This issue of the Cher Ami Newsletter launches a series of articles about the “Battle of the Bulge”. The “Battle of the Bulge” was actually a campaign that consisted of hundreds of smaller battles and is of interest to historians because it was large, fought in unusually rough terrain in harsh winter weather and both sides were on the offensive at different times and places along the front. Both sides fought well and the opponents were well-matched.

The campaign is of interest to Lost Battalion Games because it touches on three of the games in our line. Our COMBAT SOLDIERS In the Battle of the Bulge card game is an abstract recreation of the battle at a low level that catches the confusion of the actions. Our Panzer In Miniatures game, using the PANZER PaK 3 Module which adds American units, can be used to recreate all sorts of battles using 1/285th scale miniatures and many small scenarios based on situations from the historical Ardennes Campaign of 1944 – 1945. If you own the SERGEANTS! – Expansion, you now have American units and some Battle of the Bulge scenarios, already finished and play tested, will be available soon. During World War Two, the two most serious “surprises” experienced by the United States were the “Day of Infamy”, the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the German Ardennes offensive known as the “Battle of the Bulge”, starting on December 16, 1944. In both instances, clues of unusual activity were misunderstood and disregarded.

The Japanese thought they could strike hard blows and win enough early victories to force a victorious negotiated settlement – that plan had worked for them before in the 1904 – 1905 Russo-Japanese War. The United States was surprised that the Japanese would start a war with such a powerful adversary that they would inevitably lose and also surprised at the location of the attack – if the Japanese attacked, it was expected to be directed at the British in Malaya and at the United States in the Philippines. The Japanese thought that eliminating the United States Pacific Fleet with a surprise followed up by quick conquests in the Pacific was a way to win an otherwise uneven war. The Japanese were later surprised themselves when they found that the United States was prepared to accept the heavy losses necessary to roll back the Japanese defense perimeter.

In the 1944 German surprise, after a series of catastrophic disasters in 1944, the Germans were thought to be finished. The German high command, at least in the person of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, thought that a surprise offensive in the Ardennes would reverse the war’s momentum – an offensive through the Ardennes had worked before, in 1940, when France was overrun and forced to surrender. Of course, Hitler ignored most basic military logic in his desperate, last-ditch effort to change the course of the war. Ever since, commentators have sought to show how various “clues” were available to predict both attacks but the real, root cause for the surprises at Pearl Harbor and in the Ardennes was an inability to understand the enemy’s desperate and twisted logic.

Militarily, “surprise” is considered to be a “force multiplier”. A force having the advantage of surprise is more effective in combat. A force that has been surprised is confused, disorganized and demoralized and is less effective in combat. The combination of a more effective attacker and a less effective defender multiplies the value of the attacker beyond normal comparisons of numbers, equipment and training.

By the end of 1944, the war was going very much against Nazi Germany. In the east, “Operation Bagration”, starting on June 22, turned into the “Destruction of Army Group Center” as a huge hole was ripped in the German lines. The Soviet armies drove on to the borders of East Prussia and 25 German divisions simply disappeared. Earlier that month, the Allied armies in Italy broke through the German mountain defenses, liberated Rome on June 4 and drove into northern Italy. Two days after the fall of Rome, the Allied armies in Great Britain, under Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, established a beachhead in Normandy on “D-Day”, June 6, 1944. This tied up the 1,000,000 German troops in northern Europe in a bloody campaign of attrition as the Allied beachhead was expanded and heavily reinforced. Two months later, the Allies broke out at Avaranches in “Operation Cobra”, leading to a German rout and their near encirclement near Falaise. Most of France and the Low Countries were liberated by the victorious Allied armies as they drove forward to the German border as the colors of autumn deepened.

Allied progress slowed as gasoline, entering the continent over the Normandy beaches, now hundreds of miles to the rear, could not be brought forward fast enough for their hard-charging mechanized spearheads. While the Allies were stalled, the Germans gained time to deploy newly-raised troops to defend their prewar border fortifications, known as the “West Wall” or “Siegfried Line”. These fortifications were out of date but strong enough to protect the German defenders from the overwhelmingly powerful Allied artillery and airpower. In addition to supply problems, the 60 American, British, Canadian, French and Polish divisions in northern Europe were suffering a manpower crunch. American and Canadian replacements had to cross the Atlantic, French conscripts needed training, as most of their army from 1940 was still in German prisoner of war camps, the Poles were cut off from their country’s potential recruits and the British, after five years of war, were reaching the end of their manpower pool. Aggravating American replacement problems was that, prior to mid 1944, most U. S. Army losses had been in the Air Force, then part of the Army. The United States, which provided the majority of the Allied divisions, had trained a high a percentage of its manpower for tasks other than ground combat so there was a shortage of ground pounding infantrymen. Even the trained infantrymen still at home were slow to arrive in Europe as the war there was felt to be almost over and there was a reluctance to ship troops to Europe that could be used in the ongoing war in the Pacific.

British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of the Twenty-First Army Group, made a daring attempt to use paratroopers to seize the key bridges through the Netherlands into Germany in “Operation Market Garden” but the attempt failed. His Canadian First Army was involved in a long and difficult campaign to clear the approaches to the great port of Antwerp. Once Antwerp was available, its use as a port and supply center would relieve Allied supply problems. Until then, General Eisenhower felt he could only bring the Allied armies into a continuous line along the German border, maintaining pressure until the Germans either snapped or the arrival of more gasoline and replacements permitted a resumption of a full-fledged Allied drive into Germany.

As the late autumn Allied campaign developed, American General Omar N. Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group was advancing slowly. The American United States First and Ninth armies inched forward north of the Ardennes. South of the Ardennes, American General George S. “Blood and Guts” Patton’s United States Third Army was also advancing slowly. Between the First and Third armies, Bradley, as a “calculated risk”, left only the four divisions of General Troy Middleton’s United States VIII Corps to hold eighty miles of rugged Ardennes terrain. In peacetime the Ardennes is a picturesque vacation area. In 1940, the German panzer (armored) divisions had run right over the handful of unprepared French troops in the area on their way to defeating France in only six weeks. Despite that earlier success, the area was unsuited for large mechanized operations and by late 1944 was a “ghost front” where both sides assigned wrecked units to recuperate from fighting elsewhere.

In a meeting on September 16, 1944, long before the Allied armies had reached the German border, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler announced his intention to launch an offensive through the Ardennes. Planned for November, the attack was to be made by the three armies of Field Marshal Model’s German Army Group B. Repeated delays in accumulating troops, material and supplies eventually pushed the schedule back to the middle of December. Until then, German General Erich Brandenberger’s Seventh German Army and German General Gunther Blumentritt’s German Fifteenth Army were tasked with holding the line while reserves were massed to the rear.

Continued Next Month...