At 5:30 a.m. on Dec. 16, 1944, Nazi Germany’s dictator, Adolf Hitler, unleashed a massive offensive against Allied armies on the Western Front in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg. Some 250,000 German troops deployed in Belgium against a weakly held U.S. Army front. The heaviest blow fell on Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ U.S. First Army, particularly on Maj. Gen. Troy Middleton’s VIII Corps.

Penetrating the extended front of four U.S. divisions, the German Wehrmacht broke through First Army and drove 50 miles toward the Meuse River in Belgium, with the ultimate goal of seizing the port of Antwerp in that country. The Germans had mustered their Sixth Panzer Army under SS Col. Gen. Josef Dietrich, Fifth Panzer Army commanded by Hasso, baron of Manteuffel, and one infantry army (Seventh Army), commanded by Gen. Erich Brandenberger, for the effort.

In both magnitude and violence, the ensuing Battle of the Bulge, so called because the German penetration created a large bulge in the American lines, was unlike any battle in American history. Operations in the Ardennes from December 1944 into January 1945 amount to the largest battle in terms of number of combatants and casualties that has been fought by the U.S. Army in its nearly 250-year existence.

Overwhelming Advance

In military historian John S.D. Eisenhower’s estimation in his 1969 book, The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge, the salient feature of the combat on the first day of German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s offensive was that “the American units generally held their ground, though sizable penetrations were made between their positions.”

Overlooking the village of Lanzerath, Belgium, on the path of the German advance was 1st Lt. Lyle Bouck’s 18-man Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon of the 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division. Bouck’s mission was to “hold at all costs,” he said, which he did for all of Dec. 16 before his platoon was captured.

Meanwhile, Lt. Kenneth Farrens’ 2nd Platoon of C Troop, 18th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Group, 99th Infantry Division, mirrored Bouck’s heroics by holding the town of Krewinkel, Belgium, against overwhelming numbers from the German Sixth Panzer Army. The actions of both Bouck’s and Farrens’ platoons were remarkable for the contributions a handful of men were able to make on the first day of the battle.

At the senior command level, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was first to recognize that the German counteroffensive was not a local counterattack. Eisenhower exuded optimism, cabling Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall on Dec. 17, “If things go well, we should not only stop the thrust but be able to profit from it.”

Airborne Called In

Eisenhower next ordered the 101st and the 82nd Airborne Divisions into the battle, sending the 101st to the important crossroads at the town of Bastogne, Belgium, then sending the 82nd to the northern flank near the village of Elsenborn, also in Belgium.

On Dec. 19, Eisenhower halted Allied armies fighting toward the Rhine River. He then instructed Lt. Gen. George Patton Jr. to relieve Middleton’s embattled VIII Corps at Bastogne.

Within days, the German offensive, spearheaded by Battle Group Peiper, commanded by SS Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper of the 1st SS Panzer Division, was in trouble and behind schedule. However, once his infantry cleared the way, Peiper unleashed his armored contingent. Making rapid gains, Peiper sought to reach the Meuse River, but American roadblocks and heavy fighting at the critical crossroads of Stavelot and Trois-Ponts, Belgium, disrupted his advance.

Along the way, Peiper’s SS troops massacred approximately 80 captured American prisoners. The majority of the slain were from Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. They were killed in Malmedy, Belgium. Finally halting at La Gleize, Belgium, due to fuel shortages and stiffening American resistance, Peiper led the 770 survivors of his original 4,000 men, augmented by approximately 1,800 men from two battalions that had joined his division, safely back to German lines.

Shoring Up the Shoulder

American units fought valiantly in defense of St. Vith, Belgium, including Brig. Gen. Bruce Clarke’s Combat Command B from the 7th Armored Division. Heavily outnumbered and short of supplies, Clarke was forced to abandon the town on Dec. 21 after losing nearly 1,000 GIs killed or captured. But the defense of St. Vith allowed Allied armies under the operational command of British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery to shore up the northern shoulder of the bulge.

Meanwhile, the 101st Airborne Division under temporary command of Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe warded off repeated German attacks in defense of Bastogne. Clear skies by Christmas allowed Allied air support, and on Dec. 26, the 37th Tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division, under Lt. Col. Creighton Abrams Jr. of Patton’s Third Army, crested a ridge south of Bastogne and raced into town. The siege of Bastogne was over, and the immediate crisis in the bulge had passed.

Heavy fighting remained within the bulge through mid-January 1945. The Allies now maintained the initiative after the relief of Bastogne.

