Collin Palmer's List: Battle of the Bulge Project

• the Western Allies were infected with the over-confidence that flowed from the sweeping victories they had gained four months earlier
• German armies would drive through the forest of the Ardennes to cross the River Meuse, then sweep north to retake Brussels and seize the port of Antwerp
• The Western alliance against the Axis would collapse, freeing Germany to deal with the mounting pressure being exerted on the Eastern Front by the Red Army.
• The Führer was now seeking what the German General Staff referred to as a 'total decision'.
• When Rundstedt received the final orders, the words 'Not To Be Altered' were scrawled across them in Hitler's spidery hand.
• It took four days for the Americans to pull themselves together.
• On a windswept plateau 30 miles to the southwest, the vital road hub of Bastogne was also denied to 5th Panzer Army by 101st Airborne Division, rushed up by truck from Rheims. Manteuffel was forced to bypass Bastogne as he pressed on for the Meuse.
• Eisenhower, however, began to exert a firm grip on the battle. General George S Patton was ordered to swing his US 3rd Army through 90 degrees and drive north to strike at the southern flank of the 'bulge' driven into the Allied line.
• The American troops besieged in Bastogne held out. When on 22 December the Germans offered their commander, Brigadier-General Anthony McAuliffe, either surrender or annihilation by massed artillery, his celebrated reply was 'Nuts!'.
• 'The icebound raids glittered in the sunshine and I witnessed the uninterrupted air attacks on our traffic routes and supply dumps. Not a single German plane was in the air and innumerable vehicles were shot up and their blackened wrecks littered the roads.'
• Autumn Mist had inflicted 19,000 casualties on US 12th Army, and had taken 15,000 American prisoners. But the cost to the German Army had been 100,000 men killed or wounded and 800 tanks destroyed - losses which could not be made up.
• In contrast, Autumn Mist had merely caused a hiccup in the Allied preparations to break into Germany, while denying desperately needed reinforcements to the German Army on the Eastern Front.

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• One glimmer of light for Germany came in the Ardennes, in France, where in December a German counteroffensive - the Battle of the Bulge - killed 19,000 Americans and delayed the Allies' march into Germany.

• December 16: The Battle of the Bulge begins. Hitler sends a quarter million troops across an 85-mile stretch of the Allied front, from southern Belgium into Luxembourg. In deadly cold winter weather, German troops will advance some 50 miles into the Allied lines, creating a deadly "bulge" pushing into Allied defenses.