A few points:

1) "Eisenhower didn't believe that the Germans could force an attack through the area...."

Turns out he was right, too. It was the extraordinarily defensible nature of the terrain in the Ardennes that allowed a minimal force to stop one of the largest offensives in WWII. The Bulge was a tactical surprise, but it was not a disaster (for us, anyway). That it was not is a testament to the judgement of the commanders on the scene.

2) The Malmedy "massacre" was arguably occasioned by an attempted escape by PWs. A british officer interviewed survivors (on both sides) after the war, and found that to be the most likely scenario. More information available upon request, but my resources are at home, which might occasion a delay.

3) One of the most impressive features of the Bulge was George Patton's ability to change the axis of advance of the 3rd Army to attack the southern flank of the salient so rapidly. Note that this was probably only possible because of the extraordinary durability of the much-maligned Sherman tank. Further note that the role of armor in a well-run blitzkrieg is not fighting other armor (a task for which the Sherman was ill-suited), but overrunning rear-area assets (for which durability and reliability is critical). The Sherman was one of the better tanks of the war.

1) True, although it didn't help the Belgians or Allies much in 1914 or 1940. And operationally-speaking, it was, if not an unbridled disaster, a serious setback; a division (106ID) destroyed, several more bled white (2ID, 99ID, 7AD), and the better part of two months and tens of thousands of GIs spent reducing the Bulge.

2) There is much controversy about Malmedy - but Oblt. Joachim Peiper had a long history of ruthlessness with prisoners. And Malmedy was not the only incident where Kg. Peiper was accused of shooting prisoners at the Bulge.

3) The Sherman was indeed reliable - and once the breakthrough was forced, it certainly functioned well enough; that, unfortunately, happened rarely, especially given the German tactic of keeping their main force back and constantly counterattacking. I'm sure we could debate the wisdom of building a vehicle that functions modestly in one circumstance and atrociously in another, equally likely one. For while in a well-run blitzkrieg the ideal is for tanks not to fight armor (which is indeed why the Army built their Tank Destroyer branch, and doctrinally assigned it the job of engaging enemy armor), it's not unreasonable to expect it to happen - especially on a battlefield where the enemy might not oblige by charging his tanks at your tank destroyers - and not a bad idea to give your tank a gun that can deal with the contingency. The US Army didn't have a genuine tank-killer until the 90mm.

I envy you for your ability to admire war from a detached, historical viewpoint. My father, an Army sergeant, served in the Battle of the Bulge and did not have such analytical memories of it. Of course, I was fortunate enough to serve in the Marines in Vietnam and might find it difficult to so critically analyze our battles. Perhaps, by interviewing a number of these old veterans, your hope to have even a modicum of their honesty, patriotism and humility rub off on you will be fulfilled.

"War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it. "- Erasmus, Dutch humanist, 1466–1536

Mod,

There is nothing delightful about war, certainly. I'm not sure exactly what you're going for - I've interviewed a quite a few veterans from a lot of wars, and have talked informally with a hell of a lot more. I guess I'm thankful for the luxury of being able to be all analytical about it - or even just study the subject - without having to have gone through the war first.

Hey, they were good enough not to throw any wars when I was 18, dont' blame me.

Response to yours:

1) The Bulge was an operational setback/disaster in the same way that the Tet Offensive was. Specifically, it resulted in the near-complete destruction of the German West-Front armor force, and consequently the ability of the Germans to mount an offensive in the west, at the cost of two or three exhausted allied divisions and a two(?)-month delay in the advance in the middle of winter. Given the cost of advances in the face of real opposition (the Metz and [misguided] Huertgen offensives, for instance), I'd call that an operational triumph for the allies.

2) I'll not try to broadly defend Jochim Peiper, but the Malmedy incident, upon which a large part of his bad reputation is based, is at least arguably not a war crime. I'll try to get more information tonight.

3) The Sherman was far more reliable than (for instance) German armor. E.g, Sherman treads lasted about 2000 miles; Panther treads about 150 miles. They were easier to work on than nearly any other tanks, and they were standardized to a degree that the Germans and Russians never came close to matching. The Germans didn't even really try for standardization, one of their biggest problems.

I submit that without the high reliability of the Sherman, the rapid advance through France would not have been possible, and the number of (better) tanks lost might well have equaled the number of Shermans lost over the course of the war.

In combat, barely adequate today nearly always beats good tomorrow or perfect next month. The argument used to justify continuing production of the Sherman when better tank designs were available was exactly that. In spite of the regrettable deaths of many tank crewmen, I'm not at all convinced that it is a specious argument.

As to anti-tank cannons, the longer 76.2 mm gun used in the M-10 and M-18 was adequate to the task, being relatively similar to the long 75mm gun used in the Panther. The M-10, at least, was used to good effect in both the Bulge and the Huertgen Forest. Clearly, all else being equal, 90mm guns and heavier armor are better, but that is an unrealistic argument. All else could not have been equal; there is always a tradeoff in vehicle design.

