Talk:Battle of the Bulge

Historian Ambrose relevance

Questionable as to whether this completely dismissive comment from one historian with a questionable reputation is relevant here. Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 04:45, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. You get the impression it was shoehorned in by someone who isn't a particularly big fan of Montgomery as an attempted rebuttal to Manteuffel's comment. F.M. Sir D.H (talk) 13:21, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Delaforce is no more of an authority than Ambrose. I cannot find this reference in the 2014 edition of his work "The Battle of the Bulge: Hitler's Final Gamble", so either I am missing something, or perhaps Delaforce deleted it from the later edition?

One might also question why the Manteuffel comment was included in the article to begin with, and given so much visibility.

At the time of the "interview", Manteuffel was still a prisoner in England, and was in no position to speak his mind.

Even if he had been able to speak freely, there is no way that Manteuffel could have known the thinking of Montgomery at the time of the battle, or could have differentiated his intentions or tactics from those of the US generals, since Monty really just continued with the existing US strategy - albeit much more slowly.

Liddell Hart conducted his "interviews" via an interpreter, which made it easy to "interpret" the German responses subjectively, and to put words in their mouths. Liddell Hart was a British patriot, and a critic of Eisenhower. Manteuffel's "view" that the US counter-attacks were "premature" while Monty was correct to delay for weeks, conveniently rescues Monty (and the British Army) from the American criticism that Monty took too long to cut off the salient, thereby once again allowing the Germans to escape the trap.

It has also been recognised that Liddell Hart and the German prisoners all stood to gain personally from the "opportunity". [1] Hart needed to re-establish his reputation, and the German generals were preparing for war crimes trials and welcomed any support they could get.

It is false to suggest that Monty had "a clear and definite plan" while the US generals did not. The US plan was to block every choke-point with every resource at hand, to bog down the German advance until the weather allowed the US fighter-bombers to shred the Germans, and thereafter to cut off the salient and destroy all the Germans trapped in the bulge. Phase One worked very well, most famously at Bastogne and St. Vith and the Elsenborn Ridge. When Monty inserted himself, he merely continued with the US blocking plan, which by then was already far advanced and bearing fruit. Phase Two worked partially, in that Patton performed his pincer, but Monty couldn't be bothered, and the Germans once again extracted significant resources to fight another day.

Since this quote is so obviously contrived, and originates from a single author under controversial circumstances, perhaps it should be removed from this article. Wdford (talk) 16:44, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

The issue is less "Ambrose vs Delaforce", rather is it "Ambrose vs Hasso von Manteuffel".

We can argue about the merits or lack thereof of Ambrose or Delaforce (the Bob Sales incident, for instances, perhaps marks Ambrose out as not totally objective regarding British forces & tending towards nationalistic embellishment...to put it very lightly) but that isn't really the key point.

On one hand we have a brief comment from historian Ambrose versus the opinion of a German general officer who actually fought in the battle (and at a key juncture). His appreciation is set out plainly while Ambrose's is not (as it currently stands in the article, anyway). There are likely caveats to Manteuffel's comment- such first hand sources often do contain caveats- but I think you are maybe overstating the alleged flaws in Manteuffel's assessment. German generals were not ones to mince words. If they found someone wanting they would say so. I'm not convinced the biases, real or otherwise, of Liddell Hart towards Eisenhower impinge significantly on his appreciation of Manteuffel's comments...not without much conjecture anyway, and to what end exactly? Similarly, what prevented Manteuffel from "speaking his mind"? His presence as a POW in England? Liddell Hart's status as a "British patriot" (you will note most of the more unkindly comments on Montgomery come from people who are "American patriots")? If Manteuffel's comment is unsustainable because of alleged biases, but a very small comment from Ambrose chucked in at the end because someone doesn't like Monty isn't?

Manteuffel's comment is insightful to how the people actually fighting against the allies saw Montgomery's actions. Ambrose's position, which is that of one historian, is briefly thrown in at the very end without any elaboration on WHY he thinks Montgomery was of no consequence to the Bulge. This, atleast here, makes its addition seem somewhat suspect F.M. Sir D.H (talk) 11:51, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

You make a good point that the Ambrose comment needs to be enlarged and clarified.

