Dachs, I suppose my view is colored by the logistical straightjacket German generals found themselves in Russia and Rommel in North Africa where he would launch major attacks with enough fuel for maybe a handful of days of combat operations.
Sure. That's exactly what I'm talking about. The Germans repeatedly convinced themselves that they had destroyed the Red Army (or the British Army) and that all they needed to do was to follow up on their success. The pursuit had to be hard and ruthless, cost what it may, but only a ruthless pursuit would destroy the enemy forces, and if a total victory could be secured from such a pursuit then it was unquestionably worth the hardships that the troops had to deal with.
That's why, say, the German offensive after the destruction of the pockets at Viaz'ma and Briansk looks so bizarre. They spread out their forces all over the place, to locations where they could never have been supported against the Red Army. The thing was, the Germans didn't think they were going to have to fight the Red Army. Time and again, Halder and Bock convinced themselves that they had annihilated the Soviet forces to their front and that all that remained was to mop up. That's why they repeatedly made the incredible assertion after the war that an attack on Moscow in August/September 1941 would've ended the war. It was ridiculous. The road to Moscow was guarded by the entire Western Strategic Direction, which was launching offensive after bloody offensive around Smolensk and El'nia to try to drive the Germans back. German military leadership managed to pull the wool over its own eyes to the extent that they simply forgot some of the most savage battles of the war. Even decades after the fact, some of the German generals still could not wrap their heads around the notion that the Red Army had been in some ways a lot more powerful than they had ever given it credit for.
So yeah, the Germans outran their supply lines, and this was a problem, but it was a problem because they sometimes engaged in incredible self-deception to allow them to see what they wanted to see: that resistance was crumbling, and one big push could win the war. The hell of it was that they came perilously close to being right in 1942, in front of Stalingrad.
German officers were perfectly capable of exercising restraint when they had a different appreciation for the situation. In fact, they sometimes engaged in
too much restraint, like when Rundstedt and Hitler put the brakes on the mobile troops in May 1940 out of fear that they were extending out too far. But I think putting the focus on logistical problems is missing the point. It's not
wrong - the Germans did indeed run into logistical problems at some key moments of military extremity, which made victory for them extremely difficult to imagine. But the source of those logistical problems was the fighting power and regeneration of the Red Army. (Or, in the case of the British in North Africa, the fighting power and regeneration of the Eighth Army.)
But the Hodges won at Aachen, I thought it was the post Aachen fall/winter campaign that goofed it all up?
The first attempt at Aachen, in mid-September 1944, failed. It was VII Corps by itself, and although Joe Collins was the best corps commander the Americans produced in the war, and although his troops had plenty of juice, the Spearheads and Big Red One couldn't quite punch through south of Aachen.
There were several problems with the offensive. First, Bradley and Hodges had Collins try to sneak through between the
Hürtgenwald and Aachen, to the south of the city. There was very little space here, in what is often called the "Stolberg Corridor", and the terrain was not conducive to an offensive. Secondly, and more importantly, Bradley and Hodges deployed First Army very badly. In early September, Twelfth Army Group had enough fuel to move two of First Army's three available corps. VII Corps and XIX Corps were in eastern Belgium following the victory at Mons, and V Corps was further south, close to the Ardennes. Instead of hammering the Germans in a single place by using VII and XIX Corps in depth to break through the slowly hardening German defensive crust along the West Wall, Brad and Hodges "layer-caked", launching two offensives with corps side-by-side (making the resulting diagram look a bit like a layer cake: one corps sector on top of the other in a neat stack). V Corps was splattered against the Ardennes sectors of the West Wall to no point or purpose, and VII Corps came painfully close to a breakthrough at Aachen but couldn't quite manage it, with German Seventh Army streaming in reinforcements as quickly as they became available.
Bradley desperately wanted the main Allied effort to stay out of Montgomery's hands, after bad experiences with him in North Africa and Normandy. He wanted to keep First Army as far south as possible, to avoid having it work together with the British. But he could only modify SHAEF's plans so much. So he sold Ike on having V Corps move further south, closer to Patton, although not even remotely close to mutually supporting distance. He detached a division from XIX Corps to back Third Army up because an entire corps of Third Army was still in Brittany on the pointless siege of Brest. All this did was dissipate American combat power to no point or purpose, and except for the Big Red One's tiniest of toeholds, the Western Allies were unable to hold on to any ground east of the West Wall.
