50 Fun Facts About Battle of the Bulge

What was the German codename for the December 1944 Ardennes offensive?

Wacht am Rhein, 'Watch on the Rhine', was a cover name taken from a patriotic hymn, chosen so that anyone who heard it would picture a defence of the river, not an attack.

The Battle of the Bulge was timed for bad weather to cancel which Allied advantage?

Air power. The attack opened on 16 December 1944 under thick overcast and it worked at first: only when the skies cleared on 23 December could fighter-bombers start wrecking German columns and supply lines.

Which future novelist was captured in the Battle of the Bulge while serving as a scout with the US 106th Division?

Kurt Vonnegut. Sent to Dresden as a prisoner, he survived the firebombing of the city in the meat locker of a slaughterhouse, the experience he later turned into Slaughterhouse-Five.

Why was the American line in the Ardennes so thin?

It seemed a quiet sector. The Americans used the wooded Ardennes to rest worn-out divisions and break in new ones, so the surprise attack fell on the weakest stretch of the whole Allied line.

Which miniseries has an episode titled 'Bastogne' about the paratroopers of Easy Company?

Band of Brothers. In the episode the company holds a line in the forest outside the town while fending off frostbite, hunger and German shelling.

Whose Third Army reached Bastogne from the south on 26 December, ending the siege?

George S. Patton. He turned his army north in days, and the first tanks into Bastogne were led by Creighton Abrams, the officer the M1 Abrams tank was later named after.

Roughly how many men did Germany commit to the Battle of the Bulge?

About 300,000. Counts run from some 200,000 in the first wave to over 400,000 in all, many in new divisions scraped together from sailors, airmen and civilians swept up in a last call-up.

Besides Belgium, the Battle of the Bulge was fought across the north of which small country?

Luxembourg. Freed only that September, its northern towns fell back under German occupation for weeks; at Clervaux about a hundred Americans held the castle until shellfire set it ablaze.

Which Normandy port, captured in June 1944 with its harbour wrecked, was the first big port the Allies took in France?

Cherbourg. Its German garrison had mined and wrecked the docks so thoroughly that repairs took months, one reason the Allied armies were still short of supplies when they reached the German border.

What was the nickname of the truck convoys that supplied the Allied armies racing across France in 1944?

Red Ball Express. The name came from the red dots that marked priority freight on American railroads, and its trucks ran in a loop on one-way roads closed to all other traffic.

Hitler first told his generals of an Ardennes counter-attack in September 1944 at which headquarters, bombed by plotters two months earlier?

Wolf's Lair. On 16 September 1944 Hitler cut into a routine briefing at this East Prussian base to announce he would strike back out of the Ardennes, with Antwerp as the goal.

Which field marshal led Army Group B into the Battle of the Bulge?

Walter Model. He thought Antwerp far beyond his means and pressed a 'small solution' aimed only at the Allied armies east of the Meuse, but Hitler overruled him.

What did the 'bulge' in the name Battle of the Bulge describe?

A wedge pushed into the Allied line. Newspaper maps showed the front sagging westward, and the reporters' nickname beat the Army's official title, the Ardennes Counteroffensive.

Which SS general led the Sixth Panzer Army, given the lead role and the shortest route to Antwerp?

Sepp Dietrich. Once Hitler's chauffeur and bodyguard, he owed the main role to loyalty more than skill: after the July bomb plot Hitler trusted the SS above his army generals.

Allied newspapers named the Battle of the Bulge offensive after which German commander, though Hitler had planned it?

Gerd von Rundstedt. The 'Rundstedt Offensive' was Hitler's own design; the old field marshal, commander in the West, was not told of it at first and thought it far too ambitious.

The German plan for the Battle of the Bulge counted on capturing which American supplies along the way?

Fuel. They got very little: the spearhead never reached the great American dumps near Stavelot, which were evacuated or burned as its tanks drew close.

Why did Allied codebreakers get so little warning of the Battle of the Bulge?