However the real issue is Ambrose vs Delaforce. Ambrose based his work largely on the first-hand accounts of soldiers who were actually present. Delaforce however is basing this comment on Liddell Hart's interpretation of a post-war interview with the captive Manteuffel, which was conducted through an interpreter, leaving Liddell Hart free to "interpret". We don't actually know what Manteuffel actually said (in German), and it is wrong to record this as though these were the very words that came from Manteuffel's mouth.

My main issue with the Manteuffel comment is that Manteuffel COULD NEVER HAVE KNOWN which decisions were taken by Monty and which were taken by US generals, so to state years later to an influential and sympathetic Englishman (while he was awaiting war crimes trials) that he could discern the difference that Monty made, really strains credulity. Monty's "coherent plan" was no different from the US plan that was already being successfully implemented, so what "differences" could Manteuffel actually have seen?

We do know that Manteuffel was by then aware of Monty's bragging and self-aggrandizement immediately after the battle, which had been globally reported – and hyped up even further – by the "patriotic" British press. Monty had published the book "Normandy To The Baltic" before this interview, and both Liddell Hart and Manteuffel had probably read it by the time of the interview, and were thus surely aware of Monty's post-event claims and justifications. We therefore have Delaforce citing the "controversial" Liddell Hart, who was citing an interpretation from a German commander, who in turn actually had no way of knowing what had really happened in the Allied HQ, beyond what he may have read in British newspapers praising Monty, and in Monty's own personal version of history, mixed with what Monty wanted readers to believe had happened.

I therefore think this quote attributed to Manteuffel should be regarded as unreliable at best.

We certainly should elaborate on why Ambrose thinks Montgomery's contribution added little value at the Bulge. In his work "Citizen Soldiers" (Chapter 16), Ambrose summarizes the American perspectives as follows:

• The US forces had actually stopped the German advance before Monty even got involved in the battle;
• Despite Monty's self-serving and exaggerated claims, British forces had minimal to zero involvement in the initial "stopping phase";
• Far from managing the defence, Monty actually just got in everyone's way; and
• Monty then disobeyed orders and delayed the counter-attack for so long that large numbers of Germans escaped from the trap, and fought on.

We can certainly add all this material to the article as well.

Ambrose cites Patton as saying that, had it not been for Monty, they could have "bagged the entire German army". Patton also stated that "Monty is a tired little fart. War requires the taking of risks, and he won't take them". This is a direct quote from a very senior officer who DID actually know what Monty did vs what was done by the various US generals, and he was NOT awaiting war crimes trials so he could speak his mind, and he spoke in English with no risk of subjective interpretation. If it is somehow considered appropriate to retain the highly-suspect Manteuffel comment via the pen of Liddell Hart, then we should balance it with this more reliable quote from Patton too, at the very least.

It is true that Ambrose wrote scathingly of British commanders on occasion, but he was also critical of US commanders when he felt it justified – such as regarding the decisions re the Hurtgen Forest. If you compare Ambrose to Chester Wilmot, for example, Ambrose seems quite objective actually, while Wilmot's critiques of Eisenhower and Patton in particular border on parody.

Most of the "more unkindly comments on Montgomery" actually came from very senior British officers, such as Tedder and Ismay.

My suggestions would be to delete the Manteuffel "quote" for unreliability, or failing that, to balance it with the views of Patton at least. We should also expand on the comment by Ambrose, as described above.

PS: Did Caddick call Ambrose "controversial", or is that some wiki-editor's WP:OR? I have certainly seen Liddell Hart being called "controversial" by reliable sources.

Wdford (talk) 19:19, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Upon hearing of the German attack in the Ardennes the first thing Montgomery, who was playing golf at the time, did, was to order his armoured forces to move down to guard and block the banks of, and approaches to bridges on, the River Meuse, which was actually one of the German forces objectives thus nullifying their chances of achieving their primary objective of reaching Antwerp at one stroke. This while the American commanders who's job it was to protect their own sectors were absent and not even in the same country in-which the German offensive was taking place.

Manteuffel was there at the time and Ambrose, who was a historian, was not. Thus whether anyone likes it or not, Manteuffel's views are relevant, and such 'bending-over-backwards' in an attempt to dismiss his views here in this article reeks of an attempt at whitewash.

BTW, Montgomery later became a Field Marshall, the highest rank attainable in the British Army, and later became CIGS, the highest position it was then possible to achieve in the British and Commonwealth armies, as well as commanding the first post-WW II BAOR.

