Was The Bulge America's Toughest Victory?

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Aktung, Aktung, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, USA, our American, well, no, you're tandem at sidecar.

I can't think of the right expression, John.

Brothers in Arms.

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Absolutely.

100%.

Yep.

So, what we thought we'd do, well, James and I have just done a series about the Battle of the Bulge and also also have been to walk the ground in the Ardennes been very much on our minds and what we wanted to do for you sweet listener if you make if you've made your way to the end of that series which was supposed to be four episodes and turned into sort of 58

Suddenly

there's a lot to say.

I mean suddenly you realize you haven't done the seventh army

What we thought we'd do is talk to John pick his brains with some questions from you as listeners as well.

Jim also is in Freiburg.

Yep.

Right this moment, looking at the German archive with the help of Chat GPT as well, interestingly, which can translate then and there, which must be a fascinating way.

Then there.

It's just amazing.

It is easy.

It's amazing.

And actually,

this is a tiny, dark, tiny little rabbit hole, which I'm not going to linger on.

But I found this piece yesterday written by this SS journalist at the front called, what was his name?

Akim Gurner or something like that.

And anyway, it's this incredible piece

that he's written after the

July plot it is the biggest load of tosh you ever read it is just remarkable and it is you know it it is amazing how a nation could fall so blindly for this absolute boulder dash which is what he's writing anyway I shall after this I'll send it over to both of you but I've also been looking at interviews with Otto Rehmer remember him from the Zura

Brigade

loads of the commanders

loads of the divisional commanders, corps commanders, all the rest of it,

as well as some eyewitness accounts of sort of ordinary folk.

And one of the guys says,

third SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment Commander.

And it's after the Twin Villages battle.

It's the 22nd of December.

So by this time, you know, the actions moved up onto the Elsenbourne Ridge beyond Rocker Raff and Krinkelt.

And he says, I walked up there, I couldn't get any vehicle anywhere near, so I had to go on foot.

In places, the mud was up to five feet deep

from all the vehicles that are crossed over.

Yeah, five feet.

I mean, that's

talk about it.

That's worse than Passchendale.

I mean, he's obviously exaggerating, but even so, I mean...

Incredible.

And the amount of times, John, where they've saying, well, the big problem was, you know, we didn't have enough vehicles.

We couldn't maneuver our tanks.

in the way we wanted to, so we were overdependent on panzer grenadiers and half-tracks.

We didn't have enough fuel.

You know, the ambition for the for the operation was was too great for the for the means we were given etc etc it's literally the same every time and you're going well yeah obviously i mean that's the problem i'm curious did the third panzer grenadier guy talked about getting choke pointed in the twin villages and uh the danger for american infantry and anti-tank weapons no but he did say even going through the woods was difficult because um the retreating americans had laid lots of mines yeah and those woods are thick i mean they really are yeah yeah yeah don't we know it?

I mean, incredibly dense.

And

the Twin Villages battle is very much infantrymen skirmishing with anti-tank weapons.

That the 57-mil gun is man-portable enough that you can drag it around the corner and get one off and then get away.

That bazookas are effective at very short range from the windows of a building or from a ditch or whatever.

I think it's really interesting, isn't it?

Because so many tank encounters in the Second World War, you're immediately thinking, well, is it tank on tank?

But actually, hardly ever.

These German superior panzers, so-called, are coming unstuck because of infantry resisting stubbornly and with manned portable anti-tank weapons.

It's really.

Do you remember that amazing episode, that account by that guy, Villy Fischer, who was in the 12ss?

And he's in Krinkelt, isn't he?

Or is he in Rockaroff?

I can't remember.

He's in the Twin Villages.

And he can see the 57mm

anti-tank gun, toad gun, maneuvering, anticipating his move.

And he can't do anything about it because they can maneuver their 57 millimeter faster than he can maneuver.

Yeah, so I wrote about this in pretty good depth in a book I did called Grunts and went really deep into it.

It was a really deep dive into Krink Elton Rockeraff.

And it was just amazing to me how many times you've got American infantry with their bazookas, a lot of times on the second floor

of a building.

And, you know, the Germans, that advantage of this armor, thicker armor that it would fight at distance against a Sherman, something like that, it's all negated there because they're just sort of maneuvering in this town the best they can.

And infantry is popping up everywhere where they don't want them to be.

And they're either damaging the tanks or they're forcing the crews to leave the tanks, which is more or less the same thing.

And then

the dismounted crews that are in the middle of this whole mishmash of building to building fights.

It's really an interesting battle to study from that standpoint of what infantry can do in that constricted semi-urban environment of this village of building to building.

The 57 millimeter pieces are really effective, you know, because of that close range, but also just the dismounted guy with hauling a bazooka around or whatever, or grenades.

That too was crazy.

I've got two points to make to this.

First of all, your book, Grunts, is absolutely fantastic.

It was the first book I bought of yours, and I must have bought it 20 years ago.

The other one to mention, of course, is Alamo in the Ardennes, which you wrote.

So you've got the two books about that.

And obviously, you've just been there a zillion times.

You've toured around it.

You were touring around it in December.

So it's ground you know incredibly well.

