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44-660: The 6th Panzer Army is best noted for its leading role in the Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944 – January 25, 1945). Although it never received an SS designation, calling it the 6th SS Panzer Army came into general use in military history literature after the Second World War, most likely due to being led by a SS General and commanding many SS units or to separate it from the Wehrmacht's 6th Army . The attack of

88-478: A Blitzkrieg attack through the weakly defended Ardennes, mirroring the successful German offensive there during the Battle of France in 1940, and aimed at splitting the armies along the U.S.-British lines and capturing Antwerp. The plan banked on unfavorable weather, including heavy fog and low-lying clouds, which would minimize the Allied air advantage. Hitler originally set the offensive for late November, before

132-427: A joint "small solution" to Hitler. When they offered their alternative plans, Hitler would not listen. Rundstedt later testified that while he recognized the merit of Hitler's operational plan, he saw from the very first that "all, absolutely all conditions for the possible success of such an offensive were lacking." Model, commander of German Army Group B ( Heeresgruppe B ), and von Rundstedt, overall commander of

176-626: A rest area for the U.S. First Army , with limited Allied operational objectives in the area. The Allies defended the Ardennes line very thinly, due to the favorable defensive terrain (a densely wooded highland with deep river valleys and a rather thin road network) and because they had intelligence that the Wehrmacht was using the area across the German border as a rest-and-refit area for its own troops. The Allies faced major supply issues, due to

220-481: A rest area for the U.S. First Army, and the lines were thinly held by fatigued troops and inexperienced replacement units. The Germans also took advantage of heavily overcast weather conditions that grounded the Allies' superior air forces for an extended period. American resistance on the northern shoulder of the offensive, around Elsenborn Ridge , and in the south, around Bastogne , blocked German access to key roads to

264-404: A total of 55 understrength divisions. Adolf Hitler first outlined his planned counter-offensive to his generals on 16 September 1944. The goal was to pierce the thinly held lines of the U.S. First Army between Monschau and Wasserbillig with Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model 's Army Group B by the end of the first day, get the armor through the Ardennes by the end of the second day, reach

308-429: Is not the lack of roads as much as the lack of almost anything else on which to move that matters. The OKW decided by mid-September, at Hitler's insistence, that the offensive would be mounted in the Ardennes, as was done in 1940. In 1940 German forces had passed through the Ardennes in three days before engaging the enemy, but the 1944 plan called for battle in the forest itself. The main forces were to advance westward to

352-466: Is the correct term in Allied military language, the official Ardennes-Alsace campaign reached beyond the Ardennes battle region, and the most popular description in English speaking countries remains simply 'Battle of the Bulge'. There is a popular impression that the chief trouble in the Ardennes is the lack of good roads. As anyone on the ground will agree, the Ardennes has a fairly good road system. It

396-596: The Battle of Aachen and fighting in the Hürtgen Forest , the strategic situation in the west had changed little. The Allies were slowly pushing towards Germany , but no decisive breakthrough was achieved. There were 96 Allied divisions at or near the front, with an estimated ten more divisions on the way from the United Kingdom. Additional Allied airborne units remained in England. The Germans could field

440-679: The Eastern Front , the Soviets' Operation Bagration during the summer had destroyed much of Germany's Army Group Center ( Heeresgruppe Mitte ). By November, it was clear that Soviet forces were preparing for a winter offensive. Meanwhile, the Allied air offensive of early 1944 had effectively grounded the Luftwaffe , leaving the German Army with little battlefield intelligence and no way to interdict Allied supplies. The converse

484-593: The Meuse between Liège and Dinant by the third day, and seize Antwerp and the western bank of the Scheldt estuary by the fourth day. Hitler initially promised his generals a total of 18 infantry and 12 armored or mechanized divisions "for planning purposes." The plan was to pull 13 infantry divisions, two parachute divisions and six armored divisions from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht strategic reserve. On

