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Events that led to the Battle of the Bulge

From D-Day To the Failure of the V-Weapons

Dec 27, 2008 Barry Vale

It was events earlier in 1944, which to a large extent led to the Battle of the Bulge being launched by the German Army after been planned by Adolf Hitler himself.

A Response To D-Day

An event that directly led to the Battle of the Bulge was the Allied invasion of France on D-Day, which had subsequently been successful in driving back the German Army to the borders of the Third Reich itself. Adolf Hitler was determined to launch a German offensive that would repeat the success of 1940.

Both the Western Allies and the German general staff were certain that the American, British, and Canadian forces currently in France would successfully invade Germany in the early months of 1945. Therefore if unchecked the progress of the Western Allies in northwest Europe would undoubtedly hasten the end of the Second World War.

The Failure of the V-Weapons

Adolf Hitler had also believed that Germany's secret weapons would have altered the course of the Second World War back towards Germany's favor. However the long anticipated affects of the V1 and the V2 rockets launched against Britain from France and the low countries had not actually been materialised. Besides as the Western Allies had advanced they succeeded in overrunning the German missile launch sites. Adolf Hitler anticipated that if the German Army could reach the channel coast that it might be possible to drive the Western Allies back to Britain, just like it had been achieved in 1940.

Disaster On The Eastern Front

If things were bad for the German Army in the West, the situation on the Eastern Front was deteriorating badly. The Red Army relentlessly advanced towards Germany. Indeed the only time that the Red Army had slowed down its advance in the summer of 1944. The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was content to let the German Army ruthlessly crush the Warsaw Uprising as it led to the elimination of the strongest Polish opponents to the Soviet Union's domination of Poland after the Second World War. The Red Army was preparing to invade Germany at the beginning of 1945, and the German Army had nothing to stop them with.

The Battle of the Bulge was intended to buy the German time on the Western Front, and then allow it to return resources to the Eastern Front to stop the Red Army. Instead it wasted reserves that could never be replaced.

Bibliography

Colvin J, (2004) Decisive Battles, Headline, London

Hobsbawm, E (1994) Age of Extremes, the Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, Michael

Joseph, London

Holmes R, (2007) Battlefield – Decisive conflicts in History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, and Cambridge, USA

Ward G, (2003) the Rough Guide History of the USA, Rough Guides Ltd, London

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