War has erupted between nearly the entire world TWICE and because of it, many, many lives have been harmed, destroyed, lost, and forgotten. Not only lives have been hurt, but also property. Many cities (not just the U.S.) have been mutilated or destroyed and most were eventually rebuilt. There are many people that think that if you know and understand why things happened in the past, you can prevent them from happening in the future. If this is so, then my hopes are that this helps to stop something that engulfed nearly two hundred thousand lives and left them to never be seen alive again. These lives were lost during the Battle of the Bulge. It is also known at the Ardennes and was the last major battle during World War II. The Battle of the Bulge isn't one huge battle, but actually a series of battles mainly fought by the Americans and the Germans. This was the Germans last major offensive during World War II and was obviously very costly in lives. As a total, there were three American armies, which is the equivalent of six corps. or thirty one divisions. The Germans also had three armies, but they had ten corps. or twenty nine divisions instead. Though it was mainly America versus Germany, there were also some British and other nations involved. What made this German offensive so amazing was how Germany got such a big force. This part was amazing because Germany had just finished fighting France and had suffered huge amounts of losses. .
The Battle of the Bulge started December 16th.(1) Though it started on December 16th, Hitler actually wanted it to start between November 10th and November 20th.(2) The reason the Battle of the Bulge was named so was because of the huge line it carved into the American defensive line. The American's line was so thin, they sometimes had to cover eighty miles of territory with only eighty-thousand men! Hitler had so much faith in his plan that he removed divisions from his already weak defensive line and put it into his armies for the offensive.