The second point I was going to make is that when Al and I were in Le Gliese, which was a kind of sort of end game for Kampf Group of Piper, which we did in episode five of our Battle of the Bar series,

you know, we were sat at the end of the day, you know, the sun was going down, it was kind of, you know, it was dusk, and we were sat by that enormous king tiger in the square, and you're just thinking, these things were designed for the Russian steppe, they're just not designed for these kind of narrow villages.

And again, you see the Germans just constantly trying to kind of sort of fit the wrong things into the wrong terrain it's designed for the Russian steppe but also for the consumption the conspicuous consumption of the Führer you know it's not like a committee has designed that tank that's been sent away it hasn't been designed in cobham has it by british tank people or

by vickers armstrong or whoever it's been designed with an eye to getting a nod from the boss and bigger is better the fact that that vehicle which is the product of that thought process ends up stuck in a village in an offensive that is the product of that same mind.

You know, it's too on the nose.

I mean, it's quite impressive that it actually got into that.

Well, it's pretty impressive, but it's too on the nose to write.

You wouldn't write it.

The whole thing, you know,

from conception to its destruction, it's all one guy influencing things to the point of it being ridiculous.

Anyway, it's a monument to the cult of personality, the megalomania, the egomania, all those things that are his undoing, ultimately.

And it's a monument that's literally there today, like you said.

Well, that is the problem when you have a rampant ego and narcissism you know you tend to get unstuck yep you do that's how that works i mean it's interesting though isn't it one of the things we i've been sort of looking at as well is tank destroyer doctrine you know that the americans have this idea of the tank destroyer even to the point where ammunition is prioritized towards it so that when you do get a 76 millimeter sherman they'll get the ammunition if they can but it's prioritized to the tank destroyer arm you know that's mcnair his bright idea from earlier in the war before the americans have actually had to do any of that kind of fighting and yet actually the the towed 57 57mm tank, anti-tank gun in that circumstance, is perfectly, is fine, isn't it?

You don't need hellcats.

You don't need mechanized stuff.

No.

You need guys prepared to stick to the plate, which is actually the issue, isn't it?

It is.

And who know what they're doing.

And who know what they're doing and have been well trained enough on a piece of kit that's pretty reliable.

And there it is, you know.

And also small unit initiative, mission command.

I mean, this is the other thing Jim and I talked about a lot is that, you know, when you look at the German effort, their units actually are quite disparate disparate and also are in conflict with one another, certainly in command conflict with one another.

You have Fauschem Jäger, who are sort of shadow of themselves, with Luftwaffe officers, and then doughty NCAA.

You know, competition between Fifth Panzer Army and Sixth Panzer Army and Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht,

you know, Rehmers, people who are sort of a part but not a part of things.

And it's this sort of, when you look at it, the American Army fight with homogeneity.

That's the word that came up, wasn't it, Jim?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everyone's been trained to a certain standard, at at a certain level.

The guys who stick around, you don't need to teach them mission command because they've already got it.

Exactly.

And what is so impressive about the way the Americans respond to this totally unprecedented blow is the speed with which they organize themselves into task forces and teams of all arms.

And, you know, I mean, think about Lieutenant High Duke just to the east of Bastog.

Is it Cherry?

Colonel Cherry, I think it's his commander.

Henry Cherry's in town.

He can't get back because the Panzerlair has gone in the middle of him.

So he's stuck there.

So Hijik's on his own.

He's a first lieutenant and he's there.

And, you know, okay, they get destroyed because the Panzerler are coming from the other direction.

But suddenly you've got probably a 24-year-old, 23-year-old first lieutenant commanding this combined force of troops, most of whom he's never worked with before.

in an ad hoc basis.

And that battle, though they lose, still holds up Panzerlair a day.

And a day counts for a huge amount in this battle.

And it's incredibly impressive: the speed with which an alacrity with which comparatively junior officers, you know, captains, lieutenants, majors, half-colonels, are just gripping the situation, operating with people they're not familiar with, and making these stands.

It's incredible.

McKinley at Loudstill Crossroads.

I mean, it's just absolutely loud crossroads.

Classic example.

I mean, really, it's, I think from McNair on down, there's a prioritization of combined arms and of fighting that way.

And I think that's partially the key to this and to melding together different experiential levels.

So, like the Twin Village is a really good example because the second ID obviously is a very experienced formation.

And by the way, had been in the middle of its own offensive when the bulge starts and it had to be reoriented down to that neighborhood.

The 99th Division, which is also pretty intimately involved in the area, you know, obviously that one's brand new to combat.

Both fight equally well.

And I think that that's a little bit of a microcosm there too.

And, you know, like you said, Jim, in terms of being able to put together these scratch forces, the classic example is East of Best One with teams Desabri, Cherry, and O'Hara, that, you know, that are, again, like I said, combined arms organizations that's very, very effective for doing what you need to do at that moment, which is basically to cost the Germans time and casualties.

And they absolutely do that.

Yeah.

Yeah, with Bells on.

I mean, takeaway for me from the whole thing is the point that you made, Al, which is it's always seen as Hitler's last gamble, but gamble suggests that it's got a chance of success and it clearly doesn't have any chance of success whatsoever.

I mean, zero.

And the second takeaway is just how impressive the Americans are.

It is incredible how quickly they maneuver and organize themselves, and they make far better, even though they've got more vehicles and heavier vehicles overall, they make much more use of the road network more effectively and swiftly than the Germans do.