Radio silence. Back on home soil, German orders could go by courier and telephone wire instead of over the air, leaving the codebreakers little to intercept.

During the Bulge's spy scare, which American general had to prove his identity to sentries by naming the capital of Illinois?

Omar Bradley. Stopped three times by guards hunting Germans in American uniform, he also had to place the guard on a football line of scrimmage and name the husband of the film star Betty Grable.

Which SS commando led English-speaking Germans in American uniforms behind the lines in the Battle of the Bulge?

Otto Skorzeny. Already known for freeing Mussolini, he sent out jeep teams dressed as GIs; only a handful got through, but the scare they started put checkpoints across the whole Allied rear.

Operation Stösser, launched on the first night of the Battle of the Bulge, was what kind of mission?

Paratroop drop. The night jump scattered Colonel von der Heydte's men so widely that only a few hundred ever assembled, too few to hold their crossroads.

Which secret weapon did American gunners first turn on German ground troops in the Battle of the Bulge?

Proximity fuse. A closely guarded secret, it set off a shell in the air just above its target with no need for a direct hit, so troops caught in the open had no cover from the bursts.

How did the Battle of the Bulge open?

Artillery barrage. Guns and rocket launchers opened up at 5:30 am, and the surprise was so complete that some American outposts first took the noise for their own side firing.

Which weapon killed 567 people in an Antwerp cinema on the Battle of the Bulge's first day?

V-2 rocket. It came down on the cinema roof in mid-afternoon; 296 of the dead were Allied soldiers, and it took rescuers about a week to dig through the rubble.

In the Battle of the Bulge, which ridge held by the 2nd and 99th Divisions blocked the Germans' best roads west?

Elsenborn Ridge. The Germans never took it, so the SS spearhead meant to lead the whole offensive was squeezed onto poorer roads to the south and fell far behind its timetable.

Which 70-ton German tank rode with Kampfgruppe Peiper in the Battle of the Bulge?

Tiger II. For all the dread the 'King Tiger' inspired, Peiper kept his out of the lead: lighter Panthers and Panzer IVs made the dash while the heavy tanks were fed in behind.

Which American tank, the mainstay of US armoured units in the Battle of the Bulge, was outgunned by the German Panther?

M4 Sherman. It had the edge over the older Panzer IV, but against a Panther it usually won only when numbers let a crew work round for a shot at the flank or rear.

SS troops shot 84 American prisoners at the Baugnez crossroads in a massacre named after which nearby town?

Malmedy. A few men feigned death and escaped to American lines, so word of the killings spread almost at once and enraged the troops fighting in the sector.

Who were the Wereth 11, murdered by SS troops on the second day of the Battle of the Bulge?

Black American soldiers. The eleven artillerymen, cut off in the retreat, were taken in and fed by a farmer, Mathias Langer; it is believed a neighbour then told an SS patrol where they were.

American troops in the Battle of the Bulge improvised snow camouflage from what, supplied by Belgian villagers?

Bed sheets. The Germans came in white snow capes with white-painted panzers; the Americans answered by draping Belgian linen over men and vehicles, a gift recorded on the walls of the Mardasson Memorial.

What forced Kampfgruppe Peiper off its planned route west on 18 December 1944?

Blown bridges. American engineers wrecked the crossings at Trois-Ponts as the lead tanks arrived, turning the column north into the valley where it was later trapped; in 1940 German armour had met only slight resistance here.

How did Kampfgruppe Peiper's 800 survivors escape the La Gleize pocket?

On foot. Cut off, with the relief column unable to reach them, they left every tank and vehicle behind: 800 men walked out of the 4,800 who had set out.

Which Belgian town did the US 7th Armored Division defend for days before pulling out on 21 December 1944?

St. Vith. The Germans had meant to take it on the second day; the stand there cost them four more and wrecked their timetable, and American troops took the town back on 23 January.

Why was Bastogne vital to both sides?