... and Montgomery would later become the first Deputy SACEUR (serving again under Eisenhower) the commander actually responsible for commanding the NATO ground armies in the field in the case of a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Do you know why - because the surviving officers of the German High Command when asked who they wanted to be in command of the armies defending West Germany unanimously asked for him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.8.126.91 (talk) 07:25, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Montgomery sent his armor south because Ike told him to.

Bradley's sector stretched across several of Europe's smaller countries. He was on post when the attack happened, in the area where an attack was expected. Hitler chose an unexpected area to attack. It was considered to be an unlikely target area because there were few roads and lots of bottlenecks. And so it proved.

Bradley's army commanders all acquitted themselves well. Ambrose himself reported that the US plan had halted the German advance, then the airpower came into action when the weather cleared, and then Monty wasted another month slowly mopping up.

Manteuffel was NOT there at the time - that is the whole point. Manteuffel was on the German side, and had no idea which Allied generals made which decisions. Since Monty merely followed the original US plan, there was no dividing line between strategies for Manteuffel to notice.

Monty spent the rest of his career as deputy to one or other US commander. This was a political decision - simple coalition politics. Had the USSR actually attacked, US forces would have been commanded in the field by US generals. The US High Command had by then learned exactly what Monty was, and nobody cared what the German High Command wanted.

Wdford (talk) 12:31, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Sad how Ambrose had such serious allegations to him. His history had a lot to do with my childhood. Maso Queso Flamedo (talk) 23:39, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Which allegations? Boo Boo (talk) 18:07, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Probably the ones about plagiarism. Will Tyson for real (talk) 03:56, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Truncated sentence in section "Allied counter-offensive"

This edit on 10 Nov 2022 seems to have resulted in the accidental truncation of a sentence: American progress in the south was also restricted to about a kilometer or a little over half a mile per day whe. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the material to infer what should go there. XAM2175 ^(T) 23:35, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

German casualties in the infobox

The source for the German upper estimate of losses is Danny Parker. In Parker’s book, he cites the Foreign Military Studies series available at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland (I’ve been to the microfilm room where you can find it.)

In particular its FMS A-858, interview with German Major P. E. Schramm, who apparently wrote the official war diaries for OB West during the war. Along with many of the FMS series it’s available for download on Sturmpanzer.com, the whole index: https://www.sturmpanzer.com/research/tools/fms_Index.aspx

you can see this particular one here: http://downloads.sturmpanzer.com/FMS/NARA_FMS_A858.pdf

Firstly, the relevant info is on page 20. The primary estimate is 81,834 (including breakdown by casualty type) with 98,024 as an alternate count, and an estimate of ~126,000 losses inflicted on the Allies. Importantly, it comes after he gives estimates in the same section from all of Army Group B as far as tank losses is concerned (including the 15th Army that was heavily engaged in the Hurtgen Forest at Kesternich, not really involved in the Ardennes) and he throughout the interview, despite the name, refers to events in the Vosges (Nordwind battle). The final estimate is given that it is for the period December 16-January 25, but doesn’t specify it is just the Ardennes.

Note that this officer would have used German casualty reports, and conveniently it’s almost identical to all German losses in the “West” for that period according to the German 10 day casualty reports. Only a slight difference due to time frame (every 10 day loss reports) [2] and [3]

It seems pretty obvious to me this is referring to German losses in the entire west to me, since he worked at C n C West. So I’d like to remove it from the infobox for now. 72.26.17.219 (talk) 04:05, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Kampfgruppe Peiper deflected southeast[edit]

I’ve been following the Kampfgruppe Peiper, as described in the article, on maps and find this paragraph makes no sense in relation to the previous paragraph. There is no timeline compared to the previous paragraph and has Kampfgruppe Peiper back at the beginning of the assault taking a different route ? What am I missing ? However, the paragraph titled “Germans advance west”, the account of the approach of Kampfgruppe Peiper to Stavelot makes chronological sense following the paragraph “Malmedy massacres”. PlainsSoarer (talk) 02:48, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

High and low est. for infobox

Please see this link. [4] this was dicussed before, the reason those numbers weren't in the infobox have nothing to do with "low number for germans and high for americans", it has to do with their origin and using the ones based off own unit reports vs estimates by commanders on ENEMY losses. The person who changed it a few days ago ignores this. Will Tyson for real (talk) 01:52, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

