Alpha6, thanks for pointing me back to MacDonald’s “Time For Trumpets.” Wow. I had forgotten how good that book is. Anyway, to sum up Chapter 3, What Did The Allies Know:
1. The Allies intercepted Hitler’s order in September to pull all the panzer and panzergenadier divisions out of the line for reconstitution
2. The allies in fact noted that most of the German panzer units had been pulled out of the line
3. The allies knew the Germans were concentrating the panzer reserves in the northern Eifel area across from American VIII Corps in the Ardennes
4. Until early December, the general consensus was that the Germans were most likely holding these divisions for a counter-attack, or in the less likely alternative, planning a limited spoiling attack in the Aachen area
5. The information contained above was known to all Allied intelligence officers at SHAEF, 12th Army Group, 1st Army and 3rd Army. And the consensus was held by all of them
6. It was only in the first week of December that it begn to dawn on allied intelligence offices that the Germans could lauch an offensive in the Ardennes
7. Bradley was sufficiently concerned that he got Ike’s consent to send the newly arrived 9th Armored Division to VIII Corps and engage in some deception to get the Germans to believe the 75th Infantry Division was in the area (it was still in England).
8. Patton first began to worry about the Ardennes on Nov. 24, but the real red alert was raised by Patton’s G2, Col. Koch, who held a briefing for Patton and his staff on December 9. Koch outlined the attack that was about to happen, although he thought it was meant to spoil Patton’s Saar offensive.
9. Patton was determined to proceed with the Saar offensive, but did order the preliminary planning for contingencies should the German attack take place. And this was what allowed Patton to start his counterattack so quickly.
10. The last guy to realize the danger was Middleton at VIII Corps, but when he did, he asked for reserves but Bradley had none to give.
11. Monk Dickson’s final intel report on the eve of the attack was not well written or focused. He was still not sure whether there would be an attack or a counterattack.
It appears that the Americans knew a good deal about German dispositions, but didn’t have a good grasp of their intentions. When they did start to figure it out, it wasn’t with a complete grasp of what was going to happen, there was no consensus among the intelligence officers, and it was too late to do anything anyway.
Actually, there are many similarities btween the intelligence failures in the Ardennes and Pearl Harbor.
My original reason for asking earlier today was the principle of contingency planning. In this case, shouldn't SHAEF (1) identify the possible enemy actions that would potentially be most hazardous to Allied success and (2) guard against them? At least Patton seems to have planned, anyway--so the movie was roughly accurate on that point.
It seems like if you know the Germans have stripped their defenses of substantial panzer units, you'd want to do likewise in order to create an adequate mobile reserve to counter them. But then, I'm just an ignorant desk soldier....
Outstanding summary!!!
The Pearl Harbor comparison is apt. Both of these events caught the Americans napping because the events in the run-up was viewed through the lens of expecting the Japanese/Germans to conform to the Americans expectations.
In the case of the Bulge the Allies were misled by there reliance on Ultra, IMO. How is that? The Germans wireless security regards the actual offensive was pretty effective so there was no barking dog from Ultra to say, hey boys we are going to attack on 12/16. No barking dog, no need for the Allies to worry right? See the German counterattack just after D-Day at Avranches(sp).
What Ultra did provide was a whole host of side information that had the Allies, in the main, not been convinced that the Germans were pretty well beaten should have tipped them off.
Regards Col. Dickson’s warnings: Col. Dickson, in short, suffered from the boy who called wolf to often. As an “alarmist” most of his higher ups just said, “there goes Monk again”.
Well off to work :-(
Regards
alfa6 ;>}