The Battle of the Bulge: Hitler's Last Gamble

In June 1944, nearly three million Allied troops landed in Normandy, successfully opening a second front in Europe. In September, Operation Market Garden, the plan to capture the bridge at Arnhem by airborne assault, failed, but German forces on the Western Front were steadily nearing collapse. On December 16, Hitler launched his “last throw of the dice”: he massed his forces in the Ardennes, where Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg meet, and mounted a counteroffensive to seize Antwerp, the Allies' main supply port, and try to create a second “Dunkirk evacuation.”

The Allies, convinced the German army could no longer mount a strategic offensive, were caught off guard. Some soldiers broke under the German assault, fleeing or surrendering, but many more held their ground bravely and resisted stubbornly, slowing the German advance. Driven by desperation and revenge, and compounded by the harsh winter weather, the Battle of the Bulge was as brutal as the Battle of Stalingrad on the Eastern Front. Both Allied and German forces suffered nearly 100,000 casualties. Renowned British military historian Antony Beevor recounts this bloody battle, which ultimately broke the Wehrmacht, in meticulous detail, day by day.