If the Germans won the Battle of the Bulge, how will the outcome of the war change?
How will it affect the outcome of the war if the Germans won the Battle of the Bulge? Given that the Soviets were at the Eastern German border by the year of 1944, how will the Germany victory of Battle of the Bulge affect the Eastern and Western front? Will Western Allies bother to negotiate a truce with the Germans etc..?
Was the Ardennes offensive a desperate or a smart attempt by the Germans? For smart I mean the Germans would've exploited the division between Western Allies and the USSR by negotiating a truce with Western Allies...
That would have prolonged the war by a month or so, not much of a difference as the eastern front was exposed as before, and there simply were not enough troops available to secure the new frontlines for any meaningful given time, Antwerp cut of or not. The germans never really grasped that the western allies were not about crushing the Nazis or fighting communism, but crushing Germany.
I doubt it would have had any lasting effect on the outcome of the war. Germany deployed about 500.000 men (I think?) in the battle, the Western Allies alone still had over a million men waiting (seeing how they had 2,052,299 men in northern France alone in august, according to Wikipedia). Perhaps the Germans could have really captured Antwerp, but they would probably had to divert many forces to the Eastern Front again anyway.
If the nazis had captured Antwerp, they would have a longer front line to defend in the west and would have to thin it out a bit. Just like the situation the U.S. was in as the battle commenced.
Originally Posted by Harry Henkel
If the forces committed in Ardennes would have been deployed in the East, a bigger part of central Europe would have enjoyed democracy and a smaller part of central Europe would have suffered from communism. It just might be possible that if Bulge never existed, Germany might have stayed as one instead of two nations.
The division of Europe was decided at the Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam conferences not necessarily by the advances of Soviet vs. Western Allied troops.
Depending on advances in the west however, the basis for negotiation at the Yalta conference might have been different.
If victory over Germany had been delayed by a German Ardennes success, there is the possibility that the a-bomb would come into play. I suspect however that the Americans would have been more hesitant to use it against the Germans than against the Japanese for a number of reasons.
I am not at all sure about that. I think that Roosevelt would have had no calms at all to use the nuclear bomb against Germans.
But the use of that weapon would have hardly been the issue. One most remember that the main opponent of Germany in WWII was the Sovietunion, with the Western allies at no time fighting against more than a third of the German troops. The one hope left to Germany at the time was that especially America would be starting to realize that if they continued to fight against Germany they way they did, it would mean that Europe was in danger of falling almost completely to the Soviets. Hitler hoped that finally America and Britain would offer terms to Germany to prevent that. With the increased resistance towards the west Hitler hoped to buy time so that this could happen, his opinion being that he still could better afford to lose land in the east than in the west.
However, given especially Mr. Roosevelts disposition (an abject hate of Hitler if not of Germany, coupled with the odd view that Stalin would be an essentially harmless fellow and that the Sovietunion would eventually evolve into a benign power), there was essentially no chance of a premature peace agreement of any kind between the USA and Germany. Roosevelt was downright single-mindedly determined to utterly crush Germany, no matter what kind of government was ruling it (if, for example, Hitler had been assassinated and the Nazi government had been toppled, it would have made no difference for him) or what the larger consequences of this would be. As far as Stalin was concerned, he simply intended to agree to whatever territorial demands the Soviet dictator might have, and after having thusly ensured the peacefulness of the Sovietunion, to withdraw the American troops from Europe within the next 18 months after Germany's defeat. Churchill was much more wary of Stalin, but Britain was already depending on the US too much to be able to really direct events.
In short, had the Battle of the Bulge been successful, America would most probably still not have come around, the war would have been drawn out by a few months at best, and a larger part of Germany would have ended under immediate Soviet occupation. Wether this would have had an effect on the later occupation zones is difficult to say. It is entirely possible, that Stalin would have agreed to withdraw his troops even from larger areas held by Soviet troops, since there was, as said, reason to believe that the US forces would withdraw from Europe within one or two years. After that had happened, he would have been only confronted by the comparably weak French and British. So, it was a good strategy for him to play it nice at first, instead of seeking an instant confrontation.
Last edited by Kitsune; 09-25-2009 at 11:22 PM.
Roosevelt was dead in April 1945 IIRC, but nonetheless I think there would have been hesitation to use the bomb, if nothing else due to the fact that it wouldn't have been necessary and that the obvious target (Berlin) would be of more use to the Western Allies relatively intact than radiated.
I agree that FDR was far too lenient in his concessions to Stalin.
But the relations between the French and the Americans were really bad at that time, if the Germans had retaken Strassbourg it might have caused a split up between the allies.
@Breakfast in Vegas:
Afaik Berlin was not seen as such an obvious traget. I think I read somwhere that Mannheim was considered to be the victim of the first atomic bomb.
No change, period. Although Soviet Union would have nabbed more of Germany.
Hadn't heard that, thanks.
I'm not a Germany fan, but it would have added to the misery inflicted upon them by their maniacal government.
Their resources were pretty much bled out by this time, anyway.
A lot more deaths from conventional bombing and more territory gobbled by the Russians.
I doubt the A Bomb would ever have been dropped in Europe.
Just off the top of my head.
A military defeat against the Americans in the south would have still left the British/Candians/Poles coming through in the north
German strengthening against the west had weakened them in the east so the Russians/Soviets would still be coming through
No ground offensive would affect the aerial bombardment of German cities so German materiel would still be expended against the air war, again letting the Soviets fight their way through. (Or vice versa)
Any delay in the ground war might cause military caution but it brings an undefeated Germany into the available window of a functioning A-bomb and the German air defence system was shot to pieces already, no way could they defend against either an atomic hole in their front line or the instant vaporisation of their supply centres, if the allies had been halted in the west that only leaves the Soviets in a position to take advantage with an offensive.
I don't think that outcome could be changed on western front. The only difference would be a Germany in the soviet influence sphere. Those few pieces that western allies would be able to liberate most propably would end as a part of the france.
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