And the Germans, after all, are supposed to be the ones with the operational art, you know, with the operational skill.

I think that's really, really important.

The other thing is, John, I'd be really interested to hear your take on this.

Al and I came to the conclusion that actually the criticisms that have been directed towards the Allied High Command and First Army and 12th Army Group for not anticipating this and not reacting quickly are actually a bit unfair because Bradley makes the point that he didn't see it coming because there's no obvious strategic objective.

And he's right.

I mean, you can't, you, you can, you can sort of try and second guess your enemy, but you can't second guess someone who's making completely irrational, stupid decisions.

There's no doubt.

And I mean, first of all, Ultra has kind of dried up because Hitler knows there's some kind of leak and thus the communication nodes are a little bit different than they had been.

Second of all, obviously the weather hasn't been very good and that negates the effectiveness of photo recon.

The other thing, too, even if you do know the offensive is coming, I don't know that there's all that much you can do about it in the sense that in the wider theater as a whole, you're really starting to run short of combat manpower in the U.S.

Army at that point.

And part of it is our prioritization for that manpower for other things, aviation, sea power, so on and so forth.

And we're really running up against that.

And so as Bradley had, I think properly called it, calculated risk, he understood that that was a thinly held sector and this made them vulnerable.

But he felt that maybe the terrain would do some of the work for them in the sense that it was hard for any attacker to maneuver in the Ardennes and, you know, all those things we know about.

And he was right.

And he's right about that.

It's just, it's small comfort to us if we're part of that three and a half divisions.

that's on the side of this tidal wave coming.

But so I do think, but the interesting dynamic that I found that that's that's happening, you know, during the days leading up to the bulge is from the privates on up, there's a sense that something's in the offing, that the Germans are up to something and each like pushing it up to their, to the higher level and convinced that they don't really quite understand it.

So I think from like a sergeant's perspective, the Germans are clearly up to something because there's

an accumulation of strength and things are different.

He's convinced, you know, that the lieutenant doesn't understand, the captain's convinced, the colonel doesn't understand, and on and on up, all the way up up to Bradley himself with 12th Army Group, because it's Middleton who kind of complains to Bradley, you know, Middleton, the 8th Corps commander, that's basically around Bastogne.

So, but again, like, what are you going to do?

Are you going to reorient everybody away from 6th Army Group to come up to help you?

Is 3rd Army going to be basically told to stop in its offensive operations to the east to come up and man the Ardennes?

Is 9th Army going to be brought down?

I don't know.

Great.

It's wonderful in hindsight if we can say we know all this, but I don't think anybody realizes.

Kind of, of, you know, the small glimmer of winter sun kind of creeps over

the landscape.

I mean, you know, it makes no sense to launch an attack there.

So I think the accusations of intelligence failure and the kind of sort of finger pointing over that, I think, are completely misplaced.

Well, or they illustrate the limitations that necessarily come with intelligence.

You cannot ever get inside the mind of your opponent, not quite.

And after all, Ultra offers you what?

He offers you dispositions and the presence of headquarters and things like that.

But it doesn't tell you what you're going to do necessarily.

you know inevitably ultras come up in this conversation because certainly in this country in our popular history culture ultra means we know what the german generals are having for breakfast we know when they take a shit

we know we know we know they're in a we know they're in a thoughts and it took two years off the war or whatever and all that whereas actually it's part of a complex picture yeah in which some things come into focus out of the fog and other fears things disappear back into it and i mean i think it is interesting because at that stage of the war the ultra's fallen away but it's also the stage of the war where there's so much ultra they don't know what to do with it all yeah generally where it's a complete torrent and how do you pick your winner when you're trying to figure out what the german runners and riders are you know it's it's part of the story i'll make a provocative statement here go on from a ground combat commander's perspective ultra is really kind of overrated ultra to me has a much greater effect on the battle of the atlantic and and certainly the the aviation side of the house um the the bigger strategic understanding of what their diplomatic intentions are things like that but if you're talking about for me as a division commander or a corps commander or a regimental commander, giving me actionable, tangible, you know, intelligence, Ultra, there's hardly any time in the war when that happens.

I think maybe at Mortain, you know, and even then, the 30th Division for a day or two is out there, you know, dealing with mostly the whole offensive.

Ultra, in fact, kind of screws us over in a way from a ground combat perspective in Sicily when Eisenhower decides to withhold from the 82nd Airborne Division and the assaulting amphibious divisions the presence of two German divisions there.

And so we basically go in blind because Ultra is too valuable to risk to brief us on the German presence.

So if that's the situation for me, fighting them on the ground, how is there any value?

You know, so to me, and about the bulge, I think maybe is a class example, too.

So I'm not saying it's nothing,

but I'm saying maybe it's a bit overrated in terms of the effect for ground combat commanders.

Not overall.

Yeah, I think that's fair enough.

No, it's absolutely fair.

It was a question I was dying to ask you about 10 minutes ago, John.

What have we been doing then?

What do you attribute the fact that the Americans are able to deal with this kind of thing so well?

What is it about the American army at this stage that means, and we're not denying here that a lot of guys are taken prisoner and a lot of guys do decide the fighting isn't for them?

Because there's St.

Michael's Grotto, isn't there?

