WW2: BATTLE OF THE BULGE, 70 YEARS BEYOND AND LESSONS LEARNED AND STILL APPLICABLE TODAY.

 

December 16^th 2014 marks 70 years since the German Ardennes offensive also known as the battle of the Bulge was launched by Adolf Hitler the German Dictator in a last ditch effort to stop the advancing Allied armies from overrunning Germany in the late autumn and winter of 1944 as the Allies were hoping to bring the war in Europe to a close in early 1945.

Beginning with the D-Day invasion over six Allied Armies had landed on both the northwest and south coast of France and had linked up and were pushing their way across France towards the Low Countries and ultimately Germany.

 

The Allied landing on D-Day had been the culmination of American policy upon its entry into the War based on a meeting between US President Franklin D Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston S Churchill as far back as on 9th August 1941 when they met on the Atlantic Ocean near Newfoundland, Canada on the US Navy's heavy Cruiser The USS Augusta and eventually issued the Atlantic Charter on the 14th of August 1941 which came to articulate the war aims of the Western Allies and their view of a post war world.

The two leaders had agreed among other things that should the US enter the war, Europe was to receive priority attention in terms of manpower and material resources in prosecuting the war. It became known as the Europe- first policy and it was to guide American policy makers in the planning and prosecution of WW2. The policy was the brain child of Roosevelt who differed to the request of Winston Churchill on the need to come to the rescue of the United Kingdom which was bearing the brunt of the European war as it then was before the Pacific war erupted on December 7, 1941.

President Roosevelt with the firm support of General George C Marshall then Army Chief of Staff therefore set about ensuring that the defeat of Germany was going to be the chief pre-occupation of the American military, while offering enough resources for a containment of Japan in the Pacific front until the fighting in Europe was brought to a successful end. In the aftermath by late 1944 more than ninety percent of the American army was committed to France where over six armies had been deployed to the frontlines by November 1944.

Amongst the Armies on the field was the US First Army whose heroics had been detailed in my earlier writing on the “US First Army the forgotten heroes of WW2’’ under the command of Lieutenant General Omar N Bradley who later passed on Command to Lieutenant General Courtney C Hodges, when he was promoted to the command of the US Twelfth Army Group comprising the First and Third Army under the command of Lieutenant General George S Patton. Thereafter the US Ninth Army was also activated under Lieutenant General William H Simpson.

After the commencement of the Allied landing on the south coast of France in the Marseilles region in August 1944 the US Seventh Army under the command of Lieutenant General Alexander Patch also became operational and all these armies had by November 1944 been deployed along a front in western Europe stretching from Belgium and Luxembourg to the south coast of France bordering Switzerland as the Allies pressed towards Germany on a broad front. The US Seventh and French First Army were to become part of the 6^th Army Group under the command of General Jacob L Devers

 On the British side, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery commanded the British 21^st Army Group comprising the British Second Army under General Miles Dempsey and the Canadian First Army under the command of General Henry Crerar which was deployed along the Belgian-Dutch borders to a point linking with the US Ninth Army in Luxembourg which eventually together with the US First Army came under the command of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery in the heat of the battle.

Following the Allied landing in Normandy and the advance inland into France, it had become clear to all observers that the American Army and resources were becoming predominant in the field in Western Europe. Out of the seven armies on the field including the newly activated French First Army, four were American by November 1944 and even then the only French army was fully equipped and supplied with American materials. Following Operation Cobra and the breakout from St Lo into Brittany and the activation of George Patton’s Third Army, the Americans had become the dominant players on the field in Europe employing a bravado spirit on the battlefield that baffled the German Army.

Patton’s awesome armored strikes and breakthroughs led to the belief among the German Generals that the Americans had become the more dangerous foe and desperately needed to be stopped in a massive counter offensive employing the strategy of Blitzkrieg that had served the Germans so well in their earlier campaigns in the war. Hitler reasoned that he could break the American fighting spirit if subjected to a full blown German Blitzkrieg attack led by the awesome Tiger and Panther tanks.

By early December 1944 as the Allied armies had become bogged down by supply problems and the fatigue caused by a long and whirlwind advance of over 500 miles from the Seine River to Luxembourg, Belgium and in some places the German border. They had paused to regroup and rest in the cold and deep winter of 1944 which made motorIsed warfare difficult. As the Allied advance ground to a halt, Hitler felt he now had a good opportunity to launch his much vaunted counter offensive.

