge

[Heron Mathis]

Lastingsix brutal weeks, from December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945, the assault, also called the Battle of the Ardennes, took place during frigid weather conditions, with some 30 German divisions attacking battle-fatigued American troops across 85 miles of the densely wooded Ardennes Forest.

Veteran Vernon Brantley, a private first class in the 289th Regiment, told the Fort Jackson Leader in 2009 that his unit had just arrived in Germany from France when they were told to load up and return to Luxembourg.

"Three times I was ordered to prove my identity," Gen. Omar Bradley recalled, according to the Washington Post. "The first time by identifying Springfield as the capital of Illinois; the second by locating the guard between the center and the tackle on a line of scrimmage; the third time by naming the then-current spouse of a blonde named Betty Grable."

The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II which took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945.[16] It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg. The offensive was intended to stop Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split the Allied lines, allowing the Germans to encircle and destroy each of the four Allied armies and force the western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis powers' favor.

The Germans achieved a total surprise attack on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans elsewhere and poor aerial reconnaissance due to bad weather. American forces were using this region primarily as a rest area for the U.S. First Army, and the lines were thinly held by fatigued troops and inexperienced replacement units. The Germans also took advantage of heavily overcast weather conditions that grounded the Allies' superior air forces for an extended period. American resistance on the northern shoulder of the offensive, around Elsenborn Ridge, and in the south, around Bastogne, blocked German access to key roads to the northwest and west which they had counted on for success. This congestion and terrain that favored the defenders, threw the German advance behind schedule and allowed the Allies to reinforce the thinly placed troops. The farthest west the offensive reached was the village of Foy-Ntre-Dame, south east of Dinant, being stopped by the U.S. 2nd Armored Division on 24 December 1944.[17] Improved weather conditions from around 24 December permitted air attacks on German forces and supply lines. On 26 December the lead element of Patton's U.S. Third Army reached Bastogne from the south ending the siege. Although the offensive was effectively broken by 27 December, when the trapped units of 2nd Panzer Division made two break-out attempts with only partial success, the battle continued for another month before the front line was effectively restored to its position prior to the attack.

The Germans committed over 410,000 men, just over 1,400 tanks and armored fighting vehicles, 2,600 artillery pieces, and over 1,000 combat aircraft.[18] Between 63,000 and 104,000 of these men were killed, missing, wounded in action, or captured. The battle severely depleted Germany's armored forces, which remained largely unreplaced throughout the remainder of the war. German Luftwaffe personnel, and later also Luftwaffe aircraft (in the concluding stages of the engagement) also sustained heavy losses. In the wake of the defeat, many experienced German units were effectively out of men and equipment, and the survivors retreated to the Siegfried Line.

Allied forces eventually came to more than 700,000 men; from these there were from 77,000 to more than 83,000 casualties, including at least 8,600 killed.[19] The "Bulge" was the largest and bloodiest single battle fought by the United States in World War II[20][21][22] and the third-deadliest campaign in American history. It was one of the most important battles of the war, as it marked the last major offensive attempted by the Axis powers on the Western front. After this defeat, Nazi forces could only retreat for the remainder of the war.

After the breakout from Normandy at the end of July 1944 and the Allied landings in southern France on 15 August 1944, the Allies advanced towards Germany more quickly than anticipated. The speed of the advance of the Allies caused several military logistics issues:

By December 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the Supreme Allied Commander on the Western Front) and his staff decided to hold the Ardennes region primarily as a rest area for the U.S. First Army, with limited Allied operational objectives in the area.