The higher German casualty numbers were already addressed by me in the above post, the linked previous discussion above, and a previous post further up this discussion page brought up by me titled "German Casualties in the infobox". the 89,000 figure comes from Miles, not "Stewart", who simply is included in the range, and McNeese also gives at least 81,000 casualties and 19,000 killed. BTW, looking at the primary sources, Maj.Gen.Franklin Kibler, the operations officer of 12th AG, estimated casualties at 81,810 in the December 22-January 14 1944-45 period alone (read the Kibler papers). This would have included some very minor losses outside the Ardennes too, notably at Kesternich, but that's chump change compared to the losses discounted by missing the first week and last two weeks of the Ardennes battles. 89,000 is definitely not a really high number. If we assume that the US Army suffered 75,000 casualties, yet the Ardennes-Alsace campaign lists 106,000 battle casualties, but the Operation Nordwind article only accounts for 11,000 battle casualties, where did the other 20,000 battle casualties occur I wonder? Pray do tell, since only units with the "Ardennes-Alsace" campaign credit were included in those casualties. (casualties for the 95th ID for example is not included in that number despite being a part of Third Army, for example, because it did not receive "Ardennes-Alsace" battle honor and is considered outside the scope)

If you've ever been to NARA or the OCMH library (at the modern U.S. Army Center of Military History) in Washington D.C., check out Royce Thompson's "Measuring the Intensity of Fighting in Certain Large-Scale Engagements" (1954), its a little known adjunct to the official US Military history of the war, and he had access to the same material the famous adjutant generals report on battle casualties did. He did a more comprehensive breakdown of the losses in the Ardeness adjusting the parameters of "Ardennes-Alsace" to just the Ardennes part. His figure for the Ardennes only, 16 December-25 Jan, is 81,521 total casualties (incl. 14,013 battle deaths). That being not an openly published book, its a primary source at a specific location, I can't use it for wikipedia but its the actually correct figure if you must know, the problem being it is only those listed as dead during the Ardennes time frame and not those who died of wounds later that month, and it misses the last few days of this article. Also, he used punch cards that didn't account for soldiers who were killed but weren't given a clear death date, and doesn't reconcile missing presumed dead. I agree that the 19,000 killed figure is high and too similar to the Ardennes-Alsace killed, so leaving Miles overall figure but removing 19,000 from the infobox, listed only in the casualties section, is the solution IMO. Will Tyson for real (talk) 00:13, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

There are 3 issues here:

1.) German casualties

German casualties for this campaign were well in excess of 67,000, and probably around 100,000. The Ardennes Campaign Simulation Database mentions German reports listing casualties for Army Group B at over 67,000, but this came with the problems of time delay and incomplete recordkeeping. Dupuy, Anderson, and Bongard's treatment of the subject in the database and in "Hitler's Last Gamble" show around 75,000 casualties only among the participating divisions and brigades - excluding attachments and other corps and army-level troops - and only from the period 16 December to 16 January. These various units are listed by name: they do NOT include the German 15th Army or other German forces on the Western Front; this is strictly confined to divisions assigned to the three armies that fought in the Ardennes.

Overall German losses can only be guessed at; one way to approximate is to 1.) Compare the initial and final strengths of all German units that participated in the campaign - 498,622 and 425,941 (a difference of 72,681), 2.) Add to that number the total replacements received by the 7th, 5th & 6th Pz Armies, and 3.) Deduct evacuations due to frostbite and other nonbattle causes plus desertion. As far as I'm aware the ACSDB has the numbers for (2) and (3) - maybe not desertion - but only in day by day format for each individual unit.

Then on top of all this you'd have to extend those numbers another 10 days or so to come up with figures analogous to Allied losses.

2.) American casualties

Donna Miles is a reporter, not a historian. The numbers she quoted (19,000 killed, 47,500 wounded, and 23,000 missing) appear to combine the number of wounded from the SHAEF G-2 report and the numbers for deaths among battle casualties + captured and interned in the Final Report on Battle/Nonbattle casualties for the whole Ardennes-Alsace Campaign. In addition, she also erroneously wrote that 600,000 Germans and 500,000 Americans participated in the battle; the real numbers were something like the reverse of that.

