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“They had to hug each other to share body warmth.”īack then, TIME reported that 1944 was “the climactic year” of the war against Germany. “They were facing two enemies: the Germans and the weather,” as Kershaw puts it. There were more than 75,000 American casualties, and nearly 20,000 Americans were killed by the time the month-long campaign ended in mid-January. “Even if the Germans had seized Bastogne, the question was what next? They wouldn’t have been able to get to Antwerp.” “Then we had to push the forces back to where they started, so that bitter battle to push the forces back didn’t end until the end of January 1945,” says Kershaw. The American soldiers ambushed these tanks on narrow winding roads, causing a traffic jam that slowed down their march and caused a crucial loss in momentum, keeping them from reaching the crucial Belgian city of Antwerp. “That’s the story that’s come to dominate, and it became one of the most celebrated moments of the entire war, but the Battle of Bulge wasn’t won through the ‘Christmas relief.’ It was won in the first 48 hours, when small groups of American soldiers stopped strike forces from reaching the Meuse river,” he says. The effort, sometimes called the “Christmas relief” effort, was more of a turning point in terms of morale than military strategy, argues Alex Kershaw, author of The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II’s Most Decorated Platoon. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter He had been touring the aid stations, had heard the wounded beg him, “Don’t give up on account of us, General Mac.” He sat at a debris-littered desk, printed his reply with formal military courtesy: “To the German Commander-NUTS!-the American Commander.” So there would be no misinterpretation, an officer translated for the blindfolded German envoy: “It means the same as ‘Go to Hell.'” instincts: “The serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well-known American humanity.”

The alternative: “annihilation by artillery.” The German commander appended a touching appeal to U.S. He delivered an ultimatum: two hours to decide upon surrender. Through the lines on Friday came an enemy envoy carrying a white sheet.