No falaise pocket, how would this affect the Ardennes?

What if instead of launching the attack who resulted in the desaster of Falaise, Von Kluge and Haussr desobeyed their orders and adopted defensive positions instead, how would this affect the ardennes offensive? :confused:
 

Deleted member 1487

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. Things might play out such that Paris becomes a battle ground or not. Likely the Ardennes is behind German lines going into winter if the 7th army isn't destroyed so quickly and Market-Garden isn't launched. The Germans remain overall more intact and are able to hold more to the West. So likely the Western campaign drags on and perhaps as a result there is no major western offensive in the Winter of 1944-45, as there is no place where it could happen with major success due to how the lines fall by then. In which case we get a bigger Eastern offensive by the Germans instead, because there is less threat to the Rheinland that needs to be immediately handled. Its pretty tough to say for sure one way or the other due to how many variables there are here.
 
What Wiking said, largely. I'd quibble with him and say that Hitler might try and launch an attempt to drive the WAllies off the continent anyways, since he was adverse to just sitting back and defending and believed that the WAllies would be easier to defeat in late-1944 then the Soviets would, but such an attempt would fail even more horribly then the OTL Bulge due to the WAllies more favorable positioning. Ditto for an attempted Eastern offensive, where the Soviets are just too overwhelmingly powerful and aware to be caught off guard by something like the OTL Bulge.

Amusing ASBish third option: he launches an Ardennes-esque offensive at the WAllies in Italy.
 
I've seen this situation a dozen or more times on the game board. Few playersare stupid enough to recreate a Falaise Pocket or any other near destruction that early in the game. Before it comes they attempt to delay the Allied player with a series of delaying positions/operations. How well that goes depends on when they start, and the skill of the players.

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. The slow units have trouble keeping ahead of the Allied mobile armies. This threatens more situations like the Mons Pocket or Bourgebus Ridge of OTL. The German play could try to save those with his mobile pieces, but that lead to stand up battles against superior Allied firepower. Which is even worse for the German side.

The German player often starts withdrawing the horse drawn & other formations a lot earlier, but this places a larger burden on the motor/mech units & seeing them attritioned away carrying the entire delaying operations is not good.

The usual outcome in all those games was the Allies arrive at the eastern regions of France & Belgium earlier and the German player in only slightly better condition in terms of numbers of formations and strength relative to the Allies.
 
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.
 
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 the German High Command had to do something in the Face of Bluecoat and more importantly operation Cobra.

Do nothing and the armoured units get ground up facing the British/Can/Pol forces in the eastern end of the battlefield - do something and the same happens in the Western End vs Pattons forces.

Ignore either and the entire German forces in Normandy (and beyond) face an immediate disaster.

Given the situation I do not think that there is a good answer for the German's as it turns out that they could not stop one of those offensives let alone both!

If they choose to run for the Seine - they might possibly save their better units but far too much equipment as well as most of the non motorised units will go into the bag as they would have no chance of outrunning the far more mobile allied formations.
 
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.

No argument there, & often on the game board a small mistiming in the withdrawl leads rapidly to a rout. I just finished a Fortress Europa game last October where a few misteps in moving back to the Paris region made the remainder of the summer very difficult. Losing a single armored corps at the wrong moment unhinges a entire delay line & the Allies gain a couple weeks advance.
 
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.
 
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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.

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.
 

Deleted member 1487

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.
Better then to spread out rather than concentrate on the retreat and be hammered by air power.
 
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