There's an instant where a bunch of blokes are dropped off in trucks and a good portion of them go, no, no, no, we're going back to Bastoyne.

Thanks very much.

Not interested in being here in this outpost.

You know, you'll never ever get me criticising that from my point of view.

But to what does one attribute the fact that Americans can pull these formations together that you do have this you know mixture of people from all sorts of different units and and yet they're able is it the leadership is it the training or is that the merbia strip of course that the leadership is the training the training is the leadership that the one can't function without the other blah blah blah i think this is actually one of eisenhower's finest moments because i i do think that he recognizes what's what's actually going on at a pretty pretty early moment and uh i think that that really manifests in the fact that then he's going to send a lot of combat power into the the bulger into the Ardennes.

And so the fact that that gets running, gets going within the first day or so of the offensive is very bad news for the Germans because it means that we're reorienting the power we've already got that's been perhaps dispersed elsewhere to deal with their offensive.

I think that's a big part of it.

I do think, too, there's a kind of resilience that the U.S.

Armed Forces have demonstrated from the start of the war from Pearl Harbor onward.

They definitely can take a punch.

You've seen that in the Philippines in 41 and 42.

We were used to coming back, I guess.

And we have this intrinsic strength in Eisenhower's theater that then is going to be reoriented in this direction.

And I think the ability to move fast too, in terms of vehicles, I think is crucial.

Plus, we don't necessarily have to worry about the fact that as we're moving divisions into the sector, that they're going to get attacked by the Luftwaffe and pinned down or whatever.

So there is, you know, what we've invested in aviation has really paid off there too, even though obviously the Germans have some aerial component to their offensive.

It doesn't impede at all with the presence of these U.S.

divisions coming into play within the first day or week or whatever it would happen to be.

And I think really all those factors are crucial.

Right.

I mean, it's interesting, isn't it?

Because also at these last stands, you know, the Americans take untold casualties.

I mean, they're getting absolutely hammered.

And, you know, there's a lot of criticism, sort of broad criticism of the Americans in the war as being unshaven and lacking discipline and calling, you know,

officers by their first name and looking slovenly and all the rest of it.

But who gives a damn about any of that when you're fighting ferociously on Monte L.

Tuzzo

on the Gothic line or at Schmidt or when you're fighting at the Lorsdale crossroads and getting absolutely hammered?

I mean, you know, what is the motivation for these guys to do this in a muddy, cold, wet crossroads in the back arse of nowhere in Belgium if you're from California or Texas or North Dakota or something?

Why would you?

You know, and again, it goes back to this bigger ideal.

You do it for your mates and all the rest of it.

But you do it because in the Second World War, it was the right thing to do.

For sure.

They did believe in the war and they believed that it had to be won.

And they believed that this was a moment when, you know, that it could be lost.

And it sure looked that way at the time for many of them.

In many cases, I think that they felt they had no choice but to fight, especially those fighting against SS units along the northern shoulder of the bulge, post-Malmedy Massacre, whereas, you know, the word of that spreads like wildfire, of course.

of course um i think some of them felt well there's really no alternative but to fight and in many cases they're getting orders which i think are just chilling hold at all costs and all costs means all of us yeah i mean you know yeah yeah well that's sort of my point really john i mean i think it's incredible it is incredible uh you know but i but i think there's there's enough fighting cohesion in the the army at that point and and confidence in their weapons and whatever yeah that i think they are going to fight.

And I think that's the vast majority.

You mentioned, you know, there are those who surrender and who decide, you know, this fight isn't for me.

Of course, you always have that.

And we see that with a number of the prisoners captured, of course, some of them are really just checkmated.

They don't have much option.

Yeah, yeah.

They don't have any weapons left or whatever.

And so what do they do?

But I think largely what they're doing.

Well, even the 4-2-4th and the 4-2-3rd, you know, from

they've run out of ammunition.

They're completely surrounded.

What are you supposed to do?

They don't have any ammo.

They're surrounded.

And yeah, exactly.

So the disposition is the problem.

And so, you know, yeah, you have that.

But I think largely the U.S.

formations fight really well, both on defense and on offense in the bulge.

And really, it's the latter that's more challenging going forward on some level in terms of casualties, I guess.

Yeah.

Because now, you know, you're vulnerable.

Most of the bulge is that post-Christmas fight all the way through the end of January or so through increasingly bad weather and difficult circumstances to retake the ground.

The vast majority of the American soldiers who are involved in what we call the Battle of the Bulge are experiencing that part of it, not the more famous first 10 days or whatever.

First 10 days buys us time to do that second phase, which decides the battle.

Well, yes, I mean, because one of the things we talked about a lot is that it's seen as a series of American last stands, but actually what it turns into is a load of German last stands.

It is.

The first 10 days has that, you know, Americans holding them up, being sticky, being difficult, and the siege at Bastogne and those things.

But by the end, it's completely, the shoe is completely on the other foot.

And yet it's peculiar, isn't it, that that's not the well-known bit of the battle.

It's because it's so, it's the usual, you know, just grinding, you know, day by day, taking casualties, gaining 400 yards kind of thing that is so hard to wrap your mind around.

Yeah.

Yes.

Because after all, it is striking what happens with the offensive when it's launched and the ground that's made and all that sort of stuff.

But in the end, I mean, you know, I mean, we got very hung up on how pointless it all was, didn't we, Jim, when we were there?

