Battle of the Bulge was 1944, correct?
I agree, they were on defense from 1942 on. However, if Patton doesn’t relieve Bastogne on Christmas in 1944, could the war have dragged on another couple of years, or was Hitler losing it too badly by then?
> if Patton doesn’t relieve Bastogne on Christmas in 1944, could the war have dragged on another couple of years <
From what I’ve read, the Germans were finished not when Bastogne was relieved, but when the weather cleared. Then the overwhelmingly superior Allied air force could do its thing.
And since the weather was going to clear sooner or later, the whole German plan was doomed from the start.
The western allies could have never fired another shot after December of 1944 and the Germans still would have lost. All that would have happened is that the Russians would have taken more of Germany before linking up with the Americans and British.
While we mythologize the Western Front, at the end of the day it was almost a sideshow as far as the war went. Three quarters of the German Army was fighting on the Eastern Front, and that's where the war was decided.
He was losing it badly by 1944. His generals wanted to concentrate all of the armor and men for the Ardenne offensive in the East to blunt the Russian advance. Hitler wasn’t really hoping for a military victory in the West but hoped his attack there would split the Allied coalition and from that he hoped to negotiate at best a cease fire.
Nah, the Soviets were knocking on the door. Plus The minute the weather cleared over Belgium, the Germans were toast.
It would be similar to Arkansas scoring first on Alabama. We were going to win regardless.
The Japanese enjoyed about 8 months of success in the war before they started going under.