In the case of the Sherman, the tradeoff was between success in the Breakout phase and success in the Pursuit phase. Blitzkrieg theory (and practice*) says that the primary role of the tank is in the Pursuit phase, where the Sherman excelled.

* For another example, compare German and French armor in 1940, or German and Russian armor in 1941 and 1942. The Germans nearly always had lighter armor and smaller, lower-velocity guns. Successful blitzkrieg is about maneuver.

1) The Bulge itself exhausted the German army in the West, it's true - but the reduction of the Bulge was an ugly, nasty campaign that lasted longer than the battle itself, and diverted time and manpower that would have better been spent elsewhere. TRue, it did shoot the German bolt as far as further offensives went - with the Russians closing in the East, that was going to happen anyway. The Falaise Gap was a victory; the Bulge was a disaster averted. Let's take a step back, though; my point, really, is that for all the "Good War" talk about world war II, and for all the sniping the current effort in Iraq takes, we can gain a lot of perspective by looking at some of the difficulties we had - and overcame - sixty years ago.

2)I know there were extenuating circumstances for Peiper, as he escaped the war crimes trials with his life. I'm not sure how many there were as re Malmedy - it seems unlikely he issued any specific order for a massacre, escape attempts aside.

3) The Sherman had its strengths, true. And there are always tradeoffs in vehicle design (itself a fascinating exercise). Some of the Sherman's trade-offs were made for doctrinal reasons - the idea that the tank destroyers would go after the enemy tanks, while the Shermans would do the breaking through and pursuing. Had the Tank Destroyer doctrine worked - or had it been pursued with heavier tank destroyers like the Jagdpanzers, which were more survivable in the breakout - the Sherman's weaknesses might have seemed less glaring. But the Tank Destroyer doctrine was not very successful (even though the M10 and M18 were good vehicles, and the M36 could actually reliably kill Panthers and Tigers).

Obviously, it all worked out in the end. The Sherman is an example of a dynamic that played out several times during the war; the trick for militaries before and during the war was timing when they settled on technology - and the tradeoff between the extremes of settling on building large numbers of vehicles that were past their prime when they were finally needed (British aircraft carriers, the Type VII U-boat and Mark III/IV tanks, the M3 Stuart, the whole French air force in 1940, the M13/40, the Valentine, the Zero), or waiting to settle on technology and risking having insufficient numbers of inadequately-developed leading-edge equipment (the Mark V Panther, the the ME262, the Comet and/or Centurion) or, in rare cases, having the timing to have enough of the right system at the right time (the Garand, the Essex-class carrier, the T34, radar, the Spitfire and Hurricane).

The Sherman was the best tank of 1942; in battle against the best tank of 1945 (unavoidable, since th tank destroyer concept didn't succeed in keeping Panzers and Shermans separate), it got mangled, losing 5 Shermans for each Panzer - but there were 10 or 20 Shermans for each Panzer, and those 20 Shermans (or 15 surviving Shermans, anyway) would be running while the Germans were in the shop.

A long pedantic way of saying "You're right, pretty much" :-)

1) The reason I consider the Bulge to be an allied victory is that the allies would have had to destroy that combat power one way or another (or accept that the Russians would destroy it from the east, with a concomitant change in the later position of the Iron Curtain.) If the Germans had decided on a defense in depth with those troops, the cost of digging them out would (in my opinion, of course) have been much higher than the cost of the Battle of the Bulge, both in time and allied lives.

I realize my position on the Bulge is unorthodox, but I hope you can understand (even if not agree with) my argument.

2) Sorry for not amplifying my #2 last night. I spent about 45 minutes trying to find my copy of "The Devil's Adjutant", by Maj. Gen. Michael Reynolds (without success), the book I was thinking of. As to whether his take on Malmedy was accurate, well, he convinced me. At any rate, should you wish to take a look at his argument, at least you now have the name of the book.

3) Since you've partially taken my side on this one, it seems incumbent on me to take yours, at least a bit. 8-)

While the Sherman was quite a useful tank, I suspect the allies could have made a much larger effort to upgun the existing M4A3s to M4A3E8 or Firefly configurations (longer 76.2mm main gun). It further seems likely to me that choosing not to might have cost more lives and time than the opposite choice.

At any rate, an interesting discussion.

That last point is a huge one among a bunch of my fellow armchair armor enthusiasts. The 76mm gun was inadequate against even the later Mark IV tanks, much less the Panther and Tiger. The 75mm was more of a low-velocity support gun than a tank gun. The US had, reportedly, the option to license or buy British 76.2mm ("17pounder") guns, a very high-performance gun that was capable of meeting a Panther or Tiger at moderate ranges. Ordnance Department politics (and the engineering involved in fitting the large, heavy 17# gun into the Sherman's small turret) scuttled the move, from what I heard, in favor of the 76mm.