Volume II of the 12th Army Group's After Action Report (pp. 80-88) lists the difference in battle casualties between 27 January 1945 and 15 December 1944 for the force as a whole as 10,980 killed, 46,677 wounded, 20,565 missing, and 3,474 captured. However, this includes a lot of data for both the Ninth and the incipient Fifteenth Armies (which didn't fight at all in the Bulge), as well as the Third Army's XX Corps, which wasn't involved either. If you subtract those I suspect the final total comes pretty close to the 75,500 in the SHAEF report, which is why I didn't bother to go through unit by unit to confirm a 7% difference. As for your reference to Royce Thompson - Richard Anderson addressed this directly here. Thompson (among other mistakes) misattributed battle casualties for the entire Ardennes-Alsace campaign to the Ardennes portion only. As for the 105,000 figure, it covers all battle casualties (ground and air forces) in both the Ardennes, Alsace, and other adjacent operations from the entire period 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945 ("Nordwind" proper didn't start until 31 December). The discrepancy can be explained by the inclusion of both 6th Army Group and Seventh Army casualties between 15-31 December 1945, battle casualties among Army Air Force units (2,793), and casualties among the 94th, 95th, 104th Infantry, and 8th Armored Divisions over that time period, which did not participate. (US Divisions credited in Ardennes-Alsace Campaign).

The bottom line: primary documentation for US personnel casualties in the Ardennes proper all agree on a figure of ~76,000. This, along with the more problematic ~81,000 explained above, is the number quoted by all reliable secondary sources today.

3.) Last, although you didn't mention it, there's the issue of the tanks:

The version of the article you restored relies on Christer Bergstroem; since you linked my past discussion in your above post you're already familiar with the issues concerning his reliability. The 900 Allied tank losses also look like they came straight from ChristianMunich and should be discarded outright. The Pittsburgher (talk) 21:22, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

A comprehensive response to The Pittsburgher

So there are a number of things to address, and I did quite a bit more research. At the risk of "TL;DR" I feel the need to make an in-depth response, which I hope isn't too long-winded for any readers to bear.

1. On American casualties

You are correct that Miles is a reporter and not reliable, and more units have received the "Ardennes-Alsace" campaign credit than I originally recalled, however your take on Thompson's study is simply wrong.

Firstly, addressing the Ardennes-Alsace number itself, are you suggesting all Airforce losses need to be removed from "Ardennes-Alsace"? From you "The discrepancy can be explained by the inclusion of both 6th Army Group and Seventh Army casualties between 15-31 December 1945, battle casualties among Army Air Force units (2,793)," Parts of both the 8th Airforce and more obviously the 9th Airforce (which had a tactical air command permanently attached to each of the armies involved: IX to the First, XIX to the Third, and XII to the Seventh) were heavily involved in supporting the operations on the ground and inhibiting enemy supplies supporting both the Ardennes and Alsace offensives, and engaging the Luftwaffe over the battlefields (I'm not even referring to Bodenplatte here, the Luftwaffe was quite a bit more active in the Ardennes in general than it was in previous late-war campaigns). They were not just used for supporting Ninth Army and bombing factories and harbors, and this is without mentioning the airlift efforts to Bastogne, which continued for days even after CCR 4th AD breached the encirclement.

Secondly, I know who Richard Anderson is and I interact with him all of the time on the AHF forum (my username there is "Texas Jager") both on the threads and occasionally DMs. Rich is actually the person that pointed out Thompson's study to me, and I went to find it for myself at the NARA II building (I was told by a staff member there that it was only available on microfilm, but there might be a physical copy you could find too if you look hard enough, but it's at least not listed in their already immense inventory). The total unrevised "Ardennes-Alsace" number from the Adjutants Generals report is NOT all of the ETO losses over Dec 16-Jan 25 44-45, nor does it include all the USAAF losses in that period, that is a mistake on Rich's part and he even accepts correction on that at post #17 at the forum link you provide. I know you didn't say that yourself, but forums posts are more casual compared to academic work even for someone like Rich, so quoting that and the mistakes that are made more easily therein, is problematic itself. If we are going to bring Rich Anderson, then I'll be sure to supply some of his opinions as well later in my reply.

