Some Thoughts On The Battle of the Bulge 75 Years Later

This week 75 years ago the Battle of the Bulge began on the German border. It was Hitler's last attempt to stop the Americans and British from crashing into West Germany. The US had 610,000 troops fighting in this battle. 89,000 became casualties and 19,000 died. I feel that the real figure with soldiers missing in action was closer to 100,000. The Germans lost 80,000 to 100,000 men. My father fought in that battle and was never wounded.

       All these losses and the losses in the last 4 months of the war including over 300,000 Red Army troops killed taking Berlin might not have been necessary. Sir Winston Churchill is a fascinating man. He was a great political leader. He was a great writer. He was a great painter. He had served in the British Army as an officer both in the Boer War (South Africa) and in World War I as a major fighting in the trenches. He was a brilliant historian. He relied on his knowledge of the Romans and how they fought wars to come up with an unconventional idea. He calmly pointed out to Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt that when Roman armies knew that their victory was inevitable, they became magnanimous toward their opponent. They offered generous peace terms and a chance for the opponent to save face. Before this battle began, he suggested that the Germans be offered a generous deal to quit fighting. Stalin blocked this move. At the end, he was "hell bent" on grabbing as much territory as possible. Stalin was a psychopath of the highest order and the worst murderer in the history of the human race (67,000,000 deaths). He once made this comment:

    "One death is a tragedy. Millions of deaths are just numbers on a piece of paper."