 For this, he had amassed three armies totaling over 24 Divisions, six hundred thousand men in all and over 1500 tanks and tank destroyers aimed at the line held by the US First Army in its weakest sector where tired and fresh troops were being refitted in the hilly Ardennes forest between Monschau (southwest of Aachen) and Echternach (northwest of Trier).

 

The German 5^th Army under the experienced Russian front veteran General Hasso Manteuffel was to launch a drive on the Meuse River at Namur cross it and head to Brussels, while SS Sepp Dietrich’s 6^th Panzer army was to lead an armored drive to the important supply city of Antwerp with a view to splitting the British-Canadian 21^st Army Group from the American First Army and subsequently crush them. He believed that at the end of the operation, the defeated Allies would be willing to accept a negotiated settlement of the war.

 

It was an ambitious plan that was meant to be accomplished within the four days of 16^th -20^th of December 1944 when complete weather overcast was predicted to preclude the Allies from employing their vast air power. With eight armored divisions in the lead the Germans achieved a penetration of the Allied lines 65 miles deep and some units of the 6^th Panzer Army came within sight of the Meuse River before the offensive ran out of steam as the skies opened up on Christmas eve and Allied fighters began to interdict the German lines and destroy the supply convoys.

The Germans ran into resistance stiffer than expected from the GI’s who gave a good account of the American fighting spirit as they denied the Germans vital gains by mounting road blocks, destroying bridges, fuel dumps and everything that could be of significant help to the Germans.

 The American resistance was particularly crucial at Bastogne and St Vith where the American 101^st and 82^nd Airborne Divisions respectively held the two vital junction towns that forced the German armor and supply convoys to the use of secondary roads that considerably slowed and hampered the advance.

By Christmas day in 1944 when the clouds fully cleared and Allied air power was in full swing, General Patton’s Third Army had sent in a relief column that had relieved the beleaguered city of Bastogne which never fell into German hands even though encircled for close to a week.

 With sufficient reinforcement pouring into the American lines, the German advance was soon brought to a halt in some of the heaviest fighting of the Second World War on the European front. With the Allies in early January threatening a counter encirclement of the German bulge in the Allied lines, the Germans had no choice but to withdraw their forces lest they be encircled in the resulting Allied pincer move.

 

By the middle of January the battle had shifted in favor of the Allies who had immediately launched a counter attack that threw the Germans into a full blown retreat back into Germany where the Allies subsequently began the great pursuit that led to the end of the war in May 1945.

The Battle of the Bulge was Nazi Germany’s last great offensive in WW2 and it resulted in the squandering of Germany’s last military reserves that was needed to stave off the Soviet Union’s great offensive launched on the 12^th of January 1945 in Poland that brought the Soviet armies to the door steps of Berlin.

THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA THE ALPHA PAIR BEHIND THE PEACE OF 1945

THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA THE ALPHA PAIR BEHIND THE PEACE OF 1945

The great Allied military victory of 1945 that has kept the world in peace for close to seventy years now and had created the world order that we live in today albeit refashioned after the end of the Cold war in 1989 is a treasure that must be preserved  because the dynamics of the world we live in today and the revolutionary technological changes that have swept the world since 1945 have made it clear that the 21^st century world can no longer afford the expense of another global military conflict as being the basis of fashioning out another world order as recorded in 1918 and 1945.

All through the ages violent conflicts as wars have tended to be, have been the preferred option of men in dealing with situations that seriously need to be addressed especially where nations are concerned. Wars have always been the method of last resort diplomacy where peaceful change is deemed impossible. A notable Prussian General/ statesman of the 19^th century Carl Von Clausewitz wrote that ‘war is the continuation of politick (diplomacy) by other means’.

That was in an era in the 18^th and 19^th century when wars were glorified as being a necessary instrument of national and political transformation.

 Healthy nations were expected to embark on wars from time to time keep a healthy national and political frame and ethos. The 20^th century Dictators in both Germany and Italy saw wars as a revolutionary means of both national and political transformation that was deemed to be good for the health and well being of society in general and encouraged their citizenry to think in such terms.

 The Japanese leaders in the 1930’s and 40’s preached the same message in their societies and generally encouraged their populace to embrace war as a necessary evil for political and social transformation. All this was before the great defeats suffered by these nations in 1945. These same groups of nations have today become the most pacifist and peaceful nations in the world today and ironically some of the most prosperous.

The great victors of the enterprise called the Second world war the United States and Russia however have however come to a different set of conclusion on the need to maintain huge armies and a massive military/industrial complex for the sake of deterrence and basically to ensure that the world order created by the peace of 1945 is not threatened by either party or any other nation.

