Battle of the Bulge

The Battle of the Bulge was the last effort of an almost defeated German military. Running low on supplies, troops, and gasoline, the Wehrmacht had to make a final push. As the Americans and British advanced from France and the Russian onslaught continued from the East, the Germans found themselves being squeezed farther and farther into Germany. As US and British forces entered Belgium and the border of Germany, they encountered some of the heaviest fighting in the war. Desperate German divisions pushed back with unseen ferocity. Panzers and German infantry columns pushed hard into the Ardegne forest, pushing through the Belgium border. The German panzers had little fuel left. The Panzers needed fuel in order to run, and they had to reach crucial Belgium cities to capture fuel and refuel the war machine. This all out push was almost successful. In the Ardegne forest US paratroopers defended the town of Bastion from advancing German tank divisions. The Americans lines fluctuated but never broke. The Germans advanced under fog cover hoping to reach their destination as quickly as possible. The American line held long enough for cloud cover to burn off. As the skies cleared in came the American bomber and tank hunting planes. The superior American air force ended the offensive, rendering German tanks unusable. With the German army losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers and German tanks running out of gas, the Germans were forced to retreat back to the Siegfried line. This incredibly blooding close quarters fighting in dense forest in Belgium was the bloodiest battle fought by the United States in the entire war. This one last ditch effort by Hitler eventually led to the defeat of the struggling German Army.