In regards to World War II, I always hear about the great number of Allied victories won between the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. Very little is spoken of German victories.
Are there any instances where the Germans achieved a short-term victory in western Europe after D-Day and before the Battle of the Bulge? What are the most notable of these?
I believe the next major operation on the Western front was the Allies' Operation Market Garden. The idea was to get across the Rhine in force using paratroopers followed up with armor, and thus hopefully win the war before Winter set in.
This was a failure for the Allies, as they got themselves stretched a bit too far, and couldn't complete their main objectives. So it could be viewed as a German success (although a defensive one). But even after this victory, the Germans were on the defensive.
Part of what allowed the initial German success in the Battle of the Bulge was that the Allies had it in their heads that they were on the offensive, and there weren't going to be any more German offensives.
Thus the Ardennes Offensive (aka: The Battle of the Bulge) can be viewed as the German's first attempt to take back the offensive.
Model and von Rundstedt both ... felt that maintaining a purely defensive posture (as had been the case since Normandy) would only delay defeat, not avert it. They thus developed alternative, less ambitious plans that did not aim to cross the Meuse River ... plan called for a classic blitzkrieg attack through the weakly defended Ardennes Mountains—mirroring the successful German offensive there during the Battle of France in 1940—aimed at splitting the armies along the U.S.—British lines and capturing Antwerp.
The main reason you don't hear about German offensive victories on the Western Front after Normandy is that there aren't any.
The Germans did have a localized offensive in Falaise to try and stop the Allied breakout, which resulted in about 225000 captured. Market-Garden was a defensive battle, in which they beat back an ill conceived operation. At most other places along the front the Germans managed to block the Allied offensives as their force petered out in the autumn of 1944.
True offensives were rare to absent, which is the major reason Bulge itself was such a surprise.
