World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind. Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach us, not only about the profession of arms, but also about military preparedness, global strategy, and combined operations in the coalition war against fascism. This book follows military operations of the US Army in France from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. In his political testament Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") Adolf Hitler wrote, "Strength lie...

This edited collection examines the role of the Fulda Gap—located at the border between East and West Germany—in Cold War politics and military strategy. The contributors analyze the strategic deliberations of the Warsaw Pact and NATO, the balance of forces, the role of the local peace movement, and various other topics, while weaving together the history of the Cold War at local, European, and global levels.

In the winter of 1944–1945, Hitler sought to divide Allied forces in the heavily forested Ardennes region of Luxembourg and Belgium. He deployed more than 400,000 troops in one of the last major German offensives of the war, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge, in a desperate attempt to regain the strategic initiative in the West. Hitler's effort failed for a variety of reasons, but many historians assert that Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr.'s Third Army was ultimately re...

ARDENNES-ALSACE (The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II)-This ebook Included TOC for Reader.-This sample in this ebook ;Commanders and intelligence officers (G–2) at every level— from the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), to the divisions holding the line—judged that the Germans were too weak to attempt regaining the initiative by a large-scale offensive. Despite their awareness that enemy units were refitting and concentrat...

[Includes 14 maps and 96 photos]During most of the eleven months between D-day and V-E day, the U.S. Army was carrying on highly successful offensive operations. As a consequence, the American soldier was buoyed with success, imbued with the idea that his enemy could not strike him a really heavy counterblow...Then, unbelievably, and under the goad of Hitler's fanaticism, the German Army launched its powerful counteroffensive in the Ardennes in Dec. 1944 with the design of knifing t...

An account of the ups and downs of a six-month-long WWII campaign with "a well detailed chronological order of the battles [and] interesting photographs" ( Armorama).A selection of the Military Book Club.Following the Allied breakout from the Normandy beachhead in July 1944, the vaunted German Army seemed on the verge of collapse. As British and US forces fanned out across northwestern France, enemy resistance unexpectedly dissolve...

A military intelligence expert examines the most formative battle of World War II.The Battle of Normandy was the greatest offensive campaign the world had ever seen. Millions of soldiers battling for control of Europe were thrust onto the front lines of a massive war unlike any experienced in history. But the greatest of clashes would prove to be the crucible in which the outcome of World War II would be decided.Author John Prados tells the story of how and...

The last great assault by the German Army in the West.Operation Nordwind is one of the lesser known campaigns of World War II yet one of the more intriguing. Largely overshadowed by the Battle of the Bulge further north, Nordwind was the last great operation by the Waffen-SS Panzer divisions in the west, and the last time the Wehrmacht was on the offensive in the West. The campaign also highlights the difficulties of inter-Allied cooperation between the Americans a...

THE BEGINNINGS OF VICTORYShortly after the D-Day invasion, the Allied forces in Europe had stalled. A limited operation was set in motion to punch a small hole in the enemy defenses, starting on July 25, 1944. It was called Operation Cobra, and it would become one of the greatest offensives in all of military history.In the sixty days following the launch of the operation, the Allies -- commanded by Dwight Eisenhower and led by men such as the irascible Gen...

The Ardennes offensive in December 1944, known to history as the 'Battle of the Bulge', was the decisive campaign of the war in North-West Europe.When the attack in the north by 6th Panzer Army failed, Hitler switched the focus of the offensive to General Manteuffel's 5th Panzer Army farther south. Overwhelming the green US 106th Division, German Panzers flooded towards the River Meuse.Barring their way was the crossroads town of Bastogne, reinforced at the...

[Includes 26 maps and 92 illustrations]The American armies that absorbed the shock of the German counteroffensives in the Ardennes and Alsace in the winter of 1944-45 were the most powerful and professional that the United States had yet put in the field. That this was the case was abundantly demonstrated as the final campaign to reduce Nazi Germany to total defeat unfolded.The campaign was remarkably varied. As it gathered momentum in the snows of the Ardennes and the mud an...

Fought 65 years ago this December, the Battle of the Bulge still ranks as the single largest battle ever fought by the United States Army. More men, vehicles, supplies, equipment, aircraft, and effort went into this thirty-day battle than into any other in American history. It was larger than Gettysburg, larger than the Gulf War, larger than the landings in Normandy that ignited the fuse that carried the army halfway across Europe to the blood-stained snow of the Ardennes. Thirt...