That, and the early-war decision to use gasoline engines and to expose the ammunition supply, which made early Shermans into notorious firetraps.

Bravo. That was probably the most indepth discussion of a WWII battle, and certainly the Sherman tank, that I have ever heard. Impressive.

As a co-worker pointed out to me at lunch today, the Israelis managed to put a 90mm main gun into the Sherman later, so the problems of space weren't insuperable, but there would have been a time cost to the switchover. Given the problems of developing hull and turret casting technology in the US in 1940-41(?), the time cost might have been substantial.

Procurement politics, of course, will always be with us. For a more recent example, see the use of the 105mm main gun in the first versions of the M-1 Abrams rather than the 120mm Rheinmetall smoothbore used in the A1 and later models. The 120mm was (is) clearly superior, but it was NIH. And don't even get me started on the Sgt. York or the Osprey.

The Israelis actually fit a 105mm gun in the "M51" Sherman:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/israel/sherman.htm

It was nothing if not versatile...

Very interesting discussion. As a supplement, I suggest The Blitzkrieg Myth - How Hitler and the Allies misread the strategic realities of World War II by John Mosier. I think he documents the "myth" arguement very well.

John Lukan

I enjoyed your post. I am some what of a military history wonk too. I hate to point out it was the 28 division (on the south of the bulge that was shot up in the Hurtigen forest. Also the 2nd Infantry division was making a passage of lines attack when the Germans kicked off the Ardennes offensive.

For all thier supposedly green and shot up status the 99th and the 28 succeeded in jambing up the Joseph Sepp Deitrichs 5th Panzer Army in the north to such an extent that the 5th Panzer army only made a 10 mile penetration of the 99th AO on the extreme right flank. 75% of the 99th front lines on the 20 of December where almost where they were on the 16.
The 28 Division (nicked named the bloody bucket division for all the losses it had taken in Eruope befor the battle of the bulge)did the same thing by jamming up Brandenburgers 7th army and half of Hasso Mantuffels 6th Panzer Army on the south shouldr of the bulge.

The real key that I believe to the battle of the bulge was the masterfull with drawal in contact with the enemy that the American forces accomplished in the fortified goose egg around the village of Houfaleese.

By the way I spent a evening with Jochim Peiper at his house in France in 1974. I was an S-2 of an Artillery Battalion at the time and I wanted to get his perspective on the Russians. He was extremly cordual to me and he talked about his experiences on the Eastern front. I was being civil and never mentioned anything about the battle of the bulge.

Pardon my spelling but it's late and I follow the dictates of that some times farmer, some times frontiersman, some times congressman, sometimes indian fighter, Army General and sometimes President of the United States, Andrew Jackson.
"It's a dammed poor man indeed that can't spell the same word at least three different ways"

Writers, Historians and soldiers will ong debate certain aspects of the Battle of the Bulge. One of the points of greatest controversy centers around the simple question: Did von Rundstedt's sudden slash through the Ardennes take the American high command by surprise?

I suggest that one should read the meoirs of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar N. Bradley and Matthew B. Ridgway.

The high command was well aware the Germans possessed the capability of a major offensive action and they did expect it to come soon at that time. What they did not anticipate was exactly where it would strike. They did not expect it to come through the Ardennes. They thought it would come across the Colonge Plain, north of the Ardennes, between the Roer dams and the Maas. An area deep in Montgomery's sector.

If anyone is interested, there is a really well made Battle of the Bulge computer simulation from HPS Simulations called "Bulge 44." The map is very accurate, and changes color depending upon weather. The orders of battle are good too. The game system is well thought out and you can play against the computer or other fellows with play by email (PBEM).

I was a squad leader in the mine platoon 395 Inf. 99th Div. The 395th was acting as flank protection for the 2nd. Div. in their attack on the Ruhr river dams. The buldge developed south of our position. It took our leaders a couple days to realize our units were very exposed being so far east and were withdrawn. My squad spent a night in Krinkelt with much fighting, finaly getting to Elsenbourn and setting up defensive lines. I am 84 but still remember it well.

I am trying to find information on my grandfather. He recieved a purple heart from the Battle of the Buldge, from what I can tell he was in an armored division possible a gunner on a half track, his name was George William Hopkins and I believe he was from Texas, I would deeply appreciate anyone who could help me or steer me in a direction to locate information

I would like to know if Jordan "Pop" Robinson of the 394th I&R Platoon is still alive and where can he or his family be reached.

I would like to know if Jordan "Pop" Robinson of the 394th I&R Platoon is still alive and where can he or his family be reached.

I would like to know if Jordan "Pop" Robinson of the 394th I&R Platoon is still alive and where can he or his family be reached.

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