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528-899: The 6th Panzer Army defended Vienna against the advancing Soviets, but was unable to prevent a Soviet conquest of the city. When the war ended on May 8, 1945, the 6th Panzer Army was in Austria between Vienna and Linz, in which area it subsequently surrendered to forces of the Soviet and U.S. Armies. Battle of the Bulge [REDACTED] 12th Army Group : [REDACTED] 21st Army Group [REDACTED] Army Group B : 24 December: 2 January: 16 January: 24 December: 2 January: 16 January: [REDACTED] British: (U.S. Estimate: 103,900 casualties) Luxembourg The Netherlands Belgium France Britain 1941–1943 1944–1945 Germany Strategic campaigns The Battle of

572-558: The 6th Panzer Army into the Ardennes in December 1944 failed to swiftly break the American defensive line and lost valuable time because of U.S. defensive efforts at locations like Monschau on the German border. Despite the allocation of SS panzer divisions, the 6th Panzer Army only managed a minor penetration into the northern defensive sector of the U.S. VIII Corps and its advance was thereafter checked by U.S. reinforcements arriving on

616-727: The Allied forces and compel the Americans and British to settle for a separate peace, independent of the Soviet Union. Success in the west would give the Germans time to design and produce more advanced weapons (such as jet aircraft , new U-boat designs and super-heavy tanks ) and permit the concentration of forces in the east. After the war ended, this assessment was generally viewed as unrealistic, given Allied air superiority throughout Europe and their ability to continually disrupt German offensive operations. Hitler's plan called for

660-521: The Allied lines, allowing the Germans to encircle and destroy each of the four Allied armies and force the western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis powers ' favour. The Germans achieved a total surprise attack on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans elsewhere and poor aerial reconnaissance due to bad weather. American forces were using this region primarily as

704-559: The Allied supply situation stretched further than before. In October, the First Canadian Army fought the Battle of the Scheldt , opening the port of Antwerp to shipping. As a result, by the end of October, the supply situation had eased somewhat. Despite a lull along the front after the Scheldt battles, the German situation remained dire. While operations continued in the autumn, notably the Lorraine Campaign ,

748-419: The Allies had suspended major offensives to improve their supply lines and supply availability at the front. Montgomery and Bradley both pressed for priority delivery of supplies to their respective armies so they could continue their individual lines of advance and maintain pressure on the Germans, while Eisenhower preferred a broad-front strategy. He gave some priority to Montgomery's northern forces. This had

792-587: The Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group , over whether Montgomery or Lieutenant General Omar Bradley , commanding the U.S. 12th Army Group , in the south would get priority access to supplies. German forces remained in control of several major ports on the English Channel coast into the autumn, while Dunkirk remained under siege until the end of the war in May 1945. The Allies' efforts to destroy

836-655: The Bulge , also known as the Ardennes Offensive , was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during the Second World War which took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg . The offensive was intended to stop Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split

880-547: The French railway system prior to D-Day were successful. This destruction hampered the German response to the invasion, but it proved equally hampering to the Allies, as it took time to repair the rail network's tracks and bridges. A trucking system nicknamed the Red Ball Express brought supplies to front-line troops, but used up five times as much fuel to reach the front line near the Belgian border. By early October,

924-612: The German Army Command in the West ( OB West ), were put in charge of carrying out the operation. The positions of the Allied armies stretched from southern France all the way north to the Netherlands. German planning for the counteroffensive rested on the premise that a successful strike against thinly manned stretches of the line would halt Allied advances on the entire Western Front. The Wehrmacht's code name for

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968-494: The Germans. The offensive lacked operational surprise, but Soviet Front commander Fyodor Tolbukhin 's awareness of the presence of elite SS units, under direct orders from STAVKA Tolbukhin was ordered to use minimal forces against the SS until a counteroffensive could be made in strength north of Lake Balaton . On March 16 the 3rd Ukrainian Front launched its major counteroffensive and Joseph Goebbels admitted in his diary that failure

1012-559: The Meuse River, then turn northwest for Antwerp and Brussels . The close terrain of the Ardennes would make rapid movement difficult, though open ground beyond the Meuse offered the prospect of a successful dash to the coast. Four armies were selected for the operation. Adolf Hitler personally selected for the counter-offensive on the northern shoulder of the western front the best troops available and officers he trusted. The lead role in