The actual problems with the "Ardennes-Alsace" losses, as you say, is that it includes SOME units, not all ETO but some, that weren't opposing either Wacht am Rhein/Herbstnebel (Ardennes) or Nordwind/Sonnenwind (Alsace). It's simply because all the units under Third and First Armies at that time were given the Ardennes-Alsace campaign credit, a possible reason is that the Germans also launched regional attacks in the northern part of the V corps sector (Kesternich) and also in the XX corps sector (11th Panzer attacked the 94th ID at Orscholz) in January, which encompasses the only remaining front areas under First and Third Armies not directly effected by the aforementioned twin German offensives, which while not part of either Alsace or Ardennes could be lumped in "the German winter counter-offensives", which is my guess for why the credit was given out that way. I already acknowledged this issue from the get-go, which is why I quoted Thompsons Examining Intensity to you: the entire point of his study was to point out the areas where units were included that didn't fight in either "Ardennes" or "Alsace", and to remove those and the "Alsace" losses to come up with the true "Ardennes" casualty count for the U.S. Army. He even adjusted the days included for certain divisions so the numbers only include the days where the division in question was present in the Ardennes front, for example 4th Armored beginning from December 21 rather than December 16.

His only error of inclusion was the 8th Armored Division, which he included in his MRU run on accident, and which he realized and acknowledged at the end of his report. Otherwise, he made a couple minor typos with the division battle casualty totals, such as the 26th ID where he put a "1" in the thousands-place where a "3" should be when he added it together. These typos are easily corrected and have nothing to do with the actual MRU data, they are just typing errors when putting together the wounded, killed etc for each division cumulative total collected from the MRU results. Those typos were actually all under counts, and when removing 8th AD and correcting the typos (-708, +2,111, =82,924) the result is actually higher by 1,403 than the original as-written derived total of 81,521.

Regarding the comparison to the number Forrest Pogue used in The Supreme Command[5], citing the SHAEF G-3 (Operations) message to SHAEF G-2 (Intelligence), it is, as Pogue himself says on page 396, an approximation. It was made mere days after the battle ended, and it's pretty obvious that it's just the same 12th AG G-1 daily summary casualty reports, which is what the cumulative period totals in the 12th AG Final After Action report you linked are based on, with the units not in the Ardennes removed. As a reflection of purely that, it is correct. The First issue is this: bringing up the The Ardennes Campaign Simulation Database (ACSDB) about the issue on the estimated losses of the 28th Division and 106th Division, they were significantly higher in their estimations than the daily summaries suggest (see PDF of the official report[6], pages 58 and 74). Although I have a problem with the estimation reliability they use for divisions, especially German ones where they had far less material to work with. The second, far more important issue is this: they are based on daily unit reports that often had to be reconciled later, whereas Thompson used Machine Record Units that use individual casualty data. There is simply no comparison in terms of accuracy between the often estimated figures of the daily reports to the actual number of individual casualties recorded. Sorry. If you still aren't convinced, I asked Rich for his opinion on which was more reliable since you value it, and he said Thompson.(from a thread I started awhile ago before I had visited NARA and before I had access to a lot of the primary material I do now) [7] BTW, as Rich says they weren't able to do MRU runs for the ACSDB, hence its reliance on the 12th AG daily reports for most U.S. units. The ACSDB report I linked already above, where they are transparent about their methods and numbers.

About Donna Miles, she definitely flubbed the numbers from her source, but that source is clearly Charles MacDonald's A Time for Trumpets and not the Ardennes-Alsace campaign or the SHAEF number. Her number is identical with MacDonald's (81,000 , with 19,000 killed , 47,000 wounded , and 15,000 captured) with the exception of the "missing/captured" being an 8,000 overcount, and she flips the respective strengths of the armies that MacDonald provides. MacDonald's number, in turn, is almost identical to Royce Thompson's. The exception is how he handles the missing. Although Thompson's MRU data was able to reconcile a large number of missing troops as either "killed" or "captured", there was still a substantial number under "missing" by the end of it. MacDonald, Pogue, and Thompson were all researchers/historians at OCMH (MacDonald also wrote The Last Offensive) during all these MRU runs and knew each other well, it seems MacDonald simply took the remaining "missing" and grouped them as "killed"(presumed dead). MacDonald's number is one of the most widely cited by secondary sources: Those Who Hold Bastogne by Peter Schrijvers, Battle of the Bulge by Tim McNeese, Corps Commanders of the Bulge by Harold R. Winton, Omar Bradley: General at War by Jim DeFelice, Great Sieges in World History by Spencer Tucker, Victory in World War II by Nigel Cawthorne, among many others, all use the casualty number provided by MacDonald, although sometimes flubbing it like the Department of Defense press statement. So yes, although I can't cite Thompson's report directly since it's largely inaccessible, MacDonald's is definitely the closest when it comes to secondary sources. (the "19,000 killed" should be out of the infobox though, since it's too similar to the Ardennes-Alsace number, even if it's obvious that he was trying to reconcile missing as all killed.)

