Is there any way to make "watch on the Rhine" a success?

EMTSATX

Banned
First, thanks for taking a look at this. This site amazes me, the amount of knowledge here is grand.

Is there anyway for making "watch on the Rhine" ie Battle of the Bulge a sucess using real life position and equipment and TOE? If not what equipment and commanders what/who would you use?

I'm of a couple of opinions. First, it was doomed because of the Air situation. The German's had no way to screen with the Luftwaffe, no way to give even temporary air cover. Success was not well defined and was to predicted on way too optimistic things. I just don't even know what they hoped to accomplish. I mean I know the standard answer of using blitzkrieg to capture the deep water port and split the British and Americans. Since this is lunacy, what did they really want? Was this another we'll make peace with the Western Allies fantasy? I have always thought that the resources spent here could have been spent to better use on the Eastern front (where I do not know, and I'm sure the red tidal wave would have kept rolling West.) I don't think this sped up the collapse in the west a lot, as every German who could walk or crawl was trying to get into the Western Allies lines.

Could the OKW could have just ignored Hitler and been like "ja mein Führer we're working on it." Hitler entered the bunker in January correct? Could his orders been ignored? So I guess my question is there a way to make this work and to what extent? Using the equipment and commander's available. Anyway to get better Air campaign? Could paratroopers be utilized in an effective manner? It seems the German's massively over estimated on armor. Could it have gone better? Or did they get lucky it went as well as it did?
 
Define "success". As long as allies had even remotely competent commanders, there was no way in god's green earth that Germans could have taken Antwerp. They simply didn't have the fuel to get there.

Could the OKW could have just ignored Hitler and been like "ja mein Führer we're working on it."

No, not unless Wermacht, Luftwaffe and SS decide to do it together, which they were not able to do.
 
Germany did drop a few paratroopers during the Battle of the Bulge, but their primary mission was to spread confusion amongst American troops. They succeeded.
Another role played by Otto Skorzeny's "special" troops was to dress in Ametican uniforms and spread more confusion among American troops. They succeeded.

WI German para-troopers focused instead on capturing key bridges and road junctions in the Ardennes"?
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
Reducing the scope of the offensive. The region of attack was a good one, the weather was favorable, and the preparations were successfully kept mostly secret. But they went for the moon and came up way short. We could get into the idea that they should not have attacked the Elsenborn Ridge, which was held by veteran American troops with a good position and artillery support, or that they should have totally bypassed Bastogne or that they took too long at St. Vith or that Peiper should have focused on capturing fuel supplies rather than ambulance and telegraph units, but really, the scale of the offensive was too big without air support or a serious strategic reserve. A localized attack in the Southern area of the front, against the green American units only, taking the road network that separated Patton and the French in the South from the 1st Army in the North, using the doctrine of extreme local superiority on an even narrower front, could have had success.

This would allow them to have a much more defensible and concentrated salient to defend and in the process, to overrun the most vulnerable of American forces on the front. Or better yet, they don't attack at all and keep those 100,000 troops lost in the Bulge clinging tightly to the Rhine as a strategic reserve rather than being wasted on an attack against a force with air superiority and lots of reserves.
 
Germany did drop a few paratroopers during the Battle of the Bulge, but their primary mission was to spread confusion amongst American troops. They succeeded.
Another role played by Otto Skorzeny's "special" troops was to dress in Ametican uniforms and spread more confusion among American troops. They succeeded.

WI German para-troopers focused instead on capturing key bridges and road junctions in the Ardennes"?
There was Operation Stosser- a night drop to seize Baraque Michel crossroads.
However Hitler denied his generals any kind of reconnaissance to prepare the battlefield in their favor.
As a result, Operation Stosser was a night drop conducted in a blinding snow storm, with some paratroopers who had never jumped out of an airplane before, with pilots they did not know, and given only a week to prepare compared to the American airborne divisions who trained for six months before their D-Day drop. Operation Stosser was doomed before the planes left the ground.
 
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Redbeard

Banned
Militarily they probably couldn't do any better than OTL, but I wouldn't 100% exclude that they could achieve a little more politically - i.e. creating a split between the US and British. That would however in all likelihood just have meant a much larger portion of Germany being occupied by the Soviets.

By late 1944 it probably would have been smarter to simply abandon the western front and concentrate all remaining forces in the east. That would create a chance to at least split the Wallies from the Soviets, which would be in German post-war interest, but would also require Hitler being sent to another (hot) place.
 
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