ljadw wrote:As a lot of people you have a wrong idea of the Ardennes : they are a small geographical region south of the Meus, much south. They include the southern part of the province of Liège,the major part (not all ) of the province of Luxembourg and a part of the Duchy of Luxembourg.
While the width at the German border was some 100 km, it was at the French border less than 25 km ;this means that there was no road space enough to deploy at the French border 9 PzD . There is also the fact that there were no railroads going from Germany to France through the Ardennes and good roads were almost inexistant ;when I visited in 1961 the Mardasson at Bastogne ,we were driving at 20 km per hour through roads who had not changed since the 19th century .
That's why the forces of AGA and a part of AGB were advancing to a line between Charleroi and the city of Luxembourg( 210 km );big armies need a lot of road space and adequate railroads which were not available in the Ardennes .
A better military definition of what comprises the Ardennes.
The Ardennes, like the Eifel, is not a single and well-defined bloc. The general area may be defined as a wedge with the point between Aachen and Düren. The northern edge is a diagonal: Aachen, Liège, Maubeuge, Landrecis. The southern edge (much debated by geologists) is a more pronounced diagonal running from Aachen southwest to Arlon. The base, formed by the Forêt des Ardennes or French Ardennes, roughly coincides with the Franco-Belgian frontier and the Semois River. The Ardennes has three recognized subdepartments: the High Ardennes in the south, the Famenne Depression in the middle, and the Low Ardennes in the north. The Low Ardennes tends to be open and rolling, but includes two plateaus: that of Herve, between Liège and Aachen, and Condroz, between the lower Ourthe and the Meuse in the vicinity of Dinant. This sector is more readily traversed than is the High Ardennes, but it is relatively narrow, maneuver is constricted by the flanking line of the Meuse River, and entrance from the east presupposes that the invader has possession of Aachen and the roads circling north or south of the Hohes Venn.
The Famenne Depression is only a thin sliver of the Ardennes wedge. The Famenne is free from tree cover except for the characteristic buttes which dot the depression. Scooped out of the Ardennes massif, this long, narrow depression originates at the upper Ourthe and extends westward through Marche and Rochefort. It reaches the Meuse between Givet and Dinant, offering a good crossing site which often has been employed by European armies operating on the Meuse. But an invader from the German frontier must traverse much difficult terrain before debouching into this "march through" depression.
The High Ardennes is often called the "True Ardennes." It is not properly mountainous, nor yet a forest; rather it is a wide plateau or high plain out of which rise elevations in the form of ridges or higher plateaus erupting from the main mass. These elevations generally are unrelated to one another and combine with large forests to form isolated and independent compartments in which tactical domination of one hill mass seldom provides domination of another. The mass structure extends on a northeast-southwest axis, forming a watershed which drains away to the Meuse in the north and the Moselle in the southeast. Perhaps a third of the area is covered with forest, much of which is coniferous. This timber, however, is scattered all over the High Ardennes and presents a patchwork picture rather than a series of large forested preserves. The main mass is cut in zigzag patterns by winding, deeply eroded rivers and streams, some flowing parallel to the higher ridges, others crossing so as to chop the ridges and the welts on the plateau into separate sections. In some places the watercourses run through narrow, almost canyonlike depressions with steep walls rising from a hundred to three hundred feet. Even the wider valleys are narrow when compared with the western European norm.
Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: The Battle of the Bulge, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History U.S. Army, 1963), pp. 41-42.