The Bulge WW2

[whitehall]

More accurately called the "Ardennes Offensive" that started Dec. 16 1944 was the worst U.S. Intelligence disaster in history up to that time. American Troops were singing Christmas Carols and counting on being home for Christmas. Ike was attending a series of (booze filled?) Christmas parties while Troops in the security rest area could hear machinery and rumbles and indications of something past the German lines. Ike should have been relieved of duty for his negligence when German tanks broke through the Allied lines.

 

[1srelluc]

My Uncle was captured in the opening hours and sent to Stalag IX-B, Bad Orb.

 

[sparky]

My pop was in on it all in '44

~S~

 

[odanny]

My Uncle was captured in the opening hours and sent to Stalag IX-B, Bad Orb.

Luckily he wasn't in Malmedy.

 

[whitehall]

There is something about Christmas. After four years of constant fighting, something in the Allied culture lured Americans into the fantasy that the War would be over by Christmas 1944. Whatever passed for American Intelligence at the time promoted the faulty assumption and IKE and the generals were celebrating the premature victory. In a month another 20,000 Americans would be KIA and 50,000 wounded in battle.

 

[1srelluc]

Luckily he wasn't in Malmedy.

He was captured along with his Sgt. while directing traffic of all things. He was a MP.

They directed a retreating GI column through, was getting ready to join them, saw another column approaching and waited for them....It was Germans in captured US trucks in the forefront.

They took their Jeep and for a day or so they rode around with the Germans till they were handed over and sent to the rear and then to Bad-Orb by train.

He went into Bad-Orb at 186#.....When the camp was liberated he was 86#.

Malnutrition caused something to go wrong with his neck to where his head was always drawn-over to one side.

 

[DudleySmith]

Nobody in their right mind would have wasted so much effort in launching an offensive from there, which is why it was designated a rest area in the first place., and history proved that to be the case. The moron lost cloud cover and ran out of fuel within days, and his last reserves got chewed up and destroyed, his last hope of any kind of offensive. He wouldn't have been able to take a single bridge.