Battle Of The Bulge Characteristics

The German Command, in planning for a short and swift war, found themselves in a bind when the war started to prolong itself. From the very beginning, their plan started to fall apart, as Belgium, who they assumed would just let them march through to France, took up arms in resisting their approaches (Hull, 2005). The war would get longer and longer and seemed farther away from its conclusion as the months grew colder. As a result of this as well as their Prussian roots, they resorted to dangerously risky and destructive tactics, trying to bring the war to a quicker end while putting more of their resources in jeopardy, a move that eventually did not pay off and ended up leading to the German Empire’s demise (Hull, 2005).

     The object of the German offensive was to push through the Belgian Ardennes, cross the Mousse, retake Antwerp and its harbor facilities, thrust to the north and reach the sea which they almost succeed in doing. This would cut off the Allied troops in Holland and Belgium, making it impossible for them to withdraw. The success of the operation depended on three important

Tuchman presents three mistakes Germany made. The first mistake was that they used terror against the civilian population. If there was any sort of resistance in the town they took; the Germans would shoot at the invading soldiers, cut communication lines, sabotage roads, railways or bridges, and destroy the food supply. Then the Germans would line up people from the local villages and shoot many of them to make an example. The Belgian Minister once Germany started to invade their country said “If we are to be crushed let us be crushed gloriously.” This not only increased the will to resist in the Belgian people, but warned the whole world about the tactics of German warfare.

Bodies flailing, ripped apart by machine guns. German Panzers destroying everything in their path. A blood soaked forest; the Ardennes. The Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, 1944. It was a hard fought allied victory that pitted American, British, Australian, and South African forces against the battle hardened Panzer and SS German divisions. In the heat of the battle, the American 101st division was surrounded by German forces at Bastogne. When asked to surrender, General Anthony McAuliffe only replied with one word; “Nuts!”. The 106th division was almost annihilated. This was a gallant allied victory, showing the force of the American soldiers. However, it came with great cost. Influenced by the beginning of the war and how the war turned against the Nazi’s, the Battle of the Bulge was a bloody battle, in which German defeat lead to their surrender soon after, proving to be an extremely significant event in WWII.

The most powerful/ anything els) Allied commander, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower rushed strengthening items/rewards/supplies to hold the shoulders of the German penetration. Within days, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. had turned his Third U.S. Army to the north and was attacking (in response to an attack) against the German flank. But the story of the Battle of the Bulge is above all the story of American Soldiers. Often separated far from others and unaware of the overall picture, they did their part to slow the Nazi advance, whether by delaying (protected by metal or another covering) starts and leads with stubborn defenses of very important crossroads, moving or burning critical gasoline stocks to keep them from the fuel-hungry German tanks, or coming up with questions on not well known to stump possible Nazi

The Battle of the Bulge gave the Allies numerical as well as a logistical superiority over Nazi Germany that paved the way for the Allies to break the heavily-fortified Siegfried line and thus paved the way for the invasion of Germany.

This essay illustrates and identifies the contributions made by Engineers during the Battle of the Bulge. The Battle of the Bulge (aka the Ardennes Offensive) was a major German offensive launched through the thinly forested Ardennes mountain region on the Western Front (History Net, 2015). Nevertheless, the battle ended up being a decisive allied victory, depleting an already weakened German army as both valuable reserves and equipment were lost. It will be discussed how the Engineers and their contributions affected the final outcome of the war as well as the future of the world itself. Additionally, the contribution U.S Army Engineer Regiment to help stop the German counter offensive in December 1944 will be assessed and evaluated.

Britannica, T. E. (2017, December 08). Battle of the Bulge. Retrieved May 08, 2018, from https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-the-Bulge

The Battle of the Bulge is the largest and deadliest battle for U.S. troops to date, with more than 80,000 American deaths.The Enola Gay became well known for dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but few people know the name of the B-29 that bombed Nagasaki. It was Bock’s Car, named after the plane’s usual commander, Frederick Bock. Dr. Josef Mengele also known as the “Angel of Death” used about 3,000 twins, mostly Romany and Jewish children, for his painful genetic experiments. Only about 200 survived.It is estimated that 1.5 million children died during the Holocaust. Approximately 1.2 million of them were Jewish and tens of thousands were Gypsies. Now onto the Nazi flag. Hitler designed the Nazi flag. Red stood for the social idea of Nazism, white for nationalism, and the Black Swastika for the struggle of the Aryan man.

German propaganda twisted these ideas to manipulate the German population into believing there was “no alternative but to fight on”. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, justified Germany’s “fight to the last man” ideology as their way to “overcome their enemies' military strength” by the means of “force of will”. At the Battle of the Bulge, many of the German soldiers were inspired with this delusional mindset, so by halting the Allied advance they were protecting the rear of their comrades who were ”desperately defending the frontiers of the Reich on the Eastern Front”. Despite their military advantages and fanatical devotion to fight, by the end of the battle the German casualties amounted to 81,834, and when compared to the Allies, who suffered 76,890 casualties, their losses were consequential. German Panzer tanks of this period of the war were far superior in armament and protection when compared to those of the Allies, yet Germany still lost over 300 panzers during the failed

This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war….". This quote from the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, is about none other than the Battle of the Bulge. The Battle of the Bulge was the largest battle fought on the Western Front in Europe during World War II, and it sealed the fate of the Axis Powers. The battle was a final attempt made by the Germans to split the the American and British armies in France and the Low Countries. The Germans also wanted to retake the port of Antwerp to prevent the Allies from using the port facilities.

Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division and Allied forces had still been pinned down and surrounded in Bastogne, General Patton was called in with British Commanders and together they devised a plan to move into the Bulge. What happened next was unheard of, and Commanders had their doubts about what the General was capable. Patton ordered approximately 50,000 troops out of their current conflict and gave new orders to move ninety degrees to the northeast. Some would say this move by Patton might have been his finest hour as he commanded soldiers into the fight of Bastogne. Once the Third Army moved into the Battle of the Bulge orders were for the 4th Armored Division to proceed to Sibret. However, a Lieutenant Colonel Abrahams saw a

Assigned to the famed 2nd Armored "Hell on Wheels" Division, he landed at Omaha Beach in Normandy on June 9, 1944.

“Watch on the Rhine” or “The Battle of the Bulge” as the American called it, was the Germans last major counter-offensive in World War II to push the allied force out of northern France and into northwestern Belgium. The fighting force in the battle was 250,000 Germans which included 14 German infantry divisions guarded by four Panzer tank divisions against a mere 80,000 Americans. The first assault happened on December 16, 1944, on a thinly guarded 85 mile stretch from Echternach in the south to Monschau in the north in the Ardennes Mountains, called the Ghost Front. For Adolf Hitler and the Reich, this was their last big push against the Allied Forces. For SS Lieutenant Colonel Joachim Peiper and his panzer division, it was their chance to

The Allies faced various disadvantages during the Ardennes Offensive:  Since the Allies had reached the German border after the Normandy landings by this time, they faced an important intelligence disadvantage. The Germans used only telephones and tele printers within the German borders. Radios were not used as the Allies had cracked Enigma by then.  The Allied aircraft reconnaissance suffered due to the autumn fog and withheld them from making optimum use of air power – especially the tank-busting Typhoons of the RAF or Mustang fighters from the USAAF which would have been used against German tanks.