No, yeah, definitely.

From the German perspective, especially.

From a German perspective, yeah, if you were a German, you know, I mean, we were talking about this sort of hypothetical German mum who who loses a son in the arden you know and comes to realize in later life that there was no winning there was nothing on offer there and his sacrifice is a complete total waste horrible and it's not that he's given his life it's his life's been given up by his leadership these volunteer schlubs who are just kind of thrown in and

just uses cannon fodder literally literally i mean many i mean it's just it's horrible it really is um should we take a break and then come back with some listeners questions because we do have some good questions good idea One or two of which I think are actually fascinating.

We'll see you in a tick.

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Welcome back to Weird Ways and Making You Talk USA with me, Al Murray, James Holland, and John McManus.

This is excellent cud being chewed, isn't it, Jim?

Yeah, loving it.

Loving it.

Me too.

Now,

we had some questions.

Penny, we don't want to have a word of a pipe in our hands down a pub, isn't it?

Yeah.

A pack of nuts, that's what we're doing.

Nuts.

Well, one of those very nice, there's a couple of very good hostelries in Stavolo, weren't there?

There's that one where you had that

enormous knuckle of ham gym that you ordered, and I had the worst food engine imaginary.

You really had that last night.

Well,

I intend to be there.

I'm going to Clairvo on Thursday.

Lovely.

After going to the amazing museum in Deekirk, which everyone recommended, which I haven't been to yet.

The Middle Museum.

Okay,

that's the military museum there.

Yeah, so I'm going there on Thursday.

Having been to the Adlerhorst and Schloss-Ziegenberg, which is, I'm staying in Bad Nauheim.

and then um um yeah and then I'm I'm back to the um hotel Roane in Stavolo ow really

lovely hopefully I don't do my shouldering again this time that's very very nice that very very nice that hotel right we have some questions Nick Skeet who's come to us via the Patreon thanks for being a Patreon member Nick it's a bargain everyone let's just put it that way love the pod gents keep helping us discover more I've always been surprised that the Americans lacked winter clothing given they were the best equipped and supplied army on the planet, surely it wasn't as straightforward as nobody had planned that far ahead.

John.

So this is one of those

elephants in the room about the situation for the U.S.

Army in Europe in the fall of 1944.

That it's incredible already well before the bulge.

We've got guys on the front in increasingly cold and wet weather who are not properly equipped.

It's not a matter of not having the stuff.

It's not getting it to where it needs to go.

And part of that, I do think,

if I'm being as tolerant as possible of the supply folks, part of that is the pressures of global war that logistically speaking, we are supplying all over the globe and for different kinds of temperatures and operations and circumstances and whatnot.

So I think that's partially what's going on here.

I also think, though, too, if we're looking at Eisenhower's headquarters, his supply guy, General J.C.H.

Lee, you know, the famous Jesus Christ himself, Lee.

I'm sorry.

Anyway, we parse this.

I know he has defenders.

He's not getting it done.

And he's not getting it done because I don't think there's enough prioritization to get the stuff to the guy who needs it the most.

I think there's way too much preoccupation with rear areas and whatnot, with their own comfort level.

There's a little bit of corruption there because, let's be honest, there are

GIs who are on the lamb, who have gone AWOL into Paris and whatever and have their own black marketeering, and that does us no good.

Some of them are combat soldiers who have run away, of course, but regardless, they become part of the problem.

There's trucking issues, there's maintenance issues, There's, of course, just again, from JCH Lee on down, there's not enough of a priority of stripping bare folks in the rear of whatever stuff they need, coats and whatever, to get it to people who need it the most.

That that isn't the priority.

And I believe Eisenhower should have done more to address that.

It's just my opinion, though.

It is a glaring feature of the campaign, isn't it?

It is, although that undertop that he put underneath the M43, I would argue was pretty good.

What the hell?

did it the other day.

No, it's a rabbit fur kind of

line

line thing.

And you put it underneath your M43 field jacket.

If you can get it at the front, that's the problem.

Yeah.

For a private or whatever, I mean, you know, it's going to be hard.

Well, I mean, but also, I mean, I suppose priority is ammunition.

We're only when you're in a fix.

Ammunition, food, and fuel.

It is.

In that order.

And that's fine.

Yeah.

And I think our footgear is a work in progress, too, because, again, you're trying to design footgear for fighting all over the globe.

And so what we need for a Pacific Island with coral, sharp coral, is very different than what we're going to need in the Hurtkin Forest.

And, you know, so I think that's part of it too, that it's the larger pressures of global war.

But I do think, ironically, that the footgear problem is on the way to being solved.

By 45, we're not going to have as many trench foot problems and all that kind of thing.

But it's just that the timing is really bad and the weather doesn't help us out at all.

And I think Hurtkin Forest, of course, is the classic example because as bad as it is with the tree bursts and all that kind of thing, a lot of the casualties are, you know, trench foot and exposure and whatever.

And partially, that's that's a you know a kit failure, of course.

I mean, this is kind of related, I think.

Nicole Smith, also on the Patreon, asks, What were some of the differences in medical treatment if you were with the Allied forces rather than in German forces during the Battle of the Bulge?

I assume, in addition to being better supplied, the Allied medical teams had more training.

Well, I mean, the difference is a chasm, is the truth, isn't it?