 While both nations have engaged in saber rattling grandstanding and bluster for the past seventy years it is surprising that the leaders and citizens of both nations have not seen any reason to enter into a formal alliance that disregards their different ideological and political posturing to ensure that the world order that the victorious powers of 1945 created is assiduously maintained.

I believe both nations have enjoyed the luxury of being pride masters for over seventy years without the hazard of any viable challenge to their dominance and hegemony over the world stage and that is why they have engaged in incessant bickering.

 However in the last decade a new power, China has arisen to challenge and if possible displace the Alpha pair of global hegemony and other powers are also rising including the erstwhile losers who are watching the unfolding scenario with great interest.

Instead of Russia and America coming together to seal a pact to protect their hegemony as is found in a genuine Alpha pair in the animal world of felines, the two nations are jostling with each other with a view to tripping one another to the great delight of the wanna- be ambitious rivals anxiously waiting on the sidelines to displace the aged pair of 20^th century pride masters and Alpha pair.

If only the US and Russia realise that the greatest beneficiary of their incessant quarrels will be China and other upcoming powers anxiously waiting in the wings to upstage them the sooner they will realise that they need to ignore and settle their differences and make up a strong alliance to confront the strong challenge that is brewing like a storm in front of them from the nations that are also hungry for global hegemony.

 A word they say is enough for the wise. I don’t think that either the US or Russia will relish life as a displaced pride master. Thanks

WHY THE PEACE OF 1945 MUST BE PRESERVED AT ALL COST !!!

WHY THE PEACE OF 1945 MUST BE PRESERVED AT ALL COST:

 A NEW SUPER POWERS ROUND TABLE SUMMIT IS URGENTLY NEEDED NOW!!

Next year will be exactly 70 years since WW2 came to an end bringing to a close the darkest chapter in the history of the human race. To say WW2 was cataclysmic,  would be a gross understatement, because in the known history of the world, the kind of bloodletting and violence that was unleashed on  the earth by that conflict has had no parallel ever since or thereafter.

When the Great War later known as WW1 came to an end on November 11, 1918 following the signing of the armistice by Germany the world thought it had seen the end of the most violent conflict ever to take place, considering that over ten million lives were lost and the conflict devastated much of Europe and the Middle East, parts of Africa and Asia.

 The devastation and loss of life was unparalleled in history and nobody thought such a conflict could be repeated again.

Modern man has however proven that he can not only repeat his actions, but he can out do himself in bestiality if given a chance.

That is the sad trait in man that has necessitated the need for statesmen and other world leaders to gather together urgently to address the need for the world powers to hold a major summit preferably in Geneva to see how the burning issues that are threatening the peace of 1945 must be urgently settled now before any unforeseen and untoward event shatters the fragile veneer of peace we are clinging to now. 

24 years after the Cold war ended more on a default basis rather than a negotiated settlement it is pretty obvious that the terms upon which world peace was secured and which we are still enjoying is being threatened because the settlement involving the status of the newly freed states of Eastern Europe were not clearly defined in written terms.

 The fact remains however that many of the world leaders of that era are still alive and can be held accountable for the agreements both written and unwritten that had defined the post Cold war era. Prominent among them are former US President George H Bush, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev,  former German Chancellor  Helmut Kohl , Prime Minister John Major, French President Francois Mitterrand etc.

Part of what is greatly needed to defuse the tension in Eastern Europe right now is an understanding regarding the consensus reached then by the major powers on how far NATO was permitted to go in its Eastward expansion program, which I believe is the main reason why tension is boiling in Europe right now and trying to unsettle the peace of the world.

I submit regrettably that NATO which was conceived in the 1950’s as a defensive alliance has over the years obviously on account of the economic decline of Russia in the years following the end of the Cold War been emboldened to see itself not only as the guardian angel of Western Europe which was its primary focus but now to include the safe guard of the independence of the newly freed former satellite states of the defunct Soviet Union.

That to me was stretching the mandate of NATO too far beyond its original horizon and now going all the way to wanting to safe guard the independence of the constituent states of the defunct Soviet Union against Russia the mother state of the Soviet Union.

 The scenario to me is akin to NATO trying to protect a lion cub from the mother lioness. How far can such an agenda be advanced peacefully before a violent conflict breaks out.

