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Back to our continuing Twitter reenactment of the Battle of the Bulge

If you haven’t been following along, you’ll need to at least read this thread.

https://twitter.com/18airbornecorps/status/1342913096566902786?s=20

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Here's the situation on Wednesday, December 27, 1944: The Allies, feeling confident they can hold the Germans, look to settle on a plan to erase the bulge.

Montgomery still has a lot of concerns about the Patton / Ridgway / Collins plan.

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Many on here have been very critical of Monty ( @shelby3a is certainly no fan) but Monty's not the only one who had reservations about this simultaneous push directly north south.

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Other Allied leaders, including Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff Beetle Smith, believed Gerd von Rundstedt, Field Marshal directing the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes, had enough combat power left in the North to defeat the VII & XVIII Airborne Corps.

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Monty also had reason to believe that the Allied First Army in the North was decimated by the fighting in December and may have been unable to sustain the kind of daring counterattack Patton wanted.

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Patton disagreed, referring to Monty "a tired little fart."

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“War requires the taking of risks and [Monty] won’t take them,” Patton wrote in his diary.

This statement seems incongruent with the catastrophic risks Monty just assumed in Op Market Garden [if you haven’t, may want to go back and read our threads on that operation].

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So, a compromise middle option is developed within Eisenhower’s staff. Take a look.

[END]

To settle on a strategy, Eisenhower sets a meeting with Monty for the next day, Thursday, December 28th in the beautiful Belgian port town of Hasselt.

The two Masters of the Universe are to meet on Ike's command train.

And that's where we'll pick it up tomorrow.