Much better equipment.

And, of course, we'll have to say this with the caveat: that if you happen to be in the 326th Airborne Medical Company at Bastogne and get captured and you're at Bastogne in the siege, of course, okay, yeah, your medical equipment structure isn't that great.

But by and large, for most American soldiers fighting in the Battle of the Bull, especially in that offensive period, the medical care is really quite good.

And a lot of that is just this prioritization from the top down, and I'm talking about from Washington, D.C.

on down, to have the best possible medical care on the planet for your military forces.

And so you've got a medical presence in every kind of unit down to the very spear point and private level.

Now that pays off in the bulge because, of course, obviously there's a lot of casualties who are treated.

You've got a lot of medics, you know, like combat medics who are attached to frontline units who really know what they're doing.

They're basically like EMTs.

You've got all that medical organization infrastructure behind you in the battalion aid stations, the forward hospitals, the field hospitals, the general hospitals, the station hospitals.

So there's a lot of ways to get treated.

And of course, and then there's the equipment apparatus to back it up.

On the German side, I mean, it's likely you may not have bandages, much less, I mean, you really have blood plasma on site for a combat medic?

Not always.

And as we know, if you get a stomach wound, it's sort of good night challenge.

It's a good night.

Yeah, and antibiotics, of course.

I mean, you've got penicillin, which is in play by now for the U.S.

medical folks.

And so, you know, most of that is going, of course, to combat wounded.

Some of it is going to treat STDs.

There's that too.

But really, you know, in the bulbs, the crisis of the bulge, who knows how many people are saved by penicillin, but also by sulfanilamide, which is another variation of something of the same thing to try and prevent infection for open wounds.

That, and of course, I think that the U.S.

has gotten very good at blood transfusions.

And we all know that bleeding out is the number one cause of death from combat wounds.

And so if you can begin to get, you know, proper, you know, blood plasma.

and then transfusion, so on and so forth, as quickly as possible, you can probably save a lot of lives.

The cold helps in that way too yes you know you're much more likely to bleed out in hot weather than cold weather when you're when you're frozen up also i mean the other thing worth bearing in mind is american nurses are much more attractive aren't they and liable to german generals to catch german generals eyes and so i mean there's the extra combat power of the american nurse i've spent years trying to track down who that was and i i've never succeeded maybe somebody smarter than i is going to have to get onto that i i wish i thought she was a very very beautiful fuline That's what he claimed.

And I'm like, who would that have been?

I mean, do you think, John, do you we, I mean, we were most tickled by that story when we were when we were telling it.

We were finding it very, very funny.

Do you think it's true or do you think it's byline?

Because after all, you know, Piper essentially lies about why he doesn't go into Stavolo.

You know, he's exhausted, big, long, straggling, lying.

His flanks are very vulnerable.

He probably only really half knows where he is after all and all that.

And thinks, I'll do it in the morning rather than now.

And and yet offers excuses in post-war interrogation.

Do you think Byrline's telling the truth or I'm so old and cynical, I guess, now that I'm very skeptical of the story now than when I first heard it, I guess.

But the interesting thing about it, Al, is that it makes Byerline look worse.

So you would think he'd be lying in the other direction, wouldn't you?

So in case anybody doesn't know about this, he claims to have been transfixed by this beautiful American nurse.

She was blonde and beautiful, he he said.

And so somehow they have captured one of our female nurses.

And I would think that'd be a very big story in terms of at the time and later.

And the reason I say that is something on the order of about 90 plus female nurses were captured when the Japanese forced the surrender of American military force in the Philippines in 1942.

And that, of course, was a major national story.

And when eventually they're freed and they became national celebrities.

So this nurse, whoever she would have been, I would think we would know more about her through the media of the time and then of course latter year.

But who knows?

Maybe I'm wrong.

So he claims that he was transfixed by her much of the day, that is the key day when Panzer Lair may have made a difference in basically going in and grabbing Bastogne, which is always a bit ephemeral in my view.

But nonetheless, that's what he claims.

Oh, yes.

I mean,

an alternative way to look at that is that they've been sniped at and spat at all the way through.

They were brought into the battle around Clairvaux earlier than they were intending.

They've had quite a hard time to just get to Bastogne.

And what everyone never really says when they're talking about Panzer Lair arriving at Bastogne or second panzer going elsewhere or whatever it is, you're talking about the spearheads, you're not talking about 17,000 people, troops and their equipment.

You know, these things are the marching order of a of a of a panzer division covers twenty-five miles or something.

Easily.

You know, if not a bit more.

I mean, it's a it's a big old old era.

So what you're talking about arriving in the morning of the whatever it is, the 19th of December

on the southeast edge of Bastogne, is the spearhead of a force that has been in combat constantly since it was first deployed and has had very, very little sleep.

And you don't want to go into a town with all the incumbent problems that has for an armored force if you're then going to be repulsed.

You know, why wouldn't you wait for everyone to catch up a little bit?

Makes more sense.

And you've also, to make things worse, you've been told that there's an armored column of American in brackets 50 tanks as we know it's not 50 tanks but it is 30 odd um behind you so of course you're gonna go and deal with that it seems to me entirely reasonable and i think you know all these things are kind of accounted as this terrible mistake this terrible error of judgment it's like i i would question anyone else taking a different view to what i would to bear line did at that moment i think it's entirely justified and i don't think you can blame him for it yep and he had gone in he probably would have had that unit cut off and destroyed.

