Monday marks 80 years since the Battle of the Bulge, when the Nazi army made its last offensive push of World War II.
The battle was one of the costliest of the war, with the U.S. Army suffering more than 80,000 casualties, according to the National World War II Museum.
The offensive was intended to be a counterattack after the Allies pushed into Belgium toward Germany, one that Hitler’s generals opposed, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
The Germans found initial success with the surprise attack due to cloud cover neutralizing Allied air superiority and record-breaking cold weather battering American forces, according to History.com.
“I was from Buffalo, I thought I knew cold,” baseball Hall of Famer and WWII veteran Warren Spahn said in “The Love of Baseball.” “But I didn’t really know cold until the Battle of the Bulge.”
He had no family. He was not famous.Yet hundreds attended this WWII veteran’s funeral.
Initial successes were temporary as Allied forces retook lands lost by the end of January 1945 and the Nazis lost between 80,000 to 100,000 casualties, according to the Army Center. The American victory and the opening of an offensive by the Soviets on the eastern front made the fall of the Third Reich all but a matter of time.
Winston Churchill called the six-week battle “the greatest American battle of the war.”
Here are some historical images of the Battle of the Bulge.
