The Battle of the Bulge was a last effort from Hitler to split the Allies. As Chelsea and I found out by just looking at the map of the battle, it was very confusing. The Allies consisted of the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Some of the commanders included Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, Omar N. Bradley of the 12th U.S. Army Group, Courtney Hodges of the 1st U.S. Army, Anthony McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne, and Bernard Montgomery from Canada. Commanders from Germany were Walter Model, Gerd von Rundstedt, Hasso von Manteuffel, Sepp Dietrich, Erich Brandenberger, and Adolf Hitler, of course.
On December 16th, 1944, the battle started. Hitler believed that the alliance between Britain, France and America was not strong so that a major attack and defeat would break the triangle up. He believed his forces would be able to surround and cut off Canada’s First army, America’s First and Ninth Armies, and Britain’s Second Army. It was a crazy idea on paper, as Germany had been in retreat since D-Day. The military’s supplies had been depleted, and after all, they were facing the mighty Allies. But Hitler, stubborn as he was, thought the attack should still take place.
The Battle of the Bulge took place through the Ardennes Mountains of Belgium and also France and Luxembourg. That winter, the Ardennes Forest had the coldest, snowiest weather “in memory.” The battle was the largest one fought by the Americans in World War 2. There were 500,000 Germans, 600,000 Americans, and 55,000 British men. At the end of the war there were 100,000 German casualties, killed, wounded, or captured and 81,000 American casualties, including 23,544 captured and 19,000 killed. Those are some big numbers!!
The Germans never could have won the battle as they did not have the ability to keep their columns supplied with fuel. After the war, Field Marshall von Rundstedt said that “all, absolutely all, conditions for the possible success of such an offensive were lacking” and General von Mellenthin agreed with him. In whole, the Battle of the Bulge was the worst battle, in losses, to the Americans.This battle had to be devastating for American families back home in the country. We lost a lot of lives. But as Americans we pulled through and won the battle!!!Cora
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