WI the Allies knew about Operation Watch on the Rhine?

Blair152

Banned
The title's about the Battle of the Bulge. This, to use the cliche, was Hitler's
last roll of the dice. I was watching a program last night about the Battle of
the Bulge. It said that on the eve of the battle, German troops muffled their
engines, and boots, to make sure American soldiers didn't hear them. I remember another program saying that the Allies knew about Operation Watch on the Rhine about a month or more before it was executed, and did
nothing about it. What if the Allies knew about Operation Watch on the Rhine
and moved to cut it off at the pass?
 
Actually, since the Germans were reading US Army Military Police radio broadcasts (made in the CLEAR!) they knew at all times where we were and what we were doing. So anything we did in response to new intelligence would have provoked a change in something the Germans did. On the other hand, we are talking about the mind(?) of Hitler, after all.

Eisenhower had only 2 divisions in his strategic reserve on Dec 16th, 1944, the 82nd and 101st US Airborne. Not exactly a heavy hitter strike force. However, with a 30 day advanced warning, it would be much simpler to cancel the offensives scheduled through to the Ardennes D-Day. This would have resulted in a stronger German position in the southern sector against Sixth Army Group. I don't know what a lack of strategic offensives by 21st Army Group would do. But if the number of divisions used by the Allies throughout the battle were dug in and in position at the start?

A sane Hitler would have launched the offensive through the 15th Army's positions. Would Hitler have changed his mind? If not, the German 7th Army would have been ground down in a day. The 5th Panzer would be caught up in a meat-grinder like a small scale Kursk. The 6th SS Panzer? The heaviest hitters fighting in the toughest terrain against (probably) the toughest units. Even Eisenhower quickly determined the German's strategic objective WITHOUT the intelligence once the full force of the offensive manifested itself.

So does Hitler change anything or not???
 

Larrikin

Banned
You would need to severely lower both the arrogance and amatuerishness of the US senior generals.
 
You would need to severely lower both the arrogance and amatuerishness of the US senior generals.


Not every US general was Patton or MacArthur. Ike was hardly that arrogant(which is why he was given his post as SAC), and I believe Bradley was also competent enough to not let his ego get in the way of doing his job. Although I believe that patton was the one who was prepared enough to move his army to relieve bastogne far more quickly than his compatriots could.
 
Bodenplatte was the last roll of the dice. Wacht am Rhine was second last. Just as Bodenplatte removed many German aircraft and pilots for the rest of the war, many due to friendly fire, the Bulge probably made life a little easier later for the Allies. They wouldn't have thought so at the time, but the forces arrayed for the battle, if defensively deployed, might have been even tougher to defeat.

The reason they weren't expected is because it was doomed to failure.
 

Larrikin

Banned
Not every US general was Patton or MacArthur. Ike was hardly that arrogant(which is why he was given his post as SAC), and I believe Bradley was also competent enough to not let his ego get in the way of doing his job. Although I believe that patton was the one who was prepared enough to move his army to relieve bastogne far more quickly than his compatriots could.

Ike was an amateur, and it was Bradley who ignored his own as well as British intelligence warnings about the upcoming attack.

And as for Patton, he had to be ordered to stop his attack to the south 3 days after Wacht am Rhein kicked off.
 
...and I believe Bradley was also competent enough to not let his ego get in the way of doing his job...

Bradley had blinkers on at this time. He was obsessed with launching an attack through the Saar region and believed the intelligence reports and the attack itself was simply a diversionary maneuver designed to draw his attention away from his own offensive which he believed the Germans were terrified of.

He was so fixated with his own attack that when Hodges sent his first plea to Bradley for orders, directions and advice on how to deal with the German attack Bradley ignored it and went hundreds of miles behind the front to play cards with Eisenhower in Paris.

In the next four to five days of the battle Bradley continued to dissmiss the German counter-offensive as a diversionary attack and continued to tell Eisenhower that everything was fine and he was well in control and ready to launch he offensive at a moments notice.

In those four to five days he had done nothing to arrest the choas on his left, he had not sent Hodges or Simpson orders or advice or directions, he had not visitied Hodges or Simpson or the front to find out the situation for himself and he continually ignored the intelligence reports he was getting.

After those days Eisenhower took the only course available to him if he wanted to restore order and that was to temporarilly sack Bradley from command of the 1st and 9th US Armies and place Montgomery in control. Not did he do this to make administration in the North easier but he did it because Bradley had shown himself unwilling to deal with battle in the North while Montgomery had, as soon as he knew the battle was going on, pulled all available manpower out of his 21st Army Group and placed them defensively behind the Meuse River (in 12th Army Groups area) to insure that if the Germans got through the Americans they would get no further and sent his LO's forward into 1st and 9th US Armies territories to find their commanders (Army Commanders through to Divisional commanders) and get reports and to judge the front for themselves and report back to him so that he had a clear picture of events.

By December 20th 1944 Montgomery was the only allied commander who had a clear picture of the battle and had shown himself to SHEAF HQ as being willing and prepared to deal with it while Bradley had shown complete ignorance of the battle and shown himself completely unprepared to deal with it.

