BULGE, BATTLE OF THE.

Also known as the Battle of the Ardennes or the von Rundstedt counteroffensive, the Battle of the Bulge, 16 December 1944 to 16 January 1945, allowed the Anglo-American expeditionary armies (under General Dwight D. Eisenhower) to destroy twelve elite mobile divisions of Adolf Hitler's western European army during the latter stages of World War II. The campaign began with Hitler's surprise offensive through the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg and ended with the elimination of the German salient driven into the heart of the U.S. First Army as far west as the watershed of the Meuse River—this salient resembling a "bulge."

GERMAN PLANS AND PREPARATIONS

The purpose of the German offensive was to disrupt the Allies' logistical lines of communications by taking the key transportation centers of Liege and Antwerp. The desperate offensive, Hitler's personal scheme, was supposed to divide the U.S. Twelfth Army Group (led by General Omar N. Bradley) and the British Twenty-first Army Group (under Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery) and throw the Allied advance to the Rhine into confusion. Hitler's ultimate goal (and fantastic hope) was to negotiate a truce with the western Allies so that the German armed forces could concentrate on the eastern front and stop the relentless, vengeful advance of the Soviet armies into central Europe.

Conceived by Hitler during the collapse of the German western armies in France in August 1944, the Ardennes counteroffensive drew its inspiration from the 1940 German offensive in France and the campaigns of King Frederick II of Prussia in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Strategic insight, operational excellence, bad weather, and tactical ferocity would overcome Allied superiority in manpower and logistics. Hitler viewed the Allied commanders as weak and their fighting men as even weaker; his senior western commanders, Field Marshals Gerd von Runstedt and Walter Model, were not so optimistic. Hitler argued that the reconstituted mechanized divisions (panzers or panzer grenadiers) would not attack alone. They would be assisted by selective air attacks upon the Allied rear areas by the reconstituted Luftwaffe and the V-1 (a cruise missile) and V-2 (a ballistic missile) vengeance weapons. Special operations groups disguised as American troops would destroy or divert Allied motor convoys with supplies and reinforcements as well as seize key bridges and crossroads for the rampaging panzers. The offensive even had a deceptive code name, Wacht am Rhein (watch on the Rhine).

Despite the deep reservations of his senior generals, Hitler withdrew the surviving armored units from France, sent all available replacements (including flak and ground aviation units) to these divisions, reequipped the divisions with the most advanced model tanks (the Mark V "Panther" and Mark VI "Tiger") and self-propelled assault guns (the Stug III G and Jagdpanzer 100), stockpiled ammunition and gasoline, and organized new smaller, more firepower-intensive infantry divisions (volksgrenadiers [people's grenadiers]) to commit more support troops and new conscripts, young and old, into the battle. This dramatic reconstitution effort escaped Allied intelligence. The Germans reduced their radio communications and avoided Allied aerial reconnaissance. By mid-December the Germans had organized three field armies (Sixth SS Panzer, Fifth Panzer, and Seventh) of twelve armored-mechanized divisions and special brigades and seventeen infantry divisions along the eastern line of the Ardennes, a forested region of low mountains, many rivers, and few transportation corridors. The three German armies employed 330,000 men and eight hundred tanks and assault guns in the campaign.

THE COURSE OF THE BATTLE

In the first week of the Battle of the Bulge, the three German armies held the operational initiative and drove their armored spearheads through the surprised U.S. VIII Corps (three divisions and a mechanized cavalry group) and advanced 72 kilometers (45 miles) into Belgium on a front 112 kilometers (70 miles) wide. The Germans, however, did not meet their time–distance schedule and lost their short-lived advantage for many reasons, all linked to the stubborn resistance of the U.S. First Army, soon reinforced by the U.S. Third Army to the south in Luxembourg and France. Despite occasional unit disintegrations, the U.S. 99th, 106th, and 28th Infantry Divisions mounted a phased resistance that held the shoulders of the salient and forced the Germans to slide directly west instead of northwest as planned. Within the salient, the U.S. Seventh Armored Division at St. Vith and the U.S. Ninth and Tenth Armored Divisions and U.S. 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne defended key road junctions that forced the Germans to use their scarce elite panzer forces to seize St. Vith and besiege Bastogne. American engineer units destroyed critical bridges, defended key road junctions, and demolished gasoline dumps the panzer divisions needed to maintain their advance. Air attacks and rear area operations proved no substitute for the Wehrmacht's limited success on the ground.

