Sherman tank battle of the bulge8/7/2023 ![]() ![]() Despite some intelligence indicators of a counterattack, the Allies assumed that the Germans would take the rational, sensible decision to play defense. Indeed, with manpower and armaments depleted by five years of war, German cities pulverized by American and British bombers, and the Third Reich desperately short of oil, any rational leader would have surrendered. There seemed little prospect that the Germans could rebuild their forces to mount a strong defense, let alone mount a major counteroffensive. American troops were on German soil, and the Red Army was 50 miles from Berlin. The Allies failed to expect a German counteroffensive for a simple reason: it’s not what the Allies would have done in Hitler’s shoes.ĭuring the summer of 1944, the German armies in Normandy had been smashed and routed, while Operation Bagration - the massive Soviet offensive in Byelorussia - had inflicted 500,000 casualties and wiped out Germany’s Army Group Center. A WWII Battle of the Bulge reenactment Nazi soldier engages the Allied army, Dec.
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