US Government map of Belgium.
US Government map of Belgium.
The battle itself was a major German offensive and Allied counter-offensive lasting from 16 December 1944 through 25 January 1945.
The Allies had pushed east from the early June landings in Normandy, moving across France and into Belgium.
Below are a number of public-domain U.S. military maps from the Wikipedia article on the battle. First, the situation in December 1944 immediately before the German push west:
The German pushed to the west during the ten days 16-25 December 1944 in an operation they called Wacht Am Rhein. The "Bulge" westward in the German line and the source of the common name for the battle is obvious here.
A detail shows how Bastogne was almost entirely surrounded and cut off:
The Allied pushed back to the east 26 December 1944 through 25 January 1945:
As Stephen Ambrose describes it, "The 101st Airborne still had a complaint. As the story of the Battle of the Bulge is told today, it is one of George Patton and his Third Army coming to the rescue of the encircled 101st, like the cavalry come to save the settlers in their wagon circle. No member of the 101st has ever agreed that the division needed to be rescued!"
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| © Bob Cromwell Feb 2012. Created with /bin/vi and ImageMagick, hosted on OpenBSD with Apache. Root password available here, privacy policy here. |