And so, you know, yeah.

But it's just so odd to me that he pointed to that, that he was too absorbed with trying to woo this nurse.

Well, he doesn't say he was absorbed for a day.

He says we came across this, we overran this, this, this American A station.

There was a very beautiful girl there that, you know, that caught my eye.

And someone else has added two and two on the kind of he was out of action all morning.

It's because we don't know what he was doing for that morning.

But obviously, he was probably busy kind of trying to work out where everyone was and how far the rest of his, you know, I'm sure he wasn't just sitting there twiddling his hands, going, Roland, you have the most beautiful eyes for four hours.

I mean, that's absurd.

It seems absurd.

I mean, I like to think that's exactly what he was doing.

Yeah.

Maybe he, maybe he got it wrong.

Maybe she wasn't American.

Maybe she was a local, you know, like Renee Lemaire working in Bastogne.

I don't know.

I'm just speculating.

It just seems very odd to me that it's been this hard to find the identity of someone who would have been a U.S.

military personnel after all.

I agree with that, but I also think it's very odd that he would say, say I was transfixed by this beautiful girl if he wasn't.

Right, so someone was there transfixing him, presumably.

Yeah, yeah, he had a volume.

Just who?

And so it's one of those enduring mysteries.

I wish I could track that down.

Oh, I like the idea that he...

One of my many failures, I guess.

He went back to his personal trunk, got his gramophone out, put some tunes on, got some cologne.

Somehow found a single rose.

Maybe a bottle of wine.

He scared up from somewhere.

I am sure I have one bottle of sink somewhere.

What are you doing for Valentine's Day?

Oh, Vince's fall is over.

Now, John Kaye asks, How should we look back on the efforts of post-war politicians like Senator McCarthy in attacking war crimes trials such as those which convicted the perpetrators of the Malburne massacre?

I grew up knowing about the bitter fighting and the terrible things done by the SS and the counterproductive impact this had, and that the US had tried to bring those responsible to justice.

It was only much later in life that I learned the full story of the political games played after the war by figures like Tail Gunner Joe in attacking the Malmody trial.

John.

Oh, yeah, I don't want to to get me started on tailgunner joe so this um really it's sad because the the military justice of the time did find you know and bring to justice uh several of the perpetrators of the malmody massacre and this i feel is very very very appropriate a few years later along comes senator joseph mccarthy and we all know what he was about along comes him with this this almost kind of zeal for trying to get these guys acquitted or have their sentences reduced or whatever and like he did with a lot of aspects of his political machinations,

he circulates a lot of cock and bull stories about how the interrogations were illegal that produced some of the evidence for the trial about how

these guys were abused and beaten and tortured and all of this kind of stuff.

That just really wasn't true.

What we have to conclude, I think, in retrospect is Senator McCarthy, you know, certainly he represents an incredibly troubling demagoguery that we'll see, you know, emerge again in American history, but certainly a kind of a crypto-fascism in a way that he's very sympathetic to these Nazis, to these SS guys.

He didn't fight in Europe.

He fought in the Pacific as a Marine intel officer against the Japanese.

So this is a man who is incredibly reckless in his anti-communism and not particularly effective, if you ask me, because he never really finds

many real spies.

And there was plenty of Soviet espionage in America at that point.

So the basic premise was right, but he does next to nothing except to get Americans fearing one another.

And so this whole thing is such a fiasco.

And I think kind of sad that some of the perpetrators aren't punished the way they should have been.

I mean, in a sense, with him, communism is the weapon rather than the target, isn't it?

He's using it to attack people and using it to promote his own political career, isn't it?

So

people are just caught in that crossfire.

Creating a terrible climate of fear.

Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think what's really interesting about Malmedy is when we were there in January, I came to sort of see the Piper Piper part of the campaign as the entire thing in microcosm.

It sort of represents the whole thing in the way it progresses, the way it ends up, and the stuff they do along the way.

It sort of feels like the character of the whole thing.

And when we were talking earlier about what's making the Doughboy fight, you know, the guy from California, what's making him fight in this set of circumstances, well, one of the things is the Malmady massacre.

You know, it eludes the censor, it gets the American papers straight away and also gets round the front line like wildfire.

You know, it's discovered that same afternoon, isn't it?

And reported immediately.

You know perfectly well that it goes straight into what men are saying to each other about what might happen to them and makes them die harder, most likely.

And so it's this sort of a core part of what happens in the bulge, this.

And I think that there is an attempt to bring people to justice is absolutely right.

And, you know, for all the fact that they're on the move and how are they ever going to take prisoners, all that sort of stuff, whatever.

It's completely different.

Send them walking east, as happened many, many other places.

Send them walking east.

And also, they're on a killing spree anyway, because they're killing civilians at Boniers anyway.

Points to the German soldier is brutalized, he's been brought up, and he lives in a brutal society that regards, you know, death for the enemy as a first principle.

I find it absolutely remarkable that anyone in America

in the years that follow would incredibly disturbing.

Try and get Piper off.

You know, it's sort of like McCarthy did, and he was pretty effective in that campaign, unfortunately.

It's easy.

It really is.

