Battle of the Bulge
Towards 1945 the Russians had liberated most of Eastern Europe and the Allies most of Western Europe and they were poised to invade Germany. Hitler decided to concentrate his big effort in the western front with the aim of making a breach between the British and the Americans. The Germans launched a massive offensive on the 16th of December 1944 with a quarter of a million soldiers in the Ardennes forests between Belgium and Luxemburg. The Germans surprised the Allies. They attacked the St Vith area, by-passed the American 101st Airborne Division which remained encircled at Bastogne –at the main road center in the area. At Malmedy an SS armored force under command of Joachim Peiper murdered some 80 unarmed American prisoners. However, due to bad weather, a shortage of fuel, and the stubborn resistance of the Americans forces -- mainly cut-off individual infantry units encircled in Bastogne, the German offensive was halted. The German commander sent a delegation of officers to Major-General McAuliffe commander of the 101st Airborne Division besieged in Bastogne to arrange surrender of the paratroopers and his reply was “nuts”!. The Germans asked if this was positive or negative (of course McAuliffe rejected any idea of surrender). With the weather improvement on the 23rd of December Allied aircraft began to attack unceasingly the German armor concentrations. On the 26th of December the American 4th Armored Division (belonging to Patton’s Third Army) broke through to Bastogne thereby relieving the siege of the American paratroopers. This ended the Battle of the Bulge. In this battle the Germans lost their last armor reserves and most of their remaining military potential. The reasons that the Germans were successful at the beginning were the stormy weather which helped them this time to hide their forces Allied air reconnaissance. They could therefore exploit the element of surprise. The Allied High Command estimated that the Germans did not have the possibility at this stage of launching a large-scale offensive. The Allies had small forces in the Ardennes at that time which could not halt the Germans. The reasons that the Germans finally failed were lack of fuel and the stubborn resistance of the American forces mainly paratroopers. These recovered speedily following the initial German attacks. The town of Bastogne, in which there were large fuel dumps, did not fall to the Germans. Finally, American forces under Patton’s command (3rd Army) transferred to the area and pushed the Germans back. Allied concentration of forces and total command of the air left the Germans with no chance of winning. The German soldiers abandoned their tanks and other vehicles which either fell into the hands of the Americans or were destroyed. Most of them managed to return to their lines through the forest.