Download or read book The 101st Airborne Division s Defense Of Bastogne Illustrated Edition written by Colonel Ralph M. Mitchell and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [Includes 53 photos/illustrations and 11 maps] The defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II is one of the supreme achievements of American arms. Bastogne is deservedly identified with the finest characteristics of the American soldier, and the name Bastogne symbolizes a heroic battle. Bastogne has long held the attention of students of war, yet the battle offers new insights for soldiers with modern concerns. Colonel Ralph M. Mitchell’s study, The 101st Airborne Division’s Defense of Bastogne, reveals how a light infantry division, complemented by key attachments, stopped an armor-heavy German corps. Using original documents and reports, Colonel Mitchell traces the fight at Bastogne with emphasis on the organization, movement and, employment of the 101st Airborne Division. Although a variety of factors influenced the outcome at Bastogne, the flexibility of the 101st to reconfigure for sustained operations and to defeat strong opposition forces even when surrounded shows how properly augmented light infantry can fight and win.

Download or read book The Ardennes written by Hugh Marshall Cole and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book No Silent Night written by Leo Barron and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Christmas morning, 1944, there was little reason to celebrate.… As the Battle of the Bulge raged, a small force of American solders—including the famed 101st Airborne division, tank destroyer crews, engineers, and artillerymen—was completely surrounded by Hitler’s armies in the Belgian town of Bastogne. Taking the town was imperative to Hitler’s desperate plan to drive back the Allies and turn the tide of the war. The attack would come just before dawn. As the outnumbered, undersupplied Americans gathered in church for services or shivered in their snow-covered foxholes on the fringes of the front lines, freshly reinforced German forces of men and tanks attacked. The battle was up close and personal, with the cold, exhausted soldiers of both armies fighting for every square foot of frozen earth. In the end, the Allied forces would hold the town of Bastogne, with the hard-won victory boosting morale and sounding the death-knell for Hitler’s Third Reich. After this battle, the Nazis would never go on the offensive again. Featuring interviews with the soldiers who were there, as well as never-before-seen or translated documents, No Silent Night is a compelling chronicle of one day that changed the course of the war—and the world. INCLUDES NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN PHOTOS AND MAPS

Download or read book Those who Hold Bastogne written by Peter Schrijvers and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new telling of the brutal siege of Bastogne, where vastly outnumbered American forces held off a savage German onslaught and sealed the fate of the Third Reich Hitler's last gamble, the Battle of the Bulge, was intended to push the Allied invaders of Normandy all the way back to the beaches. The plan nearly succeeded, and almost certainly would have, were it not for one small Belgian town and its tenacious American defenders who held back a tenfold larger German force while awaiting the arrival of General George Patton's mighty Third Army. In this dramatic account of the 1944-45 winter of war in Bastogne, historian Peter Schrijvers offers the first full story of the German assault on the strategically located town. From the December stampede of American and Panzer divisions racing to reach Bastogne first, through the bloody eight-day siege from land and air, and through three more weeks of unrelenting fighting even after the siege was broken, events at Bastogne hastened the long-awaited end of WWII. Schrijvers draws on diaries, memoirs, and other fresh sources to illuminate the experiences not only of Bastogne's 3,000 citizens and their American defenders, but also of German soldiers and commanders desperate for victory. The costs of war are here made real, uncovered in the stories of those who perished and those who emerged from battle to find the world forever changed.

Download or read book Patton at the Battle of the Bulge written by Leo Barron and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Patton at the Battle of the Bulge, Army veteran and historian Leo Barron explores one of the most famous yet little-told clashes of WWII, a vitally important chapter in one of history’s most legendary battles. Includes photographs! “Barron captures the fiery general’s command presence and the pivotal commitment of his Third Army tanks to relieve the embattled crossroads town of Bastogne.”—Michael E. Haskew, Author of West Point 1915: Eisenhower, Bradley, and the Class the Stars Fell On December 1944. For the besieged American defenders of Bastogne, time was running out. Hitler’s forces had pressed in on the small Belgian town in a desperate offensive designed to push back the Allies. The U.S. soldiers had managed to repel repeated attacks, but as their ammunition dwindled, the weary paratroopers of the 101st Airborne could only hope for a miracle. More than a hundred miles away, General George S. Patton was putting in motion the most crucial charge of his career. Tapped to spearhead the counterstrike was the 4th Armored Division, a hard-fighting unit that had slogged its way across France. But blazing a trail into Belgium meant going up against some of the best infantry and tank units in the German Army. And failure to reach Bastogne in time could result in the overrunning of the 101st and turn the tide of the war against the Allies.

