12/16/44 worst military intelligence failure in history

[whitehall]

It's known as the "Battle of the Bulge" or the Ardennes Offensive. Everybody in the U.S. Army at the time knew that the German army was defeated and the rumor mill had it that US Troops would be home for Christmas in 1944. Ike was attending a Christmas party and most of the Generals were probably celebrating with confiscated French wine. Front line Troops heard the rumbling of tanks but there was whisky and beer and cheer and what passed for "military intelligence" was probably drunk as well. By the time the fog lifted three weeks later about 20,000 Americans who thought they would be home for Christmas would be dead and another 47,000 would be out of action and wounded.

 

[Kosh]

Actually Dec 7 1941 was the worst intelligence failure of all time, but that is only because FDR wanted it that way..

 

[whitehall]

Patton was insulted by the media and subdued as an intelligence source and Ike was busy making the rounds of Christmas parties with the generals. FDR was a dying man and the fat asses in Marshal's excuse for a COS staff were enjoying the (illegal) bennies of a celebration of Christmas and victory 1944.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

It's known as the "Battle of the Bulge" or the Ardennes Offensive. Everybody in the U.S. Army at the time knew that the German army was defeated and the rumor mill had it that US Troops would be home for Christmas in 1944. Ike was attending a Christmas party and most of the Generals were probably celebrating with confiscated French wine. Front line Troops heard the rumbling of tanks but there was whisky and beer and cheer and what passed for "military intelligence" was probably drunk as well. By the time the fog lifted three weeks later about 20,000 Americans who thought they would be home for Christmas would be dead and another 47,000 would be out of action and wounded.

Would say 9/11 was the worst day in history for intelligence.

 

[airplanemechanic]

No, that day lies with November 4th, 2008. There is no way that intelligent people could have made that mistake.

 

[Two Thumbs]

I'd have to go with invading Iraq.

bad intel lead us to attack a country for not a reason that existed.

 

[Steven_R]

There are plenty of incidences in history of bad or no intelligence leading to massive turns. The Battle of Trenton, Lee stumbling into Gettysburg because Stuart was nowhere to be found, Hitler attacking Stalin.

 

[whitehall]

There are plenty of incidences in history of bad or no intelligence leading to massive turns. The Battle of Trenton, Lee stumbling into Gettysburg because Stuart was nowhere to be found, Hitler attacking Stalin.

Say what? We are talking about the U.S. aren't we? Washington lost about , let's see, two Soldiers at the Battle of Trenton. Gettysburg was a horrific several day battle but the tally including both sides was about 7,000. Americans lost 20,000 during the Battle of the Bulge.

 

[Steven_R]

There's more than just casualty numbers when looking at intelligence failures and their outcomes. If we're just looking at US failures, we should add the Tet Offensive and the Nork invasion of South Korea to our list.

 

[whitehall]

There's more than just casualty numbers when looking at intelligence failures and their outcomes. If we're just looking at US failures, we should add the Tet Offensive and the Nork invasion of South Korea to our list.

The political ramifications of intelligence failures is a valid and important point but we are drifting from Military intelligence failures to a discussion of civilian intelligence failures.There is little doubt that the CIA was greatly involved in running the show in LBJ's war in Vietnam but the CIA had morphed into a pseudo combat operation and lost site of their intelligence mandate. TET is certainly a monumental intelligence failure. The NK invasion was certainly a National intelligence failure but might have resulted in moderate casualties if Truman's "old soldier" didn't go on an ego trip. We might drift off into a critique of CIA failures if we consider why a traitor like Lee Oswald was welcomed back into the U.S. with his Russian bride who was the daughter of a KGB officer but I hoped to point out the difference between the spin of what we were taught about the "battle of the bulge" and the reality of Military intelligence failure.

 

[shadow355]

It's known as the "Battle of the Bulge" or the Ardennes Offensive. Everybody in the U.S. Army at the time knew that the German army was defeated and the rumor mill had it that US Troops would be home for Christmas in 1944. Ike was attending a Christmas party and most of the Generals were probably celebrating with confiscated French wine. Front line Troops heard the rumbling of tanks but there was whisky and beer and cheer and what passed for "military intelligence" was probably drunk as well. By the time the fog lifted three weeks later about 20,000 Americans who thought they would be home for Christmas would be dead and another 47,000 would be out of action and wounded.

You have to have a proper intelligence network in place for it to be a failure.

Shadow 355

 

[Steven_R]

It's known as the "Battle of the Bulge" or the Ardennes Offensive. Everybody in the U.S. Army at the time knew that the German army was defeated and the rumor mill had it that US Troops would be home for Christmas in 1944. Ike was attending a Christmas party and most of the Generals were probably celebrating with confiscated French wine. Front line Troops heard the rumbling of tanks but there was whisky and beer and cheer and what passed for "military intelligence" was probably drunk as well. By the time the fog lifted three weeks later about 20,000 Americans who thought they would be home for Christmas would be dead and another 47,000 would be out of action and wounded.

You have to have a proper intelligence network in place for it to be a failure.

Shadow 355

Even when you do have an intelligence network in place, it can still fail.

Case in point: nobody at Langley saw the fall of the Soviet Union until they saw it on CNN. Not only did the CIA have egg on their face over the whole thing, but after 9/11 both Cheney and Rumsfeld completely distrusted the CIA's assessments since they felt they had been burned before. So when the CIA kept telling the White House they didn't see Iraq involved with 9/11 or WMD, the White House kept telling the CIA they were wrong until the CIA just wrote a report and the White House just read into it what they wanted.

Frontline did a two part episode called Bush's War. The first episode is all about the build up to the war and is eye opening. Watch Full Episodes Online of FRONTLINE on PBS | Bush's War Part 1

 

[Syriusly]

It's known as the "Battle of the Bulge" or the Ardennes Offensive. Everybody in the U.S. Army at the time knew that the German army was defeated and the rumor mill had it that US Troops would be home for Christmas in 1944. Ike was attending a Christmas party and most of the Generals were probably celebrating with confiscated French wine. Front line Troops heard the rumbling of tanks but there was whisky and beer and cheer and what passed for "military intelligence" was probably drunk as well. By the time the fog lifted three weeks later about 20,000 Americans who thought they would be home for Christmas would be dead and another 47,000 would be out of action and wounded.

Worst in history? Certainly it was one of the worst by the Americans in WW2- though 12/7/41 is probably more glaring.

But others come pretty easily to mind- the Yom Kippur War.

Probably the worst in World War 2 was the failure of the USSR to predict the German attack on the Soviet forces. Soviets suffered some 2,000,000 casualties and loss of most of their operational tanks and planes and almost lost the war due to that failure.

 

[WildBillKelsoe]

There's more than just casualty numbers when looking at intelligence failures and their outcomes. If we're just looking at US failures, we should add the Tet Offensive and the Nork invasion of South Korea to our list.

The Commies got their asses handed to them during The Tet Offensive. The Intel failure was definitely theirs.

 

[Steven_R]

The US never saw Tet coming. And even if the US won every engagement, the NVA was the big winner because the Viet Cong simply ceased to exist post-Tet, something Hanoi wanted all along. The VC were cannon fodder, and possibly a thorn in Hanoi's side in the long term.

And that's before we even get into the political damage done in the US when journalists like Cronkite said the war was unwinnable due to stuff like the Massacre at Hue, the over-running of the US embassy in Saigon, or the Siege of Khe Sanh.