"The Real Reason Hitler Launched the Battle of the Bulge" Topic

"Winston Churchill called World War II's Battle of the Bulge "the greatest American battle of the war." Steven Spielberg engraved the 6-week ordeal on the popular imagination with Band of Brothers, which dramatized the attack on the village of Foy by three companies of the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles.

Now, British military historian Peter Caddick-Adams is drawing on his years spent reconstructing the epic battle in his just-published book, Snow and Steel: Battle of the Bulge 1944-45. Speaking from a British military base in Germany, he talks about Hitler's reasons for launching the offensive, why crystal meth was the drug of choice for the Wehrmacht, and what lessons the battle can teach us today.

To begin with, soldiers weren't sure what to call the battle. It was a German penetration into the American lines, which the Americans had then surrounded and eventually sealed off. The word for that in the First World War was "salient." But that sounded too formal, perhaps too British. An American journalist was interviewing George Patton. The journalist needed a unique, American-sounding word that could become shorthand for the battle. And the word "bulge" popped into his mind. It was adopted pretty soon after the battle, and it stuck…"
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Amicalement
Armand

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To give the allies a present for Christmas?

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Eh, I am not impressed.

Wacht am Rhein was a political gesture to re-assert Hitler's control over the Nazi and military hierarchy? I can probably see that there was some of this in it, yeah. Sure. But was this the primary issue -- the primary moving force?

If we want a logical construction of how this could have been the primary motivational force, then we need to also eliminate other potential motivational forces. So how do we somehow reach the conclusion that Hitler was NOT interested or highly motivated to try to gain military advantage, or to achieve a military victory? Are there no OTHER events that evidence an interest, a motivation, to achieve some measure of military success?

If Hitler was motivated by concerns over the military situation when he pushed through the Kursk operation, or when he issued his "no retreat" orders for 5 separate significant kasselschlacts of 1944, or his build-up of forces in Army Group South to defend against the expected Soviet invasion of Romania (that enabled the massive Soviet victory of Bagration), or to hold back reserves for the expected invasion at the Pas de Calais, or the eventual release of forces to counter-attack against the British around Caen, or the deployment of forces in the Huertgen to hold up the US advance … if those (however misguided) actions were motivated by an interest in achieving military results, how are we suddenly to believe that the next major military undertaking, the Bulge, was motivated by something else entirely?

It seems fairly amateurish to me. Don't even bother to contest or explain 20 or 30 reasonable and well documented data points -- in fact just find something that changed and declare "this one thing" that was not present in any of those similar actions is the one true reason motivating one out of a large series of event.

"When I was 9 my aunt Trudy stepped on my toe at a family gathering, and within 6 hours I had a fever. So clearly toe injuries cause fevers."

Eh, I'm not impressed.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)