The Bitter Woods : The Battle of the Bulge

Soldiers of the West Front!! Your great hour has arrived. Large attacking armies have started aginst the Anglo-Americans. I do not have to tell you anything more on that. You felt it youself: WE GAMBLE EVERYTHING! You carry with you the holy obligation to give everything to achieve things beyond human possibilities for our Fatherland and our Fuhrer! -Gerd von Rundstedt, Commander in Chief, West Front The Battle of the Bulge was the greatest single battle ever fought by the American army. More than a million American troops were involved and nearly 80,000 became casualties. During the autumn of 1944 Hitler's Reich had squeezed out of Germany its last reserves of manpower and industrial strength, to turn the smashed armies of the west once again into a coherent and credible force. Behind that force lay the new technologies that the Nazis hoped could win the war - the V1 and V2 rockets, the ME 262 jet fighter, and, most important for the Bulge, the mighty 68-ton King Tiger tank. These forces were to be thrown against the weak American armies of the Ardennes to strike once again through Belgium and cut off the Allied armies at the front. It was a staggering and unexpected gamble. And, aided by weather that grounded Allied aircraft, it almost succeeded. The defeat of the German armies in the Bulge contributed decisively to the end of the war. This is the story of Germany's last great offensive and the desperate struggle which broke the German armies. The Battle of the Bulge is the subject of a major film next year. This is its definitive story.