When you are weak, when little hope remains, the temptation is for an all-or-nothing rolling of the dice. When you are strong, you are reluctant to risk all in a desperate gamble. Military strength has to be husbanded, lines and positions protected, enemy thrusts anticipated and guarded against, as the essential basis for an offensive strike.īut matters change when wars are being lost. Though he was the grand master of strategic mobility, Napoleon considered defence the foundation-block of warfare. One destination, Malmedy, would become the site of a massacre by this division of 84 American POWs. German SS troops with 1st Panzer Division check a highway sign at an Ardennes crossroad, December 1944. On the eve of the 75th anniversary, Neil Faulkner analyses the thinking and planning behind Operation Autumn Mist, and charts the course of Hitler’s last offensive in the West. The Battle of the Bulge: Hitler’s last push
0 kommentar(er)