Largely through the key decisions by Eisenhower and General George S. Patton Jr. (leading the U.S. Third Army) in the first three days of the campaign, the Allies stopped the Germans before they reached the Meuse River, well short of Liege and Antwerp. Three infantry and one armored division of the U.S. V Corps stopped the Sixth SS Panzer Army in the northern part of the salient. Augmented by the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps (three divisions) and the British XXX Corps (four divisions), directed by Montgomery with his usual caution, the Allied forces also defeated the most advanced western forces of the Fifth Panzer Army. Bradley, distressed that Eisenhower had put about two-thirds of his army group under temporary British control, did not approve a more aggressive Third Army attack against the German Seventh Army at the salient's southern shoulder. Even with the commitment of three corps (nine divisions), Patton had difficulty relieving Bastogne and dealing with the Fifth Panzer Army, too. A plan of greater daring might have bagged all three German armies, not squeezed them back to their initial positions.

In a series of engagements throughout the "bulge," the panzer formations reached the limit of their endurance in firepower and mobility in the last week of December 1944. The infantry divisions found themselves stalled beside and behind the panzer spearheads. The Allies increased their superiority in several critical operational areas: tank numbers, massed artillery, aerial resupply, close air support, and fresh infantry. Much to Hitler's dismay, von Runstedt and other generals reported in carefully phrased messages that in strategic terms Operation Wacht am Rhein had failed, but the German armies could still save themselves and inflict crippling casualties on the Allies. The German fighting withdrawal was indeed stubborn, but did not justify the sacrifices of three German armies. By mid-January Hitler's bold stroke had become a forlorn hope, and the Allies had regained the strategic initiative, which they never again surrendered.

LOSSES AND SIGNIFICANCE

The German forces suffered irreparable losses in elite personnel: 30,039 soldiers (14,325 killed or captured) of 159,564 panzertruppen and 44,420 of 171,596 soldaten in infantry formations (25,966 killed or captured). Tank losses were significant, even if German industry could eventually replace them. New tanks in the hands of new soldiers could not replace the Ardennes losses. Although the most recent (1943–1944) models of German tanks, assault guns, and tank destroyers enjoyed superior main guns, the six most-heavily engaged panzer divisions could not match the American ability to replace armored losses during the Ardennes campaign. The Germans began their offensive with 713 heavy armored vehicles, but they faced 1,382 armored vehicles (tanks and tank destroyers) in the first five American armored divisions they soon met. As the initiative shifted to the Allies in January 1945, the same five U.S. armored divisions still had 1,298 heavy mechanized vehicles in the field (excluding self-propelled artillery), but the six German panzer divisions could deploy only 332 similar vehicles, their forces cut by combat losses, air attack, breakdowns, and lack of gasoline.

The American losses were serious, 62,439 casualties in all categories and about half lost as killed or captured. The distribution of casualties, however, reveals that only three divisions (the 28th and 106th Infantry Divisions and the 101st Airborne Division) took crippling losses, almost 19,000 soldiers or 6,000-plus per division. All the other American divisions took acceptable losses, an average of 1,300 in each of nine engaged armored divisions and an average of 2,000 in eighteen other infantry divisions. Total British losses were fewer than 2,000.

The Battle of the Bulge probably hastened the end of the European war by ruining the fighting elite of the German army and Waffen-SS in Army Group West. It completed the destruction of Germany's panzer divisions begun in the Normandy campaign (June–August 1944) and on the eastern front in the Soviet victories at Kursk (1943) and in Operation Bagration (1944). Hitler failed to recognize that the Third Reich was not Prussia and that he was not Frederick the Great.

See alsoWorld War II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cole, Hugh M. The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge. Washington, D.C., 1965.

Dupuy, Trevor N., David L. Bongard, and Richard C. Anderson. Hitler's Last Gamble: The Battle of the Bulge, December 1944–January 1945. New York, 1994.

Eisenhower, John S. D. The Bitter Woods. New York, 1969.

MacDonald, Charles B. A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge. New York, 1985.

Allan R. Millett