In his 1999 analysis of U.S. infantry divisions in the European Theater, The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941–1945, history professor and retired Col. Peter Mansoor posited that the American First and Third Armies “then capitalized on their strengths—massed firepower, air superiority, tactical mobility, steadfast infantry, superior tank strength, and inexhaustible logistics—to defeat German forces in the Bulge and regain lost territory.”

New Year’s Eve Attack

During the Battle of the Bulge, the enemy also had, as a diversionary measure, mounted an attack on Lt. Gen. Jacob Devers’ 6th Army Group front on New Year’s Eve, with the apparent objective of regaining the Alsace-Lorraine plains westward to the Vosges Mountains in southern France. Code-named Nordwind (North Wind), that attack failed, and Devers’ forces inflicted 25,000 casualties upon the German First Army. Nordwind ended with the Germans gaining nothing more than 20 miles of terrain of no tactical or strategic importance.

In Eisenhower’s official report that covered the Battle of the Bulge, he informed the Combined Chiefs of Staff that the German counteroffensive had opened on Dec. 16, 1944, and had been brought under control by the 26th. The initiative in the battle had passed to Allied forces shortly thereafter, and by Jan. 16, Allied forces were in a firm position, prepared to counterattack into the heartland of Germany.

On Jan. 22, Hitler ordered his Sixth Panzer Army to Hungary as the Soviet army launched its winter offensive. The war in the West was lost. Belgium and Luxembourg were liberated, this time for good. Having eliminated the Third Reich’s threat to his front, Eisenhower began massing three army groups to cross the Rhine River along Germany’s western frontier.    

In retrospect, victory in the Battle of the Bulge belonged to the individual GIs of the U.S. Army. Initially surprised by the size and scope of the enemy onslaught, American soldiers fought valiantly and provided time for their commanders to react and assemble the combat power to undertake offensive operations. In the interim, American soldiers stopped everything the Wehrmacht threw at them.

Battle of the Bulge casualties were appalling. Among the approximately 600,000 American soldiers eventually involved in the fighting, casualties totaled 81,000, of which 19,246 were killed in action and some 20,000 captured. Among 55,000 British who fought in the campaign, losses totaled 1,400, of which just over 200 were killed. Germany amassed close to 500,000 men for the massive assault, losing at least 100,000 killed, wounded or missing. For the Wehrmacht, these losses were irreplaceable. Von Rundstedt’s Ardennes offensive certainly hastened the Third Reich’s demise.

Lessons for Today

Was the Battle of the Bulge worth the cost in American lives? Given the perspective of fourscore years’ hindsight, does the struggle provide lessons for the current U.S. Army?

Allied overconfidence greatly contributed to initial German success in the first two weeks of the Ardennes offensive. Given the nature of their victories in France and Belgium in the summer and autumn of 1944, American commanders greatly underestimated their adversary’s capacity to resist the Allied onslaught. Both Eisenhower and Montgomery had placed wagers in mid-1944 that the war would conclude by Christmas. Yet the German army already had demonstrated a resilience in Holland—after suffering catastrophic losses in Normandy, France—to thwart Montgomery’s abortive Operation Market Garden in September 1944.

The struggle in the Ardennes also serves notice that Army leaders must understand the difference between information acquisition and intelligence interpretation. Intelligence does not make decisions. In his final report on the operations in Europe, Eisenhower noted that his headquarters and 12th Army Group under Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley had felt for some time that a counterattack through the Ardennes was possible, but Allied headquarters did not consider it highly probable. The fact is that owing to complacency and smugness, no one in Allied headquarters or subordinate units seemed overly concerned about it.

Another lesson is that commanders should expect the unexpected. American units along the Western Front in December 1944 became complacent and neglected such soldier skills as active reconnaissance and patrolling, believing inclement weather would preclude enemy advances and the operational level of war. Wishful thinking is never a substitute for careful analysis of an enemy’s capabilities.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson wrote in his 2013 book, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944–1945, the most significant lesson for the modern force is, “War is never linear, but rather a chaotic, desultory enterprise of reversal and advance, blunder and elan, despair and elation.” The Battle of the Bulge demonstrates that modern warfare is a combination of valor and cowardice, small victories and initial setbacks, luck and missed opportunities, and seemingly disconnected small-unit actions.

As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the U.S. Army’s greatest battle, let us ensure that the valiant warriors of the Battle of the Bulge did not die in vain.

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Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired, a former professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, is a writer and consultant. He holds a doctorate in history from Ohio State University.