Hitler's Last Gamble - The Battle of the Bulge, December 1944-January 1945

Drawn from research conducted by a team of military experts under the direction of historian Trevor Dupuy, this book is the most complete and detailed account of the Battle of the Bulge ever written, covering all aspects of the campaign on both sides. 32 pages of photos; 20 maps. Marshaled as if this text were itself a military operations manual, the facts presented here trace 100 units that fought in the Ardennes forest 50 years ago. Dupuy, author of dozens of military books, claims for this the ultimate place for comprehensive research on the campaign, and the bewildering factual phalanx of weaponry specs, tactical deployments, weather reports, and casualty counts compels agreement with the assertion. The U.S. Army was impressed enough to use Dupuy's information in a database. So on December 16, 1944, the German forces began an offensive that achieved complete surprise. Dupuy and his co-writers unfold minute-by-minute the German units' progress, loss of impetus, and repulse. The prodigious amount of detail does yield some revisions--that fighting around St. Vith, rather than Bastogne (famed for the "Nuts!" retort to a German surrender demand), turned the tide in favor of the Americans--and so readers attuned to the anniversary and steeped in militarese might favor this work over the dozen in-print oral histories or pictorial works.