1056-486: The anticipated start of the Russian winter offensive . The disputes between Montgomery and Bradley were well known, and Hitler hoped he could exploit this disunity. If the attack were to succeed in capturing Antwerp, four complete armies would be trapped without supplies behind German lines. Several senior German military officers, including Generalfeldmarschalls Model and von Rundstedt, expressed concern as to whether

1100-455: The attack was given to the 6th Panzer Army , commanded by SS Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich . It included the most experienced formation of the Waffen-SS : the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler . It also contained the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend . They were given priority for supply and equipment and assigned the shortest route to the primary objective of

1144-404: The effectiveness of Allied Ultra intercepts. Nevertheless, some 40–50 messages per day were decrypted by Ultra. They recorded the quadrupling of German fighter forces, and a term used in an intercepted Luftwaffe message ( Jägeraufmarsch , literally, 'Hunter Deployment') implied preparation for an offensive operation. Ultra also picked up communiqués regarding extensive rail and road movements in

1188-593: The end of July 1944 and the Allied landings in southern France on 15 August 1944, the Allies advanced towards Germany more quickly than anticipated. The speed of the advance of the Allies caused several military logistics issues: By December 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the Supreme Allied Commander on the Western Front ) and his staff decided to hold the Ardennes region primarily as

1232-685: The goals of the offensive could be realized. Model and von Rundstedt both believed aiming for Antwerp was too ambitious, given Germany's scarce resources in late 1944. At the same time, they felt that maintaining a purely defensive posture (as had been the case since Normandy) would only delay defeat, not avert it. They thus developed alternative, less ambitious plans that did not aim to cross the Meuse River (in German and Dutch: Maas); Model's being Unternehmen Herbstnebel ('Operation Autumn Mist') and von Rundstedt's Fall Martin ('Plan Martin'). The two field marshals combined their plans to present

1276-528: The harbor before it could be taken. It took many months to rebuild its cargo-handling capability. The Allies captured the port of Antwerp intact in the first days of September, but it was not operational until 28 November. The estuary of the Schelde river that controlled access to the port had to be cleared of both German troops and naval mines . These limitations led to differences between General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery , commander of

1320-736: The lead element of Patton's U.S. Third Army reached Bastogne from the south ending the siege. Although the offensive was effectively broken by 27 December, when the trapped units of 2nd Panzer Division made two break-out attempts with only partial success, the battle continued for another month before the front line was effectively restored to its position prior to the attack. The Germans committed over 410,000 men, just over 1,400 tanks and armored fighting vehicles , 2,600 artillery pieces, and over 1,000 combat aircraft. Between 63,000 and 104,000 of these men were killed , missing , wounded in action , or captured . The battle severely depleted Germany's armored forces, which remained largely unreplaced throughout

1364-486: The northern flank of the offensive. After the Ardennes Offensive, the 6th Panzer Army was transferred to Hungary, where it fought against the advancing Soviet Army. In March 1945, after the fall of Budapest , the 6th Panzer Army launched one of the final German offensives of the war, Operation Frühlingserwachen around Lake Balaton . This was an attempt to protect the last sources of petroleum controlled by

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1408-516: The northwest and west which they had counted on for success. This congestion and terrain that favored the defenders, threw the German advance behind schedule and allowed the Allies to reinforce the thinly placed troops. The farthest west the offensive reached was the village of Foy-Nôtre-Dame, south east of Dinant , being stopped by the U.S. 2nd Armored Division on 24 December 1944. Improved weather conditions from around 24 December permitted air attacks on German forces and supply lines . On 26 December

1452-565: The offensive was Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein ('Operation Watch on the Rhine'), after the German patriotic hymn Die Wacht am Rhein , a name that deceptively implied the Germans would be adopting a defensive posture along the Western Front. The Germans also referred to it as Ardennenoffensive ('Ardennes Offensive') and Rundstedt-Offensive, both names being generally used nowadays in modern Germany. The French (and Belgian) name for

