An Xmas Day Battle of the Bulge

In OTL the Germans attacked on 16 December 1944, and achieved complete surprise, but the US troops quickly put up stiff resistance.

WI they had attacked on Christmas Day, with the US troops in such a festivity-sozzled stupour that it becomes a rout, with Bastogne falling & the 2nd Army being totally destroyed or captured. The Germans being able to reach the Meuse, but not attempting to cross it, which was beyond them.

If they had timed Bodenplatte (in OTL on 1 January) also for Xmas Day, destroying many more Allied aircraft on the ground, effectively ceasing tactical flights in NE Europe for a month, how long could the Germans have held the shoulders of the salient & with what results? Or would they quickly have withdrawn? Does Germany still fall in May, or get nuked in August? Or is a real dent made in Anglo-American morale, enough to cause a split, with 150,000 US troops hors de combat & Montgomery in charge?

NBL

Proctol said:

In OTL the Germans attacked on 16 December 1944, and achieved complete surprise, but the US troops quickly put up stiff resistance.

WI they had attacked on Christmas Day, with the US troops in such a festivity-sozzled stupour that it becomes a rout, with Bastogne falling & the 2nd Army being totally destroyed or captured. The Germans being able to reach the Meuse, but not attempting to cross it, which was beyond them.

If they had timed Bodenplatte (in OTL on 1 January) also for Xmas Day, destroying many more Allied aircraft on the ground, effectively ceasing tactical flights in NE Europe for a month, how long could the Germans have held the shoulders of the salient & with what results? Or would they quickly have withdrawn? Does Germany still fall in May, or get nuked in August? Or is a real dent made in Anglo-American morale, enough to cause a split, with 150,000 US troops hors de combat & Montgomery in charge?

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Not bloody likely. I can't see US troops getting that pissed that the entire 2nd Army gets destroyed because of it.
Also, after Operation Bodenplatte the RAF alone replaced all the lost aircraft within days- it had more of an effect on the Luftwaffe itself since they lost so many of there remaining trained pilots, they were unable to operate effectively en masse for the rest of the war.

I believe there actually was a widespread rout among the US forces holding the line in the Ardennes, but that has today sucessfully been forgotten and our focus is on the few crack (airborne) units that were surrounded and put up a though resistance, but basically didn't make the big difference.

The German attack had little chance of success, as they had to rely on capturing allied fuel to keep on going, and as soon as the weather cleared any German daytime movement was impossible. If starting the attack at Christmas time, there will be only very few days before the weather clears meaning that the bulge will hardly be a dent in the line. BTW I don't think a military unit at the front will be any less prepared because of a holiday. You might sing a Christmas carol, get some extra rations etc., but if it influences the preparedness of the unit the commanding officer should be put up against a wall on Christmas Morning - and shot!

But the initial rout bring interesting parallels to the French in the same area in 1940. They routed too but many units also put up a heroic fight. But the main difference perhaps was that they couldn't coun't on the enemy running out of fuel, men and materiel and the air force finishing the job. OK there is one more difference. Patton (or his staff) turned the front of his 3rd Army towards the bulge in something like 24 hours. That is nothing short of very impressive and the French in 1940 would have benefitted much if having a doctrine allowing such movements (de Gaulle given an armoured armycorps in 1939?).

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

How did Lydell-Hart after the war come to the conclusion that if the Germans had chosen the "Northern Option" and attacked Montgomery's 21st Army Corps they would have succeeded in destroying 20 divisions? Would the Anglo-Canadians have put up less of a fight than the Americans? Or would the terrain in the line Aachen-Nijmigen-Liege have favoured the attackers more than in the Ardennes?

If they had chosen the "Southern Option", together with Himmler's forces used in OTL's "Northwind", Patton's 3rd Army would have been destroyed. To kill or capture Patton at that stage of the war would have been a morale coup: imagine prisoner Patton being paraded though Berlin in January 1945, & even tried and executed for "war crimes"!

Lydell-Hart

I haven't heard of Lydell-Hart's (that L-H?) conclusion, and I strongly disagree. I believe the general consensus is that Monty was better prepared for taking an attack that the sectorin the Ardennes. Monty had many faults, but being ill-prepared certainly wasn't one of them.

