Fifty years ago tomorrow, Americans were suffering through what was surely the worst American Christmas Eve ever. After six months of military victories in Europe, following the successful invasion on D-Day the previous sixth of June, the momentum and the narrative had changed. The Germans had launched a counter-offensive in the Ardennes forest region of Belgium and Luxembourg on Dec. 16. Greatly out-numbered American soldiers were pushed back. A westward "bulge" in the north-south line of Allied advancement eastward was created that would reach over 50 miles.
Americans were used to reading of the Allies' inexorable advance toward Germany in 1944. Victory in Europe seemed assured if not imminent. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" for many American soldiers fighting across the continent meant "only in my dreams" in 1944, but, it seemed, probable in fact in 1945. That timetable suddenly looked suspect. "Your hour has struck," the German commander told his troops. Gen. George Patton, whose 3rd Army would eventually race to the rescue of the 101st Airborne and other units threatened by the Germans, warned, "this war could still be lost."
War correspondents noted in the week before Christmas that "the greatest battle involving American or British troops in this war" was being fought -- and apparently lost. "A pall of gloom" fell over the nation's capital, it was reported. The Sun observed that the fact that the sudden bad news "coincided so ironically with the festival of the Prince of Peace" made mid- and late-December "days of particularly acute and poignant suspense."
The Germans thought they had won, and on Dec. 22, called on the U.S. commander in Bastogne, the strategic transportation center of the bulge area, to surrender. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe delivered his famous one-word rejection -- "Nuts." "American ground forces," the papers reported on Christmas Eve, "continued their magnificent resistance." But it was resistance, holding on, and at terrible costs. It was after Christmas before the Americans began to push the Germans back. Both sides suffered enormous casualties before the American advance continued as before Dec. 16.
The Germans suffered more. The magnitude of their losses in men and tanks in the Battle of the Bulge, as it was named, reduced their ability to resist. "The fact that the Hun has stuck his neck out is, from the point of view of shortening the whole business, the best thing that could happen," wrote a British general. "It may make months of difference." The post-war consensus is that the Battle of the Bulge did shorten the war in Europe. Not just because the Germans stuck their neck out, but because when they did, young American fighting men knew what to do -- wring it -- and they did, displaying great heroism, sacrifice and skill that, 50 years later, deserve remembrance, respect and gratitude.