@ Buzzsaw
The better equipment of the Waffen-SS is pretty much as mystical as many urban myths about WW2. For example even in 1944 none of the german Panzer Divisions, regardless whether they were Heer or Waffen-SS, had enough half-tracks to equip its two Panzergrenadier Regiments with them. So even the "elite" SS never got everything it wanted. It often needed more replacements because these divisions tended to get the "suicide assignments" and suffered accordingly.
And as for the Ardennes Offensive ... Sepp Dietrich himself said it best.
Quote:
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"All Hitler wants me to do is to cross a river, capture Brussels, and then go on and take Antwerp! And all this in the worst time of the year through the Ardennes, where the snow is waist deep and there isn't room to deploy four tanks abreast, let alone panzer divisions! Where it doesn't get light until eight and it's dark again at four and with reformed divisions made up chiefly of kids and sick old men - and at Christmas!"
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I recently purchased the excellent "The Battle of the Bulge - Then and Now" because I want to make an accurate model of a King Tiger of schwere SS-Panzerabteilung 501 and the advance of Panzergruppe Peiper was held up mostly by the atrocious state of the roads and timely destruction of key river crossings by the US forces. This, in turn, forced them into the confrontation at Stoumont - La Gleize and thwarted any chance of a decisive breakthrough. The whole idea of "Wacht am Rhein" was ludicrous given the looming Red Army in the East ...