After the fuel situation eased slightly, Bradley tried again in early October, moving XIX Corps north of Aachen to attack near Geilenkirchen. This was much better ground for an offensive: more open, with fewer streams crossing it. Slag heaps and miners' villages made decent cover for a defender but not nearly as good cover as the Germans could find in the Stolberg Corridor, and there was much more space to deploy American armor. If the Americans had sent VII Corps in by Geilenkirchen instead of in the Stolberg Corridor in September, backed up by XIX Corps in column of divisions, it's entirely possible the Americans could've reached the Rhine and given Eisenhower the battle against the still-coalescing German strategic reserve that he so badly wanted. Three weeks, however, gave the Germans plenty of time to strengthen the West Wall fortifications and bring up disposable
Volksgrenadier formations. XIX Corps went in on 2 October missing a division, but it was competently handled by its commander, Charles Corlett, and it contained one of the best American units of the war, the Second Armored Division. Hell on Wheels and the Thirtieth Infantry Division managed to hammer a way through the German pillboxes and secure a double envelopment of Aachen by linking up with VII Corps. With the German defenders increasing in density day by day, the Americans could go no further east, and instead sat down to besiege Aachen at tremendous cost in lives and munitions. Corlett, who generally had the right tactical ideas and was enraged when Bradley and Hodges did their typical thing and shot them down, clashed with higher leadership too much; Bradley had him relieved and sent back to the US, an unfortunate end for a commander who had performed quite well in the Pacific and had done as well as could've been expected at Aachen.
After the arrival of more American infantry, including Bill Simpson's new Ninth Army (deployed north of Aachen in the Geilenkirchen gap), the Americans launched one final push in November. This was the QUEEN offensive, which stood out for its peculiar lack of forethought even compared to the other attacks Bradley's Army Group had made that fall. In September and October, Twelfth Army Group had thought it could reach the Rhine if they just broke though at Aachen. By November, Army Group leadership was still aiming for the Rhine, but German resistance was so heavy that field-grade commanders figured that they'd be lucky to make the Roer River, thirty kilometers east of Aachen. And nobody had bothered to figure out how to get
over the Roer. Massive dams in the
Hürtgenwald controlled the Roer's flooding, and if the dams were damaged or opened the Germans could inundate the area and create a formidable water barrier (as they in fact did later that winter). An offensive to capture the dams before pushing for the Roer would be tricky, especially since the
Hürtgenwald was an American graveyard already, but it would at least demonstrate a bit of foresight. Alternatively, the dams could have been destroyed early by air attack (allowing the Americans to trap
German forces on the wrong side where they could be mopped up as the Westerners waited for the flood waters to recede), or the Americans could have tried to push hard enough, with a corps or two in column of divisions, to reach the Roer with German troops left on the west bank - which might prevent the Germans from blowing the dams until after the Americans had a solid bridgehead. (This was the probable result of an American offensive in September or October, back when the German defenders were not nearly as thick on the ground.)
Bradley and Hodges ignored all these problems, if they even realized that they
were problems. Instead, they layer-caked their forces, kept up a uniform advance across the front, and ground down the Germans slowly, at the usual high cost in lives and munitions and time. Ninth Army, further north, had a smarter command team; Simpson had his corps commanders cooperate with British XXX Corps at the inter-army group boundary to hit the Germans by surprise in an area that the Germans thought the Westerners would be weak. They managed a high rate of advance, especially by comparison with First Army - until Bradley explicitly ordered Ninth Army to slow down and allow First Army to close up on its flank, destroying any chance of crossing the Roer, reaching the Rhine, or luring Sixth SS Panzer Army out of its lair.
And, of course, all the while, First Army hurled division after division into the
Hürtgenwald on a mission to seize the ridges that made German artillery observation of the Stolberg Corridor possible...and therefore incurred far more casualties than the German artillery ever would've caused on its own, while wasting men and machines that might have aided the push for the Roer and Rhine. Patton famously said that even the tent-maker [Bradley] would admit that Courtney [Hodges] was dumb, and he was undoubtedly right. Hodges was an unimaginative disciplinarian who at least cared for his men, but didn't care nearly enough to develop competent operational solutions to the problems that faced him. Instead, he was a rigid tactician who focused on solving each individual
tactical problem in front of him without bothering to think of whether an entirely
different approach would negate the need to solve
any of the tactical problems. If First Army ever came up with a brilliant idea, it would've originated at VII Corps HQ. Hodges' troops fought hard, but they fought harder than they ever should've had to.
The whole Aachen offensive was borderline criminal mismanagement at the American army group and army levels that ought to have earned Hodges a relief and Bradley a court-martial for insubordination.
Rommel was more hamstrung by having to make due with what resources he could get his hands on in North Africa than by Axis production. Anytime you're trying to conduct major operations in an area you know you can't support them, you're gonna have a bad time.
When in doubt, blame Mussolini...
He knew they were unsupportable, true. He also knew that he was kicking the British Army's tail on a regular basis, and that the proper response to a victory was to follow it up. Rommel's immediate problem was that he followed up in the wrong direction. Instead of going after Malta like OKW and the Italians wanted to do, he plunged deeper into Egypt. He, of course, did have
bigger problems, like whether he and his men should've even been in North Africa in the first place.
