“[The Battle of the Bulge] was the greatest defeat inflicted upon American arms during the war, preceded by titanic victories and followed by further astounding triumphs … [Yet,] strangely enough, this counterattack, far from being a desperate German lunge built up in record time, was planned months in advance by a cagey and frantic Fuehrer, who started thinking about it in the hospital after the bomb attempt on his life; who drained his other fronts and supplies, who committed his reserves, who demanded and got the impossible from his armies – all the while we were still driving furiously toward the German fronteir and the consolidation of a continent-long front. It was to be the gigantic effort in the West, and was to split the Allied armies, and plunge to the north, seizing the supplies, encircling whole corps and armies, and capturing the crucial cities of Brussels and Antwerp. The minimum gains were to be dislocation, demoralization, and even temporary disintegration of our forces. The attack finally achieved all of these in varying degree”.
