The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was a major German attack near the end of World War II, in Belgium, France and Luxembourg. The attack surprised Allied forces. It became the worst battle in terms of casualties for the United States. It also used up huge amounts of Germany's war-making resources.
The press made up "Battle of the Bulge" to describe the way the Allied front line bulged inward on wartime news maps and became the best known name for the battle.
The German attack was supported by several other operations. Germany's goal was to split the British and American Allied line in half, capture Antwerp, and then encircle and destroy four Allied armies. They hoped this would force the Allies to negotiate a peace treaty. Then Hitler could focus on the eastern front of the war.
The attack was planned in secret. Germany moved troops and equipment in the dark. The U.S. intelligence staff predicted a major German attack, but this still surprised them. The Allied forces were overconfident and too focused on their own attack plans, and they also didn't have good aerial reconnaissance.
The Germans attacked a weakly defended section of the Allied line. They took advantage of the overcast weather conditions, which made the Allies' air forces unable to fly. Violent resistance blocked German access to key roads. The thick forests helped the defenders.This slowed down the German advance and allowed the Allies to add new troops. Improved weather conditions permitted air attacks on German forces, which led to the failure of the attack.
After the defeat, many experienced German units lacked men and equipment. The battle involved about 610,000 American men, of whom some 89,000 were casualties, including 19,000 killed. It was the largest and most deadly battle fought by the United States in World War II.
After moving from Normandy at the end of July 1944 and landing in southern France on 15 August 1944, the Allies advanced toward Germany more quickly than expected.
Allied troops were tired from weeks of continuous fighting and supplies were very low. While the supply situation improved in October, the lack of troops was still a major problem.
General Eisenhower and his staff chose the Ardennes region, held by the First United States Army, as an area that could be held by as few troops as possible. The Ardennes were chosen because the terrain offered good defence and there were not many roads.
The speed of the Allied advance and a lack of deep-water ports made it hard for the Allies to supply their troops. Beach supply operations using the Normandy landing areas could not supply enough provisions. The only port the Allies had captured was Cherbourg, near the original invasion beaches, but the Germans had wrecked and mined it.
It took the Allies many months to build up their ability to move cargo. The Allies captured the port of Antwerp, Belgium, fully intact, in the first days of September, but it was not working until 28 November. The Scheldt River had to be cleared of both German troops and naval mines.
The limitations led to disagreements between General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery over whether Montgomery or American General Omar Bradley in the south would get access to supplies.
German forces remained in control of several major ports on the English Channel coast until May 1945. The destruction of the French railway system prior to D-Day made it hard for the Germans to respond to the invasion. It was also a problem for the Allies, as it took time to repair the tracks and bridges.
A trucking system brought supplies to front-line troops, but transportation took huge amounts of fuel to reach the front line near the Belgian border. By early October the Allies stopped major attacks to improve their supply lines.
Montgomery and Bradley both asked for delivery of supplies to their armies so they could continue to attack the Germans. Gen. Eisenhower wanted Montgomery's northern forces to open the port of Antwerp and capture the Ruhr area, the industrial part of Germany.
With the Allies paused, German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt was able to reorganize the German armies into an organized defense.
Field Marshal Montgomery's Operation Market Garden only achieved some of its goals. Its gains in territory left the Allied supply situation worse than before. In October the Canadian First Army fought the Battle of the Scheldt, opening the port of Antwerp to shipping. As a result, by the end of October the supply situation got better.
Despite a pause in fighting after the Scheldt battles, the Germans had serious problems. While operations continued in the autumn, notably the Lorraine Campaign, the Battle of Aachen and fighting in the Hürtgen Forest, the situation in the west changed little.
The Allies were slowly pushing towards Germany, but they did not get there. The Western Allies already had 96 divisions at or near the front, with ten more divisions coming from the United Kingdom. Additional Allied airborne units remained in England. The Germans had a total of 55 divisions.
Adolf Hitler promised his generals 18 infantry and 12 armored or mechanized divisions. The plan was to use 13 infantry divisions, two parachute divisions and six panzer divisions from reserves. On the Eastern Front the Soviets' Operation Bagration during the summer had destroyed much of Germany's Army Group Center.
The operation ended only when the advancing Red Army forces ran out of supplies. By November, Soviet forces were preparing for a winter attack.
Meanwhile, the Allied air attacks of early 1944 had made the German Air Force unable to fly. This meant that the German Army had little battlefield intelligence and no way to stop Allied supplies. The daytime movement of German forces was easily noticed and stopping supplies combined with the bombing of the Romanian oil fields meant Germany had no oil and gasoline.
One of the few advantages held by the German forces in November 1944 was that they were no longer defending all of Western Europe. Their front lines in the west had been shortened and were much closer to the German borders. This reduced their supply problems despite Allied control of the air.
Additionally, their telephone and telegraph network meant that radios were no longer necessary for communications, which lessened the effectiveness of Allied Ultra code breaking. Nevertheless, some 40—50 coded messages were sent per day by ULTRA. They recorded the quadrupling of German fighter forces and noticed that an attack was planned. ULTRA also picked up information about a lot of rail and road movements in the region.
German leader Adolf Hitler felt that his mobile reserves allowed him to do one major attack. Although he realised nothing could be accomplished in the Eastern Front, he still believed an offensive against the Western Allies could succeed.
Hitler believed he could split the Allied forces and make the Americans and British to settle for a separate peace, independent of the Soviet Union.
Success in the west would give the Germans time to design and produce more advanced weapons (such as jet aircraft, new U-boat designs and super-heavy tanks) and permit the build-up of forces in the east.
Given the reduced manpower of their land forces, the Germans believed that it was better to attack in the West against the smaller Allied forces rather than against the vast Soviet armies. Even the destruction of entire Soviet armies would still have left the Soviets with more soldiers.
Several senior German military officers, such as Field Marshal Walter Model did not think the attack would work. They offered different plans, but Hitler would not listen. The plan needed bad weather, including heavy fog and low-lying clouds, which would make it hard for Allied planes to fly. Hitler originally set the attack for late November, before the start of the Russian winter offensive.