Download or read book The Tigers of Bastogne written by Michael Collins and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2013-06-08 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This chronicle of an armored division’s bravery during the Battle of the Bulge sheds new light on the legendary Siege of Bastogne in WWII. Before the 101st Airborne Division’s famous Siege of Bastogne, there was already a US unit holding the town when they arrived. This unit—the 10th Armored Division—continued to play a major role in its defense through the German onslaught. The Tigers of Bastogne offers a detailed chronicle of the young armored division that withstood the full brunt of Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army in the Ardennes. The 10th Armored had only arrived in Europe that September as part of Patton’s Third Army. They soon faced the onslaught of Nazi panzers bursting across no-man’s-land on December 16. But they earned their nickname, “The Tiger Division,” as they went on the defensive at Bastogne, surrounded by an entire German army. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne said, “It seems regrettable to me that Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division didn’t get the credit it deserved at the Battle of Bastogne. All the newspaper and radio talk was about the paratroopers. Actually the 10th Armored Division was in there a day before we were and had some very hard fighting before we ever got into it.” Fortunately, in this book, the historical record is finally corrected.

Download or read book Smashing Hitler s Panzers written by Steven Zaloga and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this riveting book, Steven Zaloga describes how American foot soldiers faced down Hitler’s elite armored spearhead—the Hitler Youth Panzer Division—in the snowy Ardennes forest during one of World War II’s biggest battles, the Battle of the Bulge. The Hitler Youth division was assigned one of the most important missions of Hitler’s Ardennes offensive: the capture of the main highway to the primary objective of Antwerp, the seizure of which Hitler believed would end the war. Had the Germans taken the Belgian port, it would have cut off the Americans from the British and perhaps led to a second, more devastating Dunkirk. In Zaloga’s careful reconstruction, a succession of American infantry units—the 99th Division, the 2nd Division, and the 1st Division (the famous Big Red One)—fought a series of battles that denied Hitler the best roads to Antwerp and doomed his offensive. American GIs—some of them seeing combat for the very first time—had stymied Hitler’s panzers and grand plans.

Download or read book The Fighting 30th Division written by Martin King and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2015-07-19 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The full story of the legendary US infantry division and their remarkable service in WWII, told through interviews with surviving servicemen. The 30th Infantry Division earned more Medals of Honor than any other American division in World War I. In World War II, it spent more consecutive days in combat than almost any other outfit. Recruited mainly from the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee, they were some of the hardest-fighting soldiers in Europe. They possessed an intrinsic zeal to engage the enemy that often left their adversaries in awe. Their US Army nickname was the “Old Hickory” Division. But after encountering them on the battlefield, the Germans called them “Roosevelt’s SS.” The Fighting 30th Division chronicles the exploits of this illustrious unit through the eyes of those who were actually there. From Normandy to the Westwall and the Battle of the Bulge, each chapter is meticulously researched with accurate timelines and after-action reports. The last remaining veterans of the 30th to see action firsthand relate their experiences here for the first time, including previously untold accounts from survivors.

Download or read book Battle of the Bulge 1944 1 written by Steven J. Zaloga and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of the Bulge was the largest and most costly battle fought by the US Army in World War II. The Ardennes fighting was Hitler's last gamble on the Western Front, crippling the Wehrmacht for the remainder of the war. In the first of two volumes on the Ardennes campaign Steven Zaloga details the fighting in the northern sector around St Vith and the Elsenborn Ridge. The Sixth Panzer Army, containing the bulk of German Panzer strength, was expected to achieve the breakthrough here. It was the failure around St Vith that forced the Germans to look south towards Bastogne.

Download or read book Saving My Enemy written by Bob Welch and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A true 'Band of brothers' story"--Dust jacket.

Download or read book The Bitter Woods written by John S. D. Eisenhower and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work tells the story of Germany's last great offensive, the desperate struggle which broke the German armies and contributed decisively to the end of the war. Described are details of the unexpected gamble and the technologies with which the Nazis hoped to win the war.

Download or read book Snow Steel written by Peter Caddick-Adams and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 929 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new assessment of the Battle of the Bulge, the largest and bloodiest battle fought by U.S. forces in World War II, offers a balanced perspective that considers both the German and American viewpoints and discusses the failings of intelligence; Hitler's strategic grasp; effects of weather and influence of terrain; and differences in weaponry, understanding of aerial warfare, and doctrine.

Download or read book Corps Commanders of the Bulge written by Harold R. Winton and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2016-07-10 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the Battle of the Bulge was Germany's last gasp, it was also America's proving ground-the largest single action fought by the U.S. Army in World War II. Taking a new approach to an old story, Harold Winton widens our field of vision by showing how victory in this legendary campaign was built upon the remarkable resurrection of our truncated interwar army, an overhaul that produced the effective commanders crucial to GI success in beating back the Ardennes counteroffensive launched by Hitler's forces. Winton's is the first study of the Bulge to examine leadership at the largely neglected level of corps command. Focusing on the decisions and actions of six Army corps commanders—Leonard Gerow, Troy Middleton, Matthew Ridgway, John Millikin, Manton Eddy, and J. Lawton Collins—he recreates their role in this epic struggle through a mosaic of narratives that take the commanders from the pre-war training grounds of America to the crucible of war in the icy-cold killing fields of Belgium and Luxembourg. Winton introduces the story of each phase of the Bulge with a theater-level overview of the major decisions and events that shaped the corps battles and, for the first time, fully integrates the crucial role of airpower into our understanding of how events unfolded on the ground. Unlike most accounts of the Ardennes that chronicle only the periods of German and American initiative, Winton's study describes an intervening middle phase in which the initiative was fiercely contested by both sides and the outcome uncertain. His inclusion of the principal American and German commanders adds yet another valuable layer to this rich tapestry of narrative and analysis. Ultimately, Winton argues that the flexibility of the corps structure and the competence of the men who commanded the six American corps that fought in the Bulge contributed significantly to the ultimate victory. Chronicling the human drama of commanding large numbers of soldiers in battle, he has produced an artful blend of combat narrative, collective biography, and institutional history that contributes significantly to the broader understanding of World War II as a whole. With the recent modularization of the U.S. Army division, which makes this command echelon a re-creation of the corps of World War II, Corps Commanders of the Bulge also has distinct relevance to current issues of Army transformation.

