1944-45 Battle Of The Bulge (Hitler’s World)

Overview
A trucking system known as the OTL "Red Ball Express" that brought supplies to front line troops was inefficient and overstretched. ATL German agents covertly mined the local roads on occasion bringing even more chaos to the Allied lines. By early October, the Allies suspended major offensives to improve their supply lines and availability of front line stores. Generals Patton, Montgomery, and Omar N. Bradley each pressed for priority delivery of supplies to their respective armies so they could continue their individual lines of advance and maintain pressure on the Germans. The more astute General Eisenhower, however, preferred a broad-front strategy. Montgomery's northern forces, were given a short term priority as they bore down on the German forces in Antwerp and advanced there eventual plan of capturing the Ruhr area. With the Allied advance paused, Gerd von Rundstedt found the time to reorganize the scattered German armies into a coherent defence line and go on a limited effective.

Fierce resistance, particularly around Bastogne, were terrain favoured the defenders and so threw the German timetable behind schedule.

Eventually the Allies’ superior numbers and equally overstretched German supply lines began to take their toll, slowing the German advance enough that the American troops around and in key Belgian town of Bastogne could link up with the main allied advance, cutting off a larg part of the by then retreating German forces.

Causes of the conflict
Germany needed a decisive breakthrough to cut the British off on the Dutch-Belgian border and to help reduce American moral, especially as supplies were running low.

Result
A close Allied victory.

Political outcome
The Americans conclude that it is best to call a truce on the Western Front whilst they were wining and they were better off fighting Japan in the Pacific in the long run. The UK and France were not so easily put off. Newly arrived Brazil and Chile were determined not to leave only months after joining the conflict in Europe. German, Hungarian and Romanian moral began to rise.

Also see

 * Hitlers World