COVER STORY
By the winter of 1944 Nazi Germany was retreating on all fronts. Driven back to the very borders of the Reich, Hitler, the arch-gambler, threw the dice in the heavily-forested Ardennes region, betting a surprise offensive by Germany’s last major reserves could capture Antwerp, split the Western Allies and turn the tide of the war. Launched on 16 December, Operation Wacht am Rhein soon floundered in the dreadful terrain and from stiffer than expected American opposition. Desperate to kickstart the stalled offensive, Hitler once again went on the attack, his eye settling this time on the disputed region of Alsace-Lorraine to the south.
Hitler knew that to help stop the Germans in the Ardennes, Eisenhower, as Supreme Allied Commander, had detached Patton’s Third Army from Jacob Devers’s 6th Army…