Im no WW2 historian. I’d like to get someone else’s opinion on what would have happened if Hitler/Germany Army had won the Battle of the Bulge?
My guess is it would have caused more allied casualties but both us and the Germans knew the war was already lost or won.
The border between East and West Germany would have been a bit further to the West. Other than that, no difference.
Wernher von Braun was arrested in March 1944 for expressing (privately) the view that the war was probably lost; this was almost three months before D-Day, and nine months before the beginning of what is known as the Battle of the Bulge.
The Germans basically knew it was over by D-Day, although they mostly knew not to say so out loud.
Don't forget, the Russians were advancing like a huge, slow-moving lawnmower from the East. The Bulge was their last gasp in the West.
You might be speaking German now.
Im no WW2 historian. I’d like to get someone else’s opinion on what would have happened if Hitler/Germany Army had won the Battle of the Bulge?
The German offensive was about taking back the port of Antwerp, the allied taking of which had greatly increased the ability to bring in the cargo needed to support the vast allied armies. Had the Germans been able to make their timetables, they might have retaken Antwerp and cut our available resources. Since the virtual starvation diet caused by supply bottlenecks (and by Monty) hadn't stopped US forces from rolling right up to Germany, it's difficult to believe that it would have done more than delay the end of the war.
The reason crossroads were important was that the movement of the German vehicles would be bottled up. Those German tanks were really nice, but the roads in France were still largely unimproved, making large formations difficult at best to move to a common destination.
The US Sherman tank, by contrast, for all its supposed problems, was almost ideally suited for war in France -- it was fast and narrow, could slide through hedgerow lanes and those crooked narrow medieval streets in the scenic (or formerly scenic) villages, and take basically any road or cowpath, making it possible to arrive at objectives with massive numerical superiority.
Some time ago I read an anecdote -- a German tank commander had been captured, and was grousing about how his tank was the equal of ten Shermans. The GI guarding him shifted the cigarette in his mouth and said, "that's why we brought eleven."
That would be alternate history.
Patton said something to the effect of "Hitler's stuck his d*** in a meat grinder and I have my hand on the crank.
Another interesting question is how the outcome would have been different had Eisenhower DIRECTED Monty to clear the Schedlt Estuary IMMEDIATELY after the fall of Antwerp, instead of letting himself be bullshi$$ed into the Market Garden fiasco.
Had Antwerp’s port facilities been available three months earlier than it actually was, there would have been no Battle of the Bulge. The war would have ended in late 1944.
IMHO.