Comments for December 17, 1944. The Ardennes

December 17, 1944. The Ardennes

2007-12-17T14:49:44Z

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Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2007-12-18

2007-12-18T13:39:03Z

General Courtney Hodges commanded the First US Army from August 1944 through his retirement in 1949. He may have had a bad day or two during the Ardennes, I don't remember, but it couldn't have been too bad.

Comment from wolfwalker on 2007-12-18

2007-12-18T13:29:51Z

Commander First Army in December 1944 was General Courtney Hodges. I would question the Wikipedia account, based partly on its opinionated phrasing but mainly on the fact that Hodges retained command of First Army through the end of the war. A commander who "went to pieces" as described would have been permanently relieved, no? The Battle of the Bulge by Robert Merriam is a decent high-level strategic/tactical examination of the Ardennes Offensive. Merriam says that Eisenhower transferred overall command of First and Ninth Armies from Bradley to Montgomery because both Armies were north of the German breakthrough. Montgomery's HQ was also north of the Bulge, while Bradley's HQ was south. With landlines cut and radio communication unreliable (as it often was in WW2), Bradley didn't have any means of either receiving reports from or sending orders to anybody north of the breakthrough. Montgomery did. Only overall command was transferred, not direct operational command. Hodges was still Commander First Army; Simpson was still Commander Ninth Army. They simply took orders from Montgomery instead of Bradley for the duration of the battle.

Comment from Ledger on 2007-12-18

2007-12-18T12:58:35Z

Who was this commander of the First Army who went to pieces? “As the Ardennes crisis developed, the commander of the First Army had gone to pieces under the strain and was incapable of issuing orders, while the Ninth Army couldn't communicate directly with Bradley. This resulted in Montgomery assuming command of the American First and Ninth Armies in a controversial move approved by Eisenhower…” See: Wikipedia.

Comment from MR T's Haircut on 2007-12-18

2007-12-18T08:00:43Z

One more point to Hitlers Strategy of Splitting the Allies. More to the point splitting the Allies harmony. There was much infighting at this point of the war with the Brits and the Americans. The British were starting to demand a bigger share of the commands and leadership. Ike was having difficulty between choosing between Montgomery's 21st Army Group and Bradley's 12th Army Group. One was achieving asstounding results in the assault on Rhine and the other was bogged down in the northern BENELUX. The Russians were taking advantage of the wedge by demanding more support for eastern operations. And the United States was lulled into a soft spot of training the replacment Divisions and resting the combat hardened Divisions from Normandy. It was a gamble and had strategic merit even if it failed tactically. I think more credit is due to 3rd Army...

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2007-12-17

2007-12-17T18:10:27Z

Snerk - I see great minds think alike and post near-simultaneously.

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2007-12-17

2007-12-17T18:07:07Z

Well, good thing you weren't Hitler then, Rivrdog. Hitler's strategic intent was to split the Allies, and try to force another Dunkirk on the Brits. Yes, it would have left his forces dangerously exposed, but he felt that the Brits, without a secure base of supply (taking Antwerp would have cut the Brits off from Normandy) would have had to withdraw precipitously. There is some merit to the idea - by that time in the war, the Brits were at the end of their tether when it came to usable manpower, and the loss of any significant amount of their mechanized combat power in a sea-borne evacuation would have been un-recoverable for quite some time. As his Generals knew, but Hitler would not/could not acknowledge, the Brits could mount one very stubborn defense, and the US forces on the western side of the penetration would have mounted a furious assault to break the encirclement... as in fact we did, only for our guys in the Ardennes. Hitler had all sorts of delusions by this time in the war, include hopes the western allies would join him in repelling the Bolshevik Horde.

Comment from wolfwalker on 2007-12-17

2007-12-17T18:01:33Z

Rivrdog, the answer can be summed up in one word: Hitler. Operation Wacht am Rhein, which became the Ardennes offensive, was entirely Hitler's brainchild. He conceived it, he developed it, he ordered his generals to implement it. Several of the senior German generals fought for the strategy you suggest, while others favored a smaller offensive to relieve Allied pressure and perhaps achieve a negotiated settlement by destroying a number of Allied divisions without unduly risking the German defensive capability. But Hitler wanted to re-create the dramatic, crushing German assault of spring 1940, and would settle for nothing less. He was too nuts to understand that the Wehrmacht of November 1944 was nothing like the Wehrmacht of four and a half years earlier.

Comment from Rivrdog on 2007-12-17

2007-12-17T17:52:42Z

I've never understood the strategic validity of the Germans' objective in the Ardennes Offensive. The objective was supposedly to split the Allied front and drive into the Allied rear, all the way to the English Channel. But why? The Germans had long since lost control of that strategic water (if they ever had it, some say they never did). So, the final objective for their troops, if successful, was to get get into a position where they couldn't sustain themselves, all they could have possibly gained would have been immediately lost as the Allies shifted laterally along the Channel to reposition. It also meant that when defeated, the Wehrmacht would have been in France and Belgium, neither of which were especially favorable places for the Germans to have ended their war at. The Ardennes campaign used a LOT of resources, resources which could have bought that "negotiating time" that the German General Staff wanted. Were I the High Commander, I would have used ALL those resources to make the Rhine an even more impenetrable barrier, and not inconsequentially, keeping all my forces within the Fatherland. A quick look at history shows that the Rhine had done more to protect Germany over the years than any military resources, so the military combined with the natural barrier would have been their best bet.