I have seen some people in the past (though not on this site) say that Montgomery getting command of the 1st and 9th US Armies was a slap to Bradleys face but from where I'm standing if it was then it was no more than Bradley deserved.
 
Several members of both the 1st and 3rd army intelligence staff, expected some kind of winter counter attack for the purposes of achieving a Christmas "morale victory" what shocked and surprised them was two things

1. the scale of the offensive... the war is won attitude contributed to this of course, but also the period of bad weather, and ability of the Germans to mass their forces in forrests relatively immune to air recon helped as well

2. the location of the offensive... the ardennes was good tank country in the summer when the primary German vehicle was the Panzer MK 2, which only weighed ten tons and had a good ground pressure profile... it wasn't good tank country in the middle of winter, with 40-70 ton armored vehicles that couldn't manuever well off the roads.

that they achieved tactical and strategic surprise also owes credit to something else... previously when the Germans had conducted an offensive, whether in Africa, Italy or even the Mortain offensive in Normandy, they had always distributed a lot of their orders via their enigma machines which the allies where able to read in real time or damn close to it... in the planning for the bulge, the Germans relied almost exclusively on the local telephone network and couriers... radio silence was employed on the pain of death... even Rundstead who was the overall commander wasn't brought into the loop until a couple days before... it mirrored Rommel's second El Aghelia offensive


so the pod you would need would be for the Germans to have worse operational security. If they knew it was comming, Patton would want them to stumble into an elastic defense, and then have his and the left wing of the first army smash the flanks of the advance and try to pocket the Germans (a Tannenberg type move) Bradley and Ike who were more conventional would just rush divisions to the threatened sector (like they did at Mortain) and let the Germans run into a blood bath

IMO the first course would be far more productive
 

Blair152

Banned
well blair, this is actually a relatively reasonable POD.
Thanks, Dan. One of the programs I saw was over twenty years ago and it said that Allied intelligence, at Bletchley Park, had received ample warning about Operation Watch on the Rhine, and disregarded it as idle German chatter. The program I saw Saturday night, Commanders at War on the Military Channel, profiled both Omar Bradley, and his German counterpart,
Model, and said that Bradley had threatened to resign but Eisenhower refused.
 

Blair152

Banned
Several members of both the 1st and 3rd army intelligence staff, expected some kind of winter counter attack for the purposes of achieving a Christmas "morale victory" what shocked and surprised them was two things

1. the scale of the offensive... the war is won attitude contributed to this of course, but also the period of bad weather, and ability of the Germans to mass their forces in forrests relatively immune to air recon helped as well

2. the location of the offensive... the ardennes was good tank country in the summer when the primary German vehicle was the Panzer MK 2, which only weighed ten tons and had a good ground pressure profile... it wasn't good tank country in the middle of winter, with 40-70 ton armored vehicles that couldn't manuever well off the roads.

that they achieved tactical and strategic surprise also owes credit to something else... previously when the Germans had conducted an offensive, whether in Africa, Italy or even the Mortain offensive in Normandy, they had always distributed a lot of their orders via their enigma machines which the allies where able to read in real time or damn close to it... in the planning for the bulge, the Germans relied almost exclusively on the local telephone network and couriers... radio silence was employed on the pain of death... even Rundstead who was the overall commander wasn't brought into the loop until a couple days before... it mirrored Rommel's second El Aghelia offensive


so the pod you would need would be for the Germans to have worse operational security. If they knew it was comming, Patton would want them to stumble into an elastic defense, and then have his and the left wing of the first army smash the flanks of the advance and try to pocket the Germans (a Tannenberg type move) Bradley and Ike who were more conventional would just rush divisions to the threatened sector (like they did at Mortain) and let the Germans run into a blood bath

IMO the first course would be far more productive
Good point. Douglas Niles co-wrote a couple of alternate history novels about Rommel. Fox At The Front, and Fox On The Rhine. The POD he and his co-author took was that the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler had succeeded, and Himmler took over. The Tigers were the size of today's tanks and broke down frequently. They weren't any good in the Battle of the Bulge. The Panther and the Mark IV would have been better
suited.
 
I assume it goes in line with most what had been said in this thread before, that this knowledge wouldn't have changed too much due to

a) under-estimating the offensive
b) Allied reliance on air-power

The latter would prove decisive after all, for the Germans to go any further, you need a volcano to blow up, closing the skies for even longer than OTL's bad weather did.
 
Good point. Douglas Niles co-wrote a couple of alternate history novels about Rommel. Fox At The Front, and Fox On The Rhine. The POD he and his co-author took was that the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler had succeeded, and Himmler took over. The Tigers were the size of today's tanks and broke down frequently. They weren't any good in the Battle of the Bulge. The Panther and the Mark IV would have been better
suited.