Its road junction. In hill country with few good routes, whoever held the town controlled the way west, so the German columns that swung past it had to crawl round.

Which division formed the core of Bastogne's defence?

101st Airborne. Resting in France when the attack came, the division was trucked more than a hundred miles through rain and darkness and reached the town a day before German columns closed the ring.

What one-word reply did Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe send to the German surrender demand?

Nuts! The German officers who collected the reply had no idea what it meant, so the American colonel who delivered it translated for them: in plain English, 'Go to hell.'

Why was artillery chief Anthony McAuliffe in command at Bastogne when the Germans attacked?

The commander was away in America. Maxwell Taylor was in the United States when the alert came, so his artillery chief, a brigadier, took the division into the siege that made his name.

How did supplies first reach surrounded Bastogne?

By parachute drop. From 23 December transport planes dropped ammunition by the planeload, and gliders even brought in a team of surgeons.

In the Battle of the Bulge, where did Allied commanders meet on 19 December to plan their response?

Verdun. The meeting turned the Allies from defence to counter-attack: by the time it broke up, Third Army had orders to drop its own offensive and swing north toward Bastogne.

How could Third Army's commander promise to attack within days?

His staff had plans ready. Before leaving for the meeting he had three routes north worked out, and the first armoured column was already on the road when he was asked how soon he could attack.

During the Battle of the Bulge, the US First and Ninth Armies were temporarily placed under which commander?

Montgomery. The German advance had cut both armies off from their American headquarters to the south, so both went to the British field marshal, who moved his own reserves to guard the Meuse.

The German spearhead was stopped on Christmas Eve 1944 a few miles short of the Meuse bridge at which Belgian town?

Dinant. A British armoured brigade that had just handed in its tanks for new ones was told to take the old ones back and hurry to the river, where it ambushed the leading Panthers.

German commandos captured in American uniforms claimed their mission was to kill or capture which Allied leader?

Eisenhower. No such plot appears in the German plan, but nobody took the chance: the supreme commander was put under heavy guard and all but confined to his headquarters.

Acquitted by a US court in 1947, the commando chief behind the Germans in American uniforms settled in which country?

Spain. Still held after his acquittal, he escaped from an internment camp in 1948 and made his home in Madrid under Franco's protection.

Operation Bodenplatte, the Luftwaffe's mass attack on New Year's Day 1945, was aimed at what?

Allied airfields. Hundreds of planes were wrecked on the ground, yet the Allies made good the loss within days, while the Luftwaffe could not replace what it lost that morning.

Operation Nordwind, a second German offensive launched on New Year's Eve 1944, struck American lines in which French region?

Alsace. It hit a US Seventh Army thinned out to feed the Ardennes fight and pushed it back to the Moder River before the attack was finally halted on 25 January.

The US First and Third Armies met on 16 January 1945, cutting off the tip of the Bulge, at which town?

Houffalize. Hitler had authorised a pull-back from the tip of the bulge on 8 January, a week before the two American armies, slogging through deep snow, finally met there.

Who told the House of Commons the Bulge was 'undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war'?

Winston Churchill. He was warning his own side off: US troops, he told MPs, had 'done almost all the fighting', and nobody should claim 'an undue share' of the credit for the British Army.

War criminal Joachim Peiper died in 1976 when his house was firebombed on which national day?

France's Bastille Day. Sentenced to hang for the shooting of American prisoners, he served a prison term instead and settled in a French village, where attackers set his house alight on 14 July.

The German Seventh Army, guarding the Battle of the Bulge's southern flank, was made up almost entirely of which troops?

Infantry. Brandenberger had four divisions and some thirty assault guns but no armoured spearhead, so the flank guard for two panzer armies moved at walking pace and made little ground.

After the Battle of the Bulge, the surviving German units fell back behind which fortified border line?

The Siegfried Line. The Germans called it the West Wall; by early February the front stood roughly where it had in mid-December, only now their last reserves were spent.