Battle of Bulge, also known as Ardennes Offensive, was a major German offensive in western Europe in December 1944. After the Russians took some heavy casualty, they temporary halted their offensive in the east front. Hitler used the chance to secretly shipped some battle hardened divisions from the east front to the west front, and launched an offensive in hope of split UK and US forces into half, and thus force them to settle for a separated peace. Then he could hope to be able to concentrate his resources to defeat the Russians with the help of bought time for mass produce newly developed secret weapons including jet fighters, super heavy tanks, etc. Of course his plan fell apart as Germans were heavily relayed on some unstable elements. Such as the whole plan were based on the weather had to have low fog and cloud to prevent allies air power from interfering with the offensive, and German tanks will be relay on refueling at captured allies fuel station. I would just like to hear the opinion on (if) Germans indeed achieved their objective at Battle of Bulge, and successfully split American and British forces in half, do you think the allies on the west front would settle for peace as Hitler had hoped? My personal opinion is - Hitler was dreaming. Even if he achieved a success on one offensive, he would only won a tactical advantage on limited scale. Overall strategic advantage would still be in the hands of the Allies even if we are only talking about the west front. Why would allies settle for peace when they still have the total advantage and minor setbacks? I think not.
Well Hitler was quite beaten by then and if anything it was the smartest choice to take out of all the options. Fighting the Russians would of been stupid and defending only prolonged the suffering, they could of maybe held a couple of more months/days. If Germany managed to cut the Allies in half all it would of done is stretch their own supply lines and territory to defend. I can't take it as a serious question as we know Hitler tried to knock the Brits out of the war far earlier by bombing them. That sure didn't work so why would it work this time? Britain or South Britain was far worse off when the U-boats where blockading and rockets flying into it. I doubt anyone would think a sudden breach in territory would matter. Besides I doubt the Allies would even report it in their news pieces as propaganda was a tool in every nations arsenal so the people might of not even known if it did happen.
I think that Hitler was on the downslide at that point anyway. I had heard rumor at one point that he had been a steady meth-aphetamine user...and went for days without sleeping and was becoming increasingly paranoid and unpredictable by then. Of course nobosy knows how true this really is or whether or not it was just a side effect of knowing he was starting to lose footing, but either case, I don't think that even if he'd won at the Battle of the Bulge that he would have made it much farther. I don't think it would have had a huge impact on the outcome of the war.
The main objective for this German offensive was Antwerp. If they had captured this port then the allies would have to be supplied from Normandy, creating an over-extended supply line. Also with Allied forces split in two, with the British 21st army group and the US 9th army in the north receiving no supplies. The allies may have had to consider an armistice.
I remember in the movie - Battle of Bulge, a German general side to the colonial who would be leading the main assault force "If we achieve our objectives, it will take the allied forces 18 months to recover". I am not exactly sure it really took place back then outside the movie. If Germans could really achieve their objectives, would it really take that long for the allied forces to recover? 18 months? It didn't even take 1/3 that long since D-day for everything to happen at that point. I don't know exactly the battlefield details at that point, but if Germans did succeed in split allied forces in two and reach the port in Antwerp, in other words wouldn't the Germans be placing themselves between the allied forces and being surrounded? How can they themselves maintain supply line while they spread so thin along such long distance without air superiority? So what if they did take Antwerp, without air superiority, the Germans can easily lose the port again to any kind of allied offensive. Like I have mentioned earlier in the same post, they were in a better position on D-day (better position than right before Battle of Bulge at least), that didn't help them, and that didn't take long for the allied forces to get where they were at the point of Battle of Bulge. What made the Germans think an offensive of that kind of scale can change the outcome of the war? If what happened in the movie was also true "It will take 18 months for the allied forces to recover", the general also said "by that time we will have enough jets to shoot down every allied aircraft in Europe and regain air superiority". Do you think that would be possible? I thought the Germans lacked fuel and pilots more than they lacked planes. The first two things weren't easy to get, in fact they had hundreds planes sitting ideal because of it...
I don't believe that the Allies would have gone for an armistice if the Germans had managed to take Antwerp.I don't think they would have been able to hold it for very long. The RAF and USAF would have taken a couple of days off from their routine pounding of an already prostrate Germany to deal out some punishment for the German armour around the city, and what could any Panzers do actually inside the city? They would find the same two problems as they had quickly found back in the Ardennes : lack of aircover to protect them from fighter planes armed with tank busting rockets, and a lack of fuel. They couldn't have held the two sides of the Allies apart. The Allies supply route would have been temporarily blocked but then it could easily switch to another channel port within hours. Psychologically, the population of the Allied countries were in absolutely no mood for anything less than unconditional surrender. The Russians were now entering Germany and aiming straight at the gates of Berlin, and in the West the way was open for an Allied counterstrike across a now feebly defended Rhine with all the Germans on an excursion to see the sights of beautiful Antwerp. Five years of blood, sweat and tears hadn't achieved their objective to break the will of the British., so we weren't going to stop at that point now! The German general Vashsatampede mentioned was a little too optimistic IMHO, but then again that was a blind arrogance typical of the Nazis.