The height of diplomatic folly and madness to me who was already grown up and knowledgeable of the skillful diplomacy that ensued between Mikhail Gorbachev, George H Bush and Helmut Kohl over the status of Berlin, the unification of Germany and the dissolution of the Warsaw pact and the COMECON between 1989 and 1991, was this idea that NATO could conceive of a vision of protecting Ukraine from Russia!

There are just some crazy ideas you don’t develop on the world stage except you are looking for a very bloody confrontation and are bereft of any useful work to keep you busy which is what I am confident NATO is facing right now. I think NATO is very desperate for relevance at this point in time when its mission was gradually winding down by virtue of the sustained peace in Europe particularly in the post cold war years.

I dare say that if the Russians are pretty sure that NATO and the US in particular is no longer interested in meddling in the affairs of the former Soviet States, that the conflict in the Ukraine would wind up and completely diminish in relevance and status and die a natural death.

Vladimir Putin is not a fool neither is he Adolf Hitler as some would seek to portray him all in a bid to stoke a conflict whose only purpose to me is to threaten world peace. The man to me is the leader of a nation that has been wounded like a Lioness that would like to preserve its cubs and Pride’s pride.

 As long as the West feels it is within its purview to continue poking its NATO stick into Russia’s eyes and ribs I dare say that Europe will know neither peace nor rest. In Africa we have a saying that says a child that says its mother shall not sleep at night will first have to forfeit its own sleep first.

Anybody that has had time to read Putin’s auto biography aptly titled 'Putin’s progress' would understand why the Russian leader based on the travails of his past life has a wounded lion’s instinct to preserve itself. To go poking a stick at a wounded lion to me is not the best way to spend your time or your precious Dollars obtained with the sweat and hard work of the people of the West.

It seems to me that there are some unnamed and unseen forces working behind the scene that are desperate to plunge Europe into a major conflict in this NUCLEAR AGE in which the only outcome of a full blown confrontation would be the

 mutually assured destruction of the belligerents. Are the Europeans hungry for extinction or obliteration?

That Europe is on the decline as a center of global power which was the natural result of the two bloody conflicts of the 20^th century, and is also facing the population declined caused by a birth rate decline that is not self perpetuating, not enough peril for the European continent the birth place of the industrial revolution?

The scars of WW2 have yet to fully heal and we implore the war mongers working behind the scenes to spark a fresh conflagration to please give peace a chance so we can one day celebrate the centenary of the end of WW2 in a peaceful world.

To seek a conflagration at this time in Europe to me is the ultimate CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY as enshrined in the laws of war defined in the Nuremberg trials in 1945 at the end of WW2.

A second part of this theme will be out in due course, thanks for remaining engaged

21st Century realities ; The place of the Aircraft Carrier in the 21st century

THE PLACE OF THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER IN THE BALANCE OF POWER EQUATION OF THE 21^ST CENTURY

The 21^st as it appears, seems to be the most fluid and unpredictable century in the history of modern man. There is no century in contemporary history that has seen the spate of changes the world has witnessed within the last fifteen years of the opening of the 21^st century. Events and changes are occurring at such a dizzying place and regularity that the long-range bet is no longer a profitable proposition.

The same is happening in the realm of technology and strategic assets particularly in the military realm. In the 20^th century, assets that had both strategic and tactical value could be counted on to last at least half a century before they began to decline in relevance, but that is not so any more as technology to both enhance and counter the value of any asset are springing forth at an amazing pace , sometimes both simultaneously.

During the last years of WW2, the United States held such an overwhelming advantage on the High Seas that it would have been thought impossible that any nation could counter her power and influence for another 100 years. But then in this technologically driven age, it isn’t safe to bet against the future.

But then the nuclear weapon and the nuclear powered submarine showed up to counter the power of a fleet that boasted over 28 main fleet carriers and over 71 escort carriers, excluding the light carriers.

The fact was that the US finished the war with over 114 ships that could launch and recover aircraft including the main fleet carriers of the Essex class, light carriers and the escort carriers, not to talk of the thousands of accompanying warships of all classes.

 It was an awful deployment of sea power that in the days of Rome could have kept the US in control of the high seas for at least 300 years like Great Britain at the beginning of the 18^th century.

The game changer however has been technology, of which no single nation has a monopoly of, no matter how hard you try to conceal it. Post world war two era quickly turned from the capital ships particularly the Battleships to the  deployment of submarines particularly the nuclear powered submarines with both ballistic and cruise missile capacity with both conventional and nuclear capability.

