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. 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. Hitler argued that the reconstituted mechanized divisions (panzers or panzer grenadiers) would not attack alone. 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. Strategic insight, operational excellence, bad weather, and tactical ferocity would overcome Allied superiority in manpower and logistics.

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.Ĭonceived 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).

Montgomery) and throw the Allied advance to the Rhine into confusion. Bradley) and the British Twenty-first Army Group (under Field Marshal Bernard L. Twelfth Army Group (led by General Omar N. The desperate offensive, Hitler's personal scheme, was supposed to divide the U.S. 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. First Army as far west as the watershed of the Meuse River-this salient resembling a 'bulge.' GERMAN PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 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. Eisenhower) to destroy twelve elite mobile divisions of Adolf Hitler's western European army during the latter stages of World War II. GERMAN PLANS AND PREPARATIONSĪlso 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.

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