🪖 NUTS! Gen. Anthony McAuliffe Refused To Surrender, The Bulge, Bastogne, Belgium, Dec.1944

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NUTS! The General Who Refused to Surrender, Dec. 22, 1944, Battle of the Bulge, Bastogne, Belgium. - Anthony C. McAuliffe, (7 min).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_McAuliffe
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- (National Park Service). In the summer of 1944, after the Allies pushed the Germans out of Normandy and back toward their own border, Hitler began planning a major offensive. By mid-Sept., he hoped to regain the strategic initiative in the West and pressure the Allies into accepting a negotiated peace. A combination of factors, Allied overconfidence, thinly stretched American lines in the Ardennes (manned by inexperienced replacement troops), and harsh winter weather, led the Germans to launch a surprise attack in mid - Dec. 1944. The freezing, snowy conditions also grounded the U.S. Army Air Forces, preventing air support against the advancing Germans.

- On Dec. 16, 1944, the Germans struck, creating a massive bulge in the Allied front lines, giving the battle its famous name. They pushed 50 miles deep across an 85-mile front, but the Americans mounted fierce resistance, adapting quickly and surprising the Germans with their tenacity. The battle raged for 6 weeks, becoming the largest and bloodiest single engagement fought by U.S. forces in World War II. By Jan. 28, 1945, Hitler’s last major offensive in Western Europe had failed. The Allied victory not only shattered German momentum but also shortened the war by an estimated 6 months.
https://www.nps.gov/places/battle-of-the-bulge.htm
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(Wiki). The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive or Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during the Second World War, taking place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945.[18] It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of eastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg.

The offensive was intended to stop Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split the Allied lines, allowing the Germans to encircle and destroy each of the four Allied armies and force the western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis powers' favor. The Germans achieved a total surprise attack on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence based on the favorable defensive terrain and faulty intelligence about Wehrmacht intentions, poor aerial reconnaissance due to bad weather, and a preoccupation with Allied offensive plans elsewhere.

American forces were using this region primarily as a rest area for the U.S. First Army, and the lines were thinly held by fatigued troops and inexperienced replacement units. The Germans also took advantage of heavily overcast weather conditions that grounded the Allies' superior air forces for an extended period...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge