Battle of the Bulge: Eisenhower’s Biggest Folly?
This is the 65th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge. While most Americans who are aware of the battle learned of it through Hollywood movies that portrayed valiant U.S. resistance to the German Wehrmacht, the truth is far more embarrassing to the U.S. Supreme Commander.
The battle was unnecessary, and resulted from Gen. Eisenhower’s stifling of a U.S. Army group that was ready to cross the Rhine into Germany a month earlier.
As David Colley, author of Decision at Strasbourg: Ike’s Strategic Mistake to Halt the Sixth Army Group at the Rhine in 1944, recently noted:
The Sixth Army Group had assembled bridging equipment, amphibious trucks and assault boats. Seven crossing sites along the upper Rhine were evaluated and intelligence gathered. The Seventh Army could cross north of Strasbourg at Rastatt, Germany, advance north along the Rhine Valley to Karlsruhe, and swing west to come in behind the German First Army, which was blocking Patton’s Third Army in Lorraine. The enemy would face annihilation, and the Third and Seventh Armies could break loose and drive into Germany. The war might end quickly.
Devers never crossed. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander, visited Devers’s headquarters that day and ordered him instead to stay on the Rhine’s west bank and attack enemy positions in northern Alsace. Devers was stunned. “We had a clean breakthrough,” he wrote in his diary. “By driving hard, I feel that we could have accomplished our mission.” Instead the war of attrition continued, giving the Germans a chance to counterattack three weeks later in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, which cost 80,000 American dead and wounded.
The psychological impact on German forces and German society of U.S. troops racing across the Rhine would have been far greater than the impact caused by the pointless slaughter of German civilians in Allied air raids on German cities.
When I was growing up in Front Royal, Virginia, I met one of the few survivors of the Malmedy massacre (the most notorious incident from the Battle of the Bulge). A decade later, I lived in a group house with a retired CIA agent who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Frostbite, not a massacre, was his most vivid memory of that bitter time…
What utter nonsense. We were stalled for the simplest of reasons: logistics. You can’t ‘race’ without gasoline. Devers was in better shape than the northern commanders: the railnet in the Rhone valley had not been bombed to pieces as it had been in northern France, and Marseilles had been captured in working order – but he didn’t have that many troops. Half his force was French – not competitive at that stage of the wear.
We blew the northern French railnet to pieces to interfere with German supply and reinforcement during the battle for Normandy. It worked, but that meant that we were logistically limited until those railroads were repaired – also because the German forces held on doggedly to ports and blocked the use of Antwerp by holding the Scheldt estuary. As we moved farther from our supply base, the Germans got closer to theirs: standard recipe favoring the defense.
Soldiers love talking about the many ways in which their superiors have hindered them from doing a better job. It is a staple of war memoirs.
The private blames the liutenant, who blames the colonel, who blames the general, the general blames the politician, who will blame the gentleman from the other party. Thus has always been and always will be.
Keeping some commanders short of gasoline was maybe Eisenhowers way of keeping them from striking ahead. He could easily have given priority for the fuel that was available, he didn’t because he was committed to advancing on a broad front, especially after Arnhem.
The Allied advance in NW Europe moved was more or less limited to the speed the heavy artillery could be moved. When the Germans were blasted out their positions the guns moved forward again.
What Greg said. The Battle of the Bulge had it’s share of American failures, but after the initial attacks, it wound up doing the Germans more harm than good.
But what if Devers’ attack had worked? Would we have saved more American lives by being the first to attack a place like Berlin? We might not have lost lives at the rate the Soviets did, but it would not have been a walk in the park–and we would have had to turn most of the territory back over to the Russians once the fight was over.
the forced. f9 army the first in germany at wallendorf 5th armored sept 14 1944 forced to leave srpt 19 2o 21 1944. area turned over to 102 inf. div,along 30 mile front, that is where thr german army attack the waed on dec, 16 1944. the war should have been over in aug. or septt 1944. the real blame belongs to omar bradley by not letting 5 armored the best part of two armied got way. he screw vup over us u.s. force at st lo. france when. the win blowed smoke he screwed at singals over our troops and a lot of u. s. troops killed.in florida seven teen men drowned when they were seen out at night to may atraing on dog island in a storm. 28 div. check it out