2. On German casualties.

For one thing, the existing citation for the 103,000 German casualty number is an allied estimate, nothing more. It can be included in the casualties section, that is what it's for afterall--letting people decided for themselves based on all the data. But in the infobox? No.

The other higher numbers, 81,000-98,000 have the issue of being a misinterpretation of the primary source. I gave the link to the FMS study that Danny Parker quoted already above in a different topic (posted while I was logged out). It's an interview with Percy Schramm, who was the OKW war diarist. Even the way it's presented in that is problematic, as its not clear what the parameters he's talking about are despite the title of the FMS record, since he brings up figures for the entirety of A.G. B just before hand, as well as events elsewhere on the western front. The actual "primary source" is the OKW kriegstagebuch (war diary). Schramm had lots of notes leftover from his time as high command diarist, which he later assorted appropriately and published in 1961 as its own multi-volume book. Band IV: 1. Januar 1944 - 22. Mai 1945 is where the relevant figures comes from. (His notes are also saved on microfilm rolls at NARA) At page 1,362 he gives the exact remarks as given in the FMS study, in their original diary context. (You won't be able to see a preview of it on google books so use this. [8], and here for the index[9]) It's in section 2, B. The West, as an addendum at the end of I. The Winter Battle of the Ardennes and Concurrent Fighting. It is not just the Ardennes at all, the entire section is about the western front in general during this period, starting with the launch of the Ardennes offensive but also covering Nordwind and the other western events for the period, as does the next section, and as does most of the accompanying notes. On top of that, his figure for Dec 16-Jan 25 is 81,834 (12,652 killed, 38,600 wounded, 30,582 missing), while the entirety of OB West reported within that period (Dec 20-Jan 20) a total of 81,871 casualties (11,634 killed, 39,996 wounded, 30,241)[10][11], virtually the same number, with slightly different dates and reconciliation time marking the differences. (Schramm also gives a count of captured enemy troops of ~26,000 while Pogue in Pogue's War: Diaries of a WWII Combat Historian (p. 328) gives a figure of ~28,000 for all Americans captured in the ETO during the months of December and January.) It's a theater report, and he does the same thing at the end of the next sub-section, C. Southwest[12], where he gives theater casualties for OB Sudwest (Italy). So frankly regardless of the numerous authors that seemed to have misattributed his figures, it's painfully obvious that it's theater losses and not "Ardennes losses", which makes sense since the OKW usually dealt with theater numbers anyways, with the alternate 98,000 (which doesn't have any break downs) being some sort of reconciliation figure. It could be used for "western front" losses in the casualties section but it should cite the published book directly, and not other authors "interpretations" based on his FMS interview. I'm not sure where you got those strength figures for the German side from, but given their OOB was not static (116. PzD was pulled out of the Ardennes and sent to the British front halfway through January, XXXIX Pzkorps was sent from the Ardennes to the Alsace area in mid January, several units in reserve were never committed than sent elsewhere on the front, 10th SS PzD and 11th PzD coming to mind), it's not exactly accurate to go by that.

