The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Counteroffensive, was a major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in eastern Belgium, northeast France, and Luxembourg, towards the end of the war in Europe. The offensive was intended to stop Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split the Allied lines.
About Battle of the Bulge in brief
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Counteroffensive, was a major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in eastern Belgium, northeast France, and Luxembourg, towards the end of the war in Europe. The offensive was intended to stop Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split the Allied lines, allowing the Germans to encircle and destroy four Allied armies and force the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis powers’ favor. The Germans achieved a total surprise attack on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance due to bad weather. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. The battle also severely depleted Germany’s armored forces, and they were largely unable to replace them. The farthest west the offensive reached was the village of Foy-Nôtre-Dame, south east of Dinant, being stopped by the U.S. 2nd Armored Division on 24 December 1944. In the wake of the defeat, many experienced German units were left severely depleted of men and equipment, as survivors retreated to the defenses of the Siegfried Line. Between 63,222 and 98,000 of these men were killed, missing, wounded in action, or captured. For the Americans, out of a peak of 610,000 troops, 89,000 became casualties out of which some 19,000 were killed.
Although the offensive was effectively broken by 27 December, when the trapped units of 2nd Panzer Division made two break-out attempts with only partial success, the battle continued for another month before the front line was effectively restored to its position prior to the attack. The Allies faced several military logistics issues: General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff chose to hold the area with as few troops as possible due to the favorable terrain and limited Allied operational objectives in the area. They also had intelligence that the Wehrmacht was using the area across the German border as a rest-and-beach area for its troops. The only deep-water port the Allies had captured was the Cotentin peninsula and west of the original invasion beaches, but the Germans had thoroughly wrecked it. It took many months to rebuild its cargo-handling capability until it could be taken in the first operational days of September, but it was not captured until the first day of October 1944. On 26 December the lead element of Patton’s U. S. Third Army reached Bastogne from the south, ending the siege. On the same day, the Allies captured the northern shore of the Normandy beaches, using direct landing operations using the Normandy landing areas, using the landing ships on the Normandy, Cotentin Peninsula and Cotentin. On 27 December the Allies took control of Cherbourg and the northern coast of France.
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This page is based on the article Battle of the Bulge published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 24, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