I believe the general idea of the operation was to spilt the allies by attacking inbetween them, and hope for a poltical split. Considdering how the allies, and not at least Monty, very quickly got into a row over what went wrong and what should have been done, I believe the Germans were not that far from their goal in this context. This is were a great political leader like Eisenhower really comes to his right and can't be replaced by 1000 Pattons or Rommels.

regards

Steffen Redbeard

It's in Basil Liddell Hart's "History of the Second World War" in his discussion with Hasso von Manteuffel (1897-1978, commander of the 5th Panzer Army which almost broke the Allied line at the Bulge), at the end of the chapter "Hitler's Ardennes Counter-Stroke".

Redbeard said:

I believe there actually was a widespread rout among the US forces holding the line in the Ardennes, but that has today sucessfully been forgotten and our focus is on the few crack (airborne) units that were surrounded and put up a though resistance, but basically didn't make the big difference.

Steffen Redbeard

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Steffen, many US units held out on the frontline till they ran out of ammunition. There was dispear and low moral out of units reterating west, but not a rout. The majority of US troops shot up the Volksgerneder units then surrended when out of ammo. This caused signficant causlities and threw the German time table off. Also the surrendered troops cloged the roads slowing down the supplies and panzers apporaching the front. So it wasn't a rout.

The Battle of the Buldge wouldn't of succeded, no matter when it started. The Germans needed more fuel, veterans on the front line and most imporantly air cover. As soon as the weather cleared ever Allied fighter bomber went to work on the German troops and tanks in the field.

Planning Wacht an Rhein whilst recovering from the bomb blast on his bed already in July 1944, Hitler had intended it to commence in November.

With the Allies still shaken from Arnhem, although they still lose, assuming they still achieve total surprise & the weather, already foggy in November initially holds, plus a couple of more SS divisions from the Eastern Front, how would an earlier Battle of the Bulge have panned out for the Germans: better or worse?

Bearing in mind that Antwerp didn't start unloading much needed supplies from the Liberty ships until December 2. In OTL just those 2 weeks worth of supplies proved essential in the battle. In November, supplies were still having to come the 400 miles from Normandy. Under a full assault, if the supply line had broken, how far would the Allies fall back? If the Germans had been able to move their V1 & V2s forward, without the Antwerp-X AA system being ready, Antwerp would have taken much more of a hammering even than in OTL, possibly leading to the city's evacuation & non-operation of the docks.

History's Most Hyped Battle

Stars when they are in the process of dying start to burn their helium as well as their hydrogen. This often causes something called helium flash during which the star flares up for a while. But it doesn't last all that long and the star still dies.

The Battle of the Bulge is a lot like helium flash. All a conceivably better outcome there does is postpone Htiler's suicide by a week to 10 days. Things are still crumbling in the East. A better Bulge lets Hitler remove 5 or 6 understrength divisions (one of them Panzer) to East. If he uses them well (more not than often) it buys Berlin a week.

World War Two POD's are incredibly simple:

AXIS LOSE

Although by Eastern Front standards it may have been little more than a skirmish, it is unfair to describe any battle in NW Europe that involved 600,000 men, 180,000 casualties, 1500 tanks, 1000 planes and an advance of 50 miles, as "hype".

If Hitler had husbanded his last resources in the west, how should he have best used them? If the Americans had arrived at the Siegfried Line to find it fully manned (unlike in OTL where it was undermanned because of the losses in the Bulge), is all it would have brought the Reich is just one more week?

Would the forces from the Bulge have still been extant in March 1945 to contest more strongly the Rhine Crossing?

gtrof said:

Steffen, many US units held out on the frontline till they ran out of ammunition. There was dispear and low moral out of units reterating west, but not a rout. The majority of US troops shot up the Volksgerneder units then surrended when out of ammo. This caused signficant causlities and threw the German time table off. Also the surrendered troops cloged the roads slowing down the supplies and panzers apporaching the front. So it wasn't a rout.

The Battle of the Buldge wouldn't of succeded, no matter when it started. The Germans needed more fuel, veterans on the front line and most imporantly air cover. As soon as the weather cleared ever Allied fighter bomber went to work on the German troops and tanks in the field.

