US Army troops dug in during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944. National Archives.↗
On December 16, 1944, 250,000 German troops attacked through the Ardennes forest in the largest German offensive in the western theater since 1940. For a week, the outcome was genuinely uncertain.
Hitler's plan—Operation Wacht am Rhein—was to split the Allied line through the Ardennes, capture Antwerp, and trap the British and Canadian armies north of the breakthrough, forcing a negotiated peace. The Ardennes was thinly held. Allied air power was grounded by bad weather. The attack achieved genuine surprise. What Hitler did not adequately account for was that American soldiers in 1944 were not the armies he had shattered in 1940.
The German assault initially overwhelmed American positions along an 85-mile front, creating the 'bulge' that gives the battle its name. The Sixth Panzer Army's northern thrust was slowed by fierce resistance at St. Vith and Elsenborn Ridge—units that simply refused to move despite being surrounded. At Malmedy, 84 American POWs were massacred by Waffen-SS troops under Jochen Peiper—a war crime that stiffened American resolve across the sector.
The 101st Airborne Division, rushed to the vital crossroads town of Bastogne by truck, found itself surrounded by December 20. German commanders demanded surrender. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe's response—'Nuts!'—has become one of the most quoted American military communications of the war. Bastogne held. When the weather cleared on December 23, Allied air power devastated German supply columns. Patton's Third Army broke through to relieve the garrison on December 26.
The Bulge committed Germany's last armored reserves—rebuilt over six months specifically for this operation—into an offensive that achieved neither strategic objective. By January 1945, those reserves had been spent. When Allied forces crossed the Rhine in March 1945, Germany had nothing in reserve to oppose them. The Bulge accelerated the final collapse.
William Morrow, 1984
Da Capo Press, 2004
Presidio Press, 1994
In September 1944, Bernard Montgomery's ambitious airborne operation aimed to capture a series of bridges into Germany and end the war by Christmas. At Arnhem, the plan met the SS.
The story of D-Day is usually told in terms of heroism under fire on the beaches. The true marvel is the planning and logistics that put 156,000 men ashore on June 6, 1944—and kept them there.
From August 1942 to February 1943, Germany and the Soviet Union fought the largest and deadliest urban battle in history. Stalingrad destroyed an entire German field army and fundamentally altered the strategic balance of the war.
