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World War II Battle of Bastogne Belgium, part of the larger Ardennes Offensive or Battle of the Bulge. Encircled by the German Army the 101st Airborne Division fights to survive in the frigid cold winter weather. C-47 transport planes drop supplies by parachute to the encircled 101st Airborne Division. American troops gather the supplies. Scene of a crashed C-47 on snow covered field. Snow covered tanks. Soldiers in snow covered foxholes and trenches. Tanks on snow covered field firing. Close-up of soldier in foxhole using a field radio. U.S. soldiers firing rifles and machine gun from foxholes. Captured German soldiers...

This two part 1965 film begins with the background of events on Hitler's Ardennes offensive December 1944, with focus on 19 December attack on St. Vith and marking the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. The second part continues with the Battle of the Bulge along with highlights of the U.S. Army's 84th Infantry Division fighting the German Army in World War II, including the penetration of the Siegfried Line in November 1944 and the move into Belgium in December 1944. The film is narrated by actor, Robert Taylor. The Big Picture two episodes produced by the U.S. Army...

By December 23rd holding the line around Bastogne was less of an issue compared to the crisis of dwindling supplies. Not only were troops short on food and medical supplies but ammunition was frighteningly low. Rounds were rationed and soldiers were ordered not to fire unless attacked directly and even then to only fire two rounds. Colonel Thomas L. Sherburn, the artillery commander, was intentionally reporting overestimates of supply levels simply to maintain morale.

December 15, 1944. All is mostly quiet along the western front in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. It's cold, and the nights are dark. So dark that GI Joe, sitting and waiting, can't see his hand in front of his face. Four divisions of the US army are parked at a 75-mile front along the western frontier of Germany. The American commanders believe that the German Wehrmacht is finished and not capable of offensive operations. They either haven't been talking to some of the GI Joes in the front lines, or they aren't taking GI Joe seriously. He has been hearing...

The Ardennes Offensive (16 December 1944 25 January 1945) was a major German offensive launched towards the end of World War II through the forested Ardennes Mountains region of Belgium (and more specifically of Wallonia: hence its French name, Bataille des Ardennes), France and Luxembourg on the Western Front. The offensive was called Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (translated as Operation The Guard on the Rhine or Operation "Watch on the Rhine") by the German armed forces (Wehrmacht). This German offensive was officially named the Ardennes-Alsace campaign[5] by the U.S. Army,[6] but it is known to the general public simply as...

Patton 360 - Battle of the Bulge by History Channel

Generals At War: Episode 06 The Battle of the Bulge The Greatest battle America ever fought was against Hitler's Army when it staged one of the last offensives of the war in Belgium against American troops who were alone and unprepared for the Nazi onslaught. Despite overwhelming odds American troops defeated the German Blitz preventing history from repeating itself as it did when Hitler first invaded Belgium in the begining of the war.

On Jan. 29, 1945, First Sgt. Leonard Funk, Jr. faced a determined German army officer ready to kill him with a pistol. Armed with a Thompson M1A1 submachine gun, the U.S. Army paratrooper had just led an assault against 15 houses occupied by German troops in Holzheim, Belgium. It was part of an operation by the 82nd Airborne Division to clear German soldiers from the area following the Battle of the Bulge. Leading a makeshift headquarters platoon of clerks, Funk and his unit captured 30 prisoners. He left them with several dozen more prisoners—under guard—and returned to the fight. While...

Planes Filled the Sky Remembering the Battle of the Bulge. Warren Kozak January 5 - January 12, 2015, Vol. 20, No. 17 Exactly seventy years ago, Allied forces in Europe experienced an all-too-common occurrence in war: a huge intelligence failure that led to a surprise attack, followed by a horrific battlefield disaster. That it was transformed into victory by the Allies  was due, in large measure, to the incredible bravery of young Americans, who were outnumbered, outgunned, and fighting in some of the worst physical conditions of World War II.Seventy years later, the Battle of the Bulge is not as...

Albert Darago had never fired a bazooka before. He was an “ack-ack” guy, a fuse-cutter on a 90mm antiaircraft gun. But on Dec. 19, 1944, the brass was looking for volunteers to go after some German tanks. And Darago said sure. He was a 19-year-old, color-blind draftee, a native of Baltimore’s Little Italy and a musician who played piano and clarinet. He was no hero, he said. But when Adolf Hitler launched the massive attack that began World War II’s bloody Battle of the Bulge, he had not reckoned on GIs like Darago.

