The Battle of the Bulge was the largest and bloodiest engagement the United States Army fought during World War II. Across the Ardennes Forest, from December 1944 until January 1945, history didn’t pause for Christmas. In this horrific melee of steel coffins in a frozen forest, the Christmas miracle wasn’t peace—but survival.

On December 24, 1944, the Americans and Germans duked it out not for control over the forest itself, or the tiny village of Freyneux, but for a clear pathway to Antwerp. 

There, in that port city of Antwerp, were located the lucrative fuel depots that sustained the Allied advance into the heart of Hitler’s Reich. Hitler dreamt of taking Antwerp with a decisive thrust of armor and men in the middle of the winter, slicing hard and methodically through the Anglo-American lines in the Ardennes to get there.

Describing this plan as “audacious” would be too generous. It was completely unrealistic. Nor would Germany be able to hold Antwerp against the might of the Allied armies, or drive the Allies to seek peace. All that the attack could do would be to delay the inevitable.

Yet the Battle of the Bulge was also the only offensive choice that Germany had at its disposal on the Western front by the time........

© The National Interest