On the way

By launching a surprise dawn attack on unsuspecting American forces during the frigid hours of December 16, 1944, the German army was taking the biggest and most desperate gamble of World War II. The stakes were to involve western civilization itself. Panzers broke through the thickly forested Ardeness, the last place along the entire Western Front Allied intelligence could have imagined the Germans would attack. The German forces were fresh, and their tanks were new. G.I.'s fell back. Many surrendered. Most got themselves together and held on valiantly. Casualties kept mounting. The overwhelmed G.I.'s needed help, lots of it. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces, turned to General George S. Patton. Over three days, the quarter-million men in his Third Army withdrew from their positions to the South and moved North. Such a shifting hadn't been considered by the German high command, who then watched in disbelief as it was carried out with lightning speed and adaptability. Nothing in its advanced planning came close to predicting how soon their own revitalized infantry and tank divisions, high on glory and vengeance, would confront forces just as tough and determined. The result was the greatest and most decisive battle of World War II and which would become known as the "Battle of the Bulge." At its end on January 25, 1945, the "Bulge" would account for seventy-six thousand casualties among the American forces. German casualties ran past one-hundred thousand.