The German Ardennes Offensive that precipitated the Battle of the Bulge was Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s scheme to reverse Germany’s failing fortunes in the war by launching a surprise, devastating blow against the Western Allies, chiefly the United States, Britain, Canada and France. Army’s greatest battle is either wrong or so clouded by myth making that the realities of the Battle of the Bulge have been lost. Unfortunately, much of what we “know” about the U.S. Patton won the battle single handedly with his brilliant counterattack into the bulge’s southern flank. Many people still equate the entire five-week-long battle with only one portion of it, the weeklong siege of Bastogne, and believe that General George S. Despite the appearance of myth-dispelling works by noted historians – including MacDonald, Russell Weigley, Forrest Pogue, Hugh Cole, Stephen Ambrose, Carlo D’Este, Rick Atkinson, and John and David Eisenhower – the legends persist. Yet this epic battle led to some of the longest enduring myths and misconceptions in U.S. Only the six-week-long Meuse-Argonne Offensive in World War I produced more American casualties (122,000). ground troops in the Battle of the Bulge dwarfs American involvement in most of the country’s other famous battles: Yorktown, 1781 (8,800 Americans allied with 7,800 French) New Orleans, 1815 (5,000) Chapultepec, 1847 (7,200) Gettysburg, 1863 (150,000 total Union and Confederate) Meuse-Argonne, 1918 (500,000) Okinawa, 1945 (183,000 Army and Marine Corps invasion troops) Operation Desert Storm, 1991 (about 500,000) and Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003 (300,000 U.S. MacDonald, who had fought in it as an infantry company commander, “the greatest single victory in U.S. At its end five weeks later, the battle had become, in the words of historian Charles B. Army’s greatest battle.ĭecember 16, 2014, marks the 75th anniversary of the opening shots of the powerful German Ardennes Offensive that evolved into the greatest battle ever fought by the American Army, the Battle of the Bulge.
After seven decades, it’s time to set the record straight on the myths and realities of the U.S.
0 kommentar(er)