Download or read book The Siege of Bastogne written by Charles River Editors and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the fighting written by generals and soldiers on both sides *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "They've got us surrounded - the poor bastards." - American army medic in Bastogne, December 20th, 1944 After the successful amphibious invasion on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies began racing east toward Germany and liberating France along the way. The Allies had landed along a 50 mile stretch of French coast, and despite suffering 8,000 casualties on D-Day, over 100,000 still began the march across the western portion of the continent. By the end of August 1944, the German Army in France was shattered, with 200,000 killed or wounded and a further 200,000 captured. However, Adolf Hitler reacted to the news of invasion with glee, figuring it would give the Germans a chance to destroy the Allied armies that had water to their backs. As he put it, "The news couldn't be better. We have them where we can destroy them." While that sounds delusional in retrospect, it was Hitler's belief that by splitting the Allied march across Europe in their drive toward Germany, he could cause the collapse of the enemy armies and cut off their supply lines. Part of Hitler's confidence came as a result of underestimating American resolve, but with the Soviets racing toward Berlin from the east, this final offensive would truly be the last gasp of the German war machine, and the month long campaign was fought over a large area of the Ardennes Forest, through France, Belgium and parts of Luxembourg. From an Allied point of view, the operations were commonly referred to as the Ardennes Offensive, while the German code phrase for the operation was Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein ("Operation Watch on the Rhine"), with the initial breakout going under the name of "Operation Mist." Today, Americans know it best as the Battle of the Bulge. Bastogne would become a legendary linchpin in the defense against the Ardennes Offensive, in part for its strategic importance but also because of the almost superhuman effort made to protect it. Seven important roads converged with the town of Bastogne, and the Germans, on their way to Antwerp, recognized its importance as a hub, but with the weather obscuring the military map and intelligence at an unusually low rate of abundance or reliability, no Americans on the ground, from private to general, knew precisely what was about to happen, or in what way it would manifest itself. Three officers, Colonel S.L.A. Marshall, Captain John G. Westover and Lieutenant A. Joseph Webber, collaborated to put it quite succinctly in the Washington Infantry Journal when they described Bastogne as "a series of small, dramatic military actions related more by circumstances beyond the control of the defensive forces involved than by the design of a single commander..." In an astonishing feat of planning, logistics and discipline, Patton's army redirected 133,000 vehicles, 62,000 tons of supplies, and the vehicles and men covered a combined distance of 1.5 million miles. To his superiors' amazement, Patton was poised to reach Bastogne and attack the Germans on December 22, and on December 21, he told Bradley, "Brad, this time the Kraut's stuck his head in the meat grinder, and I've got hold of the handle." Of course, for Patton's Third Army to relieve the siege, the men had to hold out a few days, which they were able to do because supplies were parachuted in and the Germans eschewed frontal assaults. In the end, Patton's army reached Bastogne in 4 days and lifted the siege, even he used superlatives to describe the action at Bastogne, calling it "the most brilliant operation we have thus far performed, and it is in my opinion the outstanding achievement of the war. This is my biggest battle."

Download or read book Ardennes Alsace written by Roger Cirillo and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Seven Roads to Hell written by Donald R. Burgett and published by Thorndike Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division had just finished the battle for "the bridge too far", and, as Christmas 1944 approached, they were settling in for some hard-earned R&R. Then Hitler ordered a massive Nazi counterattack through the Ardennes Forest. The Screaming Eagles were rushed to Bastogne, a small Belgian crossroads where seven roads met and where the lightly armed and under-supplied division became the "cork in the bottle" of the Nazi onslaught. Burgett's stirring memoir (he was 19) recounts how epic courage bought the time needed for Patton's Third Army to redeploy.

Download or read book Nuts A 101st Airborne Division Machine Gunner at Bastogne written by Vincent J. Speranza and published by Vincent J. Speranza. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 22 December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, with the Germans surrounding the Belgian town of Bastogne, a German messenger brought a message from his commander to Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, acting commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, demanding his surrender. McAuliffe's response was simply, "Nuts!"Manning a foxhole on the perimeter around Bastogne was nineteen-year-old Army private Vince Speranza, a machine gunner with the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. This is Vince's story of the Battle of the Bulge and his life before and after the battle.Vince shares his memories from early childhood through his service in World War II and his life up until now as he stands on the verge of turning 90--a story you will long remember. Vince will be in Bastogne, at his original foxhole, on the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, drinking Airborne Beer, which his actions many years ago inspired.