As is typical throughout history, the enemy was underestimated.
After the breakout from Normandy, and the successes of the falaise gap encirclement, the allied armies got what the Japanese had called ‘victory disease’...a phrase used to describe theIr early conquests in the Pacific.
The debacle of market garden should have been a clue that the Wehrmacht was certainly not yet defeated, but it was ignored
Ike, Bradley and Monty should have known that wacht am Rhein, or something similar, was coming. Their arrogance did not allow them to consider that such an offensive could still be launched by the Germans at that point in the war
Agree. There was an intelligence failure that lead to the BoTB.
They're mostly all gone now.
I’m reading a book on the bombing of Bari, Italy and the Brits had Victory Disease. They claimed the Luftwaffe was finished. The Germans bombed the harbor which released mustard gas that was being transports by US ships. That one raid set back the offensive for 4 months.
However the Wehrmacht wasn't involved in the fighting.
The Allies had the rotten bad luck of landing in an area occupied by two Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was these two divisions that the Allies went up against.