Not attacking at all would have been better... the Panzer MK 4 series H (the main production model at that time) weighed 25 tonnes, whilst the Panther weighed over 40... in the summer when the ground is dry and hard, and the tanks can manuever a bit off the roads it might have worked... but in winter NOTHING was getting through the Ardennes with any sort of serious speed

The battle of the bulge sacrificed Germany's main reserves of infantry and armor for little more than a slight tactical win, but a stategic blood bath. It would have been far wiser strategy, as Guderian suggested to retire behind the rhine, build powerful defensive positions over the winter and use the armored reserves to blunt the main russian spring offensive
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
I assume it goes in line with most what had been said in this thread before, that this knowledge wouldn't have changed too much due to

a) under-estimating the offensive
b) Allied reliance on air-power

The latter would prove decisive after all, for the Germans to go any further, you need a volcano to blow up, closing the skies for even longer than OTL's bad weather did.

If the Heer had followed normal pattern and sent orders over the air, the entire OOB would have been known in advance.

It is unlikely that the Allies would have ignored such information, even if it was only reacted to be improving the defensive preparations and moving a couple battalions of Tank Destroyers and some addtional heavy artillery into the region.

For that matter, with the normal Intel, the marshalling areas for the attacking forces could have been targeted either by fighter bombers or by a mission or two of the 8th.
 

Blair152

Banned
If the Heer had followed normal pattern and sent orders over the air, the entire OOB would have been known in advance.

It is unlikely that the Allies would have ignored such information, even if it was only reacted to be improving the defensive preparations and moving a couple battalions of Tank Destroyers and some addtional heavy artillery into the region.

For that matter, with the normal Intel, the marshalling areas for the attacking forces could have been targeted either by fighter bombers or by a mission or two of the 8th.
That's right. Don't forget Otto Skorzeny's Operation Grief, in which German commandos were sent behind Allied lines wearing American uniforms. If the Allies had done that, Josef Goebbels, the Nazis' Propaganda Minister, would have said it was violation of the laws of war. He'd be right. Allied commandos in German uniforms would have been shot right there on the spot. As for the tanks, right again----almost. The
ground on December 16, 1944, was frozen hard. The winter of 1944, according to what I've heard, was the coldest winter in 50 years. The Allies' reliance, or overreliance, on air power, is a concern. Allied fighters and fighter-bombers, had to have good weather and it had to be CAVU.
What's that? I'm no pilot, but CAVU=Ceiling and visibility unlimited.
 

Blair152

Banned
Ike was an amateur, and it was Bradley who ignored his own as well as British intelligence warnings about the upcoming attack.

And as for Patton, he had to be ordered to stop his attack to the south 3 days after Wacht am Rhein kicked off.
In the movie Patton, George C. Scott, who played Patton, orders his chaplain
to write a prayer for better weather. Patton was ordered to stop his attack in the south so he could relieve the 101st Airborne at Bastogne.
 
That's right. Don't forget Otto Skorzeny's Operation Grief, in which German commandos were sent behind Allied lines wearing American uniforms. If the Allies had done that, Josef Goebbels, the Nazis' Propaganda Minister, would have said it was violation of the laws of war. He'd be right. Allied commandos in German uniforms would have been shot right there on the spot. As for the tanks, right again----almost. The
ground on December 16, 1944, was frozen hard. The winter of 1944, according to what I've heard, was the coldest winter in 50 years. The Allies' reliance, or overreliance, on air power, is a concern. Allied fighters and fighter-bombers, had to have good weather and it had to be CAVU.
What's that? I'm no pilot, but CAVU=Ceiling and visibility unlimited.

The ground was frozen hard, but there where snow drifts on both sides of the roads that the heavy German AFV's would sink deep into and get ditched... the snow drifts on both sides also made the roads into canal kill zones where if a leading vehicle was knocked out it stopped the entire column... basically it ended up being similar conditions to the winter war in Finland... you would think 4 years later, and after having spent a lot of time doing winter fighting themselves in Russia the Germans would have known better by that point

operation grief was rather a joke... other than sow alarm and fear to a modest extent, they can't be said to have accomplished very much, and the Americans had ultra intel on the Germans stock piling American equipment and should have expected it and ensured stronger radio discipline so they could pinpoint these fellows and exterminate them
 

Larrikin

Banned
In the movie Patton, George C. Scott, who played Patton, orders his chaplain
to write a prayer for better weather. Patton was ordered to stop his attack in the south so he could relieve the 101st Airborne at Bastogne.

Which puts the lie to the oft stated line that Patton was the first to move his divisions to relieve the forces under attack in the Ardennes.

By the way, the communications security in 3rd Army was so bad that the Germans always knew exactly where each unit was and where it was going. It got fixed after German prisoners taken in the Bulge commented on it.
 

Blair152

Banned
Which puts the lie to the oft stated line that Patton was the first to move his divisions to relieve the forces under attack in the Ardennes.

By the way, the communications security in 3rd Army was so bad that the Germans always knew exactly where each unit was and where it was going. It got fixed after German prisoners taken in the Bulge commented on it.
The 101st Airborne, under the temporary command of Anthony McAuliffe,
was surrounded by the Germans at Bastogne. When the Germans demanded his surrender, he gave the reply "Nuts!" This really had the Germans puzzled. The response was "What is this 'Nuts!?'" The German commander's
aide replied: "It means 'go to hell.'" The weather cleared on the 26th, the
101st was able to gets supplies, and Christmas presents, and beat back the German advance.
 
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