2. The Battle of the Bulge, Northern Europe, December 1944 – January 1945
In the morning of December 16, 1944, German columns struck American forces in the Ardennes, in a massive and determined assault which was intended to split the allied forces into four groups and capture the port of Antwerp. The attack was launched in heavy wintry weather, using forces which the allies were unaware that the Germans had gathered on the western front. The weather prevented the allies from resorting to their air superiority to contain the attack. The Americans resisted the attack, at first piecemeal, and then growing more organized, particularly at the northern elbow of the salient the Germans created and at Bastogne, which contained important crossroads. The resistance threw the Germans off schedule, denied the use of some roads which prevented columns from advancing parallel to each other, and gave the Americans time to rush other units to the battlefield.
The German assault included fourteen hundred tanks and over 400,000 troops. Eventually the United States committed over 600,000 men to first stopping the German advance and then reducing the salient – the famous Bulge – which had been created in the Allied lines. By the end of December the Germans were reinforced but by that time the assault was already doomed to failure, following the arrival of reinforcements by the Americans under Patton from the south and clearing weather in January which allowed the Americans to use their P-47s to attack German tanks from the air. The fighting remained fierce as the Germans were pushed back, finally retreating to the defenses of the Westwall, known to Americans as the Siegfried Line. Over 19,200 Americans were killed in the fighting before the battle ended in January, 1945. They included Americans who had surrendered as prisoners of war before being shot by Waffen SS troops in the Malmedy massacre, where at least 84 Americans were murdered.