Ambrose, Stephen E.

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Stephen E. Ambrose

Excerpt from Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany

Published in 1997

The Allies broke out of Normandy, France, on July 25, 1944. The Allied forces in France were made up of soldiers from Britain, Canada, France, and the United States. Their goal was to fight their way through France and Belgium and into Germany, eventually forcing the surrender of the German forces occupying most of Europe.

Allied forces made great strides throughout the summer of 1944. The French capital, Paris, was liberated from Germany's control on August 25. By December, the Allied advance on Germany was stopped in its tracks because supplies of gas, food, and ammunition were running short. The German army launched a counterattack against the Allies on December 16, 1944. More than 250,000 heavily armed German troops gathered to repel the Allies and capture the Belgian city of Antwerp; it was through this port city that Allied forces received their supplies.

The Germans directed their line of attack through the dense woods of the Ardennes Forest (pronounced "ar-DENN") in southeastern Belgium. The Ardennes was a weak spot in the American line, left largely unprotected by ground troops. Using blitzkrieg (pronounced "BLITS-kreeg," meaning "lightning war" in German) tactics, the Germans caught the Americans by surprise, bombarding the enemy troops under the cover of a thick early morning fog. The Germany army pushed about 40 miles into the American line, producing a "bulge" in the line. (See map on p. 189.) For Americans, the Battle of the Bulge would become the costliest battle of the war.

Things to remember while reading the excerpt from Citizen Soldiers:

In his book Citizen Soldiers, Stephen E. Ambrose examines how successful the U.S. Army was in its efforts to "creat[e] an army of citizen soldiers from scratch."
The Battle of the Bulge is considered the last great German offensive in World War II.
The following excerpt is set in the Ardennes at the height of the surprise attack on American troops.
Note the importance of the airborne divisions in the Ardennes campaign, especially the U.S. 101st, whose members were veterans of combat in Normandy and Holland. (The 101st was a division of General George S. Patton's Third Army.)

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

What happened next …

The Allied forces rallied and fought back. Their mission was to close the 40-mile-deep bulge in the Ardennes—all the while facing bad weather, rough terrain, and the unbelievable power of German "Tiger" tank warfare. Belgian citizens aided the Allied effort in small but invaluable ways-repairing blown truck tires, housing soldiers, even donating family linens for troops to drape over equipment as winter camouflage.

In the struggle for the key city of Bastogne in the Ardennes, German forces sought the surrender of American General Anthony McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne Division. His response to the proposal for surrender was just one word: "Nuts!" With the rest of General Patton's American force fighting in the South and General Bernard Montgomery's British force in the North, the Allies joined together and succeeded in driving the Germans out of Belgium by the end of December.

The "bulge" in the Ardennes was eliminated by mid-January 1945. About sixteen thousand Americans died in the battle, and another sixty thousand were injured or captured. The Germans sustained even heavier losses.

The First American army crossed the all-important Rhine River— Germany's biggest and best natural line of defense-on March 7, 1945. Meanwhile, Soviet forces were moving in on Germany from the east. The German surrender was only two months away.

Did you know …

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander of Allied forces in Europe, was attending the wedding reception of one of his men in Versailles, France, on December 16, 1944. He did not learn of the German counterattack in the Ardennes until that night.
Frostbite and trench foot (a painful foot ailment caused by exposure to cold and wetness) put more than fifteen thousand American soldiers out of commission during the Battle of the Bulge.
Referring to the major role played by the Americans in the Allied campaign in the Ardennes, British prime minister Winston Churchill called the Battle of the Bulge "the greatest American battle of the War and … an ever-famous American victory."

Where to Learn More

Books

Astor, Gerald. A Blood-Dimmed Tide: The Battle of the Bulge by the Men Who Fought It. New York: Dell, 1994.

Blumenson, Martin. Patton: The Man Behind the Legend. New York: Morrow, 1994.

Devaney, John. Blood and Guts: The True Story of General George S. Patton.New York: J. Messner, 1982.

Goldstein, Donald M., and others. Nuts: The Battle of the Bulge. Washington: Brassey's, 1994.

MacDonald, Charles B. A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge. New York: Morrow, 1985. Reprinted, 1997.

Orfalea, Gregory. Messengers of the Lost Battalion: The Heroic 551st and the Turning of the Tide at the Battle of the Bulge. New York: The Free Press, 1997.

Ryan, Cornelius. A Bridge Too Far. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974.

Van Houten, Robert, ed. Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge. Paducah, KY:Turner Publishing, 1991.

Videos

Guts and Glory. "The American Experience." PBS/WGBH, 1998.

The War Chronicles: World War II. Volume 3: Pursuit to the Rhine. Volume4: The Battle of the Bulge and The Battle of Germany. Produced by Lou Reda Productions. A&E Home Video Presents History Channel Video/New Video, 1995.

Web Sites

Battle of the Bulge. [Online] http://users.skynet.be/bulgecriba/battlebul.html (accessed on September 7, 1999).

Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge. [Online] http://www.battleofbulge.com/ (accessed on September 7, 1999).

Sources

Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany. Originally published in 1997. New York: Touchstone, 1998.

Black, Wallace B., and Jean F. Blashfield. Battle of the Bulge. "World War II50th Anniversary Series." New York: Crestwood House, 1993.

Dolan, Edward F. America in World War II: 1944. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1993.

Goolrick, William K., Ogden Tanner, and the editors of Time-Life Books. The Battle of the Bulge. "Time-Life Books World War II Series." Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1979.

The Massacre at Malmédy

Aggressive and brutal Lieutenant Colonel Jochen Peiper, commander of the First SS (Schutzstaffel) Panzer Division (an elite German tank division), directed a ruthless campaign westward through the Ardennes. On its way, his division overran a less-heavily armed American unit at Malmédy, a town in eastern Belgium. Somewhere between 125 and 150 Americans surrendered to the Germans. Rather than wasting time taking the prisoners to a camp, the German troops gathered the Americans together and shot them. It remains unclear whether Peiper issued a direct order for the shooting. Eighty-five of the captured Americans died in the mass execution; the rest escaped into the woods or "played dead" until the Germans moved on.

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