You're opening up a lot of butterflies there. If say Operation Lüttich isn't launched and the Germans are able to pull back to the Seine with their strength relatively intact that will delay the Allies a bit going forward. ..
If the withdrawl is delayed until this late in the game it can easily turn into a rout.
On 28 June Hitler had rejected a plan, put forward by von Rundstedt and Rommel, which suggested a German withdrawal back to the line of the Seine. With Hitler gone, this plan could have been put into effect. There would have been no Mortain counter-attack and no Falaise pocket, with their attendant losses.
Instead a defence of the Seine would have been followed by a defence of the Somme, and then the Meuse and Moselle, and so on back to the Reischswald and eventually the Rhine. This early withdrawal from France - about three weeks sooner than the one that did occur - would have saved some 250,000 men and much equipment, some of which could have been redeployed to the Eastern Front, particularly in Rumania.
Thus, a withdrawal would have allowed Germany to adopt defensive strategies on both western and eastern fronts, fighting on shorter, more defensible lines.
However, even with no Lüttich, the Eastern Front would have given at some point, whoever was in charge.
Well, I'll point out that a rout is basically what happened to the half of the Gernan army in Normandy which managed to escaped the Falaise gap but that's a very minor quibble.
On 28 June Hitler had rejected a plan, put forward by von Rundstedt and Rommel, which suggested a German withdrawal back to the line of the Seine. With Hitler gone, this plan could have been put into effect. There would have been no Mortain counter-attack and no Falaise pocket, with their attendant losses.
Instead a defence of the Seine would have been followed by a defence of the Somme, and then the Meuse and Moselle, and so on back to the Reischswald and eventually the Rhine.
This looks good on paper, but between the full motorization of the Allied Armies in the west and the overwhelming Allied tactical air power its really difficult to pull off, and large losses are liable to occur anyway. The plains of France & Belgium are a crappy place for a defense even if temporary & worse when 70% of your army is not motorized.
One of the annoying features of this staged withdrawl is the longer you delay a allied advance at a stage the more time the Allies have to improve their logistics & gain strength in the forward units. this results in a greater difficulty at the next stage & increased odd of a catastrophic collapse there.
Better then to spread out rather than concentrate on the retreat and be hammered by air power.Indeed. Had the Germans chose to retreat, I think there would have been a defeat, too, but the carnage would not likely be as concentrated as in Falaise. Had the Germans been more spread out, their casualties would have likely been lower. But at this point in the war, the German army was only a shell of it's former self, and the Allied fighters and bombers will still pound the Germans as they retreat, perhaps not to the Seine, but to the Rhine.