Editing Omar Bradley (section)

===Germany===
The American forces reached the "[[Siegfried Line]]" or "Westwall" in late September. The success of the advance had taken the Allied high command by surprise. They had expected the German ''[[Wehrmacht]]'' to make stands on the natural defensive lines provided by the French rivers, and had not prepared the [[American logistics in the Western Allied invasion of Germany|logistics]] for the much deeper advance of the Allied armies, so fuel ran short.
 
[[File:Marshall arnold and bradley.jpg|right|thumb|[[Chief of Staff of the United States Army|Army Chief of Staff]] General [[George Marshall]] (center) and [[United States Army Air Forces|Army Air Forces]] Commander General [[Henry H. Arnold]] confer with Bradley on the beach at Normandy in 1944]]

Eisenhower faced a decision on strategy. Bradley favored an advance into the [[Saarland]], or possibly a two-thrust assault on both the Saarland and the [[Ruhr Area]]. Montgomery argued for a narrow thrust across the Lower Rhine, preferably with all Allied ground forces under his personal command as they had been in the early months of the Normandy campaign, into the open country beyond and then to the northern flank into the Ruhr, thus avoiding the [[Siegfried Line]]. Although Montgomery was not permitted to launch an offensive on the scale he had wanted, George Marshall and [[Hap Arnold]] were eager to use the [[First Allied Airborne Army]] to cross the Rhine, so Eisenhower agreed to [[Operation Market Garden]]. Bradley opposed the operation, and bitterly protested to Eisenhower the priority of supplies given to Montgomery, but Eisenhower, mindful of British public opinion regarding damage from V-1 missile launches in the north, refused to make any changes.

[[File:LtGen Omar Bradley, LtGen George Patton, and MGen Manton Eddy.jpg|thumb|left|From left to right: Major General [[Leven Cooper Allen|Leven C. Allen]], Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, Major General [[John Shirley Wood|John S. Wood]], Lieutenant General [[George S. Patton]] and Major General [[Manton S. Eddy]] being shown a map by one of Patton's armored battalion commanders during a tour near Metz, France, November 1944]]

Bradley's Army Group now covered a very wide front in hilly country, from the [[Netherlands]] to [[Lorraine (région)|Lorraine]]. Despite having the largest concentration of Allied army forces, Bradley faced difficulties in prosecuting a successful broad-front offensive in difficult country with a skilled enemy. General Bradley and his First Army commander, General [[Courtney Hodges]], eventually decided to attack through a corridor known as the Aachen Gap towards the German township of Schmidt. The only nearby military objectives were the Roer River flood control dams, but these were not mentioned in contemporary plans and documents.<ref>Whiting, Charles, ''The Battle of Hurtgen Forest'', p. 69.</ref> Bradley and Hodges' original objective may have been to outflank German forces and prevent them from reinforcing their units further north in the [[Battle of Aachen]]. After the war, Bradley would cite the Roer dams as the objective.<ref>Whiting, Charles, ''The Battle of Hurtgen Forest'', p. 44.</ref> Since the Germans held the dams, they could also unleash millions of gallons of water into the path of advance. The campaign's confused objectives, combined with poor intelligence,<ref>Whiting, Charles, ''The Battle of Hurtgen Forest'', p. 44: None of the senior commanders appear to have considered the potential danger to U.S. forces if the Germans released large amounts of water from the Roer dams, flooding the area and channeling U.S. forces into zones heavily defended by the German army.</ref> resulted in the costly series of battles known as the [[Battle of Hurtgen Forest]], which cost some 33,000 American casualties.<ref name="D'Este, Carlo p. 627">D'Este, Carlo, ''Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life'', p. 627.</ref> At the end of the fighting in the Hurtgen, German forces remained in control of the Roer dams in what has been described as "the most ineptly fought series of battles of the war in the west."<ref name="D'Este, Carlo p. 627"/> Further south, Patton's Third Army, which had been advancing with great speed, was faced with last priority (behind the U.S. First and Ninth Armies) for supplies, gasoline and ammunition. As a result, the Third Army lost momentum as German resistance stiffened around the extensive defenses surrounding the city of [[Metz]]. While Bradley focused on these two campaigns, the Germans were in the process of assembling troops and materiel for a surprise winter offensive.