In a bedroom lay a white silk pillow - yellowed with age and emblazoned with the screaming eagle emblem of the Army's 101st Airborne Division. On the walls were pictures and plaques telling the story of a World War II veteran; in another room was an adjustable hospital bed and, on a windowsill, a worn Bible. That October day, Jim Bennett was looking for an investment, a house to buy, rehab, then rent or resell, as he has done with about 500 others over more than 20 years. But Bennett found much more at the modest, two-story rowhouse on Winton...

Belgium’s King Philippe, right, and Queen Mathilde throw nuts to the public, during the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, in Bastogne, Belgium, on Saturday. The tradition dates from when the Germans asked for the US surrender in Bastogne, to which General Anthony McAuliffe answered: ‘Nuts!’ Photograph: Yves Logghe/AP Braving snowy weather, Americans and Belgians gathered in the Ardennes on Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of one of the biggest and bloodiest US battles of the second world war, the Battle of the Bulge. Jean-Claude Klepper, 62, of Virton, Belgium, said “we must never forget what...

The Battle of the Bulge was the largest and bloodiest battle during World War II on Europe's western front, with casualties of 81,000 Americans and 100,00 Germans. It began at the end of 1944 when National Socialist Workers Party amassed three armies for an enormous attack against the Allies in the Ardennes Forest. eneral Eisenhower stated in his order, DECEMBER 22, 1944: "By rushing out from his fixed defenses the enemy may give us the chance to turn his great gamble into his worst defeat. So I call upon every man, of all the Allies, to rise now to new...

<p>On the morning of December 19, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower strode into the gloomy school building in Verdun that housed the main headquarters of General Omar Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group. He had called a meeting of all the senior commanders under Bradley. More than just the building was gloomy; the weather outside was a dark gray, and the tactical situation facing the American Army in Europe was also dark. Adolf Hitler’s gigantic Ardennes counteroffensive had been launched three days before, and German Gen. Hasso von Manteuffels’s Fifth Panzer Army was about to surround the all-important road junction at Bastogne. The news had reached the United States, and near panic reigned from across the ocean.</p>

On this date in 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, American forces were surrounded in the town of Bastogne when a group of German soldiers passed a message to the American commander demanding his surrender. General Anthony McAuliffe, the American commander, was said to have reacted to the message by saying, "Us surrender? Aw, nuts!" The reply was then written: To the German commander: NUTS! The Germans attacked Bastogne, but the American soldiers held on until bombers and reinforcements could arrive. The Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive in World War II, ended in late January,...

Sixty nine years ago, the largest land battle ever fought by the US Army started today. Do you know anyone who was there? Or maybe someone from your family was there and didn't come back, or came back changed in some way?

A World War II veteran and the nation's oldest living Medal of Honor recipient has died in New Jersey. Nicholas Oresko, an Army master sergeant who was badly wounded as he single-handedly took out two enemy bunkers during the Battle of the Bulge in 1945, died Friday night at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, hospital officials announced Saturday. He was 96. Oresko had been hospitalized after injuring himself in a fall at an assisted living center in Cresskill. He died of complications from surgery.

Al Jaffe was a scrappy, streetwise Jewish kid from the Bronx who climbed into a P-51 Mustang fighter plane in the last year of World War II and flew it into history. Second Lt. Abraham “Al’’ Jaffe completed 77 reconnaissance missions in Europe, including one that helped turn the tide of the war during the pivotal Battle of the Bulge. He was also involved in holding the bridge at Remagen, Germany, enabling U.S. troops to cross the Rhine River two months before the war ended. His exploits inspired Henry Fonda’s character, Lt. Col. Daniel Kiley, in the 1965 feature film...

December 1944 World War Two was in overdrive. The major powers were slugging it out about the world - in Europe, Africa, and in the Pacific for 5 long years already- since 1939. The United States had entered the fray when the US Congress had declared war on Japan (December 8, 1941) for attacking Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). Then on December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy had declared war on the United States. We were in the war for the long haul. Early December 1944, we had thought the war, at least in Europe, would be over in a...

Breath taking pics...