The Allies defended the Ardennes line very thinly, due to the favorable defensive terrain (a densely wooded highland with deep river valleys and a rather thin road network) and because they had intelligence that the Wehrmacht was using the area across the German border as a rest-and-refit area for its own troops.[23]

The Allies faced major supply issues, due to the rate of their advance coupled with the initial lack of deep-water ports.[24] Over-the-beach supply operations using the Normandy landing areas, and direct landing ships on the beaches, were unable to meet operational needs. The only deep-water port the Allies had captured was Cherbourg on the northern shore of the Cotentin peninsula and west of the original invasion beaches,[24] but the Germans had thoroughly wrecked and mined the harbor before it could be taken. It took many months to rebuild its cargo-handling capability. The Allies captured the port of Antwerp intact in the first days of September, but it was not operational until 28 November. The estuary of the Schelde river that controlled access to the port had to be cleared of both German troops and naval mines.[25] These limitations led to differences between General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group, over whether Montgomery or Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, commanding the U.S. 12th Army Group, in the south would get priority access to supplies.[26] German forces remained in control of several major ports on the English Channel coast into the autumn, while Dunkirk remained under siege until the end of the war in May 1945.[27]

The Allies' efforts to destroy the French railway system prior to D-Day were successful. This destruction hampered the German response to the invasion, but it proved equally hampering to the Allies, as it took time to repair the rail network's tracks and bridges. A trucking system nicknamed the Red Ball Express brought supplies to front-line troops, but used up five times as much fuel to reach the front line near the Belgian border. By early October, the Allies had suspended major offensives to improve their supply lines and supply availability at the front.[24]

Montgomery and Bradley both pressed for priority delivery of supplies to their respective armies so they could continue their individual lines of advance and maintain pressure on the Germans, while Eisenhower preferred a broad-front strategy. He gave some priority to Montgomery's northern forces. This had the short-term goal of opening the urgently needed port of Antwerp and the long-term goal of capturing the Ruhr area, the biggest industrial area of Germany.[24] With the Allies stalled, German Generalfeldmarschall ('Field Marshal') Gerd von Rundstedt was able to reorganize the disrupted German armies into a coherent defensive force.[24]

Field Marshal Montgomery's Operation Market Garden had achieved only some of its objectives, while its territorial gains left the Allied supply situation stretched further than before. In October, the First Canadian Army fought the Battle of the Scheldt, opening the port of Antwerp to shipping. As a result, by the end of October, the supply situation had eased somewhat.[citation needed]

Despite a lull along the front after the Scheldt battles, the German situation remained dire. While operations continued in the autumn, notably the Lorraine Campaign, the Battle of Aachen and fighting in the Hrtgen Forest, the strategic situation in the west had changed little. The Allies were slowly pushing towards Germany, but no decisive breakthrough was achieved. There were 96 Allied divisions at or near the front, with an estimated ten more divisions on the way from the United Kingdom. Additional Allied airborne units remained in England. The Germans could field a total of 55 understrength divisions.[28]

Adolf Hitler first outlined his planned counter-offensive to his generals on 16 September 1944. The goal was to pierce the thinly held lines of the U.S. First Army between Monschau and Wasserbillig with Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model's Army Group B by the end of the first day, get the armor through the Ardennes by the end of the second day, reach the Meuse between Lige and Dinant by the third day, and seize Antwerp and the western bank of the Scheldt estuary by the fourth day.[29][30]

Hitler initially promised his generals a total of 18 infantry and 12 armored or mechanized divisions "for planning purposes."[citation needed] The plan was to pull 13 infantry divisions, two parachute divisions and six armored divisions from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht strategic reserve.[citation needed]

On the Eastern Front, the Soviets' Operation Bagration during the summer had destroyed much of Germany's Army Group Center (Heeresgruppe Mitte). By November, it was clear that Soviet forces were preparing for a winter offensive.[31]

Meanwhile, the Allied air offensive of early 1944 had effectively grounded the Luftwaffe, leaving the German Army with little battlefield intelligence and no way to interdict Allied supplies. The converse was equally damaging; daytime movement of German forces was rapidly noticed, and interdiction of supplies combined with the bombing of the Romanian oil fields starved Germany of oil and gasoline. This fuel shortage intensified after the Soviets overran those fields in the course of their August 1944 Jassy-Kishinev Offensive.

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