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BATTLE OF THE BULGE—ALLIED MISTAKES
By Bill Fawcett
But I thought we were winning?
The Battle of the Bulge was really the result of two major mistakes. The first was that, despite the massive German buildup and plenty of warning signs, the Allied command was completely surprised. This was the result of several smaller mistakes, and a number of smart moves by the Wehrmacht.
To begin, many American officers were told that the attack was coming. A number of German prisoners were taken, or deserted to the American lines, many of whom told their captors what they had been trained to do. Reports included this information, but it was completely ignored at higher administrative levels. A German counterattack simply did not fit with the view the top commanders had of the war. A number of reports of increased German activity in the Ardennes sector were also written off as being the work of nervous new units, or simply judged to be impossible. The Americans and British had been rolling back the Germans for months. Each attack had ended in a German retreat. There had not been a German counterattack of any size since D-Day Normandy. Even those who acknowledged that there was increased activity were sure that the terrain of the Ardennes Forest was too difficult for any major offensive to take place there. That assumption was common, but rather amazing since, in 1940, the initial German flanking attack that rolled up the French army came though that same forested terrain. The Wehrmacht went to great lengths to disguise the buildup. Even the code name of the operation was designed to fool the Allies, Operation Watch on the Rhine.
The American reaction to or, rather, disregard of evidence was a product of that all-too-common Victory Disease. The war was all but over. Everyone would be home before the end of the next summer, maybe sooner. The Germans were losing and the Allies advancing, and the vast majority of commanders from Eisenhower down saw no reason for this to change. Further, intelligence sources told them that Germany was virtually out of gasoline. Without fuel, the panzers could not run. This was close to true. The Wehrmacht actually began their offensive without enough fuel to reach their full objectives. The panzer commanders were told to capture the abundant American supply depots and use the Allied fuel stored in them. So the Allies were sure that the Germans would not, and could not, counterattack in December of 1944. This opinion was reinforced by the lack of decrypted German radio transmissions mentioning anything like an attack. The top brass had become too dependent on the Ultra decryption team. When the British intelligence unit reported no activity, the generals all took this as meaning that there was none, despite other warnings.
The other intelligence source that the Allied generals had great confidence in was air-force surveillance. The Germans did an exceptional job of hiding during the day and moving at night, and obscuring signs that they had passed. It helped that, out of sheer desperation and a lack of fuel, the Wehrmacht had reverted to WWI transport methods. Rather than a swarm of easily spotted trucks, many of the supplies were brought forward by fifty thousand horses pulling wagons.
The result was that the carefully gathered reserves of the Wehrmacht were able to strike with complete surprise. The portion of the front they attacked was a “quiet sector,” in which new and recovering units were stationed. It was considered a safe position, where new units could gain experience without much risk and replacements could be integrated into veteran units. So, when the mass of armor and elite infantry hit, they not only seriously outnumbered the defenders; they also outclassed them. Thousands of American soldiers were captured in the first few days. After a communications mix-up, two entire regiments, the 422nd and 423rd Infantry, were surrounded and captured while trying to hold a line when their flanking units had retreated. There, alone, 6,500 men surrendered, the largest surrender of US soldiers in the entire war.
The German offensive continued to roll forward, protected from air attack by a severe storm center and benefiting from the chaos that ensued as the Allies scrambled to stop them short of the Meuse River. Had the Germans successfully crossed the Meuse in strength, they would have had a good chance of capturing Antwerp, the only large port and source of supply for two army groups. Finally, a combination of clearing weather, the solidification of the Allied line, the resistance of Bastogne, and the arrival of Patton’s 3rd Army broke the offensive.
Tens of thousands of Allied soldiers were killed or wounded, the entire front thrown into chaos. Patton’s order to rescue Bastogne made him unable to carry out his planned offensive south into the Saar. All the Allied generals had to do was listen to their intelligence reports. There were more than enough units to strengthen the line in Ardennes. Nothing the Germans did, other than attacking at all, was new or unusual. There should never have been a Bulge at all, much less a battle to recover it and free Bastogne. If the Allies had trusted their own field intelligence and not looked for reasons to continue to believe what they wanted to believe—that the war was almost over—there would not have been a Bulge formed to battle over. Perhaps the only real value the Wacht am Rhein operation had for Germany was that it distracted and wore down Patton’s 3rd Army. If this mechanized corps had not had to make its brilliant change of facing and rush toward Bastogne, it would have remained free to attack into Germany as Patton had planned. There would have been no mobile reserves to stop the advance into the Saar and beyond. Patton’s attack could have been a decisive breakthrough. The war might have ended sooner or the Allied armies might well have been able to be first to Berlin.