Just more one of the many examples of the damage McCarthy did during his fortunately kind of brief heyday.

My question for you, John, really, at the end of all this, and it's been so, so interesting to walk the ground again, to do this deep dive, to start really looking into the nuts and bolts of it, as well as the human experience of the whole thing.

Is this American Army in Europe's finest moment, would you say?

Hmm.

That's a great question.

Because I am really bowled over by how impressive the Americans are in this.

I mean, I think think it's one of the finest moments.

I think that certainly Normandy is right up there, too.

And

also, the dismemberment of Germany itself at the end is pretty professional demolition, I think.

But yeah, I mean, because they're put on the back foot and how they respond to the back foot.

Yeah, exactly.

You've got the defensive battle, you've got the holding the line, then you've got the counter-punch.

Put that collectively,

you're bringing to bear the American skills that they've developed since before they go into action in North Africa in November 1942, the lessons they've learned in all that time, it all seems to sort of coagulate in the snow, the mud, the rain, the misery of deep midwinter in the Ardennes in in Belgium in an incredibly effective way.

It's the the resilience is and it's one of the reasons why the war in um you know the the the Americans and the and why the British get and the Canadians get as far as they do and why why the Americans get to the River Elba is because of the the clinical way in which they destroy the bulk of German armour in the West in the Battle of the Bulge.

I mean, it's just,

I just, I think it's just so impressive.

And I, you know, again, I go back to kind of Lausdale Crossroads and Lieutenant High Duke and,

you know, all these people.

It's just so impressive.

And also, the clinical way in which Second Panzer is completely destroyed at

Sell and elsewhere, you know.

And Oville.

Kampfgrupper Kockenhausen just completely annihilated in this wood in this in the edge of the village.

I mean, it's just imp it's so impressive.

And also, frankly, frankly, the way Camp's group of Piper is dismantled.

It is just gnawed away as it moves sort of northwest and it becomes more vulnerable every day as it's just set upon by these enemy units.

I just find it hard to sort of criticize any part of it, really.

I mean, you know, obviously, you know, there's things in retrospect that you would have done differently, but overall, it's really, really impressive.

Yeah,

the interesting thing about it that kind of lives on, and I can't think of this as from too many other battles, especially in Europe, is that one of the most, really one of the most prolific and prominent veterans associations in this country was the Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge.

You really didn't quite have that for Normandy or Italy or whatever.

There was a camaraderie of those who were involved in this battle because of how they had dealt with what was really perhaps the greatest crisis of the entire campaign in Europe.

And

that they had won what many felt was the biggest American, mostly American victory in our modern military history.

And all the conditions they had endured, not just the Germans, but all the cold and the adversity and sometimes the lack of food and the footgear, all that kind of stuff.

It's really quite interesting because you're talking about people from a lot of different divisions and that in many cases fought in very different places, far apart from one another.

And yet they are all part of this organization called Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge, which was so dynamic and still exists.

And there's a few veterans left, but it's mainly the children and the grandchildren now who drive it forward.

I can't think of anything like that for Normandy, you know, as prominent as it was.

And I think that's quite interesting when you look back on it.

That's fascinating.

So I think it speaks to what you're saying, Jim.

I have one last thing

before we go.

Do you think actually that it's portrayed as styming Allied plans and holding up the war and all that?

And I came away thinking it actually speeds the war up.

The Germans basically throw away their strategic reserve and bleed themselves at exactly the moment where what they ought to be doing is licking their wounds and reorganizing properly.

Would you agree?

Reorganizing on the the other side of the rhine would be the obvious thing to get yes no i agree 100 i i think it absolutely um accelerated the the end of the war i mean these were so if the let's say the germans lose you know what is it 80 to 110 000 casualties something like that i mean a lot of those are are people they can never replace and a lot of those are vehicles and weaponry that that can't be replaced and of course oh by the way they're about to get nailed by allied armies east and west um you know as 1945 unfolds so it just stands to reason that you don't have some of your better formations available to deal with that and i think it's one of the reasons why the war ends when it does i don't i don't know that we can really put an actual time frame on it but it just to me just rationality tells us that once you remove um those assets from the german order of battle that's certainly going to be to their detriment so it's it's kind of makes you shudder to think about it in retrospect how tough it would have been in germany in 1945 to conquer it if the bulge hadn't happened.

Because I mean, you know, you guys know this, that when you really study those battles in 1945, I mean, they were really tough.

The level of violence and all that, even pretty well into April.

I think I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.

The casualty rates in the U.S.

Army in April 1945 were almost as high as they had been in Normandy the previous summer.

So there was still a hell of a lot of fighting going on.

And absent the bulge, that's probably going to be worse.

So I agree with you 100%.

Okay, good.

Well, an American epic.

There you go.

An American epic.

And thanks so much for joining us for this, John.

And we will see you at Weeve Waste Fest so people can ask you the that didn't get asked personally, which is in September, the 12th, 14th of September, uh, we have wastefest.co.uk.

Thanks, everyone, for listening.

Jim, have fun in Germany and then in Belgium, and probably in Luxembourg as well.

I mean, you're, you know, that's the thing, you turn a corner in a different country around there.

I'm doing the triangle.

Wonderful.

Thanks, everybody, for listening.

We'll see you all very soon.

Cheerio, cheerio.

See ya.