Battle of the Bulge

On December 16, 1944, the German army mounted a surprise attack on Allied forces in World War II (1939–45). Now known as the Battle of the Bulge, it was the last desperate offensive made by the Germans. Though the element of surprise initially gave the advantage to the German army, the Allied troops managed to regain ground and force a German retreat by the end of January 1945.

Nazis hoped to divide Allies

By December 1944, the plan to conquer Europe launched five years earlier by Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was losing on all fronts. From Italy, France, and the Soviet Union, Hitler's armies were being forced back to Germany. To prevent an Allied invasion of the homeland along the western border, Hitler organized a surprise attack. Hoping to split the Allies , he planned to push them back, capture Antwerp, and thus be in a position to negotiate peace. With few men available for such an attack, Hitler assembled his remaining reserves and relied on surprise to accomplish his goals. They secretly gathered more than two hundred thousand men and twelve hundred tanks near the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg, where the Allied presence was weakest.

The German forces waited for the weather to worsen to prevent Allied air support. On December 16, snow and fog presented the ideal opportunity to strike. German armies attacked along a sixty-mile front of the Allied lines. They drove forward hoping to separate the Allied armies. With the Allied armies being pushed back in this region, a bulge of German pressure formed in the Allied front. This bulge of German presence into the Ardennes region gives the battle its name.

December skies cleared

The German army had some success, including the capture of Bastogne and the isolation of some American troops. The weather cleared on December 23, however, enabling Allied planes to attack the Germans and to drop supplies to Allied ground forces. Though the battle began to turn at this point to favor the Allied counteroffensive, it would not end quickly. Bitter fighting continued until January 28, when the last of the bulge was eliminated and the Allied forces had recovered all the ground lost.

The Battle of the Bulge is remembered as the last major German offensive. It was a large-scale attack that left many casualties on all sides. Over six hundred thousand Americans were involved in the fighting, and nearly ninety thousand were captured, wounded, or killed. The Germans had nearly eighty-five thousand similar casualties. Hitler used the very last of his reserves in the offensive. Germany was severely weakened and fell to Allied forces just a few months later.