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I know this is a sensible subject, but IMHO "rout" fits as well to what happened in many US Army units as it fits to a lot of other situation where "rout" has been used as the label. Imagine if the French Army in 1940 had been able to successfully counterattack after the initial German advance. Then I'm absolutely sure that all (French) history writing would have very much downplayed/ignored the dissolution in many French frontline units, and magnified the incidents of French units fighting to their last bullet (not hard to find). All in all my main point is that the biggest difference between the French Army of 1940 and the US Army in 1944 wasn't morale, but that the French Army was incapable of reacting in time to unforseen situations. That tends to be a bad morale fertiliser. In contrast the 3rd US Army turning it's front 90 degrees in 24 hours is an operation in world class.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

gtrof said:

Steffen, many US units held out on the frontline till they ran out of ammunition. There was dispear and low moral out of units reterating west, but not a rout. The majority of US troops shot up the Volksgerneder units then surrended when out of ammo. This caused signficant causlities and threw the German time table off. Also the surrendered troops cloged the roads slowing down the supplies and panzers apporaching the front. So it wasn't a rout.

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Concur with Redbeard. The Germans routed the US forces in the first days of the Bulge. The 106th Infantry Division utterly and completely collapsed. Part of another division did too. This was a result of the US factory line assemly method of building units.

Proctol's notion that Xmas day would be an optimal time to strike is off though. May be a cultural thing. Americans dont traditionally get plastered the day before Christmas. Now if you want combat ineffective Americans attack the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas when we are still woozy from stuffing our faces full of turkey and mashed potatoes!

Mike Collins said:

Proctol's notion that Xmas day would be an optimal time to strike is off though. May be a cultural thing. Americans dont traditionally get plastered the day before Christmas. Now if you want combat ineffective Americans attack the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas when we are still woozy from stuffing our faces full of turkey and mashed potatoes!

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Yeah, and the mashed potato is really much worse than the turkey or alcohol, as you tend to overeat in mashed potatoes. That's perhaps why the potato powder in the field rations makes a really lousy mash?

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

I believe that it was some elements of the 28th KEYSTONE Div (Pennsylvania NG) which collapsed in the face of the initial German attack (these guys had been physically and psychologically battered in the Huertgen Forest before they were withdrawn to garrison this 'quiet' sector) in addition to the 106th GOLDEN LIONS. However, other US inf outfits like the 2nd INDIANHEAD and 99th successfully held the Elsenborn Ridge against repeated German attacks, which action was just as important as the more famous stands of the 101st SCREAMIN EAGLES and 10th Armd at Bastogne, and the 82nd at St Vith. Then again, in this scenario, if the German attack is launched on Christmas Day, then the 82nd and 101st wouldn't even be in the line in the Ardennes- as portrayed in BAND OF BROTHERS, the airborne guys were scheduled to spend Christmas nice and comfortable at the Mourmelon camp, before the sudden emergency in the Ardennes caused them to be sent into action via the Red Ball Express.

question: dont americans have their christmas on christmas day? We europeans celebrate on christmas eve and if the germans attacked on dec 25 they would find the americans preparing to celebrate. And hadnt the sky cleard up by then?

mattep74 said:

question: dont americans have their christmas on christmas day? We europeans celebrate on christmas eve and if the germans attacked on dec 25 they would find the americans preparing to celebrate. And hadnt the sky cleard up by then?

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I believe the norm here in the US is to celebrate in the morning by giving out presents near the Xmas tree. In the afternoon we normally eat a substantial dinner centered around turkey and ham. Given that these are soldiers in a foreign land, there would be no morning festivities. That said, the US military is SUPER anal about getting traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to the troops. There would be a larger than normal number of troops on pass but nothing outrageous and the general optempo would be low.

Redbeard said:

Yeah, and the mashed potato is really much worse than the turkey or alcohol, as you tend to overeat in mashed potatoes. That's perhaps why the potato powder in the field rations makes a really lousy mash?

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

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Now dont underestimate the damage turkey can do! There was a recent scientific study that stated eating turkey makes human bodies produce some sort of chemical that makes one want to sleep

Mike Collins said:

Now dont underestimate the damage turkey can do! There was a recent scientific study that stated eating turkey makes human bodies produce some sort of chemical that makes one want to sleep

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...and did you know that leather can cause the most terrible physical reactions? Everytime I've fallen asleep with my shoes on, I awake with a terrible headache!

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

If the Germans hadn't attacked on December 16, when would the Allied assault have likely commenced and what would have been its format?

Mike Collins said:

Now dont underestimate the damage turkey can do! There was a recent scientific study that stated eating turkey makes human bodies produce some sort of chemical that makes one want to sleep

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Turkey actually does contain a chemical called triptophane (spelling?) which was, at one time, prescribed as a tranquilizer. So it definitely does cause one to feel drowsey. Especially when one eats a lot of it, as happens at holiday time.