The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 3

reconfigure resources and capabilities. The COG itself also has to be ‘powerful’ enough to

provide robustness and/or have a disruptive effect on a competitor (see following textbox).

[Text Box starts] Battle of the Bulge

On 6 th June 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy, France, and opened a third front, to be

distinguished from the Russian and Italian fronts. It only took two months for the Allies to reach the

outskirts of the Third Reich, an impressive feat given the initial delays and losses in the Bocage

country (the Normandy hedgerows). September 1944 though, saw the disastrous campaign –

Operation Market Garden – that failed to capture bridges over the river Rhine at Arnhem (Holland). As

a result, the Allies were forced to divert their forces westwards, towards Aachen and Cologne, to open

up a corridor to the Ruhr valley, the industrial heart of Germany.

In December 1940, a German offensive in the west – Operation Wacht am Rhein – was

envisaged. Intended to operate like the action in May 1940, a force of seven panzer and thirteen

infantry divisions (with two panzer and seven infantry divisions in reserve) would push through the

American lines south of Liège, cross the river Meuse, and drive towards the deep water port of

Antwerp, which was still in hands of the Germans. The intention was to split the British and Canadian

21st Army Group and the American 9th Army, and lay the grounds for another Dunkirk like rout of the

Allied forces, followed by peace negotiation with the west.

The battering ram consisted of four Kampfgruppen (battle groups), equipped with the most

advanced equipment that Germany could muster at that time. Among them were probably the best

medium tank of WWII, the PzKpfW V, better known as the Panther, or the Tiger II, also christened by

the Allies ‘King Tiger’, the heaviest production tank with 70t. The most powerful battle group was the

Kampfgruppe Peiper, led by the notorious Waffen-SS officer Colonel Joachim Peiper. Its objective

was to get to the Meuse, through a narrow corridor of around 50km wide, through the thickly wooded

terrain of the Ardennes and its single-track roads and hairpin turns; this was unsuitable terrain for

tanks that had grown considerably in weight and size since 1940.

‘H’-hour was set for 16 th December 1944. Operation Bodenplatte – the destruction of the Allied

Air Forces on the ground − and Stoesser – a parachute drop near Malmédy, achieved little success.

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