1496-495: The offensive, Antwerp, starting from the northernmost point on the intended battlefront, nearest the important road network hub of Monschau . The Fifth Panzer Army under General Hasso von Manteuffel was assigned to the middle sector with the objective of capturing Brussels. The Seventh Army , under General Erich Brandenberger , was assigned to the southernmost sector, near the Luxembourgish city of Echternach , with

1540-503: The operation is Bataille des Ardennes , 'Battle of the Ardennes'. The battle was militarily defined by the Allies as the Ardennes Counteroffensive, which included the German drive and the American effort to contain and later defeat it. The phrase 'Battle of the Bulge' was coined by contemporary press to describe the way the Allied front line bulged inward on wartime news maps. While the Ardennes Counteroffensive

1584-545: The rate of their advance coupled with the initial lack of deep-water ports. Over-the-beach supply operations using the Normandy landing areas, and direct landing ships on the beaches, were unable to meet operational needs. The only deep-water port the Allies had captured was Cherbourg on the northern shore of the Cotentin peninsula and west of the original invasion beaches, but the Germans had thoroughly wrecked and mined

1628-601: The region, as well as orders that movements should be made on time. Hitler felt that his mobile reserves allowed him to mount one major offensive. Although he realized nothing significant could be accomplished in the Eastern Front, he still believed an offensive against the Western Allies, whom he considered militarily inferior to the Red Army, would have some chances of success. Hitler believed he could split

1672-551: The remainder of the war. German Luftwaffe personnel, and later also Luftwaffe aircraft (in the concluding stages of the engagement ) also sustained heavy losses. In the wake of the defeat, many experienced German units were effectively out of men and equipment, and the survivors retreated to the Siegfried Line . Allied forces eventually came to more than 700,000 men; from these there were from 77,000 to more than 83,000 casualties, including at least 8,600 killed. The "Bulge"

1716-524: The short-term goal of opening the urgently needed port of Antwerp and the long-term goal of capturing the Ruhr area , the biggest industrial area of Germany. With the Allies stalled, German Generalfeldmarschall ('Field Marshal') Gerd von Rundstedt was able to reorganize the disrupted German armies into a coherent defensive force. Field Marshal Montgomery's Operation Market Garden had achieved only some of its objectives, while its territorial gains left

1760-483: The task of protecting the flank. This Army was made up of only four infantry divisions, with no large-scale armored formations to use as a spearhead unit. As a result, they made little progress throughout the battle. In an indirect, secondary role, the Fifteenth Army , under General Gustav-Adolf von Zangen , recently brought back up to strength and re-equipped after heavy fighting during Operation Market Garden,

1804-512: Was equally damaging; daytime movement of German forces was rapidly noticed, and interdiction of supplies combined with the bombing of the Romanian oil fields starved Germany of oil and gasoline. This fuel shortage intensified after the Soviets overran those fields in the course of their August 1944 Jassy-Kishinev Offensive . One of the few advantages held by the German forces in November 1944

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1848-534: Was likely. Three days later, the Germans were thrown back at their original starting positions. The 1st, 2nd, 9th, and 12th SS Panzer Divisions were reduced to 31 operational armored fighting vehicles by March 15, 1945, while Army Group South as a whole retained 772 operational tanks and assault guns as of March 16, 1945. However, the German forces broke under the Soviet Red Army counteroffensive and retreated towards Austria to defend Vienna . In April 1945,

1892-415: Was that they were no longer defending all of Western Europe. Their front lines in the west had been considerably shortened by the Allied offensive and were much closer to the German heartland. This drastically reduced their supply problems despite Allied control of the air. Additionally, their extensive telephone and telegraph network meant that radios were no longer necessary for communications, which lessened

1936-640: Was the largest and bloodiest single battle fought by the United States in World War II and the third-deadliest campaign in American history . It was one of the most important battles of the war, as it marked the last major offensive attempted by the Axis powers on the Western front. After this defeat, Nazi forces could only retreat for the remainder of the war. After the breakout from Normandy at

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