As for the ASCDB, which is where Hitler's Last Gamble gets its statistics from, and you can find the final report/encompassing information for here[13] (or here[14] if you prefer a non-PDF format), although you've apparently already read it: the German numbers are estimates based on fragmentary information, a large portion of which comes from none-other than....drumroll please... the Heeresarzt (army surgeon) 10 day reports! There actually was no primary source "daily German battle casualties" used except for units of one corps, LXXXI., which wasn't actually used in the Ardennes (part of 15.Armee). They had the ten day reports, as well as some 10 day reports for divisions, mostly under 5.Panzerarmee, and monthly reports for German divisions. The units they had aggregate data for directly from the source is at page 293. In order to come up with daily casualties, they essentially used the units they had information on for an "average" for the units of the same type they didn't, then distributed the losses by day depending on whether a unit was "Active", "Inactive", or "Out of Contact". The problem was they used "averages" that were based on many units that weren't in the Ardennes to begin with, like the 353d, 362d, 360th VGDs, etc to inform the averages for the units that did participate but where limited information was available. It's perfectly possible that how they redistributed losses was erroneous, based on perceived level of activity. Even further they took a lot of German data aggregates and averages for the entire Ardennes period and put it into the artificially smaller Dec 16-Jan 16 timeframe, which according to Richard Anderson was something they didn't want to do but were obliged by their contract.[15](post #37) There is a lot more at play here, and they allowed the German daily losses to balloon past what the actual Heeresarzt reports account for, despite using much of that info to inform the averages and aggregates to begin with; I suspect they mistook Schramm's figure for Ardennes losses is the reason the "ceiling" was raised for German losses (His OKW diary is cited as a primary source, albeit only for the tank figures). The only real issue brought up in the ACSDB about the ten day reports themselves (other than a lack of unit breakdowns) is the question of latency. I'll have to ask Rich a bunch of questions on his own work on the project to sort this out, although Chris Lawrence was the main guy behind its creation along with Dupuy. I understand why they did the ASCDB like this, the whole point was a day-by-day comparison, but trying to claim that these approximations based on more than a few stretches' somehow supersede the primary source, is akin to saying that cutting off the points of a triangle so it fits in a circular hole proves that the triangle was circular all along, it's cochamamie. The American casualties question is a matter of unit reports losses vs even more precise recorded individual losses, whereas the German casualties is about misattribution of primary sources on one hand (81,000-98,000 number), as well as in the ACSDB case using very rough approximations where the goal wasn't even to "fix" German losses but rather give comparable daily numbers with American G-1 daily losses, and on the other hand what actual German unit losses were reported as, albeit with latency issues like the 12thAG reports. Makes me wish there were German MRUs for their casualties, but alas there wasn't. At pages 759-761 you'll find the ACSDB giving a reliability rating for the information used, the German divisions (except a few from 15. Armee and, 150th PzBgd, based on Skorzeny's FMS interview) all get the E rating for the casualties column, the lowest possible.

3. On Tank Losses

Fair enough on Bergstrom, I went back to the thread and the issue actually seems to be with the Tank destroyer losses he provides too. Dully left out. However the 800 tanks lost is from Peter-Caddick Adams, not Bergstrom. Rich Anderson's own estimate at 839 when including tank destroyers, if we're going with the forum post trend, citing AF&W section loss reports in that same Bergstrom thread you posted awhile ago.[16] The 527-554 German losses also seems to agree with Rich Anderson[17]. I see no German reports anywhere that come close to Danny Parker's 800 figure. The ACSDB came up with figures for 556 as well, but even that is high based on what they use: they check it against Jung's figure of 600 for the entire Western Front period of Dec 16-Feb 1, and the A.G. B (incl. 15. Armee) tank losses of 324 from Dec 16-31.(page 561 in the ACSDB PDF) If the premise is applied as presented: the Germans lost 44 tanks in the entirety of Nordwind, the 11 PzD at Orscholz, the final 12 days of the Bulge, and all of the assault guns with the infantry units across the western front? Another issue again of the ACSDB redistributing figures, averages, and aggregates for a smaller timeframe.

Anyways I'm going to use Jung's slightly higher 10-day report losses for the German losses in the infobox. They seem to incorperate some latent returns, explaining the surplus compared with the 10-day reports linked in the infobox atm.[18] Will Tyson for real (talk) 11:16, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

BTW, why did you remove the "Ardennes-Alsace" number from the casualties section?[19] Yes, it doesn't belong in the infobox because of a wider definition, like the OKW war diary number, but the casualties section is a fine spot for both so long as its parameter is specified. I added it back and made it very clear that it includes more than the Bulge and Nordwind.Will Tyson for real (talk) 23:58, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Citation needed

Please explain why a reference to Hansard that verifies the statement, "The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill found it necessary in a speech to Parliament to explicitly state that the Battle of the Bulge was purely an American victory" is repeatedly turned back to "Citation needed".

Specifically the relevant part of the speech reads, "I have seen it suggested that the terrific battle which has been proceeding since 16th December on the American front is an Anglo-American battle. In fact, however, the United States troops have done almost all the fighting and have suffered almost all the losses... . Only one British Army Corps has been engaged in this action. All the rest of the 30 or more divisions, which have been fighting continuously for the last month, are United States troops."

If you want to, add the word "almost" between "was" and "purely". But please do not suggest that the statement made is unjustified because it _is_. 87.115.242.178 (talk) 21:21, 27 April 2023 (UTC)