The aircraft because it had the operational capability of the submarine has also remained a strategic weapon of choice. That was why while many nations turned from the Battleships, the aircraft carrier remained relevant acting more as a mobile platform for deploying air power from the sea, from anywhere in the world.

The fate of the aircraft carrier is however tied to the ability of its air crews to deliver offensive power through the application of air power. Thus the aircraft carrier is a sure winner against those nations that lack the power to parry air strikes by either retaliatory strikes or the anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles that are proving more deadly and capable with each passing day.

The Russians are building more progressively deadly anti-aircraft missiles in the class of the BUK that are proving more and more deadly to planes flying in the interceptor role. The planes that have the ‘capacity’ to evade these missiles are getting prohibitively expensive both to build and operate.

And one of the cardinal rules of war is that a prohibitively expensive asset is a liability on the long-run, a lesson clearly grasped from Adolf Hitler and his miracle weapons that ultimately drained Germany of vital resources towards the end of the second world war and ultimately deprived Germany of the capacity to build the basic weapons that had been most effective previously.

1942, marked the beginning of Germany’s turn to miracle weapons that consumed an unreasonable amount of the nation’s resources and drained her energy leaving her vulnerable to the nations that concentrated on the basic and easily mass-produced weapons of war.

You may not believe this but the facts are there to prove it, 1942, was the beginning of Hitler’s obsession with wonder weapons and that was also the year the tide turned against Germany. The wonder weapons only served to nurse false hopes that became the basic undoing of Germany surrounded with enemies that were content to use the tried and proven assets with which they ultimately humiliated Germany.

The law of diminishing returns climaxes in this greatest of ironies, which only the most discerning can apprehend. IT IS A FACT OF LIFE THAT THE MORE DIFFICULT A PROBLEM APPEARS IN THE NATURAL, THE EASIER IT IS TO SOLVE IN REALITY, if you know how to handle it. Like they say ‘the bigger they come the harder they fall’.

The fact remains that highly complex solutions should never be rushed to a field of conflict, because they are highly vulnerable to basic counter measures e.g., ‘David and Goliath’.

Hitler’s wonder weapons were all neutralized by the Allies one after the other applying the most rudimentary elements effectively. Allied destruction of Germany’s oil supplies effectively eliminated the fuel hungry Tiger tank and brought Hitler’s 1944 offensive in the Ardennes to an abrupt halt.

 The V-1 and V-2 Rockets were eliminated when their bases were overrun by the Allies and the Me 262 jets were put out of action when the Allies destroyed their overextended runways as It became obvious that they required extended runways and the Russians on the other hand used the humble shovel to dig trenches that effectively stopped the Tiger tanks in the battle of Kursk in July 1943.

 

In the Pacific war in 1945 as the war against Japan drew to a close, the Essex class carrier, the USS Franklin managed to deploy about 50 miles off the coast of Japan to inflict the daily dose of airstrikes that had become the lot of Japan in the closing days of WW2.

It was on record that the Franklin set a record by that record- closeness to the shore of Japan as it acted with impunity. A single Japanese ‘Val’ with two 250 pound bombs closed the day for the Franklin when the fire that bomb started made the Franklin the most heavily damaged US warship that survived the war.

The USS Bunker Hill suffered the same fate as the Franklin in a two plane strike. Though both planes survived the war, they could neither launch nor recover aircraft and that effectively put them out of action as far as the war was concerned. The point is this, that the strategic and tactical value of an aircraft carrier is not tied to its being afloat, but to its ability to launch and recover aircraft.

Once it cannot launch or recover aircraft it has no tactical or strategic value over and above any other warship. And that is one thing I say that a hit by a single missile either ballistic, anti-ship or intelligently guided cruise missile can be cheaply or realistically accomplished on a modern day aircraft carrier regardless of the tonnage.

The idea is not to sink the ship but to render it incapable of launching or recovering aircraft, in that way its usefulness as an offensive asset is completely neutralized. On the other hand the aircraft carrier is still very useful against poor nations that are bereft of missile technology.

However in the contemporary age the aircraft carrier is still very useful as a command and control center and as a floating sea base in support of forward operations as long as it is not deployed too near the shores of a missile capable nation. However its usefulness as a weapon of intimidation is still very much relevant for those nations who can be intimidated by its immense size and firepower.

The next writing will be centered on why the ‘Peace of 1945’ must be preserved at all costs no matter whose ‘Ox is gored’.

Civilization has no other choice as a WW3 is no longer a realistic choice or option. No sane person starts a war he cannot win or survive. Thanks for remaining on Deck.