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"On December, 16, 1944, Hitler launched his last gamble in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes. He believed he could split the Allies by driving all the way to Antwerp, then force the Canadians and the British out of the war. Although his generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. Many were...

After the success of the Normandy invasion, the Allied commanders are buoyantly confident that the war in Europe will be over in a matter of weeks, that Hitler and his battered army have no other option than surrender. But despite the advice of his best military minds, Hitler will hear no talk of defeat. In mid-December 1944, the Germans launch a desperate and ruthless counteroffensive in the Ardennes forest. As American commanders respond to the...

"December 16,1944, the vanguard of three Grerman armies totaling 500,000 men suddenly attacked out of the mists and snows of the rugged Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg in what was the last desperate gamble of Adolf Hitler to reverse the impending defeat of Nazi Germany. In the most abysmal failure of battlefield intelligence in the history of the U.S. Army, the Germans achieved total surprise. Six hundred thousand Americans fought in what...

In December 1944, the German Army launched an attack through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium that aimed to seize the port of Antwerp and cut the Allied supply lines, hoping to force the Western Allies either to delay their advance on Berlin, or even agree a peace settlement. The Battle of the Bulge is a comprehensive history of Hitler's last offensive in the West, the failure of which undoubtedly hastened the end of World War II. The book begins with...

By late 1944 the Allies were poised to smash the Siegfried Line and break into Germany. Supply lines were shorter thanks to the port of Antwerp. Arnhem aside, there had been a long run of victories and there was no intelligence even from ULTRA to suggest a German counter-offensive. So the major December attack through the mountainous Ardennes by massed Panzers and infantry took the Allies totally by surprise. Fog and low cloud negated the Allies'...

The post-Normandy battles that the Allies fought as they struggled for seven months to advance from the Seine to the Rhine were complex and controversial. Even after sixty years, the questions remain of who was responsible for the failure at Nijmegen, the destruction of the British First Airborne Division at Arnhem, and the failure of Operation Market Garden. Could the war in Europe have been won in 1944 with better strategies? Historian Robin Neillands...